159th of Gnielm, 336 EA
Citadel of the Athalial League, Athal
Svaljna sat at the center of a peaceful sort of afternoon, for the Citadel. A warm breeze blew over dappled lawns between buildings. Guildfellows came hither and fro. Two ducks waddled at the side of a small pond, grooming through each other’s sheening coats.
“Alright!” Mepka bounded up the grassy knoll on the balls of her feet, sporting her telltale smile. “I’ve got something for you.”
Svaljna matched her smile in kind. “You are too kind, friend.”
“No, no.” Mepka insisted, “Someone kind once told me that they were just speaking the truth. I’m doing the same now. I know I’ve dragged my feet on it, but it’s finally done.”
With that, she handed Svaljna a thin folio, stamped in glittering saxe ink with the seal of the Athalial Explorer’s League. It was so light a thing to give, but still she handled it with great care.
“I-” Svaljna caught herself, that instinct she had to self deprecate, and she put it away. “Thank you.
“I just wanted to get it right, you know?” Mepka explained as Svaljna stared down at the parchment. “If it’s on me to vouch for your competence, you know damn well that I’m going to try to give every detail of how you saved my sorry ass.”
“It is still very kind.” Svaljna said with a verdant sense of wonder.
“Well, the league needs more like you. Like us. With this, plus the letter from the codger stationed back on your home plane, you’ll have enough to register as a guildfellow yourself.” Mepka pulled fingers back through her hair in feigned nonchalance. “Have you thought about what you want to do, with that whole deal?”
“I have.” Svaljna said simply.
After an impatient beat, Mepka nudged her. “Well, out with it then! Leave me in suspense, why don’t you. Hells, I’ve thought of what I’m going to do next.”
“Oh?” Svaljna cocked a head.
“I’m putting up a contract.” Mepka fiddled with her quarterstaff. “I need someone to perform some sveida for me.”
Svaljna’s brow furrowed, her shoulders tensing. She reminded herself to relax herself, that it was okay. “For what would you want that?”
“I just, there are things I need to know. About what is to come for me, or come back for me. It’s like we talked about, that first night. The person I was when I was trapped, they’re a part of me. Same as for you, I think. But maybe we’d both sleep easier at night knowing if we were ever or never going to be that way again.”
Svaljna thought on this for a long and moment, reveling again at how similar she and her new friend were when it came down to it. She hadn’t met anyone like Mepka, before Mepka.
“I understand.” She began her preparations, using her foot to carve out a circle from the dew on the grass where they stood in that very moment. “I will do this for you, no contract.”
“Thank you,” Mepka started, surprised as Svaljna stepped into her space and began painting arcing trails of berried ink across her hands and arms. “Oh, oh! You mean like, you’ll do it now? Here?”
“Yes, here.” Svaljna swallowed hard, keenly aware of all the many people going about their various businesses. “I am trying to be more open, with my magic. And with my self.”
“Right then.” Mepka looked impressed.
“I am not ashamed.” Svaljna confirmed, sounding more like she was convincing herself than her friend but even still she was able to push forwards through her own awkwardness. “Besides, better to do under light from the sky.”
Indeed, the sun moved across the heavens as the ritual was primed. It landed at a low arc on the horizon just as the full moon appeared on the opposite firmament. At the moment when they shared the sky each of those great celestial bodies hung in frame to the aether, bathing the wall at the edge of this world in cool and fiery hues.
“Augi’r Dy’tiisy”, Svaljna began, breathing heavily to take in the world, feeling a call to fate.
“Psalre”, She continued, hands clasped to her companion’s forearms, feeling for who they really were.
“Ahtr’ul”, She ended, rolling her eyes along the lines of the cosmos itself, feeling the weight and beauty of the aether.
There was a moment at the end of whip crack, like being slung wildly between lives, and then their was prophesy.
Svaljna saw Mepka born, bathed in mud and and muck and moss. She saw a heart dissolve into fog, and reconstitute itself in form of flesh made to withstand iron. She saw threads, all tangled and matted into one another, cut as a hand reached through a veil. She saw the moon that was made to never change roll through many imperceptible cycles, waxing and waning and waxing over and over and over again. She saw a road, a long and drawn road, a road of the form of a circle and of a line at once. At all points along that road she saw herself, standing next to Mepka, and the figure of a third woman obscured in a warm shadow. Most of all, though, she saw through to the very shape of each of those people, the essences of their lives, and in so doing she felt herself able to accept fully the possibility that they were good.
The magic broke, not like the snapping of a cord but rather like the opening of a bottle. Svaljna and Mepka blinked to each other, regarding the other for the lifetime they had just spent together in that spell, and they felt for all the world that there was no-one else they would rather be.
The Etra Anthology 