Tara led them into the forest, making them just one group out of three or four that entered—although they were the only ones that eventually strayed from the path. They only needed to wander around for about an hour before she found the stone Itzun wanted her to bind her blood to.
Fortunately, it wasn’t on the path itself; the single stone hid in a tree’s shadow, but Itzun let her know when she saw it.
“Nothing too distinguishing,” Rene noted, looking around. She gave Tara a curious look. “Do we need to help with anything?”
“You can just wait,” Tara replied, shaking her head. She looked at Matteo and gestured towards the box of pottery shards he brought. “May I have those?”
“I never blunted the sharp edges,” Matteo warned as he passed her the box. “Do you need anything else, or..?”
“This is fine.”
It seemed to concern him more than it already did. She knew the pieces had been cleaned, so overall this might not be too painful. She could get it done and over with fairly quickly.
She looked at her parents, trying to make sure she sounded calm without being indifferent.
“I’ll start by saying that, barring outside circumstances, all of us will be coming home,” Tara announced. She hesitated a bit to find a good way to continue. After a second, she didn’t see a reason to talk around it—that didn’t make it any easier to admit, though. “Itzun wants me to bind blood to the stone.”
Rene grimaced and Adelinde held back some other reaction. She wondered how much the idea must hurt them.
“The ending mirrors the start,” Adelinde murmured. “He chose a poetic way to finish things, at least.”
“I don’t need to give much,” Tara explained, hoping it would make them look a bit less…worried. “And I swear, this is the only time I’ll draw my own blood.”
It didn’t make them look more comfortable, but they seemed slightly assured if nothing else. With the warning out of the way, Tara turned back towards the stone.
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“We might need to wait here,” Tara warned, taking out one of the pottery pieces and putting the box on the ground. “I don’t know what the immediate aftermath will be.”
“It’s all right. None of us have plans other than keeping you company,” Rene said kindly. The other two murmured their respective agreements.
Tara took a little breath, picked up her chosen shard and pressed the edge into the tip of one finger just hard enough for it to bleed. She wouldn’t shed more blood here than she had to.
She brushed off stray dirt from the stone with her other hand, then gently pressed the bleeding finger to it. To bind the blood to the stone, she imagined the people who had gone through the same process at the gravestone; she even winced when she thought back to Rene.
After a second, tiredness came and Tara pulled her hand away. There wasn’t any change in the stone in terms of color, but there was no trace of blood having been on there. It must have worked, then.
She didn’t really fight the desire to sleep—she couldn’t even if she wanted to. Matteo helpfully moved her so she could lean against a tree as she drifted off, their parents murmuring some concern as the voices faded.
…
Even if she couldn’t see anything, she knew this place was where she spoke with Itzun. It had the same feeling to it—a kind of dream where she could still feel, see, and hear things of her own accord.
The longer Tara stood there, though, the less she could be sure she was actually standing, the darker the space around her became, the less she acknowledged the unnatural silence.
She looked around a bit and saw nothing. Most people would likely be scared, but…in all honesty, she took it as a relief.
Gods and mortals didn’t have a historically good record left behind whenever they mixed. That was how the first island fell, with divinity’s power mixing with humanity’s pride. That was how Dakari almost fell, with a god believing that humans would follow along with his plan for entertainment. She knew Matteo mentioned once or twice that the most uneventful islands had the littlest interference from their founding god—some of islands didn’t even know the name of that god.
Perhaps it was a bit cold, to immediately prioritize and appreciate her newfound freedom rather than lament how Itzun may never be able to interact with his subjects directly again—yet she still did.
Chizuru deserved to finally rest. While that may not happen until Tara herself died, she could nonetheless live the kind of life that the girl should have: unburdened, at least from unnatural causes.
Even as her thoughts became a bit more vague and the darkness around her only grew, she still smiled at the thought of being able to actually watch the first sunset and sunrise of the year without wondering which one could be her last with her family.
She could finally claim to be normal after this.