Day 480
The echoes of my family are something that both Kaide and I must reckon with. Seeing my grandmother as a talented alchemist makes sense, though it never would have occurred to me as a child. The further echoes feel like I am watching someone else's story even though I know it is their blood in my veins. Maybe I am shielded from this by my culture - my bloodline is not so important to me as my family.
But for Kaide, to see an Osyr holding an elvish family in bondage as property is not easy. Even at their worst she was never property to Magdalena - the idea seems cold. And she is disconnected from her own bloodline and wonders if knowing any part of her past will change who she is now. Magdalena once told Kaide that the only way she would help Kaide re-integrate is if she could prove herself as strong as her other half, someone 'worth existing'. It sounds like Magdalena, but maybe not the one we will meet in a few weeks' time. I think our shared teacher has softened further.
She wonders if this fae mutilation I've seen is something her other half might have ordered - if she might have become someone who would give such cruel commands as to sever the wings of fae. She wonders why her other half created the Empire at all.
It's a hard series of questions. Of course the Empress became someone capable of such cruelty - there are Blaze ghosts in the ziggurat who told me of their deaths. But more importantly to Kaide and me is that these were wartime decisions. Even as my great great grandmother stole these wings she killed them gently and I can discern with a military perspective that this was not torture but
acquisition. I don't know if I want to know what precisely those wings were used for.
Kaide asks also after our war with the Collective and whether there is senseless killing involved. I think she does not quite realize what a cruel question it is for me, though I'm sure she senses my discomfort at answering. Our armies don't indulge in senseless killing of innocents, but some of our military leadership (me...Mistress...) have gone out alone to wipe out anything standing our way. The thing with the Collective is that, as far as we've seen, there is no ability for an individual to exist independently from their unity. And in the early days of the war they always moved first, always destroyed first; I feel we have done our duty in being peace-seeking and forgiving. Of course...this does not consider what Rabiya represents - a Collective race existing as an individual. I push the thought from my mind as something I can affect no change over at the moment.
Something I can do...revisit some of these ancient places with a keener eye towards what I'm looking for. The last echo calls up places we've been before I knew anything about their history or meaning. Now I want to sink my hands into the earth where a Grove once stood above the Weaver's Village, feel for any hidden roots or even earth that was once tree.
When we head further south I hope we will encounter the Grove from this memory - cradled amidst hills all around it like the Grove Magdalena told me about.
And
seeds in the library. The small thread of urgency I have felt to bring Kaide and Lyssa to the Empress in Deldrin intensifies to a near-burning desire to get my hands on these books, seeds, songs. But we can't leave yet - there is still work that we need to do here. Seeds that have waited thousands of years for me can continue to wait.
Day 481-483
Over the next three days Kaide and I undertake an enthusiastic course of study and experimentation with Magdalena's lectures and Kaide's skill at gem circle net casting. The principle is so sensible - a series of stones taught to always exist in relation to one another so that they can be tossed out and form a circle by instinct. She tells me her people used it for calling enormous sea creatures using enormous nets and pearls. Such huge circles couldn't be permanently inscribed with the currents and movement of the water and so they needed to have memory of their locations.
The echo I choose to call is my grandmother, the alchemist. I carve a wooden measuring spoon from a piece of fallen Grove wood and Kaide helps me train gems so that they can be held close with copper wire and cast out to imbue the spoon with new properties. The result is a spoon that will always measure out whatever I need for what I'm making, relying upon my grandmother's steady intuition of spices, flavours, and measurements. She was never wrong in my own memories of her.
In this time Kaide also works on bloodline magic from all of her elvish blood. One of Tira's ancestors was a cartographer and she fashions a Grove wood pen that will help recollect the holder's travels to produce reliable maps. She says that the process of calling these echoes feels complicated - she misses Tira, Knotrael, and Alder especially because she has learned things about their families and wishes she could share them. And with Lyssa still here she knows she should ask before looking. She feels a little guilty for having done so without permission for the others, since they gave their blood for the Empress and that is not who she is anymore.
I'm proud of her for this line of thinking. It speaks so well of her.
And on our last full day in Dreamfall I bring Zadiyah to the top of the ziggurat, intending to activate the flame bond between us so that we will be able to find one another like any member of my family. She is losing some of her stiff formality and I think travelling with Camellia will be so, so good for her!
Before the ritual we settle in and talk about her magic a little bit. At Camellia's insistence she has worked up the courage to ask me for the help she needs.
I have always wanted to be like Lyssa. Not you - you were too much to emulate. But I wanted to be a good servant, able to execute your will. Now I need help with my magic...I'm not commanding an army anymore. I need to move past that, from general to...governor?
I'm proud of her for asking, and eager to sink my senses into her magic. She feels a bit like Alwen, always missing the trees and only seeing the forest. She has such a keen sense of the pulse of the troops and what the entire group needs but she misses the individuals. Like Alwen, I guide her to sensing the weak points in her wide area and focus in on the individual who stands apart from the group and how they might need to be handled differently. I show her to look for the barriers between people that change the flow of emotions over a group.
When I connect us the flame is dim but steady. I wish we had more time to feed it, but again the needs of our people will have to draw us all apart. She descends from the ziggurat alone, as I have one more working to complete by myself.
By now it is near dusk and the warm lights of the ground twinkle up at me atop the steps. I carefully cradle the vial of Mistress' blood in my hands and enact the same rites I just worked over Zadiyah. I feel it take hold easier than any of the others and far to the east sparks a vibrant, pure-burning flame of connection, stronger even than Lyssa's white-blue presence. She's there and I can see her.
That night when I sleep I think perhaps I've awoken in the Dreaming, but the air is too energetic and alive. I feel so far South, deep in Collective territory where even I haven't gone before. And curled beside a low campfire is Mistress, peacefully sleeping on her bedroll. Uncle Red is playing a low, meandering melody on his flute and stops abruptly, locking eyes with me.
I can only hold the connection for moment before I fade back into my own bed. But it is enough time to give him the most impish, mischievous smile I can muster...and to capture one last glimpse of my sleeping Mistress.
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