Chapter 109 Stitch (Part 2)

From the satchel, I drew out a necklace. It was twin to the one Ash wore around her own neck, save that its gemstone was still its original green. The stone caught the light of the fire and glowed. Sara stared at it. She stared at it for some time.

"This is for you," I said. "If you will accept it." I did not know why I added that second part. As if there were any possibility of this girl not accepting something I gave her with my own hands. I held the necklace out stiffly, the way I had seen men give tribute. The way I had once given this girl a vase not worth taking.

She took it, slowly. She brushed her fingers over the chain, her mouth hanging partly open.

"I wished to repay you for this," I said. I reached inside the collar of my uniform and drew out a cord. A thin leather cord, and threaded upon it, a single clay bead. A bead that had been shaped into something almost, but not quite, round, with two jutting points meant to be horns, though they looked more like the ears of those long-eared rabbits.

Sara's eyes went wider still when she saw the clay bead. I did not know why. I saw her eyes water, and she wiped at them furiously with the back of one arm. Her lips trembled.

"This necklace is a promise," I said. "I may be gone for a time. I may be gone often. But I will return."

For a moment, I thought the gift had not been enough. Then the girl's arms were around my waist again, and her grip was no less fierce than it had been before. She said nothing at all, which only confused me more.

I looked to Ash for some assistance. The Hero only smiled back. She leaned down and brushed the top of Solara's head. The tiny phoenix was watching Sara with singular focus now. Distantly, I felt wetness spread across my waist. The girl was crying, though she made no sound. The only thing I could think to do was rest my hands on her shoulders, and wait. Eventually, she let go.

She let go and scrubbed at her eyes, more furiously than before. "T-thank you," she said. "So pretty." She looked at the chain with far more wonder than it demanded. "It's so pretty, Lys. Is this- is this really for me?"

A strange question, given that I had just given it to her. "Yes, it is."

The girl looked from me to Ash, and to the chain that hung from the Hero's own neck. "That's pretty too," she said, turning her smile on the Hero. "It looks like mine." She paused, her head tilting slightly. "Just like mine. But your stone is shinier."

"Thank you," the Hero grinned, her fingers running down the length of the necklace. "Lys told me they're both the same."

"Same?" Sara looked down at the green stone, then at the blue one around Ash's neck. It was clear enough what question she was asking.

"I used my power to turn that green stone," I said, gesturing at the necklace in Sara's hands, "into what she is wearing." I turned the gesture toward Ash. The girl still looked confused, and there was little wonder why. She had not seen it done.

"Allow me to show you." I held out both hands, and I reached into both Requiem and Cradle. Wisps of black and white fire met in the space between my palms. Beginning met Ending, and in the middle, there was only a Becoming. The two streams of fire became a third stream of every color at once. And beneath my ribs, the slow pulse of the Ember Core went quiet.

"Pretty…." Sara murmured, staring.

"With this power, I can change a thing. I cannot change them too far. This power is called Turn," I explained.

"Turn," Sara mouthed slowly. "I like that name!" she said, beaming.

"Do you now?" Ash asked. The Hero had a smile that was very unlike a Hero right now. "Do you know, Lys wanted to call it-"

I cut her off. "If I considered any other names first, then those are a secret. For now. Perhaps I will use them again, in the future." Sara had once caught me in the naming of my own techniques, and I had wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. I did not want her to know now of the names I had discarded before arriving at Turn. Ash's smile only widened. The Hero was vexing me on purpose, then. How unheroic.

Sara looked down at the green gemstone. "Then can you change this?" she asked.

"Yes, I can," I said. I had considered it, even when I had first acquired the necklace. But green had seemed an appropriate color. Appropriate for the mark on her arm -the shades were very nearly the same. I had not thought it needed any changing. "What color would you like?" I asked her.

Sara considered this. She considered it for some time. Finally, she pointed at my arms. At both of them. "Can- can you make it like those?" she asked. "Like both of those?"

I felt very warm, and I could not have told anyone why. "Yes," I said.

I gathered both powers again and sent a thread of Turn toward the necklace. I touched the gemstone, and I asked it to turn from a green emerald into one that was black and white in equal measure. As with Ash's necklace, the emerald had no strong opinions on what its color was. It did not much care if it became a black and white emerald instead. The only one of its kind.

Slowly, the color shifted. It split down the middle. One half filled with a dark that drank in the firelight. The other shone white, and gave the light back. And what was left was a gemstone both black and white in equal measure. Sara stared at it. Then she looked up at me, and her eyes were somehow brighter than even the brightest parts of the emerald. "Lys, can you put it on me?" she said, holding the necklace out for me.

I would. I took the necklace from her, and she turned. Unlike with Ash, there was no long golden hair to sweep aside. I unclasped it, then clasped it back around her neck. I gave it a small tug. The thing was secure. She turned, and stared down at it, and then back up at me. "It's so pretty."

"It is," Ash agreed with a smile. "Now we both have one."

"I like mine better," Sara said.

"I like mine better too," Ash answered.

Sol let out a chirp from the grass. She had waddled forward, and now she stood behind my leg. She craned her neck past it to look at Sara. Sara looked down at the bird. "Does it look pretty?" she asked.

Solara craned her neck upward and let out a long and slow trill. That made her answer clear.

There was more to say. The second part of what I had meant to tell her. "Sara, I told you to stop your practicing," I repeated. The girl slowly nodded, and looked more unsure than she had only a moment before. "I do not wish for you to stop it entirely. I simply wish for you to do other things as well. Run, as other children always seem to enjoy doing. Or do whatever else you like. Do not focus only on power. Those that do never find as much of it as they hoped."

Sara looked up at me and slowly nodded. I was sure the girl understood only some of it.

"What she's trying to say," Ash said, leaning down until she was eye-level with the girl, "is that even if you never have more than a Spark, Lys won't mind. So… get strong like she asked, but don't just do that all day, okay?"

That was not what I had said. But… perhaps it was not so far from the truth that I would correct her. Sara stared back at the Hero with wide eyes. She raised her right arm and looked down at her green Spark. "Okay!" she said.

We had gotten through to the girl. In some measure, at least. If she had come as far as she had with mana alone, in only the time we had been away at the Academy, then she would be formidable enough one day. I had spent a lifetime sifting the strong from the weak, and those instincts told me now that this Sara would not grow up to be weak. There was no need for her to rush toward that strength.

We sat in the grass after that, around the fire, and Ash and I shared stories of the Academy with Sara.

We told her of the mess hall and its great bell. Of a library older than the walls around it, where the books flew to your hand and the staircases came to carry you. Of single rooms that held whole deserts inside them. Sara's eyes went wide at all of it, and wider with each new telling.

"And on our very first night," I said, "a girl kicked down our door."

"Kicked it?" Sara gasped.

"Yes, she broke it. I repaired it, but come the morning, she kicked it in again."

Sara laughed. "She sounds funny!"

"She is loud," I said. "Funny is… one word for her. Her name is Ren. Perhaps you will meet her one day."

"There's Edda too," Ash said. "And Corin. There's Alisa too. She came here with us, but she's asleep."

There was more to tell, and we told it. I told her everything I could about Koralis. Of its three walls, and how it looked like a crown atop a head. Sara nodded along fiercely, though I was certain the girl had never seen a crown. I had made a promise, once, on the day I had first seen that city. That this girl would one day see such a sight with her own eyes. The promise returned to me now, and I made it once more. I would see it done. Someday.

And eventually, I noticed something. Solara was being…sneaky. She was moving closer and closer to Sara, using our stories as cover to get closer to the girl. A waddle here. A half-step there. A tiny roll here. She was not being nearly as secretive as she thought. For Sara looked at the baby phoenix each time, and each time Solara pointedly looked the other way and pecked at the ground, or stared somewhere far into the distance, as though she had been going nowhere at all.

I did not understand it. I had never imagined Sol capable of stealth, or someone who would ever resort to it. She had turned her back on an Archon, hissed at Inkers, and bitten a Sigil. When we had walked through Koralis, she had loudly chirped at everyone we had passed. Not once had she ever tried to be quiet, not until we came to Hamel.

Eventually, Solara was a heartbeat too slow in one of her turnings, and the girl's eyes found her mid-waddle. The phoenix froze, and then retreated behind a small stone.

"Birdie, do you wanna come play with me?" Sara asked. Solara went very still behind her pebble. A rock that was not nearly large enough to hide her from the girl. Through the bond, I felt Sol's hesitation.

Sara held out her hands. "I won't hurt you," she said brightly. "You're so pretty. C'mere. C'mere."

Solara regarded the girl. Sara's approach, as strange as it was, would surely not work. Sol was a mighty creature. A beast born from a creature of legend. She had all the indignation of a Queen and the mighty bearing of a Goddess. She would not respond to a "C'mere."

Solara let out a small chirp. She waddled forward, past the stone.

I watched in silence. Ash watched in silence. We watched as, slowly, Solara tucked her wings, and rolled. She rolled toward Sara, who let out a gasp of surprise, and stopped when she bumped into the girl's knee. Then she straightened. Gingerly, the girl reached out and brushed her head, perhaps the way she had seen me do it. "You're so pretty. And so fluffy. Ooh, and so warm!"

Solara's hesitation slowly melted. I felt it melt through the bond. She craned her neck toward the sky and let out a long and slow trill. Sara slowly picked her up. The baby phoenix was almost too large for my hands now, and she filled Sara's completely. Sara held her to her chest, and squeezed the bird. Sol let out another trill. A softer one.

"The bond is both ways, isn't it?" Ash murmured next to me. "Between you and Sol."

"It is," I said. Where was the Hero going with this?

"I think that's why she was shy. Because she could feel what this place and the people here meant to you. She wanted to-" Ash paused. "She wanted to try and leave a good impression, or something."

I looked at Ash. The Hero was watching the girl and the phoenix with a surprising amount of attention. Whether or not her guess was right, I did not know. It would explain some things, at the very least. "Then it seems Sara was not the only one worrying for no reason at all," I said.

Ash smiled at that. Her hand crossed the little distance between us and rested on my own. We both watched in silence.

The night wore on, and the fire wore down with it, and eventually Sara started to tire. Much of that was doubtless the fault of the strange game she and Solara devised between them. Solara had begun her rolling, as she always did. Sara had watched her do it, once, and then twice. And then the girl had lain down in the grass and begun rolling beside her.

Solara had stopped mid-roll. She had righted herself and stared, and through the bond came something I could only name astonishment. Then the two of them were rolling together across the grass.

I could only sigh. I turned to Ash. "It seems this rolling is a poison spreading through all of my retainers."

Ash grinned. "Oh? I was just about to start rolling with them."

I sighed again. My court in this new world was truly a strange one.

Eventually, their strange game ended, and by then the girl could hardly keep her eyes open. She came and leaned against my side, and told me to tell her more stories. I did. Some of those stories were about Koralis. Some few were of a time long past. I did not know how much the girl heard, or how much she understood. Her eyes slowly opened and closed.

I brushed her hair idly with one hand. I had not decided to. It did not seem worth stopping. Solara sat in the girl's lap letting out the occasional soft chirp. Somewhere far past the trees, the dark had begun to thin. The first light was not far off now.

"Don't wanna-" Sara murmured. "Don't wanna sleep."

"You must," I said. "Sleep is necessary for your kind. And more so for you, I suspect, as you are but a child."

"Don't wanna-" she mumbled. Her eyes had closed. "Won't be here… when I wake up."

I looked at Ash. We had told the girl nothing of when we would leave. It seemed she had known it anyway. I opened my mouth, though I did not know what I meant to say. Sara was already asleep, one small hand curled around the black and white stone at her throat.

"It's time, Lys," Ash said softly.

I nodded. I rose slowly, carefully, and gathered the girl up into my arms. She weighed almost nothing. Solara lifted from her lap and flew to my head, and she made no sound at all as she settled between my horns. It seemed even she understood.

We walked back through the village. Hamel was still asleep, its huts dark, the mud paths empty beneath the last of the stars. "I do not wish to go," I murmured. That surprised me. Both that I meant it, and that I had said it at all.

The Hero walked in silence for a few steps. "I don't think I want to either," Ash eventually agreed. "It wouldn't be so bad. To just stick around."

Some part of me, the oldest part, wanted to dismiss the notion out of hand. I had seen how these people lived. It was not grand. None of them held any ambition for more. None of them had any power greater than a Spark, and few of them ever would. Even at my most meager, I had been stronger. To live a life without caring for power at all was… strange. And perhaps some part of me would not have minded it after all. Some small part.

"Mayhaps," I said, and nothing more.

We came at last to the hut beside the old oak. Through the open window, on the shelf inside sat the ugliest vase in the whole of the world. And beside it stood the flower. When I had last seen it, it had been a wilting, dying thing. It bloomed now. Likely more than it ever would have on its own. Yes, this girl would be strong.

Tamara sat outside the door, a bowl of half-shelled peas forgotten in her lap. She watched us come. Her gaze moved to Sara, still asleep, still clinging to me even in her sleep, and her eyes brightened.

"I have talked to her," I said. "She will have no cause to trouble you in the future."

The woman's eyes widened. She looked at Ash, who only shrugged. Did this woman think me a fool? It had taken me some time to work out her intentions, but work them out I had.

"That's good to 'ear," the woman said, and reached for Sara.

I held the girl out. Or I tried to. She clung, even asleep, and I had to gently pry her small arms loose. The transfer took longer than it should have. I was being careful.

"Mmm… Lys…" the girl mumbled.

Something inside of me ached to look at her.

"You will take good care of her," I said. "You will put her life above yours, if it comes to it."

"You don't need to tell me," the woman said. There was no heat in it. She was looking down at Sara as though she were something fragile, and that look told me my words were unneeded. She was not the girl's mother. Perhaps she did not need to be.

Solara let out a chirp. A low one. Sadness came through the bond. It seemed the baby phoenix would remember her. I reached up and idly brushed her feathers, and she let out another small chirp at the touch.

"I require paper," I said. "And ink."

It took us longer than it should have to return to the clearing. The sky had gone from black to a deep grey by the time we stepped past the treeline, and the grey was already thinning.

Alisa yawned as she walked. It was her third yawn since we had collected her. "I thought you'd wake me up earlier," she said.

"That was the plan," Ash said. "But someone was busy."

I did not meet her gaze. The letter had been… difficult to write. There had been too much to say, and my words had been too small for all of it. And the ending had been the hardest part of all. In the end, I had simply signed it Lys. Ash had added to what I had written. Solara had punctuated it with having her beak tear through an empty edge of the paper. Why she had done that, even I could not say. Perhaps she had meant to copy us. Then I had folded the letter, and tucked it in her hand.

"Arianrhod is not yet here," I said. "A small delay matters not."

Ash knelt by the ring of stones and buried the last of the fire. Solara watched the work from atop Ash's head and offered a chirp of supervision every so often.

There was nothing else to do now but wait. We had said our farewells. Briefly, I had considered heading into the forest and digging up the two sets of armor we had buried in the dirt. I dismissed the thought almost as soon as it occurred to me. Arianrhod had believed what the Archon had told her so far -enough that she had hardly asked us any questions at all about our origins. None of that would survive our return if we came back already armed.

And as for my Darkness Binding, there was another concern. I had seen its like in this world before, on Morrigan. The apparent leader of those the people here called "Smears". There was no telling what wearing the Darkness Binding in front of these people might lead to. If we did return for them someday -my Darkness Binding and the Hero’s armor- that day was not today.

"She gave us a lot of things," Alisa said. She was eyeing the packs at our feet. "What a nice woman."

"She is," I agreed. When I had gone to retrieve the girl, Martha had pressed yet another pack into my arms. Food. Traveling clothes. And nearly the whole of last night's stew. It had been… difficult to convince the woman to let us leave at all. She had seen sense in the end. We would need the clothes, for in our reading we had learned that this Azareth was a far colder land than the one we were leaving behind.

"This place wasn't what I expected," Alisa said.

"And what did you expect, girl?" I asked.

"Don't call me gir-" Alisa sighed. She crossed her arms and looked back through the trees, in the direction of the village, though the forest had long since swallowed it. "I don't know. I just never thought I'd be somewhere like this."

I did not know what she meant by that. But I caught Ash looking at the girl, and there was something in the Hero's gaze. Something that said she understood what I did not.

I was just about to ask when the world in front of us split open into yellow.