CW:

THE END OF ARC TWOOOOO!!! Weaver POV!!! talk of the dead. sad attacks. BEG emotions. Lore things on the Weaver because you've all been SOOOO patient and deserve a lil' peek into Her nonsense!!!

That night, after a half dozen long hours of our family erecting the walls and foundations that could eventually blossom into grander things if we would commit to them, our two spirits separate and meet in their shared Dream…

If the sky was cracked before, a knife slicing a weeping laceration into our minds, it is now a gaping wound of glimmering nonsense.

My Challa, my Inamatorii, glances over. “Can we fix this?”

The dream flutters and pulses at her passive presence and will. No anger or wariness in her or… or even fear. Just… love.

For me.

That, above all things, sends such shivers of fear through my soul.

I sigh to try and distract myself from her gaze and pulsing affections, “We could spend much Amwella to repair and heal the damage, but…”

Foolish girl, blinded by past gifts and drowning in my own madness… You should be furious at me. Should… should have demanded more concessions of the spirit that hurts you time and time again. Can’t you see how horrible I am? Feel my broken and worthless spirit just… rotting away?

“But?” She presses, the first negative emotion flashing behind her eyes. Worry and fear for our shared Dream.

I hate how… how the more I wake up to myself, the more I seep into your mind and feel my work… the more I hate myself for what I’ve become. Old and rotting and bitter. Slow to love and slower to trust… Nothing like what I should be. Like what I was.

I focus a fraction of myself on her questions as I try to pull my mind from the muck of self-loathing. “The Zeridii is freed, and dreams may provide a perfect staging ground for understanding and communication.”

The first song I shared with Ina haunts my thoughts though. Drives the cold pain of guilt and shame through my heart at the woman who would now give her everything to protect me…

She squeezes my hand tighter. “What is the Zeridii, exactly? Where’s it from? What does it want? You… you keep saying it’s dead?”

I nod. “My last lover stayed well away from Arudia, and even so she didn’t live in a time that travel there was easy. We only encountered the… outskirts of the infection.” I pause, considering the best words to convey simple truths. "An old thing of many shards and personalities, dead and fracturing. Little ghosts that used to sing in wondrous harmony, now disjointed and alone and… and becoming aware of the Waking World in individual flutters. Arudia will need a Sun Spoken’s help to keep the peace a shard of mine swore to create for the women of these lands.”

I… I fight to ignore how much I have in common with this star fallen spirit. Focus on my lover and… and how much I’ve hurt her already.

My Challa’s song is a lament born of older pains than even I can fully understand these days. A broken song woven from the memory of my shattering. A thing to take advantage of one who could be shaped and molded to satisfy old regrets at the cost of just… one little spirit’s will and future. So easy to simply... erase what she was and replace it with my own rotting stolen desires...

Now I’m peering over at my workings. Searching. Trying to… to parse out what is her and what are the little things I carved into her mind, body and soul with the healing song I taught her.

I burned so much of her old body away, and used the wellspring of Amwella stored in my shard to fuel the change. But… there wasn’t enough to finish. So… the healing song I’d taught her is both repairing the body and coaxing the mind into singing another’s song.

A Lamentation for the woman I lost.

My Inamatorii.

Given the body I would have wrapped her in if only she had just accepted that offering in those final days. Had taken even a moment to ensure her own survival!!!

“You look really pretty, by the way.” My Challa smiles at me, interrupting what could have been a deadly spiral into rotting grief and misery. I glance down and… and see…

My old form!?! Something like the body I lost before the breaking... I think?

Shorter than my lover, dark sun-kissed skin layered in glimmering scales, hair a whirling nonsense mass of tendrils. And I assume… eyes of pulsing jade like the oceans of my home.

Fuck! I… hope she can’t see the gills!

“Thank you.” I whisper. Can’t… can’t even fight my tendrils leanings toward her as those passive musings shred all my old layers of protection. Soothing my fury and peeling away my mantled curse's wrath.

Just... The cost of giving her my everything through so many mergers.

This place, this Dream, is more her’s than mine now, I simply have more years of experience in how to sing Dream Worlds to match my will. From Emarial’s fear at our union I’m not sure if this is so for my other shards. If… if they can even see their claimed women as more than tools or… Playthings.

I can’t help but glare down at the ash beneath our feet at that description. At how well it fits.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

That’s all our other lovers are to me. Even… even after everything they’ve sacrificed and done for us. I can’t help but… but consider them distractions and fun things to be used before their little flames fade and leave me alone again.

Souls a paltry prize to snuggle against compared to what I lost. Only my Ina means more to me. And… Isn’t that just because I’m shaping her soul and mind in an attempt to call a shadow of my beloved back from death?

The past hours in the Waking World were exhausting and… and hard. A litany of all the things that I did to hurt this amazing woman and her lovers. Rules and expectations laid clearly and talked out to ensure I could not stumble into hurting anyone again, followed up by words and phrases to snap me from those actions. Both in the Dream and Waking World when we mingle spirits again.

But… They could never guess at the Lamentation I’d already started back when this shard first touched her mind and soul. How could any of them even imagine the twisting selfish working of a shattered shard broken from a goddess’s daughter…

I finally whisper. “I’m sorry for hurting you. And… and violating your trust.”

I should tell her.

Here. Now! Give her the knowledge and tools to… to keep me from hurting her again. Real power to wield should my spirit fester with old Rot and Ruin like it always does!!!

Ina says something, a murmur of forgiveness I can’t accept as this idea curdles through me. Sends a wash of such fear and pain through my spirit. The Dream ripples and pulses from that in horrid mimicry to my head tendrils agonized wiggles.

What happens when she sees that I’ve just… always been too broken and can never hope to be repaired? Will this be the final wound for her? If so she... she'll drive me away!!! Will... will find the song to draw me out of her mind and Dreams and seal me back into the silence between and-

Suddenly Ina’s pulling me close, leaning her head down into mine. Then sort of… drags me into the same kind of hug I would normally wrap her in. One where she’s holding me from behind and wrapping arms around my body. Cooing soft murmuring things to calm the turmoil she feels weeping from my soul as my tendrils reach back to clutch at her so desperately.

It helps but… I’m not sure there will ever be anything in the Waking or Dreaming Rifts that can truly settle my blighted soul. But… just these unyielding affections are a balm that helps me dredge through the muck at least one more time for her. When the Dream settles, and we’re sitting amidst a field of flowers that’s sprouted from the grass, she leans down to kiss my nose.

“I’m sorry.” I blubber as my traitorous tendrils reach up to play amidst my Challa's hair.

She tightens her grip on me. “You're forgiven.”

I shake my head, voice cracking and losing all the control and dignity I’d normally weave from the Dream. “There’s something else. Something worse I need to tell you.”

She tilts her head, worried but… still in love with me. But how much of that is… is poisoned by my workings!?! Twisted from a young woman who can’t know any better!?!

“It’s okay.” She pulls me close, bears my blighted spirit echoes with nothing but a loving smile.

I shake my head again. Trying to… to find the words and-

“You miss her. Probably… probably more than I’ll even know.” She murmurs.

I jerk to a stop, eyes go wide as my tendrils freeze. “What?”

She… she can’t know about…

WAIT!

Has she been reading me this entire time!?! Sensing my… my… emotions and thoughts and... and worse things!?!

“You’re not subtle.” She giggles, beautiful and overwhelming and… and impossible to resist. Even through my tears I feel a pained smile touch my lips. “And you kinda basically told me last time we fought. Inamatorii was a past lover of yours.”

I just… stare up at her. Heart and soul withering under that… that confident loving gaze that so easily peels me apart.

“I’d remember what book I picked such a gorgeous name from. After all... I have a good fucking memory when I actually pay attention to things.” She smirks. “This body was her’s. Right? The name is just… another mind thing? Not a compulsion. Just… Sort of an echo across its parts?”

I nod, but whisper. “I never got to give it to her. She wouldn’t let me. Not before…”

I’m sobbing again as old pains roil up and rot the Dream around me. But… but my Challa pulls me close. Showers me with affections and love I do not deserve. Murmurs soft nothings to just… let me know that I’m not alone. That she isn’t angry or upset or disgusted with what I've become.

That she won’t leave me.

It takes most of the Dream to pull coherent thoughts from my mess.

“You… you can pick out a new name if you'd like.” I whisper, holding onto her spirit as tightly as possible. Hoping… hoping the Dream can last so much longer…

Ina huffs and shakes her head. “That will just confuse everyone. Myself included.”

“But…” Horrid thoughts of… of what if she’s already been consumed and can’t be anything but the Lament I laid on her bubble up and tear at my mind. A deep and sudden worry that I waited too long to tell her and–

“It’s a good name. Thank you for sharing it with me.” She nuzzles my trembling tendrils and gives them more pecking kisses. “And besides, I picked the name out because Yrelia liked it too.”

I tremble a bit, “I don’t know how much of your mind it’s touched! I don’t want you to be twisted and changed by my wretched–”

She hushes me with another snuggle. “I’ll handle it.”

A pause of worry before I can whisper. “How?”

“I’ve been inspired lately. Will be toying with the songs you taught me anyway.” She leans down to hover just above my face. “You’ve given me the foundations. I’ll just… compose a song using what you’ve shown me. Make sure I’m always exactly who I want to be.”

I just sag into her… murmur a few blubbering thanks and apologies. It takes even longer to pull myself together this time.

“There is one thing I’d like from you though, if… if you can give it?”

“Anything.” I reply immediately.

“So… We’ve just been calling you the Weaver or Goddess or… big spirit.” She gives me a few more kisses, even moves between my tendrils tips to show them little dizzying affections “But… Is there a name you’d prefer?”

Oh.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I whisper carefully. “Old names have… weight. And memories that could ruin everything.”

“I mean… Yeah? I literally have an old name that makes me flinch every time I hear it aloud.” She pulls back and frowns for a few seconds, “Fuck! I… I hate that our lovers heard it.”

But then our eyes meet and she’s smiling down at me again. “So… Let’s find you a new one!”

I glance past her at the cracked sky. “What if the name doesn’t feel right?”

She shrugs. “Toss it off, and try out another. That’s what our lovers offered to me on that first night.”

I sigh, just… just too overwhelmed by her. “I’ll… consider a few options.”

The Dream shifts, a signal to us both that its end is near.

“Thank you.” I squeeze her tighter. Wordless physical dream nonsense emitting from my heart and soul and spirit. An eternity of everything I’m feeling just… laid as bare as possible. “Thank you for… for not just locking me away. For wanting to keep me.”

She returns my embrace. “It’s just like you promised me, Always and Forever!”

“Or…” I murmur sadly. “Just… at least until the Dream’s End.”

CONGRABULATIONS of reaching the end of Arc Two:

Hetaera of the Paths!!!

The next... like.... 70-80 pages are already written and more are zooping in so there won't be a delay between this and Arc three.

OMGERRRRRRSH!!!! We did it! GUCK US! The end of Arc two is here and posted and shared and guck guck guck we are unmade and in love with this.

THANK YOU ALL so SO SO SO much for reading and comments and drinking in our soul songs!!!

AS BEFORE we adore questions as much as comments, and while you can totally post em here, our discord is a GREAT place to settle in and discuss all the silly wiggles of our disaster lesbian Polycule! Make sure to message us wiff Patreon info so we can give you proper roles and suuuch!!!