Winter claimed the land, coating the growing things in white snows, blasting away the last vestiges of life with shrill winds. Yet, even in this season of death, in this place where things were made smaller, many things continued to grow. Among them, was Tuya of the Hollows.
It seemed to Tuya that she did not have to look up so high to Yaha anymore, and that most of the other women in her region began to look up to her. Her body grew sideways too, gaining and sculpting flesh in her arms, legs, abdomen, and chest. She no longer looked at herself and saw the small helpless girl who would always be overpowered. She saw a warrior.
Her training with Yaha became less focused on mastering new techniques and more demanding on her body and mind. Every day, she endured many Yaha-isms. Her favorite among them, “You have learned how to wield the weapon. Now you must become the weapon.”
Tuya ran, jumped, spun, danced, and moved her body with spear in hand, pushing herself to the point of physical exhaustion nearly every night. Then she recuperated, eating and drinking more than she thought possible, more than she could have imagined after spending her earliest years subsisting on whatever the tamers allowed her to have. The training and the eating were a release, fighting the battle she could fight now so that she could shift her limits and fight bigger battles later. Not that it was easy. There were times she wanted to lie down and rest, to dwell in the dark and hide, but Renisha’s words stuck with her, allowing her to endure many Yaha-isms, throwing her forward on this path. Her body became a woman’s weapon trained for fight and flight rather than a fearful child’s for freezing like summer flowers in the winter winds.
Growth was not always unequivocally good. Celegana’s bounties often came with a price. For Tuya, the bittersweetness of her budding femininity gave her more trouble than the changes in height and muscle. First blood was coming and numbroot leaf could not stall it much longer. Whether in spring or summer, her time trickled away, and with it, her ability to evade Gurgaldai’s grasp. She did not welcome the soft flesh budding on her chest and in her hips over her lean warrior body. This growth was a damn inconvenience, and more and more the tamers watched her not just for her face, which grew unwelcome, red bumps in places.
If not for Darrakh, she would have hated these changes. He called her beautiful as they explored each other’s growing with giddy hands and eager lips. They spoke deep into the night, safe in the dark place after sunset. Kisses and cuddles, growing ever bolder in their touch, but never crossing her final boundary.
Tuya began to imagine what it meant for a man and woman to join together, with the memory of Renisha and Rahan linking always near. That did not have to be bad, it did not have to be conquest, it did not have to be hateful, it did not have to be pain. It could be pleasure, equality, love, and it could be wonderful. When she thought like this, these changes did not seem so bad.
The problem was that she did not always think like that. The more she grew to care about Darrakh, the more terrifying trust became. He refused to link minds with her and that fight ended many cold nights of warm cuddling. Yaha’s doubts crept into her, seeking sinister motives for closing his mind. Trust was like walking on a branch overlooking a deadly drop and the branch was one bad step from breaking. She felt like she could fall at any moment, and the fear often overpowered the love, never allowing her to be truly comfortable. Yet, she kept going, not only needing him, but wanting him. The fruit at the end of the branch seemed worth the risk of falling. What maddened her was that trust could have been proven, that she could see whether the branch was surefooted or whether it was hiding rot within, if only he opened his mind to her. This frustration compounded the more Tuya linked with others, wishing that he would let her in just like them.
Masarga sought her out like a starved child sought out food, merging minds several times each day. The child gained confidence in her wilding, sharing how she found plants and nurtured them with warmth and life in the season of cold death. Masarga’s loneliness dissipated, blown away like all the leaves in the winter, as she learned more of Tuya’s mind and of her own strength. The more she learned to use her strength, the easier it became to believe that she was not wrong. When she froze this truth within her, Tuya felt the cracks in her own soul healing. Love she had been unable to give to herself, she gave to Masarga. Love she had been unable to give to herself since her earliest days, since the day she failed Sarnai and Khula, Masarga gave back to her.
No more was she the powerful girl that could do nothing with her power. Never again would she let them make her feel weak, thanks to this girl, and the beautiful changes they seeded together.
On one of the final days of winter, where new snows stayed wherever they came from, where the light shining down through the empty canopy melted the old snows, Tuya devoured roasted mushrooms and snails with a group of women. Her body ached, Yaha choosing to do training in the morning, waking Tuya from a restful sleep to tell her that the body did not get to choose when it needed to fight. She ran the perimeter of their sanctuary a few hundred times, half-awake, while Yaha shouted, “Down!” and “Up!” forcing her to drop to the ground then spring up and thrust her spear or jump, spin, and slash out with the spear. Often, the wicked woman would issue the commands so fast that Tuya never got to return to a sprint for she was constantly jumping and dropping.
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Yaha must have been hurt as a child to scheme up such cruelty. When Yaha finally called for a stop, Tuya crashed into the stream and spent an age of her life catching her breath. Each ache, each muscle that got angry when Tuya tried to use them, kept the morning in her mind even though Yaha was not with her, as the woman rarely left the dark place anymore. Yet, those aches subsided, tended by the link she shared with Masarga, as the girl interpreted her thoughts and tried to make pain smaller.
Eased of pain, Tuya looked up and took in the beautiful sight before her. She shared what she saw with Masarga, showing the world through her eyes. Tamer consciousnesses were colorless to Tuya and they siphoned the vitality of the lives they touched, marring them like smoke would. Were they to pass through a field of flowers, Tuya’s eyes could see the subtle withering, or how the flowers strayed to the side, their stems flexing, and the way their petals grew less saturated with color, as if sick. Like tamer consciousnesses, wilder streams were translucent, varying in size based on the strength of the mind they belonged to. Unlike tamer consciousnesses, the wilder streams enhanced the colors of the world. Mushrooms clinging to cavern walls became deeper browns, yellows, and reds, while moss slithered toward the wilder consciousness, becoming a richer green, only receding when the consciousness flowed away. Best of all, people touched by wilder consciousnesses became more of themselves, their color became richer, giving off auras of the strength lurking within them, and the emotions pulsing from them grew more joyous, more peaceful, more accepting and approving of the world around them. To see what happened when six wilder consciousnesses flowed in the small space around the little fire was to see true beauty, life prevailing in the dead of winter, in the land of hollowed souls.
Season after season, Tuya saw the misery left behind by the tamers, imbalanced by the absence of the wilders. At last, she saw the world at its best, if only in this small circle of six. To the world, Tuya, Masarga, Enkhti, Berude, Seruun, and Ibakha were just six girls sitting around a fire in the snow, eating in isolation, as it had always been in the Hollows. The tamers did not see them sharing the food they found using their wilding strength nor could they see the flow of their consciousnesses, streaming from one to another, branching off into three pairs and restoring color to the world around their little fire.
Was there anything more beautiful than six girls sitting around a fire, none of them who were able to give love to themselves until they learned they could love somebody like them? Six girls sitting around a fire, learning to believe that trying their best was the greatest thing they could ever do and was all that Tuya hoped for them? Six girls sitting around a fire, learning that they were not wrong, that the lies they were taught were the true wrongness? Six girls who made each other more of themselves?
We are beautiful, Masarga projected, mind melded with Tuya.
You know, Masarga, you did this. You taught them to link. You taught them how to listen to the wild, to find the surviving mushrooms and make them more of themselves. You seek them out when they are getting yelled at and stay with them when they are scared. You let them know how loved they are and how love is only a thought away. You are responsible for this beauty. You are the beauty itself.
Joy streamed from Masarga to Tuya, joy and pride. This little girl, many seasons from her first blood, mattered. Best of all, she knew it. She was not healed from every wound. Masarga still got scared, still cowered, still froze and made herself small when the tamers neared her, still had moments when she thought the worst would happen, or when she gave all the credit to Tuya, and that was alright because she kept going, kept trying her best, kept finding hope and sharing love, and knew now she did not need to be perfect to not be wrong.
Now, where once was only dread, youthful hope bloomed, and it was more beautiful than anything Tuya ever grew.
That beautiful mind with those beautiful thoughts reached out to Tuya. I like to imagine the Hollows where we all do this, where every khorota is connected so that we are never alone.
We six are the seed that will grow into that great tree, Tuya projected. Long after I am gone, after you are gone, the seed we plant today will continue to grow, whether in the hardest of winters or the most bountiful springs. So, my little seed, keep being you, keep making others more of themselves, and know that I will always be proud of you, that I love you, that you were never a mistake.
I was never a mistake, Masarga believed, a seed grown into the most wonderful flower after a season of nourishment. I am doing my best and my best will never be wrong.
Tuya projected a mental embrace, a vision of her arms wrapping around Masarga, of the love she felt. She would be to Masarga as Zaya was to her and Masarga would be to others as Tuya was to her. After centuries of being held down, of being told lies about who they are and what they are worth, the women of the Hollows would return through this growing cycle of love and connection. In this place of pain and emptiness, they would learn to make pain smaller and stay connected, they would become whole. Tuya saw it with clear vision. Six girls sitting around a fire. This was how the wilders would return.