Denziu's mind was in anticipation and curiosity as the caravanners marched towards Lorilaine. Zie had studied the whole of the Tachanigh-Kelkaith as best as zie could from the vast Querent-Querent Library at Zyrine. Lorilaine, zie thought, was properly a 'Benevolent' theome, but as nobody wanted to live there it was recorded in countless annals as a 'Negotiable' theome. This struck Denziu as rude to its land god Serafustin, who was very protective. The accounts that zie had read emphasised that Lorilaine was entirely safe. It was merely annoying.
Serafustin was constantly looking far into the future of everyone who visited, and then pestering them with the ghosts of dragons they would someday meet.
Flyers crossing Lorilaine tended to praise the effect. Flying dragons would be answered by other flying dragons, who would only someday look familiar as a result. Likewise, an izerah who took the entire theome at a run would only be met by other runners and perhaps flyers skimming overhead. Those who moved quickly considered it a place to play with ghosts.
For trade caravans, plodding along the road? It was a place to be bothered by untiring ethereal summons.
The landscape of Lorilaine was a place of shimmering beauty. The grasses here turned orange, and although they were still in a coniferous boreal domain, the foliage was in many places pink or red with silver bark. These trees survived here and not elsewhere.
There was no sign of civilization save the roadway that they travelled on, and that smooth, steadfast surface underfoot was maintained by Serafustin. If they met a road crew in this theome, they would be able to see through them!
As indeed, Denziu could see through a dragon who was flying from the north to meet them. She was pink and transparent.
"Spread out!" called the ethereal flying dragon on an overlight pass, and there was nothing ethereal about her voice. It was a good, strong shout.
She flew around, looking like a glass vashael shedding a mist from her wings, and landed next to the caravan. "Walk farther apart from each other so you can be spoken to separately and we'll be done faster," she said to the caravanners as she walked along the caravan towards Choave.
"Stand together so they'll leave us be," rebutted Choave, speaking loud to the whole caravan from his position in the front.
She was a strange pink crystal, quite like a glass statue of a vashael, yet she moved like an ordinary dragon without anything that spoke of the weight of stone in her motions. And indeed she moved quickly, catching up to the front of the caravan to speak to Choave. "This is a mystic theome. The very length of the road is a dream of the land god," said the ethereal dragoness.
"Yes, and the width. Will we see the road abruptly become as wide as a field, that our 2 by 7 caravan should become 7 by 2 to fill the space?" asked Choave, still keeping his voice loud enough that all could readily overhear.
"Serafustin can separate you if you won't separate yourselves," said the ethereal dragon, threateningly.
"She can, but she won't," said Choave. "That would be impolite."
"You're being impolite!"
"I have been here several times per year for hundreds of years," said Choave, "And the novelty has completely worn off. Pick which two of us, three if you must, that you really need to have a talk with, and let us all overhear whoever it is that gets confronted with an elliptical conversation about errors we were never going to make."
The ethereal dragon gaped at him, and momentarily fell back a row as the whole caravan plodded onwards, but then she hurried to continue. "You were too going to make them! That's the whole point of why I do this," she said, and at the phrase 'why I do this', Denziu abruptly had the sense that they were witnessing Choave argue with Serafustin herself.
"Are you actually Serafustin?" Denziu called up the caravan, and was momentarily glowered at in reply.
When her gaze returned to Choave, the ethereal dragon said, "Fine then, but don't complain to me when you meet the dragon who burns your house down. I would've told you what kind of dragon, but I won't now. You're not who I really need to have a talk with."
Choave snorted, and Chatulerin called from within the column, "Sera, you forecast too far ahead! It won't all happen and we know it!"
The ethereal pink vashael turned and took a swipe in the air at Chatulerin, then abruptly vanished in a puff of the mist that had been falling from her wings. The creak of wagon wheels and the plodding of footsteps held a kind of silence in the wake of her departure.
"They're all Serafustin," said Ekis, from her usual place in the column next to Denziu. "They'll pretend to be someone else, but everyone in Lorilaine is Serafustin. At least every pink crystal someone. Look, there are more coming." Ekis gestured forward.
A pink crystal quadruped with big fins was jogging down the road to meet the caravan. It took Denziu a moment to recognize the rare form of a myrskor. Alongside it came the less alien though still rare form of a pink crystal kalla, while a pink crystal swaivshon came to a landing in the orange grass alongside the road just ahead of them.
The ethereal swaivshon fell in beside Orachu the Unambitious and said a few things that nobody else heard, for their speech was all in whispers. 'Their' speech, Denziu thought, having a poor sense of the facial structure of swaivshon, no scent cue to go by, and no audible speech to judge a voice. Whatever the subject was, Orachu emitted a stunned, "I'll remember that," and dipped his head as he pushed on. The pink crystal swaivshon disappeared in a momentary haze of mist.
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The ethereal myrskor fell in beside Mosdrao. He said, "You're killing me with your tales of exploring, Mosdrao! I don't want my pantheon room’s sculpture of you to be my first memorial sculpture! Don't make me go through that! Just stay home this time!"
Mosdrao tilted his head away from the myrskor with a grimace as he asked, "Wait, how far away is this prediction for?"
"TWO MONTHS!" said Serafustin, voice changing as she broke character harshly.
Mosdrao's jaw dropped. "I'm going to meet someone who goes from zero to statuary in two months?"
The kalla fell in next to Denziu at that point, but stayed quiet while all eyes were on Mosdrao and the pink crystal myrskor next to him. Returning to a male voice, the ethereal myrskor said, "It's a mistake, isn't it? We who live for so long... Who wants to believe in anything quick?"
Chatulerin said, "Sera, you're going to mess it up for both of them with this one."
The ethereal myrskor looked at Chatulerin and said with Serafustin's voice, "I have to TRY! I can't predict for Mosdrao, he dies seventy times a century!"
Mosdrao flinched and said, "But I haven't died even once!"
The pink crystal myrskor reared up in a lightning fast motion and Mosdrao yelped, leaping a step away and staggering in his harness. The whole caravan slowed momentarily and flowed around to avoid anyone crashing into each other as Mosdrao caught himself and resumed his position in the rows. "What was that for?" he demanded, and Denziu saw a small bleeding cut in his shoulder.
"For dying in so many predictions. You're a heartbreaker, Mosdrao!" said Serafustin, and then the pink crystal myrskor vanished abruptly in a puff of mist.
Looking towards the ethereal pink kalla walking next to him, Denziu saw a heavy fur coat and wondered at the kalla's attire. It looked like a very fine coat, and Denziu hoped that zie was seeing a future buyer for zir pottery. Was this someone zie would meet soon?
The two walked on for a bit longer without any words being said, as the caravan's attention started centreing on Denziu in curiosity. Eventually zie asked, "How many times per century do I die?"
"Not even one, Denziu," said the kalla, speaking in Serafustin's voice, but gently. "Your Fate goes on for many thousands of years. Too many. It's too solid to be real."
"Is that what you needed to tell me?" Denziu asked.
"Mm. I'm thinking about it," said Serafustin, speaking still as a transparent crystal kalla in a transparent crystal coat. Her hooves clopped as she walked alongside Denziu on the road, and Denziu was fascinated by watching the kalla's feathers and the fur of her coat sway with her motions despite all being of that same pink crystal.
After a little silence, Serafustin reached over and flicked the pewter hawk charm that Denziu was wearing. "Can I just have this?" she asked.
"Go ahead," said Denziu. Zie lifted the strap of the charm over zir head with a hand, and then held it out to Serafustin, who took it.
"Good, because your mother won't let anything you hate happen to you. You've only been stressing Baggil by carrying this," said the ethereal kalla, wrapping the charm's strap around her arm tight until she was wearing it like a bracelet with the loose bit of strap clenched between her fingers.
A soft hooo came from Ekis, past the other side of Denziu.
"Your mother Praoziu has written you into a corner with her prayers," said Serafustin. "A Fate with no variations is as false as a Fate that branches madly. Beyond that... I keep going back and forth in my head about how much to tell you. Probably better to say less rather than more. Just keep an eye out for this coat, would you? You'll see it again for sure."
The pink crystal kalla faded away in a haze of mist.
"For once, she said less rather than more," said Choave.
The pink crystal vashael that they saw first suddenly reappeared in a haze next to Choave. "I heard that," she said, frowning intensely at him.
Choave grunted.
"Should I make you walk for days in my lovely pink-hued forest?" Serafustin asked, waving a hand broadly across the scenery.
The whole caravan plodded on a few more steps before Choave said, "Okay, I'll bite. What kind of dragon burns down my home?"
"Hah! A kalla," said Serafustin. "But that's so much less than you would've gotten if you'd been nicer to me." She vanished again.
A haze rose up billowing windlessly across the scene around them, and when it faded away the evening light by which they’d entered Lorilaine had become the first light of morning. Denziu felt rested, just like when zie’d been shunted to morning in Inaildoro.
They were now standing on an entirely different bit of roadway, where the green grass of Atney met the orange grass of Lorilaine. A trio of what looked like white ceramic tubes with rounded caps stood straight and tall next to the roadway, arranged in a triangle about two metres on each side. Each of them had red ring-shaped protuberances along the top third of its length, and the two on the side facing the border had a "Welcome to Atnypoltiai" sign hung between them with a cord looped over those rings. Some vandal had drawn a line across the part that said”poltiai”.
Choave cleared his throat and told the caravan, "And this is why the trade caravans go through Lorilaine year after year after year. When Serafustin is done with you, she shunts you right through."
Everyone else must have already known that, so he could only have been speaking to Denziu. Zie felt called to answer, and raised zir voice to speak from the middle of the group. “So much for camping in Lorilaine!”
“I was really expecting her to maze us for a day,” Choave answered.
As the caravan crossed over into Atney, Chatulerin raised her voice at Choave, "You really should just be more polite to her!"
"She is bitter and bossy," said Choave with a proud toss of his head.
"She wants to protect everyone she meets," countered Chatulerin.
"Kishka!" said Choave, speaking to the other dragon at the head of the caravan.
"Yeah, boss?"
Choave said, "Chatulerin is right. Shush me when we get to Lorilaine on the way back."
And that was Lorilaine, a three day walk crossed in one skipped night, courtesy of the land god.