19.3 Six Days

Day 263

I wake to the smell of cooking boar sausages - Andstella’s proficiency in wilderness survival is clear in the way her little home here is set up.   We spend the day discussing and plotting, despite my eagerness to simply be on the move again. The question that doesn’t yet have an answer is: What does the Court want?   I’m baffled that they want to reclaim the Forest of Nightmares. Those are trees that never housed songs or memories. They were seeds when they were taken. Andstella has her own thoughts on this - it’s possible that the Court simply wants to destroy it because it’s a threat and they need a victory, or it might be a nebulous external problem that allows them to send away some troublesome wizards on a fool’s mission just to get them out of the way.   One thing is clear, at least: The Court is threatened by the Vanguard and will want to neutralize them. Andstella has her own plan for this as well. She proposes that we bring all of the Vanguard to Dreamfall (along with Kadia, who we will simply break out of jail) and begin arranging for the Vanguard members to sleep beneath our Tree and take the form they’re meant to have. When we’re ready we can tell the Seasonal Court to speak with us (the Time Court?) as an independent people. The years of independence gained by the structure of our sleep cycle will be precious for the Vanguard’s future.   So for now, we focus on creating a way to return here. Alder, Andstella, and I combine our knowledge and instinct in creating an anchored Shadowgate that Alder will be able to connect to from far away, provided he can focus on it and has enough power to reach this far.  

Day 264-269

It takes us six heart-breaking, frustrating days of work to do this, set against the backdrop of Lesili’s orderly camp-management. Throughout it, Alder feels so regretful at his lack of ability, something that both Andstella and I work hard to correct. This is weird magic and an argument could be made for each of us being singularly responsible for our failure if anyone cared to make it. Over the course of these six days I notice my sleep cycle changing. I used to be up early with Alder and now I find myself sleeping in more and shifting later into the night. When I wake up, Andstella is usually cooking with him (a little closer than I’d expect...which is strange) and she’ll take a nap around midday. We also find a strange, inexplicable resonance between our magics...perhaps one that we’ll understand better when there are more of us.   Over the course of our six days of work I also find more flickers of memory from my ancient fae mind. I was summer and writing a song for a spring festival. The girl I wanted to impress was an elf, and I hoped that I could catch her attention enough that she would wait for me when I had to sleep again. I remember spending time together and her holding my hand as I slept in the Grove. I don’t remember if she was there when I woke...