The Truth in the Mirror

"The Truth in the Mirror"
 Sweetbreeze stood before the proud parents and reached one hand to gently touch the infant’s fair hair.  She smiled at the beaming young couple.  ◊She is as lovely as her mother,◊ she sent to Brill, whose smile was as bright as the daystar overhead.  
 With her free hand, Brill touched Sweetbreeze’s shoulder.  ◊Sunstream tells me that you are soon to have a cub of your own,◊ the Wavedancer sent in response, wishing to share in the smaller she-elf’s joyful news.
 Sweetbreeze smiled at Brill, but there was a melancholy in her eyes and expression that the new mother did not- and could not- understand.
 In truth, Sweetbreeze did not understand it herself.  She had wanted a cub in her youth, particularly following the hunting accident that had changed her life; stealing her voice and filling her with a mortal dread of big cats.  However, now that she was pregnant at last, she could muster no joy, nor excitement.  Instead, all she could feel was…sadness.
 Having greeted the new cubling (or pipling, as the Wavedancers called their children) and her justifiably proud parents, Sweetbreeze needed to get away from the others for a while.  She smiled once more at Brill, pretending not to see the concern in the lovely elf’s face, and then headed for the seaside.
 She felt Blueruff’s concern in the back of her mind, but she sent a burst of wordless assurance to her wolf-friend, and, though the concern didn’t subside entirely, it faded into the background hum that was her bond with her wolf-friend.
 Her lifemate, however, was much more difficult to deter.  His own brooding nature was in harmony with hers, though his was often less melancholy and more violently demonstrative.  She knew he would follow her until she proved to him that she was all right.
 Which meant, of course, that he was probably going to be following her for a good long time. Because she could not lie and tell him all was well.  She could not even prevaricate and tell him she would be well.
So she waited for him to catch up and sent him an unfeigned smile when he took her hand, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do, and laced their fingers.
 She kept the tone light.  ◊How did you manage to elude your sister?◊ she teased.
 Dart chuckled; Chitter’s favorite climbing post, perch, and overall playmate was her older brother- unless it was their father.  It was rare that she would allow him out of her sight while she was awake.  “I asked Mother to take her.  When she saw where my attention was, she understood.”  He squeezed her hand.  “I saw your face when you greeted Korafay, beloved.  Tell me what you’re thinking.”
 She sighed and said nothing as they walked along the damp sand above the tide.  At one point, she stopped to remove her leather boots, and Dart released her hand to do likewise.  The sand squished between their toes, leaving a gritty feeling that was different, and yet somehow still similar to the forest mud they both knew so well.  Dart didn’t press her; he knew her well enough to know that she would tell him in her own time- even if her own time was maddeningly slow to most of their kind.
 So they walked in silence until they reached the base of the impressive cliff that the Wavedancers called Lookout Point.  She looked up at it, considering, and then turned back to Dart.  ◊Hold tight to me,◊ she sent, wrapping her arms around him.  Her eyes sparkled with mischief.  ◊I’ve been practicing.◊
 Before he could ask exactly what she’d been practicing, the wind began swirling around them, tugging at their clothes and hair, and whipping sand into their eyes.  Dart wrapped his arms around her waist and hung on, squinting to keep the sand and grit out of his eyes.  Sweetbreeze, he noted, had closed hers entirely and was frowning in concentration.  The winds picked up speed, but nothing else seemed to be happening for some time.
 Then, rather abruptly, Dart felt his feet leave the sand.  Startled, he redoubled his hold on his rather incredible lifemate, but she didn’t seem to notice.  Her eyes remained closed, and she continued to frown.  They continued to rise with almost painstaking slowness, the winds swirling about them in an ever-lengthening cyclone.
 Finally, their feet became level with the top of the cliff, and, though he was thrilled to bear witness to her use of such a unique and awesome power, he was relieved to have solid rock under his feet again.  And when Sweetbreeze sagged in his arms, exhausted, he was even more glad of the cliff beneath them.  He helped her to sit on a boulder, and she bent to brace her hands on her knees, pouring sweat and breathing hard.  
 As her breathing calmed slowly, she straightened, looking weary but proud.  ◊Well?◊ she asked, lifting her eyebrows at him.
 He ran his fingers through her sweat-dampened hair and smiled.  “You were wondrous, beloved,” he told her.
 She beamed at him, but he saw that same flicker of discontent in her ice-blue eyes.  His heart squeezed in his chest, not knowing what to say.
 Seeing his closed expression, she tilted her head to one side.  ◊What is it, lifemate?◊
“Do you know…there is only one moment in my life that I can recall…when I have looked into your eyes and not seen the shadow of your unhappiness?” he asked bluntly, momentarily surprised by his own frankness.
 In her sheer shock, her recent accomplishment and even her exhaustion were momentarily forgotten. In spite of the hurt she felt at his words, Sweetbreeze found herself asking, ◊Which moment?◊
 Dart met her eyes squarely and lifted his eyebrows.  “The moment I heard your soul in my heart and saw that you heard mine too,” he said softly.
 Again, his candor overwhelmed everything else.  She swallowed hard, feeling her eyes begin to burn as tears rose to the surface- tears she refused to shed.  She held out her hands to him.  He took them in his and sat beside her on the boulder, their legs pressed tightly together, their shoulders touching.  ◊My mother,◊ she began softly. ◊My mother might tell you I was a happy cub,◊ she pointed out with vague amusement.  She sighed and used one hand to lift the bulk of her hair off her sweaty neck, using a thread of her power to cool the heated skin and dry the sweat from her hair.
 ◊I still remember every moment of the day that changed…everything,◊ she confided in him suddenly.
 Dart blinked, and watched the emotions play across her beautiful face and wished there was some way he could take her pain, or relieve it somehow.  He felt as helpless in the face of her obvious pain as he had as a younger man, when his father had killed another elf to save his life…and been unable to forgive himself.  “You’ve lived so long with the pain and fear,” he whispered, nuzzling her shoulder.  “Will you share it with me?”
 She blinked silently several times, and then sighed.  ◊Share?  You want to share my pain?◊
 Dart cleared his throat as something occurred to him, a half-remembered memory.  “Have you ever shared it with anyone?” he asked slowly, his mind racing to recover the rest of his thought.  “With Skywise?  Or…with Strongbow?”  Part of him, despite his concern for her, hoped that she hadn’t shared it with his father first.
 She shook her head.  ◊No,◊ she confessed.  ◊After it happened, right after, it was too…raw, too painful.  Strongbow and I had much in common, but not that.  By the time the scars had healed enough…we had lost the connections we’d had.  And Skywise…◊ She smiled fondly.  ◊Skywise was never serious enough to make me consider telling him.◊
 “You never bled the poison from the wound,” he murmured.
 ◊I…well, that’s…◊ She fumbled over her words, a first for her.
 “You never bled the poison, and so the wound never really healed.  It scarred, like your throat,” he told her, lifting one hand to tenderly trace the four parallel scars that marred her otherwise perfect skin.  She shivered at his touch.
 ◊Dyrr…◊ she sent helplessly.  He still thrilled at the love and tender emotion she put into his soulname.
 “You need to heal it, beloved,” he pressed.
 ◊I’ve managed,◊ she sent, but even she could hear the half-heartedness of the words.  Though the words were strictly true, her sending lacked the force of conviction.
He smiled and squeezed her shoulder gently.  “Maybe you have managed, beloved.  But a Wolfrider knows that managing is not living.”
 She stared at him, a faint smile making her lips twitch.  ◊I’m unaccustomed to such eloquence, lifemate,◊ she finally sent, her tone softly teasing.  ◊Very well, then.  What do you suggest I do?◊
 His answer was ready, taken from the mist of his long-ago memories, and his gaze was tender with his love for her.  But his sending was firm when he said, simply, “Share it, Aiyo.  With me, with Timmain…share it with your father’s spirit, if nothing else.  But bleed the poison of it.”
 She considered his words in silence, her eyes distant and thoughtful.  In a movement so slow that she didn’t even appear to be aware of it, she placed one hand over her still-flat abdomen.  Her focus crystallized again on his face and she asked, ◊For our cub?  Or for me?◊
 Dart smiled and pressed his forehead against hers.  His reply was strong and strident in her mind, and filled her with love.  ◊For us all, beloved.◊
 She smiled genuinely at that and combed her fingers through his winged auburn hair.  ◊I wish to return to the palace,◊ she told him.  Her eyes sparked with amusement.  ◊But I think we shall have to make our way down in a more traditional manner.  Getting us up here has wearied me more than I thought it would.◊
 He didn’t pick up on the impishness of her tone until she stood and turned and, with a running start, launched herself off the edge of the cliff into the open air.  Dart half-expected her to float, as he’d seen her done on a couple of occasions, but she plunged towards the waves below.  His horror was tempered by his amusement and surprise.
 After peering over the edge to make sure that she missed the rocks far below- though he knew her ability to move air and water alike would keep her from harm- he decided to shimmy down the side of the cliff instead of take her path off the edge of it.  In something more like a controlled fall than a climb down, he reached the sand just as she climbed, dripping, from the surf, looking more than half like a Wavedancer herself, particularly considering the seaweed that had draped strands of itself over one of her ears and wrists.  She grinned at him and gathered her wet hair into a tail at the nape of her neck to wring some of the water from it, only then discovering the trailing green tendrils.  With a laugh that was as silent as the rest of her, she carefully peeled the weeds from her body and tossed them back into the sea.
 She took his hand in her cold, clammy one, and they walked, together, to where the palace stood, resembling nothing more than another jagged cliff surrounding the sheltered bay.  Hand in hand, they breached the portal, and were greeted by an abrupt cessation of the outside sounds.
 Most of the palace’s residents, the displaced Sun Folk, were at the feast outside, celebrating the birth of Korafay.  A few of those remaining within looked up from what they were doing as the pair passed, but few offered greeting, even to Dart.
 When they reached their destination, Dart frowned slightly.  The chamber of the Scroll of Colors always felt eerie to him, though he knew that most counted it as the heart of the palace and the power of their race.
 ◊Once, I wondered if everything we did made it to the Scroll,◊ she sent to him as they both peered up at the large sculptures.  The two halves of the scroll seemed to, at once, both create their own illumination, and drink in the natural glow of the walls.  Sweetbreeze stepped closer to them, letting go of Dart’s hand to touch one of them.  A burst of multi-hued light answered her touch.  ◊Rayek noted my interest.  Rather, my preoccupation.  So I asked him.  And he actually answered, in that condescending way he used to have.  The Scroll, he told me, knows everything that has happened to our race, even those who have touched other worlds.  It knows what is happening to our race at each moment.  And it knows what will happen.  Not just to our people as a whole, or even as individual tribes, but as individual elves.◊
 Dart nodded.  “So, if I could turn the Scroll, I could read your story for myself?  I could read our cub’s story?”
 She smiled and turned her head to look at him over her shoulder.  ◊Aye.  But since neither of us possesses the power to turn the Scroll for ourselves, I will have to tell it myself,◊ she said, again caressing the swirls of iridescent material that held the existence of her entire race.
 Dart, sensing that she was ready, sat, making himself comfortable on the Guider slab that had, at one time or another, held many different people, including both her father, One-Eye, and, more recently, Sunstream.
 He wasn’t thinking about any of that as she stared at the ceiling of the chamber.  ◊It was one of the first hunts of summer,◊ she began. ◊We had started out in a group, but I wasn’t the only one to start tracking my own prey.  In those days, there were no humans nearby; there were no rules about hunting alone.◊
 She recalled every detail, as though she were reliving it even in that moment, centuries later.  ◊It was the first time I had ever brought down a full-grown buck by myself.  In that moment, as I cut his throat and gave his blood back to the forest, I was proud.  I had remembered all of my lessons, and I had honored my teachers.  At least, that’s what I thought.◊
 Dart said nothing, only fixed his eyes on her slender form as she moved from the Scroll to one of the mirrored walls of the chamber.  She stared into its faceted depths as though reading her story in its shifting colors.
 ◊My wolf-friend then was Whitestripe; even as a cub, he’d had an odd stripe of light color down his spine.  He was my second wolf-friend- is it wrong that I can no longer recall his predecessor’s name?◊ The question was rhetorical, so Dart didn’t even attempt to answer.  She continued as though she hadn’t paused in her narrative.  ◊I gave him his due, the liver and entrails that he loved.  And then I set to butchering the buck.  I was so caught up in my success, and Whitestripe was caught up in his meal.  We had no warning…the longtooth was too hungry or too rabid to care that we were there.  Whitestripe heard her or smelled her first.  His attack gave me time…I can still see the way she threw him across the clearing…into the tree.  I heard his back break.◊  Her mind-voice choked on a silent sob, and her shoulders began to tremble.  ◊There was no time!  I had one arrow to the string even before she flung him aside.  The shot was a good one, but I found out later that it had hit a lung, and not the heart.  It was the only shot I had time for.  She charged me…The first strike broke my bow, shattered it in my hands, and knocked me over.  The second…◊  She swallowed hard and lifted a hand to the scars at her throat, staring at her rippling reflection in the wall.  ◊The second would have killed me if Rain had not been so close.  Even as I lost consciousness, I saw Strongbow’s arrow suddenly seem to grow from her ear.  I don’t remember seeing her collapse in her charge.  The descent into blackness tore me from my body.  I stopped being Snowmelt for…for time without counting.  I was only Aiyo.  I was small and alone, and scared.  Sometimes, there would be another with me.  I remember my mother’s touch, the soft golden glow of her love for me, tethering me to my broken body.◊
 She closed her eyes as the remembered fear washed over her again.  A cold, clammy sweat broke out on her forehead and the back of her neck, making her shiver with a chill.  ◊Others came to me too, when I started to slip farther from myself.  They kept me from losing myself.  Rain was one of those.  So was your father.  And Brownberry, my closest friend.  Even so, there were times that I could not ever remember being anything but what I was, Aiyo, a soul free of a body.◊
 Dart followed her path around the room again, one hand trailing along the wall until she returned to her starting position, just behind the Scroll platform.  She continued her narrative.  ◊When I finally did return to my body, Rain had done everything he could.  He had stopped the blood flow and saved my life, but he could not heal the scars completely.  And he could not give me back the voice I had had.  In fact, he could not give me back any voice.  In those first few moments after I woke up, I knew such pain!  I cannot even describe it to you, it was so intense.  Rain knew immediately that something was wrong.  I was cast again into the blackness, but this time, something held me closer than before.  I hovered near enough in spirit that it took little effort for my mother to call me back to my body, back to the form I had almost forgotten.◊
 She turned and looked at him, her eyes haunted, full of unshed tears.  ◊For moons after my healing was complete, I remained fearful.  The shadows beneath the trees set me to trembling, even those surrounding the Father Tree.  Learning that Whitestripe had indeed been killed defending me was another blow to my fragile spirit.  Unable to bring myself to hunt, when the very sight of a new bow made me shiver in terror, I drifted through my days, trying the patience of my lovemate…and my chief.◊
 ◊At the changing of the seasons, I was still unable to face the forest.  I had lost my purpose, lost the Way.  I hated myself for my weakness…more than once, I thought to go into the woods and simply never return.  But something…something stopped me each time.  Once, it was Brownberry, asking me to go swimming.  Another time, it was my mother, asking me to help her pick burs from Softpaw’s pads.  Even once, it was Moonshade, presenting me with Whitestripe’s carefully-preserved pelt.  Finally, I decided that there must still be purpose to my life.◊
 She heaved a sigh and closed her eyes briefly.  ◊I had a dream.  I still recall it as clearly as though it were last night.◊  
 It ran through her mind and memory with a clarity most Wolfriders didn’t experience with actual events, let alone dreams.  She felt it again, as though she were dreaming it for the first time, and her mind was so open to him that Dart saw it too:
 The darkness gave way slowly to a field of stars, slowly brightening until she could see better than she could most nights.  A silvery-gray wolf that sparkled as though he were made of stars himself approached.  Snowmelt felt no fear, only awe as the massive beast strode to her side and nosed her hand until she rested it on his head.
 -Fear eats at you, wolf-cub.-
 Snowmelt dropped to her knees and stared at the wolf.  “What?”  Snowmelt’s eyes went wider at the sound of her own voice, a sound she hadn’t heard in more than a season.
 -Fear eats at you.  Fear is not the Way.-
 “I know that.  I cannot seem to help it.”
 -The Wolfrider Way is not the only Way, wolf-cub.  But it is the only Way your people know.  Forgetting is the Way.  -
 “I can’t forget.  How can I when I bear the scars?  When I cannot laugh or speak aloud ever again?  Forgetting is the Way, and Wolfriders live the Way.  If I cannot forget, how can I be a Wolfrider?”
 The wolf’s glow brightened and he gently dragged his tongue up the side of her face once.  -Then you can change.  A Wolfrider changes when she cannot remain the same.-  
 “I have changed.”
 -You have.  And when the fear is more distant, you will see that you are still the same.-
 She sighed and pressed her forehead against the cool surface of the wall, the true meaning of the long-ago dream hovering in her mind even now.  ◊I woke up for the first time in a long time, feeling like a real Wolfrider.  I knew what was needed for me to be a Wolfrider again, and so I did it.◊ She sighed.  ◊I took the tribename Silence, and I apprenticed myself to Trueflight- your grandmother- who was the tribe’s carver.  I also learned many of our tribe’s legends from Longbranch, but Pike’s aptitude and memory for the stories far surpassed mine even when he was still flighty, chattery Chipmunk.  With a new name, a new purpose, and a new wolf-friend to bond with, I was well on my way to conquering my new fears.  It took many seasons before I could bring myself to join a hunt once more, and I never strayed far from the group again.  Even after carving bows for my tribemates, I could never bring myself to use one again.◊
 She snorted softly and added, almost absently, ◊I’m still afraid of the big cats.  When Pike rescued the tuftcat kitten after we killed its mother on the Great Plain, I all but begged Ember to destroy it.◊ She shuddered.  ◊I do not know if that fear will ever leave me.  I have changed and healed in so many ways, beloved.  But not everything can change.◊
She finally stopped, facing away from him, with one hand on the mirrored wall of the Scroll room.  Dart’s eyes had never left her, but now he blinked and his eyes flickered to her reflection.  He closed them and opened them again, hardly knowing what he was seeing, but the sight didn’t change.
 The reflection in the wall was Sweetbreeze, but at the same time, it wasn’t, quite.  The reflection was shorter, slimmer, with smaller curves, almost as though she wasn’t done developing yet.  Her hair, though styled the same as the Sweetbreeze he had always known, was both shorter and slightly darker than his lifemate’s.  The reflection wore different clothes, leathers that he had never seen before.
 The most striking difference, however, was the simple lack of the four parallel scars that had marred Sweetbreeze’s throat for his entire life.  The reflection stared at Sweetbreeze with no bitterness, with none of the melancholy that he had come to expect of his lifemate.  This younger vision of her was full of the innocence and hope for the future that characterized the youth of their race, unjaded by experience and hardship.
 ◊Snowmelt.◊
 There was, oddly enough, no surprise in Sweetbreeze’s mind-voice, though Dart was somewhat stunned.  Instead, her sending was full of a mix of awe and resignation.  The reflection smiled and nodded, and Dart realized that it wasn’t actually a reflection.
 It was an elf spirit.  It was his lifemate’s spirit, so long lost, killed by fear.  Here, in this room, in this moment, she made her presence finally known.  Dart could only watch, fascinated and awed himself, as the reflection of Snowmelt lifted her hand and touched the wall.  After only a moment’s hesitation, Sweetbreeze lifted her own hand to press her free palm against Snowmelt’s against the wall.
 As Sweetbreeze stared at her younger, unscarred self, the vision of Snowmelt said something that both of them heard with astonishing clarity.
 A truth, a truth so intense and powerful that it rattled her to her very core and lit many of the dark corners of the blackness she had so long feared.
 ◊We Are Still Aiyo.◊
 Snowmelt vanished abruptly from the wall, leaving not even a true reflection of Sweetbreeze behind, and Sweetbreeze felt her cheeks wet with tears.  Her spirit, though, felt lighter.
 Dart said nothing, nor made a sound as he slipped from the room, a smile on his lips, even as he felt his own eyes mist over.  Maybe she wasn’t healed, but the poison had been let from the wounds.  And now she could heal.  For her sake, and for their cub’s.
 After all, his lifemate was now a whole spirit again.  The days to come would be full of change.