General Summary
Day 470
As I stand to leave Puddle they look down and ask simply if I need a hug. I melt into their embrace, shockingly gentle for such an enormous person.
Back at the house I am immediately surrounded by the smell of cooking from Dal and Lyssa. Dinner is cheerful and warm with the family all around me, including Liliales who has been eagerly talking to Tira about magic.
As the others clean up I snatch a few moments to write to Trillium and Void, filled with concern over the memories Trillium and I have regained. I was right to worry - his terse messages have no comfort, only further worries. Madness, a husband and son...the pang of grief is shallow and clinical but I still feel it. More than anything I want her here beside me.
I'm pale and quiet when I emerge into the common room and am instantly collected up by Bran and Lyssa. I stumble over telling them in vague terms what I am worried about. I have a growing confidence that Trillium's curse serves a purpose just like my own lost memories did, but I had the comfort of knowing that I did this to myself and chose it. Tira has been thinking about the curse too, that perhaps we could unravel it if we could find a loose piece of it.
I feel my mind tighten around this precious, secret memory. We will not intentionally unravel that magic until those people hunting her have been stamped into dust. At this, Dal laughs and points out that it would be a rousing afterparty for the wedding if it weren't for the absolute lack of leads or knowledge we have about our quarry.
Dal...he tells me that he greeted me on this side the way he did because he was worried that I would be too fragile for all of it at once. He was right - this was the right path for me. I needed to anchor myself with family and love before I could understand who I am. And Trillium...what might anchor her? She has all the same things I do here but the losses and madness she'll grapple with are different. How could I have been brought back if Mistress and Doraal had been lost to me?
Yneir and Bran both point out that she has some time before anything terrible might happen to her. She has spent so long unwoven from fate that it will take time before she weaves herself back in. They talk about a hero's journey and how her presence in other grand happenings might hasten her progress...but it all swirls around me. I don't have much trust for fate when it comes to her, not with these memories, the magic, and the curse.
I want her near me so badly. Haze suggests that perhaps he could simply go fetch her now but after a while I admit that tonight is not a night for decisions. I'll take the night and maybe send him out in the morning.
Fortunately Alder sends us all of to bed with sweet, spun confections. I take a few more with me to bed as I sit in the darkness and pen further letters. I feel humiliatingly small writing to Void again - this stupid ancient dragon-fae who stands between me and the information I need to make decisions for my family.
The response is quick and unexpectedly wrathful. It raises many questions, one of which is whether the dragons remember Canyon Shade and Drifting Leaf Shadow if not Trillium herself. To hear that their belonging was a subject of debate infuriates me - if not on her behalf then on his. That a child of theirs might have been outcast is unacceptable and seemingly out of character for what I know of their clans.
Vengeful dragon ancestors though...this is a new problem and one that is more easily understood than the vagueries of a curse withholding memories to prevent madness. This I can understand and work on. Either holding them at bay, hiding her from sight, or helping her sever the connection herself. There are options here.
The Zephyr condemn themselves further and further in my eyes. I think back to the vision I saw through the pearl and of the geometric patterns drawn by the Divine Sword of Order mages. Now I can see it echoed in the Zephyr magic embedded in the humans - the connections are clear.
I miss Magdalena so much.
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