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82. Reunion [ARC 5]

  ARC 5 - Walk the Clouds

  I opened my eyes, the interior of the yurt greeting me. My head was resting on a pillow, a bnket covered me, and I was comfortably naked. I tried to recall the events leading to that moment, but everything was a blur after…

  I shuddered and tried to sit up as my mind struggled with the moment I looked into her eyes. Part of me was clinging to the memory like it was a raft in a flood. But another part was desperate to escape it, fleeing as though it were a ravenous monster.

  A hand on my shoulder held my down. “S-stay, just rex. You had a seizure.” I turned my eyes towards Luv as she leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Jaina and Carmil treated you, you’re okay. But they still said you should r-rest.”

  “Is she really here?” My voice cracked and strained, the words almost desperate to stay unspoken.

  “She and her two comp-panions are with Briggavel in the workshop tent. They are w-worried they did something wrong. Dekarru has assured them they haven’t, but they seem smart. I think they know something’s up.” She stroked my head as she spoke, her fingers pying lightly with my hair.

  I felt a shifting within my body that sent a wave of relief through my mind. I pulled my arm out from under the bnket and smiled. “Sorry, I did it again I think.”

  [Going off on your own alone while drawing a great deal of attention? That was not the wisest idea, beloved. But you could not have known what would happen, either of those encounters alone would have been unlikely. Both is absolutely ridiculous. Though, you will require escort now that you are becoming famous. No more adventures alone.]

  I took a breath and nodded. “I understand you have been making good progress with Azuriel.”

  [Beloved.]

  “I’m gd you two are getting along despite how rough your first meeting was.”

  A tug came from my arm as Carmil exited my runes and formed atop me. “STOP. I am certain this is a difficult and painful experience, but I will not allow you to divert attention from it. Your reaction to her appearance was severe. Jaina and Dekarru believe it to be reted to your emotional state more than any possible medical cause. We must face this, Esme.”

  I closed my eyes and took a slow, deep breath. I could feel my heart racing, and for once it had nothing to do with my nude lover straddling my waist. “I think… I think I fought myself.”

  Luvetra took my hand in her own and squeezed gently. “What do you mean?”

  “I think, the part of me that was Lietri wanted to run away. Guilt and fear and self loathing all hitting a peak. But Dani? Dani wanted to leap for joy, cry out in thanks to the gods, take her hand and dance in celebration at the reunion.”

  Carmil sat back, her eyes losing focus for a few moments as she pondered something quietly. After about a minute she spoke, her tone soft and comforting. “That makes some sense yes. Soul Containment is still in effect, which as I understand it indicates that your souls have not completely merged quite yet. I am not certain I would have anticipated struggles between them at this stage. But to be fair, this is an extremely unusual situation.”

  “S-so the parts of her that are not fully integrated got into a disagreement and that was enough to give her a s-seizure?” Luv’s fingers softly stroked my hand, the sensation pulling my mind towards her warmth. I felt my lips curl into a smile despite the severity of the situation. My giant love always made me feel safe.

  “Theoretically, if it were a significant enough disagreement the internal conflict could potentially cause some very strong physiological reactions. But this is, as they say, uncharted waters.”

  “Will it be safe for Esme to see her again?” I felt Luv’s hand squeeze mine almost tight enough to hurt.

  “I’ll be fine.” I felt the lie on my lips, the taste of ash and bile greeting my tongue as the words left my lungs.

  Carmil leaned down, her forehead resting on my own. “Beloved.” The word was a soft sigh, a gentle beg for honesty.

  I squeezed Luv’s hand, my other arm wrapping around Carmil and holding her tight. “I’m scared. For so many reasons. There are a million ways this goes wrong and so few where it goes right.”

  Luvetra’s voice drew my eyes to her smiling face. “You underestimate yourself, maybe her too. I think you had s-such a bad reaction because so much was already happening and you got effectively ambushed, emotionally s-speaking.”

  I took a breath, then paused as I remembered something. “Wait.” I shifted enough that Carmil moved from atop me, letting me sit up. “She said she was assigned to me, that The Dreamer had sent her.”

  Luvetra cleared her throat. “Uh, yes. She cims that Vei’Ryn c-contacted the three of them some days ago and asked them to come and help you. Or, us really?”

  I closed my eyes and sent a small pseudo-prayer to my Goddess composed effectively of ‘what the fuck?’. I received in response a powerful urge to get up and go speak with them. Not just her, them. The three people sent to me and my Tribe, the first love of one of my souls among them. Vei'Ryn's way of saying ‘if you want answers talk to them, not me’.

  I took a slow breath. I reminded myself that she and hers had sworn to be forces of good. Hell, she had made an oath to the Ferryman himself to never deceive me again. If there was a manipution, it was in my best interests. Or at least what she believed were my best interests. It had become clear to me by then that the gods were anything but infallible. Still, she was right more often than wrong.

  More personally, I wanted to talk to Tendri. Even though the idea scared the shit out of me I still wanted to see her, speak to her, hear her voice again, hold her hand. Lietri loved her, even if that love was tainted with her own rather serious self-hatred and internally toxic behavior. She loved this woman enough to carve herself apart to see her smile. Her love, or at least how she showed it, was not healthy, but it was real. It was real, and it still lived on inside me.

  I told myself that the part of me that was Dani was strong enough to drag those feelings into a better pce, but I wasn’t sure how true that was. Maybe though, maybe I didn’t need to think that way. I might not think of Lietri and Dani as destroyed anymore, but that didn’t mean that I had to think of myself as just a mix of the two of them. I was Esme Dreamsinger. My own person with my own desires, needs, strengths, and fws.

  “I am Esme Dreamsinger, Saint of Vei’Ryn Tayalora.” I said aloud, taking a deep breath and nodding my head.

  Carmil smirked and leaned over to give me a soft kiss. “Yes, you are. You are my wonderful, wise, strong, and loving Esme. Now wait a few moments before you go, I know you desire to speak with her alone so I will prepare the meeting.” She was right, Dreamer’s message be damned. I’d talk to all of them eventually but Tendri would have my attention alone for now.

  Luv helped me get up, reattach my leg, and get dressed again as Carmil strode away. I let myself breathe and let Luvetra dote on me. This was going to hurt, but I was ready. Or at least as ready as I could reasonably be. After a few minutes Carmil stuck her head into the yurt and gave me a nod.

  I walked to the workshop tent, my cane becoming necessary almost immediately. Gods my nerves were shot. As I stepped in, I looked at her. She was leaning over the mostly completed body for the rifle Brigga was making me, the look on her face one I remembered well. Fascinated concentration. That slight smirk as she picked something apart with her mind, figuring out how it worked and forming ideas on how to make it better. Beauty and brilliance all in one.

  I cleared my throat, her gaze turning to me. She jumped as she saw me and quickly scurried over, nervousness pin on her face. “Saint Dreamsinger, I apologize for ambushing you before. We had heard an unknown Saint was speaking in the city and knew it had to be the one we were sent for.”

  “The Dreamer sent you three to me?” I don’t know how I managed to keep my voice in control, but I did.

  “Um, y-yes? Did, did she not inform you?” Fear crossed her features.

  “Dreams are rarely straightforward, a deity of them must be mysterious and vague at times. Even if only to keep up appearances. No, she did not inform me. But I do believe that she sent you to me, don’t worry about that.” I could see the tension drain from her face and her shoulders drop as that particur fear was alleviated. “But I do not know why she sent you. Enlighten me?”

  She forced a real smile through just as real nervousness. “Oh, we’re arcanicraft inscribers. We all have different educations and experiences and we’re all low enough level that we are generalists that will gain more specialized csses as we grow.”

  “Ah, I had heard several arcanicraft experts had come to help Willow Creek catch up with Pitrak and Uvtrayl. But they seemed more high level crafters or those more suited to teaching others from what I understand.”

  I motioned for her to join me as I walked over and sat in a chair next to the desk holding my incomplete weapon. She spoke as she walked and settled in next to me. “Yes, but we’re not with them. The Dreamer visited each of us in our dreams and asked us to come assist you and your tribe specifically. She told us things that proved we hadn’t just been dreaming and what to say and who to say it to to get us on the envoy. Though we kept our actual goal a secret. Though I suppose giving a speech and granting blessings in public means the secret is out.” She gave a nervous ugh. “But um… Saint Dreamsinger. If, if your goddess didn’t tell you we were coming, how did you know my name? Is that part of your powers as a Saint?”

  I sat back in my seat and let myself breathe. Silence hanging in the air between us for a few long moments before I raised my cane. I activated it and it retracted into the simple metal ring shape it had for ease of storage when not in use. I held it out for her. “What do you think of this?”

  She took it and looked it over. “Impressive. Simple, though a bit much for a walking aid. A gift from someone with power, money, or connections?”

  I nodded. “Uvtrayl made it as a part of a pn to convince me to side with them. Back before they knew what I was. Hell, I barely knew what I was at the time. I was a Pitrak soldier before any of this.”

  She looked at me when I said this, her eyes searching over my features. “That is… unexpected. How did you go from that, to Uvtrayl bribing you with a fancy cane, to being in a tribe with the Oracle of the Green Mother in Willow Creek?”

  “It is an insane story involving demons, angels, a romantic blood elemental, magically induced amnesia, and lots and lots of dumb luck.” I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “For a while there, my memories only went as far back as waking up in a military transport surrounded by the dead with a huge chunk of shrapnel in my leg.” I lifted my prosthetic enough that the robe slid away and showed it pinly. “Infection set in while I spent days wandering through the woods looking for help. I barely survived.”

  She stared at my face, I could see a hint of recognition. Or maybe I just wanted that to be what I saw. “That sounds terrible, was there no one else alive at all? No survivors on either side to take prisoners or aid the wounded?”

  I shook my head. “No, the only other living thing there was a carrion feeder. Thankfully I was armed and it was low level.”

  She just stared at my face, seconds ticking by as some part of her recognized me, even with my altered features. But denial, grief, not wanting to hope, it was all there as well. She shook her head and looked away when she found me staring right back. “I apologize Saint Dreamsinger, I didn’t mean to stare. You just reminded me of someone I lost.”

  Fuck, this was going to hurt us both.

  I took another steadying breath before I spoke again. “I had fshes of my life before for some time. Little hints of memories, little details that I couldn’t really build an identity with. Even the System told me I was nameless. Esme was given to me by someone I love dearly, Dreamsinger by my Goddess. Who I was before was lost. Though… I have regained much of my memory now. Or, memories rather.”

  She looked at me again, her mouth opening with a question that wouldn’t form.

  I looked into her eyes. “Tendri, I need you to keep this secret, very few people know what I am about to tell you.” She nodded, her voice still failing her. “I am not one person, I am two souls accidentally forced together and trapped within a divine barrier. I am two people, merging into someone new.”

  She swallowed, her fingers gripping my cane tightly. “How can you trust me so much already? Why are you telling me this?”

  “Danielle Carpenter was one of the people I used to be. A young homeless woman from a hateful family who was taken from life by a cold winter. Freezing alone in an alley after running away, hoping to find a better life.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” She repeated the question, looking down at her p as she fought the urge to look up at me again.

  “Because the other soul-”

  “Don’t. Please.” Tears fell from her face.

  “She never meant to hurt you… I never meant to hurt you Tendri.”

  “No, no she’s dead. I got the letter, I cried for days, I sent her ntern to the Ferryman!” She stood and backed away from me.

  “I’m so sorry. Lietri is a part of me now.” I couldn’t stop the tremble in my voice.

  “No! This—this is a sick joke!” Her voice rose into a scream, eyes accusing me of every evil imaginable. “Why would you do this!?”

  “When Mr. Baranett realized we would dance to the radio when he was working downstairs, he started turning it up louder for us.” She froze, the tears falling down her face the only movement. “I think he knew, even when we both pretended so hard we almost convinced ourselves it wasn’t true.”

  “I said goodbye to her, twice.” The tremble in her voice caused my own to fail.

  “Lietri never—I never wanted to hurt you Tendri. That st night we had together, she thought it would help you. But Lietri didn’t understand people the way I do as Esme. She didn’t realize it would leave a far deeper wound.”

  “She? I? Which are you? What part of this story do you py?”

  “I am honestly still struggling with that question. I thought, I thought maybe I was just some completely new thing pulled from the remains of the two people I used to be. But there is so much of both of them in me. I don’t think there is an easy answer to who I am in that light. But I do know that I feel what she felt. I might have a different view of things than she did, one that lets me see the mistakes she made and the harm she did without meaning to, but those feelings she had for you? They still live in me.”

  The look in her eyes, anger, hate, desperation, pleading, a spark of hope that it was true. “Then tell me, tell me how she felt.”

  “She loved you with all that she had. A bit too literally. She had no love for herself, only for you. She thought that it didn’t matter what she did, how much she suffered, how low she stooped, as long as it was for you. She lived entirely for your sake and without you…” my words drifted off, the memories of Lietri’s st few years were hollow and painful. How did I tell her that?

  I could see it, the moment she believed me completely. The second the denial fell away. Slowly, she stepped forward, lowering herself into the chair once more. “Is she… is she dead then?”

  “I don’t have a simple answer to that. In some ways, I am her. In others, I’m not.”

  She raised her eyes to look into my own. “Did you ask your goddess to send me to you?”

  I shook my head. “Honestly, I think she did this to force me to face you. My Goddess cares deeply for me and I think she knew I was avoiding this.”

  “Why?” A simple question with a hundred paths of meaning and a hundred answers for each one.

  “Because I-… I’m scared. You are the greatest part of Lietri’s life, and her greatest regret. The guilt over what happened is overwhelming by itself, but to add to that the fact that I’m not entirely her? Lietri Dawnlight did things, said things, thought things that Esme Dreamsinger hates. I still feel love for you, I think that no matter what happens I always will. But Lietri’s self-hatred was a poison that makes the memories I have of that feeling burn with shame. Sometimes, I think about it, about her, and I hate her, I hate myself. It becomes easy in those moments to think ‘it’s good that she left, better that Tendri could get away from her and find someone better’.”

  “Don’t talk about her that way.” Anger tinted her voice.

  “I am not speaking of my view of her, of myself. Simply a justification for my own cowardice.” I ran a hand over my face. “Gods, even when I didn’t think that way, I could easily just push the idea aside because I had so much else to do, so many more important duties. How could I justify leaving my responsibilities as a Saint to run off and look for an old crush? No, you are not and never were simply a crush, but the mind is cruel to itself far too easily. I avoided thinking about you much because it always left gashes in my heart that I had no idea how to heal.”

  Long moments of silence passed between us. I didn’t know what to say next and it seemed like she didn’t either. But eventually she spoke again. “So what do we do? I… I kinda promised Ollie and Liru that the three of us would be serving a Saint together. It would be awkward at best to find out that’s not true.”

  “The other two inscribers, friends of yours?”

  She nodded slowly. “I mean, we met after we all had a visit from the Dreamer, but we became friends quickly on the trip here.”

  I felt a small smile on my lips. “I’m gd you have friends.” She looked at me again and a small smile of her own was on her lips, alongside the hurt of everything else. “As for what happens now, well I really could use some inscribers, probably. I mean, at the very least, you see the rifle Brigga is making for me. We don’t really have our own inscribers to make it an actual managun. I’m certain that I’m going to be involved in a lot of crazy nonsense going forward and having talented people across a wide field will very much help.”

  “But, do you want me here?” Her eyes met mine and I felt my heart leap.

  “Tendri, I love you. You mean so much to me that seeing you just appear as if from thin air gave me a damned seizure. Watching you get further and further away as you stood on that train ptform is one of the darkest memories I have from two different, extremely painful lives. I am so sorry for every hurt I have caused you. If it were only my choice I would never have another day apart from you. But I will not command anyone to spend potentially the rest of their lives following me if they do not want to do so themselves.”

  She gnced away. “You seem happy with that woman, the tall one. I wouldn’t want to get in the way.”

  I fought off a small, manic urge to ugh. “Tendri, what do you know of the Path of the Green Mother?”

  Her body nguage screamed awkwardness. “Um, nudists that like being close to nature?”

  I took a breath. “Not wrong, but we also typically don’t only have one partner. Luvetra is extremely close to my heart, but I consider all within my tribe as lovers. And… a few outside of my tribe as well.”

  She stared into my eyes, her lips fttening as they always did when she was embarrassed. Gods, how could I have even considered not finding her? Her life, her being, her everything was written on my heart, even when half of it was Dani’s.

  “I would never ask you to do anything that made you uncomfortable, but its best to just… dive in. Get the big stuff out of the way rather than you getting settled in and suddenly having it sprung on you.”

  She ughed, I think the only reaction she could actually bring out to the situation. “Oh gods, I’m sorry! I believe you and I’m not trying to insult your ways just, gods. What the hells?”

  “It is a lot, yes.”

  “And you, you want me to be a part of… of your harem?”

  “Not a harem, not even close. I am not some spoiled royal with a rotating selection of people I consider lower than me that I use for fun. My lovers all all equal to me, all precious, all loved. None are lesser than me in any way. Hells, Redagga and Briggavel are far, far more into each other than me or anyone else in the tribe. We even call them married despite them not being so.”

  “This is confusing.” she rubbed her face as she spoke, sitting back in the seat and chuckling again at the idea of what was happening. There was still so much hurt in her voice, in her face, in the way she moved. But the absurd reality of it all was a good thing to vent her emotions on, so ughter came out easily.

  “Complex at times, but worth it. I love them all deeply. Gods, I have a kid on the way, maybe more than one.” I sighed.

  She stared at me with a brow raised. “You’re pregnant? With twins?”

  I paused. Oh right, she didn’t know about that. “So, in the interests of staying honest and getting the big things out of the way early. The changes you can see right now are not the only ones that have occurred.” I took a breath, standing so that I could more easily pull open the robe I wore.

  As the fabric fell to the ground, her eyes immediately locked onto my crotch. “… huh. I don’t remember that being there before.”

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