“Are you really all right with me trying this?” Yelena asked uncertainly.

Rosalea nodded. They were sitting out in a gazebo, ducks were eyeing Fen warily from their pond. Fen was shedding partially because the weather was nice but also she was growing in a healthier fur coat. “I trust you.”

Yelena breathed out slowly. “You have been having dreams about a fire?” Rosalea nodded again. Yelena reached out with her hands to touch Rosalea’s head and then stopped, bringing them back down to her sides.

Rosalea looked up at her and saw all the anxiety clearly written all over her face. “I could go get Briar?” she teased a little. “He seems good at motivating you to do things that you find a little scary and intimidating.”

Yelena huffed. “No. I can do it. I just… I have not really used my Ieshan magic, except the Death Knife, and I… well, you know. It has caused both of us so much harm, especially you. What if I unlock stuff, you know, about Lio? That could be really painful and color your feelings toward your daughter. Or plant a false memory by accident?”

Rosalea breathed out slowly. “Well, I have been working with you on terra magic for weeks, and it has been hard for me, and you have been patient. I feel as though you and I are real friends.”

Yelena nodded. “It might be easier. I did not like you before I understood what you were facing… before I saw what happened to you.”

Rosalea smiled. It was a practiced smile, one she gave many times even though she felt awkward. “You and I are real friends, and most of the memories we have made together are shared. I just… I want to get back to that place with Rhainnon and Genya somehow. Dreams are supposed to mean that I have a memory close to the surface, correct?”

Yelena breathed out heavily. “I know. I understand. I am just a little scared. Still, I will try.”

Rosalea closed her eyes as Yelena placed her hands against her forehead. She felt a little odd as she felt Yelena’s magic flowing through her. Rosalea meant to hold still, but she quickly realized she could not move at all.

She could feel pressure from Yelena, though she remained conscious. She tried to get an understanding of that.

With Uryan healing magic, she felt conscious of the person she was healing, like there was a connection between them that blurred spiritual and physical. She did not know if that person had any consciousness of her or what she was doing, but she suspected they did not, since they always seemed a little surprised when the spell ended. In this case, she was locked in place, but definitely aware, but she could not sense Yelena other than the feeling of pressure.

A moment later it ended. Yelena withdrew her hand. “There are a lot of layers of red magic,” she said, her brows drawn together. “I think that means that a lot of individuals have tried to layer magic on you. Still, I found a weak-looking point, and I tried to pull back the other layers from it? Do you feel any different?”

Rosalea shook her head. “No, I feel the same. Is it possible for me to also see those layers of magic?”

Yelena pursed her lips. “I am not actually certain. Maybe? I have never gone looking for anything like that. Kaylar might know.” She tilted her head. “Shall we let you sleep and see if your memories can recover some now that I tried to free a space?”

“Yes. Thank you, Yelena. Can we do more drills with moving earth?”

Yelena smiled, “Now we are talking about something I feel confident about.”

It was a good feeling of support as she moved from the uncomfortable topic of her brain being magic-scrambled and to something that felt good the more she learned about it. Rosalea reached out with her hand, closing her fist, pressing her magic into the earth just out of her reach and imagining fingers of it squeezing through the earth and ripping it up as she did so.

“Stop, stop!” Yelena said, interrupting her. “You are doing it as wrong today as you were yesterday.” The Ieshan moved next to her. “You still build pressure around things like you are trying to crush it. You are not trying to crush the earth. You do not need to be so forceful with it; your magic means you already have an affinity with it. There is no need for all this bullying you do.”

Rosalea raised her brows. The earth was not like the plants or the animals. It did not speak to her, it did not feel.

“Watch,” Yelena said, making a “come here” motion with just her one finger. A stream of dirt and pebbles rose from the ground around their feet and swirled through the air to curl around her finger. “It is not about grabbing every particle in an imaginary hand. It is about extending yourself into it; for a moment, the two of you become one. Do you bully other magics like this?” She turned a circle, drawing the stream of sediment into a circle around her head, which solidified into a sort of makeshift ring that hovered around her head.

Rosalea felt her cheeks coloring a little as she thought about how she had saved Lio, how she had battered her way out of the Ieshan fortress and forced her magic to all act as deep magic until burned her. “Maybe a little,” she said.

Yelena made a musing noise. “Well, head strong is one of your charms, I suppose. At least, I heard that was what made you so interesting to everyone,” she sassed a little. Rosalea gratified her with a huff. Yelena continued. “Here,” she crouched down putting her hand to the earth, focusing. Rosalea could see a tendril of the woman’s brown magic extending downwards further and further until she found something she was looking for. Rosalea felt the earth shifting subtly under their feet until Yelena drew up a piece of quartz.

She closed her hand around it and made it a smooth oval shape. “How about I just give you homework? Crystals like this one are usually receptive and have a good memory for it. When you have managed to press my magic out of it with yours, I want you to try altering the shape. Then we can practice again.”

Rosalea gave her a raised brow as she accepted the warm crystal. It was a little bigger than her thumb and a mix of clear and white.

“It will do you no good to keep practicing in a way that is wrong. You must learn to attune to your element. There is no need to batter your way through every situation like an elven savage. What good are all those magics if you cannot use them any better than a hammer?”

Rosalea was half-distracted watching Briar slinking up on Yelena, only to realize that she had been asked a question a few seconds too late. “I… see your point?” she asked.

Yelena was about to retaliate for Rosalea’s obvious lapse of attention until Briar slung an arm over her shoulder and caused her to squeak. She squeaked again as he pulled her in toward her side. “Wow, lady. You sure you ain’t some blade mage? Those words were pretty harsh. Rosalea does better when you’re nicer. Can’t you have some charm like me?”

Rosalea could not help but grin, and it was hard not to chuckle as an indignant Yelena went for his ear. He ducked out of the way in a fluid motion as she stepped after him. “Charm? Is that what you call grabbing me out of nowhere?”

“I got loads of it!” he insisted as she grabbed at him again. He put his hand up as if he was surrendering and smiled as she grabbed it.

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“You are the worst,” she said, letting go a second later as she realized what she had done.

Briar grinned. “I have come to say that Lio is hungry, and so Genya thinks you should come back in for a little while.”

“Thank you,” Rosalea said, and she left Yelena to lecture Briar for sassing her.

There was a lot of support here for her. With the Ieshans, she had been almost exclusively responsible for the care of Lio, but here, she had opportunities to work with and learn alongside everyone here. When Genya was not watching Lio, there was always another volunteer willing to take a little time with her.

Lio was extremely fussy once Rosalea got back in, so it took Rosalea a little while to cheer her up enough to talk her into having something to eat. Afterwards, she was quick to fall asleep. It was a peaceful afternoon. Rosalea spent time learning to cook from Genya. Or, rather, finding that she did know how to cook some things and could not remember them until she attempted to cook it.

The mind magic was full of holes like that. Rosalea could remember how to write or read, but could not remember learning how to do it. She could cook, sew, clean, even card wool… but she did not know how she knew, or if she knew it until she tried it. Then, there were other things.

Genya said she knew how to use a bow and arrow, for example, but Rosalea had given herself a horrible welt when the string slapped into her left elbow. She has sent the arrow careening off and nothing about holding a bow felt familiar to her in the slightest. They had also trained her in survival, but it was clear by the miserable time they had trying to get here that she had remembered none of it. Rosalea had learned that Ulric had spent the most time teaching her, and so the working theory was that he knew she had learned it and did not want her to try to escape again with that knowledge.

As Rosalea kneaded dough for bread, she asked, “Why do you think Ulric taught me things like the bow and arrow at all? Or how to survive? It does not seem like a very princess-type of thing to do?”

Genya paused in peeling her potato, putting it down for a moment. Her back was to Rosalea since that was where they kept the bin for feeding the peelings and vegetable waste to the goats. “I cannot remember when I got to the Ieshans, but it was close to when one of their castles had been destroyed by Uryans. Valaysha was your grandmother, and she had been expecting Lindir. She’d been lost in the wilds and the desert for quite a while, so she had Lindir in poor health because she didn’t have the knowledge ta take care of herself. I think, at first, Ulric wanted ta protect ya from somethin’ like that happenin’ to you. But, when you ran away, he thought it would be better if ya did not have so much knowledge ta get so far away.”

Rosalea mused to herself. “I suppose it is lucky for me I had a dragon friend that was looking to pick me up and bring me here.”

Genya smiled. “I cannot condone what Nashota wanted or how he handled things, but I’m still glad that there was not an army coming ta take ya back.”

Rosalea nodded. She was also glad that she had gotten away in time to stop Kaylar from attacking the fort. People would have died, and it would have been entirely her fault. She did not know if she could live with that.

The rest of the evening was peaceful. Kaylar visited and they all enjoyed a game involving big plastic tokens with numbers on them. They were big to grip in the hand so that Kaylar could interact with them (with his magic) more easily, but they had the bonus of being too big for Lio to hang onto with her little hands.

That night, she dreamed she was looking back at a castle. She was familiar with the castle even as she felt she had never before seen it. Then, she felt as though she was not herself. Her hair was long and black. She was running away.

She owned her own cottage… so much smaller, but so much friendlier than the cold and austere Castle Darius. She kissed Gaiden as he came in, and patted his liana, also a wolf, Hakon, on the head.

A baby cry in the background caused her to move away…

… Lindir only laughed at him, and mocked,“Your woman’s prophecy will fail, you baktya!” and dropped ungracefully to the floor - magic erupted along her skin like too-red fire and spread along the floor, as if it could draw a line between the baby and the murderer.

In the background, a baby was shrieking… No, not that background. Rosalea blinked blearily awake to Lio screaming for attention..

She felt rattled by the dream. She could hardly define what she was feeling. Fortunately, her instincts got her from the bed to Lio’s crib and determined the problem was need for a change.

It was an action that Rosalea had probably done hundreds of times now, so the steadiness of it made her slowly calm down.

“It seems like Yelena’s hole in the mind magic worked,” Fen said, yawning and stretching and pressing herself to Rosalea’s leg and hip as a big reaffirming presence.

“I was Lindir for a moment, looking at Ulric who had killed Gaiden. What… do I feel about that? Sick?”

“That would be fair,” Fen offered neutrally.

Once Lio was changed; she continued to fuss. Rosalea did not think it sounded like hungry fussing, so she just put her against her shoulder and began walking in a bouncy way to soothe the little one. She felt so rattled it was hard to focus on being soothing.

“I never want to see any of them again,” Rosalea declared flatly.

Fen was silent.

Rosalea breathed out as Lio began to relax against her. “Fen, what do you know about their prophecy that motivates them to act like this?”

“I know it, but I think you should talk with Kaylar about it. He has a lot of knowledge to share about it, I think.”

Rosalea gave her side eyes, but she decided to accept that idea. She put Lio back down in her crib. When she went back to her bed, she held her arms out for Fen, pressing herself to the wolf’s fluff until she calmed down.

She tried to remember what she dreamed about, but she ended up sleeping so heavily that she could not remember any.

Yelena did not allow her to practice Terra magic because she had not worked enough with the crystal. Rosalea spent time with Rhainnon instead. After watching Rosalea lift snow from the ground and then use pressure to compress it to water, she audibly hummed.

“So, I still cannot stand Yelena mostly, but we did chat a little about your magic yesterday. She’s right. You operate from a place of pressure. I cannot remember if that is what you were doing before, since you did not get a lot of time to show me magic. But, I do think that you can still do it really effectively if you think of it a little differently.”

Rosalea was glad not to get another lecture. Rhainnon raised a bit of snow in the air and then walked to Rosalea.”See, I’m only holding the bottom? I’m doing that by solidifying it and focusing on it with my magic. Technically, since most water holds the shape it is in, you can just create a field around the outside.” She waved her hand to pull heat from the water in the air to warm her snowball into a pool of water with a little sediment in it, but the snow “bowl” she had made remained frozen snow. “It takes less magic, and if you get good at the shaping and holding, it should let you do more than what you are doing, which is overwhelming it with magic. I am pretty sure this is how you were using it before, but I only got to see a few examples.”

Rosalea nodded. “I think I understand. I will practice with it!”

Rhainnon smiled. “Kona said that Fen thought we should chat with Kaylar. Do you want me to call him?”

“Yes, that would be really nice. I… have a memory my mother gave to me. I wanted to ask him what he knew about the Ieshan and Uryan prophecy.”

Rhainnon smiled graciously. “I think since it caused us so much trouble that would be good to know. I remember when we first met you told me that you had been running from unwanted children.” Her expression crowded instantly, and she looked down, “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said that…”

Rosalea felt her throat catch a little. “Do not be sorry. I… Everyone is so positive… I… think about it sometimes. How… wrong… the whole thing ended up being. I will always love Lio. But, I have to think of her… as… separate, I guess.”

Rhainnon sighed and hugged her. “I am sorry though. But, I am also glad Lio is sweet and yours.”

Rosalea felt lucky again to be here. She had heard enough about herself to know she had spent a lot of time alone, and trying to imagine managing Lio without all these people around her and wandering through a wilderness she did not have the skills to survive in…

“All right! Shall we have Yelena come? I feel like she might know things.”

“If she wants. I also think it might be a sensitive topic. Also, you do not have to force yourself to be around her just because I am enjoying learning from her.”

Rhainnon huffed. “She’s arrogant, but most of my problems with her had to do with you. So, if she’s being good to you, I’m gonna try and get over it.”

Rosalea smiled, and she tried out hugging Rhainnon on her own. She was warmed as Rhainnon reacted with a happy noise and a firm hug back.

Rosalea let go. “So, teach me how to summon a dragon on purpose!”