AS THE MOMENT OF epic awkwardness lingered like an unwelcome rash, Varzune chose his moment to pop up and deliver an entirely inappropriate wingtip-slap of approbation. “Mini-Sparkles takes the bout by a landslide!”

“Eep.”

Allory did not know where to look.

Utter humiliation.

Xiximay vented a mutinous growl and stomped off a cart-shaking step or two to curl up in a quiet corner. Her shoulders took on a forbidding granite slant of negation as the Jokerbro added something in undertone about complicated women. The Diamond Fae only sighed, the tension draining out of her body and with it, the cold radiating off her bottle also reduced to bearable levels. Harzune regarded this effect with unabashed interest. No doubts about what he was thinking! Yet he managed to restrain his overblown romantic tendencies to the gesture of shaking a nectar gourd meaningfully in her direction.

The white Fae smiled, “I’d love a drink, please. You’ll need to squirt it down my throat, however, or it freezes in my mouth.”

“Even now?” Harzune inquired.

She glanced uncertainly at him, even a touch shyly? Allory knew she must feel hurt. She also knew exactly why that was and whose undersized behind ought to be first in the line for real kicking, this time. Did she really lead the boyfae on with her ‘please protect teensy-tiny me’ persona? She did not mean to, but could she deny that the accusation fit?

Destiny could just line up with everyone else and give her its best shot.

With studied gravitas, Harzune said, “Zzuriel, may I take you aside for a private talk? Just for a few minutes?”

Her white antennae bobbed. “I … oh. If you think it’s safe?”

“Seems so.”

Despite someone’s ferociously inept bungling, it appeared that a certain something had just begun to bud beneath Middlesun. Allory had to smile inwardly, recalling Varzune’s comment about the convenience of a bottled girlfae. What an odd, amusing and potentially deathly situation. She sent a tiny wish of her own after them.

Let this be true.

Ashueli said, “Now that everyone’s awake, I’ll go see if I can relieve Yaarah. He’s been driving all night.”

After seeing to the patients, Allory joined the pair at the front of the cart. Overwhelmed. Too many different issues swirling about in her brain. She needed to work out where to start – maybe the Golden Purrmaine could turn his talents to the task?

The breaking of dawn stilled her spirit.

Muted pink and sapphire colours percolated down from the heavens, providing plenty of visibility even down in the depths. Yaarah leaned forward to cluck encouragingly to the pair of grey lizards as they negotiated a steeper downslope. Their heads hung wearily. Ahead, the cleft continued to wind along, easily a mile deep, but Allory noticed that the great shoulders of the mountains had begun to draw back. Quicker than she would have imagined, the walls of this ravine also widened and they caught sight of a sliver of full daylight ahead.

“Chameleons,” Varzune said softly. “Sabline?”

Someone must have fetched her by touch, because the Sabrefang indicated that she still could not hear a thing. Leaving her in the guise of a Faroon merchant driving the cart together with Ashueli, her supposed child, Yaarah and Allory winged ahead to scout with the help of ten Chameleons to disguise the Felidragon and his partner.

So lovely to dig her fingers and toes into his gorgeous coat once more. Cart driving was wholly overrated. This was the way to travel. Joy swelled in her soul. Allory lifted her face to the sun, letting the radiance filter through her shuttered eyelids and warm her soul. Awaken the morn! Let Middlesun shine upon all Spheris as she ought to.

I wish I knew your name, beautiful one. A shiver of yearning accompanied her thought.

Felidragon and Fae girl first checked back the way they had come, examining the peaks and dips for any sign of lurking Dragons. Nothing. All was pristine, utterly silent. Next, Yaarah swivelled one hundred and eighty degrees. Together, they gazed over the foothills leading up to these mountains and down upon the endlessly green realm of Marakusia. To the fore, several hundred carts similar to their own almost swamped a rude wooden lodge that served as the waypoint for this side. Odd. Far more than they would have expected. Farther in the distance, the green hills settled into what appeared to be a flattish plain that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

While the scholar pointed out the pimply appearance of some nearby hillsides, which supported a good growth of the dominant flora of this region, mushrooms and fungi, Allory’s eye swung to the sun-anti-spinward horizon.

She pointed to their right. “What’s that, Yaarah?”

“Well, hrrrm-prrrt, I would take that for an unusual weather phenomenon,” he noted after a suitably scholarly pause for deliberation. He failed to disguise a shiver of premonition.

Funny old Furball.

“Unusual?”

“Most unusual,” he allowed graciously.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Allory rewarded him with a scratch behind the ears in his favourite spot. “Which part do you like least, the dozens of whirlwinds sweeping ahead of the storm front, hauling what looks like dust and plant matter up into that nasty-looking bank of emerald-green clouds, or the vertical cloud front you can see farther back, which is like a lumpy black cliff backlit by fire?”

It swept right up to the edge of the mountains they had just left, Allory noticed upon closer observation. That meant making a choice between braving the large number of very irate Dragons they had left behind or trying to outrun the storm to the fore.

“Mrrr-frrr, I didn’t notice that detail,” he purred unsteadily, “and I like none of it, apart from your vivid description. Frankly, my friend, not to put too fine an edge on the talon, that’s terrifying.”

His hackles rose, almost burying her in gorgeous golden fur.

She stifled an urge to sneeze. That was not the type of grooming a Felidragon tended to appreciate.

To the Chameleons surrounding them keeping up an illusion of a small cloud loitering just above the pass, she said, “Take observations please, everyone.”

The Felidragon said, “What’s your sense of what’s out there, Allory Fae?”

She extended her mind before she thought the better of it. Before Yaarah added, “Be careful, will –”

“Unnnh!”

The halo migraine struck her like a Felidragon swatting her over the earhole. Darkness crushed her consciousness in an unstoppable flood.

* * * *

Next she knew, Allory lay in Yaarah’s paw, the ravine wall close to his left wingtip. The Chameleons must have rushed away for help, because she did not see or sense their presence. He questioned her urgently. Allory barely heard, preoccupied with the implications of what she had sensed out there. Warmth radiated against her throat. Could she imagine or remember that the soul locket had flared, protecting her from that searching, ravaging mind? Had she sensed behind the storm an inkling of that ageless entity whose presence chilled her soul like no other, which had sucked all her nascent courage out of her bones and left her as dry as this treasury of bones she carried … she frowned, questioning the veracity of her perception. The boneyard could not be real, could it? Surely it was merely a metaphysical representation of a deeper truth, nothing material or tangible? Could it be that the real, non-mythical Ascended Septuani were somehow trapped inside? Or linked to it?

Sitting up, she drew her knees to her chest and hugged herself. Hard.

The shaking did not stop.

Fiery golden eyes regarded her with deep knowing. Yaarah had to give his forepaw a lick, a gesture she recognised as the cat-Dragon grounding himself before he purred quietly, “That’s the place, trrr-pssst? That’s where you sense the darkness, isn’t it, Allory Fae?”

Allory beat back the darkness threatening the edges of her hollow-eyed vision. “Aye.”

“Is – is it there?”

Never had she appreciated the elision of a word more. “I believe so. Aye.”

She sounded terrible. Felt worse. Ghastly. Beyond petrified.

Yet she was not alone.

“I am a terrible person, Yaarah.”

“Frrr-prrrt?” he spluttered. “What the … Allory, no. That is not true.”

“It is true.” After the longest pause, she found she could no longer keep it to herself. Allory whispered, “I am the boneyard girl. It’s me, Yaarah. I keep the bones, as I told you. Maybe … maybe I’m one of those spirits, the ones called –”

“No.”

How could she bear his concern, his gentle regard, his faithful friendship?

Allory muttered, “I carry their weight. I feel the weight of souls, Yaarah. We all saw that power grip me. It injured Spheris itself. I injured her.” Despite that he kept shaking his muzzle and repeating no, no, no, she continued in the tiniest of voices, “Why else would I know that … that creature, the Wraith’s touch? I know it, Yaarah.”

“Dear one, you know it only because you’ve been forced all your life to bear a burden no mortal soul should be called upon to bear, prrr-hssst. Who gave you that duty, Allory Fae? Who forced you?”

Headshake.

“Someone must have given you that – that imaginary locket.”

“I’m not mad, Yaarah! Don’t say that word! It’s real. It must be.” She sobbed brokenly against her folded arms. “I fear it. Maybe I am insane. The amsinthe … the incessant boneyard dreams … maybe you’re right. Maybe this is all the product of a fractured, broken mind – but worse, maybe it stems from me, from deep inside. Maybe it would be better for us all if –”

She tapped one of his talons.

Nausea twisted her stomach into knots worse than any overgrowth of jungle vines. Here it came. She had revealed all, at last. Articulated her deepest fears. The Golden Purrmaine must surely act as he knew was right and end it all. Surely?

“No! No, mrrr-frrr, this is the voice of fear speaking,” he cried. “Please, please Allory Fae, put such thoughts out of your mind. We will work it out. You’ll see.” The concern, the tremor in his voice almost broke her. “Your powers – I believe that powers such as you command were not created to serve evil purposes. I know your heart. Tiny you might be, but what is inside here –” his talon indicated her heart “– this is as big and beautiful as Middlesun itself. Fur and fangs, you’d be the last person to think that, of course –”

“How could I?”

“– but if you cannot trust yourself to see what is real,” he added with growing vehemence, “then maybe you need to start listening more to others around you, those who will speak wisdom over your precious, precious life and try to help you to discern the truth. For instance, my whiskers tell me that you are a good person. Wickedness and malice do not indwell your soul as you fear.”

She echoed lightly, “The Dragon’s whiskers say so?”

“They insist.”

Oddly, she realised his words had beaten back those echoes of darkness, the filth of that mind she had sensed impinging upon hers. Ambitious. Immensely powerful, a malevolence sharpened and deepened during the passage of aeons. How could she ever hope to stand against such a power?

No idea. Not today. Maybe not ever.

All she could do was to keep taking one tiny step after another. That much, she would dare.

Reaching out, she stroked his whiskers, feeling smaller and more reticent than ever, yet somehow strengthened in the core sap of her being. “Thank you, Mister Whiskers. I do believe that these are your greatest power, friend Felidragon.”

He grinned uncertainly. “Hrrr-mrrr?”

Tremulous and unnerved though it was, her smile widened. “This Felidragon I know, he’s a fallible creature and prone to the occasional mistake, but the Dragon’s whiskers are always right.”

“O … murrr-hurrr-HARRGGH!!”

His great belly-laugh shook her so forcefully he had to perform a swift catch before she tumbled off his paw. Their gazes sparred lightly, one with shy wonder, the other with the gentlest fires she had ever seen. Fires that knew her, that warmed a soul in ways she could not begin to describe. Was this an emblem of friendship? Companionship? True understanding of one another?

After a long pause, the Felidragon inquired, “So, what should we do now?”

Uncomfortable squirm. He asked this runt?

Oof. Eliminate that voice! Knowing her furry friend, he already had a plan. All he wanted was her verbal confirmation.

Allory said, “Perhaps we ought to speak to those refugees and learn what they know? We really could do with spying upon what lies behind those clouds, but I fear that would be too challenging to achieve in our current condition. Once we learn more, we’d want to decide if we try to race ahead of those storms to the Elven Deepwoods. Going back – not an option. Forward? How do you fight that?”

“How do you fight that, indeed?” he echoed rhetorically.