Work Text:
Elowen gripped her brother, Torian, tight in her arms. When she was a child his hugs would swallow her, even as one of the slightest of her brothers. Now, they were evenly matched. She didn’t want to let go. She didn’t want to have to step back and towards the future where she would have to raise an army. A blade wasn’t meant to lead. She wasn’t enough.
Her voice in her head whispered. You aren’t.
Torian pulled back, a tired smile on his face. The scars on his neck, magically sealed shut by Kelnys, still glistened. Baby new skin, soft skin, skin that would be pierced and burned and hurt. She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a bolt swaying above her own head in suit, held only by a single spun thread.
Torian cleared his throat. “Thank you. For being here to save me. For helping me continue Father’s mission.”
Elowen gripped the hilt of her dagger. “I could barely move when you were shot. I didn’t save you.” She jutted out her jaw to the tent. “They did.” Shame welled up in her throat. She had so much she wanted to say to Torian. So many things that she thought would be helpful for him. A thousand small apologies, for every day she’d been gone again when she could have travelled home.
“They were only here, because of you.” He shook his head incredulously. “Ellie, I’m not made for the hard world that you’ve sewn your roots in. You survive in the sand and the silt and the stone where others would whither. I need the shade of the walls of Mouse. I can help others thrive there. I can be with my books, to study, to prepare. You-you help others thrive out here.” He gestured to the forest; to the blood splattered path.
His blood.
The blood will never stop flowing. It will flood.
“I help them survive.” She said, “Nothing more.”
Elowen ducked under the flap of the tent and Torian followed. Inside, Dolly, Lovak, Raidion, Kelnys, and I sat around a small fire, its smoke drifting through a hole at the top of the tent. Torian announced their plan for the Last Light to travel to Talisca in his stead. He would reconvene in Mouse, train those he had, and ready preparations for more to follow.
Dolly furrowed her brow. “Ellie, how do you feel about the plan? It’s up to you.”
Elowen dug her nails into the palm of her hands. They bit, stinging without drawing blood. Before, they would let her go alone, now she was given a choice. “Torian, you’re in charge. You pick.”
The last choice she made, it was a battle. She wasn’t going to explain herself again. She wasn’t going to fight for her family or for her friends. She had tried being as strong as the oak, now, she was going to be as free as the forest.
“Then it’s settled. I trust anyone who walks in step with Elowen.” Torian stated. “Anyone who she trusts to keep watch while her mind roams dreams. Anyone who fights with her or for her, are family to me. You all may have been Web, but you all are Grenweard now, as far as it concerns me. Though I warn you, it’s a heavy yoke to bear. No heavier than the ones you have worn thus far, I imagine. I will see you all in the morning.”
Torian took his leave, Lovak in his stead. The two were quickly in conversations about the coming journey.
I waited until they could no longer hear the two men’s footsteps to turn to Elowen and ask. “Why does Grenweards put egg on themselves?”
Kel and Dolly both snorted.
“Yoke, not yolk.” Elowen replied, “I’m going to get some air, I think. Do a round to make sure there’s no one else out there that wants to kill us.”
“There are.” Raidion stated.
“Shut up Raidion.” She replied, ducking out of the tent.
The stars were just starting to appear in the sky above. Theolon’s bow was in full form, arrow tip twinkling and pointing towards the sliver of moon. Towards the horizon, she could just start to see the flames of Ignas, red diamonds in a sea of white and yellow stars. The cicada’s screamed above her as she stepped into the tree line, out of sight of the tents and away from the campfire smoke cluttering her view of the sky. After a few minutes, a small clearing appeared. A fawn was nestled against its mother, its spots as bright as those in the sky above. The doe blinked at Elowen with curiosity, and as Elowen settled against the mossy trunk of a tree, it lay its head back down against its child.
The wind brought the sound of chimes, and a shadow hovered above her. The footfalls were familiar. The deer didn’t move except for a twitch of the ear. Not predator or foe then.
Dolly leaned against the tree, and spotting the two deer, slowly crouched down to sit next to Elowen in the bend of its roots. The space between the roots of the tree was just wide enough to fit them both, and the thick moss deadened any sound from echoing into the forest. She pulled out a blanket from her pack, carefully spreading it across the two of them. It blended in with the leaf litter of the forest; to any passing person, they’d be hard to spot.
“Are you okay?” Dolly whispered.
Elowen stared up at the stars. She opened her mouth to speak, but when she tried, nothing came out. Hot tears welled up at the corner of her eyes, and she swallowed. In the dark, she hoped Dolly couldn’t see them.
Dolly pulled out her waterskin and handed it to her. “I stole some wine, if it’ll help.”
Elowen took a long swig. It was white, which was dryer than she liked, but it did help. “That was…that was everything I’ve been trying to fight against. Everything I told you all—”
She grimaced.
It wouldn’t do any help now rehashing the argument. Torian, for now, was safe. Her brothers, her father, her mother, were safe. Or, as safe as they could be.
“I know.” Dolly said, “You were right. Your family was—is—in danger. The rest of us don’t know what it's like. I’s tribe was safe, protected by the caves and their numbers. Kelnys and Raidion don’t have any family left. Maybe, we didn’t understand.” She took the wine skin from Elowen and took a sip. “Maybe, we don’t understand what stakes matter until it’s too late. I’m sorry for that. But we're here for you now.”
“Promise?”
A voice in her mind whispered. She’ll break it.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Dolly replied. “Always. Whatever happens, no matter what. We’ll never leave your side, unless you tell us to go. And even then, it’ll take some convincing.”
Elowen pointed at a small grouping of stars above them. “Look behind that cluster, do you see the pink and orange haze?”
Dolly squinted. “Barely. I never noticed that the sky wasn’t just purple and stars before.”
The wind whipped overhead, the branches swaying back and forth in dance. A few loose leaves tumbled into their laps, brown and withered from the winter. Dolly picked one up, tearing pieces of it apart so only the branching skeleton of its stem was left.
“That’s where Ignas burned the sky during the Great War. She was said to have lifted her fist and the Sun came to sit in it, and she urged it to burn in both the day and the night, for weeks. Casting out darkness from every corner of Reliquae until all who hid from her sight were lain bare. The night was scorched, and that patch forever remembers where the sun burned it.” She twisted the end of her hair between her fingers. “Grenweards are said to get their red hair from her, passed down from the flame.
“When I was a child, I’d look at the stars and imagine myself sitting in forests just like this. Free, at ease. Now, all I can see are the eyes of the web, or the spark that goes out in a person's eyes just before they die. I keep seeing Eiddon and Derwen, falling to the wrath of war, their bright eyes doused by blood.”
Dolly handed Elowen back the wine, who took a long draw. It was like, after she came face to face with her family again, she couldn’t get them off her mind. She had left them, left the responsibility of them, for years. Now she was catching up on all the guilt that she had pushed down, had ignored, and had been too busy surviving to notice when it fluttered in her belly. She was nauseous, not from the wine, which she had now drained, but from the fact that everything she loved was always held just out of reach. She didn’t know what would make her feel settled. Make her feel free. She broke the cage that held her, and burned the web that bound her, so why did she still feel so stuck?
“My people have a story about Ignas too,” Dolly snapped her fingers, a small flame appearing between them before spluttering out. “Alakash was said to have spoken to the Moon and the Sun, on behalf of Ignas. The Moon refused to talk to him, its back stayed turned and dark. But the Sun; it wanted to see everything. It wondered about the darkness of night, of the owls and the possums, and especially about the Moon.
Dolly winked at her. “I know–Alakash and his fables–but hear me out.
“The Sun agreed, and when Ignas picked it up, it shone brighter, amplified by Ignas’ steady hand and fury, her stubbornness to hold the line. She wasn’t alone. Alakash helped her, helped keep the Sun in place with songs when it grew bored, helped eventually coax the Moon out to reflect its light brighter.
“That’s why Alakash has white hair. When the Moon finally came out, its beam struck him. He didn’t mind though, changed as he was. He thought it made him look wise–though it didn’t help any of the other Virtuous to take him seriously. Only Ignas, which is why Tieflings are said to be resistant to flames and have eyes that can see in the dark. In order to stand near the Sun or the Moon, to weather no matter the hardship.”
Dolly passed Elowen a small black and white feather. “For your brother.”
Elowen spun the feather in her fingers. It was tradition to thank Persephone, the Goddess of luck, by whispering gratitude to a feather and letting it fall into the breeze. If it was heard, it’d fly up, and if not, it would settle to the ground. Either way, it was good luck. She held the feather to her lips. “Thank you.”
As she let the feather go, Dolly flicked her wrist, the gems on her rings glowing a soft pink. Wind caught her feather and took it across the meadow, where it disappeared into the shadows. She couldn’t tell if it fell or carried itself further past her vision.
“I thought you weren’t religious.” Elowen said.
“I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t. Even before I was conscripted to the Web, hell, before I left Mouse, I had lost faith. The gods had turned their back on me, on the people I loved, even on the people I hated.
“Mouse wasn’t like the castle you lived in. That castle, that was a place of fairy tale. Even when we were there, it still felt like a dream. The streets though, the alleys, the run down places with daggers hidden under floorboards, those were Mouse to me. I had a home, and a family, but life was hard. Finding my way to a big city, to Vigil and our crew, that was my church. Every stolen purse a prayer, our rituals the moonlight prowls, our holy water a drink of ale.”
Elowen could feel her eyes drooping. She slid down to rest her head on Dolly’s shoulder. “So, did you make that fable up on the spot?”
“How did you know?”
“It sounded like you.” A lock of Dolly’s hair tickled her nose, and she sneezed. Dolly patted her thigh, and Elowen slid down to rest her cheek against her knee. Dolly ran her fingers through her hair, gently undoing knots Elowen hadn’t realized were there.
“Maybe I’ve got a little Alakash in me along with Themself.” Dolly noted, “Maybe I’ll be the next Virtuous.”
“Right, the Virtuous of bluffing.”
“Ponder this, I think I’d be Wild.”
“Aren’t you already?”
Dolly laughed. “Do you think, in another world maybe, there would have been a place for them all together? That they could’ve kept Sentiasa as it was? If the Wild could switch places, could survive with the Virtuous and vice-a-verca, maybe… But when I think of the Vile well…it falls apart a bit there.”
“There’s the Dolly I know, the Heretic.” Elowen looked at the moon peering at them from above. “So, the Midnight Moon. I wanted to wait, until Haven was further behind us. It was what Knox–Vigil–called you? A pet name?”
“It was what he called me, but it wasn’t a pet name. My infernal name roughly translates to Moon, on account of,” She gestured towards her hair. “When I first linked up with Vigil, well, we only met at midnight. It wasn’t always…the most tasteful of meetings. It wasn’t until much later, when money got tighter and we found we had a mutual interest in more than just the sounds of each other's moans, that we started our little ring of bandits. At the end of the day, Moon and Dolly mean the same to me. They're my names, not his. Midnight though, that’s a time I don’t often think of as my own. That time between the end of one day and the start of the next, just before the shoe drops, when you close your eyes thinking that you’ll wake up next to your partner and wake up to rough hands taking you before the Spinner, Midnight is stuck as his.”
The moon centered in the sky. No doubt, it was nearing midnight.
“Would you take away Midnight, if you could? If you were a god?”
“Would you take away your years in the Web, faking your death, if you were?”
A question for a question, an answer for an answer.
“I don’t think, even with all the power of a god, I could. It’s in the fabric of my being. There is no Elowen without that mistake. There is no version of myself without making that choice.”
“No Elowen without Endellion.”
“I suppose.”
“Midnight will always come then too. One day turns into the next, whether or not I’d take away the hour, the change will happen. Midnight, or one, or eleven. It doesn’t matter. So no, I wouldn’t take away Midnight, but I think I’d like to make the Moon brighter then. So that no matter what, even on a new moon, there’s still a glimmer of Ignas stubbornly calling me to safety. Reminding me that there’s a choice, even if I feel like there isn’t. Sometimes, you just have to wait for the light of dawn to see it.
“When we first met…I was terrified of you. Kind of still am. It’s like you weren’t afraid of holding the sun. Didn’t care if it would burn you. I lo–care about you–I care about all of our crew.” She shook her head. “I’m getting sentimental. Just know that we’re here. That you’re not fighting alone.”
The voice in Elowen’s head said nothing. For once, it was just the wind and the sound of the branches scraping branches, and the soft, rhythmic breath of Dolly above her, waiting.
Elowen bunched the blanket between her fists. “It’s felt–it’s felt like when I first joined the Web. When I didn’t know what I was doing, or whether I would make it. A little voice in the back of my head telling me that everything I was, wasn’t enough still. Being on my own, making the decisions, it isn’t something I’m good at. I’m a soldier, at the end of the day. I take orders, I cut those down who oppose them.”
“I don’t think you’re just a soldier. You’re a harbinger now.”
“What if I don’t want to be? What if I just want everyone to be safe. Every time I open my mouth, it’s like I’m screaming into the wind. It gets twisted, and wrenched away from me, and by the end it just sounds like nothing.”
“Then I’ll take the message for you. And you cover my back.”
How many times had Elowen stepped in front of Dolly, in front of Raidion or Kelnys, and taken the brunt of the swing of a sword? How many times had she intercepted an arrow with her bracers or ran headfirst into a raging storm of magic?
“When Torian hit the floor, I couldn’t cover him. I didn’t protect him. The voice was right, it was the truth.”
“You are the strongest person I’ve ever met. When it comes down to it, you’ll know what to follow.”
Elowen shut her eyes. “Tell me what to do.”
“I’ll do you one better.” Dolly ran her thumb across Elowen’s forehead, smoothing the lines across her brow. She felt Elowen relax, for a moment. “I’ll tell you a story. It’s a good one. A true one this time.”
“Should I believe you?”
“Never. Now shush.” She tapped a finger gently on the woman’s nose twice to make sure she didn’t oppose again. “This is a story about a tree. So great and powerful that it could wrench its roots from the earth. If it favored you, you could sit in its tallest branches and travel a forest made of trees just like it. A forest where the fruits and the flowers would talk to each other, where the sun rose and faded, and the sky was made of stars. Where the moon was white and new, and where the trees would sing to one another.”
“I think I know how this ends.”
Dolly leaned over and gently placed her hand around Elowen's chin. The pad of her thumb pressed her lips together. “Shut up, El. You’ll miss the best part.”
Elowen stuck out her tongue and licked Dolly’s thumb. Dolly pulled her hand away with a laugh.
“You rapscallion.” Dolly tutted, pulling the blanket over Elowen’s mouth instead.
They had slept back to back many a night on the road, their bedrolls warmer together than apart. Given that Kelnys snored, I preferred to sleep in the trees, and Raidion was off wandering half the night, it was their only option. Here now though, it was familiar. She would rather be here, next to Dolly, than in the tents with Lovak and Torian and the other strangers.
“This was a forest that a Kobold, who was once deep below the earth, found themself. Where they had no right to be, and yet, there they were. Like magic. Like a lightning strike, something that could only have happened that one time. And even though there was nobody in that forest to hear the Kobold, they told their tale to me once. And even though they're gone, the story lives on. It lives in me, and you, and in the wind that carries my voice.”
The lightning bugs were waking up, and one came to rest on the top of Dolly’s hand. It crawled for a moment, up and down, its light blinking, searching for its pair. Eventually, a yellow light spun in the air before her, and the bug flew up to meet it, the pair fluttering off into the underbrush.
“This world is an incredible place. We were told once that it had boundaries, but it turns out now that it doesn’t. That our wings we thought were clipped, were just out of sight. That the end of the world was the beginning.
“This is a world where a kobold can stand on the highest mountain, and look gods in the face. A world where an elf can be loved so well that he doesn’t realize he’s a dragonborn. Where a lost daughter can be loved back to life by her family, and still live to fight for people she doesn’t know. It’s a world where someone who’s not even from here, can find family too. This is a world where flies, the smallest, most unloved beings can fight against shadows. And maybe, even win.
“You asked me to tell you what to do, El.” Dolly clicked her tongue. “I won’t do that. That’s what the Web wanted me to do. To be their leader. To be their talking head. They wanted you to listen, without thought. To act, without will. I’ll tell you what I think. I think we protect each other. We protect I, and Kelnys, and especially Raidion, though that’s mostly from himself. We’ll protect Torian, and Eiddon, and Caelan, and Derwen, and Celyn. Your parents. The reason we have to keep pushing forward. No matter what voices spin webs of lies in our mind.
Dolly waited, listening to the deep breaths that she knew meant Elowen had finally fallen asleep. “We protect the people we love.”
Elowen’s face, unbothered by her thoughts of the day, was years younger in sleep. The girl she once was, and still is, settling into the comfort of sweet dreams. Elowen was warmer than Dolly, like a furnace in her lap. The tree broke the wind that danced across the meadow, protecting them from the night's chill. Dolly kept watch until the first light of day. Until the sun shone through the trees. Until the doe and her mother stirred and trotted out of the pasture. Until the birds started to sing.
The day was beginning. Elowen stretched, the morning rays gentle on her skin. The creases between her brows pinched, and her mouth set in that hard, true line that it tended to settle in. Her eyes stayed shut, giving Dolly a few moments left to trace the slope of her nose and map the constellations of her freckles. She thought back to Torian’s sentiment from the night before; Dolly Grenweard didn’t have a bad ring to it.