Tallah

Yriea spoke, but her words were swallowed by the rush of wind as Catharina dropped like a stone between branches she’d watched grow, catching a hanging vine one heartbeat before it was too late. She swung around, and landed gracefully atop the next thick, moss covered branch. Blue-feathered parrots squawked their annoyance at the disturbance and took to the air in a great, noisy pandemonium.

“Are you listening, Cat?”

She grunted, tensed and jumped off, reached for a final vine and deftly lowered herself to the soft, yellow-leaf-covered ground. First down, as always. She looked up to see Yriea jump and drop unassisted in a flurry of green and white fabric, like a petal on the wind. She took two steps back and the aelir’rei landed with the grace of one never afraid of the fall, born to run and hunt across the canopies of the ever-forest.

“I wasn’t listening,” Catharina lied. “Were you saying something?”

That got a pout and a momentary, sullen silence.

“Savage.”

“Tart.”

“I would call you monkey but those can actually climb a tree.”

A pair of Dominion-bred corallins waited for them, brushed down and saddled by an aelir minder. His name, Catharina knew, was Glaram. She knew each of the house members by name, station, and matriarch. She signed her gratitude to him, hand over breast, as they approached.

The corallins that made their home on Vas held almost nothing of the deadly beauty of their Dominion counterparts, the difference almost as glaring as between a common mouser and a panther. These were taller than a man, muscular and lean, with coats of black, fine hair into which the aelir massaged oils to ward against pests. With claws and fangs large and sharp enough to rip an armoured man in two, they were majestic beasts bred for war and to cover quick distances across the forested land.

One was called Briar, for her prickly moods and difficult temper. Catharina loved her dearly. She took a slab of meat from Glaram and fed the great cat herself.

“I will miss you,” she said. With a glance at Yriea, she added, “The most of all.”

Briar let out a low growl and her rough tongue licked the hand that fed her, and then Catharina’s face. She’d grown accustomed to this rough, wet show of affection and let it happen. Once satisfied, Briar shook to settle the saddle and lowered herself, belly to the ground, so that Catharina could mount. Glaram strapped her luggage to the saddle’s side, latched in place for the long trip ahead.

They took to the trail at a steady, slow trot. Briar led and Yriea’s Onyx followed in her wake, both animals steadily increasing pace as they warmed to the vague road. Catharina looked back once to see the Olden disappear from sight, its great corolla hidden by the lower canopy of the forest. A final look to a fragment of her life she felt she would never revisit again.

“Race you, flat-ear?” Onyx shot by them and sped away into the thick undergrowth, Yriea’s mocking laughter quickly deadened by the foliage.

Briar grumbled and looked back at her rider.

“Are we going to let them get away with that?” Catharina asked. She patted the mount’s side, leaned forward and whispered into the corallin’s ear, “How about we remind them that they’ll never, ever win a race against us?”

Briar quickened her pace gently, settled soon into the sprint and the forest became a blur of colours. Catharina let out a small gasp of pleasure at the thrill of the chase, gripped the saddle’s handholds, and felt herself really smiling for the first time that day. She was one with her mount as they ran across the soft earth, dove under overhanging vines, and swayed side to side with the path. It was exhilarating! Her shrill, aelir battle cry echoed among the trees and was answered back by many others, their cheerful trills sending her on the way.

Household Calhad acted aloof, but eyes would be on them until they passed out of the trees and into the hills of Diolo.

She was still days away from boarding the ship. The path stretched far away but she had Yriea with her and the goodbye calls of those that had known and cherished her. Brooding on things to come and regrets to leave felt foolish in the face of such a gift of time.

The speed. The fragrances in the air and the soft, cloying warmth of late Summer amidst the ever-forest. She drank it all in and laughed as Briar shot past Onyx, great paws churning the soft, moss-covered ground.

Yriea’s indignant cussing as Briar kicked up the loam in her face was a balm to Catharina’s ears and she relished in it as they gained distance.

“I’ve just made this dress, savage.” The words chased her as Onyx could not. She couldn’t help but laugh.

Briar ran on for a time before slowing and pacing herself up to a forest stream. It didn’t take long for Onyx to catch up and Yriea to huff her annoyance as she dismounted and went to wash her face.

“Not even once,” Catharina said as she watched from the saddle. “What made you think I’d let you win this time?”

“I’m going to wear that cat as a mantle when you’re gone.”

Catharina patted Briar’s neck and caressed her ears.

“Hear that, Briar? She’s going to wear you as a coat. What do we say to that?”

Briar yawned and gave a great harrumph of disinterest. Her tail swished and whipped a fern across Yriea’s back.

“My feelings exactly. The lady aelir’rei forgets the last time she tried to take any sort of retribution on you.”

Yriea twitched as she cupped her hands and drank from the stream. “You promised we’d never mention that.”

“I’ll treasure the sight of it always, right here.” Catharina tapped her chest. “The sight of your bare bum hanging out from your exquisite dress after you tried to clip her whiskers. Poetic. I might have it made into verse.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Would your prissy self come to savage Vas and stop me?”

“I just might. Briar’s coat should be warm enough even for that place.”

Catharina grinned and the great cat purred under her.

A moment between duties. She relished its fleeting warmth.

They rode at leisure for the next few days, a steady pace punctured by sprints across flat grasslands where the great cats could chase one another. They slept under star-lit skies, nestled together in the sides of the corallins, holding hands as the aelir did since time immemorial. For them it was to keep one another from plummeting down from the canopies. For Catharina it was for Yriea’s warm touch and her peace of mind.

Dominion land provided for their needs as an aelir’rei of a Protector carried her family’s sway with her. Food for themselves and the corallins. Fresh clothes and saddles. Balms for travel sores. Scattered aelir settlements offered their produce and their services, all too eager to please and aid the daughter and ward of household Calhad.

Catharina was deeply and uncomfortably aware that she would not enjoy the same shades of hospitality on Vas, where the name of Voc Anghan was spat on by what remained of the ancient shards of humanity’s empires. Her father ruled Aztroa Magnor, but that was a distant, secluded place that most of her kindred had forgotten even existed. And her father sat sat atop a motley assortment of warlords and petty nobles vying for control over an ice-encrusted tomb, fighting petty squabbles and vying for control over nothing.

Yriea had been as good as her word. Her pestering had turned ritualistic and increasingly insistent, to the point of being simply weird. Was there any aspect of aelir life that she had failed praising in excruciating detail? Any story she had not used the chance to share?

Probably. But by the seventh day’s dawn, Catharina felt like she’d learned of the aelir just about everything that her training hadn’t covered. Through it all she was certain of two things. One, she would still be aboard the ship as it left for Vas. And two, she loved Yriea with all her heart and going away will be the hardest thing she would ever do.

Forest gave way to hilly grasslands, and then to a continuously slopping swathe of farmland punctured by stone-built windmills quietly spinning in the sea-born wind. The scent of salt carried on the air now, constant and inviting with the Divide shining on the horizon, as brilliantly blue as the clear sky above. Seeing it for the first time in so long made her heart ache in ways she couldn’t quite comprehend.

Expectation for a duty long-planned and long-awaited?

Dread at the change and the challenge to come?

Sorrow for the encroaching end of her journey?

All these collided into a maelstrom raging in her head. The more she pushed away dealing with it to the moment of departure, the worse it got. Yriea drew her mount next to hers and leaned over from her saddle to wrap an arm around Catharina’s waist and pull her away from her darkening thoughts.

“Alas, we are nearly there and I have exhausted every plan, ploy, or blackmail that I could throw at you,” she said, expansively gesturing with her free hand at the enlarging azure horizon. “You are as resolutely stubborn as when we set out on this journey. Goddess have mercy on whoever crosses your path next, for I expect you to walk straight through them.”

Catharina smiled and ran a hand through her hair. It was long now and she considered asking Yriea to cut it before she boarded a ship full of men who bathed only when it rained and they happened to be above-deck.

“I know that look. I’m not cutting your hair.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t feel like it and I don’t want to get a knife near your throat.”

“Afraid you’ll take the chance to settle all our scores? Your arm would get tired before you stabbed me enough times.”

“Droll, savage. Truly droll.” She took hold of Catharina’s saddle horn and angled Onyx away from the path. Briar followed obediently. “Come. We’ve still got time.”

She led them sideways, through fields of grains that rippled like the great ocean beyond it. Elend vassals and the much taller grass-born aelir farmed the fertile land here. Reaping season was nearly upon them and Catharina could see preparations being made, wagons drawn into fields by the tall, stocky reptiles the aelir bred for heavy lifting. They were called shiprils and were an impossible sight on Vas. Several mulled in the sun, legs splayed out as they warmed on rock outcroppings.

Workers paid them no mind as they crossed the fields. The corallins drew some growls from the baking lizards but none were eager to leave their warm spot for a tussle with the great cats.

Yriea ultimately led them to a copse surrounding a stone well, out of which a spring bubbled and rushed down the hillside. It was all neatly tucked away in a hollow of the hill, a small oasis in an ocean of grain fields. Its water was high, near the lip of the stone, and overflowed down a gentle, ragged path to ultimately meet the ocean. Here they had shade and a flat space to rest for one more night. Neptas hung low near the horizon, a red glare that dipped into the Divide. Cares was still a pinprick of light in noon position, still a star like any other, but growing slightly brighter by the day as Fall approached.

They unsaddled the cats and gave them their freedom for the evening. They leapt away and ran on silent feet into the grass to hunt for their next meal.

“We could have slept in town,” Catharina ventured as Yriea refilled their water flasks from the well. She wandered to the edge of the copse, split the tall grasses, and looked down into the city. Diolo, a vanadal place, was a stone-built port that catered to any of the seven peoples. Even humans were welcomed, if not liked. In spite of her warring feelings, she found that she looked forward to seeing her kind again, to hearing one of the many tongues of Vas spoken in more than memory.

“We could. I don’t want to. Come here.”

The aelir’rei sat cross-legged on a carpet of moss and patted the earth in front of her. “Come. Sit. Let me do something with that silver mane of yours.”

Catharina obeyed and Yriea set to the task of braiding her hair. Among the high-born aelir this was considered an intimate act, one shared only by true-blood siblings born of the same aelir’matar. She had not accepted to be named aelir’rei, but it mattered very little to her friend.