THE GREEN CANOPY'S NO SEA OR NET, BUT THAT'S ABSOLUTE --
confusion of thickets behind me; before me, open space.
Her smile fades, when I mention that I have to go back, and she asks if I absolutely must, if I like it here so much. I give her a faintly apologetic look, my smile turning solemn at the edges. “My people are relying on me,” I admit. (I haven’t told anyone else about my quest, but I think, somehow, that she is trustworthy) “You see, I am here to find the heir to our kingdom’s throne – without them, I don’t know what we’ll do.” If it were just a matter of royal blood, the stakes might be lower, but, unfortunately, the heir is another issue entirely. The king was plenty healthy, when I left, but who knows how long that will ever last? “I do like it here, though. A lot. I’m sure I’ll find a way to come back and visit, even after I have to return home.” I’m not sure if that consolation is for her sake or for mine.
(It is a consequence of my lives, I think, that I am not used to the concept of permanence. The idea of losing this land forever – with its night sky, and the moon, and the sun, and the stars, and the sea, and all the strange, wonderful outsiders that I’ve encountered – is unlike anything that I have ever encountered before. It is frightening. In a way, it nearly makes me understand why outsiders fear death.
I try not to think about it.)
Maeve tells me about the “gods,” each of which apparently controls a time of the day. (I suppose, then, that they must align with each of the courts.) Their gods are siblings, apparently, with another god – the father – that controls time. Tempus. I try to burn the name into my brain, like Caligo. When she mentions that they fight a lot, I smile, faintly, and I think of my sisters. (My blood-sister, scarcely flesh of my flesh; and then my first sister, owl-feathered and taloned, gone from my reach.) “That sounds like siblings,” I say, with a hint of a laugh. I remember them. I wonder if I will see them again.
She reacts with some predictable confusion, which is much better than the outright horror I expect of outsiders. She asks about being a sword, what it felt like, and I consider, for a moment. “I didn’t. I was just a sword. I didn’t- feel like I do as a horse. I don’t think that I felt anything at all.” A sense of being, at most. Of presence. It didn’t feel like anything, because I was a sword, and swords feel nothing at all. “It wasn’t awful, even though it feels like it should have been, now. It wasn’t quite like a trap, either, because it was what I was supposed to be. Maybe that was why it didn't bother me.” I didn’t feel sad as a sword, or happy, or anything else. I felt movement, in someone else’s grip, weathering, splashes of blood. It was pure sensation. Nothing else. “I think it’s hard to understand if you haven’t been something else before. I mean, it’s even hard for me to understand, now.”
She says that she’s glad I’m me, now, and I grin broadly – and then she asks to be my friend. I blink at her in wide-eyed delight. “I’m very glad to be Nicnevin now, too,” I say, then add, "and I’d love to be your friend! Maybe we can write letters to each other?”
She’d be my very first friend in all of Novus, and, frankly, I can’t imagine a better one.
(I wonder if they write letters here. I wonder how to send them.)
@Maeve || <3 <3 <3 || "the cliff," gregory orr
"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
