My memories of the next few hours got a bit muddled. A few minutes after Dad left and all doozy from the information he just relayed, I helped Kishirra sit up and drink from her water cup.

My stomach was still full of butterflies, I could feel their razor wings fluttering against the inside of my belly.

“Hmmn,” she muttered, holding the cup by herself. “I… I apologize for the utter inconvenience. I was distraught.”

“What matters is that you are alive.” How could someone be so beautiful, stunning, brave and yet so stupid? “Drink your water. You have good mettle. When you came in I thought…”

“We were made to last,” she replied in a whisper. “That is the root of this whole matter in fact.”

“The ash. The soul decay – I remember. But you are safe here. And your goddess will not allow you to end up like that.”

She shuddered. Gulping, she reached for her pendant and bit her lip, hiding in beneath her robes.

“I have faith in Her, but I do not think I deserve it.” She reached with a trembling hand for her weapon. “I thank you deeply for your care, but it is nigh time for me to leave. I have to complete my Quest. Then perhaps I can ask for forgiveness when I faulted. I feel like I have failed my Test. Pr perhaps I never properly understood what it was.” She stood up and she was strong enough, even in this state, that I couldn’t hold her back. It would be like trying to wrestle a mountain.

“Wait.”

“Haste suffers no waste,” she replied in that cryptic way of hers. Nothing that I could say would shake her.

So stupid! She was just like me, putting my head beneath the blankets.

“Wait,” I groaned, reaching for her hand anyway, and I slipped my fingers between hers. It was the first time I had touched her like this.

Her skin was silky-smooth. Still burning a bit from her fever.

What did she say? How Elves had been created as pets and companions by the people who were here before? No wonder it…

But I had to tell her something far more important.

“There is something I have to tell you. I thought about what you said. About your origins.”

Her eyes flashed like burnished iron.

“It is no cause for concern to you. You belong to the great river, and you will go flowing back there when it is your time, so please…”

“No,” I was not going to let her off the hook this time. “I do not mean it like that!”

I had never said this to anyone. I had to share it. I knew what words to say but they hurt against my throat like shards of glass. I had to tell her the truth. Or she would disappear in the leaves once again, and I would just stay in my room and all that I had done so far would amount to nothing.

I would lose her forever.

“I know how it feels to lose yourself. I know how it feels to… to be r-reborn,” I quailed through my trembling lips.

Kishirra’s grey eyes widened. Her body relaxed, or perhaps she lot all of her strength and just regarded me with a different look.

“You are a Strander,” she whispered.

+++

“That is how we call you in the Holy Land,” she whispered. Kishirra sat on the other end of the garden’s clearing, drawing her legs to her chest. Her mood had improved, or if anything not worsened. And she looked a lot better than before. Perhaps her emotions had a greater sway on her health than it did for human beings.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“I would never expect I would meet one,” she continued. “This explains why you keep using so many weird terms, so many queer words. But that is all I know.” She shook her head, as if trying to shake off the cobwebs of my revelation. “If you revealed this to me to get information.”

“What? No! I never told anyone. Even my parents do not know, but I thought you could understand.”

Kishirra paused, weighing thoughts in her mind.

“How?”

“No idea.” I shrugged, trying to stand still, even if all I wanted was to fidget like crazy and maybe throw myself under a blanket, disappear from the Elf’s sight. “I died, and then I woke up again. It took some time for the memories to resurface.”

“I see.” She rubbed her gloved hands over her arms. “It was the same for me as well. I thought this was my first life, but then I realised I was a bit too good at certain things. Skills I did not have time to develop. A hidden and deep intuition. A tinge of sadness.” A pause as she rubbed her hands together. “Longing for memories I had never lived, for people I had never met.”

“Sometimes I miss my old world too. I miss wasting hours watching cat reels.”

Kishirra tilted her head, quizzed.

“Cat reels? In your world do they reel them in like fish?”

“Uhm, nevermind. Just a figure of speech.” Now I was this close to explaining the internet to an Elven Knight. Better not to touch that topic ever again. “But I get it. I think. Sometimes I wonder if I belong here at all, but then I think about the forge and the garden, and how lucky I am to have such a good family, and maybe I think it wasn’t… wasted.”

“But,” Kishirra tentatively added, “you are still going to leave. After this.”

Her voice dripped with a kind of fearful despair, and it speared through my chest like ice.

“I do not know. Maybe I will come back to my old world. Or maybe I will move on. I have no idea why I am here.”

Kishirra sighed. She rubbed her fingers against her palm.

“The Gilded Etchings teach that there are two kinds of people in this world: those with a whole destiny and those with a hollow destiny. People with a whole destiny can move on and enter the embrace of Ansàrra after death. Those with a hollow destiny cannot do so until they fill it.”

So maybe I had been sent back to fill this destiny of mine. To do something, which meant… oh.

“I have been thinking a lot about my plant and herbs encyclopaedia.” I wanted her to understand. I pictured Kishirra picking up my book, flipping through the pages with her strong fingers. “Ah, an encyclopaedia is like a thorough handbook. I want to write all I have learned from my mother and from my experience with the garden. But I want to do more! I want to fill it with all sorts of plants and useful herbs – and I want to be able to look at them for real, to touch them, with these hands. Not just see them here or read about them. I want to walk on those hills, outside the city.” I offered her an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I got a little excited there, for someone who did not even know how to look someone in the eye just a few months ago I’m talking big, right? But maybe that’s how I can fill my destiny up a bit. And I wouldn’t want to do this alone.”

“That is not how I am,” Kishirra replied, the echoes of that sorrow from before still chafing against her lips. “I do know what my destiny is. And all I’m trying to do is to change it. All I am thinking about is myself… truly Ansàrra’s heart is full of mercy if She can accept me in her care. Admitted she still does. I feel like something is still missing.” She lifted her gaze, levelling her silvery eyes with mine. “You said you were inspired to come out of your room and talk to people by my Quest. I truly find that hard to believe. But…” her cheeks darkened a bit as she coiled a blonde lock around her fingers, “would you believe me if I told you that I find your idea endearing? Trying to leave something behind for others to find. Using your second chance to deliver hope and knowledge to people who do not possess it yet – ah, that is truly something that can fulfil a destiny and a fill a heart.”

“I…”

She blinked, her cheeks flushing again – a healthy colour this time.

“Ah, I overstepped. My apologies.”

“No, no. I also do not know where I might find the courage to do anything like that. And writing a book is nothing to brag about, come on! But it would change the world into something that makes a little more sense.”

“The world does make sense.” She stood up, running her hands through her locks. “I would really like to read that book. And to spend more time together.”

“Come to the festival then! There’s going to be songs and dances and the whole town is going to be there! I can introduce you to people who will appreciate what you are doing for them! You don’t have to be alone.”

“For someone who claims she could not look someone in the eye, you seem positively great at connecting people,” she grinned.

“It’s a uh… work in progress,” I stammered.

“I cannot promise I will be there.” Her gaze shifted right, and I knew she was looking at the hills. “But if my duty allows it, I will. And I would gladly read your book.”

I sighed.

“Yeah, I am going to make sure you do read my damn book. But you know what? We are not finished here. Not nearly.” I grabbed her hand again. “You owe it to me.”

Her grey eyes widened.

For a moment I thought she was going to take her poleaxe and smite this new Lugana, this girl who was in way over her head!

But I had come this far.

I would not allow her to leave – not now that she knew how I felt.

“And first things first, you are going to help me with a little thing.”