[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

Each kiss of the thick, silken waves upon Hamal’s hull was a touch of eternity’s lips. Every one of the countless currents furrowing the sea of chaos was a fold of forever. No storm rose to meet the lonely jumpship that pierced through the curtain from a place whose obscurity was so vast it eclipsed the ocean of glistening night. No sudden eddies formed to crush Hamal in their midst, no great waves tossed it straight into the grand stream. In gentle wavelets, the currents of hyperspace drew us to their heart, shivering against my jumpship’s outer hull when they rolled back to their immutable course on the other side of the mirror humanity called the space-time continuum.

In silence, I mouthed a brief thanks. There was no way I would have had the strength to bear with a hyperspace gale. Drawing on the sparkling shadows of stars strewing the currents was taxing enough as it was. It wasn’t that I hurt, or that my body was so battered it took all I had to keep awake--no. I was simply feeling heavy, maybe because of the holding net still pinning me to my seat, or maybe because emptiness itself was heavy. It was oddly hard to think beyond choosing the swiftest current we needed to shift to next.

We should stop by Pillar.

Yes, we should do that, it would make things easier: the Marine Shoguns would be more ready to listen, and besides I should-- A short burst of croaking laughter echoed on Hamal’s bridge. “Now!” The sharp pain engulfing the left side of my face had given my voice a slight slur. “Priceless,” I whispered as the bubbles of laughter receded. It was only now, that my dull mind had focused on Pillar, that I had remembered Ligea. I had abandoned the jumpship; she had so totally slipped from my mind that I hadn’t even tried to reach out to her when I had called out to Hamal. Murali was three times dead: his body, his Scales, and his jumpship.

Sorento was dead.

On impulse, I reached for another stream in the many strings of hyperspace’s currents, one which would take me straight into Core Side regions, and then I made myself stop. I had nothing to bring Pillar but grief, but still I’d touch the surface of Time and Space there. They’d relay my message and open my way to Earth. Yes, they. I couldn’t deal with Core Side nastiness and arrogance. A low, shuddering breath escaped me, a shaking sigh that bespoke weakness unbefitting a Gold Saint, and drew up the right corner of my mouth in a self-deprecating smirk. I blinked, and allowed myself that heartbeat of self-pity, contemplating the right half of Hamal’s bridge which was all my eyes consented to show me. Then I snatched at a swift side stream, and pulled Hamal into its midst.

The curtain parted ever so slightly to let Hamal’s nose break through the surface of the night. Keeping my hold on it, and on hyperspace beyond it was hard, but letting go and being enfolded in the embrace of Achernar’s gravity well was out of the question. “Pillar,” I called, opening a priority channel. Audio only.

“Who?!” the startled confusion in that question registered in my brain even as did the thousand of dots flashing on Hamal’s traffic monitor. There was a hell of a lot of tourists clogging Achernar system’s routes today, an awful lot of them. “Hamal?!”

“Yes,” I closed my eyes, “of course, Hamal.” My jumpship’s identification had flown along the comm link. Pillar’s question was ludicrous. “I need you to relay a message to Earth and Threshold, through to the Sanctuary itself.” I drew in a breath. “I’ll be jumping straight to Earth. No stopping. Warn them, please.” An orange blink on my right. “Also, warn the Graad Foundation that Hamal will need to be taken in for repairs,” I added in an afterthought. Belatedly I remembered a semblance of manners--and that Pillar owed me nothing. Nothing at all. I gulped in a breath, and swallowed down a ball of barbered needles. “And thanks,” I finished, refocusing my mind on the curtain parted around me.

“Hamal--wait!” The shrill quality of that voice caught my attention. It didn’t belong there. It tasted like fear and hysteria. Horrible. “Confirm!” The female voice resumed. “You must give visual confirmation!”

Reluctantly I opened my eyes, and discarded the halved vision of my jumpship’s bridge. “What will that change, Pillar? Video can be tampered with, falsified much easier than ID codes.” Almost, I severed the link there and then, but I had to reach Earth unhindered. Without Pillar’s advance warning, a jumpship bursting from hyperspace beyond the Threshold jumpgate would trigger an immediate response from the bulk of Earth’s military fleet stationed there. They would blast any intruder out of the sky first, and ask questions later. “All right,” I sighed, giving in.

The familiar face of Siren Zara winked to life on my main comm screen. I looked at her, and distantly I wondered why the sight of her felt so remote--alien. Before me, Zara’s blue eyes widened, and a shadow darkened her gaze. To her credit, she tried to swallow back the expression of mixed horror and pity that gripped her face, but she didn’t quite manage it. I let the deep silence that had blanketed Hamal’s bridge stretch on, and refused the nasty little voice urging me to ask her whether she was satisfied now. “Ligea,” the young woman murmured at last in a blanched voice. “Where is Ligea?”

Thankfully the holding net forced me to sit still while the anguished question echoed around me. I watched the wild glint in Zara’s blue eyes and the almost imperceptible trembling of her lower lip. She must know the answer to that, and yet she had gathered enough courage to ask. She would hate me. They all would, if only for being the one who had lived. “Gone,” I told fair Zara. Quietly. “Gone.” Softly. “Gone.”

I didn’t wait to see her recoil under the assault of that word. “Link off,” I said, the vocal command which would sever the communication. Discarding the thousands of ships stuck in giant traffic jams leading to and from Pillar’s jumpgate, I dived back into the sea of chaos, and closed the curtain around me like a veil. I fled.

Fast.

Deep--not deep enough. Never deep enough. I was no kid who could hide her head under the pillow to be safe from the monsters haunting the darkness. So I grasped the swiftest currents and denied the blank heaviness of my mind.

Hamal plunged into the grand stream of the sea of chaos, its sharp fins cleaving through the swirling waters of the night. A mistake, and the great ground swells would crush us. We would burst into a tiny shower of silvery light, and be scattered to all eight galactic octants in a heartbeat. The grand stream allowed for unnaturally long jumps, but it didn’t forgive the slightest error--so easy, so understandable to make one in the sorry state I currently was.... The stray thought lingered the way nightmares do, until I stretched my mind toward a small eddy, almost impossible to sense from the cascading heart of hyperspace.

An eddy that was no more than a ripple in the flow of night, weak and faint because it was the reflection of a relatively small and insignificant yellow star.

The sun.

Something like a groan traversed Hamal’s hull from nose to tail as we fell into the hold of reality’s four dimensions, the faintest of shivers, twin to the absurd lurch in my heartbeats. The sun, the Earth--before that, dark, red Mars, which streamed past us while we were shedding the last shining drops of hyperspace meerschaum. Our parting the curtain had dropped us well into the solar system, past Threshold and the asteroid belt, as I had decided.

Blinking dots on my traffic monitor.

I stared at the rapidly moving ships, and belatedly remembered I should at least say hello to people who could neither feel a jumpship’s name whispered by the stellar winds, nor sense the weak flames of my cosmo leaking from my soul and caressing Hamal’s flanks. “To Earth and Threshold,” I said on all priority channels at once, “this is the jumpship Hamal, bound for Earth. Please, clear the way from all inexperienced pilots and ships. Hamal will not drop velocity before reaching the moon’s orbit.” I set the message on repeat, and rechecked the traffic monitor.

Most of the blinking dots were gone, good. It meant that my message had been received as well as expected. Orders would be echoed all through Threshold’s military sections for pilots to stand down from battle-readiness, and the low, frightening hum of shark-shaped warships would fade into silence. All of a sudden, I realized that two dots were still present on my monitor, flashing more rapidly with every moment that passed. Before it could start trumpeting its deafening warning, I switched off my early collision alert system. In front of Hamal, the path was almost clear of ships, which now were jamming the secondary in-drop pathways. But those two dots refused to go away.

“Hamal to incoming vessels,” I opened an emergency comm link, “what are you playing at?” I heard the weariness in my voice, and didn’t try to stifle it. Damn them, they were two military ships dispatched from Threshold, and they had used Jupiter’s mass as a slingshot to fling themselves at Hamal with reckless speed. The last thing I needed was to have to stretch myself to save two insane crews from absurd death.

“Hamal.” Almost no static in the answer, which had come on a private channel I hadn’t even known existed. “This is the military escorter Borea. We were sent to convoy you to Earth.”

Immobile, I listened to the stupid words resounding on Hamal’s bridge while the two ships were assuming positions on our flanks in almost impeccable synch. With difficulty, I kept myself from pushing them away: they weren’t jumpships, they were just sleek military ships with human pilots who couldn’t feel the first spark of solar wind cradling their vessels. It was unnatural and dangerous for them to be so close. “I don’t remember requesting bodyguards of any kind,” I said in a calm, reasonable voice.

Weariness was tearing at my bones and gnawing at my heart.

I was tired, tired of games like this one, of ludicrous pretense.

There was a tree, in the absolute darkness between galaxies. A tree so huge its canopy was the sky, and its intricate network of forking branches was as vast as the grand stream that endlessly coursed the core of hyperspace. A silvery-green heaven of magic and wonders, so immense and powerful we didn’t stand a chance if those who existed in its sphere, those who shared its heart turned their gaze upon us for real.

“No, ma’am.” I blinked at those words. “We were ordered to stay with you until you reach Earth’s orbit. We were told the Graad Foundation would take it from there, ma’am.”

Laughter, rasp and incredulous answered the young pilot’s embarrassed apology. The mirthless sound escaped me and sank into the bridge’s walls. I was Aries, and Gold--and I was “ma’am” to young people who were sitting on their own bridges, bored and more than slightly annoyed to have to waste hours escorting what was to them a mere diplomatic ship which enjoyed privileges and the use of a technology their hierarchy would kill to get their greedy paws upon.

Technology.

Laughing harder would result in more pain cutting through the left side of my face. Instead, I activated the comm link and said, “Not hours, gentlemen. Now, please, keep up.” With that, I pushed at Hamal and veered off-course, abandoning our already steep approach vector for an even faster route.

“Hey!” The startled cry rippled by, unheeded. Of course the two smaller ships tried to follow Hamal, but safety protocols kicked in and forbade the gathering of speed which, combined to the brutal change of course during a ship’s gliding down a gravity well would mean its swift and total destruction because of the crushing pressure rupturing its structural integrity.

“Bye-bye,” I smiled, a grimace which kindled even more the fire eating at my face. The words would drift along the costly private link, sluggish, and reach their destination well after I had reached my goal.

Earth.

A sphere of blue and white and brown--of a myriad tiny dots of light like fireflies. Small. So small. With an effort of will, I shut the main viewscreen and pulled Hamal to a gentle stop, right in the middle of the greatest junkyard of all: rotting satellites and ancient space stations’ skeletons, fissile nuclear hearts dating back to the beginning of the twenty-first century, their cores still alive and leaking death into space. It was a fitting parking place, and besides nobody would make the mistake of approaching Hamal here. The jumpship would be safe until Graad Foundation repair teams could tow it to a maintenance station and mend the lacerations on its hull, and the unbalance in its outer structure.

Slowly the hum of Hamal’s engines faded, and the vibrations that coursed the deck dwindled to become almost imperceptible. “Release holding net,” I breathed, and the force-field dropped. In cautious motions, I stood up. Aries again was weighing heavily on my shoulders, but then the jumps since we had dived into the black waters between the tree’s roots had been awfully long ones. It was only natural for the flames within to be burning low. Being blinded in one eye wasn’t so bad, I found as I took a series of tentative steps on the bridge.

Good.

Thomas, I sent the thought to a temple on top of a great flight of Stairs, in dry mountains south of Athens from which one could sometimes hear the sea sing when the wind willed it, I’m coming. And I teleported myself there.

“Fiammetta.” The calm, deep voice of Gemini Thomas greeted me as I stepped into the main chambers of Athena’s temple. I pivoted on my right heel to face him, and paused when I noticed at least two others standing behind the head of the sanctuary.

“You’ve gathered everyone, thanks for that,” I sighed. It would make things faster. I should have expected this from Thomas: efficiency and no nonsense like wasting precious time gawking at a battered, defeated Gold Saint. “What I must tell you--”

“Will wait,” Thomas cut me off, as calm as a moment before, “until you’ve received medical attention and have had the opportunity to rest, if only for a few hours.”

A hiss clawed at my throat when I tried to clench both hands into tight fists. “Shit, Thomas,” I began, striding toward him and those with whom he had come to meet me, and I bit back what I was going to say, freezing in my steps. Tau had come to stand on Thomas’ left. Tau, and just behind him--Theirn.

My heart sank. “He shouldn’t be here!” I snapped. “Thomas, you have no right to use my apprentice to--”

“I’m here because I’m now strong enough to shrug off Thomas’ will completely,” Theirn said softly, struggling for calm. The light in his eyes was a wild, dark one, fury and sorrow, anguish and rage intertwined. “And you should have felt my presence in here from the moment you materialized in the chambers,” he added, looking straight at me.

I started, and then gave him a blank stare. He was correct. I was worn, diminished right now. “Fi,” blinking back absurd tears, I glanced toward Leo Tau, “you need to stop driving yourself like this,” my friend said gently. There was more he could have said, it was in the clouds swirling in his gaze. I had no need for that. No need for comfort.

No need for friendship, kindness or any other futile thing of the kind.

“Fools!” I snarled. “We face that which is way beyond us, probably beyond the gods themselves, and you will hear me--now!”

“The walls will hear you,” Tau shook his head, “and they will watch you burn yourself out, but not I.”

“I told them to send an escort because the feeling of Hamal was so weak and off, so thin that I thought the sun’s gravity well would crush the both of you.” It was Theirn, and a growl rose in my throat when I heard the slight trembling in his voice. Even were that all true, it didn’t matter in the slightest. I gave a brisk shake of the head. I had no strength, no patience left for this.

“Take off Aries, Fiammetta.” Numbly, I watched Thomas come toward me. “Release your Cloth, and show us you’re still strong and lucid enough to stand through a full war council.”

The smile which came to my lips in answer to that challenge revealed my teeth. “Leave me, soul of mine,” I whispered quietly. “Go and rest, we’ve come home.” At once, pieces of star cracked, all over my body, broke and pulled away.

And they vanished in a shower of golden dust.

Something troubled my vision, and I stumbled forward.

A faint, croak-like cry resounded between the columns of marble supporting the temple’s roof.

“I have you,” Tau murmured in my right ear. His arm was around me, supporting my weight. The pain devouring my left arm and my face was unbearable. The flames of it were obscuring my vision and robbing me of breath. I willed word past my lips, I willed my legs to bear me, but none of the strings of my body responded when I snatched at them. “Stop it!” Leo Tau growled. “We have time, I swear to you. Stop it,” he repeated, “or I will make you.”

He would, at that. Laughter rose inside me, black, and drowned everything.

A dull ache was scratching at the door of my dreams, insisting. Through dark and cold waters the scratching sounds carried, until they wrapped around me, and pulled me ashore.

A faint sigh echoed in the room when I opened my eyes. The pain in my back was small enough, caused by the incredible hardness of the bed I was lying upon. The worst of it was at my hip’s level, but it would pass quickly enough once I was up. Staring at the walls of thick, ancient stones and at the great wood beams supporting the ceiling, I blinked.

I could only see half of them. For a moment I lay there, uncomprehending, then I noticed a dark-skinned hand spread on the bed, inches away from my own right hand. “Murali!” I gasped in an inaudible murmur. The crystal shards of that name grated at my throat and knifed through my lungs as memories came galloping to the fore of my mind, the thunder of their fire-clad hooves torching my soul.

No, that hand didn’t belong to Murali, no matter how black it was. That hand was attached to a tall figure whose beautiful, aristocratic features belonged to the Tutsi ethnic group in Africa, not to the proud, gorgeous sons and daughters of India’s Himalayan regions. That hand belonged to Tau. Murali was--dead.

Holding that thought before my mind’s eye, I looked at the Leo gold Saint, Clothless and slumped upon a wooden chair the back of which he had turned toward the bed, and upon which he had rested his left forearm and his chin on top of it all. I gave myself thirteen heartbeats to watch him, to watch his head drooping to the left, eyes closed and a small quirk in the lines of his mouth that made it seem he was pouting in his sleep. “Lion cub.” The whisper had escaped me before I could stifle it, as well as the smile crawling up my lips.

Dark, shining eyes snapped open and set on me, clear. Not sleeping so soundly as he had appeared to be, I mused to myself. Leaning some weight on the palm of my right hand, I pushed myself up and grimaced. That had brought no sharp pain tearing at my face. On the other hand, the ache in my lower back was starting to be a real nuisance. “Goddess,” I muttered, “I need to get up. Who could sleep in such a bed? It’s so hard it might as well be a wooden plank.”

“Thomas,” Tau shrugged beside me. As I glimpsed the view from the open window beyond him, I realized it was true. The distant gleam of the sea could only be seen from the great Stairs or from some chambers in the temple of Athena. The day was leaving early morning in its stroll to reach noon, and the breeze entering the room was hardly warm, gentle and refreshing. I didn’t ask Tau what time of the year it was. Instead, I lifted my left forearm and eyed the synthetic case enclosing half of it, my wrist and my hand dubiously, which elicited a snort from Tau. “Sometimes, mundane medicine serves a better purpose than a healing.”

“The more so when your number one healer is out of commission,” I retorted with dark amusement.

Something flickered in Tau’s gaze and then was gone. “You’re lucky. Somehow you did manage to set the bones more or less correctly. You’ll regain full use of that hand in time. As to the wounds in your flank, you had obviously seen to them yourself. Now, the sword-like cut in your face,” he stared at me steadily. “I’m sorry. The wound will heal, and should only leave a very slight scar, if at all, but there was no saving your eye. It was too late.” Tau’s mouth was drawn in a taut line.

For a moment, I stared back at him in silence, then I pulled my legs from under the bed sheets and stood up, stepping past him and going for the window. “Stop looking so glum,” I scorned the Leo Gold Saint, “I can manage well enough. Doesn’t Ithiel spend his time walking around fully blind?”

“Fi,” the creak of a chair being pushed aside covered Tau’s voice for a few seconds, then I felt him come to my side. “Damn you, this--”

A flash of sunlight on my right.

On instinct, I turned toward it. It was a small mirror set in the wall next to the window. Likely Thomas used it to shave. A red-haired face’s angular lines were being reflected in the glass, and green eyes were looking back at me, the left one veiled as if by a thin layer of frost.

There was no gashing wound slashing through the left side of my face.

No scar almost.

“Stop acting as if nothing that concerns you had value,” Tau was saying. Wordlessly I lifted up my right arm, forefinger pointing toward the ceiling, and he had the wisdom to shut up.

Still staring at the ghost in the mirror, I hissed, “Who--” I clenched my teeth, “who did this?!”

“Theirn.” Tau’s answer came out as a sigh. “Fi--”

I whirled around to confront him. “Fuck it, Tau!” Theirn is an apprentice, strong though you all may believe he is, he’s still an apprentice, and he’s not ready to confront things like this! You had no right--”

“There was no denying him.” Tau’s voice was very, very soft. “Fi, the child you brought up has grown. He’s close, so close to Aries he has nightmares about it. He’s no fool,” the Leo Gold Saint looked away, and his words reduced to an almost inaudible whisper as he said, “he knows what that means. And as we both did at the time, he would fight it with all he has--he would have fought Thomas.” A chuckle resounded between us, empty. “He has your total lack of respect for authority. So.” Tau heaved out a sigh, and faced me again. “Besides, he was by far the best healer available, better than us. He stayed by your side until he dropped, and Thomas took him back to the House of Aries.”

Pride and sorrow were warring inside my heart, a deep, deep sadness that rose from the echoes of my friend’s words. Yes we had fought it, Tau and I, we had refused the moment when we had sensed it coming, we had denied it. But Time couldn’t be pushed aside, unless one could forever sail the sea of chaos and never come ashore.

Death was a thing as inevitable as the coming of dawn.

Death--Theirn would have to deal with mine as I had with master Nominoë’s. I was only distantly glad to think I would soon be free of having to do so. With an imperceptible nod to myself, I gulped in a breath and willed calm to my voice when I asked, “How long have you let me sleep?”

“A full evening and night,” Tau’s eyes searched my face, likely for traces of anger.

“And more than a bit of this morning,” I completed for him. “That was quite a lie-in. Since when does one pamper Gold Saints so?”

“Since one needs to have one’s Gold Saints in possession of their full wits so they can make a report, before they’re sent to die in the war that’s likely to come knocking at one’s door.” A shadow had touched mine on the stone floor.

“Your bed is an instrument of torture,” I told Thomas with a smile, “you should change it.” Then I stepped past him, toward the door of his room. “Now that I’m done napping, shall we sit down and chat?”

He didn’t answer, but when we reached the main chambers of the temple, four other people were waiting. Four.

Ithiel had come.

Unable to help myself, I stared at him, but he didn’t volunteer anything; he didn’t acknowledge any of our presences in any way. Eventually I shifted to the right, so that the Virgo Gold Saint was beyond the range of my halved vision. I could still feel him, like a thin, sharp double-edged blade of light cleaving through the fabric of the world. Blowing air through my nostrils, I visualized the stream of clear water running behind the House of Aries, and willed a full glass of it to my right hand.

Without a care for the heavy, awkward silence blanketing the room, I drank a sip and clacked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “Good.” I drew on a smile. “Let’s dispense with the niceties and introductions, shall we?” A dark glint shone in Haizea’s eyes mirrored in Orion’s, but Thomas merely nodded. Tau rolled his eyes heavenward, and Ithiel looked politely bored. Games were for children, that was what every inch of the Virgo Gold Saint’s body was saying, for kids, not for those who claimed the name Saint of Athena.

He was right.

Discarding the chairs, I sat down on the closest corner of the great table set in the center of the chambers, and looked at the great double doors that opened on the parvis of Athena’s temple, and beyond on dry mountain peaks.

On azure blue sky.

On a beautiful veil of daylight that was hiding the boundless ocean of night that cradled the Earth in its waves.

“When Murali and I turned toward the giant blue,” I said in a quiet, toneless voice, “it shifted, it reverted back to a black hole. We were too close to the event horizon to escape together. There was only one possibility, and a rather crazy one to boot. So I tried to reach Ithiel and send him warning.”

“You did reach me,” Ithiel gave a single nod of the head. “Go on,” he waved at me when I sat there, silent, wondering if they had heeded the message and evacuated the Fringe Worlds.

“We jumped into the black hole.” I tried to ignore the heat rising to my cheeks as I resumed, “or rather, we jumped beyond it.”

“It would put you beyond the rim!” Orion hissed from somewhere on my left.

“I think that’s exactly what it did,” I bobbed my head in agreement, “but what lies beyond the ends of the world isn’t absolute darkness,” a lopsided grin split my face in two, “even though it dissimulates itself as such. No,” I drew in a breath, “what greeted Hamal and Ligea were swirling garlands of silvery-green leaves. A tree.” I closed my eyes for a few seconds as the scent of the spicy-sweet breeze rustling the infinite canopy flooded my being. It was strangely hard to detach myself from that memory. “A tree,” I repeated, “so vast and tall it seemed to encompass the whole intergalactic abyss.”

“That doesn’t make sense!” Haizea snorted. “There’s nothing there but darkness, a pit of unending blackness.”

“We ran up and down its trunk, to its roots and as close to its top as we could. At top speed, it took us long minutes each time, if not more. The flow of Time felt weird there,” I continued, discarding snarky, bitchy Sagittarius.

“The ships?” Tau asked softly. “You said you ran?”

“We were cut off from them,” I explained between clenched teeth. “As soon as we stepped outside, they were whisked from right under our noses. Finding them again--” I bowed my head. “I tried, with all of Aries’ strength, and I failed.” Dead silence followed my words. None of them challenged my claim, or scorned me. With an effort of will, I refocused on the tale I had to tell. “During our wanderings in that gigantic tree, we met several...” I groped for the right term, then settled for, “beings. One looks like a man, and seems to be the very essence of Fire. He’s called Cinaed, because Murali named him so.” I blinked back the wavering light in my eyes, and went on, “There’s also some kind of squirrel, a hateful and vicious little beast, a serpent guarding a pool of black waters at the roots, and women referred to as the Sisters. Likely there are more, but that’s all I saw.”

“This,” Aquarius Shui shook his head while I was drinking another sip of water, and said in a thoughtful voice, “feels like a mythological place.”

I set my glass on the table beside my right thigh, and looked Shui right in the eye. “It gets better. The squirrel may just be an evil beast with a rotten heart, but the Sisters are mistresses of illusion-making. The serpent is as quick as lightning despite its miles-long body, and Cinaed--” I stared at the glass of water next to me, and whispered, “Cinaed is as powerful as the tree is immense. There are no boundaries to his strength, slim and delicate though he looks. Countless times he blocked my attempts to reach out for Hamal. We tried to talk to him, to reason with him, to no avail. He understands human thought-patterns, they all do, and they can make themselves understood, but....” I allowed my voice to trail off into silence, then I let out my breath in a sigh, and shook my head. “I don’t know why he--they, the tree trapped us and wouldn’t let us go. It didn’t make sense then, it doesn’t make sense now. No more than did their tolerating our presence in the tree’s mid-levels, so long as we wouldn’t harm it or try to flee. Time trickled past, nibbling at our will to escape and at our feeling of our jumpships’ absence. We knew we had to find a way out before we lost ourselves completely. I was sure the black pool at the roots was a gate of sorts, and that winning past the serpent could be done. But we needed Hamal and Ligea. So we had to tear apart the veil enshrouding our minds, and that meant hurting whoever or whatever was weaving it enough for its attention to shift away from us.” My lips thinned as they curled up in what wasn’t a smile. “We couldn’t confront Cinaed and win. Together, Sorento and Aries couldn’t hope to defeat him. So we did the only other thing we could: we went for the tree itself.”

“That’s what got that fool Sorento killed!” Haizea snickered in the chambers. Because the sneer on her face badly served to dissemble a fear that was bordering on dread, I stayed the ethereal hand I had rested against the back of her head, and didn’t snap her neck.

“Do us all a favor, and be silent if you have nothing worthwhile to say,” I turned toward her and closed the fingers of my ethereal hand upon her neck, ever so slightly. “Or I will make you, and I can assure you our battle will not even last a heartbeat.” Before me, the Sagittarius Saint’s eyes were wide. “What killed that fool Sorento was a blow from Cinaed, a blow meant for me, that Murali took in my stead.” My voice didn’t shake as I uttered those words. The mask upon my face remained emotionless. “It took my opening Hell’s black Gates to win free of the blindfold set upon my mind,” I continued as calmly as if I was talking about the weather. “It took that to do little more than a scratch on that tree and escape.” With that, I hopped down from the table and turned my back on them all. “It’s absurd,” I concluded in a murmur. “It’s insane, and yet that’s what happened. That’s what lies beyond the Rim, and how that’s tied to the trap set for us at Omega, I don’t know except for the feeling in my heart that says the link is there.”

Standing still, I waited for questions and doubts, but silence alone hugged me, deep and troubled. The still sensation in my shoulders was growing worse by the minute, but still I denied the urge to walk away. “Your message did indeed reach me.” I blinked when Virgo Ithiel’s voice reached my ears. “But mine seems never to have reached you, judging from your account of events. Strange,” he mused, “I was certain I had felt at least a hint of your presence.”

“When?!” I asked, pivoting to face him. “when I first saw the pool of black waters, I reached out to it, and sensed whiffs of Earth and the Sanctuary. That was shortly before escaping.”

Ithiel interrupted me with a denying wave of the left hand. “Before that, almost right after you jumped into the black hole and we lost you.”

When we had stepped outside of our jumpships, then, but there was no event I could link to--

Ripples in the air.

A dissonance in the wind rustling leaves that seemed frozen by the thinnest layer of frost.

Sounds grating against my mind.

An alien screech, a presence--an enemy I had found myself snarling at on instinct.

“No,” I heard myself say, and again: “No.” I had refused that contact, I had shielded myself from it. Ithiel, I sent the thought his way, was it you, then? I-- Before I could come to the obvious conclusion of what my mistake had most likely brought about, I turned my back on him. I’m sorry.

“It’s past us,” Ithiel’s quiet voice answered my thoughts, “and forever out of our reach. It no longer matters.”

“No,” I summoned a smile to my lips, “it no longer does.” Pivoting toward Thomas, I asked him, “Now, what?”

The head of the Sanctuary gave me an appraising glance, then he heaved out a small sigh. “We wait until the remaining Marine Shoguns can make their way here, then we hold a common council to try and find which path to follow. It will take a few days for them to be done gathering intelligence on what’s happening Halo Side and even now creating greater and greater ripples Core Side. I suggest we take advantage of that small respite to prepare ourselves. Unless the Goddess sends us some kind of miracle, we are falling into war.” Once he was done saying this, Thomas walked away, the echoes of his steps growing in the chambers.

I didn’t stop him to ask him what he had meant and what was going on Halo Side. I didn’t ask him how much time had passed on Earth since the moment Murali and I had disappeared. As Ithiel had told me, it was past us. Beyond us.

Over and done.

Taking the long walk down the Stairs to the House of Aries was oddly agreeable--the sun kissing my shoulders, my arms and my neck had the gentleness of early Autumn. I could have whisked myself to my destination with a thought: it had been centuries since the seal set by Athena on the mountain to force everyone, friend or foe, to climb up the Stairs and traverse the Twelve Houses to reach the great temple on top had waned, and finally dispersed with the winds rising up from the Aegean Sea. As I stepped through the eleven other Houses, none of my peers came to greet me. In the Houses of Pisces, of Capricorn, Libra, Cancer and Taurus, Gold Cloths were slumbering, waiting for someone to claim them. Out of habit, I touched each of them with a thought, and every time a weak, drowsy hum resounded in my mind in return.

There, all of them.

Safe.

I expected to meet Theirn when I stepped under the shadow of my own House: the young man’s presence was as clear as the sun as high noon. When I didn’t find him in his room or in the kitchen, I strode over to the terrace of stone on the small temple’s left side, and paused on the side door’s threshold. There was Theirn, indeed, and also a table on which bread, cheese, honey and a basket full of figs were waiting, next to an earthen flask that I used to keep wine cool. “Well, there sure is enough to feed us,” I chuckled as I joined his side. At once, Theirn’s eyes flicked toward me, bright, then they froze and looked away, to immediately come back to me. Watching the table, I pulled my chair back a bit, so that it would be shaded by the centuries-old olive tree that generations of Aries Saints had tolerated growing right next to their home.

I made a show of sitting down and observing the battlefield Theirn had laid before us, grabbing a fig and sniffing it tentatively. It was ripe enough for its outer skin to come off with the slightest pressure of my fingers. In spite of myself, I felt my mouth water and my stomach grumble in anticipation. From the smile that shone in Theirn’s eyes, mixed with relief, the growl must have been louder than I had thought. Reaching out for the bread with the right hand, I sliced a loaf with a thought, and landed it before my apprentice. “Lucky I don’t need a knife to cut bread,” I grinned at him. Ignoring the sudden clouding of his eyes, I served myself another loaf in the same fashion, then I got a piece of cheese and started eating. “Good,” I sighed between mouthfuls, and I waved at Theirn, who was nibbling on a bit of bread. “Eat,” I told him. “You went so far as to breach Sanctuary law to go to the village in the next valley on your own to get all this. So you might as well eat what you deemed worth your life to bring back.” It was yet another of the Sanctuary’s obsolete laws which forbade apprentices from leaving the Sacred grounds alone on pain of death.

Not that anyone could have stopped Theirn or caught him, except me.

Small, inconsequential words of mine which brought a smile on the young man’s face. He was still too young for this--a little bit older than I had been when master Nominoë had faded into whispers in a Spring evening breeze. “The healing you performed was a fantastic job,” I told him abruptly, willing gentleness to my voice.

Theirn looked away. “I couldn’t restore your eye,” he said between clenched teeth, his gaze distant.

“Pfeh!” I snorted. “Who do you think I am, Theirn?” The question made him face me again. “I’m still Aries, and I’ll be until my last breath.” He winced at that, and would have averted his gaze, but I locked my eyes with his and held them. “I didn’t stop on Pillar. The last jump drained most of my remaining strength. What could have been accomplished on Pillar had become impossible when I parted the curtain Earth-side. Not even master Nominoë could have done anything. Now,” I nodded toward the loaf of bread he had barely touched on the table, “eat and shed whatever stupid guilt you carry in your moronic heart, or I’ll whip it out of you.”

The growling voice and feigned anger fooled him, and I watched the droop of his shoulders fade as he at last allowed himself to feel the hunger tearing at his stomach. A fool, with a fool’s heart. I took a bite from a very ripe fig, and held the fragile flesh together with my mind before it could spill on my clothes or on the table, sticky and sweet, and a pain to clean off. Of course, Theirn was hungry after his healing my wounds, and yet he had waited through a whole night and almost half a day, until I had come back to him.

Fool.

With an absentminded gesture, I reached for the wine and served myself a glass that I brought to my lips at once. I froze when the golden liquid tickled my tongue, tingling and sweet, and full of the potent Summer sun. “I was lucky to get it. It’s fresh out of the barrel, just forty days after harvest,” Theirn was saying, mirth dancing in his eyes at what he thought was surprise on my part. The wine was indeed young and excellent. It tasted like water--spicy, sweet, tingling water that could be found in clear pools born in the hollows of an immense tree’s branches. Fool. I gulped down the contents of my glass in a long swallow.

Fools, both Theirn and I.

A sudden breeze embraced me, and I blinked as it brought me the distant song of rustling leaves. My hand didn’t let go of the glass, it didn’t shake when I set it on the table. My voice was quiet when I asked Theirn, “Did you feel the breeze just now?”

With a shake of his head, he replied, “No, but since dawn the wind has done nothing but rise and then abate, only to rise again and echo the waves crashing against Cape Sounio.” He shrugged one shoulder.

Looking up, I stared at the ancient olive tree. The silvery back of its leaves wasn’t trembling in the slightest. The air around us was still. I released my breath in a sigh, and refocused on Theirn. “I’m going to see to Aries. Want to come along?”

“No!” He answered me at once, much too quickly and sharply.

I forced my lips to curl up into a smile. “That’s a lie,” I told him in an even voice. Before he could start an adamant protest of innocence, I went on, “We both know it. You feel Hamal. You feel Aries. The name has grown so close to you that it’s haunting you. Of course you want to watch while I heal Aries, to help if I allow it. What you do not want is to envision that your inheriting the name means that I’ll die, sooner rather than later.” He recoiled under the assault of my words. It was a harsh thing to say, but better to have it out between us now.

Far better.

“Master Nominoë didn’t tell me, perhaps because he judged it a necessary part of training that I find out on my own, or perhaps because like you I couldn’t bear the thought of what my acute feeling of Aries’ Fire meant, and he didn’t want to hurt me. But I will tell you what it is I found.” Softly, I went on, “I found that he was proud of me, and that he was at peace, knowing that I would be there for Aries once he was no longer there--that he loved me, that he knew I loved him, and that it was enough for him. So it was for master Nominoë,” I looked him right in the eyes, “so it is for me. That’s all we can have. None of us can prevent Time from ticking. Now, will you, or won’t you come along?”

For an awkward moment, it seemed that the wavering light in Theirn’s gaze would dissolve into tears, but he managed to swallow them back with a loud sniff. “No,” he whispered at last. “I’ll wash the dishes while you work.”

“Suit yourself,” I nodded, standing up, and I went back inside the House of Aries.

In the relative darkness of my House’s central room, a statue of gold was glowing softly. To those with enough talent, it was singing as well, a gentle, soothing song without words. I set a knee down next to the great Ram, and ran my right thumb over its left shoulder. “You’re a mess,” I told it in a voice so soft it was almost inaudible. “Look at you.”

A mess, it was. Battered and broken, as if it had been smashed by the core of a giant blue star, repeatedly so. Such was Cinaed’s power, inhuman and dreadful. With difficulty, I chased him from my mind and focused on the task ahead. I had my tools and my priceless pouches of stardust. For a while longer, I contemplated the damage done to Aries, then I set out to work.

Cloth-healing was a demanding task. It focused the whole mind and required a perfect control and understanding, not only of one’s own cosmo, but also of the Cloth in one’s care. It was also rewarding in strange ways. Few were those who could feel the living beings they wore like armor. The touch of them was as alien as it was calming, like a refreshing balm upon the soul. With needles and stardust, I weaved cosmo and the essence of my Cloth together, and gently, carefully I started stitching the cracks in the golden statue. To do so, I let go of myself and willed my spirit to cloak the wounded spots, merging my own essence with Aries’ for a heartbeat so I could be in perfect harmony with it, know every tiny detail of the cracks marring its beauty before making it whole again.

A faint, distant draught made me shiver, even as I sensed a familiar presence squatting by my side. “So you changed your mind,” I found myself smiling, eyes set on my delicate weaving of starlight. “Welcome. I won’t need your help, so just watch if you would.” If there was an answer, I didn’t hear it. Focused on Aries, I kept on working, until at last I was done. Then I turned toward Theirn and asked, “So, what did you think?”

There was nobody else in the room. I blinked. Theirn? I asked in thought.

Yes? Worry was tainting the wings of his immediate reply.

Why did you leave before I was done? I tried not to let any of the odd anger smoldering inside me carry with the question.

Leave?! There was no denying the utter surprise spilling from my apprentice. I told you I didn’t wish to be present. I’m seeing to the dishes, as I told you I would. Nothing else. Worry again, deep.

True as Theirn’s thoughts were, still it was likely that his closeness with Aries had unconsciously brought him to share some of the healing, hence my sensing his presence. It was likely. Never mind, I sent his way. Don’t wait for me, I’ll be off for a while. I have a place or two to visit. With a friendly pat on the back of my now whole Cloth, I straightened and then walked out of my little temple of a home.

Walking back up the Stairs in the middle of the afternoon was far from being as pleasant as going down. Still I did so, listening to my heartbeats and focusing on my chest rising and falling with each breath. Aries’ flames were drowsing within me, their little sparks like purrs that were enveloping me and holding me close. I was as whole as I’d ever be again, except for the cast on my left forearm, which would eventually go away. It took me a bit more than an hour to reach the sixth House.

Even as I stepped on the parvis of the House of Virgo, a shadow detached itself from one of the statues guarding the entrance. “What are you doing here?” Ithiel asked me, without a trace of amenity in his voice.

I stared at him, frozen, then belatedly I remembered it was wiser to stand in the shade unless I wanted to cook under the afternoon sun’s blazing rays. Ithiel had come to greet me, I hadn’t had to search his House for hours before he condescended to reveal himself. “I have a favor to ask,” I began.

Pursing his lips, the Virgo Saint moved to turn his back on me. “I’m no grief counselor,” he said.

Numb, I watched him walk away. Blood had rushed to my cheeks, as if he had slapped me. Was it so obvious, then? Was it trickling out of me like an untrained adolescent’s first love? Not fair, was what I wanted to shout at Ithiel’s back, not fair! But it was. It was. I was no untrained kid, and for me to leak out emotions was-- With a hiss, I sent those useless considerations aside. “Did you feel it, a bit more than an hour ago?” I asked him. Quietly.

“While you were busy repairing your Cloth?” Ithiel had stopped on the threshold of his House.

I stared at his back. So it was real, I hadn’t imagined it. “Yes,” I replied shortly.

“What favor?” Ithiel asked me from above his left shoulder.

“Watch me, just for a day or two, please.” I bowed, which triggered a rare snort from the Virgo Saint.

“The Sanctuary is safe enough.” He gave a shrug.

I sighed. “I know. There’s a place I need to be.” Silence met my words, so I added, “On Earth, Ithiel, not elsewhere. It could be an interesting opportunity.”

A chuckle escaped him as he turned toward me. “Aries selfishness disguised as a reasonable suggestion.” He smiled. “Go, I’ll humor you this one time.” Without another word, he turned his back on me and disappeared into his House.

The sky was severed in two opposite halves. A low blanket of dark grey clouds had invaded the northwest, and blinding silvery light was shining in the southeast, where the sun had risen a few hours ago. When it had come above the hills, its rays had flown over the small lake’s surface in a rain of blazing arrows. Now the quiet waters were no longer painful to look at. Peaceful and dark, deep, they were reflecting the charcoal ocean of clouds above.

A shiver ran up my spine when I sat down close to the shore. The ground beneath me was cool, and the blades of thick grass my right hand touched were still wearing necklaces of sparkling morning dew. Taking my eyes away from the silent waters, I peered at the rolling hills all around me, and at the small trees climbing up their slopes. Green, gold, crimson red and orange fire were the dominant colors in the tableau, embracing and then clashing in a beautiful, rioting patchwork as they were doing. It was Autumn on Earth’s northern hemisphere, indeed. The left corner of my mouth curled up into a smirk. I couldn’t even tell what season it had been when we had all left for Pillar and Omega. From the North, a harsh gust of wind glided over the little lake’s surface, and gave birth to wavelets that embraced the stones scattered on the shore in musical splashes.

Grey. I smiled at the waters. Charcoal grey. The lake was actually a loch, the place I had come to being just inside the border of Scotland. Murali’s birthplace. There was a village on the far side of the loch, whose name I could never pronounce correctly, where Murali’s parents probably still lived. Lost in a labyrinth of hills, this place was a haven that Murali had always kept close to his heart. There was nothing formidable here, nothing otherworldly, just the strong feeling of the ever-shifting border between land and water. Right at the village’s edge, the loch spilled its dark waters into a small stream that flowed to the sea. During the great equinox tides, it was said that salty waters could sometimes find their way to the loch.

I drew in a deep breath, and smelled moss and wood and the distant, unmistakable scent of the sea. Another gust of wind brought more wavelets ashore, and flapped the long sleeves of my rough linen shirt. Reaching up in a reflexive gesture, I hugged my left arm. I should have worn wool. Scotland wasn’t Greece: Autumn’s hold on this region wasn’t as gentle as in the Sanctuary. I had been here since last night, and the chill was starting to seep into my bones. It was bad for rheumatism and mending limbs, oh yeah. Again, the wind rose, gentler this time and blowing from the South behind me. Letting go of my arm, I reached up and freed a leaf the wind had dropped in my tangled hair. I brought it before my right eye and spun it between thumb and forefinger. Eventually I tossed it toward the loch with a thought, a frail skiff lost in the ocean.

A tiny silvery-green dot on the charcoal waters.

You’re still damaged. My hand dropped to the ground and snatched at a tuft of grass, pulling at the blades without quite wrenching them free. Unmoving, I stared at the loch’s dark waters while Cinaed stepped into my field of vision. His back to the loch, he gave me an appraising glance. The eyes of pale blood were searching my face.

In a slow motion, I pivoted and met his inquisitive gaze. It was easier than I had thought it would be. I could feel the loch’s deep, peaceful waters enfold my heart and drown its frantic drumbeats, as well as muffle the searing pain in my chest. The loch was a thick cloak I wrapped around me as I confronted the unearthly figure standing before me. Unbidden, a smile hovered on my lips. He was going barefoot still, as if the cold, wet earth beneath his toes, soles and heels didn’t disturb him in the slightest. I didn’t reply. There was nothing to say, except to confirm the obvious. A cold gust of wind slapped me once more, and I focused on it. I focused on distance, and refused the shiver coursing down my spine.

I could no longer feel the Sanctuary.

I could no longer feel Aries or Theirn, or--a spark, so tiny it might have been a silly wish tricking my mind. I made myself discard it, and sucked in a breath. “What do you want?” I asked him in a toneless voice. There was no anger, no rage, no pain, all smothered by the deep, deep charcoal waters.

You healed others, Cinaed squatted down beside me, and you’re still damaged. The expression on his face was a puzzled one.

He was curious, I realized all of a sudden. It was curiosity which had drawn him here, and had drawn him before. He was aware of my healing Aries, and he couldn’t understand why I hadn’t restored my own self. It was likely human limitations didn’t mean anything to him. Why he had chosen to do this, to step into the world, to ask me senseless questions and then politely wait for an answer was beyond me. His power was immense; he could wring knowledge out of me if he wanted to. It made no sense for him not to want to.

He didn’t make sense.

An almost imperceptible rattle to the back of my mind reminded me of the here and now--of why I was playing this sick game. “Scars can be useful reminders of one’s mistakes.” I told the seemingly gentle bringer of death beside me, and then I added on a whim, “You’re far from home.”

Home. The thought was a quiet hum, as if he was tasting the word. It’s this, he bent down to caress the grass at his feet. Home. His eyes were set on the ground and he was smiling softly. Your core. He looked up at me.

Adrenalin was poisoning my bloodstream. My vision reduced to a dark tunnel, I stared back at him, deaf to anything other than the harsh, frantic drumbeats of my heart. He was dangerous. He could pick things from my mind without my noticing, and he could put those pieces together. Here he was standing, on Earth, and he could kill with a blink of his eyes. Destroy. Instead, he was chatting with me, Murali’s assassin, so close that the feeling of him was raising the hair on my neck and sending gooseflesh crawling up my arms. “No,” I willed myself to reply, and I dragged in a breath, “Not mine,” toying with meanings and half-truths.

Crystalline laughter wrapped around me, coming from him. Your roots, he waved at everything around us in an all-encompassing gesture, all of this. It beats in your heart and flows in the sap coursing your limbs. Looking away from me, he stared at the hills and at the clumps of trees crouching on their slopes. Strong, the thought was a faint breeze. Then he faced me again. That’s why you left, why your companion died, why you would die yourself--

Blood red fog blinded me, but I denied the snarl clawing at my throat. In a brisk movement, I stood up and walked away, shaking. It was only when I sensed cold water licking at my ankles that I remembered where I was, and stopped. I couldn’t strike at him here. I mustn’t, even though I was burning inside. The Fire at your core has blackened. Its flames are tainted. Was there more curiosity in his silent whisper, or was there the faintest hint of disgust? I laughed, harsh crystal shards that tore at my chest and grated on my ribcage.

A rattle at the back of my mind, stronger.

A dot of golden light.

I blinked, and stood very still, setting myself apart from the oh so weak perception. I don’t remember inviting other guests. I whirled around to face Cinaed, even as what might have been a derisive snort reached my ears. In the same time, the tiny dot of golden light whooshed out, blown out by a crushing wind. I didn’t call out to Ithiel. I had to trust that he had known how to shield himself. Another, strong gust of wind slapped me, real this time. The slight grimace of annoyance on Cinaed’s face faded, and his eyes widened, almost imperceptibly. What’s this? he asked, pointing toward the loch. Something like wonder was dripping from his thoughts.

In the North, the clouds had started unraveling, torn by the strong wind, and they were dissolving into delicate threads of rain--a thin, thin veil of grayness unfurling down toward the hills. A rainbow would soon be born from the encounter between a myriad tiny drops and the Autumn sun’s light.

Cinaed’s question echoed on the loch’s charcoal waters. It was as absurd as everything around him. Blinking at the gleams dancing on the lake’s surface, I answered, “The heavens are reaching out to embrace the Earth.” Something that might have been a smile was trembling on my lips.

Your roots, Cinaed repeated, the touch of his mind soft and delicate as a feather. It binds you and sustains you. The light in the pale red eyes was a knowing one. Gentle. Yet, he continued with the same gentleness, you’ve outgrown it. You’ve shed it.

He was talking about humanity. He was wondering at its taking to the stars, living on colony worlds, and he was trying to understand what didn’t have meaning for him. “We’re human beings,” I found myself explaining. The storm of anger in my heart had withdrawn, overcome by the charcoal waters of a Scottish loch, and by the childish wonder in an alien killer’s eyes at the sight of simple Autumn rain. “We’re not bound to our world as you’re to your tree.” You know about us, we know about you. The slight quirk of his lips told me he had gotten that message.

You are. He shook his head, and stared out at the loch. With a pang of the heart, I wondered if he was aware of the village on the far shore, and if he had estranged it from the world as he had this place. All of you, he murmured inside my mind, but then weeds and moss rarely feel this is so. I didn’t have to look at him to know he was smiling.

Weeds. A lopsided grin twisted my face. He wasn’t the first to view humankind this way. On numerous occasions, human beings had seen themselves as a species which brought destruction wherever it went.

Gods of ancient times had viewed humanity in this fashion, Poseidon and Hades.

“People died at Omega,” I told him on impulse. Quietly. “When you trapped them.” Hundreds, who hadn’t been able to evacuate in time, those who had remained behind to shut down systems, as if to leave everything in order for when they would be able to return--folly, all too human. Thousands, from the radiations of the giant blue star the black hole had turned into, unless they had gotten to Core worlds in time, and been extremely lucky.

Leaves wither on the tree, he replied, as quietly, never to grow again.

My heart sank in my chest. What did he mean? He wasn’t human, no matter how much he looked the part. There was no way for me to be sure how his mind worked. Interpretation was more than risky, but if ever he meant-- “What do you want?” I asked him again, without hoping for an answer. He had all but confirmed he and his were the source of what had happened at Omega. There was no reason to think they’d stop there. There was no telling where they’d stop, or whether they ever would.

How about you? I stared at him, and the gaze of pale blood met mine. Will you stop? Can you? A low, dark fire was glowing in his eyes, intent. In silence, I looked into the crimson red pools, and I denied the cold twisting my insides into viscous little knots. No, he eventually answered his own question. You cannot, and you, there was a strange emphasis on that second “you”, as if he had meant it in a more personal fashion, will not. The thoughts, calm and even, had the feeling of a final judgment.

Power sparked around him.

He’d leave, like this, and his leaving now, while that fateful pronouncement was still haunting the wind and sending shivers on the loch’s peaceful surface--no. “We are but people,” sounds rushed past my lips, unstoppable, “small and full of flaws. We are what the sun, the night, the earth and the oceans made us. We are light and darkness both, we--we live and we die. We build things, and then we destroy them. We preserve and we kill, we’re just...living beings. People. Imperfect. Alive. Ugly,” I blinked, as the memory of the small village on the far shore popped to the fore of my mind. Little houses of stones and wood, tidy gardens where flowers were blooming and perfuming the night in Spring. A diminutive harbor where fragile fishing boats would be painted and repaired during Winter, while the loch’s waters became whimsical and difficult. Wrinkled hands would weave away the rends in intricate, flashy-colored fishing nets. “And beautiful,” I murmured. Murali’s parents were there, probably an aging man and woman he had showed me once from afar. I didn’t know them, I didn’t know any of the people living in that village. I didn’t know the crews of the thousands of ships sailing the night above our heads. I didn’t know the hundreds billions of people who had settled on distant worlds, harvesting stellar winds or working on the fields of an Earth-type planet. I didn’t know any of them, but they were mine.

Mine to protect.

Mine to shield, as I hadn’t shielded Murali.

I bit my tongue until I tasted blood in my mouth, and I shoved aside the memory of his limp body bumping against my back.

Grief, I whirled around to find Cinaed standing right next to me, pulls at the strings of one’s heart and forces them out of tune. Something flickered in the red eyes, and in the same time the breeze rose again. Warm.

Gentle.

It embraced me with ethereal wings of sweet, spicy scent--basil and oregano and honeysuckle.

Eyes tightly shut, I clutched at the wind’s unreal folds--at soft fabric. My eyes snapped open, and I realized that my right hand had grasped with desperate strength a white, silken sleeve, almost at the shoulder’s level.

I took a slow, slow step back, all the while fighting to force my fingers to release the claw-like hold they had on the garment and the hard, muscled arm beneath it. “Don’t,” I heard myself say in a dead voice, “don’t ever touch me.” I could feel my teeth gritting in an effort to keep a snarl locked in my throat. For a fleeting moment, I saw something dark in the gaze he had set on me, deep and heavy like sadness, mirrored in his smile.

Around us, it started raining.

The echo of countless little drops bouncing on the loch’s surface invaded the air, just as a blinding golden light eclipsed everything.

“Well,” Ithiel stepped out of the already fading explosion of sunshine, wrinkling his nose, “looks like your friend wouldn’t wait for me.”

Cinaed was gone.

“What?!” I dragged in a breath, and got a firm hold on the chaos roving within. “When--”

“Just now,” Ithiel heaved out a loud sigh. “He was blocking me until now, and it didn’t seem hard for him to do either.” The snarkyness in the Virgo Saint’s voice meant annoyance. Ithiel was pissed.

“Did you get anything from him?” I asked. “Anything at all?”

“Apart from the fact that it’s useless to watch out for him because he can keep you away with a snap of his fingers?” Ithiel sniggered, most un-Virgo like. “Yes,” he nodded, “but later. You took your time organizing your own private ceremony for the dead. Our guests are entering Earth’s orbit as we speak, tailed by a skittish military escort. Thomas has called for all of us, which of course you couldn’t hear,” he snorted.

When Virgo’s incredible pride was bruised, it was as unbearable as when an infant started a temper tantrum in the middle of a crowd. So master Nominoë had warned me once, so it was. “Let’s go then,” I told Ithiel, and I stepped out of the world without waiting for him.

End of Chapter 7.

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