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It was autumn again, and Nasreen remembered it as if it had just been yesterday when she’d stumbled into Helovia. She’d been a girl then, lost and utterly alone, wandering the woods with salty tears streaming from bloodshot silvery eyes. Then, Amaya’s corpse had been fresh and her heart had been raw, gouged and seared by fear and loss. Much had changed since that fateful day: Kahlua had found her, brought her home to the Edge, and become her friend. A brother whom she feared she would never again see was alive. She’d learned of the Helovian gods, and by their favor, had even become a sort of priestess for her herd. Gradually, the maiden had started to become something, to be someone beyond the wisp of a girl she’d left behind.
Yet history has a funny way of repeating itself. For here she was again, and though Amara’s bones must now be bleached and dry on the forest floor two years later, Nasreen was sobbing as if her heart would break.
• • • • •
It had all started with the whispers—rumors of murder that had reached her ears on one of her return voyages to the Edge after another ill-fated search for Th’orqui. Worried, she’d consulted with the moon goddess, but she’d been too distracted to see the signs until Quilyan went missing. Angry though they’d been at each other, she couldn’t believe he would stay away that long—even that prim little nurse of his hadn’t seen him in seasons. He had to be dead or home, and she needed to know. She hadn’t intended to slip away quietly in the night, leaving her herd behind her as she skimmed over the treetops in her frantic search, but that’s what she had done. The thought of her brother had consumed her, fueling her search of Helovia—and when she couldn’t find him there, of the world beyond. For the memory of home still haunted her, and she clung to the hope that somehow, he had done what she could not: find their kingdom.
But in fact, it was she who did just that. One hazy morning in late summer, she had touched down in a clearing in a faraway wood. It was a grim place, all grey despite the fiery sun, a collection of gnarled trees whose trunks were charred and withered. Soot and ashes rose in a fine, filmy powder with each step she took, dirtying long white legs and clogging her lungs. A strange silence hung over the place; no birds called from on high, and not even a fly buzzed in the heavy air. She would never have recognized it if not for the Great Tree. Its shape was one she would have known anywhere, her favorite tree from the godswood back home: big, firm, safe, stretching to the sky with branches that had always reminded her of upraised wings. She had spent her early days tripping and tumbling over its roots with her twin, later visiting to pray to the god who watched over it. To her, the Great Tree had been the heart of the godswood.
As the familiar shape had materialized out of the smoky air, Nasreen had let loose a choked cry, stumbling forward. She wasn’t dreaming, for there in the flaking bark were all of the signs: ancient carvings, scrolling swirls, sacred inscriptions…all unmistakably Th’orquian. Then, slowly, as if in some horrible nightmare, the remains of the godswood had emerged around her—here, a crumbling leaf, there a burned and mangled tree. The church of her ancestors had been desecrated.
She could not say how long she drifted about the ruins of the godswood, dry sobs mixing with heaving coughs from the ash. She had dreamed of finding home for nearly all of her life, and now she was here…but it was far from the joyous occasion she had always envisioned. The girl felt as if she was walking in a dream, yet now her eyes had been opened and she couldn’t wake up. The loss wrapped around her heart and slipped its fingers around her throat, slowly strangling her until she could take it no more. It was as a sooty ghost that she fled, leaving behind her childhood home once and for all, the only memories stored in a pod of seeds that she held tightly in her trembling lips.
Nasreen had worried that she would not find Helovia again, and the possibility of a double loss had seared her heart like a hot iron: to be cast off and homeless in the aftermath of her discovery was the only thing worse that she could imagine. Much to her relief, she had found her way back. Immediately, she set a course for the Edge, spirits growing a little lighter with every step…but she should not have celebrated so soon. The maiden had missed much in her absence: the murder of a demigod, the revelation that her own patron deity was responsible, the flooding of the land, and perhaps most importantly, her herd’s invasion of the Hidden Falls. When she arrived at the Edge, she’d found it empty, desolate. Unable to believe, she’d paced the wall, swooped through the skies, and called out until she was hoarse, but no one came. Double loss, indeed.
• • • • •
So here the mare stood, weeping amongst the willows with her world in broken pieces around her. Princess no more, priestess no more…just Nasreen.
@[Bucephalus]
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