Despite it being a bit risky for the carriage to be bouncing, I’ve got our ghostly steeds going at their maximum speeds pulling us along through the forest from Daffodil’s home in the direction of Autumn Brook. There’s not even a real path through this forest, just a slightly beaten trail that Daffodil has walked repeatedly over the decades of her life as custodian of Noirdivinhoz.
I’d say it was like magic the way Daffodil’s wounds begin to knit themselves closed, and her missing arm seals itself as a stump near her shoulder. I would of course be an idiot to say that, because it literally is magic. These blood potions cause spontaneous short term cellular regeneration in a way that regrows damaged organs, and seals wounds. Sadly, Daffodil will be missing an arm, as it does not regrow whole limbs. If such a regeneration is even possible, well, it feels like that might take magic along one of the highest circles. Seventh, eighth, or ninth.
Still, deeply ingrained in me are these weird Fakeworld memories, so often my first reaction is disbelief and skepticism. Magic? Those mysterious memories say it doesn’t exist. Digital life forms? That’s videogame, anime, movie, cartoon stuff. Ogres, cyclopses, hydras, dragons, Fae, changelings? Those would be in fantasy novels, and tabletop and board games. Oberon, Anubis, Bastet, Mab? Those are literally beings from mythologies, and yet, even though I knew those names as long ago as my early life in Can’Z’aas, those are the names of the rulers of the Fae’s Wilds here on Rayileklia.
So I have to cut myself a bit of slack and not call myself an idiot for my knee-jerk reactions to things I guess. Yeah Bud, I’m basically chastising myself for chastising myself. No, it’s not really all that productive, true. Because a kind woman was on death’s door, that’s why I’m letting my mind spiral like this, okay? She’s still out, despite her wounds having healed, which worries me. We’re making all the haste we can towards The Brook, Autumn Brook, her hometown, in the hopes of getting her to Tiago and George, the saint and historian who live at the apothecary. Tiago’s basically a doctor. His potions and salves are medicinal, not just placebos, he’s studied his stuff, and he knows some spiritualism.
I know that not everyone is Can’Z’aasian critterkin, or Can’Z’aasian critterkin adjacent, but I don’t know how magic interplays with that Bud. Err, you wonder how it works for me? If I’m healed by something, I’m generally ready to get back to it pretty much immediately, despite maybe being ragged and flagged to hell. I, hmf. Well, thank you for the compliment Bud. I’m not sure if that’s accurate, but thank you for the praise regardless. I’ve nearly died, dozens, maybe hundreds of times in my lifetimes, and have died at least once or twice in this timeline alone. My death nearly killed Lil in one branch of one timeline. Even though I mostly didn’t die in my second run through that timeline, I still put strain on Lil’s life force that had ke—. Wait. Do I have a dragonforce already?
Bud, can you check something for me? Is there a crimson glow anywhere in or around my true self the way that you see it? Red strings? Those, err, well, yes, those could be important too, definitely. I know that one tied me to Dawn. Is, glp, sniffle, are the. I sob into my palm as I try to even think the question. Are the fragments of the string that tied me to Dawn still in there? Even in the slightest? I furiously rub my itchy wet eyes while waiting on Bud’s search and response.
Oh thank heavens. Thank you Bud. Yes, yes it’s sentimental. Yes I’m still crying despite that reassurance, because I’m remembering her last hours. I failed her Bud. You were there. She was erased from existence, and nearly wiped from history entirely, right in my arms. She died in torment, trapped in her mortal shell, or well, flesh vessel, senseless.
I bawl my eyes out recalling the moments that Dawn was pleading me to find some way to end her or save her. I hear a sniffle from my right and glance at Teuila. I’m sitting in her lap, and Tiktik is sitting in mine, so that we can make enough room to keep Daffodil laying flat across the seats and packs we’ve stacked up between the seats to make a flat surface for her.
Teuila’s telepathic avatar runs through our mindscape trailing tears. She flings herself at my mental avatar, and we weep together. Teuila admits, “I, I didn’t know how, how it went down. Not exactly. Sniffle, glp. The Sisters just said you tried your best, and despite it all, Dawn died. They, they didn’t say how bad it was for you. Oh my Airhead. My Air. I’m so sorry.”
Teuila’s mental avatar sinks to her knees in our mindscape, bawling her eyes out in a mixture of sympathy and a reminder of the loss of Dawn. The tears running down my face must wet Tiktik’s neck as she turns to check on us in meatspace.
Tiktik cocks her head at an angle quizzically as she asks, “You two okay? I think your friend is alright. She’s resting, probably processing some trauma or stuff. Lost her home and faced some scary powerful lady or something. Don’t be glum chums, here, my smiley wand.”
Tiktik boops each of our noses with a wand, and I literally can’t keep myself from smiling. It actually hurts to try to fight it, so I’m left with a smile on my face despite my sadness. I shoot a mildly furrowed-brow glare at Tiktik who giggles and shrugs. Huff. I sigh and roll my eyes. Her heart’s in the right place. An almost two centuries old funky little monkey enjoying getting up to lighthearted tricks. Heh, not all that unlike us honestly. With our accelerated thinkspace, we got a lot of living done in quite a short time, somewhere around a couple centuries.
I don’t remember how much detail we went into for Tiktik when we said the last friend on our journey was lost to us. I think I’ll take her aside to have that talk once we’re safely in The Brook. I think our best course of action there is to drop Daffodil off with Tiago and George, go check into the Keel Over, and plead with Harriet, Tiago, and George to work on getting everyone in Aasimovia to evacuate. After that, we’ll be begging Captain Tim Fisher aboard The Drake for a hastened ferrying across Lake Siempre so that we can beat the refugees to Jaggedfen Bog to take care of the hydra.
Huff. What a mess. A mess that’s all my fault, ever since failing Dawn. I’m nothing but a f-- Teuila’s telepathic avatar slaps mine, and I’m left stunned, blinking stupidly.
Teuila’s telepathic avatar grumps, “It’s not your fault Dawn was cursed. It was that Shitelord Bright Lord piece of crap crapsack sack of crap I’m gonna wring his neck with all my might, lord! Lord almighty I want to end that wretched, horrid being. It was all him and his stupid cultist priest person thing. Fanatic lunatic. So don’t you dare do that! Okay?”
Teuila’s expression softens as she almost begs, “Please Air. Please. I don’t want you beating yourself up. We’re both so sad already. Don’t be hard on yourself. Please? I want our time, glp, I. Reggie. I love you. You’re dying, and we don’t know if we’ll get sixteen big old evil dragons to fight before that happens to get the dragonforces from their hearts. Just, just please don’t. Okay? Not with what time we have left.”
I gulp back a sob and nod as tears streak down my face. I’m sorry Teuila. You know how hard it is to be in my head.
Teuila’s mental avatar cups my avatar’s cheek and drops its forehead to mine. She nods as she agrees, “I know. I know it is love. I know. You brought us back. You got our connection back. Somehow, somehow we’ll get through all this, I’m sure of it. Somehow. Some day, maybe soon, we’ll catch up with the three ell loser squad and chew them out a bit for leaving us behind. My, my precious little Lu, and dorky li’l dragbutt. Our big sweet flumpkin pumpkin goober hound Lucky. Some day.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I nod in silent agreement, unable to form words, or even really just coherent thoughts to express myself at the moment. I let the whole of me sink into Teuila and her embrace, in thinkspace and meatspace. The shifting causes Tiktik to slide, so she turns her head to look at us again, and notices we’re still sad, and crying.
Tiktik blushes as she apologizes, “Oh, you two, um. I’m sorry for how I tried to lift your mood forcefully. I guess you’ve got some other stuff going on, huh? I mean, I guess we all have things, and seeing a friend almost die can’t really be helping with any of those. I’m really sorry pals. Do you want me to go ride in the jockey driver seat thing place for some privacy?”
Teuila and I both shake our heads as we gulp back sobs. Te wraps her arms around the two of us, trapping Tiktik in our awkward seating arrangement with her incredibly firm grip. I sigh as I try to collect my thoughts. As easy as it would be to let myself sink into spirals of despair, I need to constantly be taking stock of our situation, our assets, our leads, every possible avenue for successes for any of our goals. If nothing else, I need to continue learning runes. Hm.
Trying to distract myself from the various bits of mental anguish swimming around inside my skull, I ask Tiktik, “Hey, um, Tiktik? Since your magic, well, wait, before that, do you have a nickname you like or anything? Do you want us to call you anything special?”
Tiktik glances back towards us over her shoulder, and takes note of the tears still streaming down my cheeks. She appears to be carefully considering what to say, which I find slightly odd given the subjective nature of the question. Tiktik seems to get lost in thought as she taps her chin with her ghostly hand wrapped in her orange hair.
She seems to alight on the appropriate thing, in her eyes, to say, “Oh, sure thing! But I want you to pick it. When you feel like you know me well enough. When you’re feeling better too. You two are going through a heck of a bunch of stuff, and walking around with the weight of the world on your shoulders. No rush, and no pressure.”
My jaw hangs slightly slack at Tiktik’s non-answer that throws the ball squarely back into my court. My right index finger is indecisive between pointing and recoiling. I shake my head and huff one quiet incredulous laugh. She’s certainly a character. Hm, I kind of feel like that doesn’t do her justice. Calling her a character feels like distilling her down to a couple of her predominant personality traits and making caricatures of them. I wonder if anyone else thinks of character as possibly insulting. Hm, still. Character, chara, Kara? I like the name Kara or Kera, though I’m not sure why, and I don’t think it applies to Tiktik.
Oh, right, I had intended that as a segue into asking her, “Err, I’d be proud to stumble into a nickname for you at some point. I was originally going to ask if you knew of any runes for like time, past, present, future, anything related to traveling along the fourth dimensional axis, or anything like that. I know it’s a bit of a long shot, and I hope it’s not insulting to ask because of the sound of your Mnemonic.”
I suddenly recall, “You mentioned sending Littlebit a few seconds into the future though. It’s just that, on Can’Z’aas I had a magic called a time skill, and it was, well, it cost me a lot of sanity to learn it, and to learn to use it without stealing time and life from anyone else.”
Tiktik grins madly as she exclaims, “Do I! You’re right! Ah! I’m glad you really listened to me, sometimes I talk, and I’m pretty sure most people just nod and nod and nod until I’m done. I’m not sure if that says more about me or about them. What was I—? Oh yeah! Okay, so, um, let me put this spell up. Okay, you have your aura vision thingy, so watch this one.”
The quirky cutie that is Tiktik spins about on her seat, my lap, forcing her to straddle me and Teuila so that she can show me the runostructure. Her hands work in more exaggerated motions than mine require in order to craft her rune, but much like mine, most of Tiktik’s runecrafting is done through force of will as it takes shape. Tiktik explains, “So, this right here? This whole thing signifies time for some reason. But this part? Flexed up this way, it basically means present up to a little bit of the future, but only a little bit. I’m not sure why, or what to change to make it further. I’m not sure what would represent past though. I’m almost afraid to play around. Then again, if I stumbled into it in the past, I don’t remember doing so, so I might have already found it, and forgot by sending myself into the past to before I learned it. Ya dig? Only—. Gak.”
I find myself honestly smiling happily through the tears at our quirky new friend. Her verbal tik of having to make a joke out of that particular euphemism is sort of like Lil calling something mega bad, mega mega mega bad. Lil’s repetition of the intensifier was charming to me at least. I--. Huff. I let my mental avatar sigh and sob with regret over how things were left between us when Lil took off. They were rightly upset, and wanted a break, after digging alone with Lucky for months, then voluntarily dying with the five souls of origin, the rest of us.
Wait, that’s right. Every time I started to piece something together about souls of origin or something, either Luni would deflect my train of thoughts, or I’d get a— Ow! Head— ache. Oh hells. I. I feel faint. Crap. My eyelids droop until they sink to a state demanding they remain closed. Worse, I slump forward, my face cushioned by two soft pillows beneath a fetching dress as I lose consciousness.
“Hey Err, do you think I’m being dumb for taking so many economics courses and only a couple of music electives?”
I cock my head to one side curiously, almost upset that my best friend would ask such a thing. She must know what my response will be, “I could never think you’re dumb. You got us through everything since the O—. Since we ran. Glp. I. I just mean, you’re brilliant, amazing. Whatever you choose to study, and however you choose to apply it, that will be the right thing for you, I’m sure of it.”
That gorgeous smile that I love so dearly, that I’d fight heaven and hell to protect, turns into a frown as I accidentally meander myself into a non-answer. I backpedal to recover, “I think it’s sweet that you want to open a music store. I think it’s wise to focus on the business side of things to start. And I mean, hey, lots of musicians don’t get formal training, or at least not a lot of it, or if they do, it’s not from some college, it’s from some mentor or one on one musical coach type person. Plus, well, I think you’re already amazing with your looping and sampling stuff. The things you can do with your mouth blow my mi—.”
I regret my choice of phrase as it leaves my mouth, because she waggles her brows. She’s always ready to pounce on any opportunity to tease me. She starts, “Oh really now? Just which things that I do with my mouth do you like so much? Tehe, you’re so red, it’s no fair when you get embarrassed before I can even say my tease. Anyway, come on Err, Sam will be at the deli, so we should be able to get a whole bag of groceries for a tenner. He’ll probably toss in some day olds or something. It’s worth it. You might like the things I do with my mouth, but I like to put those tasty things into — wait.”
Pft. I snort a laugh as she sets herself up and walks into her own tease. I know she means the food from the deli is amazing for how affordable it is. We lucked out finding that abandoned building out on route six, and then finding that one of the closest businesses has a couple of people who used to be street kids working there. They make sure we get the cheapest stuff so we can get enough of it to survive. The two of us lived in the wilderness so long that I didn’t realize there was some sort of code of the street for street kids to stick up for each other.
She playfully swats at me while laughing and complaining, “You can’t laugh about that, only I get to tease you and laugh about that you butt!”
I laugh incredulously as I ask, “Do you have any idea how hypocritical that sounds?”
She sticks her tongue out to blow a raspberry at me before answering, “Nyeh, I don’t care. Them’s the rules buster. Hehe, whatever, come on Err, keep up!”
Despite her wanting me to keep up, I’m lost for a moment in the smile that she flashes me. Ever since that day. She called me her hero, she insisted on it, repeatedly. I hated it for only a second. Until she flashed that smile at me. Then it felt like anything happening was the most right thing in the world. At least until that weird scolding by—. Huff, doesn’t bear thinking about.