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Chapter Text

POTENTIAL
Aughra, Raunip
long before AoR

Aughra, the first and only of her kind, gazed down at an incongruous rock. She had seen many rocks in her day, but never like this one that had fallen from the sky. What was to be done with it? She couldn’t ignore it. It was her job to sort out the pieces that made up the whole of Thra, and now this rock was one such piece. A piece of Thra, and yet a piece of something else.

A puzzle.

A possibility. That Aughra may be the first of her kind, but not the only. She raised a gnarled hand, breathed a breath, and lifted a new life out of this unexpected rock. A piece of Thra, and of something else. She could hardly wait to meet him.

GROWTH
urLii, Amri
before AoR

urLii did his best to ignore the tiny Gelfling. He unfolded an arm from his back and reached for a match to light a third candle, refusing to take his eyes off the book he was reading. There. Much better light.

But although urLii was a creature of great placidity, who should have been able to keep his focus, the little fellow just kept staring with those big black eyes.

“Can I help you?” urLii asked at last. Maybe I can give him what he wants and he’ll go away.

“Yes!” The Gelfling perked up. “Who are you? What are you reading? Can I read it? I read all of the books in Domrak already.”

“That’s a lot of books for such a tiny Gelfling.”

The Gelfling said nothing, but kept up his hopeful stare.

urLii sighed and waved him over. The Gelfling perked up from his crouching position and sprang over to urLii’s side, peeking at the book. “It is a history of the Age of Harmony,” said urLii. It was meant to be their first and only lesson, but the lessons never ended.

“Are you all right?”

urLii blinked at the Gelfling who stood before him. He was not as tiny as he used to be.

“I was just remembering something.”

“I know you’re busy,” said the not-so-tiny Gelfling. “But I need help with this potion. It smells… wrong.”

urLii walked over to his young pupil with a smile. Time for another lesson it seemed.

THE UNEXPECTED
Rian, Gurjin
five trine before AoR

Rian sat alone on a rock halfway between the castle and the shore. As a child visiting the castle, he had raced his father to this rock and back. It was one of their favorite traditions. Now after his first official week as a castle guard, he had needed a private place to sit and think, and the rock had popped into his mind.

He stared at the shore, the castle at his back, and worried. Being a castle guard was different than when he had visited the castle as the son of the captain, and yet, he was beginning to realize, he now somehow had to be both. The other guards treated him differently, but at the same time, his father showed him no favor. If only one or both of those things wasn’t true…

SPLASH.

Rian screamed in horror as his musings were interrupted by some sort of lake monster heaving itself onto the rock beside him.

“Hey,” the lake monster said.

Oh Thra, it’s just my roommate. “Where did you come from?” Rian said. “I thought you were a lake monster.”

Gurjin pointed to his neck. “Gills. You didn’t know Drenchen have gills?”

“I did not know that,” Rian said neutrally, trying to catch his breath.

“Well, you should really try to learn about other people’s cultures before you go around calling them lake monsters.”

“Yeah.” Great, now after everything else, I’ve insulted my new roommate.

After a moment or two of silence, Gurjin cleared his throat. “Actually, when I first met my friend Kylan—he’s a Spriton—I almost drowned him. I had no idea that other Gelfling didn’t have gills.”

“Oh geez, was he okay?”

“Oh yeah, he was fine. Just fine. We’re still friends.” Gurjin threw a stone into the water. “Although I guess my old life is all behind me now. Everything here is so different from home.”

Rian considered it. While he didn’t know as much about being a guard as the others seemed to expect, he did know a lot about the castle, and his home in Stone-in-the-Wood was less than a day’s travel away. No matter how confused he was feeling right now, he couldn’t be feeling as lonely as Gurjin.

“Well,” Rian said. “You have one new friend here already.” He playfully punched Gurjin on the shoulder. “Just don’t try to drown me.”

Chapter Text

APOLOGY
Smerth-Staba, Kira-Staba
after AoR

Easier to speak with each other than with the Podlings or the Gelfling or even Mother Aughra herself.

A Gelfling would need the words formed by vibration and air I am sorry my sister.

Or the dreamfast, an image of clean crystal veins growing murky on their path north, and a pang of regret.

But his sister knew the shifts in the minerals that filled the soil, the chemicals flowing from through webs of mycelium, all the way from the low swamp to the snowy mountaintop. Oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, different arragements of probability and spark.

So no need to waste extra energy in her precious last moments on vibration or memory. A simpler message than what the Gelfling would hear on the air as I am sorry my sister, that I live while you die.

And a simple reply, like the words None of this is of our choosing. Hang on to life, dear brother, and do not let go, but arranged in spark and soil.

The exchange continued in a gentle flow of elements, no longer like words of Gelfling, Podlings, Mother Aughra herself, but something akin to their nameless tunes.

Until it ceased.

And then there was no one left who would understand so well.

OBSTRUCTION
Tavra, Brea
after Flames of the Dark Crystal

Tavra perched on the table, staring up at the dizzying heights of the Library, so much higher now that she was so much smaller.

Tavra startled as several sharp thuds reverberated through her new body, more sensitive to vibration than her old one. Leaving Onica to her book, Tavra scuttled over to the source of the sound, to find Brea tugging futilely on a door seemingly latched from the inside.

“You stupid door,” Brea shouted. She gave it one final tug, kicked it, and sank to the floor, a tear escaping her eye.

Tavra knew it wasn’t really the door that Brea was upset about. Unfortunately, she couldn’t fix all the death and destruction of the past few months. But, she thought, eying a small opening between stones in the wall, she might be able to fix the door problem.

Tavra scuttled up the wall, startling Brea slightly. She easily squeezed herself through the crack. The room beyond was dim, lit only by moonlight, but her new eyes navigated the shadow well. She climbed up to the latch, caught one of her long arms on the bolt, and pulled.

When Brea opened the door, Tavra gently scuttled up her arm and perched on her shoulder. For the first time since Tavra’s transformation, her younger sister smiled at her. With one spindly leg, Tavra wiped Brea’s tear and then scuttled off again.

HEALING WOUNDS
Gurjin, Pemma
a few trine after AoR

“See,” Pemma said, wiping the blood from her dagger, “I told you the two of us could handle one Darkened nebrie.”

“Naia’s going to be mad that we killed it,” Gurjin said. “She really wants to capture a specimen to see if we can cure it.”

“I love Naia, but if she wants to subdue a giant raging monster and drag it through the swamp for half a league, she can do it herself.”

“Yeah, well,” her brother said, struggling to tie a bandage around a gash on his right forearm. “I’m going to have to listen to an earful while she's healing this. Captive audience.”

“I wish I could heal it,” Pemma said. “I was never good at it though.” Not like Naia and Eliona. They were already so much better than me and I never caught up.

“I was never good at it either,” said Gurjin, “until I had to be.”

It was true that amongst her few hazy memories of her brother before he had left for the castle was the fact that he had been terrible at dream-healing. So maybe if he had been able figure it out, she could too.

“You know how you, like, dreamfast with the wound and your mind kind of zooms in to see the tiny pieces that make up a person’s body?” she began. “The little blobs and lines and stuff? I can get to the part where I can see the lines and blobs, but I can’t get them to knit back together.”

“You know how I always do it?" Gurjin said, grabbing her hand and placing it on his wounded arm, “I concentrate really hard in my mind and say Come on you stupid lines and blobs, knit back together.”

Pemma narrowed her eyes at him, but she didn’t take her hand off of the wound. “That’s not how Mom taught me.”

“I’m completely serious,” he said. “Come on, don’t you want to spare me an earful from Naia?”

The stakes were high. “Fine,” she said.

Hand to the wounded arm, like a dreamfast, but not quite. The lines and blobs came into focus, and, mentally, she berated the heck out of them until they bent to her will.

A minute later Pemma came out of the healing trance. Her brother smiled at her and swung his newly in tact arm back and forth from the elbow.

“Let’s not tell Naia about the nebrie,” Pemma said.

“Good idea,” said Gurjin. He hopped up onto a low branch, helped his sister up, and the two of them took off through the canopy back towards Great Smerth.

Chapter Text

HIDDEN AWAY
Amri, Deet
a few trine after AoR

“Boo.”

Amri jumped so high that he smacked his head on a low-hanging apeknot branch.

“Deet, what are you doing here?” He tried to reposition himself subtly so that he could hide his secret behind him without her noticing.

“Don’t ask me. I followed you. What are you doing sneaking off into the middle of the swamp?” She craned her neck to peer around him, unfooled. “I thought you had quit sneaking off in secret once you managed to get out of Domrak for good.”

I never wanted to get out of Domrak for good, he thought. He moved aside so Deet could see what was behind him. A small opening in the ridge of rock, one of the few hunks of rock in the swamp that was large enough to house…

“…a cave,” said Deet.

“Just a small one.”

“So after all these trine, you’re sneaking back into caves?”

“I just miss home sometimes, I guess. I always wanted to see the daylight world, but that’s different from never being able to go back home again. So sometimes I come here and sit for a little while.”

Deet peered inside, her keen eyes taking in the tunnel that opened into a cavern spotted with glow-moss. “Can I go in?” she asked.

The slight waver in her voice surprised him. As much as he wanted to keep his secret hideaway to himself, he realized for the first time that were others who probably needed it as much as he did.

“Yeah,” he said, with a wink. “My swamp-cave is your swamp-cave.”

WARMTH
Kylan, Onica
a few trine after AoR

“What about this one?” Onica asks.

The coat she holds up is simpler in style than the others in this shop, but it’s made out of a heavy gray brocade that seems less than functional.

“Looks too itchy,” Kylan says.

Onica puts the coat back on the rack. “That’s your way of saying too Vapran, right?” she says in a low voice. But he just smiles in response and exits the shop.

“Maybe I don’t need a coat,” he says, wrapping his cloak around him to try to fend of the cold of the Ha’rar night. “The Skeksis won’t leave the city alone forever, and then we’ll have to flee to the desert. You don’t need a coat in the desert.”

“Well, let’s try to have a little optimism,” says Onica. “We’ll try one more store.” She grabs his hand and leads him into a small shop.

He can tell this one is different from the start. Instead of frilly curtains and refined furniture for customers to rest on while being waited upon, the design is sparse, metal racks with clothing and not much else. Behind the counter is a Vapra, but next to him is a brown-haired man dressed in clothes with a Stonewood crest. Kylan glances at the Stonewood, as he always does, trying to match the features on the face to faint memories of his father’s. But there is no obvious connection.

Kylan is drawn to a coat on one of the racks, something about the smell of the fabric is familiar. He reaches out to touch it, when Onica calls out to one of the shopkeepers.

“Haron?”

The Vapra turns around. “Onica! I have a shop in Ha’rar now.”

“I see that,” she laughs. “Kylan, this is Haron. We used to sail together.”

“Don’t let the Vapran features fool you,” says Haron with a wink. “I’m a Sifa now, through and through.” He runs a hand over the coat Kylan has been looking at. “The wool for this one came all the way from the Plains,” he says, then nods towards the Stonewood. “But Anli did the design.”

“A bit of Stonewood touches,” says Anli. “Can’t help myself. But a few from the Sifa and Vapra as well. We’re all one clan now, right?”

Kylan smiles. “Yeah.”

A short while later, Kylan and Onica exit the shop, and she walks him back home to the Citadel. Kylan pulls the coat tight around him, warm in the cold Ha’rar night.

HOT CHOCOLATE
Brea
about 15 trine after AoR

In the dim candlelight, Brea puts down her pen and closes her journal, only to look up into a pair of luminious eyes staring at her from the shadows. Startled, she flutters a few inches out of her chair before realizing, mid-air, that they belong to her son.

“Oh Thra, you scared me,” she says. In her defense, while he is very small, he is also always so very quiet.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “It’s too cold.”

“Cold?” she asks. It’s one of those rare nights in the swamp at the height of the rainy season where the temperature is not unbearably hot, but it is, in her opinion, still very far from cold. Clearly he has not inherited her Vapran preference for snowier climates. Just as well, she supposes, if he’s going to live out his life in this sweltering swamp.

Swamp aside, thoughts of her old home have unlodged an idea. “Come on,” she says, leading him to the hearth. “I’ll make you something.”

A few minutes later, she places a cup on the table in front of him. “I used to drink this all the time when I was little,” she says. “Be careful, it’s a little hot.”

“You drank this in Ha’rar?” he asks, before taking a cautious sip.

“In Ha’rar,” she confirms. “It was high up in the mountains and snowed constantly in the cold season. We used to drink this to keep warm.”

“I’d like to see snow,” he says quietly, looking into his cup. “I wish we could visit.”

“You were supposed to be born there,” Brea says, before realizing she has let a little too much sadness into her voice. He will pick up on it of course; he always does. Ah well, she thinks. At least it’s an honest feeling. With her mother and sisters there had always been too much that they kept hidden from each other.

Her son puts down his empty cup and climbs onto her lap. “Can you show it to me?” he asks.

The swamp is so far from Ha’rar. But on this night, the rain failling in sheets through the canopy, she can almost feel a chillness on the breeze. “Yes,” she says, “I think this is a good night for it.”

She places her hand to his small one, and in an instant they are standing on the blinding white mountainside overlooking the city as the Great Sun rises into full morning. As Brea’s small self in the memory sips the warm drink in her hand, both her grown self and her son taste it too, and together they watch the merchants open their shops, the children rush to school, the entire city come alive.

Chapter Text

SLOW AND HEAVY
Naia, Gurjin
several trine after AoR

“Oh my Thra,” her stupid brother said. “Can’t you go any faster?”

Naia paused, each hand wrapped around a vine as she delicately navigated her way through the apewood branches. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot you were an expert on moving quickly when you have an entire other person inside of you.”

“It’s only one entire other person, Naia,” he replied, flipping himself casually over branch so that he hung upside down in front of her, as if to taunt her with his mobility. “How hard can it be?”

“What do you mean only one, that’s still more than you ever…” She blanched. “Oh Thra,” she said in whisper, “what if it’s not just one?” She scowled at her brother. “If you just tempted fate into turning this into twins, so help me…”

“I thought it was fun being a twin,” he said with a pouty face.

“Not right now it isn’t.”

Gurjin flipped back down from the branch, landing nimbly. She didn’t resent him for being free right now, his body completely his own, but did he have to rub it in her face? “How come I have to go through this crap and you never ever have to?”

“I dunno, you’re the maudra, you tell me,” he said with a wink.

She pushed him into the water. But as his words sunk in, she regretted it a little.

He surfaced. “Sorry,” he said, treading water. “I was being a jerk.”

She jumped into the water beside him, and tried to ignore the outlandish size of her splash. “Here,” she said. “Now we’re better matched. Try to keep up with me now.”

He had never beaten her in a race before he left for the castle, even before her wings had grown in. But many trine had passed since he had first left for the castle, and ever since he had come home, even before her current state, he had beaten her more often than not. Now he pulled ahead easily.

When she made it back to the base of Great Smerth, he was waiting to help pull her up out of the water. “See?” he said. “I told you you could go faster.”

She couldn’t decide whether to pound him or to smile, but she ultimately chose the latter. “All right, fine,” she said. “It’s not that bad being a twin, I guess.”

BLOOD TIES
Amri
a few weeks after the above

The Drenchen paid little to no attention to him at first. In fact, he and Naia had been sharing a room for a couple of trine before anyone really noticed that the random Grottan helping develop weapons against the Garthim was, you know, always showing up at breakfast in the Great Hall with their maudra. It wasn’t until she was noticeably expecting their first child that they began to acknowledge him as part of the maudren.

Which was fine. He wasn’t with Naia because she was a maudra. It was more of a despite situation. So the lack of attention all these trine had been for the best, had given their relationship room to breathe and grow. And he had been accepted when the time had come, warmly enough. But the reality of the situation was that she wasn’t the random Grottan’s wife, he was the maudra’s husband.

Now, after what seemed like hours of pacing the floor with his tiny daughter, exhaustedly praying that she would go back to sleep, he looked down at the (at long last) quiet bundle in his arms. But she wasn’t asleep. She gazed up at him, and their eyes locked, seeing each other clearly even in the darkest hours of the night.

To the rest of the world, she might be the future Drenchen maudra, but in that moment, and forever, she was his daughter. My family is my family, he thought, carefully holding her up in front of him so that their eyes were level. Once again, she shifted her gaze to meet his. And what the rest of the world calls us doesn’t matter one bit.

TRUST
Mera, Kylan, Brea
about ten trine after AoR

As the meeting draws to a close, Brea begins to jot down a memo, when the pencil snaps in half in her hand. Again. She winces once, then sighs. She puts the top half in her pocket and begins writing with the stub.

Mera opens her mouth to speak but closes it before Brea can see. She excuses herself, leaving Brea alone in the room. When she gets to end of the hallway, she almost turns left, down the ramp that leads out of the Great Smerth, but, at the last minute, she turns right.

She knocks on the door firmly, three times. When Kylan opens it, she watches his expression melt from neutral into a slight frown.

“I know you don't want to talk to me,” she says. Now that she sees the frown on his face, she begins to think this is a mistake. “Actually, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come.”

“What is it?” he says, before she can turn away.

Mera doesn’t meet his eye. “Tell your wife that arla leaf helps with the muscle spasms,” she says, turning to leave once again.

“What?”

Oh Thra, he doesn’t get it. “Look,” says Mera. “Maybe she has all of this figured out, or maybe one of the older Vapran women has been helping her with it, but seeing as she broke four pencils in the course of an hour-long meeting, I thought she might need some help.”

“Oh,” he says, figuring it out at last. “Well, there’s Naia…”

“Naia’s just barely been through the same thing herself. And the Drenchen have it easier than most.” Mera shakes her head. This isn’t going to work. Well, she’ll give it one more try and then consider it done. “Brea just seems confused, and I want to offer her my help, but I know you don’t trust me, so I thought I’d ask you first.”

“It’s up to her,” he replies through his frown. “If she trusts you or not.”

“But I’m not okay with it unless you are.”

She can read the expressions on his face fairly well, although she’s never completely mastered it. But she can read his doubt now, and she knows that the two of them have never seen eye-to-eye about the decisions she had been forced to make during his childhood. This was a bad idea. She is about to say as much, when he looks up at her with his gentle smile.

“It’s up to her,” he says again. “If she’s fine with it, then so am I.”

A few minutes later, Mera re-enters the meeting room, to find Brea still writing notes. Her hand scrapes against the paper, and she frustratedly throws the pencil stub to the floor.

Mera picks up the pencil and places it back on the table. “Arla root will help with the muscle spasms,” she says.

Chapter Text

COMMAND and DISGUISE YOURSELF
Seladon, Mayrin
before AoR

Mother had said to meet her in the throne room after breakfast, but Mother was late. No doubt something urgent had come up.

So Seladon stood alone in the throne room on a rare morning flooded with the light of all three suns. The beams—yellow, red, red-violet—shot through the windows and bounced off floor and ceiling, a feast of warmth and radiance.

The abundance of light was too much to resist. Seladon raised her arms in front of her, palms out, as she had practiced so many times before. She let the light fill her eyes until they glazed over and she went into the trance, like a dreamfast, but not. When three guards came into the room without so much as as a glance in her direction, she knew she had succeeded.

Giggling, she twirled in a circle around the throne room, unseen by guards or the passersby in the hall. She spun her way to the throne and leapt upon it, feeling the light go through her instead of bouncing off, her small form invisible to all. Every once and again one guard would look at the other, as if deciding whether or not to ask his fellow if she heard the phantom laughter.

Seladon stopped, mid-giggle, however, when Mother entered the room. Mother would not be fooled. She hurried to get down from the throne before Mother sat down, and, in her rush, stumbled onto the floor with a noticeable thud.

The guards startled, but Mother never flinched. “Seladon,” she began, “the Vapra have moved past the age of magic and trickery that gave us the dream-shadow.”

Seladon allowed herself to flicker back into view. “Trickery? But mother…”

“That’s enough Seladon. I forbid it.”

In her ten trine of life, Seladon had already learned to suppress her desires to the demands of the throne. This command was no different from any other. But it was hard. Perhaps she could be more careful, practice in her room, in secret.

But one look at Mother’s face and she knew she would never get away with it. It was best to forget all about it.

The first of the peasants was brought in with their petition for the All-Maudra. Seladon stood quietly by her mother’s side, learning her duty. The morning wore on, the Dying Sun set, and the triple light of the Suns faded into a less bright sky.

LOYALTY
Ordon
during AoR

When the Lords told him his son was a murderer, he didn’t even think twice. Surely there would be an explanation, and there was. His son was ill. That made sense. Best to find him and bring him back to the Lords as soon as possible. Their wisdom was his son’s only hope.

His next step, of course, was to go to Maudra Fara. She listened patiently, with full understanding. The young woman she had been had grown up wisely, as to be expected from a maudra. When Rian, at last, stood before Fara’s throne, Ordon was relieved. Surely this whole ordeal would be behind them shortly.

But his son’s illness was even more severe than he had imagined. Still, Ordon had many trine over the boy, and despite the latter’s escape, tracking him down after his flight from Stone-in-the-Wood was not too difficult.

When he first entered the Podling tavern, his heart stopped for a moment. I’m too late. Rian stood dreamfasting with three others, the disease in his son’s mind sure to spread now. I have failed the Lords, he thought. And my son. Now his crime is that much greater.

But his eye caught a flash of silver. One of the Gelfling dreamfasting with Rian was Vapran—and dressed as a paladin at that. The All-Maudra had already been informed of the situation with his son—surely one of her own soldiers would be wary of dreamfasting with him.

He turned back to Rian. This time he looked at his son—really looked at him. He saw the castle guard—careless but full of joy and laughter. And he saw the boy who practiced with a wooden sword behind their home at Stone-in-the-Wood, happy to do anything that let him spend time with his father. And before that, the infant who had brought such happiness to his mother’s eyes.

Everything clicked in that instant. He pushed the Lords out of his mind, and the All-Maudra, and even Fara too, and placed his hand to his son’s.

INK
Tavra, Onica, Tae
a few trine before AoR

“My mother will kill me,” said Tavra, standing outside of a shop on the docks in Cera-Na. “Just, unceremoniously have me tossed into a pit of gobbles.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Onica replied. “She’ll disinherit you at worst.”

“It’s not worth the trouble,” Tavra said. She peeked inside the shop window. The woman behind the counter looked Dousan by birth, but she wore Sifan clothing.

“Look,” said Tae. “Every time you see a Sifa with a tattoo, you say Hmm, interesting. Every single time, Tavra.”

“And,” said Onica, “you already tore that page out of that book. How old was that book, Tavra?”

Tavra looked down at the page in her hand, a detailed drawing of a unamoth emerging from a chrysalis. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I was just going to stuff it back in when I was done. Nobody reads all those books anyway.”

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” said Onica. “But you’ve been dreaming about it for ages.”

“Well...” said Tavra.

“Oh for the love of Thra,” said Tae. “You’re getting it under your wings where literally no one will ever see it unless you go flying around Ha’rar half-naked. Or fully naked. Now let’s go.” With that, she grabbed Tavra’s hand and yanked her into the shop.

Two days later, Tavra sailed back to Ha’rar, where she debriefed her mother on the news from Cera-Na. She kept her face straight, but inwardly smiled whenever her wing happened to brush against the bandage discreetly hidden on her lower back.

Chapter Text

TARGET
Arathim Ascendancy, Unnamed Threader, Tavra
during AoR

The instance of us pays no mind to the frightened whispers of the soft, hairy mammals, nor to the deep cackles of the dry, fragile birds. The instance obeys us, scuttles on swift spindly legs up its designated path, up the restrained left arm of its target.

The target does not whisper or whimper, but their eyes grow large, its eyes grow large (the mammals are not instances, each is one) and its ears tilt back as the instance buries itself in its long silver hair (so much hair, these mammals) and wraps its legs around neck, lips, cheekbone (the large eyes mean fear, and so do the tilted ears).

For each instance of us, there is a first time, a first connection, but we are one, so we share it, compare the new sensations to thousands of sensations we have felt before, and the process executes itself flawlessly every time. But

Perhaps it is because the target’s will is particularly strong for a mammal. Perhaps it is a quirk of this instance, heretofore undetected. Perhaps it is both. But this time, the only time, the instance is shaken as the target’s words echo through their newly shared mind. Leave me alone.

Me. The instance flinches at the word and pushes back at the concept. To do otherwise would be poison, poison to the instance, to the whole network. And yet, in a corner of the matter that fills this instance’s mind, something sparks.

I am doing this. I am doing this to another I.

But we have done this thousands of times. We flood the novice instance with wave after wave: sparks of thought, emotion, memory. The aberration of thought fades quickly enough.

The target is integrated, the plan is set. We pull its cloak tightly around its awkward upright body, and walk it out of the castle gates into the night. When the target’s eyes see the other mammals in the forest, there is not the least spark of recognition, the least thought of I.

We execute the plan, flawlessly.

GENTLE
Seladon, Tavra
during AoR

Seladon has countless memories of her sister riding high on a landstrider, sword in hand. She has just as many of her sister slinging bola and hurling spears. And she has the very recent memory of her sister dueling a Lord of the Crystal, three times her size, and holding her own.

But she does not choose any of those.

She has countless memories of Tavra sitting quietly on the edge of an argument, waiting to be called in, defusing the tension with a few calm words. She has just as many of herself, upset by a mistake she had made or frightened by a nightmare, running not to her mother for comfort, as things would work in a normal family, but to her younger sister instead.

The memory she settles on then, is one of Tavra on a landstrider, but without a sword, chasing a member of the herd, a juvenile, that has become frightened by a peal of thunder and run headlong towards the town below. Paladins follow with spears and bolas, ready to take it down before it can do any damage. But Tavra is faster. She leaps out of the saddle, flutters through the air, and lands gently on the frightened landstrider’s back. A few quietly-whispered words, a few reassuring pats, and the creature calms.

“Have you decided?” Maudra Fara’s voice draws Seladon back into the current moment. There are only a few hours until dawn. They must return Tavra to Thra, and do it quickly.

“I have,” Seladon replies, her voice small, her dress torn and stained with blood.

Seladon takes her place in the circle as head mourner, raising one hand to Brea and the other to Fara. She takes a breath, enters the dreamfast, and here on a dark night in the Dark Wood, the memory of her gentle sister lives.

DANCING LIGHTS
Tavra, Unnamed Threader
a few trine after AoR

The Silver Sea on a moonless night, ten thousand stars sparkling double across soft ripples of darkest water.

This spot atop the tallest mast has become Tavra’s favorite spot, here between the stars and the sea, which is nothing more than a mirrored sky. It is the farthest she can get from the cold dirt, rock, soil of Thra that call to her in her new form.

But it’s not fair to the Threader whose body she shares, who, unlike her, was made to bury herself in those deep places. The Threader does her best—she still sees their shared form as a kind of penance for what the Arathim did to Tavra. But even her individual intent is against her nature.

It is not sustainable, Tavra knows. And the Threader has given her more than enough time with her loved ones after her first death. But Tavra is not ready to face those thoughts today.

Besides, there are clouds on the horizon. Soon enough, the stars will be covered and the sea as black as the earthy depths of Thra. And then, for a few hours at least, towering in the mast above the starless sea, the two of them will find what shared peace they can.

Chapter Text

SUGAR AND SPICE
Rian, Deet
a few trine after AoR

Deet reached their cottage just after dark, exhausted and covered in mud after a long day of checking the crystal veins on the northern edge of the swamp. Their cottage. Hers and Rian’s. Their very own, at last.

So she was mildly alarmed when she entered only to find herself in a cloud of black smoke. Rian stood beside the stove, frantically juggling a wooden spoon and a jar of spices. His face was more serious than the situation called for, which she always found endearing, but she knew it might mean that he needed to be talked down a little. “What are you making?” she asked lightly.

“I thought I’d make supper,” he said. “It’s supposed to be wild nebrie pie.”

Deet blinked as Rian poured a large handful of white powder into the mixture. “Is it supposed to have so much sugar?” she asked.

“I…” he sighed. “Now that I think about it, probably it was supposed to be salt?”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Deet, gazing into the pot of filling.

“I’m just kind of going from memory of how I’ve seen other people make it before,” Rian began, “but I don’t really know what I’m doing.” He poured the filling into a pan lined with a lumpty-looking crust. It only filled the pan about halfway. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s a mess.”

“It’s not a big deal, Rian,” said Deet. “We can just go to the Great Hall and…”

Rian dropped the spoon with a clatter, with an intense look on his face that did not quite match the checkered apron that he wore. “I know we’re lucky,” he began, “that I have my mom and brother and sister and you have your dads and your brother, and that we’re all alive and together. I know that’s more than a lot of people have right now.”

Deet placed an arm on his shoulder. “We are.” Where is he going with this?

“But if we’re going to build a life together, just the two of us, we can’t rely on them to feed us dinner every night. And we can’t eat with them and everyone else in the swamp in the Great Hall all the time either. I just thought…”

Deet picked up the wooden spoon, dipped it in the piping hot pie-filling, blew on it a few times, and took a taste. Her eyes widened. “Actually, it’s delicious,” she said.

“You don’t have to make me feel…”

“No, it is, taste it,” she said, sticking the spoon in his mouth. Mouth full of spoon, his face transitioned slowly from regular surprise to surprised approval. “It’s not bad,” he said around the spoon.

“It just looks a little funny,” said Deet. “But that’s not what matters, now is it?” Deet removed the spoon from his mouth and kissed him in one quick movement.

“No,” he said. “It’s not what matters.”

SAFETY FIRST
Seladon, Tavra, Brea
before AoR

“Brea, get down from that cliff.”

Seladon endured all of the duties that Mother tasked her with, but babysitting was the worst.

“She’s fine,” Tavra said. Tavra was the one who insisted that they come down to the beach in the first place, and for some reason Seladon had given in. Some reason being that even if Seladon had said no, Tavra would have stubbornly gone off by herself anyway.

“Tavra, she’s eight. She doesn’t have wings yet. What if she falls?”

“I’ll catch her,” Tavra said, not looking up from the piece of driftwood she was now whittling into a sword. With a knife. Seladon was not happy about the knife either, but Mother had allowed it.

“Oh yes,” Seladon replied, “and you’ve had wings for one whole month now, surely you’re able to go around snatching falling children out of the air.”

“All right, then,” said Tavra, taking a couple of swipes with her halfway-carved sword in the general direction of the sea, “you can catch her.”

SPLASH.

“Now she’s in the ocean,” said Seladon, frantically gesturing at the sea. “Mother will never forgive us for letting her in the ocean.”

Tavra squinted at Brea’s flailing form frolicking amongst the waves. “I don’t know, she seems to be swimming well enough.”

Seems. Seems to be swimming. “Oh for the love of Thra,” Seladon said as she scaled up the nearby cliffside and launched herself into the air. She fluttered over to Brea, did not bother to assess whether her tiny sister’s swimming skills seemed to be holding in the briny deep, grabbed her by the collar, and flew them both back to shore.

Seladon unceremoniously dropped Brea into the sand, which proceeded to coat every inch of the latter: feet, dress, hair.

“Well, there’ll be no hiding this from Mother at this point,” said Tavra, looking down at sea-tousled Brea. Seladon glowered.

Brea lay on her back catching her breath after her brief adventure at sea. Seladon hoped that her youngest sister had learned her lesson, and when at last Brea opened her mouth to speak, Seladon awaited her words of remorse and contrition.

“Tavra can I try your knife?” Brea asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Tavra said with a shrug, offering it to her.

But before the transfer could be completed, Seladon’s hand thrust out in between them and snatched up the knife.

“No. No knives for childlings of eight trine,” she said, “and no knives for alleged young women of twelve who would give knives to childlings.” Brea and Tavra looked at her in shock. “And no pointy sticks either,” Seladon said, confiscating Tavra’s driftwood sword.

The three of them stood in silence for half a minute, during which Tavra’s look of shock transformed into a grumpy scowl and Brea’s into a frown accompanied by thinly-veiled tears. Oh for the love of Thra what did they expect?

Seladon felt the cold steel of the knife and the warmth of the sun-warmed driftwood that she clutched to her chest. She breathed in and breathed out. “Who wants ice cream?” she asked.

Tavra’s scowl evaporated, Brea’s tears disappeared. “Can I get two scoops?” Brea asked from her position splayed out on the shore, covered in salt water and sand.

“Yes,” said Seladon. Two scoops would mean that Brea would be even more wound up than usual tonight. But she’d be Mother’s problem then. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

COMFORT
Rian, Gurjin
immediately after AoR

Rian stood before Maudra Fara’s newly-hewn grave, scowling. He knew he should probably be feeling sad but mostly he was pissed off.

“Hey.” Rian recognized Gurjin’s voice but didn’t turn his head.

“Hey,” he said, continuing to scowl.

They stood in silence for a moment before Gurjin tentatively started again. “So, how are you feeling about…”

“This sucks,” said Rian.

“Yeah,” said Gurjin, nodding. “Do you need to say more or is that…”

“It sucks. My dad died and Mira died and so many other people died and Deet… I don’t even know what happened to Deet, and just, like, also my maudra is dead. Why not?”

“Yeah, but we found the crystal shard.”

“Well, it’s not going to make everyone less dead.”

“Might help Deet though.”

Rian took a deep breath and held it. “Fine,” he said. His mouth went back into a frown but it was less scowly.

“So,” said Gurjin, “do you want to go back and strategize with everyone, or stay here a little longer?”

“Stay here a little longer.”

“Got it. And I should…?”

“Also stay here a little longer.”

Together they waited for Rian’s frown to turn into a sigh, and then headed back to join the others.

WITHOUT WARNING
Onica, Ethri
immediately after AoR

Scores of Gelfling from seven clans celebrated together around the Crucible at Stone-in-the-Wood. Onica couldn’t help but crack a small grin, even as she tried very hard to pay attention to the Stonewood Elder before her. Meeting with the other Elders could be boring, but there was, apparently, a price to be paid for bashing people in the head with teapots. So now she had to go to these meetings in Cadia’s place.

“Then that’s settled,” said the Stonewood Elder.

“Yes,” said Onica. “The Sifa will welcome your representative at our next Council of Elders.” Over his shoulder, a flash of silver caught her eye, but it wasn’t the one she was looking for. Seladon. And Brea with her. The two of them sat around a campfire with a handful of women, Ethri among them.

“What’s that meeting over there?” Onica asked the Stonewood.

“Oh, that’s just for maudras and heirs.”

“Why is Princess Brea there, then?” Onica asked. “Where’s Princess Tavra?”

“Ah,” said the Stonewood Elder. “I believe the Princess Tavra heroically returned to Thra during the escape from the castle.”

“No, she didn’t,” said Onica automatically. Her voice was firm but her mind ran off in a thousand directions. I haven’t seen her since we got here she would have been in the center of the battle against the Skeksis she would have been celebrating with Brea when the shard was found she would be by Seladon’s side now but how could I not know…

Onica abruptly parted with the Stonewood and walked in a daze of thoughts towards her maudra and friend. “Ethri,” she said. “Who is this meeting for?”

Ethri heard the waver in her voice and her eye widened in shock. She took Onica aside. “Oh, Thra, Onica, you don’t know?”

With Ethri’s words, the weight of the truth fell upon her. Tavra was gone, and Onica hadn’t been there. She hadn’t even seen it coming.

Wait. How did I not see it coming?

Onica didn’t claim to know everything about the future, but she was a soothsayer, and for major events in her life, she always had some intimation beforehand. But she had felt no such premonition, had read no sign that the woman she cared about more than any other would soon be dead.

Which could only mean one thing.

Tavra wasn’t really dead.

PROGRESS
Naia, Gurjin, Kylan
during AoR

At no point in the planning process had Naia considered that the hardest part would come after they escaped the castle.

But now her brother lies on a bed of dead leaves on the edge of the Endless Forest, where the trees are too sparse to give them cover. She’s afraid if they don’t move they will be caught by the Skeksis or the castle guard or a wandering patrol who still believe the lies of the Lords of the Crystal. But she’s more afraid that if she moves her brother, he will die.

Every now and then he speaks. Naia? he asks, then pushes her hands away. Naia I’m fine, I’m fine. But he is clearly not really seeing her and clearly not really fine. She goes in and out of the healing trance, trying to find the source of his fever as quickly as possible. She knows that there must be an infection but where…

Naia, I’m fine.

“You’re not fine,” she yells in frustration, grabbing his hands to keep them from pushing hers away.

“Naia.” Kylan this time. He has been palely watching her work, holding on to Gurjin as best as possible in an attempt to keep the larger man from thrashing too much. “His back.” He holds up one of his hands, smudged with blood.

She forces her training as a healer to push away the panic rising in her belly. Together with Kylan she gently flips Gurjin over onto his stomach. The wounds on his back are covered in blood, both old and dried and new and bright. She gently removes a dried leaf from the wound, then removes her dagger and cuts away his jacket, his shirt, his undershirt.

She has been healing the two gaping wounds for several minutes when he finally speaks again.

“Naia,” he says, his voice as dry as the crumpled brown leaves beneath his body, beneath her knees, “It hurts.”

Well, she thinks, that’s progress at least. She returns to her task, and prays that they will make it into the Forest before the first moon rises over the horizon.

Chapter Text

DETERMINATION
Unnamed Vapran Farmer
a few trine after AoR

She had been a farmer her whole life, and she knew well that too much water was just as bad as not enough. But that had been their choice—the Wellspring or Sog. Their farm was too far from Ha’rar to be protected from the terrible Garthim monsters by the new fortifications, and besides, the land had become so blighted that almost nothing grew anymore anyway. So they had chosen too much water over too little, packed their bags, and boarded a Sifan ship for the south.

It had been hard. The southern climate was hot for a Vapra—the moisture in the air stuck to her skin, mixed with the sweat on her neck, and she felt like she could never get dry. And it was too wet to grow crops the old way—crops that were necessary beyond what grew in the wild now that the population of Sog had swelled with refugees. So new ways had to be devised. They just hadn’t quite figured out what those new ways were. Right now she was working on a kind of trough that could be hung from the branches of one of the great apewoods and filled with soil for planting.

She wanted to do her part for the Resistance. She had supported it from the start. Her suspicions of the Lords had begun when they had demanded her necklace—what could such beings need with a Gelfling heirloom when they had a castle full of treasures? And when the necklace had been mysteriously returned, it seemed all the more like a sign—that it was not only acceptable to question the Lords’ rulings, but that it was a good thing too.

But she was not a soldier and never would be. She was a farmer, and would have to support the Resistance that way. She wiped the sweat off her neck, picked up a spade, and began to fill the trough with soil.

ROYALTY
Aughra, Jen, Kira
some time after AoR

Aughra watches a busy colony of beetles scurry up and down vines wrapped around an old apewood tree, a burst of life in a renewed Thra. Nearby, the two young Gelfling stand entranced before a moss-ridden memorial stone, reading the dream-stitched memories of the dead.

The memorials she has directed them to are for two women long gone, but Aughra’s memory is long too, and these days mostly whole, and she has read in the blood of the two surviving Gelfling descent from them, among others. Others who have no stones.

“So we’re both descended from… queens?” asks Jen, when he and Kira emerge from the trance.

That’s what he took away from this? “From queens, yes,” Aughra replies. “But also a whole bunch of peasants. What about them, eh? Don’t you care about them?”

“Of course,” says Kira. But her eyes drift back to the stone. “Did they rule from the Castle of the Crystal?”

“The peasants?” asks Aughra, a little contrary. “No.” But she softens and answers the girl’s real question. “No, nor the queens neither. The Castle was for the urSkeks, and the Skeksis after.”

The idea of lords and ladies and maudras as monarchs came from the urSkeks and the Skeksis in the first place. Aughra has assumed, wrongly it seems, that the idea would disappear with them. But Jen has been raised by urRu, whose books held myriad concepts within them, including that of royalty, and Kira has been raised by Podlings, who remember the ways of the maudras.

Well, it won’t matter much if we never find any other Gelfling anyway. Without anyone to rule over, these two can call themselves king or queen or peasant or whatever and it won’t matter one bit. But Aughra remembers the looks in their eyes as they spoke of queens and castles.

Thra is healed. It seems, however, that the world will not fall back into its old ways, from before the urSkeks came to them. Ah well, Aughra thinks, as the last of the beetles disappears behind the far side of the tree.That was a foolish thought anyway.

HARD TO FORGET
Aughra
some time after AoR

The light of three suns bends into infinite angles and bounces in endless rainbowed arcs as it passes through the transparent walls of the Castle of the Crystal.

The place is a work of beauty, Aughra cannot argue with that. A gift from the urSkeks, when they were newly arrived to Thra and filled with the arrogant assumption that they could bring something of wisdom to their place of exile. Not quite fair. Aughra thinks of the stars, and of how much more she knows of them now.

But the urSkeks had brought other knowledge as well, knowledge of hierarchy, and the Skeksis after them had translated hierarchy into peasants and lords, rulers and the ruled. The Skeksis whispered these things into the ears of the Gelfling, until free-spirited bands of families calcified into clans, until wise old mothers who delivered babies and words of counsel fossilized into queens.

The few Gelfling who have survived the slaughter, far from the Skeksis and the Castle of the Crystal, have done much over the many trine to shift back into the old ways, marrying across clan lines and turning to councils of elders for governance. And yet, when the Gelfling speak now of the two who have healed the Crystal, the words on their lips are king and queen.

Where there are castles, there are castles to conquer. The lessons of the urSkeks the Gelfling must forget, if they are ever to be truly free.

A stray beam of Great Sunlight refracts through the castle wall and bends into Aughra’s eye. A thing of beauty indeed. Alas.

Aughra raises her arms, breathes in once, then lowers her arms again. The walls of the Castle of the Crystal first creak, then groan, then shout as they tumble to the earth. Aughra breathes out.

Chapter Text

TAKE IT FROM ME and SECOND THOUGHTS
Tae, Ethri, Onica
after AoR

Flashes of stars focused into still shots, a memory of the timekeeper calling the hour. The silhouette of a hooked figure ballooned in a great coat, and behind it the silhouette of ridge after ridge of hills rolling across the starlit sea.

The three women break the dreamfast.

“Aughra’s Eye above the horizon at the dead of night,” says Ethri.

“But no mention of the month or day or even the season,” says Onica.

Tae turns her face away from her friends and towards the horizon. Somewhere behind it, the distant island that her memory cannot pin down the location of. “I should have paid more attention to the maps,” she says.

Another memory, one that each woman holds in her own mind, in slightly different variations: Maps are tiresome. So many lines and angles and other mathematical complications. Gelfling needn’t trouble themselves with such matters. Leave yourselves to the wind in your hair as it fills the sails and the sun on your face as it dries the decks. Let the Lord Mariner guide you across the seas.

“It’s not your mistake alone Tae,” says Ethri. “It’s one the Sifa made over and over again for generations.”

“In retrospect, she really was very sketchy though.” Tae’s smile is wry but she still doesn’t quite meet Ethri’s eye.

“All right you two,” says Onica, the optimist always, “enough dwelling on the past. I have enough information to try at least. We’ll just have to try the Gelfling way.”

Onica lights her fires, tosses her powders, and the three join together, casting their far-dream to the sea, scouring the waves for ridge after ridge of rolling hills.

LUCK
Kylan, Onica
a few trine after AoR

“It’s like what you do,” Onica says, handing him a torn piece of old sail taken from her boat. “You pass your intention into the charm, to bring fortune or to stave away tragedy, and the intention lives on in that object.”

Kylan is unsure. Over the past few trine, Onica has taught him about Sifan soothsaying, the use of dreamspace to see paths unbounded by the flow of time, and that makes perfect sense to him. But dream-stitching is for memories, not intentions, and Sifan charmwork still seems to him more superstition than dream-art.

But he doesn’t want to insult his friend, and he’s perfectly willing to admit that there are some things that he may never understand. So he takes her suggestion and weaves the charm the only way he knows how.

He concentrates, and moments later, not an intention but a memory—one of himself and Onica, each a few trine younger, watching Ha’rar appear on the river’s edge after a day of sailing up from Stone-in-the-Wood—is stitched into the piece of old sail.

Kylan offers the completed charm to Onica, and she accepts it with a smile. “See?” she said. “I told you that you could do it.”

“I’m not sure it’s right,” he says. “It’s a memory, of when we first arrived in Ha’rar.”

“It’s perfect,” she replies. “I’m sure it will bring me luck.”

With that, she hugs her friend and climbs onto the boat, lined with fresh sails for the long journey ahead, ready to sail off to parts unknown.

SURVIVING A STORM
Gurjin
about ten trine after AoR

Unlike the crew of Sifa around him, Gurjin has only been sailing ten trine, instead of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. But the storm doesn't rattle him.

Perched high in the mast, his face is slapped with wind and water, but his hands know the task sight unseen, and he manages to untangle the ropes and free the sail.

But with the wind at a frenzy, the ship leans over sharply before the crew can react. Gurjin's grip slips, and he only has a fraction of a second to kick himself off of the mast so that he will land in the sea instead of on deck.

Still, the smack of the sea knocks the wind out of him, and he sinks. He doesn't have to worry about drowning, but if he sinks too far, the pressure will kill him instead. He has no idea how far away the ship is now, and they are too far from the mainland for him to make it back without it.

The waves roil. He focuses on riding them, of expending the least amount of energy that will keep him from getting thrust too far into the depths.

And so he does not notice until he is thrust into the sand that the water has become shallower and shallower.

The sky calms, and the sea. But Gurjin barely notices. He stands in disbelief in calm shallows. They've actually found what they'd been searching for all these years. Land.

Chapter Text

IMPROMPTU
Ethri, Naia
about a month after AoR

It was only one eye. As she had crawled away from the battle to tend to her wound, the eye that remained had seen enough broken and bent bodies of her fallen comrades that she counted herself fortunate, even as the dirt of the forest floor beneath her mingled with the blood dripping from her face.

Besides, now that the battle was over, Maudra Naia had insisted on healing the wounded flesh herself, despite all the other woman had been through that night, so there was little chance of infection, and what remained of her face would be saved.

“I’m sorry I can’t do more, Ethri,” Naia said beneath the torchlight of the old inn at Stone-in-the-Wood. Ethri almost laughed thinking of earlier plans to meet Maudra Fara this very month, perhaps in this very spot, to discuss something as now-trivial as trade arrangements, before the entire world had slipped out from under them, and before Fara…

“It’s only one eye,” Ethri said with a shrug.

“At least the socket is healed,” said Naia, her warm hand framing Ethri’s cheekbone and temple as she finished her examination. “You can decide what to do next—a patch, or a wooden one or we can sew the lid shut.”

This night had not gone as expected. This month had not gone as expected, nor had the one before that. But if there was one thing the Sifa knew, it was that life is as changeable as the sea—make all the plans you want, but life will rarely shift itself to meet them. It will splash itself wild in every which way—best just to ride it out.

Ethri reached for her sword, held it in front of her remaining eye, and examined the scabbard, lined with jewels that danced in the torchlight. “How about this one?” she asked, plucking off a large round emerald with her knife. She held it up to her face for size, and smirked.

Naia’s face shifted into a smile, and then into a snicker. The two young women, exhausted, battle-tried, barely stifled their giggles as they worked together to fix the gem into place. “How do I look?” Ethri asked, when they had completed their task.

“Like a Sifan maudra out of the legends,” said Naia. “Gem-eyed Ethri.”

“Has a nice ring to it,” Ethri said.

SECRET GARDEN
skekSa
some trine after AoR

The garden had begun as a practical way to stave off monotony. They would never starve—urSan gathered fish and kelp easily enough. But while the same dish of boiled fish and kelp was enough to satisfy an urRu, a Skeksis craved variety. SaSan had craved variety. That’s what had gotten her into this mess all those two thousand trine ago.

And so she gathered samples and seeds from the wild plants of the island, resilient in the sand and briny seawater that occasionally washed above the shoreline into the yard of their rock-hewn home. Berries, leafy greens, even a short grain that was surprisingly sturdy. The thing about gardens, she realized, was that they were about control. And she liked being in control, even if her dominion was over mere plants. Much less changeable than Gelfling anyway.

Then the animals came, flyers and crawlers and creepers. And they too could be controlled, by manipulating the variety and number of this or that flower or fruit.

The days passed into months and she reveled in her small domain of plant and beast, nary a wise brain among them to cause her trouble.

It was not until the months passed into trine that she realized she no longer cared for their loyalty, but for their companionship. The realization crushed her at first. But as she watched the cycle of plants grow in and out over the trine, the cycle of beasts that wandered in and out of the garden, never quite predictable despite her best efforts, she realized that she had what SaSan had always craved. Variety.

RAIN
Deet, Rian
several decades after AoR

Deet had known about rain of course. In songs it was an obstacle for the hero to bravely fight through, a backdrop in which tragic lovers shared a parting kiss. And there were the days when water dripped down through the cracks in the rock above Domrak, occasional trickling streams making their way through the small holes that led to the surface.

None of that had prepared her for living her entire adult life in a swamp, where the rain did not trickle but poured, where the rain started one night under two full moons and did not stop again until the moons had waned into nothing and then waxed back to full.

And now, change had come again. The long rains had spread themselves further and further apart, and for the last ten trine, when they did come, they lasted a week at most. And she could barely remember the last time they had come.

So she wasn’t surprised when Rian came back up from the watering hole with two empty barrels—barrels they used to call rain barrels back when they had been able to collect whatever water they needed from the sky.

“No luck,” he said, placing the barrels down by the front door. “Nothing but mud.”

“Cheer up,” she said. “We’ll have to walk a little further to get it, but there’s still plenty of water in the swamp.”

“Less and less every trine,” he said, a hand to his lower back as he stood. He turned to her with the wry smile that always appeared whenever he was trying to fend off dark feelings. “It can’t all run out, can it?”

“If it does, we’ll just have to go somewhere else,” she said, taking his hand.

“Leave our home?”

“We’ve each done it once before. Just as long as we’re all together, we’ll be fine.”

“You’re right,” he said.

As for the rest—that less rain here meant less rain everywhere, that sooner or later they would run out of places to go, that nowhere was safe forever—they left it unsaid. Deet picked up one of the barrels, Rian picked up the other, and they started the long walk down the low road towards the next village over.

Chapter Text

RUNNING ON EMPTY
Tavra, Onica, Kylan, Brea
modern AU

“I’m starving,” said Onica, throwing the house keys down on the counter and grabbing the nearest edible object, a carton of half-eaten popcorn. She tossed a few kernels into her mouth. “Mmm, just the right amount of stale.”

Tavra smiled warmly at her wife’s endearingly terrible eating habits, while vowing to find something in the kitchen that would make for a proper breakfast. They had, last night, on a whim, decided to ditch the last day of the convention, check out of their hotel room early, and ride the whole night across the length of the Crystal Desert. The sunsrise over the Claw Mountains had been breathtaking, but as they had sputtered into their driveway in Ha’rar in the early morning, the motorcycle was on its last ounce of gas, and its two Gelfling riders were running on empty too.

But there was no way Tavra was eating stale popcorn. She rooted through the refrigerator, but came up empty. Sometimes their tenant left neatly-labelled tupperware containers filled with delicious leftovers and a note to Help Yourselves! but alas not today.

Tavra’s fridge explorations were interrupted by a squeak of the front door. She looked up as said tenant entered with a tray filled with two coffees and what looked like various pastries.

“Kylan!” said Onica, through a mouthful of popcorn.

Kylan froze, his eyes darting around the room, then back at the door, as if he were considering sneaking back out. “Uh, you’re home early,” he said at last.

Tavra eyed the tray in his hand. Why are there two cups? “Did you bring us coffee?” she asked.

Kylan paused for a moment before answering. “Yes?” he said. “Yes, I brought you coffee.” He removed one cup from the tray and placed it on the counter in front of Tavra. Thank Thra I really need this, she thought.

“Kylan, have you seen my backpack?” Tavra stopped mid sip as her sister walked in from the bathroom. “I need my saline sol…”

“Brea, when did you get here?” Tavra asked. To her left, Onica choked on a piece of popcorn. Tavra patted her absentmindedly on the back as she sputtered.

Brea turned her eyes from her sister to Kylan. “What are we telling her?” she said.

“That I bought her coffee,” said Kylan, still frozen in place.

“Yes,” said Brea. “We bought you coffee.” She reached into the tray and placed the remaining cup in front of her sister as well. “Two coffees.”

“Oh,” said Tavra. “Well, I am pretty tired, I could use two…”

Onica finished coughing and transitioned into laugher. “Oh my Thra, Tavra. The coffee is not for you.” She handed one cup to Brea and the other to Kylan, then pushed them towards the door. “You two have a lovely breakfast on the porch. I’ll take care of this one,” she said, gesturing at Tavra.

Tavra was hungry, and sleep-deprived and, to be honest, very confused. And she really needed that coffee. She sighed, picked up the remaining popcorn, shrugged, and began to crunch.

DISASTER
skekLi, Amri, Rian and Aughra
honestly it doesn’t really matter when

“It’s so weird,” said one of the Gelfling, the annoying Grottan one who never stopped talking. “Like, I know, abstractly, that you and urLii are the same person, but, like, on a gut-level, I just don’t see the connection at all.”

Oh stars above, shut up. “Stop mentioning that person,” skekLi rumbled in a low squawk. He hooked an arm onto the ladder leading back up to the deck of the ship. Wherever the leak was, he couldn’t find it in the hold, and the sooner he got up that ladder, the sooner he’d be out of earshot of the little pipsqueaks he held prisoner.

But no sooner had skekLi reached the top of the ladder when the Grottan raised his voice. It turned out that for such tiny creatures their voices could be awfully loud. Curses. A gross miscalculation. “I’m just saying,” said the irritating mote in the hold below, “that urLii would never do something like this.”

“UrLii wouldn’t do what?” asked the other Gelfling prisoner, the snide one who had spent an inordinate amount of time since his capture rebraiding his hair. “Capture two Gelfling, or try to sail a ship without knowing what he’s doing?”

“Both I would imagine,” said the Grottan. “I mean, for one I can’t imagine him bothering with the effort to do either when he could just hang out in the Tomb of Relics shifting through old junk.”

“We wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for a piece of old junk,” muttered the snide one. He raised his voice in the most intentional of manners and continued, “and I’m not clarifying whether I mean the ship or the Skeksis.”

SkekLi debated jumping overboard. He had never swum before per se, but the shore wasn’t that far off, and how hard could it be? The longer he sat there listening to the prattling of the Gelfling, the more he was willing to take his chances.

He was in the middle of raising a delicate foot to the railing when a shadowy figure appeared on shore. Friend or foe? Well, it’s not like it mattered at this point. “You there!” he shouted. “A little help?”

The shadows coalesced into the the most grotesque shape on Thra. The crone. “Aughra doesn’t do boats,” she said, continuing her stroll along the shore.

The crone was not optimal. But she was the only option. And he knew just how to lure her. “I thought, however,” said skekLi, “that Aughra loved the Gelfling.” He reached down and grabbed the nearest prisoner by the hair and lifted him up in display. “I’ve got two.”

“Argh, I just fixed my hair,” said the Gelfling, struggling in skekLi’s grip. “Mother Aughra, please,” he said.

The crone sighed and began grumpily shoving a nearby log towards the water. “Doing this so the Skeksis doesn’t eat you, not because of the hair,” she mumbled.

Another Gelfling head peeked out of the hold. “Mother Aughra,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to meet you. You met all my friends, and I was kind of feeling left out. My name is Amri.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Loquacious Amri. Mother Aughra knows all her children.” Slowly, painfully so, she paddled the log in their direction. “I’m taking the Gelfling first,” she said. “Then I’ll come back for you. If I feel like it.”

SkekLi stood up to his ankles in seawater on a sinking ship with, quite frankly, the two most annoying Gelfling on Thra, forced to bargain for his life with an addled crone. This mission is a disaster.

“You know what,” he said as the crone maneuvered the log beside the ship. “Take them.” He plopped the snide one onto the log, then picked up the Grottan and tossed him after his friend. “I’ll figure something else out.”

The water was up to his waist and the crone and the two Gelfling were long gone by the time a new shadow waddled onto the shore, boarded the log, and paddled out to the sinking ship much more quickly than the crone had managed. Well, the extra arms helped.

“You,” growled skekLi, “I refuse to be saved by you.”

UrLii raised a single eyebrow behind his ridiculous spectacles. The annoying thing is, he would just sit there and bear it as we drowned here together. SkekLi refused to let the smug placidity on that urRu’s face be the last thing he ever saw. Begrudgingly, he hopped onto the log, and let his better half paddle him to safety.

REPUTATION
Kylan, Rian, Naia, Hup, Deet, also Gurjin, Brea, and Lore are there
during AoR

The road to the Crystal Desert was long, and while the troop of six Gelfling, one Podling, and one giant rock-person was not yet worn-out enough to be called bedraggled, they were certainly bordering on weary. So Kylan was relieved when Rian, falling naturally into the role of field commander, spoke up at last.

“All right,” said Rian. “Let’s camp here for the night. Kylan, you can cook, right? Why don't you make dinner?”

Kylan’s brow furrowed. Weird, he thought. That was the third time that day that someone had brought up him and cooking. First Deet, casually trying to make conversation on the long march, had asked him about the best way to prepare vegetable stew, and then later Brea had inquired about the differences between traditional Spriton and Stonewood cuisine.

“Uh, I can make dinner,” said Kylan, ”but I’m not much of a cook.”

“Yeah," said Naia, “I remember one time when he was visiting Great Smerth and he tried to help me debone the fish for dinner. Honestly, by the time he was done, it looked like a mackerel had exploded on the plate. And that's not to mention the part where he set the wild nebrie pie on fire.”

“Okay, listen,” Kylan said. “It’s not my fault. Songtellers usually perform right after the evening meal, so we’re too busy practicing to help with the cooking. I guess when I was little Maudra Mera made me peel vegetables, so I can do that okay?”

“Huh,” said Deet. “I just assumed you could cook. Everyone always mentions that you made broth that one time.”

Really? That’s what motivated this? One pot of broth? “I don’t know, I knew you guys would be hungry when you got back from your athletic carriage rescue adventure, and broth is the one thing I know how to make. Not that hard, really, since we already had a bouillon cube. Just toss it into some boiling water, find a few herbs lying around, and there you go. It’s like, literally the easiest thing you can make.”

“I'm honestly a little surprised you didn’t manage to set the broth on fire,” said Naia.

Rian laughed. “Really? Oh, sorry, man, I just assumed that, like, cooking was your thing.”

Kylan kept a neutral smile on his face. My job description is literally songteller, not cook, but okay. Well, they were all still getting to know each other.

“For the record,” Kylan began, “I can read and write, and dream-etch, and dream-stitch, and of course I'm a songteller, and all that entails, with the music and memorizing hundreds of stories and everything.” He shrugged. “Oh, and I can make shoes? So if any of you need shoes… I guess with learning how to do all that other stuff, I never really had time to learn how to cook.”

Before anyone could respond, Hup began rifling through their rations pack while letting out a long string of Podling. Kylan translated. “Hup says that he was a professional chef and no one ever bothers to ask him to cook.”

Rian’s voice was flat with disbelief. “Hup, you were a professional chef?”

“Ye,” Hup replied, unleashing another string of Podling while waving his spoon around slowly in front of Rian’s face.

“He says why do you think he has a sp…”

“I got the meaning,” said Rian. He sighed, and then blinked, barely managing to catch the bag of vegetables that Hup threw at him.

“Peel,” Hup said. Rian sighed again, then sat down next to Hup and dutifully set to work.

“Well, I think we all learned an important lesson about making assumptions today,” said Deet, lifting a rather large tree branch and carrying it over to the wood pile.

Kylan smiled and took out his firca, ready to provide some accompaniment as the others went about preparing the camp. They still had a lot to learn about each other. But he had a feeling that sitting around a campfire with a good meal would help everyone to open up. He was ready to listen and understand each of their stories. He was good at that too.

Chapter Text

LONG TIME COMING
Amri, Deet
many decades after AoR

He realized after the fact that he had no good reason for assuming that Deet would outlive him, but he always had. They were both Grottan, and she was a trine younger than him, so his mind just operated with the understanding that she would always be there.

So when the words had come out of the mouth of Deet’s son—My mother passed away a few hours ago—his mind, still quick but not as quick as it used to be, had processed them slowly, and to be honest, he had a feeling that there was something deep inside of him that would never truly understand them.

The arc of his life was traced across the Skarith Land—from the caves of Domrak to Stone-in-the-Wood to Sog in the south, and then, when Smerth-Staba had at last Darkened and withered, back up north again to the swamps between the Black River and Grot. That arc had been traced with many companions—his wife, his children, his friends—but now as he passed into his ninetieth trine he realized that only one of those companions had been there for eighty-nine of them.

The Thra of his youth had withered away, and there were still so many trine until it would be healed. As he watched his daughter lead the rituals to send his oldest friend back to Thra, the reality that he would not live to see the healing of his world, that as the last of his friends, none of them would live to see it, flared up in his heart.

But it was an old realization, one that he had realized many times before. His heart would keep on beating, at least for today, and probably tomorrow, and maybe for a few trine more. And then with him, something that had started a long time ago would come to an end.

SOMETHING BLUE
Aughra
a century after AoR

Brown. Tan. Beige. Light beige. Dark beige.

Aughra’s mind drifted always and sometimes it drifted to the cataloguing of colors she saw from her high hill.

Dark brown. Taupe.

Moments were meaningless, and in the stretch of browns, the screeches of bats, the rare flash of purple.

Bat screeches above, her feet followed their noise without her mind’s paying much attention. She found them nestled on the roof, nowhere to go, no Gelfling to seek.

Aughra’s mind coalesced around the moment, her will returned, and she shooed the bats away. With a firm nod, she watched them fly off over the barren wasted Skarith Land.

It was by accident that she happened to face north as she turned to climb down from the roof. A glint traveled over leagues and caught itself in her only eye. The sea. Something blue, for once. She thought of blue, and then of green. Of the Skarith Land as it once was, a thousand, two thousand trine ago. Green and blue, and the Gelfling woven everywhere through it.

The moment passed, as moments do. Aughra’s mind de-coalesced and drifted away again. Her eye turned away from the north, to the hills below as they were in the now.

Brown.

GHOSTS AND GHOULS
Unnamed Gelfling Woman, urSan, skekSa
a century or two after AoR

She knows there’s no such thing as ghosts; she’s read all about it in books. But she’s also read in books that the urSkeks left Thra trine and trine ago, and that much has been confirmed by her mother and grandmother as well.

Under a moonless sky, the dark water of the bay glitters with stars. It is on nights such as this that the apparition appears. She waits until her eyes grow heavy with sleep, so that when she hears the splash, she can barely tell if it’s in a dream or waking life.

But there, in the water where the bay meets the open sea, a glimmer of movement. What looks like arm, then another, then another, then another, clambering onto the rocky cliffside, and a long, slender body—so different from that of a Gelfing—pulls itself onto land. It meanders slowly into the forest, and there, in the last bit of visible shadow, another figure, taller, but hunched, as if with age, and beaked.

She shakes her head once, then picks up her lantern. Tonight is the night. Tonight she will learn once and for all if ghosts really do exist.

Chapter Text

FIRST AND LAST
Aughra, Raunip
a long span of time

Of the race of Aughra I, Aughra, am the first…

the stars are distant

except once

one gets close

closer

a fire in the sky

falling onto the earth of Thra

and then, another

of Thra and of the stars

of the race of Aughra

alive, scampering always, lurking sometimes

searching for truth with mismatched eyes

shining like stars brought down to Thra

but it seems with time

all stars must fade

…and the last.

TEXTURE
Tavra, Unnamed Threader
after AoR

Somehow, out of the confusing swirl of her own thoughts and all of the other thoughts that accompanied her new way of being, coalesced the pressing need to design shoes for a spider.

Not a bunch of tiny Gelfling shoes, one for each foot—that would be ridiculous. But there had to be something, perhaps a leaf of some sort she could tie to her legs or are they arms? so that she would just stop feeling everything.

With every movement, tiny hairs vibrated with a hundred sensations that the Other, the Others knew very well but her mind my mind could not interpret. Cascades of dirt as she scuttled up slopes, cold droplets of moisture in the soil through which she pushed her arms—legs—one signal after another, endless threads, never coming together, coming together in dreams of tiny shoes, and she knew, knew very well, that the Others could pull them together. But I can’t pull them together.

We can pull them together.

The Other, just the One Other, the one whose body she shared, whose body she’d stolen or had it stolen her mind instead? Just the One Other grabbed the threads of sensation and wove.

Warmth of three suns, baked into sworls and long grains, smoothed by rain and sun and once, long ago, hands, Gelfling, or Podling maybe.

Tavra calmed, finding herself on the ruins of an old wooden fence—Tavra is a name thinks the Other, the Others—finally still, knowing where she was at last.

HANDS
skekUng
some time after AoR

The tallest of the three Gelfling raised its hands so that its palms framed its face. A gesture of surrender, or so a less wise being than skekUng would take it. But Ung knew that Gelfling hands were dangerous. He still had the burn marks on his leg to prove it, three tiny fingers and the creases of a palm. That one had gotten away. This one wouldn’t. None of them would.

Backed up against the sheer cliff face, surrounded by dense vegetation, they had nowhere to go. It would be nothing to stretch out his arms, grab each one by the hair, and drag them back to the village, where the cage-backed Garthim waited.

Ung stared down the tall Gelfling and took a step forward. The Gelfling stood still, unblinking, not breaking Ung’s gaze. All too easy.

And then, faster than a blink, the Gelfling’s hands pivoted to the left and to the right, its friends immediately joining their palms to its palms. Ung scrambled to reach them while they were still in the dreamfast, but he was not as quick as he used to be, and the Gelfling were quicker.

Almost at once, they opened their eyes, and the tall one tossed the one to its left into the air. A female, apparently, she spread her wings, picked up the smaller male by his outstretched hands, and before Ung knew it, the airborne male’s foot had collided with his face.

By the time Ung’s vision had faded from blank whiteness back into reality, the Gelfling had fled.

Ung cursed the Gelfling for their silent connection of mind and cursed himself for not acting sooner to neutralize such a threat. He had known from the start that Gelfling hands were dangerous.

Chapter Text

EMPATHY
Kylan, Naia, Tavra, Rian
during AoR

Naia is easy to read, partly because they’ve been friends for so long, but mostly because she, by nature, hides nothing. She loves her brother, and she will save him or die trying, and she’s convinced herself that this Rian person is a means to that end. She’s too wrapped up in having already made up her mind to listen to what Rian has to say.

The Vapran princess is trickier, but even though they’ve just met, Kylan senses in her an attitude inherent in women with power—Naia included, although she’d hate to admit it— the air of a person who doesn’t need to listen to others if she doesn’t want to. It’s almost comically obvious in the way the two of them talk over each other now.

But easiest to understand is the Stonewood stranger. It’s barely a challenge—in circumstance, the two of them could be twins. Kylan sees the brushed-off commoner in Rian’s face, hears the dead loved one in his voice, reads the fear behind his eyes. And when Rian says that the rumors that his dreamfasts spread sickness are nothing but Skeksis lies, Kylan believes, because he knows.

Kylan stop this talk of monsters made of bones. We both know it was only some wild beast from that cursed forest. And stop dreamfasting that memory, no one wants to see it. It’s macabre.

Stop dreamfasting. What the powerful say to the powerless when they are threatened by the truth.

Kylan knows without a doubt what to do next. He knows that with the right prodding, Naia will clear her mind and follow his lead, although he’s unsure about the Vapran princess. Maybe she’ll try to stop him, but that certainly won’t keep him from trying.

“I’ll dreamfast with you,” Kylan says.

SNAP JUDGEMENT
Rian, Gurjin, Mira
several trine before AoR

“What a surprise. The Vapran guard thinks she can just take whatever chair she wants.”

Rian looked up from his plate. A Vapran guard who had met during training earlier that day—Mira, was it?—was indeed seated next to him, with his roommate Gurjin glowering down at her.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, her tone of voice not at all sorry, “I didn’t realize this seat was reserved.”

“Yeah, well, it is,” said Gurjin. “Tell her, Rian.”

“Gurjin, why don’t you just sit there?” Rian asked, gesturing to the empty seat on the other side of Mira.

“I’m not sitting next to that Vapra,” Gurjin said. “She’ll probably just take all the good food too.”

“What is this thing with the Vapra all of a sudden?” Rian asked. “We can’t do that sort of thing at the castle. We might all be from different clans, but we have to get along while we’re here or everyone will be miserable.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if two Vapran guards had come to your home one day and taken you away from your family, you would be a little wary of them too.”

“That wasn’t me,” said the Vapran girl, perhaps a little more forcefully than necessary.

Rian looked at Gurjin and shrugged. “It wasn’t her.”

Gurjin sat down next to Mira, grabbed a nebrie roll, and plopped it onto his plate. “Fine,” he said.

They ate for several minutes in the awkwardest of silences. Rian had just bitten into a peachberry when three guards, a trine or two older than him, approached the table. “What’s this?” asked the biggest one, “Captain’s son thinks he gets to eat before all the rest of us?”

Rian sighed and pushed back his chair. Well, third day on the job and I’m going to disappoint Dad already. But he couldn’t not punch this guy in the face right now.

Before Rian could stand up, however, double thuds echoed through the hall as Gurjin and Mira knocked over their chairs at the same time. “Buzz off,” they said in unison.

The biggest of their would-be bullies glowered, but Gurjin was bigger, and Mira looked particularly threatening hovering two feet in the air brandishing her toppled chair. The three older guards retreated to the other end of the table.

Mira replaced her chair on the floor and gestured at Gurjin to sit in it. He shook his head and sat back down next to her. The silence among them lasted for about ten more seconds, then dissolved into laughter.

Chapter Text

RECKLESS
Seladon
during AoR

The heat of the torchlight sears tears into her eyes, but Seldon does not let a single one drop. This is all Brea’s fault, she thinks.

Brea, always clambering on the furniture to peek at the highest shelf, wandering off into the woods to find some strange bird she’d spotted in the distance, leafing through books that had been clearly forbidden. Brea, who couldn’t even be called disobedient, because disobedience required paying attention to orders in the first place.

And Mother… Mother shares some of the blame, that’s true. Mother who never scolded enough, who didn’t make Brea listen, who too often listened to Brea instead, and where did it get her?

Where did it get both of them? Brea and Mother on the floor together, covered in blood.

A light breeze makes whisps of Seladon’s frozen breath as dusk fades into night. She calms herself. The situation is under control, the reckless mistakes of the past behind them now. The Lords of the Crystal will teach Brea about obedience, and as for Mother…

Seladon gives the command, and Mother’s pyre lights up the night sky.

PANIC
Seladon, Brea
a week or so after AoR

The pacing is involuntary, as is the shaking in her arms, and although images rush past her eyes, she doesn’t really see anything. This is new, Seladon thinks.

She has certainly been in stressful situations before, but in the past, she could cooly reason the fear away. Even if she’d sometimes had to make up the reasons. Yes, mother is dead, but it was her fault, really. The next step is to apologize to the Lords of the Crystal. They will be merciful.

But she can’t make up reasons anymore. And although it is less terrible than facing a room full of Skeksis, she cannot bring herself into the throne room to face her advisors. Mother’s advisors. I forgot to fire them when I took the crown despite all of the other… changes I made. I can’t even pull off a proper regime change.

“Seladon, everyone’s waiting for you.” Brea’s voice cuts through her thoughts, through the pacing, through the blurred vision. But her arms still shake.

“I can’t” is all that she manages to get out of her mouth.

“Of course you can,” Brea says, looking back towards the throne room. “You’ll be fine.”

“After the way I left Ha’rar? How can I face them with a straight face?”

Brea tries a smile. “I was the one who left Ha’rar in disgrace, technically,” she says. “If I can face them, so can you.”

Brea that is exactly the problem. That I just threw you to the… But somehow Seladon manages to choke back the words before she spits them out in anger. She’s just trying to help.

A moment passes, until Brea’s voice once again floats through Seladon’s mess of thoughts. “I’ll stay right beside you the whole time,” Brea says. Her voice is quiet, but the words are steady. “I’ll nod along with you. I’ll agree with everything you say. They’ll see that everything is fine.”

Everything is not fine. But the offer is a generous one for Brea. Maybe everything is, if not fine, at least salvageable.

Seladon’s arms stop shaking. “You’ll agree with everything I say?” she asks with a half-smile.

Brea rolls her eyes lightly, but her half-smile reflects Seladon’s. “For this one meeting. And don’t abuse the privilege. Now let’s go.”

I can’t make up reasons anymore. I just need to find another way to hold back the panic. Not a light task. But for now, she matches her steps to Brea’s and lets her sister lead her down the hall to the throne room.

RESOLUTION
Seladon, Brea
some trine after AoR

Seladon had never expected to lead an army. She had trained, of course, in riding and in rudimentary swordsmanship. But there had been an element of ritual to it all, a show for the heir to the All-Maudra to put on. No one had ever expected for there to be any battles during her reign, and it had been clear that if the need for one arose, Seladon could delegate the task to Tavra and no one would think twice about it.

And yet the Seladon who stood surrounded by soldiers on the ramparts above Ha’rar, squinting her left eye against the rising Great Sun, had never felt more comfortable with herself and her place in the world. She had built these walls, and she would hold them.

A soldier shouted down from the lookout tower, but Seladon had spotted them already. A line of Garthim pressing up from the south, still a dark brown blur in the distance.

“Are you sure about this?” asked Brea from her side.

“Surer than I have ever been in my life,” Seladon responded, her eyes on the horizon. The Great Sun had risen higher and she no longer squinted.

Seladon turned to embrace her sister. “If the Garthim make it to the walls, you know what to do. Evacuate the city, and make sure you get out too. Our people will need you.”

Brea nodded and the two released their embrace. “But it shouldn’t come to that,” Seladon said. “I don’t plan on letting a single one of those monsters get past me alive.”

The blur of Garthim on the horizon had solidified into individuals, two or three sevens of them. Closer, but still the good part of a league from the city. Seladon leapt off the wall, swooped down into the saddle of her waiting landstrider, and, army at her back, rode out to meet them.

Chapter Text

RELIC
Aughra, TekTih
various times

Aughra watches wheels spin, orbs whirl, all meaningless motion. She records the arcs of the Brothers above, and of the Sister moons, and of the distant stars, strangers all. Pen in hand, scurry of mind, meaningless motion. Useless relic—this machine that swirls in circles, this head full of calculations--useless relics both. By Gelfling hand…

A flash, sometimes, of dark-armored beasts—not beasts—machines—their meaning all too real—dark-armored soldiers who will smash the thing to pieces, and she does not have the will in her to long for the day, nor to dread it. It is a day that will come, no more, no less.

A flash, sometimes, of urSkek. TekTih plies a single bone-thin arm, alive with light, until metal creaks—barely—and the Second Brother sweeps into a shallower arc. Aughra’s eye, heavier than an urSkek’s, perceives the change in motion. “It is good,” she says. “Better.”

“You understand much of the stars and their geometries,” TekTih utters.

“Ha! You know much more.”

“But without your knowledge of Thra, without your inherentness, our task would be nigh impossible. The bridge must erupt from your Crystal, from your world.”

“Ah, but a bridge has two sides," Aughra says.

“And this observatory will help us build out to the other. The bridge will be made. Thra will no longer shade us; we will no longer burn our light into Thra.”

“I have grown used to you in these thousand trine,” says Aughra, and she has. “But once you get home, make sure they don’t send you back.”

TekTih ripples, a slow, subtle motion, a trick of the eye that is the sound of a laugh.

The Third Brother swings low, and Aughra ducks a head without a thought. Thoughtless motion, not careless, a learned dance, of two machines—not a machine, a living thing, the life of a world—two relics who have lived as one for so very long, for too long.

A flash, sometimes, of the now, a glance through the open window. The suns, the real suns, beating the blanched earth, chasing each other across the sky, catching up with each other, and this machine serves less of a purpose with each day. Each day, a flash of the now, and Aughra wonders if today is the day that the dark-armored soldiers will come.

FOLLOWING
Kel, Raunip
late Age of Harmony

Kel, frustrated, frowned at the sacred tree. She was, generally, not one to find herself in such situations. Certainly not frowning at trees, and certainly not frustrated. Rarely did she fail to succeed in her endeavors.

She recalled the series of events that had led her to this moment. That morning, before third dawn, doing her rounds, checking in with the good people of the southern valley. Finding out from Elia the Vintner—from Elia, not Mother herself—about the plans to tear up Elia’s orchards and plant raingrass instead. Then mid-morning, striding into Mother’s hall, demanding why. A message from the Lords of the Crystal, it seemed, that raingrass would do better in the upcoming season.

“What season?” Kel had asked.

“Something about the position of the Rose Sun relative to the Sister Moons,” said Mother, not looking up from the papers on her worktable. “The tides will shift, and the weather with it.”

“But tearing up Elia’s orchards is no small change. The trees date back to our grandmothers’ grandmothers’ days,” said Kel. “Have you at least meditated upon this plan up in the Waystar Grove?”

“I am too busy today for old superstitions,” said Mother, alongside the scratching of her quill. “But if the ritual will placate Elia, then you can do it yourself.”

And so Kel had tried. She’d come alone to the Waystar Grove, at third dusk. She’d drawn the lines in the soil, chanted the hymns, knelt in meditation.

And felt nothing.

Now she stood, alone, frowning at the eldest of the Waystar trees, who, in turn, offered nothing but a soft glow, and silence. What did I expect? Mother was right, the ritual was never anything but a comforting superstition.

But the drastic plan to tear up the orchards felt off, and Kel wanted to know why. Improvising, she placed a firm hand on the Great Tree and tried a dreamfast. At last something happened, flashes of light and root and vibration. But nothing coherent. The connection sputtered out.

“That used to work,” came a voice from the darkness. “But not anymore. Not since they ripped the Crystal of Truth out of the mountainside.”

Kel put a hand to her dagger. Before she could utter a warning, a figure ambled into the treelight, a being about her height, twisted out of root and vine, not flesh. “But it’s nice to see a Gelfling who still bothers to try,” it said.

Kel’s mind jumped from initial fear to her catalogue of memory, flipping from one image to the next. It found two relevant entries, and calmed: one image, from her earliest childhood, of a visit to a high hill, and another, more recent, of an illustration in a book from Mother’s library. “Am I so poor at my attempts to connect to Thra,” Kel asked, “that Mother Aughra sends her own son to aid me?”

“My mother most certainly did not send me. But perhaps Thra sent me on her behalf.” He wrapped a clutch of vine—a hand—around the Great Tree, touched his forehead to its bark. “Perhaps there is a reason that you and I both sought out the Waystar Tree tonight.”

An ally, perhaps. “What do you mean,” Kel asked, “that the ritual used to work?”

He twisted his head, fixing Kel with mismatched eyes. “I can show you,” he said, offering his hand. “Unlike the urSkeks, I have nothing to hide from the creatures of Thra.”

Kel had not, upon waking at second dawn, expected to end the day in a dreamfast with Brother Raunip, son of Mother Aughra. And yet here she was. A better plan than frowning at a tree. She pressed her palm of flesh to his, of root and vine.

Gelfling, like her, but unlike her, beneath a mountain that she knew, but did not know.

A tree, like the Waystar, but unlike the Waystar, the Cradle Tree in the Endless Forest.

The Gelfling singing, raising standing stones, speaking to the Tree and the Tree listens, and the Gelfling listen, and learn.

A flash of sky, a burst of rock, the Lords of the Crystal, the Great urSkeks. And so the mountain tumbles, the Crystal of Truth erupts, the Crystal of Truth is caged. A prison—a palace, and Mother’s eye burned away.

The Gelfling returning to the Great Trees, season after season, trine after trine. Each visit, the Gelfling listen less, and hear less, until they hear nothing at all.

Kel knelt on the cool earth. The midnight hour had coated the soil with the thinnest of frosts, in defiance of the summer ninet; its chill stirred her mind. Why? she thought. Why did they rip the heart of Thra right out of its chest?

But that’s not the question that she asked aloud, when she found her voice again. “Why?” she asked Raunip, son of Aughra. “Why do the urSkeks want to tear up Elia’s orchards?”

“I don’t know,” said Raunip. “Would you like to come with me to the Castle of the Crystal and find out?”

Chapter Text

FIRST LOVE
Vayla, Faron
which is what I named Kylan’s parents ;)
a few decades before AoR

Mother had little time for songs. When asked, she would say things like You can’t eat a song or A song won’t keep the rain off your head.

But Grandmother loved a well-told song, and so Mother had no say in the matter. Traveling songtellers had long ago learned that a detour to their family’s farm guaranteed a few hot meals, a warm bed, and a sackful of grain in return for their services.

Tucked safely onto her grandmother’s lap by the hearth, Vayla would close her eyes and let the music and story echo through her head, her chest, her heart. And although she loved her days tilling the soil, she loved too these nights drifting across the seas of vibration and memory.

Vayla eventually outgrew Grandmother’s lap, but not the songs. The day came of course, when she lost both at once. Grandmother returned to Thra, and the songtellers quickly learned that Mother was nowhere near as generous. And so they stopped coming.

Except for Faron. For some reason, Faron kept coming. He cycled back every time the Second Sister showed her first crescent. He told his songs with full heart through Mother’s apathy and Father’s indifference and her sister Vera’s light scowl. On his third visit, Mother repaid him with a loaf of bread and a hammock in the mounder barn, both adequate, but only just.

That night, Vayla stayed by the hearth long after Mother and Father and Vera slept, as she did often enough. She did not, however, go off to bed once the fire died down. She didn’t quite sneak out—she was very deliberate in putting on her cloak, her shoes—but still she leaned into her usual quietness as she pushed open the door, stepped across the plank-lined tree roots that led through the yard, and peeked into the mounder barn.

It was empty, save for the mounders. Vayla placed an absent-minded hand on the neck of a nuzzling calf as she stood in the wide mouth of the barn, processing the likely scenario that Faron had taken the hint in the adequacy of Mother’s payment and moved on early.

“Looking for a place to sleep?”

Vayla jumped into flight, nearly banging her head into Faron’s before he dodged.

“There’s a free hammock in there that I’m not using,” he said, leaning down from the roof of the barn. “That was the feeble attempt at a joke that I was going to make, anyway. Are you all right?”

The worry on his face was genuine, deeper than the situation warranted, but it melted away with Vayla’s smile, which was also genuine, and deeper. He held down a hand and helped her glide up onto the roof beside him. The First Sister was full, the Second a sliver, the light of both cascading across the rippling grasses of the Plains.

“Why do you keep coming back?” Vayla asked.

“I don’t know. You seem to enjoy a good song,” Faron said. He nodded towards the bold moonlight waving towards the horizon. “And the scenery is beautiful.”

Vayla liked his response, but didn’t have one her own, so she just smiled. It was enough.

Faron began to spill his tales, not the ones of long ago heroes, but of his own travels through the Endless Forest and across the Plains, of how he had once glimpsed the Castle of the Crystal, and of what he had heard from fellow travelers of Ha’rar, the Claw Mountains, Cera-Na. Together they sat until one moon set, and then the other. At the palest hint of dawn, Vayla brought him another loaf of bread, and some cheese to go with it, and they bid farewell, at least until the Second Sister showed her first crescent once more.

It took over a trine of his visits before Vayla began telling her own songs. At first she spoke, albeit with passion, only of soil quality and crop rotation. But soon enough, she spoke of her dreams, of having her own farm instead of living on her grandmother’s, her mother’s, her older sister’s, as she was fated. And of her doubts, of how her grandmother was the only one who had ever understood her, of how she no longer fit in with her own family.

Her songs opened him up fully, and he no longer boasted of his adventures, but instead spoke in a low voice of his parents back in Stone-in-the-Wood, how they had constantly asked him when he would put aside his hobby for a real occupation, and if he wasn’t going to be a soldier like his brother, maybe at least he could be a hunter or a smith or an apothecary or something useful.

“Here we are,” said Vayla. “The Lonely Farmer and the Useless Songteller.”

“That’s a good title,” he said, his smile wide, the moonlight reflecting the blackness of his hair, the splashes of blue-green across his face. “We should write a song to go with it.”

HOPE
Brea, Kylan
about a decade after AoR

Brea awakens and immediately tilts an ear toward the baby sleeping beside her. Still breathing.

She opens an eye to double-check, and there is Kylan kneeling by the bed, staring at their son’s face. He’s waited until she was asleep to show any sign of worry. Of course he has. But the advantage is hers; his focus, deep as always, does not shift fast enough to notice that she’s awake.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

They’ve been together long enough that he knows he can no longer get away with It’s nothing, but his answer is, as it always is with his own feelings, a puzzle.

“He looks like my father,” he says.

Brea looks at the splash of blue above the baby’s left eye and a memory drifts into her mind—not hers, but Kylan’s, a memory she knows that was hard-earned, hidden behind the worst memory of his life—of a dark-haired man playing the firca by the tall grasses beneath a rose-colored sky.

“He does,” she says. She hasn’t quite worked her way through his puzzle yet, so she decides to go light, stalling for another clue. “People are going to wonder who we kidnapped this little Stonewood baby from.”

That elicits his smile at least, the gentle one that she knows is genuine. But it melts away, and out comes the key to the puzzle. “They must have had so much hope,” he says.

Ah. This is easy. The various points of distinction and overlap between the two cases were such that she could tackle this one with simple rationalism. “Of course they did. The world they lived in was different from ours. They had no reason to suspect anything bad would happen when you were born.”

“That’s not making me…”

“No, listen,” she says, gently taking his arm in case her words grow too hard. “They didn’t know what would happen. And we don’t know what will happen either. We held on to Ha’rar for ten trine more than we thought we would, before the tide turned. Maybe it will turn again.”

“I know this isn’t what you expected,” he says, shifting his gaze to the window. The twin moonlight filters hazily through the humid canopy of the swamp. “It’s not what I expected.”

“It’s not,” she says, placing his hand on their son’s belly. “But he’s here now. So we have to have hope. There’s no other choice.”

Their eyes meet, and his expression melts again, from frown back to gentle smile. He opens his mouth to speak when the baby begins squirming beneath their hands.

“What should we do?” Kylan whispers.

The puzzle has been solved, but the emotions behind it could use further resolution. “Should we show him his grandfather? Let him see whose face he’s going to grow into someday?”

Their son’s hand is tiny, completely engulfed by theirs. But still their minds meet, and their dreams meet, and under a clear sky by the tall golden grasses, their hopes meet as well.

Chapter Text

AS IT USED TO BE
urSan
some time in the Age of Division

The waters that drape her legs, her tail, her waist, are, on this windless day, still and transparent. Today she meditates in the shallows that surround the Last Island of the Silver Sea. Or at least that is what the Gelfling call it. Even though it is not.

A glint beneath the glassy green waters cascades into a symphony of flashes, as a school of specklers swims by. She chooses a speckler and clears her mind of all but its movements, tracing its abrupt turns and bursts of speed, and, thence, the angles of light off its scales.

One of her routine meditations, but this time, something different happens. This thing of matter, this thing of meat, this brain that is in her head finds something that used to be, and fires, oddly…

and she is back hovering above a shallow sea of white sand beneath a white sky, tracking the ikram in their underwater migrations; although their paths can be predicted, there is always slight error that must be measured so that the models can be refined

she adds vector after vector until the sampling of token132 is complete; token133 awaits

but instead, she commits a mistake: she wonders, briefly, how the model would change if the error were more than slight

an arm extends until it touches the surface of the waters; the ikram shift vectors, scatter, and the pattern has irrevocably altered

what have you done? the voice of the supervisor reverberates

her own voice echoes back, defiant: a new factor must be added to the model

the supervisor’s reverberation is so profound that the surface of the water ripples: your insolence is trite, SaSan

but all SaSan can think about, as the ikram scatter away from the rippling surface, is how the supervisor’s rage will now have to be factored into the model as well

…but this thing of matter, of meat, this brain, is not as it used to be; it is not meant to fire this way. An ache behind her eyes that melts away as she tilts her gaze away from the specklers, and the memory melts away with it.

She shifts her heaviness further and further from the Last Island of the Silver Sea, until she is fully immersed in the glassy green waters. The specklers dive down, following her trail. She closes her eyes, feels the displacement of the water as the fish swim around her, loses her heaviness, and joins their dance.

EXPOSE
Kof, a Podling
shortly before the events of the movie

Kof kept one eye on the vines as he tossed a heap of dirt over his shoulder. Podling songs extolled the joys of dirt and digging, and yet he could never convince anyone else to join him in his excavations.

Most of the villagers feared the dead, which was odd, because it was the living that would kill you. The vines that draped the ruins might snatch and strangle before their victim even noticed, but the ruins themselves remained still. Under the heat of three suns, they warmed; under the silence of two moons they cooled. Nothing to fear in old rocks, and much to learn.

A few hours of shoveling and Kof had at last managed to expose the stony outcropping long ago buried by landslide and mud. A row of tombs, still sealed. Packed dirt filled the inscriptions, rendering them more legible than usual against the dark rock.

Kof squinted at the first inscription. Old Doa had in her youth picked up some of the secrets of writing, and, after much begging, had taught him everything she knew. The first word was easy enough: maudra. It showed up again and again in the Ruins of the Old Ones, the title of the great Gelfling chiefs. The next he had never seen before, most likely a name. He sounded out the letters: V-a-l-a. He picked out one more word in the inscription: Arathim. Odd. Arathim and Gelfling were two entirely different types of creature. Perhaps they had been allies, or friends.

The next tomb, the last tomb, with the word maudra, again. Kof deciphered the name: Fara. A daughter of Vala? A sister? What was her life like? How did she die? He eagerly cast his eyes over the rest of the inscription, searching for clues…

…then stopped cold. A word, the last word Doa had ever taught him, after much shouting and tears. He had even given up once, until in the days leading up to her death, Doa had whispered it to him from her sickbed.

“Shkekshe,” Kof read aloud, and, for the first time in his life, understood why the others feared the dead.

Chapter Text

CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Nan, a Gelfling; Tal, her sister; Kira
about a century after AoR

Nan gives mother’s dream-etched necklace to Tal, even though Tal is the younger sister, and even though Tal probably isn’t coming back.

“You should keep it for your daughter,” Tal says, but Nan has already fastened it around her sister’s neck.

“There’s no time to argue,” Nan says, now tugging the rough fabric of the sling snuggly around her child as she fastens it to her hip. “Bear the past with you in the necklace, and my daughter will bear it in her name.” A farm in the valley below Kira-staba, the Waystar Grove, their mother had told them.

Their mother had seen the Grove in her grandmother’s memories, but Nan and Tal’s own grandmother had only a child’s memory of it, indistinct and jumbled. Cutting through a blur of farm and valley, the light of seven trees far atop the mountainside, then six, then four, then two, then one, then darkness. As for the necklace, its story was passed down in speech, not memory; an heirloom stolen once, returned once, a symbol that the way things are need not remain that way forever.

“I’ll bear the past right back into Thra, you mean,” says Tal, leaning on the ladder of her landstrider. “Like a seed, maybe?”

Tal’s smile is wry, but Nan’s lips press together in earnestness. “I pray you may meet such a fortunate end,” she whispers, touching her forehead to her sister’s.

The wryness finds itself into Tal’s voice, but Nan hears the depths resonating below it. “And I pray you and your daughter fly far, far away from here.” The shouting grows louder, the crashing of trees echoes through the night. “I should go,” says Tal. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” says Nan. She knows she should hold back her next words but they tumble out anyway. “Tal, I’m scared.”

“I’m not,” says Tal with a wink from atop her landstrider. “You shouldn’t be either. We’ll fight to the end, and anything past that is beyond our control.” Tal touches the necklace, then speaks her final prayer. “Nineteen more trine. And then the Gelfling will rebuild the ruins of Ha’rar. And perhaps even the Waystar Grove will shine again.”

Nan cannot see the tears on Tal’s face, but she can hear them. She flutters up to the landstrider saddle, hovers before her little sister, and wipes them away. A boom louder than thunder, and both women realize that an entire apeknot has fallen. They realize how many Garthim it must have taken to knock it over, how many must lurk in the swamp below.

“I’m not scared,” Tal repeats, and Nan can barely hear the waver in her voice. Tal wraps an arm around her sister, kisses her niece on the forehead, and then dashes off towards the screams that unravel the night.

SOMETHING CONCEALED
Kira, Jen
after the movie

They have already followed Aughra’s map to three wasted towns that now lie broken, buried, burnt. With each town, a sprinkling of despair in Kira’s heart, like a light dust, accumulating in layers.

But somehow this fourth town is worse. It is worse because unlike the other towns, there had been a real chance that they’d find living Gelfling here. And it is worse because although there are no Gelfling, nothing is broken, buried, burnt.

The newly-sprouted Wellspring Tree looms over a lush oasis that has, in the last trine or so, poked vines through the windows of dwellings long-abandoned but still perfectly intact. Homes of Gelfling laid out neatly with straw mats and tables and bowls and cups and spoons.

Jen calls her name and Kira welcomes the distraction. Perhaps if she is distracted the despair will not have time to settle.

But of course Jen has found a cavern, and of course he wants to go inside. She wants to get away from the empty town, so she agrees.

It is a poor decision. Alternating chambers of blue mosslight and orange seedlight, and clearly Gelfling had lived here too. Jen reads the symbols burned into the walls—Aughra has explained that this was the way of Gelfling writing—and becomes excited by one of the words he reads. He grabs her hand and leads her from tunnel to tunnel, and she lets herself be pulled until they are in a cavernous room filled from floor to ceiling with something that Kira has never seen before.

“Books!” says Jen. “This was a library. They had a library.” Kira has no idea what he is talking about, but this is hardly the first time, and she smiles despite herself at his enthusiasm. He grabs one of the books off the shelf and opens it to reveal some kind of leaf, a whole sheaf of them, bound together.

“But they’re not urRu books,” he says, his face alight, “or Skeksis books either.” He runs his fingers along the symbols on the leaf. “This isn’t ink,” he says. “These are our books.”

A flutter in Kira’s heart lightly lifts the thin layer of despair that has accumulated with each wasted town. Then Jen flips the leaf, and the flutter beats so fast she almost faints. Staring out from amongst the etched symbols, meaningless to her, is a face not so different from hers, or Jen’s. It is the third Gelfling face she has seen since before she can remember. And in this book there are hundreds of leaves, and in this room there are hundreds of books.

The despair scatters, out from her heart, through the caves, out to the desert where it is lost in the sands. She and Jen may be the only living Gelfling here, but, Kira realizes, this place does not belong to the dead.

Chapter Text

DECEIVED
Gurjin, Pemma
~5 trine before AoR

Gurjin glided up to the waving copse of pond-grass, reached in to grab a fish, and pulled out his sister instead. His sister of nine trine who was most certainly supposed to be back home with Mom and not out hunting in the wilds of the Southern Reach.

Gurjin kicked his legs, propelling himself towards the surface where he could tell her as much, when Pemma yanked him back down. She put a finger to her lips. Gurjin raised a skeptical eyebrow in response. She shows up out of nowhere and she’s shushing me? But the look she shot back at him was stern, and quite resembling their mother. She doubled-down on her shush, and he rolled his eyes and nodded.

They surfaced inside a hollowed apewood, away from the rest of the hunt. “What in Thra’s name are you doing here?” he whispered.

“I want to help with the hunt. So I thought I’d hide and watch you guys and learn how.”

“Pemma, you’re too little to help with the hunt.”

“Well, someone is going to have to help Dad after you’re gone.”

“Oh, so you’re my replacement?” He no longer whispered. But his anger crumbled along with Pemma’s expression.

“No,” she said, tears dripping down her already-wet face, “I’m not your replacement.”

The two of them stood in the water, up to his waist, up to her shoulders, silent except for her tears. Muski rippled past their ankles, swamp-flies hovered around them, winged flyers called from the branches of the apeknot above. Gurjin put his arms around his sister.

“I’m not,” she said again.

“I know. I’m sorry. It was a bad joke.”

“Mom doesn’t really need me here, you know,” she said after a moment. “She has Naia and Eliona. Maybe someday I can come to the castle with you.”

Mom definitely does not want you to go to the castle. And someone is going to have to help Dad with the hunt when I’m gone. He almost said as much in response, but instead he just said,

“Yeah, maybe you can.”

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
Laesid, and also a fizzgig
~25 trine before AoR

Laesid loses her balance and instead of fighting to keep it, she tosses her staff aside and lets herself fall into a bed of moss. She is certain that she could get back to normal if she could just get off of the hard-packed earth of this cursed Forest and back into the softness of the swamp. Plenty of vines and branches to grab onto, plenty of water that her muscled arms and strong wings could pull the rest of her body through.

But Mother insists, rightly, that Laesid still needs time to heal, and Mother insists, rightly, that she cannot spare the soldiers to escort her injured daughter home, at least not while the Lords of the Crystal still call for their aid. And so Laesid is stuck, and newly-changed, and young.

What do the Arathim have to do with the Drenchen anyway? Why is this our fight? Why do we have to make sacrifices just because the Lords of the Crystal demand it? She slams the moss beneath her hand, and it gives, like the peat-bogs of home.

At the force of her hand, a nearby log trembles, then yelps. A beast of teeth and fluff tumbles out and peers up at her.

One of those little rolling monsters that the Stonewood are so fond of. She reaches out a hand, and the creature sniffs. It waddles forth, but does not tuck into a roll, and Laesid notices it favoring one if its front paws. Not just Gelfling and Arathim caught up in this last battle, I suppose.

“All right,” she says, scooping up the fizzgig, “let’s take a look.” She’s used to healing Gelfling, but she’s managed to heal a muski or an infant nebrie here or there. She gently touches the creature’s paw, enters the healing trance, and in a minute or two the damage is fixed.

The fizzgig curls into her lap, and Laesid stares up at the roof of the Endless Forest, finding it easier than before to see in it the apewood canopy of home. How many of these creatures haven’t been so lucky? And how many Stonewood?

Mother, as usual, is right. But only mostly right. The Drenchen will fight against the Arathim to the end, but because the Stonewood need them, and the Podlings of the Forest as well, and all the speechless beasts. Not just because it is what the Lords of the Crystal demand.

Laesid glances over at her walking stick. She’ll pick it up later, but not yet. The fizzgig nuzzles. She closes her eyes and nuzzles back, lying on a bed of moss and listening to the sounds of Thra alive all around her.

WARRIOR
Naia
after AoR

Naia glides from her landstrider onto the Garthim and stabs at its pincer joint with her dagger, realizing at the worst possible moment the subtle differences between a hunter and a soldier. A sword. I should have a sword.

She’s killed Garthim before, but that’s no guarantee that she’ll kill this one before it kills her. Although as much can be said of any beast. A hunter is good enough, maybe.

She stabs the joint again, and slices through tendon. The Garthim uses its other arm to swat her off, like an irritating crawlie, and she falls hard into the mud. But the creature is already wounded, leaking black ichor from the gaping hole where its pincer had been. And Naia has been a hunter long enough to know that the beast will not get far in this state.

Naia is tempted to throw herself at another Garthim, and another, and another, until her hunter instincts transform into those of a warrior. But such tests of mettle are a luxury from days past—back when her failure would mean her sister’s promotion to heir, not maudra.

As Naia re-mounts her landstrider, she hears a shout from her second-in-command. Right now the Drenchen don’t need her to be a hunter, or a soldier, or a warrior. She’s slain one Garthim today, and that’s a fact. Now she will go be who she must be.

Chapter Text

SNAP JUDGEMENT
skekHak
Second Great Conjunction

Hak, they think. He thinks? She thinks? We think? No, not we. Hak.

Bodied now, like the pitiful ones.

The brittle Gelfling,
the rooting Podlings,
the digging Gruenaks,
and Arathim, tunneling in the soil, which is filth filled with crawlies and tiny slimy things that get inside of lungs, tunneling with soil above and rock above, heavy granites, countless tons of matter ready to collapse upon them, upon Hak, smothering the breath out of Hak, suffocating Hak.

Eighteen companions of light, now bodied, twice-bodied, writhing, fragile things
like brittle Gelfing

tombs
tombs are relevant

And eighteen of the bodied, Hak hates, but eighteen of the bodied Hak hates more, they sicken him like coughs from lungs and heavy granites because they mean dea—

Hak refuses the word in two quiver-shot arms and a hulk of some body in his hands and we have no lungs no coughs no heavy granites upon us and a twist of neck and the hulk of some body in his hands disappears into light

Disembodied. Good. That is proper.

Hak prepares another quiver shot of arm, takes aim at one of seventeen, one of thirty-five, or is it thirty-four?—no bother

Hak will save them all.

MAGNETIC
skekSa, urSan
after the Second Great Conjunction

For the first thousand trine, when SaSan still burned her light into Thra, the compass needle had always pointed to the austral pole. The compass, that delicate tool, that SaSan had loved for its mechanical simplicity, even though her radiance had little need for it. Cursed creature.

Now the compass needle quivered and danced and changed its mind, austral one moment, boreal the next, as the ship slid from one latitude to another. Sa noticed the change slowly, but after a ninet of confused turns about the seas of Thra, it was undeniable: the poles were reversing, and they had waited until SaSan and her radiance could no longer trace their invisible arcs, the only thing she had been good for.

So now she was stuck, without her compass, and enough memory of who she used to be to know that hundreds—perhaps thousands—of trine would pass before the compass needle pointed with consistency to the boreal pole.

Perhaps that bore can still sense the poles, the magnetic arcs, even now that they are wild. I will find her and steal the knowledge back. And so Sa decided to seek out that which she had passionately avoided for a century.

When Sa laid eyes on San for the second time, one hundred trine after they had first met, the latter was scratching maps into the sand, with detail beyond that which the former’s new brain-thing could ever hope to calculate.

Sa swept the hem of her long coat along the sand, erasing a three islands dotting the shores of the northwest coast. “How dare you steal the best part of her knowledge?” she asked. “Of our knowledge.”

San’s response was of course, infuriating, and a denial: “I do not possess the mind of the former one. I am just more patient with the needle.” And she began retracing the three islands that Sa had smited from the map.

Sa smote more map in her rage as she stomped away from the useless creature. She boarded her boat up the coast where she had docked it, cast out into the depths, and tossed the compass right overboard, where it hit the waves with a satisfying plop.

HALLOWED GROUND
Jen, Kira
after the movie

Jen stares at the map so hard that he almost stares through it. He tries to figure out what part of his experiences with Aughra had led him to assent when she had instructed them to go out and find one specific tree in the middle of a place called the Endless Forest.

Kira whispers into their landstrider’s ear, guiding it around a pool of water, and Jen recalls why. How at Aughra’s suggestion, the haunted look on Kira’s face had faded partly away. I want to try, she’d said.

With another quick word, Kira brings the landstrider to a stop.

“It’s here, isn’t it?” she says.

Jen looks up from the map. “Maybe? It turns out a map of a sprawling forest full of mobile vegetation and few solid landmarks is not the most useful of maps.”

Kira flutters them down from the landstrider and approaches the husk of a great tree. A crack splits the shell of its vast trunk, revealing the hollowness inside.

“It’s dead,” Jen says. But Kira is already dancing around the tree, running her hands all over its bark.

“No,” she says from the far side of the tree. “Come see. There’s a sapling inside, growing from the stump.” Indeed, a gaping split reveals a young tree with sprouting leaves sheltered within the trunk-shell of the old.

“Listen,” Kira says. “There’s a sound, like a hum of energy. It almost feels… sacred.” She places a hand on the sapling. “Maybe we should find out if it can dreamfast.”

Jen has only recently learned about dreamfasting, but even so he’s skeptical that it’s the sort of thing that can be done with a tree, sacred or otherwise. “The urRu never told me anything about sacred trees,” he says.

Kira’s eyes meet his, the smile in them matching the one on her lips. “Yes, well, the urRu didn’t tell you about a lot of things, did they?”

He hasn’t seen her smile since before. Before the castle, before the Crystal Chamber, before…. He is so relieved to see it again that he presses a hand to the tree next to hers, without further complaint.

Find the tree, and you’ll know what to do next, Aughra had said. Jen breathes in, breathes out, and lets the dreamfast begin.

Chapter Text

FORGIVE AND FORGET
Aughra, Seladon
after AoR

Back to a tree, Aughra sat on the leaf-lined soil of the Endless Forest and assessed the world. Still there, she thought. Just like Aughra.

A moment of peace, then a crunch of footsteps. Gelfling. Aughra closed her eye and tried to blend into the tree.

“Mother Aughra,” came a startled voice. No such luck. And this particular Gelfling was a lot of work.

“Sorry to startle you,” Aughra said. She stuck a thumb in the direction of the forest hearth. “The party’s that way. This old woman just needs a break from the festivities.”

“Of course,” the Gelfling woman said. Thank the stars, she’s taking the hint. “But before I go, I must apologize to you for my behavior.”

Too tired for this conversation, but this one probably needs to have it. Let’s get it over with, then. “To me?” Aughra asked. “Why?”

“You sacrificed yourself, for me and my sister…”

“…and the others. You and are sister are delightful, but other people are important too.”

“Yes, of course,” the Gelfling woman said, all diction and posture. A branch-beetle alighted on her arm without her noticing. Aughra watched as it scuttled down the sleeve of her dress. “Anyway, if I had listened to you when you first called us into dreamspace, or even considered your message before going to the Castle of the Crystal, maybe you wouldn’t have had to make that sacrifice.”

Aughra kept her eye on the beetle, a fascinating specimen… had she logged this one in her catalogues before? “Hmm. Yes, I can see how that sequence of events might have played out differently. Or maybe not. Who knows?”

“I’m eternally sorry. I know you can probably never forgive me…”

The beetle flew away, and Aughra tried to hold back her sigh. How long is this apology going to take? “It’s really not a big deal,” Aughra said.

“What?”

“Not a big deal. Don’t trouble yourself over it. Your Gelfling lives are short enough as it is, and that was even before those treasonous birds went off the deep end.”

“But… you died.”

“Kind of.”

“And then you… emerged from the decaying corpse of the Hunter.”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“What?”

“Things happen. Aughra happens. Both things and Aughra have been going on for a long time. Will keep going on for a long time, too.”

“I don’t understand.”

Aughra wished to spend her time on important things, like naps and the cataloguing of beetles, and while Gelfling emotions were important in their own way, this was becoming absurd.

“All right little Gelfling,” she said. “I’ll make it clear for you. You are forgiven. It is forgotten. Now if you still find yourself itching with apology, go try it out on that one over there.” She pointed to the littlest princess, fluttering about the celebration at the hearth. “Or them,” she said, pointing to what, if she recalled her symbols correctly—and she always did—was the contingent of Vapra, who this one fancied herself the ruler of.

“Yes, Mother Aughra.” The Gelfling’s voice remained subdued, and Aughra wondered what would ever be enough to lift it up again. In the end, Aughra cannot do everything for them.

“Young Seladon,” Aughra said to the retreating figure. “A little ash is nothing that Thra can’t absorb.”

Young Seladon’s posture, for once, slouched, then righted almost as quick. She turned her head back towards Aughra, nodded once, and then let the her crunch of footsteps pull her back to the hearth.

All right, enough time on Gelfling today. Mother Aughra loves the branch-beetles too. Aughra pushed herself up—still old, apparently, thought rebirth would do something about that—and wandered off into the Endless Forest, with insects on her mind.

MESSAGE
Jen, Kira
after the movie

“I found ghosts in the cathedral.” Kira stares into the candlelight as she speaks, shadows flickering on her face, but she isn't really seeing anything. After a moment, her eyes flicker up to meet his. He sighs, and takes her hand. “All right,” he says with a small smile. “Take me to them.”

Every one of the abandoned cities that they’ve visited has its own copy of the prophecy, but only in this place is it burned into the walls of a cave that surrounds an effigy of the Crystal of Truth—whole, not fragmented. Upon first seeing it, Jen had recalled Aughra’s words when he and Kira had first decided to set out for the Crystal Sea: The Dousan were weird.

Kira leads him to the base of the Crystal effigy, to an etched symbol that he’s already explained to her—unity. “Kira, it's just an etching,” he says, but she ignores him, and places his hand upon the symbol, next to hers, then raises the other for a dreamfast. Jen stares at her hand and shrugs. He’s given into her whims before and rarely regretted it.

At the touch of her hand, a flash, and then, the ghosts.

Not one or two, but a whole crowd—the largest group of Gelfling Jen has ever seen—in this very room, surrounding two women. One has dark painted skin that Jen has figured out from books to be the hallmark of what was once the Dousan clan. The other has dark hair, which, like his, is streaked with a lighter shade, although Kira's mind focuses in on the lines on the woman’s face, and on the faces of elderly Pod People from her village, and Jen realizes that this may be a sign of age, if Gelfling age like Podlings.

The women—Maudra Ithri of the Dousan, Maudra Kel of the Exiles, as they announce themselves—call the crowd to order. Jen settles in among the sea of faces—some painted, some not, some with dark eyes like he’s never seen before—waiting anxiously to hear what comes next.

The ghosts begin to speak.

Chapter Text

LULLABY
Rian, Kylan
during AoR

Rian forces himself to swallow some hard bread and cheese, a final meal before raising his sword against the Lords who he had once sworn to serve. Beside him, Kylan draws with a stick in the dirt, a map of their battle plans, traced over and over again.

Kylan hums as he draws, and Rian recognizes the tune almost immediately. “I didn’t know Spriton songtellers kept Stonewood lullabies in their repertoire,” he says through bites of bread.

“Ah,” says Kylan, blinking up from his tracings, “oh, uh, they don’t, usually. It’s just something that my father used to sing to me.”

“Your father?” Rian asks. Why would his father… Suddenly, Kylan’s thoughtful glances at the buildings lining the hearth of Stone-in-the-Wood take on a new light. “Are you saying that he…”

Kylan’s next words tumble out uncharacteristically quick, smothering the end of Rian’s question. “The version of the lullaby that my father sang had a different ending line than the most common version,” Kylan says. “The more common ending goes And rare is the gelfling babe who’s cried since the Lords shone down from the mountainside. But the other version goes…”

“…since the Lords split open the mountainside,” finishes Rian. “That’s the version my family always sang as well. The other kids used to tease me and say that the Lords never split open a mountain. But I’d tease them right back and say I’d never seen a shiny Lord.”

Kylan smiles quietly before studying the dirt again. Rian is about to bite off another piece of bread, when the other man speaks. “Except that they did shine, once,” he says. “If what you told us of the Heretic and the Wanderer is true.”

Rian puts down his bread, turns his gaze west, towards the castle, although it is too far to see. “If the Lords really did shine once…”

“…then maybe they split open a mountain, too,” Kylan finishes.

The Heretic and the Wanderer were generous with their knowledge, but they were also…indirect. “How much do we still not know?” Rian mutters under his breath.

“How many secrets locked away in lullabies?” Kylan says to the dirt.

Rian is not one for riddles and mysteries, especially those that might never be solved. But there is one mystery wrapped up in this song that can be solved right now. “Kylan, your father, was he…?”

“The scout,” Kylan interrupts, nodding towards one of Maudra Fara’s guards, who has just alighted by the Crucible. “It looks like she wants to talk to you.”

Rian nods, taking the hint in this second interruption. He leaves Kylan to his dirt drawings and walks across the Stonewood hearth, humming the old lullaby that will, it seems, keep its secrets for a while longer.

VICTORY
Aughra
right after the movie

The victory is too old. Decaying parts—and she herself knows much of decay—uniting with weather-beaten things in a dank hall. Victory, covered in dust.

And yet there is light. She had expected light this third time—Aughra knows a conjunction better than anyone, doesn’t she—but light bent into violet, absorbed by the opacity of the chamber. Instead, this third time trails back into the second, all mirrors and refraction and urSkek, and the unbent light of the Crystal when it was whole.

This third time, like the second time, but not so much like the first.

Yes, the leaving, if you twist it, is akin to the first time, with its coming.

But their Castle still stands, the mountain stays split, the body of the world is forever changed—the heart still beats, in a chest of artifice. Aughra does not stand on the open mountainside, and her eyes do not see as they once did.

A thousand trine too old—two thousand. Victory is not the word. It’s over. It’s done.

What’s next—not the same, never the same. Life will cover Thra, perhaps some of the old—enough Podlings to flourish, and perhaps the Gelfling will surprise her again. Not likely, but perhaps. Not the same, never the same. Joining—replacing?—the old will be the new. Aughra wonders hard if her heart will grow to love it.

Chapter Text

SUGGESTION
Brea and Dara, a name I have arbitrarily given to the Vapran farmer from the show
about a decade after AoR

Dara leaned her mud-caked hoe against the side of the shed and looked down at the Princess’s book. “Will all those numbers really help us grow more crops, Your Highness?”

“I… Brea is fine,” said the Princess, for the third time since the conversation began, before pulling her long hair off of her neck. Third time for that too. “And I hope so. I still have to analyze everything and see what conclusions I can draw. But certainly all this hard data on rainfall, water levels, topsoil depth will bring us closer to figuring out how to grow crops in a swamp.”

Dara nodded. At this point, anything would help, and what the Princess said made sense in a way. “Looks like all the crawling around in the mud with a measuring stick will pay off,” she said. “Although you shouldn’t have to do it, Your Highness. Any one of us would be happy to take the measurements for you.”

“I certainly appreciate the offer,” said the Princess, smudging some mud onto her forehead as she wiped away the sweat. “But it’s more accurate if the same person takes each measurement at each interval.” She swiped at her hair again, and Dara couldn’t help a small smile.

“It’s certainly a lot hotter here than home, isn’t it?”

“It’s so hot,” the Princess replied, leaning back onto the shed wall, next to the hoe. “And sticky. And my hair. Between you and me, I’ve been thinking of just cutting it all off.”

This time Dara failed to hold back an honest laugh, although she quickly covered her mouth. But the dirt-smeared young woman leaning on the rickety old shed laughed along with her. In the shared moment, Dara felt bold enough to share a suggestion. “Before you do anything drastic, you might want to try just one simple braid,” she said, gesturing at her own. “Keeps it off the neck.”

“That’s a brilliant idea,” said the Princess. “That would be much cooler. And it’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”

“You’ve only been here a week, Princess Brea,” she said. “Takes a while to adjust.”

“Just Brea is fine,” she responded, absent-mindedly beginning to pull her hair into a braid. “My mother stole your necklace once and now you’re giving me hair tips in a swamp. Surely we’re beyond formality.”

This time when she laughed, Dara didn’t bother to hide it. The Princess, halfway through rebraiding her hair, joined her. Maybe they were living in a new world. But she wasn’t quite ready for Brea yet.

“How do I look?” the Princess asked, when she had finished. The braid was floppy and loose, and would probably fall apart in less than an hour.

“You could probably make it a little tighter,” said Dara. Not quite ready for Brea yet, but I think I can do this. She gestured towards the younger woman’s hair. “Here, let me show you.”

GRAVITY
Rayna and Thala, some kids I made up for Naia and Amri ;)
a few decades after AoR

Thala could not swim as far as Rayna, but she never stopped trying. When they first visited the Southern Shores, Rayna had twelve trine to her name—and her wings in—and Thala only eight. Rayna launched herself through a curling wave and disappeared into the emerald translucence of the water before surfacing so far from shore that Gelfling on the beach were as specks of sand.

Thala, without a thought, went splashing right after her sister, despite her limitations of size, and strength, and breath. She made it halfway as far as Rayna before she realized that she was in trouble, and her sister had to pull her back to shore.

But Thala did not give up, and each time they visited the sea, the same act played out—Thala spending herself to exhaustion, surfacing for air over and over again, never giving up the chase until her body gave up in the middle of the green-gray deep.

And then, Thala’s wings came in—then she could soar through the sky with the same freedom that Rayna had in the water.

Of course, when they visited the shore, the only thing that changed was that Thala now beat herself to exhaustion in the sky rather than in the sea. And she occasionally managed to outpace her sister, before she splashed down into the waves, winking brightly at Rayna as the latter swam over to save her before she, you know, drowned.

After one particularly stubborn day, when Rayna had almost passed out dragging Thala back to shore before a helpful fishing boat picked them up, their father had taken their hands into his, looked deeply into their eyes and said, Please, girls, I am so nervous.

Since that day they had moved their race the shoreline, Rayna gliding through the spray just beyond the breakers, Thala hovering above the thin line where ripples of foam washed onto the sand. But still, even in this new direction, they raced further and further each time, and, as they advanced along the coastline, so too did Gelfling knowledge of the Southern Shores.

Back home, they poured over parchments with their father, tying their memories to map. Their father was nervous, and so was their mother, although she’d never admit it, and so were most of the other adults. But for all their differences, Rayna and Thala both held the glint of the sun on the sea in their eyes, and in their hearts they saw nothing but horizon.

Chapter Text

PLATEAU
Nen and Thala, who are children of some of our friends ;)
about half a century after AoR

Nen kneels on a shadeless plateau of rock and dust. The stick he uses to measure the depth of the water is, at this point, nothing more than a crutch—he needs no hard numbers to read the fate of the settlement from the stream. The water level is so low that the rockskimmers—the tallest only half his height—barely cause a splash when they peck at whatever stray crawlies they manage to find in the muddy stream bed. The water, although it still flows, only reaches their knees.

Nen sighs, and stands, and records the hard number anyway. The numbers will be a comfort to him later, when he needs to convince himself that he hasn’t just given up. More importantly, numbers are the foundations of plans, and plans keep him going. If the numbers say they can no longer survive here on the edges of the wasteland, then that’s what the numbers say. Back in his study in Sog, he has other numbers, and they will tell him where to go next.

A few days later, back home, he combs through those numbers carefully, consults maps, and—just once, to be sure—consults his own dreams. He then draws his conclusions and brings them to Thala.

“We have another trine at South Bend,” he says. “Two at most.”

Thala, like him, does not go by the title of maudra, although they have each taken on the responsibilities that their mothers once bore. “Are you sure?” she asks.

Some numbers do not need to be measured because they are already fixed: fifty trine from now there must be at least one Gelfling. They have survived more than half the span that the prophecy has said that they must endure, holding steady in their strongholds.

But Thra shifts, and the Gelfling must shift with it, for good or for ill. Nen has enough data to examine the past and the future apart from the time he dwells in, and he sees that the long trine of holding steady have run their course. The remaining trine will run headlong towards the fate of the Gelfling, and all of Thra, whatever that may be.

Nen points to a spot on the map to the west of South Bend, down the sloping hills to the south of Grot, where scouts say the flooding river has enriched the formerly dry lands. “It’s time to move on,” he says.

LAMENT
urSu, Jen
almost a century after AoR

It is not the span of their lives, but their multitudes.

Time layers memory evenly in mind—seventy trine or seven hundred, it matters little how long. The memories are well-ordered, and well-spaced. Differences of lifetimes are not an obstacle to knowing.

Times come—although few—when urSu’s motions bring urSu’s body over the ridge of the Valley, and there, the fluttering abundance, the scampering hurry. Winged things flit from tree to tree, leaf to leaf, blade to blade. Beasts dart on springed leg, and the tall grasses shake; beasts slide on wide bellies, and the tall grasses twitch. Every breath brings Su’s senses the same sign: here there are many.

Even fewer times bring Su to the villages of wise creatures—the Podlings, or the Gelfling, or both. They too are many, as are the things that they do, or, more rightly, the things that they do at once. Weaving, talking, laughing, but all three things at once—the urRu do each, but each in its proper time, or, at least, its own time. And the laughing—rare and precious in Su’s usual days—here among the wise creatures of Thra, like everything beyond the Valley, it echoes much.

In the Valley, Su can focus, can breathe deep, can contemplate. But Su has never been able to track the many beyond the Valley. Focus on one barely settles before another snags it away; the focus bounces from one to one to one, diminishing each time until it is nothing. And then Su’s motions bring Su back over the ridge and into the Valley, the many beyond barely known better than before.

And so the trine pass, layered evenly, in well-ordered spaces of memory. Memory that does not fail when Su travels over the ridge to find… less.

Less and less.

Twitches of grass become rarer, and Su studies the beasts that make them, and at last knows them well. Two darting beasts of springed leg, Su visits trine after trine, telling one from the other by the whorls in their fur and the rhythms of their breath.

And Su sits in a small village of Gelfling and Podlings, and although Su’s focus is not yet enough for conversation, Su comes to know one creature from another by the lines on their faces or the weight of their gaits, or sound of their laughter, which now, too, is less.

The less is a blessing for Su’s knowing. But Su’s mind carries itself in spirals, and eventually the spirals cycle back to the reason for less. And then, in shame, Su leaves the village until the spirals track away from the reason for less and Su visits the village again.

And so it repeats, until one day, in the Village, instead of less, there is none.

No flutterings, no hurry, no three-things-at-once.

Plenty of space for Su to focus, but now there is nothing—no one—to know.

Su’s mind spirals through the time—so little—spent in this world over the ridge of the Valley, and as it does so, it spirals through the truth—that Su’s knowing of others, still so very poor, has come only after much grief for the ones that Su had come to know.

Su repents, and wishes for multitudes.

But wishing is nothing, and there is nothing left but a song of lament, from Su’s own throat, a low note that shakes the breeze…

…but not the tall grasses, which shake on their own.

Because Su has come to know—when grasses twitch, there is a beast lurking within, or a wise creature, or, in some cases, in this case, a child. Spirals of mind circle past a memory, well-stored, of a prophecy. Perhaps there is still a chance for repentance, and for multitudes.

But Su has also come to know that a child cannot survive on its own. Su is not sure how many days until the child will be grown—but the span of their lives has never been an obstacle.

One, thinks Su, scooping up the child before turning back towards the Valley. I can come to know this one.

Chapter Text

TOWER
Mayrin
during AoR

The morning of the tithe, Mayrin wakes before first dawn, and sighs. A long day ahead, and her sleep unsettled by something as trivial as a dream… most inconvenient. She rolls over, shuts her eyes, and tries to clear it from her mind.

Nothing more than a jumble of memory, anyway, this dream, for she has seen all of its components in waking life:

First, the arms of the Castle of the Crystal, reaching up towards the sky, as if to pluck wisdom from the heavens and hand it over to the Skeksis Lords for careful interpretation. The Castle she has visited countless times, so small wonder it finds its way into her dreams.

And second, higher still, a hill of crags in layered browns, and at its peak, the glint of glass and metal. Mayrin has seen this hill but once, and has never climbed it. She knows from books that Mother Aughra dwells there, or did.

A much younger Mayrin had thundered down the Black River at the head of the Ha’rar cavalry, joining Vala’s forces against a pit of murderous spitters on the far side of the river from Stone-in-the-Wood. In the midst of the battle, this house of Aughra had reflected in the steel of her sword.

But the spitters had not found their way into this dream, nor had Vala. Only the bracing obsidian towers of the Castle, melting into a glint of glass and metal on the high hill. It is only now, upon awakening, that Mayrin has remembered the spitter blood coating her blade.

Mayrin cares little for the… illogic of dreams. She prefers plain truths to hidden meanings. Her dreams are memory, and memory is plain enough. And she can get by on only a few hours of sleep, even on the day of the tithe.

Mayrin pushes herself out of bed, and makes her way through the dark of her bedroom to begin preparations for the day.

LAST SIGHT
ZokZah, Jen
after Thra’s Crystal is healed

The small creature in need of answers, always

the last I saw

of two thousand turns of rock and sea

How does a wise creature, a creature of speech, know so little?

I had thought such things

But I gave answers, patiently, always

What is evil? he asked once—

at that asking, no longer so small

for such simple questions—

but I told the answer, patiently

And then I

when next we met

I

had he realized that it was I

who clutched the knife

the old wizard who tutored him in the ways of the air

stole the breath of another

So much in one moment—many dank things taken to dazzle at once

perhaps he never knew my other face.

But my last glimpse of two thousand turns:

I saw his eyes—

questions,

in the light,

hovering

CANDLE
urAc, skekGra
centuries before AoR

“Can you be more precise?” The night is starless, but within urAc’s rock-hewn study, the flame of a single candle lights Ac, and the Valley’s unexpected visitor, and the page.

The Wanderer’s other half waves an impatient hand, its flutter echoed in a long shadow on the wall. “You know what we were like. You remember.”

Ac has spent days and nights and days and nights scraping moments into scrolls. But the occasions on which Ac delves into the distant past are rare, and not so different from prophecy. “The memories come,” Ac says. “And go.”

“I still don’t understand why you need to scribble my ramblings into that scroll of yours anyway,” says the other half. Gra. “Wanderer already told you all about the vision.”

“I must record the testimony of both witnesses.”

“Both,” mutters Gra. “Ha. That really gets to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it?” The shadows at the fading edge of the candlelight catch in the angles of the Skeksis' face, the curves of the urRu’s.

“You remember,” Gra repeats at last. “We… shone.”

Ac considers this while staring into the single flame at the edge of the desk, then speaks. “Like the candle,” Ac says.

“No, not like the candle, not at all,” says Gra, not one but two arms now flinging impatient shadows on the wall. “Oh, you don’t remember at all.”

Not like the candle. The candle flame at the edge of the writing table has been Ac’s companion through the stillest of nights. The candle is warm, and it dances in full accord with the air that fills this world. It wouldn’t be so bad to shine like the candle.

“Candles burn out,” says the Wanderer’s other half, Gra. GraGoh.

“That is not a fault against them, I think,” says Ac.

Gra humphs, not an urRu noise, but not a Skeksis one either. “Maybe not,” Gra says, “but either way, we were never like candles, and you know it.”

“No,” agrees Ac, “we weren’t like candles.” But what might we become? After all, look what they have become already. “Hmm,” Ac says.

Gra’s roll of eyes is just as expressive as the earlier waving of arms. “I know what that Hmm means. Are we done? Can I go? I’m going to go. In the vision, I saw how urGoh and I used to be. You know what we looked like, you met us, you were there. Good luck with your scroll.”

The night is starless, and moonless, but the flame of a single candle lights Ac, and the page. If skekGra and urGoh have their way, Ac too will shine again. And then…? What then will I remember of starless nights?

Chapter Text

THERE’S MORE
Deet, Rian
a few months after AoR

He’d caught her, when she’d fluttered right at him, ready for the rest of his life.

“Is this place okay?” he’d asked. The wooden walls of the old watchtower smelled like life itself; the open roof let in the whole night sky. “I thought about my old house, my parents’ house, but…” That’s when she’d leapt into his arms.

It had been inevitable, after months of not-quite-together and of almost dying, and of almost losing one’s self completely, to be together like this at last. Even if, maybe, there were parts of him that remained in the heart of another, and parts of herself drawn to darkness still.

Now he breathed next her, deep in sleep, somehow, despite the hustle in the town below. Tired laughter from soldiers stripping off well-nicked armor by the bonfire. A cry from the woods for a stretcher, another person found wounded, or dead. Another battle done, and many long trine to come. It’s over, he had said, but of course it wasn’t.

Today, I lost one friend, and two more became starlight. It was a wide thought.

But he had chosen this place well. Her eyes, exiled to a world of daylight, sharpened in the night. Above the watchtower, the crown of the forest blanketed them snugly, each leaf pressed into a singular outline against patches of starlit sky.

It’s over, she thought. It’s over, but there’s more.

She closed her eyes and pressed her face to his back, and matched her breathing to his until at last her exhaustion approached sleep. She dreamed of first dawn streaming dimly through the leaves, and, in a few hours, it came.

SANCTUARY
Kylan, Brea
a few weeks after AoR

Brea closes the book so quietly that he can barely hear it shut over her soft sigh. That’s a bad sign, Kylan thinks. Usually her frustration involves much more distracted slamming.

“I knew none of the ancient histories mentioned the word urSkek—I certainly would have remembered as much,” she says. “But I thought re-reading them after everything we learned in the Circle of the Suns might lead to some new insight. Maybe not exactly how to send away unwanted visitors from another world, per se, or how to heal one’s Crystal of Truth, but something.”

Kylan raises his eyes to heights of the library, as wide as the sky but still safe and sheltering. “Seems a little early to give up,” he says. “There have to be some ancient histories in here you haven’t checked yet.”

“There are.” She rests her head against the table. “But I feel like we’re not getting anywhere. We have no lead, no plan. We’re just randomly reading books.”

Kylan pulls the volume he is randomly reading closer to his chest. Perhaps she’s right that it’s a useless effort. But here in the library, with the twin moonlight reflecting off the old polished wood that gives it structure, he feels more at peace than he has in weeks. Perhaps ever.

“I used to think the world was one big puzzle for me to solve,” Brea says softly. “I guess I’m finally learning that the world exists for reasons much larger than keeping me entertained.”

“I was the opposite,” Kylan says distractedly as he flips to his desired page. The paper in this volume is just textured enough that he can almost feel the tree bark that it was made from. “I interacted with the world—told songs at the clan hearth, helped gather vegetables during the harvests—but I never felt like I was part of it. Just existing alongside it, I guess.”

He closes his mouth—the thoughts are ones he doesn’t usually give breath to. Perhaps this place is making him feel a little too safe. “Sorry, that’s depressing.”

“No, it’s not,” Brea replies. “Well, it is a little depressing, but you don’t have to be sorry. It’s not your fault that you had the childhood that you had.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Kylan says. “I lived in a maudra’s house. I was always warm, and fed.”

“But also you felt like you didn’t belong in the world.”

“Well, the maudra kept me warm and fed but she wasn’t my mother.” I miss my mother. But he certainly wasn’t going to give breath to that thought.

“Are you all right?” Brea asks.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“You don’t look fine. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.” He keeps his eyes on the manuscript in front of him, to avoid the skeptical look that Brea must be giving him. She can mask her emotions well enough when she remembers to, but this late at night she is certainly too tired to remember to.

“Kyla—“

“Songs of the City by the Sea,” he says, laying the book on the table next to where she is still resting her head. “The songs in this book are supposed to date back a thousand trine, so I thought I’d look for clues about urSkeks in the lyrics.”

“That’s a good idea.” Brea straightens and leans over the book. “What did you find?”

“Not much yet. I was skimming ‘The Cradle and the Key’—“

“Gyr the Songteller’s oldest known work.”

“Yes. Every songteller in the Skarith Land knows a version it, and everyone’s version is a little different. Since this book is so old, I thought I’d see what lyrics it uses. But they’re the same ones that I know already. ”

“Nothing stands out?”

“Not to me. But you're the one who spent time with urGoh and skekGra. Maybe something will stand out to you,” he says. "Unless you've thought of this already.”

“No. I know the name, but I don’t think I’ve ever even heard it told. What’s the melody?”

“This book says it’s usually sung to the tune of Pearl Moon Waning. Although whenever I perform, I use Rose Sun Dusk.”

Brea leans back against the tall back of her chair. The pliant wood, all one piece, curves and twists to form the shape of a unamoth, an effect so subtle Kylan can almost believe it has grown that way. “Will you sing it for me?” Brea asks.

“What, now?”

“Why not?”

“I’m a professional, you know,” he says with a smile.

“I know. I'm sorry,” Brea replies, a little too seriously. Kylan thinks of their first meeting, in dreamspace. She has changed enough since that day that even from that brief, disjointed encounter he can tell the difference in her demeanor. I’m sure she misses her mother too. But he has already decided he’s not going down that line of conversation.

“I’m just kidding,” he says gently, nudging her shoulder with his. “Which tune?”

“Rose Sun Dusk is good.” Brea tugs on his shirtsleeve so that he’s seated on the chair beside hers.“I can never hit the right notes with Pearl Moon Waning.”

“Are you joining me?” he asks. He leans a hand on the armrest of this chair, his favorite in the library. Most of the others are made of evergreen wood from the forests around Ha’rar, but this one is from an older set that was gifted from the Stonewood over a century ago. The loops of springwood still smell like the Endless Forest.

“Yes.” Brea replies. “Then it’s less of a command performance for a spoiled princess and more of two friends doing an activity together.”

"I was kidding.”

“I know,” she replies, still frowning. “I’m being grumpy. It starts on this page?”

After a false start from which they both learn that the tune known as Rose Sun Dusk in the south goes by Blue Moon Waxing in the north (and vice versa), they begin.

In a cradle of branches a childling slept
In the heart of the Wood where the blue flames leapt
But her dreams were concealed (though she wished them free)
For the cradle was a lock and a lock wants a key

“So the cradle is the Cradle Tree?” Brea asks once they’ve completed all six verses.

“That’s what some commenters say. No one knows for sure.”

“What’s the key, then?”

“Your guess is as good as any.”

“Probably not an urSkek.” Brea’s wry smile does nothing to mask her exhaustion. In the past few weeks she’s been caged—twice, watched a family member die—twice, fought a battle against their erstwhile Lords for good measure, and through it all has just kept going. She needs a break, but of course there’s no telling her that.

“I know you wanted to find something about the urSkeks,” Kylan says. “But it’s comforting, in a way, that Gyr’s oldest song has nothing to do with them.”

The wryness drops out of her smile as she runs a hand along the heavy paper. “That’s a good way to think about it.”

“I’ve been to the Cradle Tree,” he says. “Naia and I passed by it on our way to the Castle. No locks though.”

“How did you know it was the Cradle Tree?”

“It was larger than all the trees around it, for one. And there were these piles of stones that I assume the Stonewood put there. Like cairns. But more than that, something just pulled me towards it. It reminded me of the Low Tree back home.”

“Have you spent much time at the Low Tree?” In anyone else the question would be innocent enough, but Kylan knows that Brea’s been trying to circle back to their earlier conversation about his past. It’s probably not even conscious on her part—in the course of their research together it’s become obvious that she has a habit of fixating on a line of inquiry and following it until she gets distracted by another one. He thinks of distracting her again, but then he thinks of the night in the desert when she poured out her grief for all to see. I can tell her this much at least.

“Each night since I was old enough, after the town settled down for the evening, I would take the short walk to the glen where the Low Tree grows, climb up into its branches and play the firca until the first moon was high in the sky,” he says. “Even though I felt like an outsider in Sami Thicket, I always felt like I belonged among the branches of the Low Tree. Like I was truly part of my mother’s clan.” And that’s all I want to say about that.

Brea watches him quietly for a moment, and he’s worried that she’ll press him further. But she doesn’t. “I trekked up to the Waystar Grove once when I was ten,” she says instead. “My wings weren’t in yet and I had to climb the whole way up and down in the snow on foot. It was terrible.”

“Yes,” he smiles, “having to go everywhere on foot is terrible.”

Her laugh is quiet and she curls into the chair. “The lights of the Waystar are fading, the sailors say. It’s just like Deet told us, about the Sanctuary Tree dying.”

Kylan thinks of the glints of purple crystal poking through the soil beneath the Cradle Tree as he and Naia had passed it all those weeks ago. But it’s late, and neither he nor Brea need to focus on that now. “All the words in this place, there have to be some answers,” he says instead. “Or at least a spark of inspiration.”

“You mean a key?” she asks, with a smile in her tired eyes.

Everything in the library is a gift from Thra—the shelves and chairs carved from its woods, the ink ground from stone and and the quills cast by molting beasts. Even the pages of the books themselves. He wonders about the words written on them. Probably not an urSkek.

“We just have to look in the right place,” Kylan says. He turns the page to another ancient Gelfling song—‘Son of the High Hill,’ author anonymous.

Brea finds a store of energy and leans back over the table, pushing aside the histories she has been scouring and picking a volume from his pile. Songs for the Night of the Hidden Moon. “This one’s etched,” she says, running her fingers over the letters burnt into the page before curling back into the unamoth-winged frame of her chair.

Kylan splays his hand onto the etched page of his own volume, as some Gelfling must have done hundreds of trine ago, and trusts that the key is close at hand. He begins to read.