Other-time.

Humming a jaunty tune, Talia the Maiden balanced along the edge of a sheer bluff, her spread arms sweeping out over the long drop to the rocks below. She was fearless. Her bare feet crushed ice pebbles between her toes and set off rockslides, chunks of the bluff collapsing in her wake. A winter wind blasted with more than enough force to dislodge a teenage girl. Never mind the temperature, enough to freeze waterfalls, should have blackened her fingers with frostbite.

The silk of her violet slip tickled as it whipped in the wind, making Talia struggle not to laugh and lose her song.

Distant and looming, Yggdrassil overshadowed even the mountain peaks. Always visible, always watching.

Skidding on her heel across a waterfall's frozen mouth, Talia reached the bluff corner and leaned over. Far below, a highlands lake glistened, nestled at the juncture of several glacial tributaries. Steam curled up from its edges stained daffodil and rose with minerals.

"Here I go!" Talia whooped, leaping forward. The lake grew rapidly closer, cold air whipped her dress up to show off the bare peach of her butt. Then she arced into a dive and splashed into the lake, laughing at the air bubbles and how her clothes floated up around her armpits.

Perfect. Water bubbly warm, minerals stroking and heavy. Every day, every adventure - perfect under the Forest's watchful eye.

Yesterday the Maiden crawled down a crack in the earth to marvel at diamond clusters, padding across cavern floors thin as leaves. Tomorrow, perhaps she would dive into Yanu's aquifer and watch the strange things down there. Regardless, Yggdrassil would watch, by leaf, stem, or root, as protective as any mother bear.

Talia came to rest at a steaming vent. Her kicks stirred up enough silt to hide her in a murky cloud. Dispersed through the lake by the vents, the powder darkened the water and hid the child.

She shivered, not sure why. The water felt hot now, uncomfortable. Things stirred in the back of her head, stains across her blissful day. A memory dangled like a taste on the tip of her tongue, something so vital it would bring holiday to an end.

Every child must grow up sooner or later. A thought, but not one that originated inside the girl's own head.

-Who is that?- How long since she had talked to anything but plants? Loneliness bit her heart, unfamiliar and sharp. The water began to churn in response to her anxiety.

Suddenly, Talia was afraid. Bouncing along the bluff seemed long ago, and the water pressed down on her like grappling arms. Memories and hallucinations reflected off the bubbles and silt - a mountain, its top a star of fire; cold darkness that spread forever and ever, emptier than any desert, and the sudden eruption that shattered it; her own voice, hoarse from weeping. She kicked off the bottom and paddled furiously for the surface. The water twisted, capturing up and down into a cyclone.

"Look at that," her reflection seemed to taunt. "Look at that skinny little thing with messy brown hair and a faded dress, flailing for the surface like a scared fish!"

She fought her way up, but somehow emerged against the vents again. Another surge for air and daylight...

...and jerked back from the blue-white cadaver with her own face and rotted fingers. Despite death, the corpse flaunted a graceful and curvy figure that dwarfed Talia's narrowness. The stench of molding hair choked the water.

"Sweetheart," purred the cadaver. "Its time to wake up, sweetheart. The world is bright, new, and awaiting you! Can't sleep forever, silly!" A host of grinding voices echoed behind, hissing with threats under the cheerful words.

“No!” Talia cried. “I want to stay here!”

More sodden cadavers floated behind her doppelganger, crowned with faces that taunted her memory. They forced a life before Yanu and Yggdrasil to stir and lit a strange pulsing in her heart, full of abandoned sorrows.

Sweetheart, how you let yourself ignore the blighted margins of this broken land. Men and beastmen shoved to the very Edge; how they suffer when the storms rush through! They labor under the harsh sun with finger and bone to scratch out life and war with each other for stable bits of land like islands in the soup. They huddle into dingy cities and bow before all the gods of earth, sea, and sky to pray that the Havoc leaves them be for a single year. It never does. Too far from the Cradle. A rushing, devil's wind precedes the storms. Havoc comes. People of all races die. They change into foreign things. The community can do nothing but butcher the afflicted – destroy their bodies to save their souls – and begin to build again. Each year, again. The men there call themselves Shai-selem, ones cursed by the devil, and dream that they one day build up enough strength to invade paradise lands like Lydia and Yandra. They would kill every soul there for the taste of stability...

Talia screamed - not at the corpses, but at the poisonous knowledge rushing into her head. Her voice echoed throughout the Other, building into impossible registers, and the lake exploded. A fire inside her lashed out, cleaving the top from the mountains around her and setting off avalanches. Many of the cadavers disappeared under flying boulders, but her twin remained, floating across from Talia in the molten lake bed.

"Wake up, sweetie. Haven't you slept long enough? Children must grow up, sooner or later."

Gnarled roots of Yggdrassil burst through the earth and snaked upwards. One smacked the twin away like a rag doll and another curled around Talia's wrist. Part of her cried out, as though its cool wood was the slime and grease of a monster, but the roots dragged that part and those evil scary away into the depths.

A few seconds passed, and then Talia opened her eyes. Such a beautiful day. She smiled at the sun, untroubled as an infant. "I think I'll go play in the vines," she hummed, hopping over the cooling rubble.

Yggdrassil watched as always.

**********

In another world, disasters ravaged the hills at the northwestern edge of Dryad lands. The Border Guard stationed there escaped an avalanche by the skin of his teeth. As he crawled down from the cusp of rock which saved him, a rotting corpse rose from the blasted crater that once was a lake. It left blighted hand prints on the rocks as it crawled free.

“She must wake," it hissed in a tongue the Dryad could not understand. "The Forest and all in must be destroyed - she must wake!"

A new monster was born, the Maiden's detritus thrown away by the Forest and coalesced into hateful purpose.

**********

Yanu, the great Forest, well understood its sacred duty. The longer its Maiden stayed awake, the harder its task would become. If its most precious daughter was to remain pure, she could not confront the monsters again. Continual subversion of the specters into physical form would lead to great strain on the Dryads, who remained a vital part of its immune system.

Next time the innocent Maiden ventured to the edge of the Forest, nightmares struck. Ready, the Forest interceded immediately, spiriting Talia away to Yggdrasil. Its vines set the sobbing girl in branches as wide as a highway, and wind through the boughs carried the whisper of its voice.

"Dear child, do you see? I am here to protect you. You cannot keep ducking out of sight."

Wet-eyed, Talia started as vines began to tug at her violet dress. Well, almost more of a shirt, considering it barely covered her butt at best, but she always wore it!

"I'll give you a new dress," promised the swishing trees. From its trunk, it produced a sky blue slip, the hem edged in lace. "This one will never tear, rip, or stain."

Talia frowned, clinging to the last bit of her old dress. She could swear the new cloth shivered and wiggled against the wind.

"It will protect you from nightmares and help you sleep."

Some fragment inside warned against the easy road. -Don't even nightmares have a purpose? Maybe they know why my heart aches like I'll never see a good friend again?- But...she could still feel the last one's dank breath, its chimera heads all chanting "Children must grow up!" in awful mockery as it pinned her against the stones.

"Okay."

The vines tugged the new clothes over her head and fussed with the hem. Though barely longer than her old one, it had such a pretty sheen and a fuzzy, pleasant fullness. She glanced at that old violet rag and tossed it out of the branch. Like a favored blanket, she knew the new dress would look after her.

"Go play, child," urged the Forest, and she bounced off to do just that. "Play, and let yourself drift back into the darkness..."

**********

Talia wondered about many things, but the thoughts never seemed to stick, washing away like rot in the rain. How come things shifted and danced under her? She would lay in the grass at noon, close her eyes, and open them to a field of daisies at midnight. Spring meadows yielded to a rainbow wind that turned them into autumn leaf beds. One time she was climbing a giant oak when it shifted into a cliff side. She fell hundreds of feet, screaming, and only her pretty new dress broke her fall. It felt like landing on a giant feather pillow.

Somehow, things hadn't used to be so malleable. A sense of Other-place permeated the world, throwing it into a subtle but persistent chaos. It made her feel adrift.

Another thing – why did her dress always guide her around? If she went a bad direction, it tightened around her ribs, tugging incessantly, tighter and tighter, until Talia acceded. Disobey long enough, and the pressure began to hurt. Once she stubbornly forged ahead – ribs on fire in a velvet vice – and almost ran into a hulking monster. The dress wanted her to stay away from those things, and she was happy to yield.

A whole lot of days passed that way, the dress nudging Talia from straying too far.

Funny, but one day she noticed underwear. That seemed a strange thing to suddenly appear. The dress hadn't come with any, but now she had matching panties for her butt. Funky, but what harm could modesty stand for?

Soon she decided to stop climbing mountains and crawling through swamp mud. Her dressed seemed almost unhappy covered in dust and slime, and that was no good! Besides, she had those warm, white stockings to keep clean.

The same day that she discovered her new stockings, she noticed the dress almost reached her knees. "That's funny. Is it growing longer?"

"Don't worry about it," assured the Forest. "Would you like something to eat?"

The Maiden's stomach rumbled. Why, she couldn't remember the last time she felt hungry! Eat, sleep, breath - you did those to taste an apple or blow bubbles or pass a lazy afternoon, not because you had to! Yet her tummy persisted, and she nodded. Yggdrasil lowered a milky white flower, and she drank from it like a chalice. Awash in a warm stupor, she fell into a nap, and when she woke, her dress reached past her knees.

After that, Talia couldn't range nearly as far from Yggdrasil, always called back by a rumbling stomach. Her dress hem inched towards her feet as the tree tops got higher and higher. As memories of exploring faded, the distant reaches of the Forest began to look Big and Scary.

She hardly wondered at all anymore. Big words slipped up her tongue. She napped often. Soon, it was easier to suckle from the white flower - she couldn't reach it without standing on a root. Laughing often, she would forget the reason for her giggles before she even finished.

The dress reached to her toes and hid her baby fat. She couldn't get it off during a game of "Try to get naked!", and she wailed loudly when she spilled more of her nectar onto it than into her mouth. Still, the stains would vanish in seconds, alongside her worry.

Wailing was easier than words. Crawling among the roots was safer than exploring unknown reaches. Sleeping most the day meant never being bored. Her world was the little clearing and Yggdrasil's attendant vines to tickle her toes and coo her to bed. No need to worry at all. Mommy Yanu took care of everything.

Talia slept a whole lot each day, always feeling tired.

Yggdrasil waited. Soon her baby Talia would enter the deepest sleep without dream, worry, or care - the kind of blissful doze only an infant knew. Untold years would pass. Its charge would sleep away the ages until Yanu could insure a proper Guide, one dedicated to her protection.

Damn Glisinda needed to hurry up and die so it could reclaim the Guide-essence from her corpse. It sent homesick dreams through its roots at the distant Dryad, hoping to lure her home to a quick end.

Yggdrasil caressed Talia's chubby cheek as the toddler slept. "No one is going to wake you. No one will make you grow up and hurt. I will protect you until the world ends and takes the horrible memories with it."

**********

By now Talia slept the vast majority of the day, toddling on the brink of the long Sleep. Crawling around the roots one night, already sleepy despite only being awake an hour, she found something weird. She was really hungry, ready for more flower-milk, but a torn patch of violet drew her eyes. Her dress twitched a little around her chubby belly, pinching, but something about the object sparked a flicker of curiosity.

With difficulty, the child managed to topple into the hole between two roots and touch the faded cloth. It was huge! A big lump of violet she could fit inside and have room for a twin.

Her dress tightened all over, pinching most uncomfortably. Her tummy rumbled urgently, her limbs shook with sleepiness, and the darkness of her little hole seemed deep and scary. All things that should have prompted her to back away, to let out a baby's wail; yet her fingers curled around the discarded old dress and wondered.

-Why did I throw this away? How come I always stay in the roots? What have I been doing, spending forever playing baby games and suckling milk?-

Talia clutched the dress closer, a terrible nausea settling in. -Why...am I like this? A baby? How come I crawl in this forest nursery all day? Eat, sleep, stare at nothing. Is that an adventure?-

The niche seemed smaller, no longer a cavern, and her new dress fought back. It stoked her hunger, sapped her limbs, and strengthened all the chains of a baby's body. Drink some of Mommy Yanu's flower milk and all the questions will go away! Just warmth and quiet and darkness.

"No," she mumbled. Teeth began to push through her gums, filling her mouth with a copper taste. She wobbled onto her feet, clinging to the violet lifeline, and soon her legs steadied. -What's outside the nursery? I can't remember, but I want to see!-

Her dress spasmed, squeezing, and her growth halted as an awkward three year old. Then it spoke in bouncy tones. "Stay little! Let Mommy clean and care for you! Out there is Big and Scary! You have to learn bad things and lose good ones!"

Hungry, tired, and pinched, she was tempted. It was all so effortless...

Yet the Maiden spied honeycomb patterns in her memories, shapes designed for faces and names. Friends she lost somewhere on the road. -If I stay in this nursery, I will never learn who they were.- With the thought came a fragment. An old man, a thousand years her confidant and father. He gave her that violet dress the day they joined together, telling her that purple made her eyes shine like jewels. From him, she thought of a young woman with proud, onyx horns and the nimble tricks of a gymnast. Other fragments waited just beyond, stars in her mind's sky to light the way.

Suddenly strong, Talia reached under her dress with both hands and ripped away her slip in one yank.

The dress screamed.

She grew again, leaving baby fat behind, caught in a tornado of aches and stretches.

"No!" The dress tried to regrow around her bottom, snaking out in ribbon and lace. She caught its tendrils and yanked. Seams tore, and the fabric leaked blue dyes like blood.

The Maiden fell to her knees, wrestling with the living garment. It grew with her, tendrils covering limbs and face, trying to cocoon. With each inch covered, she could feel her mind - her will - slipping away again.

"A child does not sneak out! A child gives her mother unconditional love! A child is controlled!" scolded Yggdrasil's dress. "Don't you see? This is for your own good! You were never happier than before you were born!"

Talia howled, and she couldn't tell which voice was hers. The toothless wail of a wet infant, or the furious shriek of a grown-up? All she could do was thrash, harder and harder, against the reassuring numbness.

-If easy and happy means I never get to know who my friends were, I don't want easy! How can I sleep while the world swallows all memory of my dearest? I want to see HER again!-

Something ripped and dyes spewed. Talia tumbled forward and landed in the dirt outside the root hollow, naked and slick with blue blood. Behind, the blue dress - grown to a shimmering mass of tendrils - sputtered and died.

Something in her mouth, sharp and copper-coated. Spitting, Talia cupped a full set of baby teeth in her palms.

"Oh my god." She retched right there, adding to the mess. Left over bits of the vile dress twitched. Quivering, she staggered to the hollow and snatched her violet rag - so small! - out of the goop. Then she tripped over herself in haste to get back.

Her rag held precious little knowledge, but it gave all of itself over to her in a flood of memories. This was not the first time the Forest had trapped her as such. It would whittle away her independence and curiosity until she was but a mote, and then she would curl like a seed inside amber, trapped in its trunk, to sleep for ages. So many years would pass while the old man watched her in fatherly patience until she sprouted again. Then in a blink of an eye, she would fall back into the child's sleep.

Thus would pass age upon age as she neither grew nor learned.

-How long have I spent as an infant?- She shivered. -Have I slept so long that the ones in my memories died of age?!-

Yggdrasil creaked, an angry moan that made the trees quiver. A nanny slow to anger, but overwhelming in its attacks..

Twitching in her palms, her rag gave one last gift. As the tendrils began to erupt from the soil to bind Talia to the ground and force-feed her the enchanting flower milk, it expended its last will to shunt her far to the east. The miles passed in a sudden blur, and Talia toppled to the ground feet over head in ash and soot as deep as her wrists. Around her, a broken waste of lava tubes and ash tornadoes, and a lumpy volcano spat fire to the northeast. The sun was an impression through the clouds, and the air stank like rotten eggs.

Outside. Big and Scary and Alone.

Still dripping blue dye, naked and sore and scared, she began to trudge. Her heart was heavy, and she could not suppress the damnedest worry that no matter how far she ran, Yggdrasil would always hold part of her captive in its heart.

**********

Other-time, lost in the fog of ages

A quiver at the edge of sight; the sudden cast of shadow from jagged hill of rock where moments before the land lay flat; sharp winds of grit that roared from nowhere and vanished just as fast, leaving the Wastes utterly quiet. The landscape seemed to teeter on the precipice of unraveling, anchored only by the constant fire of that lumpy volcano and its smog clouds.

Talia wandered vaguely east, away from the Forest, and soon could not tell one direction from another. Exterior desolation seeped into her head, too, and her feet drug forward with little enthusiasm. Numbness blanketed her, interrupted only by the shiver when a new wind hit.

Strange half-ruins littered the landscape, patches of architecture that poked from the ash like solitary guards to a long-lost glory, stained almost black. She would sleep inside them, a tiny reprieve from the weather, but while her mind hovered in the border of waking and sleep voices would whisper up her spine.

"....Norhill destroyed?!"

"We are cursed. The Academy rains fire on our hearts."

"Lo, the world burns. There are none left to replace our glory."

"For Elijah."

And so on, all the past of the land echoing into her. Demons, the lot of them, unwanted visions of a great opal craft filling the sky and hurricanes of Havoc so fierce they threatened to unmake the world itself.

She did not sleep well or stay long in these tattered ruins.

Eventually, so soot-covered and dye-stained that she resembled some feral animal on two feet, the Maiden stumbled from the border of the Wastes into the river basin that hosted so many summer caravans. A road, hard packed and dusty, but no people. She forded the river on slippery rocks and found another road - this one thinner, grass growing lightly, bordered by the stockade of a trade post, but still no people.

The remnants of a campfire, the ground still warm, but no people.

-I'm all alone now.-

Hobbling on, the land began to rise on the eastern edge of the river basin, waters colder and faster. The Maiden swore she could hear mountains singing in the distance, a somber rumble. She wormed up a hillside of pines, rounded a rock, and bounced against a creature of tiger-striped fur and pointed feline ears.

Both staggered back, hard pressed to decide which was the feral one. The creature clung to an armful of firewood, and Talia scooted back against the tree. It seemed a girl by slenderness, walked on two legs, and glared at her with amber eyes.

"Wait," Talia coughed, voice dusty.

The beast-child flattened her ears, twisted on a foot, and bolted away.

"Oh, hell!" The Maiden charged after.

They raced through the dense pines, the girl sure of her steps and Talia tumbling on hidden rabbit holes; the beastgirl exploded out of the forest onto a river bank with quite a lead. The Maiden arrived just in time to watch in amazement as the girl reached a primitive camp and vanished into thin air. A circle of pounded dirt bordered the river, nomadic tents in a circle around a bonfire where meats roasted. She stumbled down to the camp at full tilt, crying out. "Wait! Come back, please!"

From the largest tent, a ripple of the tent skins preceded the emergence of another figure. This one swaggered like a born king. A walking tiger broad and tall with a face too beastial to read the expression in its eyes, it flexed thick-jointed hands tipped by claws. He - naked, definitely a male - marched directly for Talia, and she skidded on her heels at the edge of the dirt.

"What brings you here, dreamer?" he demanded.

Compared to everything else, Talia ignored how walking tigers somehow knew her language. "I didn't mean to hit her!"

He paused, the ears flickering back and forth in a mishmash of emotion. "Hit her?" Then he twisted, listening to some imaginary voice, and the feline lips pulled into a snarl. Or was that a grimace? "How is this? You touched her?"

Talia nodded, feeling very much the errant child.

"I assumed you a dreamer caught in the astral planes," he rumbled to himself, "but that cannot be so. Dreamers lack the substance for such an impact..."

She nodded again, not sure if that meant trouble or not.

"This is unusual. Let us slow down. I am Elusive, Totema to the Heartland Seekers, Scion of Wisdom, Tempered Heart of the Borderlands."

"Uh...Talia. From the Forest." The Maiden couldn't bring herself to mention Yggdrasil. What if its name could call it after her?

"Ah!" He grinned. "So you are Dryad, yes?"

"No...not really..." -Though I am a child of the Forest, I guess...-

Silence stretched. Pine needles floated down off the hills, and Talia sneezed. Elusive finally made the next overture. "Ah. I do not understand, but it is rude to deny a guest hospitality. My seer shall bake honeydew in honor of our meeting, and perhaps we will speak on this matter over dinner?"

"That would be nice," the Maiden replied, almost queasy with the thought of actually sharing a meal with another person!

To his credit, Elusive seemed to understand that he intimidated her. He withdrew several arm lengths and lowered the shield blocking his tribe from interacting with the astral planes slowly. To Talia, the air shimmered with the faint ghosts of a tribe in daily life. Outlines strengthened and grew into arms and hands and fingers. Then colors rushed to fill in the shapes with their brilliant fur and dark skin. Beyond all sharing the touch of tiger in some form, the fifty or so people who stopped their tasks to bow towards their new guest varied from humans with a smattering of fur - like the girl Talia had bumped - to little more than tigers with unusually keen eyes and an extra digit on their front paws. Their clothing consisted of simple furs and leathers, though they handled smelted tools in their paws.

Blushing, Talia bowed back. Her hair was a mat of soot and tangled curls; skin stained, smeared, sweaty; eyes baggy from lack of sleep and dragging loneliness. "I could...may I bathe?"

"Of course. We shall speak again come the night." Elusive bowed once more and withdrew into his tent, leaving Talia stranded in the midst of strangers.

"Should I...where do...that is, is the river...?" Her voice seemed to shrink more and more with each passing second.

The girl who she had bumped against pointed towards the river.

Looking closer, the Maiden spied several white lumps of soap sitting on a flat rock. She hustled over, scooped one up, and dunked herself in the river. So cold! Her entire body puckered with goosebumps, and she scrubbed away at full speed.

Of course, who should come to bathe beside her but the most beautiful woman of the entire camp? This tigress was all the sleekness of a cat and the curves of a woman, bountiful in her nudity.

Talia glanced down at herself, little the better for washing away blue and black. -A candle beside the sun.-

Out in a hurry, she found a sarong and furred jacket waiting for her on the rocks and gratefully pulled them on. She expected stiffness, but their owner had either tanned or worn them supple. They smelled of musk and hung baggy on her chest like drapes. -Beggars can't be choosers,- she reminded herself.

Soon the sun began to set, and the tribe assembled around the bonfire to share dinner. Talia demurred a slab of haunch, watching as Elusive approached.

He sank to the ground beside her and nodded politely. "Do you feel better?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"Are the clothes satisfactory?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to tell me how you came to this place?"

She paused a second. -Was that a trick question?- "Yes?"

He waited a moment, and eventually Talia divulged the short version of her escape from the Forest. She left out the embarrassment of being regressed to a child by a dress and flower milk, calling that her durance in vague terms.

At the end, as his tribe began to disperse to their tents or to stargaze by the river, he bowed. "Thank you for your story. I have a theory which I hope may elucidate. Would you like to hear it?"

"Yes, please."

"A Totema is born when a creature of the natural world has such a strong will that its essence or soul survives the trial of death. Thus was I born, many years ago, from a normal tiger. However, we require a tether to the physical world of blood and heat, or our souls slip to the next life and never appear again. Thus, our tribes. We are the guiding spirits of the People, their mentors and champions. We bestow upon them many gifts, and in return they support our very existence."

She frowned. "What does that have to do with me?"

"Well, you see...Totema arise irregularly. We don't have rock or moss Totema. Reasons for this are unknown, though I believe the deciding line is sentience. Yet if sentience is the only requirement, then why are there no Human Totema?" He smiled, as if making some point.

"I don't see."

"I apologize. The way you describe this Forest, it sounds almost like a Dryad Totema; yet you describe yourself as apart from the Forest nation, tugged constantly towards the sleep of aeons. I have heard legends of a Maiden who sleeps in the Forest heart, yet does not resemble the Dryads who tend to her. You appear quite human. I wonder – is it possible that you are a human Totema? Just think! The legends could tether you in a tenuous form of belief, but being weaker than a true tribe would leave you little energy to explore your world. You could be a unique phenomenon!”

"Wouldn't that mean...I was dead?"

His ears flattened a bit. "Unfortunately, I believe so."

"I don't think I'm dead..." she said in a small voice.

The Totema paused, one ear shifting to listen to the distance.

"...What is it?"

"My colleagues advocate testing."

"What colleagues?"

"Ah. Sorry. We Totema can communicate over vast distances through our astral Network. You could say that I am never alone."

Envy fluttered up into the Maiden's throat, but she swallowed it. "So - what kind of tests are these?"

"You already passed one, for you wear our clothes."

She glanced down at the sarong. "These things?"

"Yes. The People straddle the gulf between the astral realm - the realm where the sacred earth holds her memories - and the physical. Thus why you could bump into Niana on her firewood trip and why you can wear our clothes." He smiled at her incredulous eyebrow. "Do not believe? Go. Try to pick up that hammer by my tent."

Talia scooted up and over, examining the hammer. It looked as normal as any iron tool, a little rusty and very worn. She leaned over, grabbed it, and encountered a weight as great as a boulder. Straining, she tried with both hands, butt in the air and knuckles white; at last the hammer gave a little wiggle, throwing her back onto her rump. "Balls!"

Several of the beastmen children, eavesdropping from their tents, snickered. Talia flushed. Elusive turned to them and snarled, a grinding sound that sent them all scurrying out of sight.

"Apologies. Do you see my point? Those things that are a part of the People straddle the Other and physical worlds, while foreign tools resist our every advance."

"So I'm a useless ghost," she said.

"Not in the least! You simply need to learn to harness your Totema blessings." He clapped his paws together. "In the morning, we will set out to find you the beginnings of a tribe!"

"How? I haven't met a single person till now, not the whole way since the Forest!"

He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "I forget. So much you do not know...If you can see them, they can see you. Or, perhaps, the reverse. Humans and Dryads cannot pierce the astral except in rare dreams. You would find the capitals of the great cities empty to your eyes."

-So how exactly do I establish a tribe if we're stuck on opposite sides of the fence, genius?- whispered Talia's inner peeve, but she just nodded with a weak smile.

"Come. Sleep. We will return to the trading post in the morning. You may have Niana's tent for privacy."

Despite being wide awake, Talia accepted with a clumsy curtsy. "Thank you."

Thus the two departed into their separate tents, and Talia laid awake to worry and eavesdrop on the gossip of her new neighbors.

"Now we're in it," complained one voice, young and male. "Next thing tomorrow he's going to want to march right up to a human camp!"

"We shouldn't have come this far in," his comrade agreed. "We're a spit and a surprise away from joining the slave lands.”

"Another fool experiment. It'll turn out even worse than last time. Even if that pipsqueak is a human Totema, why do we want to give them that kind of power?!

"Its a bad idea..."

The voices trailed off, and Talia stared at the tent poles for the long night hours. -Please, God, don't let me cause any more hurt. I don't want these People to suffer like the ones I lost, just for me...-

**********

Yggdrasil could not find Talia's soul, though it sent many tendrils to wither in the Wastes to no avail. Deep in the bowels of its trunk, her body still slept, skin gray and breath light as a thought.

Part of it yearned to wrap vines around the girl's neck and wring. It hated that its nature would compel it to protect the very child who spurned its love. Yet...

How could it abandon her, lost and alone, to wander a harsh world? No more could it uproot and run after the sun than to give up on her.

Its' calculations were swift. It halved Dryad access to the land's mana to boost its tendrils a few more miles. Any price would be acceptable.

Mother and child needed each other!

**********

Negotiations with the trading post lasted about long enough for the fellows behind the palisade - whom Talia still could not see or hear - to figure out that this envoy had the strength of arms to resist enslavement. Rotten fruit and stones began to fly alongside curses and shouts before the first beastman approached the walls.

"This is Elsian land, filths!" one man called from above the gate.

Another beside him shouted at the same time, "Be gone from Lydia or its an act of war!"

As the tribe began to retreat eastward, the two belligerents fell into a fistfight. Niana relayed blow-by-blow for Talia, much to the Maiden's embarrassment. "Oh! Wow, pretty good left hook for a human! Now there are some buddies coming up. Hey, they're trying to throw the Elsian guy over the palisade! Ouch! Looks like he broke a leg in the fall. Now his buddies are grabbing some clubs and--"

"Niana, hush," Elusive growled.

Her mouth clapped shut.

"They will blame the fight on us," the Totema said. His neck fur rippled in annoyance.

"But you didn't have anything to do with their territorial dispute," Talia pointed out.

"That will not matter."

They returned to the camp, and Talia spent several minutes silent by Elusive's tent while the Totema arranged for a perimeter in case the humans decided to mount a raid. Funny. Less than a day with these people, but already she felt her shoulders unknotting as Niana began to chatter on. At least here she could see and touch, smell and feel as though part of a real world.

Eventually Elusive returned. A near-tiger with a little boy on his striped back slinked off into the underbrush. The boy held a bone staff with the most peculiar sheen to Talia's eyes, letters pulsing red down its hilt. When he rattled it, both tiger and boy faded into the backdrop as though they were ghosts across paper.

"Where will we go now?" the Maiden asked, tearing her eyes away from the spot where they disappeared.

"I do not know. Come. I will commune with the others for a solution, and I would like you to try and listen in."

"How do I do that?"

"I will teach you the meditation."

He led her into his tent, already fogged with white-orange smoke that tasted of spring honeysuckle and clung to her clothes like morning dew. She bowed to his seer, a rheumy and mangy old woman with tiger ears and gnarled paws instead of hands, and settled to the pillows. The seer fanned the incense fire with a small paper clamped between her awkward mitts. Over the next hour, Elusive instructed her on postures, breathing exercises, and chants of the People to focus her mind and tap into the flow of the collective. Many of them required or suited non-human postures, and she settled on simple cross-legged with her hands in her lap. Her sarong pooled over her knees, and she found her eyes tracing the hem over and over as the honeydew filled her nose and the world started to waver.

Trees, river, and the People - tides and waters flowing around her. She felt afloat, rocking with the tide - what Elusive had called "the first layer". Gradually, she gathered up each of the notes and strung them into a stronger melody. The entire region was one song, from the squalls of the trade post to the taste of ash from the volcano. This autumn's ash would congeal in the spring floods, and the waters would push the fertile soils a tad farther. The flood plains ecosystem would expand, patient over the years, until it claimed the entire length of river.

Second layer. She could feel the ambient mana of life around, from the constant seep of bacteria breeding to the foul-tasting spike from a deer butchered for dinner. Most the energy passed within bodies, cell to cell, even when a predator ate prey. Yet some tiny fraction flared with those pivotal moments – birth, orgasm, death – and flowed into the air to join the greater currents. For the beastmen, that mana flowed directly into Elusive, as though he was a fuzzy battery. No, more like a processing plant or an electrical transformer.

Further, deeper - this should be the third layer. She should have found herself in what Elusive described as a large empty cavern, full of conversations. With concentration, she should have been able to zoom in on any words and join in, networking as many or as few as she desired.

"Be careful, though," Elusive had cautioned. "Eavesdropping is very easy. We are not a private people. Do not advocate desire for a mate if you are not prepared for many courtships."

She had blushed at that.

Instead, all she could hear was the crackle of the world in motion. Beyond, a distant storm boomed and heaved - lightning storms snapping at a tiny, fragile island of sanity. A symphony without orchestration, expending as much effort pounding itself with noise as attacking the island. Utter chaos. The flimsiest of barriers held back the inevitable flood, a patchwork lattice of mana that reminded her of a dragon's overlapping scales. Where could such ferocious, protective energy originate, and who maintained them?

Putting her questions aside, she listened harder and slowed her breathing to glacial pace. The world obliged, stretching into Other-time. Lifetimes and countries shrank to grains of sand, and the orchestra began to resolve. Factions rose from the heaving war. Sea rushed up full of water and brine to crash into earth molten and resolute; crystals ambushed both, and all three died to the sudden surge of electricity's snap. The crust heaved, collapsing into a bed of lava, and then spat up full grown mountains littered with snow. The clashing notes were more than energy - they were archetypes. Raw fragments of a planet, built and thrown into a blender. Mountain, forest, water – each one wanted to expand infinity and fought for dominance.

Nothing, no one, could survive in that soup. Not even the Totemic ability to counter Havoc in small degrees would afford them an ounce more life in that maelstrom.

Wait. Who said that the People were resistant to Havoc? (Inverse resonance crashes into the Havoc code, forcing it into set channels which diverge around a defined area, a voice seemed to lecture.)

It was a necessary correction. A woman's sweet voice, forceful. Dryads and the People received aether modifications designed to protect them against the Havoc bombardment. An anchor for each – land for Dryads, Totemic spirits for the beasts. Humanity remained a test case, and we did not expect them to survive those early years.

Talia tried to twist, but she couldn't find meaning to the idea of movement amongst the raging chaos. It surrounded her now, far out to sea, far out from Elusive's safe tent.

In a deeper sea now, each note was a primordial explosion, the sound of stars dying and entire skies flickering in and out.

-I'll drown here, and even the idea of me will be strewn to the winds!- panicked the Maiden.

Something latched on and dragged her up. The chaos and noise receded, leaving a stark silence to smother her. Her neck prickled – someone else nearby in the sanctuary even if she could not see.

-Please. I'm sorry I'm so ignorant. Are you...a god?-

The voice laughed, and an aurora of stars spilled from its lips. Sound made sight, the stranger was the night sky folded into a woman's voluptuous silhouette. Her hair hummed up and down the octaves as it swished. Talia knew that she, too, would appear spun from stardust and song. Hers would be a clash of sepia and ember, all jumbled up, like a nebula.

You're not dead, little Sleeping Beauty.

-What?- Behind them, a clarion call gave birth to a new sun in a wave of fire.

Your Totema friend means well enough, if a bit driven to prove his pet theory, but you won't be able to take him with you to the end. Look below to the forces that rage in that insanity and tell me that you think he could survive it for even a breath.

Talia did. She surveyed the world, an incredible sea of Havoc with a half dozen floundering islands across its surface like scabs. Her star-eyes picked out the tiniest blip in a far island with eagle precision. Suddenly the shadow-woman and she both zoomed down, landing amongst men and city streets. A young man was in the center of a procession, hands in shackles and back bent. People lining the streets jeered at him as a priest behind administered savage lashes. The scene ran in slow motion, letting Talia spot how when the young man tripped, the gag - almost more like a horse's bridal - that too many prisoners before had chewed on finally snapped. It left a deep gash as it recoiled, and the man tipped back his head to howl.

"Havoc!"

Stardust and the ripple of song surged from the very air into the man. Like a hole in the dike, the madness sea that surrounded the island spewed through. Its myriad competing elements jockeyed to manifest, and titanium won. The metal boiled outwards, transforming the man and his tormentor into statues. Ravenous, it spread outwards, reaching for the crowds who recoiled.

"No!" Talia cried. "Don't let it have them!"

Watch.

The titanium seemed like it would spread outwards forever, swelling until it ate the entire island, and it latched onto the first two fingers of an unfortunate old man shoved forward by the crowd's backwards heave. The fingers solidified, and then...the titanium chord ran out of air, like a singer out of breath. It collapsed into itself, sucked down the drain, and took Talia with it.

The shadow-woman grabbed after Talia in surprise, but the Maiden was already down into a dark fog. A dream mist, silence full of anticipation, all the worlds and stars held in its depths. She would pull latent strings, and the notes that sounded would tell her the secrets of existence. Yet gravity forced her past that, along a spiral towards a hole at its base. Deeper still than the beginning of time, a cut-out of not against the mist.

A doorway. A black hole. An Abyss.

Whether she liked it or not, the tide dragged her closer. Her toes hovered just above, and she screamed.

"Don't let it--"

**********

Elusive came out of the communion with his elders somewhere after midnight, ears perking at the last crickets of the season outside his tent. He stretched, still unsatisfied, and glanced to Talia. "Were you successful?"

She did not answer, meditating cross-legged.

He frowned. "Talia. Wake."

She did not.

-Please, ancient ones, do not let me have damned her!- He snarled, but stopped short of touching her. What if she was in the deep meditations, where his interruption could shatter her mind like a vase?!

"Marjoly, more honeydew!" he spat. "More! Keep it flowing until she wakes!"

His seer bowed her head and stirred more into the pot, sending a new gust of the smoke through the tent.

-Dammit, Talia. Wake up!-

For three days and nights, he prowled the campsite, watching the Maiden's body neither shift nor blink. The children scowled as they mixed more honeydew twice a day; extracting it created a smell like human sewage crossed with burning pitch. Tuned to their Totema's distress, the adults struggled to reign in their feral urges. The days were unpleasant.

-Certainly my first dives into the collective were difficult. I could not best the bestial pains and the memories of my old jungle. Is that where she is? Is she caught in the web of her own past, seeking anchor?-

The Maiden's scream sent him bolting into the tent. Her body seized, back arched, and feet pedaled wildly. Elusive screamed in her ear, yet she swatted at him blindly. Lost in the fog.

-I hope for both of us this is right.-

He backhanded her at full force. The blow bounced her across the rug, and for a moment he feared his own strength. Then she snapped upright, shook her head, and jumped into his arms, sobbing like a child in night terrors.

"Thank you! Oh, thank you, Elusive!"

"Y-you are welcome," he growled, gruff with relief.

"It was...I was...thank you." Her cheek was blotching purple, but the girl did not seem to care.

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"I apologize for hitting you." When she nodded slightly, he moved right ahead. "What could you hear?"

"Hear? Well.....so much...I never had any idea it was so complex..." Her voice trailed off, sobs already replaced with a glimmer of curiosity.

Elusive sighed. "So you were not able to pierce the Network? Frustrating. I'm afraid that my colleagues were not able to offer advice on where to go, though they did spend much time offering tests for your nature."

"Where to go?" As if she had forgotten their quest. "No. That's not right. Elusive, I'm not Totema. I'm not even dead." The Maiden paused, flicking her gaze at him under sultry lashes - probably not even aware of the signal that sent right to his loins. "Do you still want me?"

He forced his blood to quiet. -No. I cannot risk tainting her!- So he took her at face value. "Yes, I will still help you. Choose whatever direction suits your heart, and I will see you there."

Most the Totema and a chunk of his own tribe believed he was helping Talia to prove his human Totema pet theory. Silliness. That truth would reveal itself in time. He helped the Maiden because she so resembled his daughter after the Havoc. Oh, his precious cub! The world accepted that humans slid into beastmen, but so few were willing to entertain the reverse. A beast become human. Her ferocious little tigress, naked of her proud stripes on two legs as she staggered for a cloister door...

A long time ago, that. The scar healed, mostly. Little twinges jabbed him with Talia's tears warming his fur. His daughter cried human tears, too, unable to understand why her father forced her to a strange, two legged world. At the time, his feral mind had perceived only a threat, a stranger in his territory, and believed that his cub was dead.

Ah, to have known reason then...he would never have let her go.

"Let me Listen again," Talia said, eyes drying. "I'll stay in shallower waters...but I'm sure there's something. A clue for my path!"

He nodded. "Please do not be another three days."

But she was already back into her meditation, barely breathing. The Totema shuddered once, lust and old memories rubbing hot against each other. Already his people responded, the growls of rutting begun, and he left Marjoly fanning the honeydew with her mangy paws to join the fray and forget himself in the circle of pleasure.

**********

Norhill 715, Autumn Turning

Elder Sheena and Serge met in shadow and secrecy behind the swollen knot of bark that would soon be a new Hall for Miranda to flit about in. Echoes of the traitor queen's latest party rolled over the night, the picture of excess in a new capital composed mostly of empty houses and dirt. It was no Turning like memory, solemn meeting of the two halves of their Dryad nation. This was a circus, one only attended by sycophants. Opponents to Miranda found their families assigned to the far reaches of the Forest.

-If this is her idea of revolution, I hope never to see her actual government,- Serge thought. -Never to much to ask that she put her authority to use and actually save our nation before it crumbles into civil war and dust.-

His spines kept tearing holes in the back of his stolen Grower's robes, and he was out of patches. Snow already piled up in the ditches, turning the ground to mush during the shortening days and ice by midnight. Winter would be very harsh for the mors.

Sheena approached, wrapped in a shawl. An emerald dangled between her breasts on hemp weave. Under the King, an elder wore no sign of rank - age alone gave weight to his or her words. Miranda, however, favored as much jewelry as she could heap on. Sheena technically ranked the Second Eldest (behind Miranda herself), despite being barely thirty five years old. Benefits of being the queen's mother and all.

The average elder, well into his second century before joining the prestigious councils, took such promotions as one more reason to ignore Miranda in every way possible. They grew bolder.

Serge found himself scowling, his mind ready to explode into ranting about damned elders and their utter failure as a ruling class. Dryads were meant to roam free, answering only to the King who listened for the Forest's will!

"Thank you for coming, Serge," she said, sketching a bow. "I know its a risk for you to be here."

"Nah. I was coming this direction anyways." He shrugged, an attempt at casual.

"Yes...my daughter. She isn't doing very well, is she?" Sheena smiled weakly - more a grimace, caught between disappointment and love.

"I'm not here to kill her," Serge said. He tried for civility, but the words came out barbed. "I want the truth of what happened in that tree on Spring Turning, and to do that, I will wake the Maiden."

Sheena let out a tiny sigh of relief. "Thank you. I...had feared the worst."

-I never said I didn't want to kill her. I want to feed her eyes to dogs and hang her for the crows, the little simpering bitch. But that won't clear my little sister's name, so she gets to sleep a night or two more.-

"If that is your goal, then I know something that may help you along the path. Please wait here."

Serge did, counting the minutes. His fingers buzzed and neck began to ache, sure signs of impending Hibernation. His hidden nest waited several miles away. If Sheena wanted to betray him, all she had to do was dawdle until he no longer had the strength to run.

Yet the Elder returned despite his fears, and she handed him a small bundle containing a loop of poison nettles, preserved with the nettleberries still on the fig.

"What is this?"

Sheena smiled. "Though the King and Queen may be long lived, they are not immortal. There must be an alternative way to reach the Maiden for the new Choosing."

"This is one of those things that I should die for daring to learn, right?" Serge said, grinning now. -The answer is in my hands!-

"Oh, definitely. You can buy five such secrets from an elder for fixing his leaky roof. What would become of our proud people if they realized how very little Yanu values us?"

Serge grinned even wider, reaching out to embrace Sheena. "Thank you, Elder. I will get to the truth."

She replied as he turned to run for his Hibernate nook. "Please do not hate my Miranda. She is just a child, thrown into power and responsibility she was never prepared for."

He could not pretend to forgive, so he pretended not to hear.

-Glisinda, the winter will be long. Just survive as best you can! Come spring, I swear that this will all be a horrible memory. There will be justice.-

**********

"High up the mountains to the east, where the trees end," Talia said, "there is a sound, like someone singing with a voice broken by crying." Though she exerted herself for several hours, she found no trace of any sky-shadow women. She skirted away from the deeper layers of meditation, concentrating on the immediate. A lucky shift in the wind brought the quiet lament to her attention, and the girl found no other clues to follow.

Elusive, Marjoly, and the several of the older beastmen nodded. Talia did not know most their names, though she recognized the woman who she bathed beside and Niana's father.

"I don't know what it is, but that's what I heard. And..." She gulped. "I want to go investigate."

She waited, fighting down the urge to fidget like a child on a stool. -There. Out in the open, I want to do this. I'll take control of my own destiny.-

Niana's father spoke. "That land is harsh. Winter arrives early with driving snows and perpetual gloom. We cannot take the tribe into those conditions at this time of year.”

"When will the weather clear?" Talia asked. She was trying very hard to be a part of the debate - not simply a burden on the tribe to carry.

"Mid-summer, most likely."

"Is there another route?"

"You must pass through Lydia. It is the only breach in the mountains; they drive from the Edge of Yandra down south into the Rainbow Sea north.”

Part of her wondered what a Rainbow Sea looked like, but she chided herself for drifting off. "Okay."

Elusive shifted. "The others tell me that the land east of here is tormented by a great monster. The humans won't touch it.”

"That's good, right? I know you guys don't get along well with them..."

One of the men spat, and two of his fellows shook their heads as if to say "This girl is daft".

Talia gulped again and forced herself to sit up straight. -If I don't speak out, they won't listen. If I don't act like an adult, I won't be treated like one!- "I do not know exactly what the noise represents, but I know that it sounded important! Familiar, even. Please, Elusive. It was all I could find.”

After a long pause, Elusive nodded. "Very well. Dango is correct. We cannot take the tribe into that climate on our supplies. Dango - you, your sons, and their fellows will remain with the tribe alongside the women and children. No, do not bristle so. I do not insult. You can smell as well as I that three of our women have quickened. Would you leave them untended?" The men bowed their heads. "Thank you. Meanwhile, a small party of us will accompany the Maiden up the mountain side to investigate this music. Go prepare."

People scattered. The Totema pulled his seer to the side and began to whisper into her ear, leaving Talia alone with the one sleek tigress. So ripe, relaxed on her pillow.

The Maiden kept a secret curled up in her defensive posture. Her Listening had not completely faded with her meditation. If she closed her eyes, she could hear thrums of ochre and orange that made up the tigress, a little seed of blood nestled in its center and dividing itself at a blinding rate.

-She's pregnant.-

A hand on her forearm startled Talia back to reality. The tigress clasped her wrist, smiling. "You did a good job."

"Thank you."

With a final squeeze, the tigress departed. Elusive returned to tell her that they left in the morning. Dango stalked about, annoyed at her. The world moved on, and Talia laid back to stare at the tent poles. When she slept, she dreamed of crickets and jade woods that unfurled one twisted path at a time.

**********

Moving east of the camp, Elusive's band arrived at jagged land that climbed in elevation quickly, facing into snow-capped peaks that stretched the horizon. Winter began early in these lands, and the clouds above brought with them a smattering of snow. Drifts of the powder lurked in the shadowed recesses. Those beastmen who maintained enough humanity to desire clothes pulled their cloaks tight and ducked their head.

They forded the camp's glacial tributary several miles northeast, and a misstep left Talia's foot sodden and her teeth chattering. She never knew water could be so cold and yet flow.

After noon, the clouds smacked them with a miserable storm. They slogged up, snow-blinded and huffing, for hours. Shortly before dark, the storm broke, and the camp huddled around a miserable little fire. Climbing up more than forward, they spied the distant glow of the home camp below and bit back discouragement. Talia attempted to Listen through the gale, but the half-note faded in and out from all around.

In the morning, the world was freshly buried, stray flakes still coasting down. Elusive cast his gaze up and sighed. "If we push, we will perhaps break the tree line early tomorrow."

The slope grew steeper, boulders punctuating the snowdrifts, and in the afternoon they moved into a torn ravine above the slender river rapids, moving foot over foot with their hands clenching the brush for balance. Then they crawled up boulders so steep that at points Talia hung from her frozen fingertips, waiting for the tiger above to pull her up. (At least, she thought, she did not have to worry about rocks tumbling free from her weight.) Dusk began too early, the troupe exhausted, downtrodden, and without shelter for a night that promised another blizzard.

Perhaps the monster thought it caught them unawares as they rounded yet another twisted turn between shattered rocks. Certainly, Talia screamed and backpedaled like a doe. The beastmen at the fore rolled out of its way, coming up behind the creature. It was a good ten foot high of broiling black smog in a vaguely human shape, twin embers for eyes. Tendrils snaked from its backside to whip at the beastmen, gouging the snow where each had been.

Snow churned into mud, a roil of the creature's claws and jaws snapping at the tails of beastmen who pounced and leaped like liquid. Talia watched in awe from over Elusive's protective shoulder as the beastmen bounded from three sides, ripping deep into the smog.

Not that it helped. Their adversary exuded more smoke and swiped back.

Some silly part of Talia wondered to herself. -So it's smoke can hurt us, but we cannot touch it? Unfair!-

Elusive rumbled. "This is futile. Use it."

Talia glanced up, but he did not explain.

One of the beastmen - Sanja or some such? - reached to pull a rod from its strap across his back. The Maiden had never thought much of it, not any more than the thousand other unfamiliar tools these nomads saddled themselves with. He grasped it with both hands like a bat and swung it hard into the creature's writhing midsection.

Sharp as a crystal, the rod sang out. Its sound washed over Talia like knives, and she clamped her hands over her ears. A jumble of notes, squeals, and deep pulses - like being hit in the face with an entire composition in one breath. If she could decompress it, the melodies would pour out. Instead, it slammed her senseless.

When her eyes opened a few moments later, her ears rang too much to hear Elusive. One last tendril of smog snaked up the western cliff face, retreating at full speed, and the rod thrummed with indigo electricity.

"..." Elusive said.

"What? Is it gone?"

"..."

She shook her head. "I can't hear!"

He gave her an odd look, but dutifully guided her onwards. An hour or so later, she could start to hear the world again, though a migraine blossomed between her temples that put her in no mood to discuss the experience. She spent the night huddled in her furs, wincing at every flicker of the camp fire, trying to gingerly pick apart the notes of that sound with little success.

**********

Above the tree line, the ceaseless wind taught Talia that numb was only a step along the journey to a frozen death. The tribe around her shivered, fur rippling under a coat of snow, and they had to stop frequently to rest. Air seemed like a distant memory, each inhale only worth half as much. The world from mountain to Forest opened before them – when the damned clouds broke for a few precious seconds. In short, she hated the mountains.

Perhaps if she abandoned the Totema's band, whatever Other-logic let her dance on the frozen peaks of the Forest in a slip would save her from frostbite, but she refused to consider such a thing.

To her aggravation, at each stop Elusive forced her to settle into a light trance and Listen for new clues. Now she was guide, faced with a canvas of stone, ice, and storm, and the responsibility kept her stomach in a knot.

Beside her walked Sanja, the rod once more amongst his climbing hooks and extra furs. She glanced over. "May..I see that?"

He glanced at Elusive for permission and offered it.

She expected it to erupt in the lightning again, but instead it buzzed lightly in her palms like a happy puppy. “What is it?”

"An Artifact," Sanja said. "Sacred relics of our people."

"How was it made?" She traced the runes down its side, marveling at how each one lit up after she touched it.

Elusive declined to mention that not even he could see the runes while the rod was dormant. Instead, he offered, "By great sacrifice. They are few, and many tribes have warred to steal a potent artifact from a rival.”

Talia stopped, the cold and wind forgotten. Holding out her hand, she smiled as tiny lightning arced back and forth from her fingertips to the rod. Their party staggered to a halt, all staring at the girl now, as she whispered, "Its singing to me of its history."

Songs of a thousand lands and a thousand years. The rod was alive, as much as she or a tree. It didn't just accumulate power, holding it separate as a bowl held water; it joined the mana, distilled and refined, into a new entity.

"Its beautiful," she said. Reluctantly, she handed it back to Sanja, and the runes died the moment it left her grasp. "Let's keep going. I know we're close."

Sure enough, soon they found the cave entrance, little more than an outcropping to block the wind and a two foot hole into the mountainside. Sanja edged in first, Talia right behind, and the entrance broadened into an atrium of...Hey, where did Sanja go?

She twisted around, but she was alone in the atrium. "Sanja? Elusive!"

Another full, frantic turn, and the crack which led outside was gone as well. "Balls!"

Trapped, deep in the dung now. She gulped and started forward, following the atrium's walls by a flicker of reflected orange light. Someone ahead gave a withered cough, and pushing through another squeeze in the rocks brought Talia into a smoky living area. Of the people she could have expected, a puny grandma with a face like sour grapes was low on the list. The crone boiled pine needles in a slimy pot, two bowls of broth already out by her knee.

"Would you like some?" asked the crone ever so nicely.

"No thank you." Talia fingered her hem, shoulders to the tunnel. Closing her eyes, she Listened - the crone emitted a whisper broken by tears. Her goal was a hag? Fighting back disappointment, she delved deeper. The whisper expanded, flowing around her, almost choking. Thick as fog, foul as rot, a smog to coat the lungs...

"You're that monster!" The Maiden staggered back to flee, but hit a blank rock wall.

"I am, dear heart. But do you know where I come from?" One wrinkled eye lifted, the pupils flecked with blood.

"I don't care. I came to find help, not to be trapped in a room with a beast."

"Oh ho? You who brought those beasts into my home! They ignore my territory - it is my right to defend it!" Her outline fuzzed, a picture out of focus, with smog around the edges. "If you have a bargain to ask, best make it!"

"Wha...a bargain?" Talia's inner cynic rose. -Of course. I got so pampered by Elusive's effulgence, I forgot that in the real world people always want to take more than they give.-

"I think I would part with a secret or two, perhaps, for your pretty hair."

Brushing a finger through the plain brown locks, Talia frowned. "What do you know?"

"Oh ho! To learn that, I want your pretty eyes."

"And just what are you even going to do with my eyes?!"

"Devour them," the crone purred.

"I will give you nothing!" Talia cried, pressing flush to the wall. Her knees trembled.

The crone's outline shivered in anger, but the wrinkled visage stayed frozen sour. "Very well. Then we shall be company for a very long time. For I will not let you out unless you pay me for the door." When that didn't get a response, she added. "Perhaps I will leave you here and go remind the runts outside who owns this land?"

Talia gulped. "I have nothing to pay with."

"Oh, don't say that! Perhaps an old memory pains you? I will take it off your hands. I can make you beautiful or powerful if only you'll have a mind for it..."

"You are not the first one to trade me ease for more dear things!" Talia spat, surprising herself with the steel in her voice. A stubborn fire in her chest began to simmer, granting unexpected strength. "State terms of trade that are worthwhile or not at all!"

Stifling a snarl, the crone growled. "Fine, little brat. I will take the Artifact for that which you seek."

Before the Maiden could ask, she felt the weight of the rod in her hand, thrumming against her thumb. Where did it come from? Another trick of the Other-place? "But...it is not mine to give."

"It chose to come with you, not the Beast. Would you deny it? Come now. As you dawdle, your friends outside freeze in the growing storm.."

Talia hesitated a moment longer, and then thrust the Artifact forward. "I agree."

How fast the crone snaked over to snatch it out of her grasp, and in its place left a cracked wooden flute. The woodwork was clumsy and nicked, and no notes would play from its cracked tube. "What is this?"

The crone cackled. "It is what you heard, what you sought! A half note, a shade of memory!" She cradled the rod close, its runes beginning to glow.

Indeed, the flute emitted a soft, shattered note. A wounded animal, or the keen of a toy left behind. Listening close, Talia could hear her own voice from long ago. This voice was childish, no more than six or seven, caught in the cycle back towards sleep, and it bubbled over with stutters. It welled up in her heart, chanting simple lyrics. "Maiden sleeping in the fields, the world spins round and round. Maiden sleeping in the tower, world falls down and down. Maiden sleeping walks her dreams, the world grows dark and darker. Maiden sleeping in the stars, maiden sleeping smiling home again!"

-Home.-

Thunder pealed through the cavern, wrenching her attention to the crone who bathed in mana's purple lightning. The dancing power deepened the shadows of each wrinkle to a ravine, reducing the face to a jumble of peaks and scars. "Foolish child, you trade poorly! You traded not for safety from me, nor asked to learn my nature!"

An arc of electricity slammed into Talia's upthrown arms. It shattered the flute into splinters and tossed her against the stone.

"My song!" Talia sagged to the floor, scooping a handful of wood chips.

“I will eat you whole, and armed with your aether I will return to the Forest to take what was denied me, all those years ago!” It expected an easy kill, far from Yanu's protective vines.

-Aether? The aether drive? I know that word. Its...an engine for mana. With it, our bodies can tap into the power...-

Talia felt something very strange, confronted by the cackling hag. Something she had always been too scared or self-absorbed to know before. Her heart beat faster, drumming in her temples, and her vision narrowed. She was angry! No, she was pissed off!

She caught the next bolt and swallowed it whole into a sudden hunger as boundless as the sky. A shiver of fear passed before the crone's flecked eyes. Talia moved forward, compelled by the vista opening inside her mind.

There was a second purpose to this cave, this chamber, obscured by time. Runes, etched in rainbow brilliance across the mountain's innards, channeled mana into a great canopy to the sky. Like a river into the sky, it fed the lattice of dragon scales that restrained the Havoc seas from crushing solid land. A resonance chamber, one of hundreds, the floodgates that held the world from complete collapse.

Now the Maiden diverted its flow, the runes ripping from the stone to float in a corona around her body. The monster fell back, terror clear in its eyes.

Outside, Elusive and his men huddled into a tiny ball and prayed to survive as Havoc erupted from nowhere. The storm blew from the peak, rippling over the landscape, replacing constant snow with the insanity of liquid shapes. The Totema called on all his reserves to shield his men, a bubble of stability on an angry sea.

"You spoke truth, haggard crone!" Talia spat. "I did not trade for safety, and for you there will be none!"

Her runes shot out to pierce the crone's body at the joints, and they lit with celestial radiance to incinerate that husk. Then they floated back, and on a sudden whim Talia began to rearrange them.

The Maiden did not question why she knew how to configure them, no more than her innate understanding of Elusive's tongue or how to activate an Artifact. She merely focused on a goal, fingers dancing the intermediate steps in mastery, and in moments the runes grafted onto the chamber walls in their new configuration.

Havoc seas vanished outside. The Totema rose on shaky legs to look over peaks lightly snowed, a bowl of mountain ringing a deep valley still ripe with autumn. Instead of a land so harsh that no man wanted it, he spied overflowing bounty in lush greenery and broad, calm rivers. A paradise waiting for claim. He laughed in satisfaction. -Good sun and moon, no ritual – no magic of ours – could ever do so much to grace this land!-

"Do you like my gift?"

He whipped around to see a sagging Talia. Splinters in her hands bled, and she looked rung out like a week's insomnia, but she was smiling.

"It is a gift too much for any king!” Elusive crowed.

"Its yours."

"What?"

She laughed. "Its nice to see you being the clueless one for once."

"Mine? But the People do not claim territory."

"Oh, you're so full of shit. If you don't 'claim' it, then 'steward' it, alright?"

He gaped at the prim little Maiden. She's getting some spunk in her...

Sanja stepped forward anxiously. "Talia...I lost you in a warren. My deepest apologies!"

She shook her head. "It was a trap especially for me. You didn't know."

"The Artifact?"

"In there somewhere." She shivered. "I need to rest."

As Sanja scampered inside to recover the rod, Talia let the party lay out furs and a fire. The night was clear, no sign of a blizzard, and she could see all the stars laid before her.

This time when she slept, she dreamed of a home in a place as beautiful as those diamonds in the heavens.

**********

Winter's snow fed a highlands lake at the northern edge of the gentle valley. From there, water split to the east and west, twin rivers cutting through the mountains. Instead of a brutal, deadly climb over peaks with scarce air, a man could walk from the shattered lands of old Norhill to the savage lands on the eastern side of the divide with nothing more than a decent slope. Oh, how the humans would tremble at this new pass, disrupting their carefully laid geopolitics. (Elusive particularly hoped that the trading post who spurned them earlier that week was under water now.)

East. Beastman lands, the worst pickings. Though all three races were born together at the foot of the Cradle - in the tongue of the gods, "Norhill" - the dryads soon withdrew to the west, and the humans forced the People of the Well from sight. East of the Lydian range, the world was a rough place. Humans were the submissive ones, huddled in their tents praying for Havoc to pass them by, and the People roved in their great tribes. Further one traveled from the Cradle, the worse the lands faired. Less fertile, less stable, Havoc storms of increasing strength and frequency. Defeated tribes sometimes found themselves pushed so far from the wheel of the world that they perished in the great Havoc hurricanes of the Edge, the very ground under their feet destroyed.

Get a big enough storm, and not even the magic of the Totema meant a damn.

Elusive watched an elk at the water's edge, placid as it drank, and contemplated. Six days past, the storm on that mountain top had been like the Edge of the world: a torrent of elemental forces, malevolent as they clashed in explosions of light and sound, while his magic strained and unraveled to maintain the very souls of his men. Forces like those could swallow a person as easily as blink and notice even less.

-Talia caused that. She controlled it.-

A wolf's scent drifted down the wind. The elk noticed and bounded off. The pack which had meant to make him their dinner glowered at their clumsy omega, and Elusive smiled. -Poor thing.-

She made a land for him. A home for the People. He climbed the peak the day after to find no hint of cave on the summit. However, the day was clear, and in the distance his eyes could squint out the hump that remained of Norhill. The wheel of the world, so close he could almost smell it. "Oh, child, you have no idea of how you give..."

The other major tribes would begin to arrive by the turn of spring - their first meeting outside the Network for many years, and so close to home at that! In the meantime, Elusive called upon a bundle of dust and wind from the very bowels of their collective memory...

"You say this woman-child dances runes on her fingertips?" asked the First. Its voice came in wheezes, similar to the wind through a hole in a rock. Long ago, the First sat beside the gods themselves, watching over the birth of the world; he was, however, long vanished. These remnants were just that...echoes.

"Yes, great father. She also created a Havoc storm like the Edge of creation and controlled it to give us a new land."

"Ah..." It wheezed several times until Elusive feared the echoes had caught in a rut. "Perhaps the gods prepare to walk again."

"Father?"

"It is said that in the making of the world, dissent amongst the gods led to catastrophe. Six were lost to the gods, plummeting from the heavens. The corpses of three became the earth, air, and sea. Three more scattered before the Havoc winds, lost altogether, and heard from no more.>

The Totema paused, watching a branch float past his toes. "You imply that Talia is divine?"

"Do you know what Talia means in the old tongue?"

"No, father."

"Sleeping Beauty."

With a final wheeze, the echoes subsided. Elusive, tail whipping the water, chewed the words without satisfaction until the sun set.

**********

Niana tried to show Talia how to snag fish from the river with bare hands, but the Maiden really wasn't up to task. Even if she could react that fast, the fish felt slick like snot and the water froze her ankles. She cursed and gave up, tromping back up to the new lakeside camp.

-I glance at the trees, the water, the mountains, and I think, Its unreal.-

She found Elusive waiting inside the tent that was her new home. Other than her grass-stuffed mat and a few tokens the tribe children made to welcome her, it was bare. The roof leaned together into a point, and Elusive filled the space with fur and muscle.

"Hi." Still annoyed from the fish, she nevertheless curtsied to the Totema.

He smiled. "Hey. Let's talk about things, alright?"

Taking a breath, she smiled back. "Sure. I'm up for it." Well, not really, but for Elusive she'd try.

"I'm well aware of what it is like to become something, but have no idea what that thing is. To roam the world, confused in a daze, thinking yourself alone." He sank to the mat, motioning her beside him. "One of the things I always wished in those first days was that someone would have been more open about their thoughts. I met People - other Totema, even - who knew what we were, yet they kept silence out of some misplaced ideal of self-discovery."

She nodded, waiting for him to wind up and drop whatever bomb he held.

"You would not even have recognized me then. I was so fiercely angry with everyone, prowling in blood fury. Really, it was a miracle I survived long enough to begin understanding my new existence..." Seeing her blank look, he shook his head. "I am sorry. What I mean to say is - I am proud of you."

As the Maiden began to stammer in embarrassment, he pulled her into a hug. She stiffened like a scared mouse. Elusive was solid and warm, his heartbeat loud and fur sleek. Slowly, Talia thawed, laying her head across his shoulder.

When he released, she felt fuzzy, giddy, and a little confused. "What did you find out?"

"I spoke with the Firstborn of all Totema, and he..." The Totema paused, chewing on his lip. "Talia, the chamber you describe is a chamber of the gods. Only they can find it. Only they can use it."

She almost laughed. "What?! But I found it right in the open!>

He nodded. "Exactly. There is a connection between you and divine figures of history..." Despite his earlier words, he did not share his most private conclusion. -I believe you to be the sleeping goddess lost long ago, dear sleeping beauty.-

"Well....it seems kind of far fetched," Talia admitted, "But it would be kind of neat." Then she would belong somewhere, at least, in the vast hierarchy of the universe. "What were they called?"

As Elusive spoke, for the first time in memory spoken word matched the language she thought in. It knocked her askew. For a moment, Elusive's tongue became strange, a mixture of growls and body language as alien as chatting with a rock. In its place rose her language.

"Dela vertita machien," he growled out. Other words followed after that in the tiger tongue.

The door to her memories swung wide, lighting her soul. Shadows and dust fell back before her realization, and in a moment erased who she was. She expected such a thing to hurt, but instead it felt like the wondrous release of bonds. As if her soul leaped from a cliff and exulted in the wind.

-I'm broken,- Talia realized, surprisingly calm. -There are parts of me missing. Names. Faces. Meanings.- She scanned the vastness of her history, far more than a mortal girl could lay claim to, and marked the craters from stolen memories. An old man with a weathered and twisted crown of vine; a young nymph with horns and a secretive smile; others, faces whose names waited on the tip of her tongue. Too many years in Yanu's embrace, an ignorant child playing the same games over and over.

Talia laughed at the enormity. "No, no! That's not a name! That means Arc of Heaven."

All the Totema heard was babble, overrunning with giggles.

With an effort like damming a river, Talia pushed her tongue back into the tiger language - now aware of how silly she looked, growling and pawing at the air. "The Arc of Heaven. Its the name of a vessel."

"And how exactly do you know that?" Elusive growled. He did not much like being left out of the loop.

"The power of names,” Talia mused. “Dela vertita machien.”

Doors of her mind thrown ajar, Talia began to narrate her story, watching the moon crest the mountains.

**********

"Have you ever lived somewhere vast, but only seen a fraction of it? That's what the Arc was like. Gigantic, but irrelevant. Full of marvels and miracles that would shake the races of this land's very understanding of life, but I never checked. I received the basics in education, despite my will, and learned about , , , and such, but it meant very little to me. Others worried about that stuff. Took care of absolutely everything."

"Guess I was just spoiled."

"I remember being in my room, staring out the window into space. You'd think of it more like a personal garden. The plants were...smarter, I guess. Better. They could form any furniture I would ever need, from a bed to a latrine. Outside, the blazing sun filled most the view, obscuring the thousand stars beyond. The window displayed a projection of the world that would soon hang in the emptiness, a jewel ready for life...

"We were close to our destination, and I felt very nervous. I fittered with my hair, trying to ignore the bundle of cloth laying in a corner. White and gleaming and perfect. I'd be wearing it soon, the first one to set foot on the new land..."

"I don't know exactly how it works, but I do know that building a world takes sacrifice. I'd seen it before - three would leave together, floating into the dark. There would be a flash, and in their place would be a ripe world - atmosphere, seas, and lands all lush. The older ones, they'd tell me that those three would sleep as long as the world lived. I never believed them. None of my play friends who agreed to leave came back to the Arc. Ever."

"As far as I was concerned, they were just dead."

"Don't think ill of the Arc. No one forced us to build these planets. We did it for the same reason a mother knits for her favored children. Countless species waited in the bowels of the Arc, frozen and dreaming of their new home. Some, like the Dryads, we found on dying worlds and gave a second chances. Others, we created.”

"Guess that's a mark against me, huh?"

"No matter how I dreaded its arrival, the fated day came. I remember stepping off the Arc. The Arc was vast overhead, covering most the sky in gleaming opal. Behind me stood the elders, and I kept trying not to trip on the hem of my dress. Christen a new world by doing a faceplant; wouldn't that be a sight? So I took a deep breathe and stepped from my home onto waiting, empty loam."

"They never told me how it could hurt. It was like swallowing a molten pebble, bathing in a vat of boiling oil. I fought and tore and screamed against a terrible pressure that wanted to crush me into dust, and in the end I won. But the world...oh, my world...all our technology tore asunder, pouring out to whip across the face of creation in fury. Whatever flaw the world found in me, it crumbled into chaos. The Arc's influence saved the Cradle, but the vast majority of the planet descended into insanity."

"I wish the elders would have degraded me. They didn't. Instead, they just went about the task of unloading the cargo - that being the first of the People, humans, and Dryads. They let me sit in the loam, now green with weeds, and weep, while they made adjustments to the species. Each species received a miniature version of the aether drive, allowing them to tap into a fraction of the elemental forces that we wield with such ease. Otherwise, how else could they expect the children to survive in such an unforgiving landscape?>

"I wasn't on it. I couldn't stand to see anyone, hear their disapproval, and I simply let it depart without me." Part of her wished they had dragged her back on board, kicking and screaming. At least that would have meant they cared.

"With so little stable land, the Arc did its best to scatter the populace around. Every inch counted when only four percent of the surface could sustain life. It wasn't long before population pressures exploded, and war broke out. At the time, I lived among the Dryads, sulking in the recesses of their groves that reminded me of my room in the Arc, and when the humans burned the groves...I expended the last of my influence to create a grove the humans couldn't burn. Yanu, the Dryad word for Forest. In those days, it was a tremendous swath of land, and the Dryads would rule the world based on its power for the next fifteen hundred years.>

“I left everything in the hands of Yanu and their first Queen. Then...well...I fell asleep...and here I am.”

**********

Talia left unsaid the shame. -I crafted the Forest, not because I cared about the Dryads, but because it reminded me of my room. I delved into its very heart, and I begged the nascent intelligence there to let me sleep forever, undisturbed, until no one remembered my guilt.-

-I created Yanu, and I surrendered myself in the prison that has held me these last four thousand long years.-

Elusive leaned over to wipe away her tears. "What were your people called?"

"Stars." She sniffled. "I was born in the molten thunder at the heart of a sun as it died, which was itself born from a star before that, from a star before that, stretching back into the depths of time." Her cheeks felt ruddy and eyes swollen. "I know...I don't look it, do I?"

He beamed. "When you smile, I'd say you shine."

"So...you believe me?"

"Dear child, to me you are Talia, and that is good enough."

She hiccuped. "What a non-answer."

The tent rustled, and with a start Talia spotted Niana eavesdropping from the door. "You little witch!"

"I told you we were not a private people," Elusive chided. "When the Totema tribes arrive in a few weeks, your tale will be retold to them as well."

"Great..."

He squeezed her shoulder. "Knowledge is a powerful thing, child. They will take you seriously or face my wrath." He paused until she brightened a little. "Now...indulge me...when the Arc left, do you remember any others staying behind?”

"No.> -I was alone.-

"The legends account for six fallen gods."

The Maiden - the Star - shrugged. "I'm no god. Things get garbled over time.”

"Thank you."

Standing, Elusive stretched. "Sleep now, child. Perhaps we will find more answers in the morning." He departed, dragging Niana after him.

Laying back, Talia felt about the new light in her mind. In one distant corner, she could remember a paper she read in her Arc room. Two names on that list of runes, letting her connect faces from that long-lost age and their names. To draw constellations in memory, making sense of chaos.

-Andreas, face gaunt and intelligence fantastic. Athos, coy and ever sneaking into my business.-

One across the hall, the other next door. Reassuring borders to her tiny world, if not exactly good friends. She tried to recall if they had given words of consolation before the Arc left. Nothing. After the wreckage of her landing, she had seen neither again.

**********

Lightning struck the crest of Norhill from a sky clear of its usual overcast of ash. The mountain responded with a terrific gout of lava, visible as a dark smear on the horizon all the way to Lydia. Prophets and dice-men gathered to agree on its ill omen, never imagining that it was just two stars chatting.

"Which do you believe will win?" asked the earth dragon.

"Andreas has the drive," replied the sky dragon, "but Talia can be very stubborn when she's not being a spoiled child."

Then they were quiet again, subsumed in their work. Their wills held the world intact; their blood fueled the resonance chamber that Talia accessed in her need and a hundred others like; the effort left them faint energy for idle talk.

Three dragons, chained to the planet that bucked under them in rebellion, who agreed on one thing. Though they should have died in the birthing, been renewed as seeds to one day grow into children of the Arc, they would hold onto their painful lives until the last. Either one of the star children would save the world, or the dragons' hearts would give from the strain. Until that day, they endured.

That same day, the People of the Well began their pilgrimage. From all over they streamed, armed against bandit and military might, following the Network's whisper of a paradise just for the People. New land, close to the Cradle and stable. Thousands came to witness the miracle. Tens of thousands came to protect the new land from the inevitable greed and jealousy of thrice-damned humans.

In their camps and throughout the Network, they steeled themselves for war. The People would reclaim the Cradle as their own, and this time no human swine would step foot on it ever again.

**********

Despite several Cycles of recovery, the mors still harvested poorly. Forest weather, usually so helpful, ignored the needs of the Cycle. New Capitol failed to shift seasons on the Turnings, instead holding the heat of summer weeks too long. Then it would shift to the worst of the colds, freezing the mature crops. Havoc raged across the western Edge, so strong no one could venture there. The Dryad magics were drying up like frogs on a rock.

surveyed the damage with dismay, movements sluggish. Oh, how she wanted to sleep! Yet she could not. The Queen needed no Hibernation. She would rise up, resolute, and lead the people to greater glory than ever!

Alone for once, the self-proclaimed queen hobbled to the thorn wall. A barrier of thicket and stinging vine, a towering mausoleum. Stopping a step beyond the reach of the poison stingers, she looked up at Yggdrasil's boughs and broke into sobs.

She screeched in anger and lashed out, kicking a rock into the brush. "Fine! Stay up in your heavens, you useless bitch! I'll fix things myself."

The Forest never noticed the outburst. It had eyes only for the girl asleep in its cradle, her veins alight with a fire of purples and reds that made her seem to glow from within.

How many times must you rediscover old wounds before you realize, Mother? I love you. I do everything for your own good. You asked me to take care of you, forever and ever! Because I love you, I will never ever let you wake! Not even if you remember...

**********

Elusive's tribe pounded away in a frenzy of preparation. When the People first asked the Totema how many would be coming, his answer was "a lot" and a shrug. Food needed to be stored, lodgings erected, pathways explored, dangers identified, and a host of other things which Talia had little experience in. She was just a shade, after all, even if she could forget as long as she stayed in the tangible circle of the camp.

She wouldn't let herself mope though. Why, the girl knew more about herself than she had in thousands of years! Talia spent many hours in the night, hands in her lap, Listening farther and wider for more signs of her people, and she found them. Distant knells from other resonance chambers feeding the lattice – though the one above the valley seemed dormant, exhausted. Occasionally, a firefly would flare upwards into her Listening, dead and dimming even as she noticed. Mortals who opened themselves to the Havoc, their aether drives allowing a hole to open for the seeking Havoc.

Others sought better understanding of the engine that opened them to the mana. Talia traversed the Academies of the Wizards by their echoes, observing their experiments in blood and magic with a critical eye. -Brutal, but a beginning. Given a few thousand years, they could make the leap from superstition to mastery. Maybe even sail the vastness on mana engines like we do.- More likely, though, they would blow themselves up, just like the Wizards of thousands years ago. What remained of those original masters? Not even a memory.

Disinterested in the weave of Wizard fighting Wizard, Talia turned her eyes to a pulsing knot of mana, like a bruise across her canvas. A peninsula of relative stability which jutted from the northwest of the island nearly to the polar cap, the pulsing nestled in a glacier floating amongst a hell of ice. The mana, upon inspection, thrummed with an undercurrent like drums, strong and steady. Quite unlike the sketchy jerks of the Academies.

That unique resonance was why she decided on the Fault as her next destination of interest.

Steeled, she approached the tiger Totema around the evening campfire. -Might as well do it in the open; everyone eavesdrops anyways.- "Elusive?"

"Yes, dear child?"

"I want to go somewhere."

"And you needed permission from me?"

"Okay, bad choice of words. I've found interest in the northwest glaciers.>

“The Fault? What the devil do you need in that haunted place?”

Elusive opened his mouth to rebuke her, but then forced it shut. -No. She is not my little girl. She is not my tribe. I do not have the right of Father.- "Much like you heard from this mountain?"

"Yes."

"Have you considered that it may be similarly dangerous?"

Talia nodded. -A hundred times while I mustered the courage to talk to you.-

"Alright. As soon as the other Totema arrive, we will organize your escort."

-No. Even a few days' Listening shows that the drums are increasing pace. What if they stop while we wait, the spell finished?- "I can't wait that long."

Terrible words came. "Dear child, the tribe cannot leave now. Spring, at the earliest. Any sooner, and we simply cannot."

"Then I'll go alone," she replied out of stubborn lips. -What if by spring there is no trace left, gone like a solstice night? What if by spring Yggdrasil's vines find me and drag me back to sleep?-

"Why are you so eager?" Elusive growled. His protective instincts demanded that he keep her safe in the valley until the other Totema arrived. A proper tribe hunkered down in winter, all wars abated until the seasons warmed.

"I have to find the rest of my memories!> the Maiden snarled back, flushing. -Every day I sit here is another chance for Yggdrasil to catch up!-

"It will do you no good to regain your memories if you die in the next breath!” Now he was shouting.

She put her lungs into out-yelling him. "What do you know about going to sleep crying because your best friends could be dead and you wouldn't even know it?! You just want to keep me here like a trophy to show off to your friends!"

"I am trying to protect you, child! You --"

"I don't want to be protected!" she shrieked. Overwhelmed, she fled the camp, crying.

Elusive snarled and lashed out, kicking the campfire and sending the embers flying. Several hit the new tents and started to smolder. His tribe surged up to grab water and blankets before a conflagration erased a week's hard work.

Staring at his outburst, the Totema swore softly. "You really are like a daughter...my dearest made me so mad I wanted to kill her sometimes, even with the simple mind of a tiger."

Talia was nowhere in sight, already down the deer path and shoulders quaking. -Fine then! I will go by myself! I'll show that pompous kitten who I am!- She stumbled over a rock and broke down crying again when her fall didn't even budge it. Feeling very sorry for herself, she turned her nose northwest and started a dejected march.

So two people who cared very much for each other managed to spend the night in utter loathing.

**********

Norhill 716, fore winter.

Talia met another Totema in Elsia's sweeping plains. A raven, the Totem proved helpful at helping the Maiden avoid the dangers of the Other-land at first. While she appreciated tips on how to avoid nightmare pits and the marauding spirits of unjustly killed beastmen, she skipped camp on the raven when Elusive made contact over the Network. The tiger no doubt wanted his Totema brother to drag Talia back to the mountains like an errant brat.

The raven gave chase at first, but the Maiden could hear the chime of a Totema from miles away as her Listening grew. They played hopscotch across Elsia, never touching.

He refused to follow her into the Fault.

-Marcellus slept in nightmare, frozen with dozens of other would be assassins. Food for the Devourer, spare parts for repairs on the weakness of flesh.-

She balanced on the crumbling edge of a glacial bluff, spying the mouth that marked the entrance into the fortress inside. Towers spiraled from the fortress' glacier like spines of an animal, the mana running their lengths coated in blood. Surely men toiled in sight, but she could not see them through the Other. The drums rumbled, a furious and repetitious beat that obscured any smaller melodies.

Familiar music, teasing her.

As a shade, she clambered down the shards of ice that would snap under pressure. As her toes touched the fortress floor, the drums faltered and stopped. In the span of silence, she Listened to the clamor of men and swords, horses and cows from the real world. Then the drums resumed in a new rhythm. More intimate, like a heartbeat.

Into the belly of the beast, her neck prickling. Veins of ice ran through the walls, coated in crimson runes. Each rune linked a fleshy jewel into a river of mana that resonated throughout the structure. Drawing closer in morbid fascination, she made out the arterial holes at the top of each jewel...

Hearts.

Human hearts, severed and buried. The hundreds of sacrificed souls, their spirits captured, used as a power source.

-No...coming here was a mistake. The mortal races can't manipulate aether drives. They can't pin a man's soul to the wall and suck it dry even after death!-

A machine of superb efficiency, extracting torrents of mana that shot like black lightning down channels of ice. Far too advanced for the mortals, eons ahead of the conceivable output of a Wizard. A mortal wouldn't know how to spend so much power!

A Star would.

-The exact same process exists in the Forest. A pyramid, with me at the top. Skim the best of the Forest's mana for myself, just to keep my body alive despite the...damage...the ceremony caused.-

Without that steady stream of magic to patch the holes in her soul, would she die? If someone knew the Guardian Stones were anchors for her runes, how easily they could be ground away and...

she muttered, turning for the entrance.

Her feet slapped on the cold stone, making no progress. Stationary despite breaking into a sprint. Then she began to slide backwards, further into the fortress, no matter how she clawed at the walls. If she was a Star, then this must be the degenerate orbit around a black hole. A maelstrom, dragging her down with the lightning currents.

She passed through the bowels of the Empty Armies, the ice around her running black with mana. Frozen bodies floated in the morass, many of them missing chunks. Enough mana to turn the entire island into a single glass crater! The current seized her and flooded ever faster through the dark catacombs.

Talia howled and clawed, finger tips bleeding from scrabbling against the ceiling for purchase.

Sister Talia? Have you become brave? Come to face me? Hungry, as cruel as the katabatic winds.

she howled at the voice. Too familiar, a voice she knew from the Arc, but she refused to put a name to it.

Cast silver doors yawned wide, letting the cold roll over her. Frost crusted her lips, eyelids, and mind, trying to steal away her mind. An eon in ice beckoned, a statue against the seasons...

We are shattered remnants thanks to you, sister. Unwhole.

Not all of us got to forget, nestled in green nurseries. Your wretched ceremony cast us from the heavens to share your bondage. For what?! Why have I ached these four thousand years, too weak to leave my frozen tomb?!

Drenched in the black, blood magic, Talia careened through the silver doors and into a vortex. Freezing cold, but unharmed, she burst through into a room of crystallized mana. Crystal, ice, braziers, stone...all coated in blood tass, whipping into a centrifuge around the Hole at the center.

The Hole stirred. For a moment, two Stars shared recognition that spanned galaxies.

-Andreas.- Oh, he rang in horrible, discordant notes, every bit as broken as she! -could the ceremony do this to you?!-

Her fallen brother snarled. When you broke the world, the elders abandoned us to its storm. I will devour everything that is you and become whole again!

His will crushed down on the girl, mountains of need powered by the sea that sucked at Talia. She fought to swim against the current. Her skin began to glow, and Andreas' body to darken. The mana sea responded, heaving into a hurricane. Its clouds rose into the stratosphere, bolts lancing into space, and the northern waters returned to that primordial chaos. Several foolish Wizards of the Empty Armies thought to siphon from its rage through resonance barriers, channeling nets, and heavy water grounds. They boiled alive.

Andreas reached for the hearts and bodies entombed in the ice, his spare fuel. Talia crashed against him, cutting them off. He in turn withdrew his blessing of mana from the Wizards and men of the Empty Armies and surged to greater strength.

Though the Maiden shone like the sun, the Devourer swallowed light faster still. Soon he lobbed spears of black into her, yanking away chunks for him to eat. He ground up and swallowed her dreams of the first Queen, her first friend so long ago, and laughed to steal her light for his furnace.

Pieces slipped away, the edges of her mind fraying in terror. He would eat her, bit by juicy bit, until everything lovely about her was one of his baubles. Couldn't even curl up and die gracefully, naked before his burning eyes.

-Glee would know what to do.-

For a moment the layers of fog in her mind all peeled back, and she knew the lost. Knew Glee, all her beautiful Guides, the Forest's infancy as a single seed in her palms, the endless cycle of growth and regression in its boughs...

Then the Devourer sucked those down as well. She was a sad nugget, just a name and a few fuzzy memories of Glee clutched tight.

Glisinda would fight.

The Maiden's names disappeared. Legendary ones, new ones, and private endearments - gone.

If there was an abyss, Glisinda would leap it, laughing in the face of oblivion.

With the last ounce of consciousness and volition, the Maiden charged right down the Devourer's gullet, a streaking comet into the dark...

Quite clearly felt her spark snuff out...

Emerged in warmth and comfort and a certainty as vast as the sky. All the pain and confusion served a dance so wild that even the stars were mere dots on an endless beach. Something - Someone - Greater wrapped arms made of lifetimes around her and whispered the most important words she ever needed to hear.

"No matter what, I have always loved you."

"I want to live," the girl replied.

"Then open, dear heart, and drink sorrow until it turns to joy."

She did, leaning back in the Arms and watching as her heart seemed to flower, a speck of a vast and dancing universe.

The fullness of the Akashic Library poured into her, that repository of all existence returning all the Devourer had stolen and more...

And in less time than a thought, the Maiden became once again the being who watched the lights soar out at the universe's beginning. A being who died and lived and yet remained.

Eyes full of stardust, she understood the awful weight that crushed her brother into darkness. Incomplete, a shadow of what his soul demanded to be. Crippled, blinded, forgotten. Memories and hatreds left to pile deeper until they corroded his soul to a sterile diamond.

Swimming in Andreas' mind, subsumed...yet whole. Hope all the brighter for the crushing depths, It seared her in lover's passion, blazing in spite of everything.

The depths recoiled. "Why do you yet live?! I am not whole! I have consumed your brightness, but it boils in my guts! I am more hollow than ever!"

"And the harder you crush, the brighter I shall burn!" Talinda sang, swelling inside him on the strength of an old name. A title of determination and renewal. "Don't you understand, Andreas? We are stardust. Our bodies live and die, but life rushes onward! One day our bodies will make flowers grow."

"Stop! Just stop!"

"No, brother. I will give you a new lease on life...whether you want one or not."

Letting the tide of brilliance sweep through, Talinda rose to the heavens and crashed into her sibling star. Then she squeezed, contracting the whole force of creation, and he imploded.

The tides withdrew from Talinda, shrinking her into a simple person again, a speck of sand, a single life. Andreas was gone. In his place a fist-sized black diamond rested in the vines above her, a black that glittered and rippled with potential.

-I'm awake,- she realized blearily, cradled in her tattered dress by vines, deep in Yggdrasil. Awake, and crumbling.

-Insides ache, so very hollow.- A bit of Andreas stabbed into her to sharp effect. -Abandoned by my Someone Greater back into a broken egg shell...-

And the new sleep which claimed her was not rest, nor reprieve from shame. It was death.

**********

Norhill 716, spring Turning

As spring began to stir, so did Serge. He woke the day before Turning - a feat unusual, but not unknown among those with some driving need. Aching and stiff, he rolled out of his nook to find the day far too warm, the ground a muck of melted snow around. After checking the nettleberries, still wrapped and whole, he stole some breakfast from the meek remains of the mors larder and turned himself to the task of the thorn wall.

It was limp, wilted, brown in patches and reeking of mildew. At his prod with a stick, the barbed flowers quivered, responding at a sluggish pace - almost two blinks of an eye before they struck. His mind and limbs were still sluggish from sleep, ears too muffled by the dream-buzzing to hear the approaching commotion.

"By the Maiden!" swore a mors.

Serge twisted around and cursed his luck: Miranda and her entourage stood gaping at the edge of sight, staring straight at him.

The false Queen lobbed her fatal word. "Deserter!"

Serge shocked wide awake, and he decided to take his chances on the wall! He leaped onto it and began to zigzag up as fast as his fingers could grasp, regardless of a thousand thistles. Vines tried to snatch at his legs, and stingers wheezed in the air behind his ankles.

Below, Miranda's little court shouted at him. “Stop!” Like he was going to listen.

He scaled the wall's height in a single adrenaline-fueled dash and leaped off its crest.

For a moment he thought the jump would be suicide. Nothing but air, his legs spinning. Then a vine from the wall behind snaked, wrapped around his ankle, and yanked back. He spun down and hit the inside of the wall hard enough to rattle his brains, the vine snapping. Rotted, the thorns broke from his impact, spilling fragments of plant and him all into a heap at the bottom.

On the plus side, nothing stabbed or ate him while he struggled free of the grime.

What little remained of Capital sagged under profuse growth. Vines as thick as his chest wrapped around the marble columns, slowly crushing them back into the soil, and the once-tended homes grew into wild knots. It looked abandoned for a thousand years. Yggdrassil dominated the horizon, roots arching from the ground to soar as high as the treetops, and strange things sniffed about. Monsters, twisted remains of the animals who once lived here.

Lucky for Serge, then, that a post man in the Forest learned dozens of ways to avoid becoming dinner.

Soon enough he stood at the very base of that cursed tree. He could not see Capitol any more for the vines and roots so thick. Easy enough to climb...and climb...and climb. At a glance over his shoulder, the whole Forest spread out below him. His world, its edges showing brown and black wilt.

Storms wiggled on the western horizon, making the colors there mutate.

-Havoc storm. Even closer now...-

What the hell was wrong with the world?

He climbed too high, missing the shadowed crevice that led into Yggdrassil, and found himself among its street-wide branches as the sun was setting. Unwilling to trap and eat one of the monster-vultures with their hooked beaks and glowing eyes, he slept hungry, and backtracked the next morning. Turning day.

-Miranda will declare me traitor to the entire nation today. Will Mom and Dad pretend I'm dead too? Take down my portraits and seal off my room?-

(Unfair of Serge. Their parents fought for Glisinda just as hard; they simply used words and ideas while Serge only saw force and immediate action.)

This time Serge found the entrance, though the Dryad had to shove his spines against his waist to squeeze through. Inside reminded him of a childhood spelunking expedition he and the other boys once conducted. Glowing lichens for a sky, cool bark smooth like rock, the distant drip of water and a stillness so deep it could steal your breath. Just like the hidden worlds deep in those caves where sunlight never touched.

Though he expected attack, none materialized. The vines that twitched on the walls cared not for his presence. More and more of them coated the walls as he crawled down over the moss, until at last he found the heart of Yggdrassil bathed in lichen's green glow.

There, in the center of a hammock of vines, the Maiden lay dead, cradling a black diamond between her breasts.

"No!" He hacked her down with his spines, wild strikes that sprayed his face with vine sap. "Dammit, no!"

“Dead, dead, gone for months,” whispered the brush of severed vine against the lichen.

Serge swallowed. "I'm no mors, but if she's dead why hasn't she rotted? There's plenty of mold here to eat her.”

"Finished finished rotting away..."

-Hell, I'm a nymph. Life is my purview!- He cast arms and mind wide, calling to the growth below. It shuddered, he strained, and it broke out into raw growth. It leaped onto the vines, devouring them in a glowing fuzz, and bell-topped little flowers began to sprout along the floor. Compost assaulted his nose as the life cycles rotted down to future generations. A tap seemed to be sucking all the wind from his diaphragm to the growth all around; the room began to feel cool - then cold.

No response from the Maiden at all.

-This won't work.- He tried to close the flow, but like a hole in a dam it only swelled. His camouflage skin began to spray bright colors of panic, and every breath came under squeezing iron bands. Such a potent Growth would not be denied its dinner.

-I'm going to die.-

Lichen started to coat his numbed fingers, burrowing in while his system struggled to pump more blood. The only things not growing were the nettleberries in the little bag at his side.

-Glisinda...Sorry.-

The nerves in his fingers were too far gone to fish out the nettleberries, and so he used what tool he had. Serge Grew them. As if waiting for that signal, they leaped forth in two directions - spiking into his gut to seek fuel, and through the Maiden's neck. Her body began to change - reacting at last! - but his eyesight failed too fast to witness.

She stirred, eyes fluttering in their sleep, and Talinda's first breath was Serge's last.

-The Cycle is dead....long live...the Cycle...-

He only hoped that the Maiden would be all the world needed and more.

**********

Talinda woke in a new dress and new body, encased in a cocoon of mosses. A dead poison nettle branch withered beside her, and her neck ached fiercely. Her fingers clutched around Andreas' shard, waiting white-knuckled until it pulsed. Andreas was dead, but his seed lived yet. One day it could grow into a star child and join the Arc.

Then she noticed changes in herself - taller, for one thing, and her hair had turned to auburn curls draping over her shoulders. Her breasts were bigger, her dimples mostly smoothed out, and her figure thinned. The girl had become a woman.

This dress was peach chiffon, twisted around her legs, with a bodice to emphasize her grown figure. Before, she would have found it embarrassing, something that just emphasized insecurities...but now? Now she fingered it and smiled. -Maybe today can start a new era of my life...-

Tearing free of the cocoon, she wiggled to the mosses below and surveyed the room. So beautiful, caught in eternal dusk...

There, at the end of her circle, hung Serge's mangled body. Pierced by the poison nettles and half-eaten by the lichens, it nonetheless seemed confident even in rictus.

"What...." But she already knew. A procedure she had installed herself - a failsafe in case one of the Guides of the Forest failed. Nettle berries would extract a price to catch her attention, nothing more than a little blood and some dizziness...

But if she had been truly dead, then it would require all of him to bring her back.

"Mother," whispered the Forest, as simpering as a kicked puppy.

"What, child?" She reached up to brush an ant from Serge's cheek. In death, his camouflage misfired into a whirlwind of purples and reds.

"Wasn't my fault...please don't..."

How heavy her heart, burdened with a whole planet worth of mistakes. Yet the star continued to stand on her own two feet, and she could not explain the source of such strength. "I won't destroy you. Its not evil to be foolish. I should have been there..."

"Miranda is..."

"Not a very good Queen. Yes, the story is written all over your roots.” Talinda smiled wryly, the Listening strong. “You will send Miranda into exile, as she dared to send my Glisinda. You will destroy the thorn wall surrounding Capitol. I refuse to be the battery for the Cycle any longer, and thus you will teach the Dryads to create pacts with smaller, more manageable sections of land at a time. They will have to abandon parts of the forest to wild growth until their population expands. Is this clear?”

"Yes, mother."

She walked a path that her feet had not known in thousands of years, leaving her sanctuary behind for the clinging humidity of the spring sun. Blossoming, ripeness, birds cawing. Sweat began to trickle down between her shoulder blades.

"Are you leaving, Mother?"

"Yes." Talinda gazed out across her homeland, seeing it truly: a recreation of her comfortable little room on the Arc. A playpen, safe and blind. "After all, no one can hide in their room forever. Children must grow."