General Summary
Day 173
I spend the rest of the day being shown around the rest of Solace by Stella. The small city is so extraordinarily well-organized, with people who seem to operate by rules that I can sense are there but cannot entirely deconstruct.
Their gardens are visually beautiful but largely ornamental, with flowers grown in very specific configurations and foliage trimmed into shapes.
She shows me to an art gallery and I note that all the artwork depicts stories and people. There are no landscapes, no still life images, nothing that does not include a person no matter how small. They have an ingenious way of telling stories using enchanted stones that project illusions when touched and I see parents telling their children the stories of each painting or piece of art. Even the benches are carved with faces and human figures in the decorations.
“You could tell a story about a mountain but isn’t the mountain only special because of what happens there? Why not include the people who made it special?” Stella replies when I ask why all of their art centres on the people. It’s an interesting thought - people usually are central to a story. Can something be art without a story? To these people, presumably not. I wonder what they would think of the abstract carvings that Bran and I have made of glass.
Stella explains to me that the city is run by magistrates who are appointed in succession and that people tend to dedicate themselves to a career and focus on it once they have finished their basic education. People are allowed to (and often do) change their professions as they grow and develop new interests. She used to want to be a musician, she tells me with a laugh.
We conclude by visiting a school for children, where they receive a basic education to prepare them for whatever job they choose. Elves have schools but more often we apprentice to someone or learn about our culture simply by existing as a part of it. These children are being taught the rules of the city and how to participate in it. It is remarkable to see such order and clarity combined with the freedom to choose. It’s what the Collective might have been if there was a little more compassion in their creed (and perhaps some scientific rigor - to have a centrally administered definition of weights and measurements….)
The tour concludes back at the inn where I find Nidet playing the fiddle and charming the other patrons. He looks happy and relaxed and gives me a smile as I enter.
When we settle down for dinner, just the two of us, he apologizes for his behaviour in the morning. He has sifted through his memories again and found that he has known elvish comrades who fought beside him and knows that we cannot all be dark and evil. Still, the memories lean more in one direction than the other.
Abruptly I ask if he knows of Wellspring and the tree there. He says he remembers the tree and the war there - remembers leaving it many times and perhaps dying there. His memories, though, are not of people who sang their last song to the Wellspring tree before dying in battle. The horror of that tree was that people would sing to it before they were ready to sleep for the last time and then spend their last life in battle, their last song unsung.
When I tell him that I now hold Wellspring and am approaching the Grove to return it, if the fae want those songs back, he nods. Of course they want that history returned. He wants to bring more Raaita to sleep beneath the Wellspring tree and remember those songs that have been lost for so long.
I am painfully aware that a sleeping Raaita might wake surrounded by elves and lash out, but I offer anyway: If they wish to sleep, my people will guard them. They say that perhaps they could bring fae of all seasons so that some could be there to explain when others wake. To be guarded by elves and to wake with both fae and elves to welcome them would be a very strange and new thing.
I ask, cautiously, about what one remembers when one wakes. I have been anxious to ask Camellia but haven’t found the words. Will she wake and remember everything about this life? What if the version of herself that she becomes has a different calling? Nidet stares at me intensely and we talk about Camellia a bit. He seems to pay close attention to how confused and sad I feel about the prospect of saying goodbye to Camellia in just a few months. And then he hugs me, because he too has cried over saying goodbye.
“When I saw you today I was scared. I was frightened and I thought about my people and thought ‘I didn’t get to say goodbye’” he tells me, “But you looked so sad to see how scared I was…”
And we talk a bit about the complexities of goodbye - about how many I’ve said goodbye to and how many I know I’ll leave behind again. Their stories are so old and wise but they are so very young that it doesn’t always make sense to them.
And in a burst of energy, I ask him to come outside with me so I can show him something. I haven’t yet used the cloak that Magdalena gave me, but I want to see what Nidet thinks. Maybe it will help me if I meet another Raaita who isn’t as quick to see my sadness at their fear.
The wings unfurl to reveal brilliant orange-gold, yellow and red.
“You’re autumn!” Nidet cries out as my wings sway gently in the evening light. Apparently some humans are quite Summer or Winter but he doesn’t usually see people so clearly tied to a season. “Yes, you really are Autumn. There’s sadness and change, but the change isn’t always sad,”
And then they give me my first flying lesson and I can see why Magdalena told me it would be tiring. The flight itself is magic keeping me suspended. The wings are just for steering!
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