Chapter 108 Stitch (Part 1)

Sara's dark eyes stared at the baby phoenix. The baby phoenix's big golden eyes stared right back. The girl did not so much as move. For two whole seconds, she only stared.

"Cute!" she said in the next breath.

She grabbed Solara in both hands and lifted her up. "What's your name? You're so fluffy-"

Solara let out a confused chirp. Then she let out a sound I had never before heard from her. Something less a squawk, and more of a squeak. She squirmed in the girl's hands. Sara let her go, and she fell back onto the girl's chest. "Aw, sorry, little birdie. I won't touch you."

Solara had bitten Ren for far less, once. She did not bite this girl. She only stared up at her, head tilted very far to one side.

Then the girl blinked. She looked around, and her gaze found mine. She stared. Her mouth hung open.

I would have to greet her properly. After so long away, a Queen must greet her retainer properly. Especially her first. I had not planned to say anything at all. I had planned to write a letter and leave it beside her. Now I would need something appropriate. Something with the proper weight. "Girl, y-"

The girl rushed forward. Her arms wrapped around my stomach as she crashed into me. Solara let out an angry squawk as she tumbled onto the cot, even as I half-fell onto the floor. The girl's grip was fierce. It had been fierce on the day we left Hamel. It was fierce now. "Lys! Lys! Lys!" she said, over and over. "Am I dreaming?"

The letter was still in my hand. I did not let it crumple. I turned my gaze to Ash for some manner of assistance. The Hero smiled, took a few steps further inside, and offered none at all. "No, child," I said. "You are not." Slowly, I wrapped my own arms around her back. The gesture was awkward, as it always was. I still did not know where my hands should rest, or how tightly to hold. So I simply copied the girl as best I could.

It was some time before she finally let go. She raised herself and shuffled back. Then she saw Ash, and her eyes went wider still. Had she truly not noticed the Hero standing there? "Ash! You're here too?!" This time she launched herself at Ash, who took the tackle far more gracefully than I had.

"Yep. Surprise?" Ash said, ruffling the girl's hair. "Sorry for waking you up."

The girl shook her head, even pressed as it was against the Hero's stomach. "It- it doesn't matter!"

I rose. While the girl was occupied with her second attack, I folded the letter along its creases and slid it into my satchel, where it came to rest against the cover of a fool's musings. They would keep each other good company.

Solara was on the cot, watching the girl with her head both craned and tilted. I scooped her into my arms and held her. She let out a small chirp. And then another.

"This is Sara," I told her. "She is my- she is my first retainer. The first of this new world."

Sol considered this. I felt her considering it. Then she let out a chirp. At the sound, Sara broke free from Ash and looked at us again. She was looking only at Sol, who was looking right back. "Is she… from the egg?" the girl asked in a whisper. Her eyes were very wide.

"She is. Her name is Solara." I feared the full name might prove too much for the girl. "She also answers to Sol."

Sara nodded quickly. So quickly I almost feared she might unseat her own neck. "Sol-ara," she said. "Sol!"

Solara let out a small chirp. A surprisingly small chirp, for her. It seemed this "shyness" Ash had spoken of afflicted her now more than ever.

Then the girl looked up at me and wiped at her eyes. "You're both- you're both really back," she said. She shook herself and lowered her arms, and then she stood straight. Or as straight as a child her size could stand.

Only for a short while. I almost said it. The words rose in my throat and died just before they reached my lips. "We are," I said instead.

Sara nodded, and smiled.

We stepped away from the village. Not into the forest proper, but to a clearing close against Hamel's low wall. I had been here before. A Hero had sat on a small boulder then, split stones scattered all around her, and I had come to tell her of my two powers. Ruin, and Bloom. We came there now together, with Sara.

The girl's aunt had told us to take her and go somewhere quieter. It was still dark, and even this close to Hamel's walls, the forest was not safe. Ash had said as much. The woman had taken one look at the Sigils on our arms and insisted it would be fine. Just as she had insisted on dragging me to Sara's room. And so, here we were.

Ash knelt before a circle of stones, and within the circle she had gathered a great pile of branches and dead shrubs. I had seen her do this before. She took two stones and struck them against one another. Back then, both stones had looked the same to me, and the Hero's actions had been stranger still. They were not the same. One was a slightly darker grey, the other a yellow so faint I barely marked it at all. And I knew well what the Hero was doing now.

Ash struck the two stones together and made a spark. It did not catch. Solara waddled up beside her and let out a long chirp. Ash looked down at the bird, who was watching her intently. "Do you want to help, Sol?" she asked.

Solara let out a long, slow trill. Ash smiled. She set the stones down and pointed at the shrubs. "Just a tiny bit of fire, okay? A really tiny bit."

Solara weighed the instruction. Then she opened her beak, and from it came a small wisp of flame. It caught the shrubs, and there was smoke.

"She's so pretty," Sara said beside me. She was swaddled in a brown sheet her aunt had pressed on her against the cold. We knelt together in the grass, watching them. I could see well enough in this darkness. Sara could not. Then again, Solara's golden body shone even by moonlight alone.

"She is," I agreed. "And she is much more besides. In all the world, there is only one of her."

Sara nodded as though she had understood everything I said. I suspected she understood only the smallest fraction of it.

The fire grew, and slowly cast its warm light around us. Solara let out a proud chirp as Ash blew into the young flames. Then the phoenix craned her own neck and began to huff at them too. She was still small, and whatever air she gave the fire surely did nothing at all. She took to the work with great enthusiasm regardless.

"And your branchy things are pretty too!" Sara pointed at my arms. At the branching patterns of black and white.

I looked down at them. This village had no one above a Spark, from what I recalled. The only one who had been more was Marsh, and he had taken his Line and gone off to be an adventurer. "These are called Sigils." I held my arms out for her, and she craned her neck toward them. "Do you remember the Lines I had?" She nodded. "These are what comes after."

"I have them too, you know," Ash said, coming to join us. "Didn't you notice?" She held out her own arms for the girl's inspection.

"Sig-ils," Sara said slowly. "Sigils! Your purple one is so pretty!"

Ash paused. Only for a moment. Someone else might not have seen it at all. "I suppose it is," she said.

Solara waddled over from the fire. She let out a small chirp and flew for my head, and reached it without striking my forehead even once. I adjusted her. Sara watched all of it. Then the girl nodded slowly, and seemed to arrive at some great decision. "I'm going to get one too!"

She held out an arm. On her right forearm, near the wrist, sat a single green Spark. It caught the light of the small fire and very nearly glowed.

I looked at it. The Ink sat slightly dull at its edges, as though the mark stood at the very beginning of becoming something else. My own Sparks had looked much the same, in the days before they became Lines. It had taken me far less time. But I had crossed into this world carrying mana far heavier from what existed here. This girl had managed to grow this much with the mana of this time. She did not even have Essence. In that light, her progress was good. It was too good.

I met Ash's gaze. The Hero's smile had dimmed, just slightly. She met my gaze and nodded. She had thought the same thing, then.

"Sara," Ash said carefully, "have you been practicing?"

I did not know why she asked in so roundabout a fashion, when we could both see the answer for ourselves.

Sara nodded. "Uh-huh! I've been practicing all the time. Look, look, I'll show you!" She cast around at the grass and spotted a clump with more brown in it than the rest.

She crawled to it on hands and knees, and tore the top from one of the blades. Then she sat back and held the torn piece against the rest, pinched between two small fingers. Her green Spark glowed.

Nothing happened. The two pieces stayed two pieces. Sara's brow furrowed. And then I saw it. The torn edges reached for one another, edge finding edge, and the blade of grass was one blade again. Sara swayed where she sat, and caught herself on one hand, grinning.

It was a healing power. A simple one. The Cradle could do the same, and ten thousand things besides. I would say none of that to the girl.

But something made me pause. I leaned in close. The blade of grass was whole. It was as it had been. And yet it was not. Where the girl had joined it ran a thin line of deeper brown, no wider than a hair. A seam of some kind.

I reached out and brushed the seam with one finger. The texture was different. The grass was soft against my touch everywhere except along that single line. Stronger than the blade had ever been.

How curious. The mend had improved it, and precisely at the place where it had broken. I thought of the flower on the shelf, beside the ugliest vase in the world. She had not restored it as the Cradle would have. Instead, perhaps she had simply given it the strength to stand on its own.

I became aware, slowly, that Sara was staring at me. Her dark eyes were very wide, and they did not leave my face. She was waiting. I thought I understood what she waited for.

"Yours is a good power," I said. "You have done more than heal the thing." I gestured at the blade. "You have made it more than it was. That is no small feat. It is something that-" I raised my left hand, and the white branchings caught the firelight. "-even I cannot do. You should be proud."

Sara's eyes went wide, and she beamed at me. The expression was almost too bright for this dark. It was very nearly enough to make me look away. "Have you named it?" I asked her. "Named this tech-"

"Tech-nique!" the girl finished for me. She said it quickly, though it was plain the word still gave her trouble.

My own face betrayed me. I smiled. "Yes. Have you named this technique?"

"Stitch!" she said at once.

Stitch. A simple word. A single syllable, like Ruin. Like Bloom. Like Turn. She had named two of those herself, and the third had been named to stand beside them. Had the girl chosen her power's name to match the others, or was it only chance? I decided it did not matter. "That is a good name for a good power," I told her.

My hand reached toward her. I had not decided it would. But it had, and it was too late to call the arm back. Sara leaned forward. Slowly, I brushed the top of her head, the way I had seen Ash do it. This, at least, I was doing correctly. Of that much I was certain.

"Lys," Ash whispered.

I looked at her. She was sitting now, and Solara had abandoned my crown at some point for a place beside her. The Hero's expression was pained, and not only pained. Yes. There was one more thing I needed to do.

"Sara." The girl paused and looked up at me. "Have you been practicing this Stitch every day? At every spare moment?" She nodded. She nodded too quickly. "I forbid you from doing so," I said. The words came out soft. Barely louder than the crackle of the fire. There was more to say, and I opened my mouth to say it. "You will instead-"

Sara had gone still. She stared up at me, and I watched her dark eyes go wider and wider, and the rest of my words died in my throat. "But-" Her lips quivered. "But if I do that- you won't- you said- you won't-"

My mouth closed. So it was truly my fault, then. Not that the page had left much room for doubt. I understood the girl. A Queen tells her retainer to be strong, and a retainer will break themselves becoming strong rather than disappoint her. One had done just that, once. And I had strangled the life from her even as she wept tears of blood. Or I had thought I had.

It was not the same here. But it was pointed in the same direction.

I shook my head, and leaned down until I was level with her. "Do you believe I will be displeased with you," I asked, "if your mark does not advance?"

She nodded, slowly. She would not meet my gaze. So that was it, then. It had never been my intention. The intention did not matter.

"Sara," Ash said softly. "Is that all it is?"

I turned and looked back at the Hero. She met my gaze and only nodded. I looked again to Sara, who had shrunk further in on herself. "No…" she murmured. "I didn't- I didn't think you'd come back." The last words came so low I barely heard them at all.

I did not understand. I could understand a command followed too fiercely, until the one following it broke. I could not understand this. I had told her I would return, and surely this girl did not think her Queen a liar.

Ash shifted closer to the girl. "Lys, she has already-" Ash looked down at the girl, then back at me. Her gaze was meant to convey something, but it conveyed little. Ash's face looked strained.

Words came to me then, from a time long ago, and yet not so long at all.

Used to follow him everywhere, that girl. He taught her to work the clay and they made pots for the whole village. He wasn't much good at it neither. She used to make 'em too, with him. Never did again, after he died.

Martha had told me this once. I looked at the girl who would not meet my gaze, and I understood. Perhaps she had reason to believe that people left and did not return. Every father I had ever killed must have said the same words to his daughter, on the night before he marched out to meet my horde.

The clay bead sat warm against my collar.

"Sara." Slowly, the girl looked up at me. I reached for the satchel. "I have brought with me a token. And a promise."