Crossing between worlds felt different when one had spent several hundred thousand years avoiding it.
Light folded.
Sound stretched.
For an instant, I existed nowhere.
Then everywhere.
Time became difficult to define.
One second.
A century.
Neither.
Then—
earth.
Air.
Heat.
Gravity.
I emerged into Uniyani.
Shi was standing directly in front of me.
Naturally.
I struck their back.
They stumbled forward.
"Ow."
"Why did you stop?"
"I didn't!"
"You were stationary."
"I was admiring—"
The ground moved.
Not metaphorically.
The earth shuddered beneath my feet.
I stopped.
Shi stopped.
We looked at one another.
Then—
the tree behind us shook.
Not Ravieen.
Azhuraya.
The Tree Between Worlds.
The last great permanent gateway rooted in mortal soil.
Its trunk was colossal.
Far larger than I remembered.
Pale silver bark streaked with gold rose so high that clouds wrapped around it.
Roots broader than streets broke through the earth in every direction.
Buildings stood between them.
Shrines had been carved beside them.
Entire neighborhoods existed beneath arches formed naturally where one root crossed another.
I stared.
That had not been there before.
Shi turned slowly.
"Kasa."
"Yes."
"Was the tree always this large?"
"No."
"Good."
They nodded thoughtfully.
"I was concerned my memory had suddenly improved."
Azhuraya trembled again.
Harder.
Birds exploded from the canopy.
Thousands.
Then tens of thousands.
People below cried out.
Bells began ringing somewhere among the settlements surrounding the roots.
I looked upward.
Something was wrong.
No.
Not wrong.
Changing.
Recognition moved through the tree.
I felt it.
Old magic.
Ancient.
Awakening.
Shi stepped closer.
"Kasa?"
"Yes."
"Is it supposed to do that?"
"No."
Shi stared at me.
"Comforting."
Then—
the crown exploded.
Millions of leaves burst from Azhuraya at once.
Not fell.
Burst.
Green filled the sky.
Then gold.
Scarlet.
White.
Pink.
Black.
Leaves coated in frost spun beside leaves dripping summer rain.
Flowers erupted from branches that had been bare a moment before.
Fruit ripened.
Withered.
Bloomed again.
All at once.
The sky changed.
Dawn raced across it.
Gold became blue.
Blue became crimson.
Crimson became midnight.
Stars appeared.
Then vanished.
Noon slammed through darkness.
The sun jumped across half the heavens.
Shi grabbed my arm.
"Kasa."
"I see it."
Rain fell.
Three drops struck my face before freezing into snow.
The snow became flower petals before touching the ground.
Wind reversed.
Heat became cold.
Spring became winter.
Across the landscape, seasons collided around Azhuraya.
Leaves ignited orange and red.
Another bloomed green.
The temporal regions were colliding.
Impossible.
I stared upward.
Then—
the moons appeared.
One.
Large.
White.
Seyra.
Then another beside it.
Pale gold.
Mahir.
Shi's grip tightened.
"Kasa."
A third emerged through violet clouds.
Smaller.
Purple.
Nayeth.
All three moons hung beside the sun.
Day.
Night.
Seasons.
Hours.
Years.
Colliding around a single tree.
People had flooded the streets beneath Azhuraya.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Some kneeling.
Some staring.
Some running.
Priests spilled from temples.
Children pointed upward.
Merchants abandoned stalls.
Bells rang from towers I did not remember existing.
One man fell directly into a fountain because he was looking at the sky.
Shi watched him.
"That part seems normal."
I ignored them.
Something deeper moved through Azhuraya.
Roots began glowing.
One.
Then another.
Gold.
Silver.
Violet.
Blue.
Light raced beneath the earth.
Away from the tree.
Across streets.
Under buildings.
Out toward the horizon.
Hundreds of miles.
Perhaps more.
Riedana was waking.
No.
Remembering.
I knew this feeling.
And suddenly—
memory struck.
Fire.
Not this Riedana.
The old one.
Thousands of years ago.
Smoke across red skies.
Bodies lining roads.
Children screaming.
Jinnblood families fleeing burning villages.
And Shi—
younger.
Not in appearance.
In spirit.
Laughing while running away from me.
Naturally.
They had crossed into Uniyani without permission.
Before their Qarin existed.
Before mine.
Before the law allowed either of us to come for personal bonds.
I had followed to retrieve them.
That had been my intention.
Then I saw the village.
Yfryth soldiers surrounding a line of families.
Not warriors.
Families.
An Alnohr mother holding an infant.
A Jinnblood father shielding two children.
An old woman burning beneath hellfire because someone had discovered her bloodline produced Qarins.
The Yfryths had learned something before the rest of us understood the horror of it.
They did not need to kill a Jinn's Qarin.
They could kill the ancestors.
Destroy the bloodline.
Erase the future person before they were ever conceived.
I remembered the first scream across Klysium.
A Jinn collapsing in Ravieen.
Not injured.
Not dying.
Something worse.
Their future bond—
gone.
A person who should someday have existed—
removed.
Not dead.
Never born.
Then another Jinn felt it.
Then another.
Future Qarins disappearing.
Possibility collapsing.
Bloodlines ending in fire.
The law had been absolute until the law threatened the very thing it was meant to protect.
So the Covenant was made.
The Covenant of Unborn Souls.
No Jinn would be condemned to eternal solitude because law prevented another from protecting the bloodline that would someday create their Qarin.
The Mortal Roads opened.
Thousands crossed.
I stayed.
Shi stayed.
We fought.
Not for our Qarins.
For everyone else's.
I remembered standing beneath Azhuraya while Riedana burned.
Its branches blackened.
Roots split.
Blood soaked the soil.
Shi stood beside me wearing the shape of a creature I had never seen before and never saw again.
We thought the tree would die.
It didn't.
Neither did Riedana.
And now—
thousands of years later—
Azhuraya remembered us.
The entire tree became still.
Every branch.
Every leaf.
Every root.
Then a sound moved through the world.
Not spoken.
Not heard.
Felt.
The bark vibrated.
The roots beneath the cities carried it.
Every leaf whispered the same thing.
One word.
It rolled outward across Riedana.
Across the Eleven Hours.
Across mountains.
Deserts.
Forests.
Coasts.
Cities I had never seen.
People I had never met.
RETURNED.
Silence followed.
Shi stared upward.
Then at me.
Then at the thousands of mortals staring at us.
Their smile slowly appeared.
"Oh."
I closed my eyes.
"No."
"I haven't said anything."
"You are about to."
Shi looked around at the bells.
The lights.
The three moons.
The millions of seasonal leaves still spinning through the sky.
Then back at me.
"Kasa."
"Yes."
"I think they noticed us."
I opened my eyes.
"Yes."
Shi grinned.
"This is going extremely well."
And somewhere in the distance—
another bell began to ring.
The bells did not stop.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Not because they were loud.
Because they were everywhere.
One tower answered another.
Then another farther away.
Then one somewhere beyond the first ridge.
The sound rolled through Riedana in waves.
Bronze.
Silver.
Deep iron.
High crystal.
Different cities.
Different traditions.
Different centuries of architecture.
All answering Azhuraya.
Returned.
The word still seemed to live inside the roots beneath my feet.
Shi stood beside me with their face tilted toward the sky.
Three moons remained visible around the sun.
Seyra.
Mahir.
Nayeth.
They looked nothing like the heavens I remembered.
No.
That was inaccurate.
They were exactly the same moons.
I was not looking at the same Riedana.
That distinction mattered.
I stepped away from Azhuraya's roots.
And stopped.
For the first time since crossing into Uniyani—
I truly looked.
The land stretched away in impossible directions.
Morning burned across fields to the east.
Not approaching morning.
Not the remnants of dawn.
Morning.
Golden light spilled over farmland and pale stone villages while workers moved between rows of crops already glittering with dew.
Farther north, beyond an invisible boundary cutting directly through the hills—
midnight.
A forest stood beneath a black sky crowded with stars.
Silver lights moved between enormous trees.
Perhaps insects.
Perhaps lanterns.
Perhaps both.
A road entered that darkness without changing direction.
Travelers disappeared into night.
Another road crossed westward through autumn.
Scarlet trees.
Orange leaves.
Cool wind.
Then—
one step past another invisible boundary—
spring.
Green.
Flowers.
Rain.
A wagon rolled from falling leaves into blooming fields as if crossing a doorway.
The horses did not react.
Of course they didn't.
This was normal to them.
I stared.
Snow fell over distant mountains.
Not unusual.
Except beneath those same mountains—
farther south—
tropical rain poured over dark green jungle.
Lightning flashed.
Steam rose through enormous trees.
Beyond that glittered water.
An inland sea, perhaps.
I did not remember an inland sea there.
That was mildly concerning.
Shi moved beside me.
"Everything changed."
"Yes."
The word came out flatter than intended.
Shi looked at me.
"You sound upset."
"I am deciding whether I am."
They smiled.
Not mockingly.
Interested.
"That sounds exhausting."
"Deciding?"
"Being you."
I ignored that.
The city around Azhuraya should not have existed.
That was the greater problem.
The last time I stood here—
there had been tents.
Thousands.
Army tents.
Healing tents.
Storage tents.
Funeral tents.
Temporary wooden walls.
Smoke.
Blood.
Mud.
The ground had been crowded with wounded soldiers and terrified families waiting to learn whether the people they loved were still alive.
Now—
buildings.
Not one city.
Layers of one.
Homes had been constructed between Azhuraya's roots.
Some directly beneath the enormous arches where roots rose from the earth.
Others climbed them.
Stone stairways spiraled around living silver bark.
Bridges connected roots hundreds of feet above the ground.
Markets occupied wide terraces carved into earth between them.
Blue awnings.
Red awnings.
Gold banners.
Entire streets wound beneath Azhuraya.
Temples rose between roots that had once been stained with blood.
Several were older than surrounding buildings.
I could tell.
A thousand years.
Two.
Three.
One tower had survived at least four reconstructions.
Another structure had been built atop ruins belonging to something I vaguely remembered.
A military hospital.
No.
Before that—
a granary.
Before that—
nothing.
Time layered everything.
People simply called the result a city.
And there were people everywhere.
Humans.
At least—
some of them were human.
A woman carrying baskets passed with dark skin and silver eyes.
A man beside her had ordinary brown eyes but faint blue patterns glowing beneath his throat.
A child ran between them with tiny horns.
Nobody cared.
A merchant shouted beneath a striped canopy while a creature with feathers along both forearms argued about the price of oranges.
Two women crossed a bridge above us.
One had wings.
Actual wings.
Not Jinn wings.
Feathers.
Copper and black.
Another person stepped from a canal with greenish skin, shook water from long fins running along their arms, and handed a bundle of wrapped goods to someone waiting on shore.
I looked again.
The aquatic person's companion said something.
They laughed.
Continued walking.
No one stared.
Shi did.
Enthusiastically.
"Oh."
I glanced at them.
They pointed.
"Look."
"I am."
"No. Look properly."
I followed their gesture.
Someone was sleeping on a roof.
At least—
I assumed sleeping.
They were stone.
Completely.
Gray-black stone.
Large wings folded against their back.
The body looked carved.
Too perfect.
Too detailed.
One hand rested beneath their head.
A child sitting nearby ate something from a paper cone and used the sleeping person's knee as a table.
Shi whispered:
"Are they dead?"
"No."
"Certain?"
"Mostly."
"Very reassuring."
The stone person inhaled.
Not with lungs.
The entire body softened.
Stone became skin.
Color spread across their face.
Their wings flexed.
The child immediately grabbed their food before the knee moved.
The newly awakened person stretched.
Stone wings unfolded.
Then they jumped from the roof.
I stopped.
Shi did not.
They walked directly into my back.
"Ow."
"Quiet."
"What?"
The stranger dropped.
Then opened their wings.
Stone.
Actual stone.
Each feather looked carved from dark basalt.
They caught the air.
Rose.
Circled once.
Then landed on the street thirty feet away.
The impact cracked nothing.
Their body was tall.
Broad.
Skin dark gray with thin streaks of crystal running over the shoulders.
Two small horns curved backward from the temples.
Their eyes were gold.
Not Amalaq gold.
Mineral.
Like sunlight trapped inside amber.
They glanced toward us.
I studied them.
They studied me.
Then Shi leaned around my shoulder.
"Kasa."
"Yes."
"What are they?"
I did not answer.
Not immediately.
I knew Gorgons.
Or had.
Many centuries ago.
I knew Stone Golems.
Several still existed.
I knew what happened when their magics mingled with humans and Jinnblood families.
Hybrid traits.
Occasional mutations.
But this—
This was stable.
Intentional.
A people.
The stranger's clothing had openings tailored specifically around wings.
Symbols had been carved into decorative stone plates along their arms.
Culture.
Language.
Inheritance.
Generation.
Not anomaly.
I understood suddenly.
Not what they were.
What had happened.
Time.
Thousands of years of it.
I said:
"I don't know."
Silence.
Shi slowly stepped around me.
Their expression transformed into something radiant.
"You don't know?"
I regretted the sentence.
"Apparently not."
"Something exists that you don't know."
"Many things exist that I don't know."
"Yes, but usually they're boring."
"Shi."
"This is magnificent."
The stone-winged stranger narrowed their eyes.
Shi waved.
Naturally.
"Hello."
I closed my eyes briefly.
The stranger stared.
Then slowly raised one hand.
Shi looked delighted.
"We've made contact."
"They live here."
"Still counts."
The stranger took off again.
Shi immediately followed with their eyes.
Then looked toward the rooftop.
Another stone figure slept there.
Then another atop a temple.
Then three along the side of a tower.
"There's more."
"Yes."
"Can we meet them?"
"Eventually."
"Now?"
"No."
"Why?"
"My Qarin."
Shi paused.
Then pointed accusingly.
"Ah. You're using destiny to interrupt anthropology."
"Correct."
"Selfish."
I resumed walking.
They followed.
For four steps.
Then—
laughter erupted somewhere to our right.
Not human laughter.
Not entirely.
High.
Sharp.
Carrying farther than it should.
Shi turned instantly.
Three people stood near a fruit stall.
At first glance, human.
Then one grinned.
Teeth.
Powerful jaw.
Rounded ears shifted higher along their head.
Spotted fur appeared along one cheek.
The others laughed.
The sound echoed strangely between buildings.
Something ancestral moved through it.
Hyena.
Shi's face lit up again.
"No."
"But—"
"No."
The farther we walked, the more unfamiliar Riedana became.
Winged people crossed between districts beneath different skies, navigating temporal boundaries as casually as roads.
Blue-green figures climbed from canals with webbed hands and luminous markings beneath their skin.
Others carried horns, feathers, fins, tails, or bodies shaped by bloodlines I could no longer identify.
Some traits I recognized.
Gorgon.
Golem.
Roc.
Jinn.
Human.
Others belonged to nothing I remembered.
And that was the point.
These were not remnants of the peoples I had known.
They were what came after.
They were not creatures.
Not mutations.
Not remnants.
They were peoples.
Whole peoples that had not existed when I left.
Now I understood what it felt like to arrive late.
Then I saw the woman.
Silver eyes.
That was all.
The crowd moved.
Someone stepped aside.
And for half a second—
a woman carrying bread looked toward me.
Dark brown skin.
Black hair braided with silver thread.
Ordinary clothing.
Nothing remarkable.
Except her eyes.
Silver.
My mind moved backward.
Not intentionally.
Memory arrived.
Fire.
A battlefield.
A younger woman kneeling beside an injured Narath while light poured from both hands.
Silver eyes.
Blood across her cheek.
Alnohr.
Her name—
Seyani.
No.
Seyara.
No.
I searched.
Seyrahn.
She had been a healer.
Stubborn.
Terrible singer.
Refused to retreat even after losing two fingers.
She had once thrown a bowl at Shi.
Shi had deserved it.
The woman in front of me was not Seyrahn.
Obviously.
Seyrahn had died nearly six thousand years ago.
But something in the eyes—
the cheekbones—
the shape of the mouth—
I stopped.
The woman noticed.
She looked uncertain.
"High One?"
Ancient form of address.
Not exact.
Altered.
Survived anyway.
I inclined my head.
"Forgive me."
She smiled politely.
Then walked on.
Shi had stopped beside me.
They didn't joke.
A child ran past.
Violet hair.
I turned.
Too quickly.
The child looked back.
For one instant—
another memory.
Burning village.
A little boy beneath collapsed timber.
Violet hair full of ash.
One leg broken.
Crying for his father.
I had carried him three miles while Yfryth hellfire fell behind us.
His name had been—
I remembered.
Talren.
He survived.
I knew that.
He became a mason.
Married.
Had three children.
One died young.
Two lived.
Then—
generations.
I had stopped watching.
One had to.
There were too many lives.
Too many branches.
Too much time.
The violet-haired child disappeared into the crowd.
Shi whispered:
"Kasa."
"I know."
"You recognized them."
"Not them."
"The blood."
"Perhaps."
A merchant approached.
Human, by appearance.
Middle-aged.
Warm brown skin.
Gray beard.
A woven red cap.
He had been staring at us for some time.
Cautiously.
Then he bowed.
"Forgive me."
I turned.
The man's eyes moved over my skin.
My clothing.
My wings.
Recognition existed there.
Not certainty.
Stories trying to become reality.
"Are you..."
He hesitated.
"A Jinn?"
Shi immediately raised a hand.
"Yes."
The man's eyes widened.
I gave Shi a look.
"What?"
The merchant swallowed.
"From Klysium?"
Shi answered again.
"Also yes."
The man's mouth opened.
Closed.
He looked toward Azhuraya.
The bells.
The seasonal storm still moving through the canopy.
"Then the old stories..."
"Apparently less fictional than expected."
"Shi."
"I'm helping."
The merchant laughed nervously.
Interesting.
Then he said:
"My grandmother used to say the Jinn would return through Azhuraya."
"Your grandmother was wise."
"No."
He smiled.
"She was usually drunk."
Shi choked on a laugh.
I almost joined them.
Almost.
The man touched his chest.
"I am Jareh Sarqai."
Sarqai.
I stared.
The name moved through memory.
Older.
Different pronunciation.
Saraqai.
A family of metalworkers.
They had supplied blades during the First War.
One had died repairing armor inside a burning forge.
Another had hidden seventeen children beneath their house during a Yfryth raid.
I looked at the merchant.
"Sarqai."
He nodded.
"Yes."
"How long has your family lived here?"
His eyebrows rose.
"Here?"
"In Riedana."
He thought.
"Recorded?"
"Yes."
"About six thousand years."
Everything inside me became quiet.
Six thousand.
Shi looked at me.
The merchant continued.
"Probably longer. There are older names in temple records, but the spelling changes."
Of course it did.
Languages changed.
Names changed.
People changed.
Blood remained.
Not perfectly.
Enough.
Jareh looked concerned.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No."
I studied his face.
I did not recognize it.
That was almost better.
He wasn't a copy of an ancestor.
He was himself.
A continuation that had become something new.
"Your family survived."
Jareh frowned.
"Survived what?"
Of course.
History had become myth.
I looked toward Azhuraya.
"Something very old."
He glanced toward the tree.
Then back.
"I suppose we did."
He smiled.
Simple.
Unaware of what those words meant.
I returned the gesture.
Barely.
"Yes."
"You did."
He moved away soon after.
Shi and I remained.
The crowd continued.
Life continued.
Children argued.
Merchants shouted.
Someone dropped a basket.
A Dhabari laugh echoed across the market.
An Anqari flew overhead.
Stone wings opened on a rooftop.
Water splashed in canals.
Everything I had protected—
not the buildings.
Not the nations.
Not the specific cultures.
The possibility.
Six thousand years.
I could have counted them.
Every birth.
Every marriage.
Every child who survived a fever.
Every person who met someone they would otherwise never have met.
Every generation branching into another.
One rescued bloodline becoming ten.
Ten becoming hundreds.
Hundreds becoming people whose names I would never know.
That had been the point.
Not preservation.
Continuation.
That was what we saved.
Possibility.
Children surviving long enough to have children.
Bloodlines refusing to end.
People becoming things we could never have predicted.
I had spent thousands of years remembering everything we failed to save.
The villages erased.
The Jinnblood lines ended.
The Qarins who would never be born.
The souls whose futures disappeared before they began.
I remembered every one.
I had never counted what came after.
Perhaps grief encouraged poor mathematics.
Shi stood quietly.
Remarkably.
Then:
"We won."
I looked at them.
"Not entirely."
"No."
Their eyes moved over the city.
"But enough."
Enough.
A dangerous word.
A comforting one.
For once—
both.
I watched a little girl with stone wings chase a boy with webbed hands between market stalls.
"Yes."
Shi smiled.
"We did."
We walked farther from Azhuraya.
The bells had begun slowing.
The city hadn't.
Why would it?
The world had received proof that Jinn existed and apparently still had vegetables to sell.
Mortals were impressive that way.
Shi walked beside me.
Not backward.
Not as a bird.
Simply beside me.
For a while.
Then they said:
"You're still doing it."
"What?"
"Looking."
"That's generally how sight works."
"You know what I mean."
I did.
I looked toward the city.
"I remember a different place."
"Obviously."
"There was no city."
"Now there is."
"That forest wasn't there."
"Now it is."
"The sea—"
"Now exists."
"Shi."
They smiled.
"What?"
"Nothing is as I remember."
"Of course not."
I looked at them.
They gestured broadly.
At all of Riedana.
"You're surprised?"
"No."
"You look surprised."
"I understand change."
"You study change."
"That is understanding."
"No."
Shi shook their head.
"You watch it happen."
"Which allows understanding."
"You stand outside it."
That caught my attention.
Shi kept walking.
"You know how long a mountain takes to become sand."
"Yes."
"You know when civilizations become something else."
"Sometimes."
"You know when stars die."
"Yes."
Shi looked at me.
"But knowing when something changes isn't the same as letting it surprise you afterward."
I said nothing.
They smiled.
"See?"
"That proves nothing."
"It proves you're annoyed."
"Frequently."
Shi laughed.
Then gestured toward the marketplace behind us.
"You always tell everyone time must move."
"It must."
"Then stop looking offended that it listened."
I stopped.
Shi took two more steps.
Turned.
"What?"
I considered the statement.
Annoying.
Simplistic.
Accurate.
They knew from my face.
Their grin widened.
"Oh."
"Don't."
"I said something wise."
"You occasionally do."
"Kasa."
"Rarely."
"You hate that I'm right."
"I dislike the frequency with which you'll mention it."
"Forever."
"Exactly."
They walked back toward me.
Their expression softened.
"Change isn't always losing what existed."
I looked around.
Shi continued.
"Sometimes it's what happens because it didn't die."
That—
I considered.
A stone-winged child flew overhead.
A silver-eyed woman crossed beneath a bridge.
Jareh Sarqai disappeared into his family's six-thousand-year continuation.
A city stood where tents once stood.
Temples where hospitals had stood.
Markets where wounded soldiers had once bled.
Riedana wasn't evidence that the old world had been erased.
It was evidence the old world had survived long enough to stop being old.
Interesting.
I exhaled.
Shi tilted their head.
"You're thinking."
"I am always thinking."
"More intensely."
"Unfortunately."
They smiled.
"You're welcome."
Then something struck beneath my ribs.
Hard.
I stopped breathing.
Not pain.
Her.
The world vanished.
For one second—
no Riedana.
No Shi.
No Azhuraya.
No crowd.
No bells.
Only the bond.
For twenty years it had been distant.
Warmth through walls.
Dreams through fog.
A voice muffled by laws older than nations.
Now—
clarity.
A living soul.
Moving through the world.
Her.
My hand rose instinctively to my chest.
Shi's expression changed immediately.
"Kasa?"
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
The bond pulled.
Not metaphorically.
Direction.
Distance.
Motion.
Life.
I turned toward the coast.
Far beyond the city.
Beyond temporal boundaries.
Beyond mountains.
Across fields.
Toward water.
Azhuraya responded.
The enormous root beneath the street glowed.
Silver light erupted under my feet.
People screamed.
Shi jumped.
"Oh."
The light moved.
Not randomly.
It raced away from Azhuraya.
Through the city.
Buildings reflected silver as it passed.
The root continued beneath streets.
Beyond walls.
Across farmland.
Farther.
I could feel it traveling.
The bond given shape.
A road.
Shi stared.
"Is the tree doing what I think it's doing?"
I watched the silver line disappear toward the horizon.
Twenty years.
Dreams.
Herbs.
Laughter.
Blood.
Complaints.
Waiting.
"Yes."
Shi grinned.
"Well?"
I started walking.
Then stopped.
Something was wrong.
Shi noticed.
"What?"
I concentrated.
The bond shifted.
Distance altered.
Not because I moved.
Because—
she did.
"She's moving."
Shi blinked.
"Your Qarin?"
"Yes."
"Toward us?"
I waited.
Felt.
Measured.
"No."
Their grin widened.
"Away from us?"
Another moment.
The direction remained consistent.
Speed—
interesting.
She was traveling.
Quickly.
Not running.
Too fast.
Horse?
Carriage?
No.
Water.
The motion had rhythm.
Ship.
I looked toward the distant coast.
Shi was trying not to laugh.
Poorly.
"Quite rapidly, actually."
They lost the battle.
Laughter exploded from them.
I waited.
Shi bent slightly.
"This isn't funny."
"Very."
"No."
"You waited twenty years."
"Yes."
"The door opens."
"Yes."
"You arrive."
"Yes."
"And she's fleeing."
"She does not know I exist."
"Details."
I looked toward the silver road.
Her emotional state moved faintly through the bond.
Grief.
Again.
Deep.
Recent.
That troubled me.
Then anger.
Fear.
Determination.
And something else.
Salt.
Wind.
Movement.
Alive.
Alive mattered most.
Everything else could wait.
That was unusual for me.
Shi finally recovered.
"Do you know where she's going?"
"No."
"Who she's with?"
"No."
"Her name?"
"No."
They stared.
"You really planned this poorly."
"Destiny withheld several practical details."
"Excuses."
I ignored them.
The silver root continued toward the coast.
Somewhere beyond it—
she moved.
Toward Riedana, perhaps.
Away from us physically.
Closer in every other way.
Interesting.
Shi followed my gaze.
Then transformed.
Their body expanded.
Pearlescent skin became feathers.
Arms stretched into wings.
White curled hair flowed backward and became a great crest.
Within seconds an enormous bird stood beside me.
Larger than a horse.
Long wings.
Rainbow eyes.
A ridiculous amount of white plumage.
Shi lowered one wing.
"Race you."
"No."
Their beak somehow looked smug.
"Afraid you'll lose?"
"I control time."
"That wasn't a no."
"It was."
"Sounded defensive."
"Shi."
They launched.
Wind slammed outward.
People shouted.
Market awnings snapped.
One fruit cart overturned.
Shi flew upward.
Circled.
Then shot toward the silver path.
I watched them shrink against the strange Riedanan sky.
Three moons.
Sun.
Different seasons along one horizon.
For perhaps the first time in my existence—
I was not watching time approach me.
I was following someone through it.
I stepped onto the glowing root.
Twenty years of patience sat behind me.
Somewhere ahead—
a woman I did not know was carrying half my soul across the sea.
I did not know her name.
I did not know what had caused the grief tearing through the bond.
I did not know why blood had appeared in those old dreams.
I did not know why anger came so naturally to her.
I did not know where she was going.
Or what she was running from.
I knew one thing.
She was alive.
After twenty years—
that was enough.
Shi's distant cry echoed from the sky.
"HURRY!"
I looked upward.
"No."
Then continued walking.
The silver light stretched toward the horizon.
Toward her.
And perhaps it was only fitting—
Time began chasing someone.
Far across Riedana, somewhere beyond the coast—
she had absolutely no idea.