The TwiceBorn

Between The Moon And You

"It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death." --Thomas Mann

Rogue's Refuge. 

 Alora paused Alderon on the knoll and hooked one casual leg over the saddle horn as she settled in to wait. She knew she wouldn't have long. The sun was sliding down towards the horizon, and she knew by the subtle shift in the air that it would be night soon. A smile broadened into an infectious grin. It would be night very soon for all of Rogue's Refuge.

She could feel the heartbeat of the tablet in the saddlebag behind her. It matched the beat of her own heart, thrumming through her,and her casual reluctance to head down into Rogue's Refuge and re-claim Islinn was partly due to the tablet's thrall. All she knew was the moment she was in. 

The short time she had spent with Islinn felt as though it were part of another life, one on the same road as she but always a step ahead. The one emotion that blazed through that strange and tangled path though was that someone had taken from her. Taken what belonged to her and that knowing, along with the power of the tablet, made her blind to what she had had with Islinn and blind to where she was headed when she left the knoll to head into the town. A strange and tangled road with no beginning or end.

She watched the juxun pickers as they slowly moved down the rows, the insolent whisper of the juxun loud in the cool stillness of the late day. Overseers rode busily back and forth, and the crack of their whips was harsh, as they yelled at the slaves.

"Whut the fuck are ya doin? Pick it and pocket it, stop lallygaggin about unless ya wanna be tickled up a bit, let's get this shit done!"

Another overseer across the fields picked up the cry.

"More ya pick today,less ya gotta tomorrow! Let's move!"

But that wasn't true. There was always more. More and more every day until their arms or backs gave out and when the other pickers left them behind, crying and rolling in the dirt and grasping at the juxun in one last desperate attempt to show they still had some worth, the overseers would climb down off their horses and slit their throats. Unless...they were breeding quality. Then they might be spared.

Alora settled deeper into her saddle, remembering a day long ago when she'd watched Behrin's auction and saw Islinn for the first time. The memory of it all had the power to squeeze her heart tight, making it burn and hurt in her chest. In her ignorance, she had thought the greatest thing to surmount was simply convincing Islinn she did not deserve to be treated like a slave but now here she was, death and darkness at her fingertips, and somewhere down there was Islinn, in her own darkness and Alora dimly heard JoHan's voice whispering in her ear, telling her what he knew of Islinn and what now she, Alora, also knew to be true:

You were the Chosen One, chosen to look through the mirror and glimpse the infinite...

A slow smile began to pull at Alora's lips.

I will be her infinite

"Shadowlord? Umm...what are we doing?"