“Excuse me?” I looked at the woman. She had her eyes closed and still had that little smile on her face. It was like she’d been calmly waiting for my outburst. “El-- She-- A sister?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “Tea?”

“I… what… Yes, please,” I finally said with a sigh. There was simply too much of everything, too much had been happening, it was hard to think. Maybe tea would help. Maybe it would, at least, relax me a little.

She didn’t open her eyes, touching the cups before pouring tea. It took me a moment to realize that she was feeling for them, that she moved slowly and carefully and deliberately and didn’t look at me for an obvious reason.

“How do you know who I am?” I asked. “If you can’t…”

She tutted disapprovingly. “Dearie, you can’t just ask blind people how they can see.” I frowned for a moment, but she continued. “Even if I couldn’t feel your soul as crisp and clear as if I was standing in front of an open fire… do you really think nobody would have told me about the eight foot tall demon in my camp?”

“Nine,” I mumbled, which elicited another one of her laughs.

“There aren’t many like you around, Dearie. Like us.” She gently sipped her tea, not bothering to blow on it. I wondered if the heat simply didn’t affect her.

“What do you mean, ‘in a manner of speaking’?” I asked, frowning. I wanted to get some answers, not riddles or platitudes.

“It’s a long story full of prophecies and old lies,” she said, matter-of-factly. “What’s your name?”

“I… My… I’m Liz,” I stammered. She kept catching me off-guard by constantly veering the conversation in new directions.

“Interesting,” she said. “You’re obviously not Eliza.” It was strange to hear her say it, for someone to be so calm about it. “The question, of course, is who you are.”

“What do you mean? I just said--”

“That’s just your name, Dearie.” She paused and got up walking around the tent with her cup, running her hand along the canvas over her head. I imagined it helping her with navigation, but something about the way she ran her fingers over the fabric made me feel she did this regularly. Like she did this for its own sake. “Everyone in this camp hates you, do you know that?” I swallowed and nodded. Then I realized that nodding was kind of useless.

“Y-- yes. I’ve noticed,” I’ve said.

“All of the dragonfolk do, I would wager,” she said, to herself more than me. I nodded to that again, remembering the looks I’d gotten from the Dragonborn who’d walked in the Queen’s Escort. “Do you know why?”

I barely managed to keep from shaking my head. “No,” I said. I had no idea. I found blind animosity to strangers, to people you’d never even spoken to, a completely alien concept. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

“Because when they look at you, they see the Demon Dragon Queen,” she said as she finished her lap around the tent and sat down in front of me again. Her milky white eyes looked into mine for half a second, and I wondered what she saw with them. “They see the worst they can be. To them, you are… the opposite of good and holy. They believe you evil incarnate, but more than that, to them you are their evil incarnate.”

That gave me pause for thought. I’d never considered the title before as meaning anything more than Eliza having been both Demon and Dragon. “But you don’t,” I said with an implied question mark.

She shook her head. “I have a bit more information to go on, Dearie.” She motioned at her white eyes staring somewhere three inches to the left of me.

“So what’s with the… the sister thing?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She motioned to me. “Thesis,” she said. Then at herself. “Antithesis.”

I frowned. “You’re… what? An angel? Some kind of god?”

That got another laugh from her, as if the idea of that was hilarious, as if she wasn’t sitting opposite someone who might literally be part Demon. “No. More of a… a holy figure. If you are the one they look down on, I am the one they look up to.”

“But I never did anything to--”

She raised a hand. “I never said you did. And if I’m frank, neither did I. That’s the rub with all this prophecy malarkey. We don’t get a say. That’s why I don’t go in with them. But yes, you and I were cut from the same cloth. Although,” she smiled again, “I rather think someone else is wearing that cloth these days. Which brings us back to my original question.”

“Which is?”

“Who you are. I don’t know where your predecessor went, the one everyone outside this tent expects me to do battle with, but you’re here now. Liz. But are you Liz, girl wearing someone else’s body? Or are you Liz, the Demon Dragon Queen, Serpent of the North?” She leaned forward and she finally smiled broadly, her sharp dragon’s teeth exposed and shiny. “Who are you?”

I didn’t have an answer. I’d taken the role of the queen, certainly. And it had allowed me to finally be myself, honestly and deeply. But I’d always used the title as a crutch, to keep from realizing who I was allowed to be. Had Eliza -- Lisa, I corrected myself -- taken those titles with her? Was she still technically this serpent? “I don’t…” I said, but my voice trailed off.

“You don’t have to know right away, Dearie. Most people never wonder who they are. But take some time, would you?” Her smile slowly faded as she stared at a point between my collarbones.

“If you know something,” I said, my voice low. “Please, tell me. I’ve had a rough couple of days and I’m not in the mood for--”

She held up her hand. “I can’t see the future. There’s no prophecies or destinies here.” She paused. “But… people who don’t… question…” It was clear she was having trouble getting the words out. She took a deep breath. “People can get hurt, is all I’m saying.” She raised her head and looked me dead in the ear. “Especially the people who love you.”

“Oh.”

She nodded and poured tea again. “There was the other question, of course.”

“Which one?” I asked, carefully sipping my cup.

“Why are you here?”

“What do you… Like… this body… or…”

She laughed softly. “My side of the river, Dearie. Not everything has to be a matter of philosophy. What brought you here?”

“Oh,” I said, smiling at myself for the first time in what felt like days. I explained our quest to her as concisely as I could. She listened intently, nodding. From time to time, she asked me a question, about my companions, about our journey, but for the most part she seemed happy just to listen, and it was good to repeat the events of the past few weeks. It put things in perspective. “When we were attacked, I remembered Kazumi telling me about the migration routes of the Dragonborn riders, the stories of what happened to those who crossed the river unannounced and unwelcome.” I stopped, letting the words linger there.

“Quite a risk for you to take,” she said. “So what do you intend to do now?”

“Well, I was thinking we’d barter for a ship to go downriver, or find a way to cross it without…” My voice caught in my throat.

“It’s all right. I understand.”

She paused and got up again, walked to one of the walls of her tent and stared ahead as if she could simply see out that way. “We’re riding southeast. We follow the Wide River until it bends into Wydonia. We can let you go there. It won’t be as fast as sailing, but it’s safer, and you can take the time to heal.”

I stretched and felt pangs of pain shoot through my spine. I just about managed to suppress a gasp. “I’ll manage,” I said. “I’ll be okay soon.”

“I wasn’t talking about your back, Dearie,” she said quietly. “There’s a girl just outside this tent who loves you very much, who feels the loss as strongly as you do. There’s people who have known her much longer than you. Don’t claim this grief for yourself, tempting as it is.”

I nodded and stared into my tea. I’d forgotten that Sabine had been with the companions, some for years, before they’d met me. It was easy to think of her as, well, mine. That wasn’t… I took a deep breath and drank my tea.

“Loss is hard,” the woman said. “Don’t be too hard on yourself for not being good at it. Pity those who are.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” she said as she shrugged. I couldn’t help but frown. “I gave up a lot of things to be me, Liz. My name one of them. It was a worthwhile sacrifice. Besides,” she turned around and smiled widely in my general direction. “You seem to have done something similar, it seems.”

“Wait,” I stammered. “You’re--”

“Happy where I am now. Finally. The cost was worth it.”

I smiled back at her. “I feel that. I mean, I understand where you’re coming from.”

“Now go outside. Talk to the others. Be with them. But…” She paused again for a moment and looked at my hand. “Don’t hold a wake. Not just yet. Not until all this is over. A lot can happen when you carry a soul in your hand.”

With those words she shooed me out of her tent and I rejoined the others. One of the guards was called inside and when he came back out, he called his regiment to him and they all seemed to relax. I don’t know what she’d told them, but it seemed that they no longer regarded me as a threat.

The others had been assigned a large tent of their own, and we all got onto the large four-legged creatures -- although I had to take my own separate ride -- to be transported. When we were all finally inside, I relaxed a little.

“And?” Kazumi asked. “What… what’s going to happen?”

I looked at her, at all the others. “I’d originally… I thought about going on alone. Figuring a way out. But I don’t…” I paused to take a breath and saw at least four people about to protest. “I won’t. It isn’t my call to make, not fair to any of you. Right now, we’re going the right way, still. We keep going. It’s what she…” I paused again and swallowed.

“It’s what she would have wanted,” Tilly mumbled.

“It’s what she would want,” I corrected her, trying to keep up spirits, expressing hope I didn’t really feel, and raised the sapphire. “She’s with us, quite literally.”

“Is that…” Lillian began, and I nodded.

“I’ll carry her with us. I… stranger things have happened. She has made stranger things happen. We have to hope. Trust her. And keep going.”

The others nodded. We didn’t have a wake, not really. But Sabine was on all our minds. Mellie offered to make a necklace of sorts for the Sapphire, and before long almost everyone wanted to help out, wanted to add something of theirs to it. While they did, everyone told stories about her. How they’d met Sabine, how they’d grown to know her. Kazumi had a hard time of it, but she managed to tell the story of their first encounter in the throne room, how she and Sabine had both been trying to get me to retract my wings. Everyone laughed at that. Sometimes someone cried and someone else held them. It was hard. But none of us were alone, save Morgana who sat outside once things got too sappy for her. Even Erza had to wipe her eyes a moment. Kazumi squeezed her hand and the three of us shared a tearful smile.

Kazumi snuggled up to me. By the time we were all ready to go to sleep, she was wrapped around me. I ran a hand over her scales and tried to think about tomorrow.