Roses and Thorns

Sister

The forest is in full bloom now, heavy with the heat of the growing season at its worst. The Dog Days are past, though the dizziness of the worst moon of the year still wears on us all. It's a time when magic is erratic, tension is high, and all of us swing between panic and euphoria. The Canira always laugh at us, of course. The Canii's connection to the magic of Dreamland is far more visceral and so the purging and resurgence of magic doesn't effect them half as much as it does- then again, the Cloud Chasers and Eris are far more capable than most Canii when it comes to handling physical pain. They could just be quite good at hiding it.

Once, in another life, I celebrated those days with the Eudicas. We were young and our magic had hardly developed, and the adults told us that our pain was a sign of our strength, a way of connecting with the world that had reared us. There were celebrations, trials, rituals... best of all, plentiful food. My sisters and I gorged ourselves on meat and fruit.

In stark comparison, I've spent the last three Dog Days hiding from the forest and praying to Verhamera that my loved ones don't run into the forest and never come back.

I'm disturbed from my somewhat morbid thoughts by distant rustling in the brush. "Is someone there?"
She appears, graceful and elegant, and I am stricken by her beauty before it curdles with realization. Her antlers are straight, arranged into glorious branches, and across them are strung feathers of birds too beautiful to exist. Around her neck are rings of teeth.

I am staring at a Fauna.

"What are you doing here?" I call, a threat sharp at the back of my throat. I tense myself, ready to aggress if she doesn't start running soon.

"You're far from your village." She replies in more of a vague musing than an answer. A thin smile makes its way across her wide face, but there's little expression in her dark, soft eyes. When I don't reply, she continues, "I am called Gienah. You're the Eudica. The one who is loved."

"You seem to know a lot about me, don't you?"

"It was a quick glance. I don't wish to pry much." She says, spindly limbs kneading the ground. I can't imagine how they keep her off the ground, but she still works perfectly in motion.

"The teeth say otherwise." I reply. "You get those from deals. How many lives have you ruined for those?"

"They do come at a high price for collectables." she says sorrowfully, though she in no way looks distraught about it. "I haven't ruined anyone's life. Your kin come to mine seeking help, and we show them what they wanted to see. The teeth reenergize us. You don't think the future and past take no toll on us, do you?"

"I wouldn't know." I sigh.

"Who did you lose?" she asks. There's genuine interest in the statement, but I approach it with hesitation.

"You already know."

"Do I? Marigold wasn't the first from the Glade to come to us." The teeth rustle about her neck, small and large, canines, molars...

I tense, snarling. "Told you you knew."

Chase her off. She has nothing to give you. Nothing to do but deceive you.

"You are about to chase me into the woods. I will escape and you'll go home to your sisters, feeling just as unfulfilled as you did this morning when you decided to take a walk to clear your mind."

"How do you know that?" I snap, feeling self conscious.

"I can't read your mind. This is just the most likely sequence of events."

I pause. "Suppose I didn't chase you off, then. I've defeated your prophecy." I sit down with an air of dignity. "Now what?"
"This, my friend, is what is known as an unlikely future. You have diverted us onto a new path. If many had such stalwart determination and patience, perhaps we would have a universe of such events, where fate was quite regularly defied. In the meantime, most come to us to find what they must do to prevent the futures they fear from becoming their own."

"But we could do it on our own, in theory?"

Gienah nods. "Now, the thing about unlikely futures... they are never 'better'. Same as the most likely sequence of events, they come with their own prices and trials. The question is what you're willing to give up, who you're willing to throw aside to achieve the outcome you desire. So many teeth. So much blood. Shame, really."

I think of Rose, deep under the earth in the old tree, thinking of what she'd give to be happy again. I think of Alabaster, alone in his cabin, hunched over his hearth, Asha with her nightmares, Anassa struggling through books for answers she won't find, the phantoms in the clearing that still haunt my sister.

Above all of them, Ace... if there was something I could have done that night, to fix things between us, would I have done it?

It becomes far easier to imagine my own teeth around that collar.

"You don't want to make a deal with me." Gienah looks down at me, ears twitching. "I say this as someone quite interested in your teeth. Be wary, and keep close to your loved ones. There's a time of unlikely futures in store for you."

I open my mouth but she disappears as if I had launched forwards to attack her, disappearing into the bushes as if she'd never been there, leaving me alone beneath a dappled sky in the oppressive heat of the late growing season.

Trembling with resolve, I turn back towards the Glade, feeling a new, cold wind ruffle my pelt. It knows me well as I know myself.

I have a future to chase after, one I'm quite capable of making myself.

Most importantly, someone back home needs me.