Day 418
The grotto is three days East of Shaelie and our first day passes without any trouble. The road is full of travellers though it dies down past midday. Around mid afternoon, when Kaide has already retired, I seem a strong wave of magic pulse out from nearby and instantly change course to investigate. It's a strange mix - healing, decay, and strands of fate.
I arrive at the source to find a clear pool of water nestled between two hills protecting an orchard of 3-4 year old fruit trees of all sorts. A pastel spring fae flits amongst them, dragging a piece of metal like a plow and planting seeds behind it. As I watch, she kneels beside one, floods it with magic, and floats backwards as a fully formed sapling springs forth from it. It is a feat that I desperately want to understand so I drift down openly, cradling my own decay and renewal magic in my palms as a sign of friendship.
The fae is Sienin, a gardener. With the winter receding she knows that people will need much more produce than the surrounding area can provide, so she is doing what she can. This area is so bereft of nutrients that she and her son have been hunting and decomposing animals to return the goodness to the soil. The magic she uses injects the nutrients, heals the surrounding land, and draws upon the fate of the trees to feed hungry people. She tells me to simply 'become the need' to have people fed.
I select a familiar seed - citrus, though I don't know what variety. With my own hands sunk into the earth around it I focus on what she said but find my head drifting to other possibilities: Transmutation might encourage a seed to tee its potential and move towards it. The future I hold in my mind as I embody the need is of people eating, but all sorts of people - elves, fae, trolls, dwarves, humans, Carthians, Tuskans, Kiriti, hoblins, goblins, dragons, Kindred, Osyr, even a golden grow like Yneir. One long table, stretching out into the distance with every sapient being I have ever spoken with...though it's hard to tell if I manage to overcome my anger and place an ancient Collective race at my table. Certainly Rabyia is present. And I think of Bran and the river of time he nearly got dragged into, and the magic of the Osyr pearl. I think of this tree in the future, feeding hundreds, and the river of time it would flow down to arrive at that destination.
When I feel the trunk pushing at my hands I open my eyes to find an enormous tree laden with citrus fruit larger even than a grapefruit. I'm tired - I might have pushed more than was sensible but the warmth in my wings at seeing a tree sprout from nothing was worth it. Sienin looks at my curiously and invites me to share her camp so she can hear more about how I came to have both arcane magic along with the mysticism we share.
I make some recommendations on how to prepare the fruit - citrus is always lovely with a duck or goose, fresh greens for a bright salad, and we settle down for a meal once her son arrives. He is a tall, golden-orange wildling named Jerun and neither of them seem put out by Kaide's swift appearance as soon as the food is prepared.
Over supper I mention that we are heading East and Sienin immediately makes the connection too the grotto. She describes it as being protected by a barrier (I sigh at this) which will allow worthy people with a certain amount of magic to pass through. Otherwise, an eldritch spirit can guide someone across. She went there in her first time as a mystic and remembers it as being a place from which life overflows. The water there is curative, the fruits grown there are restorative. Those who gain access to the grotto and respect its magic can learn and gain much from being there. She tells us of the special magic contained there and shows us her own example: A brilliant white flame representing life itself. It can heal, remove scars, participate in the act of creation. It took her six months in the grotto (that's half a year of wakefulness...) to learn it but once you have it, it never leaves. Six months...it's certainly a piece of magic I'm anxious to feel and understand but I cannot spend six months learning it. The idea of this magic will live in my mind as something to study and feel later on. At the very least I intend to spend a few days there; I have been saving the precious journal from Magdalena to begin reading there.
Your magic feels ancient and heartlike. It feels like what the Heart of Song might have had.
Sienin chatters happily about how badly she wants to bring Jerun there one day when he finally wakes with magic - so far he has lived every year without magic and she thinks this is something major that he has been missing. Jerun himself seems unconvinced. He has a vague sense of being part of something shining, like something would be waiting for him if he could only reach out and grasp it. It's a feeling that has gotten stronger every time he wakes. He's different from the Vanguard - no clear memories of ancient times, no shared experiences. Instead, I treat him like I did Rabiya, offering to look into his past and see whatever I can find.
Each of his awakenings: Winter mercenary, autumn scoundrel, but never any magic. Then darkness as the river flows backwards further before he was born to his parents, amazingly far back before any of my memories, any of my fae memories, anything I have heard of from anyone. I see him looking older than he does now, bright and golden but not like he is now, not like a summer fae, not like dawn and not like the golden sun. He is watching a grove burn but it is unlike any grove I have seen - dark, almost light-devouring trunks blooming into golden glowing leaves that seem to emit the light rather than reflect it. The fire burns all the brighter for it.
Two other fae join him: One dark green and sickly looking, emaciated and with sunken burning eyes and cheeks; the other with dark skin, black wings, and shockingly white hair. He greets them as brother and sister and his voice is bitter as he asks whether this will continue any longer, long enough for them to do more of this? They meet in battle, his great sword drawn but falling aside as the green fae breathes out a noxious gas over him and laughs.
"You know there's no end for you, brother. Just sleep for a while."
I come back to consciousness stricken and still, his hands clasped in mine. I search his face intently before rising and excusing myself abruptly, assuring him that I will come back and explain but I need to look in a few other places for answers before I do. I leave the pair of them with Kaide and rise into the branches until I can see the stars above me clearly. Cross-legged on the branch with my wings steadying me, I feel secure enough to take out a sheet of paper and begin my letter to Magdalena, holding the circles of a memory illusion in my mind to embed within the paper when I'm ready to send it.
With a draft in hand I lie back and slip into the Dreaming to seek out more counsel. As soon as I appear, hands encircle my eyes and a teasing voice prods me to guess who it might be. Nal, of course. Before I even say hello I unleash a flood of information about the last couple weeks - Anna's magic, Kaide, the grotto, Shaelie. She laughs and offers suggestions and asks to meet Kaide next time I'm able to visit.
With respect to the memory I show her of Jerun, she falls silent for a moment. I thought perhaps he was a variant on a Celestial fae but she shakes her head and tells me of the fae of Light and Dark, something one of her oldest teachers told her about. They encompassed light, dark, shadow, and the void. Losing them lost both the most radiant and the most empty that the fae could have been. The other two though - she doesn't recognize. This scene must have been from long before the Pruning, long before anything that anyone but the Undying would remember.
I am full of anxiety over his presence - not someone I can help without further implications on the world. And further, it is not a decision that is truly mine to make. The rage in my veins when Magdalena made decisions for me and my family is a reminder I barely need to acknowledge that this is not mine. Nal, of course, is calming: Even if I cannot give him all the answers and all the implications I can at least tell him something, bring a little peace to him. I can be myself, and that will probably be enough.
We close our visit with news of the new Celestials I sent to the Dreaming - they are in chrysalises waiting for their wings to form properly. By next Spring they will emerge and I will have to come visit all of them, which I promise to do.
A few hours of passed when I finally return to the waking world and find night well and truly fallen. I add a few more lines to my letter and slip off the branch to glide back into our camp. Sienin is sleeping and Kaide is gone but Jerun is still awake, tending to the fire and brewing tea. I explain, in careful terms, how I can show him what I saw but I cannot answer all the questions that will arise. It will not be the full answer he might desire.
Nothing risked, nothing worthwhile obtained.
As I show him the memory I see fear and rage pulsing in his blood - he unconsciously draws his own small knife as the dark fae attack in the illusion and it fades away.
As we sip the warm mint tea I slowly draw up further illusions of other fae - seasons, day and night, Celestial, light and dark, and their trees. He listens quietly to everything I can offer him and then nods slowly before excusing himself to think. Before he goes I catch his hand again and ask him to come to the grotto with me. He agrees.
I wanted my mother but I felt like she'd never come and help.
Before I sleep I send off my letter and receive one in return almost instantly telling me to describe everything and omit nothing. The handwriting is frenetic and the parchment almost torn from the force with which she finished the script.
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