#deity: aluarashi

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

Once Maliah and I had a chance to breathe, we talked just the two of us, mostly a reiteration of the same fears I poured out to you, though there was a healthy element of wishing it could be someone else’s problem. Gods’ business is gods’ business, after all, and why should Mishakal, once alerted, not heal her fellow deity, as the goddess of healing? Or another god of some power, who wouldn’t only be trying to revive a god as a mortal but also possibly deal with whatever had incapacitated in the first place?

I want to help those I can, and I won’t leave a job undone that no one else can do, but in these first shocks, I want so much for it to be someone else’s responsibility.

While we were talking, I sent a note to Seb and Ren asking for aid on Mishakal’s business, and when Seb wrote back saying he’d see us, we went off, both of us feeling extremely nervous.

Seb obviously felt nervous too—he’d shut everything down private, set out tea, and sent Ren to the back room to entertain Gwyn while we began. Within a minute of me blurting it out as poorly as possible, he was already clearly overwhelmed, not that I blame him at all. It’s the kind of news where if it didn’t overwhelm someone, I would be worried about them.

We asked, first, for intercession with Mishakal, who might be happier to listen to one of her clerics than one of us, though he seemed dubious about that. Then Maliah asked about the panaceas Aluarashi mentioned, powerful items that might heal anyone, though Seb cautioned us that things that are called panaceas rarely are exactly that. They’re things like healing potions even more powerful than the ones we can afford now, or more powerful versions of other healing items, and the more powerful the more legendary and less likely to be found. He can do more research, but we’d be just as well off asking Mishakal, through him or ourselves.

I also asked Ren in around then, to ask about the Bardic Instruments. They knew more than I did, but not enough to give us any specifics to begin with. It’s a fairly loose collection, and like the “panaceas,” there are different intensities. Some are crafted by very powerful bards who put innate magic into them—like my own gloves, only much more powerful (and they don’t need the boost of material with its own sheen of the arcane like my cloth from Niko, I’m guessing)—and if the Crafter is involved, it’s only tangentially. Others are made with more explicitly divine intervention, from Reorx or another powerful being, but there’s still fairly good historical basis for them, a provenance, a maker’s name. And then there are objects like the Ollamh Harp, where Reorx is more intimately involved, and where there doesn’t tend to be a name, no specific connection to history, just an incredibly powerful legend.

None of them are sitting in a museum somewhere, of course, where we could walk up and beg for a loan and take it to Reorx and try to find how to use it right. And I’d like more specific names and where the legends originate, so I’m going to be in touch with Nuli and hope she’ll have some more specific help, it not being Ren’s specialty.

Then we went back to discussing the problem in general, and Mishakal, admitting that we’re not sure why mortals are handling the situation at all. Seb could answer that question well enough: gods of natural forces, time and tide and craft and such, can travel fairly easily between planes. Other gods can’t, and if Mishakal needed to fetch elements for a remedy or a panacea from a mortal plane, it might cause some complications. So I suppose, at the very least, we need to go hunting something and deliver it into a deity’s hands, and at the most, take it on our own.

But Seb is willing to reach out to her for us or with us, and if that doesn’t work, to introduce us to more powerful temples that might help. He admits that his focus and worship isn’t based around temple ritual or large amounts of interaction with Mishakal, and that more formal temples might be needed, but Maliah and I agree that we’d like to start with someone we already know and trust, when everything is already as confusing as it is.

We asked about appropriate offerings, and Seb says incense and candles are traditional anywhere, but that other than that, Mishakal cares most for offerings of service: donations to her temples so they can heal more people, or donations of labor. When I mentioned I can cast some resurrection magic these days, they both seemed startled, but Seb was very clear that that would be a more-than-appreciated offering at any temple, so I’ll probably be offering a few days’ service casting that kind of magic at a temple in need, whether it’s Seb or someone else who ends up finding us the answers we’d like.

And then, in the middle of all of it, Ren said that having been dead, they could say for sure that being resurrected was unpleasant but ultimately worth it, and Seb groaned, and that was certainly something to find out about our friends. I’d known they’d retired from adventuring after a bad job or two, and that Ren has lingering energy from it, but I hadn’t known it was death bad, and that Seb had to cast Revivify. They didn’t tell the story right then, because we all needed some time to think about our conversation, both pairs of us having received a shock, and also Seb wanted to get a start on research, so we left for a little while to panic on our own and then went back to get extremely drunk over dinner.

The story is a simple and a horrible one: they were working with a team they didn’t know well trying to root a fairly nasty crime ring out of an area, and the criminals got wind of the attack and ambushed them first. Ren and Seb held out longest, but Ren took a sword to the back, and Seb only barely revived them before being knocked out himself, Ren awake just in time to cast a quick healing that gave them the chance to drop a few things as distraction and stagger away.

(I was very happy to learn that some time later, those criminals were dealt with, once the locals called on a few more resources. Otherwise I might have been tempted to divert from this newest quest for a bit. I don’t much like people killing my friends.)

It’s a sobering reminder that at every step of our adventures, we’ve been very lucky. And a much-needed reminder too, when we’re walking into something that I expect to tax us at every step. We’ll need to be careful, and I need to remember that healing and backing off to live another day is always a better option than skating close to death.

I don’t know exactly comes next, though I may have more ideas when I’m slightly more sober. We’ll stay here as long as we need to get Seb’s help, and Maliah and I have hardly seen the children since we arrived and should fix that before we go off to the far corners of the universe. Then maybe to a more central temple of Mishakal where they could make use of my offerings, and from there, wherever our questions lead us.

You get one letter full of determination, and then another full of fear. I imagine I’ll be swinging wildly from one to the other for a while, so my apologies in advance for that.

Love,

Elyn

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

Well, we haven't killed anything in the last couple days, so at least there's that.

We've mostly spent it visiting with our friends around the settlement, which has been wonderful. We started with Alorvin, since we owed her a favor for her help with the waterbreathing spell -- though before that, I woke up early, still too restless and unsettled to sleep well, and took Squirt off to the scientists' shrine to Aluarashi, and I knelt down and laid into the water one of the scales I'd pried off of the dragon on Rugira Prime and did a rather poor job of praying to them, I think. Mostly I just wanted to say that I was sorry for how things had gone with the hydra, that I hadn't really seen any other alternative in the moment but I still felt like I'd fucked it all up, and I was sorry for it.

I wasn't expecting anything, really. I just wanted to tell them that I was sorry, but they must have been feeling indulgent, or maybe still feeling kindly toward us after the puzzles and everything. I suppose the months that we've been gone must feel like the blink of an eye, to a deity. In any case, I think I understand better what Elyn was trying to tell us, after she left her offering, and why she looked so poleaxed, because all at once I felt like I could see the whole of the ocean -- but more than just see it. It felt like holding an entire starmap within my mind's eye, and all at the same time being able to watch every planet that orbited every star, and every creature that lived on every planet, and see and understand how they all interwove with one another to form a single tapestry. I held within my mind every fish and every crab and every strand of kelp, and I think they were trying to show me how vast and intricate their domain is, and that one thread started or ended wouldn't be enough to cause the tapestry to fall apart, or even really to change the picture. Then they showed me the slain hydra, sinking down into the black depths and settling at last on the ocean floor, and all the other fallen creatures that have done the same, the bones left behind by creatures long-dead and scavenged, the half-rotted corpses of things that had died more recently, the ones that were newly-fallen like the hydra, that hadn't yet been found and feasted on by the ocean's scavengers. All these dead things, they showed me, and the hydra I killed just one amongst a vast carpet of them littered across the ocean floor.

I think they were trying to make me feel better, and I suppose when one is a deity, one can afford to look at the picture made by the vast scope of an entire ocean, and to think in terms of decades and centuries and millennia. But I'm not a deity, I'm just one of those threads, and it might not matter overmuch to Aluarashi but it mattered to the hydra I killed, and it matters to the scientists who would have rather it lived.

I knelt there for a few moments longer, reeling with all that had been dumped into my mind, and then I told them that I was still sorry, because I am, and I walked back to Drime's with Squirt and drank coffee and waited for the others to wake up. And that's when we went off to Alorvin's, to pay back the favor we owed her. Mostly she just needed fallen deadwood moved about, and I think after the few days that we had we were all glad to have a task that was simple and straightforward to set ourselves to. She introduced us to a friend she's made in the woods, too, a bobcat who was very tolerant of us all wanting to be introduced, and Elyn was a little uncertain at first but I think it was good for her to make the acquaintance of an animal on this planet that wasn't interested in killing her.

After we'd finished helping Alorvin, she took us to Niko's home so we could say hi to her, since she's not staying with Alorvin anymore like she was when we left. It was good to see her getting settled in amongst the rest of the community, and good just to see her, too. She thanked me for the loom -- she said it was generous, which I tried to protest because it's not, it wasn't about generosity, it was just about doing something nice for a friend, it was about seeing a need she had and having a solution to it that would be easier for me than for her, and so why wouldn't I want to help her with it? She kept saying it, though, and so I stopped trying to protest why I'd done it and told her she was welcome, and that I hoped [loom-maker] had given her something that she could modify in the way that I'd wanted for her, and that I hadn't really understood what he was saying but he'd seemed to understand what I was asking for. She showed me what she was working on, a fabric of black shot with copper, though she tried to say it wasn't much to look at and I had to shut her down on that and tell her that it was lovely. I don't know what sort of fabrics she was able to make back on her own plane, if it was so lovely and fine that the things she weaves here pale in comparison, but it doesn't change the fact that the things I've seen her make here have all been gorgeous.

We had tea with her, and talked a little about her weaving -- or, mostly I let her talk, and tried to understand as best I could, but I think Elyn understood more than I did, since her mom's a tailor -- and then she gifted us each with the most gorgeous scarves I've ever seen. She had a handful to choose from, and Elyn took one that was done in pinks and oranges, and I took one that was made of the loveliest blues and greens and will compliment my boots from Aluarashi quite well, I think. We talked about having lunch with her before we left, too, and before we knew it suddenly we were planning one at Drime's, something that we could invite all of our friends to and get to enjoy all their company one last time before we returned to Mir on the Seles Emsel.

We lured Cloudleaper to the temple to Mishakal with the promise of getting to meet a dog, and she fell all over Gwynne at once, as I suspected she would. Ren was there, and we said hello and spent some time talking with them before Seb came out, too. They asked if we were looking for healing potions, which we weren't, really, but decided it wouldn't hurt to have a few more to our name, so we bought a couple and invited them both to our planned lunch -- and then they noticed my bow, and I saw that they recognized it, recognized it not just as a fancy magical weapon but recognized it for what it was, for what it had been inspired by and modeled off of, and I was so glad for it I could have burst. I showed it off to them, and they admired it precisely as much as it deserves, and finally I dragged myself away from them, and -- an even greater task -- dragged Cloudleaper away from Gwynne, mostly by promising to let her pet Squirt. I can't say he was thrilled at the prospect, but I promised him scritches and lots of time to go run around in the woods in the morning, and bacon from Drime, and he relented, because he is the very best dog in the whole galaxy.

We've spent some more time with the children, too, because that always seems to be where we end up when we don't have much else to occupy us. Loren showed off some magical lighters she had enchanted, and she was so proud! She offered us one, and she seemed particularly pleased with one that she had made that burned with a purple flame, so of course, how could I pass that up? She also said that we should let her know if it broke or anything and she would fix it, but I assured her that we would take very good care of it and make sure we didn't break it.

And then -- oh nenîth, then Jesson came up very shyly and gave me a little Squirt figure that he had made out of yarn, and said that it was so that if sometimes on our adventures Squirt has to be somewhere else, I'll have this yarn-Squirt that I can hold onto and keep and know that he's still with me, no matter how far away he might be, and I almost cried I was so delighted and so moved, and I hugged him so hard he squeaked.

Aside from that, things have been quiet around here. We've been planning our lunch, and Elyn has been helping them with some issues they've been having with their technology, and I've been lending my experience to those who are working on mapping the planet, as much as I can. And the other night we were all sitting around together and Elyn glumly informed us that she'd been trying to search on her LICD for any news of us that might have come up but that she hadn't been able to find anything, and that it might be easier if we had a name for our little group that we could search for, instead of "those three girls with the enormous dog who like to stick their noses into things and get into trouble".

We threw ideas around for a little while -- Cloudleaper suggested Electro-Magnetic Pulse, because of Elyn's affinity for technology and also the letters would stand in for our names -- Elyn, Maliah, and Pika, but Elyn rightly protested that that didn't include Cloudleaper in any way and we felt like it should, and I pointed out that we'd have a hard time searching for that name and finding mentions of us, instead of just science journals or whatnot. Cloudleaper muttered something, then, about chaos, and I think she meant it to be disparaging, but-- well, she's not wrong. I mulled over that for a moment and suggested the Chaos Machine, because we do seem to generate it wherever we go, don't we? But Cloudleaper didn't like that at all -- she said it sounded like a twelve-year-old made it up, which is honestly just rude, I didn't insult her idea. But that led us around, eventually, to combining the two into Electro-Magnetic Chaos, which has the benefit of being more easily searchable than an actual scientific term, and it's got the C to represent Cloudleaper. And we all decided that we liked it well enough, or at least better than anything else we'd been able to think up, and so here we are now. We've sent off to register it, too, so it's all official and everything now.

Elyn also pointed out that ECM could stand for Emergency Mom Collective, and she's not wrong about that, either.

Anyway, we've only got one more day left here on-planet before the Seles Emsel heads back up to Mir, and we'll need to spend some of it finishing up the arrangements for tomorrow's lunch at the inn, but I also want to let Squirt stretch his legs for a good long bit, while we've still got the time and the space to do it, and I definitely need to go hug those kids at least fifteen more times. I'll let you know if there's anything else interesting that happens while we're here, and if nothing else, I'm sure I'll have something to write you about once we're back on Mir and can learn what information Athan and Kian have found for us about those smugglers! It's been so nice to be back here, and I feel like I could stay for another three weeks, at least. I hope their teleportation circle is finished soon, so we can stop by more often, and easier.

And I hope you both are doing well, too! Please write me back and tell me everything that you've been up to and all the jump rings you've mapped since your last letter. I miss you both so much. It's been a balm to my heart to be able to walk out under the trees here on Nosirion-1 and let all the green swallow me up after all that time in the desert, but it's not the same as the Feywild. I'm still glad to be out here, and there's still so many more things I want to see, but that doesn't stop me from missing home, and you, at the same time.

Give each other hugs for me, just as tight as you know I would if I were there.

All my love,

Maliah

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

The last few days of my break were something approaching restful. We did find someone to cast Legend Lore about Maliah’s insignia, only to discover that it’s all so far in the past that there are hardly any legends about it. There were, though, some specific names: apparently the dragon is an emblem of the Tiriande Battalion, a fierce and famed fighting force from an elven nation called the Honorien Dominion. Not much is known about them—they were a planetary state long ago, and eventually, the society dwindled, and the last few pockets of it moved on to other elvish planets.

I don’t remember learning about it. Do you, at all? I don’t think you paid much more attention in history class than I did, but if it were taught in history class, I feel like Legend Lore might have come up with more. We forwarded the information on to the librarians working on our query, in hopes they can dig up more resources (Maliah is still very curious how insignia from an apparently abandoned planet ended up in the Feywild), but I thought—do you think Lindanas would think it was weird if I was in touch to ask him about it? Maybe some of the people settled on Sestrilles and there are non-digitized resources Nellaser’s Landing might not have access to. And if you’re not ready to trust me with him unsupervised, I’d appreciate you asking. As I told Maliah, it’s nice to have a mystery that seems firmly historical, where nobody is going to live or die over it!

We also went looking for rings of luck for Maliah, since I realized they might give her that edge against mind magics that she was looking for. The store cautioned us that too many in one place tend to start having unpredictable and dangerous consequences, but she bought two, and hopefully that will be enough for peace of mind.

And then, with all our business finished and one more dinner with Gaizka, we came here to Nosirion-1, where we put our things down at the inn and went to find Niko to ask about this crafter mystery.

She speaks about it as “alarming but not urgent,” which I grudgingly agree with, since it seems to me that not much has changed about it in a long time. The news that the phenomenon crosses planes was sobering for her, since it means it’s more widespread, but it doesn’t change the facts she’s seen, the same ones we have: some people are feeling more creative, and some less. It spreads to every facet of creativity—she’s even seen it in government workers streamlining forms and processes or coming up with coherent strategic or contingency plans, mostly on the level of villages and towns, since she doesn’t have much access to state-level governments to ask there (and even if she did, larger governments tend to involve a lot of people, where a little more or less inspiration isn’t going to make as much of a difference).

As far as she can tell, there’s no ill effect for those feeling the excess of creativity, which makes me feel a little easier about Tiriel. Maybe there’s a sleepless night here or there, but they don’t neglect themselves or anything else I might have feared. It’s been happening for about two years, just about the same amount of time I’ve been properly adventuring, and she can’t tell if everything happened at once and people are only noticing over time (since a particularly creative month or six isn’t unheard of, but at two years one might start being puzzled by it) or if this is spreading slowly, and nor can I.

Niko calls the excess something like “divine inspiration.” Not of the really drastic kind, the kind Nuli might write crafter ballads about like “The Crafter-Blessed of Siroyer,” about the creation of magical items in situations of great need, or people so inspired they come up with something wholly novel. More the kind where something sparks a song idea in me and it all flows without much struggle, or where Tiriel might get a fabric sample and know just what she wants to make with it.

It might not be bad for the people feeling the excess, but it’s still something very wrong in the universe. Niko, when we asked her about theories, shared her concern, with some background.

She describes creativity as a force in the universe, as much as gravity or the arcane. There’s a flow to it, and it’s natural for people to have periods of greater creativity and periods where there’s little inspiration. That’s all natural enough. What’s unnatural is that things seem … stuck, I suppose. Like a lot of people had the switch flicked fully on or off, and like it’s stayed that way for much longer, when naturally creativity tends to fall somewhere in the middle. She’s traveled all over the place, asked around in Mashoy with our help and introductions. She’s talked to other devotees of Reorx, who she hasn’t quite been able to explain matters to.

And then, even more worryingly, she hasn’t heard from Reorx at all. They aren’t, as she says, the chattiest of gods. She’s been regaining powers and abilities that she once lost, so she must be doing something to redeem herself from sponsoring someone who turned out to be bad news (which really seems something a temple more than a god would be angry about), so there’s that much connection between them, but when she’s given herself this investigation that has so much to do with Reorx’s domain, she was expecting some sign of approval, or help, or something. She floundered for a little, trying not to seem as though she felt entitled to interaction with her god, but she was nonetheless obviously concerned, and more than that, in some way, worried about her chosen patron.

Maliah and I, by then, were a little bit frozen with horror at the size of the situation. I knew already that it was big, that it crosses planar boundaries and is easy enough to find that you can stumble across people feeling the effects in any city you wander into. But it’s one thing to guess it, and another to have someone come to you, and tell you a whole force of the universe is out of whack, and ask for your help to fix it, since divine intervention doesn’t seem to be coming.

Or, well—that makes Niko sound like a fool, and she’s not that. She wants our help, yes, but it’s not like she’s expecting us to solve divine-level problems. Maliah may be favored by Cernunnos, but that doesn’t make either of us qualified to do anything about the force of creativity. But three people without enough power to fix something is better than one, and the first thing she’s asked is our help contacting someone with more power who may know more: Aluarashi. We’re the first people they spoke to, and we’ve had some level of interaction since. And, after all, they’re the god of tides and knowledge here, and it’s definitely knowledge we’re seeking.

She offered to let us do this on our own, but we definitely agreed that she should be involved, since she’s the one who has been doing most of the groundwork on this issue. After a little back and forth, we decided to leave an offering at their shrine and pray to them first and see where that led, and to aid us in that, I went to ask Eheba if there’s a kind of offering they seem to prefer.

It’s early days, a new shrine for a newly-worshiped god. Two years isn’t much time to properly start a tradition of worship, so Eheba’s answer was mostly a shrug and a list of some possibilities. Books (apparently a scientist tends to bind books of data), anything related to oceans, many expected things. I appealed to Maliah, since she seems to have good instincts for what Cernunnos would appreciate, but she told me firmly that she was taught in those traditions her whole life and that here, my guess is as good as hers.

(Which it patently isn’t, I know about five holiday hymns and the basic wedding attendant duties for the rituals of the Undying Court, a few awkward prayers for the Lady of Stars, and my previous attempts to talk to Aluarashi. But she, in this as in other things, insists that Aluarashi likes me better, for the time they put knowledge in my head—as though that’s more important than their attempt to comfort her for her guilt after we killed the hydra. I’d say giving a tool the knowledge to take care of a problem doesn’t show as much favor as providing reassurance when the job is done, but just try to convince Maliah of that.)

After some worrying, which Niko stayed wisely out of, we settled on a lightly enchanted game piece from the hags’ hoard and some prints of pictures Maliah has taken of maps on our journeys, as knowledge to pass on. When that was prepared, we went out to the shrine, where Maliah firmly put me in charge, again arguing that they like me better. And Niko was clear that she was hoping for something of an introduction to them at best, not for a direct appeal with us supporting her, so I stumbled through an explanation of the situation and asked if there was any help they could offer.

The response, after that, was a brief image of the waterfall we passed through to enter their domain so long ago, when we first started adventuring—an invitation more than a summons, but a clear implication that there’s a conversation that needs to happen and that the medium of a prayer isn’t going to do much about it. Eheba, when I’d spoken to him, offered to drive us out in his boat if we needed to visit the caves again, so it looks like I’ll be taking him up on it, and Niko has suggested we leave tomorrow early, especially if we’re going to need to solve the puzzles all over again to reach them.

There are still some hours left in today, though, so I’ve been writing you, and I think the kids will be home from school soon so we can spend some time with them. Then I told Eheba (and I imagine others will come along as well, since we aren’t exactly being secretive about being in town) that we’ll be at the inn’s bar tonight, so I’m expecting him and who knows what other company for conversation and drinks while we catch up.

Though not too many drinks, if we’re leaving early tomorrow.

I’ve gotten too used to solving problems, I think. It means I don’t know what to do in the face of this, where unless Aluarashi has something comforting to say, I have no idea how we’re possibly going to fix it, or if there’s a way to fix it. I would tell you to ask Lindanas about this too, but I can’t even think where he would begin to research.

And I know what you’re going to say, but—please don’t tell Tiriel. When I have a more concrete answer, I’ll do it, with all the apologies she deserves for keeping it from her so far, but like I keep saying, it’s only going to be unnecessary worry and guilt for her, and Niko confirms that she’s part of a worrying pattern, but unlikely to be in any danger herself. If Aluarashi tells us what’s happened tomorrow, I’ll write her tomorrow, but for the time being, there’s no use in it.

Last time, it took us plenty of time to get through Aluarashi’s puzzles, so I don’t know if I’ll be writing tomorrow, but I’ll tell you as soon as I know more, I promise.

Love,

Elyn

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

My thoughts are in such a tumble I hardly know where to begin this next letter, or how to say everything that’s happened. But we’ve made it back to Mir whole and hale, so I suppose I have the time to sit and try to sort my thoughts out.

I met a deity, nenîth. I’m probably telling it all backwards to start with that, but— I met a deity. You know that much from my last letter, of course, but I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it all, so you’ll have to forgive me if my letter is as tumbled-up as my thoughts are.

I held my tongue before the deity, and let Elyn do most of the speaking, because she’s better at it than I am, and more willing than Pika. In turn, the deity introduced themselves as Aluarashi, That Which Deepest Is, which is a hell of a name, don’t you think? They said they’d been watching us, and had heard of us from the great elk I wrote you about a few weeks ago, and I was doubly glad for Loren’s ring that had helped that interaction go as smoothly as it had. I can’t imagine what Aluarashi would have thought of us, if I’d done poorly and the elk had made an unfavorable report, or how much worse the puzzles and fights might have gone.

Aluarashi wanted to know our purpose in coming, as well as what the settlers intended, and when we asked about the tides they seemed mostly amused, and said they are the tides, which knocked the air from me almost as much as their name did. Apparently the tides follow Aluarashi wherever they go on the planet, and since they were in that cave, that’s the reason the tides there were behaving so strangely, and not ebbing the way they ought to have.

We took that in, and reassured them that the settlers and scientists seemed well-meant and trustworthy folk, and that they’d come only to study and learn more about the planet, a pursuit which Aluarashi seemed to approve of. Pika fell all over herself with politeness and formality, which shocked me almost as much as everything else had, though I’m starting to think maybe it shouldn’t. Pika seems to talk freely with just about everyone but us. She offered Aluarashi an introduction to the scientists, should they want it, but Aluarashi declined and said they trusted our judgment, after having watched us solve their puzzles. I didn’t even tell Elyn I-told-you-so about that, after all her worries that we were treading somewhere we weren’t wanted, instead of passing tests laid out deliberately before us.

Aluarashi was very patient with us, and seemed willing to answer any questions we might have, though I was mostly tongue-tied through the experience, and any questions I managed to ask were awkward and fumbling. Once we’d asked everything we could think of to, or bring ourselves to, they produced a box of lovely, polished wood, and Pika stepped forward to accept it while I was still trying to pick my jaw up off the ground at the idea of being given a gift by a god.

And then they gobsmacked me further, and produced more gifts, a ring for Pika and a flute for Elyn as well as waterproofing for her gloves, and the loveliest pair of boots I ever saw for me, all blues and greens like the ocean and with shell patterns stitched onto leather that Elyn said later was made from the hide of a deep-sea creature, and if it was just that it would have been enough of a gift to make me want to cry. But there’s magic in them, which shouldn’t surprise me, when they were gifted from the hands of a god, but only surprises me in that it’s such a lovely and unexpected gift, and a greater boon than I’d have ever expected a deity to grace me with. I clutched them close to my chest and scarcely managed to stammer out more than a thank you.

Pika must have thought me terribly uncultured and uncouth, for she was all grace and bows and formalities again, backing away from Aluarashi once they’d bid us farewell, and backed all the way through our archway portal, which looked now like a cascade of water. Elyn and I exchanged a glance and followed after her, and we all found ourselves deposited outside that very first waterfall, in the little pool that Pika had found, and a short walk from the beach.

It seemed as nice a place as any to stop and rest, but Pika would have none of it, and insisted we continue until we’d reached the shore and the little campfire that Eheba had made there. I daresay he didn’t expect to see us, and we must have looked a sight, all salt-crusted and dishheveled, but he took it in stride, and we all settled down around the fire, and he offered us food as we told him what we could about what had transpired.

Once we finished with that, and had eaten enough to satisfy us, Elyn turned her attentions to our gifts. That was when she told me my boots were made of the hide of a deep-sea creature, and that they’d make me jump higher and climb faster and swim easier, and I just had to sit with them on my lap for a while, tracing my fingers over the stitching and trying to come to terms with the fact that a deity had gifted me something so lovely and so perfect.

Elyn looked at Pika’s ring next, and said that it will let her walk and run on water as though it’s solid ground, and I don’t think Pika could have been more delighted. We’re probably lucky she didn’t take off right there across the waves. And Elyn’s flute she saved for last, and said it’s made from the bones of a whale, and its music can worm its way into an enemies mind and whisper and distract them, maybe even hurt them. If I’d had any doubt, back in the cave, about the truth of whether Aluarashi had actually been watching us all through the puzzles, it would have evaporated then, because I think all three of us were rather overcome by how lovely and well-suited our gifts are.

And we still had the box left to open, which we did once we’d recovered ourselves, and found inside three gems, one rose quartz, one citrine, and one chrysoprase. Elyn suggested the chrysoprase for me, and I was relieved to be offered it, because it was easily the loveliest of the three, all greens and blues to match my new boots, and then Elyn offered the choice to Pika next but she wouldn’t. So Elyn took the citrine and Pika the rose quartz. Elyn says they’re not magic, just gemstones, but it’s nice to rub my thumb over the smooth surface and remember that we were given gifts by a deity, twice over.

We all slept there on the shore, and in the morning we climbed into the boat, and before we left, Pika wet some sand from the shore in the water and shaped a little person out of it with great ritual and solemnity. And Elyn, seeing that, dropped a flower into the waters as we left the bay, and I realized with a start that I probably ought to do the same. Pika said the sand represented herself, and the water Aluarashi. And we had water aplenty at that point, but it was too late to go pluck a leaf from a bush to be my own stand-in, so I had to settle for fishing one out of the water from the side of the boat, and then laying it back to float away in our surf. It seemed a silly and pointless offering, and my cheeks burned hot at my own insufficiency, but I suppose I can only hope that Aluarashi took it for how it was meant, and didn’t think it a laughable offering from someone untutored in the ways of ritual and religion.

We found our return to the compound much easier than our exit, and we went first to the scientists’ offices to make our report to Ohabi, since Lorraine was still on leave to settle in with her new family members. Once we’d done with that, and warned her that a deity may be dropping in on them unexpectedly, we went with Pika to find Alorvin, because Pika wanted to ask her to grow her a quarterstaff the way she had the buildings of the compound. She seemed happy enough to do so, and I checked in with Nalira while they hashed out the details of that, to see how she was settling in and whether she was happy — or as happy as she could be, considering — with her new arrangement. She said she is, and I’m glad of it.

I wanted to go stop in on Lorraine and say hello to her and the children next, but Elyn pointed out that we were all still filthy and bedraggled and that a bath might be in order, before we showed up on their doorstep looking like we’d just been washed up with the tide. It was nice to soak the salt out of my hair, to be sure, and to change into clothes that were clean and dry, and I’m sure I looked a far cry more presentable by the time I got downstairs and we all three rejoined one another.

We thought to bring some candy to the children, but didn’t suppose that there were likely to be many confectioners on Nosirion-1. We decided on sweet buns from the inn’s kitchen instead, and went off to see them.

It was Jesson who greeted us, Lorraine’s youngest, who I think must have been feeling the sudden appearance of siblings older than he, because he was all affected manners and formality, greeting us and welcoming us to the home with all the gravitas of a steward, and introducing himself to us. We all responded gravely in kind, though I’m sure I saw a twinkle of humor in Pika and Elyn’s eyes both, and they’d have certainly seen one in mine if they looked.

We found Lorraine and Loren further inside the house, and Loren ran straight to Squirt and threw her arms around him, before she peeled herself away to greet the rest of us. She turned to Pika next, and greeted her with a title I didn’t recognize, and then greeted us all with the same in turn. Elyn knew it and choked up, and later in the day explained to us that it’s a tiefling honorific that someone might use toward a guardian who’s claimed responsibility for them, and it’s a good thing I didn’t know that at Lorraine’s or I think I’d have snatched Loren up into a hug and never let her go. Elyn taught us the reverse honorific as well, to be from guardian to child, and it held me in good stead, later.

But I knew none of that then, only that Loren had made Elyn cry, and they both seemed happy about it, and so I was concerned but not alarmed. Once we’d all had our hugs, we asked Loren how she was, and Lorraine, and I think they’re about as well as could be expected. It must be a big adjustment, suddenly bringing two children into your home, or suddenly finding yourself enfolded into a new family, even when the circumstances are good ones. Loren tugged Pika away for a few moments and while Pika accompanied her, I asked after Devon, but he was out for a walk, and Elyn made better friends with Jesson. I think he’s adjusting too, as well as can be expected for someone in his position.

We lingered a while, hoping Devon would return and we could speak with him, too, and laughed as Elyn played tag with Loren and Jesson. Devon never returned, though, and there were shadows in Lorraine’s eyes, beneath her happiness, that made us hold our tongue in asking about his absence, and make our farewells before she felt compelled to invite us to stay for supper.

Elyn suggested we stretch our legs around the compound a bit, rather than returning straight to the inn, and it was on that walk that she taught us about the title Loren had given us, and how to honor her right back. And then Squirt, who seemed to want to stretch his legs as much as the rest of us, and roamed away from us and back and away again as we made our way around town, came back and pressed in tight against my side and whined at me, and seemed in such unexpected distress that I used my magic to be able to speak with him clearly, to make sure I knew what it was that had upset him and could fix it promptly.

It’s still strange to me, a little, to have magic I can cast, to be able to speak a few words and wave my hand through the air and change the world around me. It must still be strange to Squirt, too, because he seemed taken aback by the ability to speak to me in turn, and it took him a moment to answer me when I asked what was wrong. But he said that he’d sensed Devon nearby, and sensed that he was sad, and it took nearly everything in me not to just run right to him then and there, and squeeze him up tight until he had to be cheered.

But we’d spent a whole afternoon with Lorraine and Loren and Jesson, and spoken with them all about their struggles adjusting to their new family, even when they were happy to have it. And Devon has always seemed the quieter, between him and his sister, and the more thoughtful, and the one carrying a greater weight on his shoulders. So I held myself back, and asked Elyn and Pika to do the same, and wait, because if he was sad and hiding, I didn’t think that having the lot of us descend upon him unexpectedly would help things, and I was so afraid of scaring him off.

Neither Elyn nor Pika seemed terribly pleased by it, but they did as I asked all the same, and I followed Squirt as he led me up into an observation tower, and I found Devon there, looking as sad as Squirt had said he was. It took everything in me not to rush to him, but I held myself back, and made sure he saw me, and asked if he wanted to talk before I just ran in and crowded him with unwanted company.

He seemed reluctant, but didn’t send me away, so I sat next to him and let him speak in his own time, and I think this whole conversation is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. He wanted advice, and looked to me for it, and I had to move past the fact that I hardly feel qualified to advise even myself, most times, and come up with something for him, because he was hurting and I knew I couldn’t leave him like that.

He’s struggling more than the others with the adjustment, or taking it more to heart, I think. He wanted to know how to deal with being thrown into a new situation and not knowing what the rules governing things around him were, and making mistakes and not wanting to ask for help, and all at once I felt such a kinship with him it near made my heart burst, and I wanted to cry, or laugh, or both.

I don’t have any answers, really. I struggle with the same worries every day, and have since the day I left you both and the Feywild behind. But I told him that, told him about leaving the Feywild and everything I’d known and venturing out into the planets and systems where everyone around me seemed to follow unspoken rules that I was unaware of, and fumbling through one mistake after another, and I think it helped him just to know that someone had been through what he was going through, and someone understood the fears and doubts that plagued him.

I told him that in the end, what the three of us cared about most was that he and Loren were happy, and if it turned out they weren’t happy with Lorraine, we would make sure they got to a place where they were, and I told him that just because something was good didn’t mean it was easy, and that it was okay if things were hard for a while. I told him that leaving you both and my home behind was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but that it had been good for me, too, and had lead me to such wonderful things. I think he took comfort from that, and it gladdened my heart to see it, but he still wanted to know how to handle it when he didn’t know how to act in a new and unfamiliar situation, and everyone around him seemed to assume that he would know, and so I told him that what I do when I find myself in those situations is that I just pretend not to know Common and ramble gibberish at them in Sylvan until they stop expecting so much of me. It’s probably terrible, as advice goes, but it made him laugh and brightened his spirit, and that’s all I could have asked for, really. It cheered and comforted him enough that he agreed to come down from the tower, and when we descended we found that Elyn and Pika had followed us to its base, though they’d stayed waiting outside like I’d asked them, at least.

Pika held her arms open to him and he let her hug him, and called her Asar, too — that’s the tiefling honorific Loren called all three of us — and maybe he knew that we’d learned what it meant because I’d called him Saram-Devon while we’d been talking up in the observation tower, or maybe he only said it because he felt it. But either way, Elyn called him Samar-Devon too, and then told him how he’d saved all us all with his driftglobe, and he was glad for that, and also distracted enough by it to cheer up and let the conversation turn to lighter things.

We told him about all of it, everything we’d been through, and he seemed to hang on our words (well, mostly Elyn’s words, but still), and eventually we’d diverted him enough that he said he ought to get home to Lorraine without our even having to suggest it. We told him to make sure they’d saved some sweet buns for him and reminded him that he could always reach out to us, if he ever wanted to for any reason, and then let him be on his way.

Once we’d seen him off, we went off to see how Niko was settling in, and found her near the inn engaged in conversation with Ren. She’s been working with Alorvin on some project of hers, cataloguing Nosirion-1’s plant life, and says her magic’s beginning to come back to her, which seems a promising sign. I still don’t know how one seeks out redemption, it’s not like something you can hunt and locate and hold like a lost trinket, but she seems content with the work for now, and the prospect of figuring it out in her own time.

Pika asked her about what her craft was, since she’s a devotee or Reorx and I guess one wouldn’t dedicate one’s self to a deity of crafting if one weren’t already inclined to make things, and Niko pulled off a scarf she was wearing and showed it to us, and we all exclaimed over it, because it’s as fine as spider silk and seemed nearly weightless in our hands, but woven with an intricate pattern. I doubt even the Queen of Air and Darkness herself could wear anything finer. And she said that back home, before she’d crashed into our plane, she’d helped improve weaving technology, so she’s an innovator in her own right. But she’d fled home with nothing but a backstrap loom, and certainly nothing like the sort of loom she must have used to weave something so delicate and so fine. I wish I knew the littlest bit about weaving, that I might help her, or even know what sorts of things she might need, if she were going to build herself a new loom. I don’t even know if we have the sorts of things she’d need here on our plane, but I hate the thought that she might find her hands tied by the limited tools available to her. Surely someone seeking redemption from their god might have an easier time of it if they could practice their craft? She seems so sad about it, and I just wish there were something I could do to help her.

I hope she doesn’t have to re-innovate all the changes she’d brought to her home plane, just to be able to weave again. But if she does, I’d have to think that must be something worthy of redemption. If it’s not, then I don’t think Reorx deserves her at all.

I didn’t have a chance to work myself up enough to ask, though, before Niko noticed that Ren seemed to want a word with the three of us, and so she excused herself and Ren came over to thank us for the work we’d been doing with the Silver Tree. They said if we hadn’t come to take on the job of retrieving Hallbjorn’s sensors, it would likely have fallen to Seb, as one of the few in the compound who stood a chance of making it out and back again alive. But as the only cleric in the compound — on the planet, really, unless Nosirion-1’s forests hide more crash-landed strangers of Niko’s ilk, though I’d be fair surprised if that turned out to be the case — it would have been dangerous for the rest of them to be without him for so long.

Ren seemed as reluctant to talk as they were eager to thank us, but I got the sense that they would have gone themselves, once, but weren’t able to any longer, and I think it would have hurt them something fierce to have even inadvertently been the cause of risk to the compound, by Seb having had to go in their place.

We all accepted his gratitude as well as we could, though I think I wasn’t the only one who found herself unsure of how to do so, in the face of all that. But we did our best, and Elyn carried it for the rest of us, as she usually does when it comes to speaking, and told them to contact us if they or the settlement ever needed us again. And then there was little left to do, in the end, but to return to the inn, with much to keep our thoughts busy.

We spent a few days, while the Seles Emsel’s travels to bring it back down to the surface of Nosirion-1, telling the scientists about what we’d seen and learned. We wavered for a while, unsure of how much we should tell and how much Aluarashi should be allowed to divulge on their own, but we finally settled on a middle ground and told them as much as we thought we should.

We had an uneventful trip back to Mir, once the Seles Emsel had come and finished its business and was ready to leave again, and it was nice to have a few days with nothing pressing demanding our attention and no need to run somewhere or do something. I gave Squirt a good brushing, which he was badly in need of, and played a few rounds of [sudoku] with Elyn, and was better able to teach her and Pika more about the game, now that we had the luxury of time and leisure, and weren’t scrambling to solve a deity’s puzzle.

It was good for us all, I think. We hadn’t had a nice, leisurely trip between Nosirion-1 and Mir yet — the once we went by teleportation circle, and that was half a moment’s disorientation and then a mad rush to find the children and help them, and the two actual, proper trips we’d made otherwise, we’d had mutiny to deal with the first time, and then the children newly in our custody and their welfare weighing heavily on our minds. And while it’s not as though we aren’t thinking about them now, it’s a weight off all our minds, I’m sure, knowing that they’re with someone who loves them, and adjusting, and at least on their way to something that could make them happy.

Once we docked on Mir, we made for The Crow, to purchase rooms and so Elyn and Pika could collect on the information that had been promised to them. For all my talk above about leisurely trips, I confess I spent much of it trying very hard (and mostly failing, if I’m honest) not to worry about this moment. I’ve known from the start that Elyn and Pika only joined the Silver Tree because Athan felt sorry for me, and made it the cost of this information they’re seeking. Once they had it, I couldn’t know what they’d want to do next, but I’ve never hoped that it might be to linger about here with me. They’re both so driven, so much more so than I am. They have things they want and purposes that drive them, and while I might be content to drift about, guided only by my wish to see new things, I’ve no doubt that neither of them would be.

Still, I can’t ask more of them than Athan already did on my behalf, and so when Athan asked them if they wanted a room all three of us could retire to while they learned their news, or if they wanted to hear it in private, I sat at the bar and ordered a drink and tried not to wince too badly, when Pika said she wanted to hear hers alone. I tried not to think about how much I was going to miss them, and not to wonder what I was going to do with myself when it was just me and Squirt again, so that it wouldn’t show on my face. But I must have done a terrible job at it, because after Pika gave her answer, Elyn asked for the same, but then looked at me and changed her tune straightaway, and said she’d hear it in front of the lot of us.

I don’t know how good of an accounting I can give to you of the information Athan had for her. What I understood of it was that the unregistered gnomish ship that had passed through Mir a while back, and that Elyn had come to Mir to learn more about, was some sort of nomadic family vessel, that had come from a bit of uncharted space near Nosirion-1, and that that might be a good place to look next, in the search for answers about Elyn’s family’s own unregistered ship.

I’d hoped, a little, that Elyn’s change of mind might sway Pika in the same direction, but no, she went off with Athan to hear her news alone, and Elyn and I took a table together while we waited, and I tried not to dwell too much on the thought that it might well be the last we saw of Pika, because it’s not as though she likes either of us terribly much. Honestly, she talks to everybody more than she does us. Animals. Children. Deities. I don’t know what we did to offend her so terribly, but I wish I knew how to tell her that I was sorry for it. I wish I knew how to make her want to stay.

When she came out from her conversation with Athan, there was a wild light in her eye, and she told us that we ought to stick around a few days (where she thought I might be off to, I have no idea!), because there were about to be fireworks.

It’s not as though I have anywhere pressing to be, in any case. i was a little surprised how readily Elyn agreed to do so, though, I think she’d be off chasing after her ship the moment she had a lead to follow, but she seemed as intrigued as I am about what it is that could put that sort of an expression on Pika’s face.

She won’t say anything more about what to expect, though, and so eventually we all parted ways to go claim our rooms and unpack our things, since it seems we’ll be here for at least a little while longer. Elyn made noises about writing to her brother, and so I’m doing the same, and writing to you.

I hope that my next letter to you will be a little more timely, now that we’re in a place with dependable LICD signal, and I’ll try to write just as soon as I’ve seen anything worth telling you about. Whatever these fireworks are that we’re awaiting, I’m sure you’ll know almost as soon as we do.

I love you, nenïth. Be safe, and be well. And I’ll try to do the same.

Love,

Maliah