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The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 32nd continuation)
“That’s…” Sal shook his head. “She must be a very special woman.”
An unexpected sadness filled Lucille’s eyes, even though she smiled. “She is, Sal. I hope to still be walking the worlds when I’m an old lady too, because I honestly can’t imagine what could stop me from loving this job as much as I do, and I can’t think of what could possible fill the space it would leave behind.” She looked around the table. “I’ve had the chance to make some wonderful friends, that I hope I’ll be able to stay in contact with, visited some wonderful worlds, and it’s even better than I believed it would be when I was taking my exams. Things would be much easier if we didn’t have to deal with the fae, but I can’t imagine anything that would get rid of them.”
“Maybe a virus tailored specifically to kill them.” Sal shrugged. “I’ve heard people talking about the possibility of doing something like that before.”
“The only problem with that is it would kill the nice fae as well as the not so nice.” Lucille bit her lip. “Most of the fae who’ve left the settlements behind are wonderful people – it’s just the ones who don’t that I have a problem with, because they want to control the Web, even though they don’t want to be a part of it.”
“I’ve never been lucky enough to meet someone who is actually fae before.” He smiled at Meriwether. “I’m not including you, because you aren’t fae right now and I think living through all those lives must have made you a very different person to the one you were when you’d just arrived on Athare.”
Meriwether smiled back. “You’re right, Sal, I am. Living different lives on several worlds of the Web has given me a perspective that I know none of the settlement fae have and I’m grateful for that, because it’s made me a better person.” He rubbed his antler, Sal had noticed it was always the right one and there was a moment where he seemed to be going to push back hair he no longer had before remembering he was a deer. “The thing I’ve learnt is that I wouldn’t change any of the decisions I made, even those ones I made when I was fae, as most of them were actually good decisions. Even when we decided to make the Web it was the right thing to do, but I would change the way we reacted afterwards.”
Sal looked at the deer, curiosity welling up inside him. “Why would you still make the Web?”
“I’ve met someone from the Athare we destroyed, so I know for a fact that not making the Web would have been a huge mistake, because we ended up killing a sentient world and causing the extinction of the Thirteen Families. There are other fae out there, so it wouldn’t have been the end of our entire race, but a lot of useful magics would have been lost.”
“Athare’s sentient?”
“Every world within the Web is sentient,” Lucille replied. “They each have their own personality and if you ever have the chance to meet them in a dream you’ll even see that they have an image of themselves as they would look if they were one of us. Quiar’s a tiger, Beshaki switches between races depending on who they happen to be talking to, and Athare is a beautiful fae woman – I think the image of the woman she thought that Emrys might fall in love with.”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Sal said, filling the silence with honesty. “The thought of a world falling in love with someone bipedal who could obviously never love her back is a little weird.”
“Emrys might have loved her too, I don’t know, I’ve never met him, but I agree that it’s a little strange. I think Athare when in love with him when she was still a young world, because she was spending hours of time with him that he often didn’t remember due to the way his dreams worked, and I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”
“How young was Athare when the fae arrived?”
“From what I’ve heard,” Meriwether said, sounding unsure, “Athare was less than three hundred years old and that’s very young for a magical world. We chose her because we could feel her magic, so it made us hope it was strong enough to support us until we worked out what we were going to do next. In the end we made the Web, using her magic to create the people she now thinks of as children, with a lot of help from Emrys.”
“And Emrys already knew what was going to happen?”
“He knew what might happen, but he didn’t know which one he was.”
“Which one he was?”
“There’s more than one Emrys, more than one Athare, and more than one Web. According to Emrys there had been Webs created before that hadn’t been quite right, so this was the one Athare wanted is to put together, although…” Meriwether shrugged. “I don’t think Aerith was in the plan, but Athare hadn’t argued against the world so Emrys let it happen, and I know for sure they didn’t expect what happened with Taithmarin. I don’t doubt that Athare tried again, with another Emrys, to make another Web after this one, hoping it would be right.”
It was hard to believe what Meriwether was saying, but Sal didn’t think that the deer was lying to him. It might have been better if Meriwether was, because Sal wasn’t sure he wanted to know so much about the Web, and at the same time he really wanted to know more. He had so many questions, questions that had probably been asked before, questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to. Slowly he looked around the table, wondering how much they’d each learnt from the Moonjumper and the once fae deer.
“It’s fine to ask questions that have already been asked,” Sini said, smiling at Sal. “The way these two go off on tangents we’ll probably learn something new at the same time.”
Lucille and Meriwether laughed. “We are bad for that,” the Moonjumper said, shaking her head. “I’m not sure we even answered all of the questions we were asked, because we just started talking and it went from there.”
Meriwether nodded. “Sal, the more people ask these questions the better, because we need to know that Quiarans are interested in learning about the rest of the Web.”
“I believe we do.” Sini shrugged. “I’ve spent long enough as a guide to know that tourists here ask questions about the doors and which worlds it would be possible to get to through those doors, but they always move on to questions that I don’t know the answers to.”
“I think the same.” Peric spoke quietly, but it was easy to hear the strength in his voice. “The problem is we both know a specific group of people and we don’t know enough about the general populace. You have more contact with them, Sal, so do you have an opinion?”
“My sisters could have done with a book about the worlds when they first started travelling. It’s possible to learn about them from people you meet along the way, but it would be so much easier if there was some sort of guide.” Sal smiled. “To be honest it would help me too, because I’m not sure which world I’d chose to travel to. I’ve heard so many stories about them that I think I want to go to all of them at some point, but I need to narrow it down to begin with, so I can take you up on your kind offer, Lucille.
“In general I think there will be people who will be interested and people who won’t. The Motharans will burn your book as heresy, even though you’re a Moonjumper who was born on Athare, but here we’re much more open minded and we like to learn. If you’re happy to teach us I think it’s something a lot of people would jump at.” Sal shrugged. “There would even be Motharans who’d be happy to learn from you, because they aren’t all the same.”
“Thank you,” Sini said quietly.
“You’re welcome,” Sal replied.
“How much do you know about Mothar?” Lucille asked.
“More than most of my fellow guards, because I spent nearly three years studying with a llama missionary who came here in the hope that she would guide some people to the correct religion, although I think she learnt as much from us as we did from her.” Sal thought of her and hoped that everything had gone well for her when she’d returned home. “She was planning on coming back as soon as she could, but she told me that would take her some time due to the way things work for missionaries.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
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That is brilliant. It's exactly the kind of thing that happens with farmemory.
>> Quiar’s a tiger, <<
Of course. *grin*
>> and Athare is a beautiful fae woman – I think the image of the woman she thought that Emrys might fall in love with.” <<
Oh, that is adorable.
>> I think Athare when in love with him when she was still a young world <<
That should probably say "fell in love" above.
Also, there's no reason it couldn't be mutual, just because it wouldn't be sexual. Sheesh, given how much Emrys created, even that is open to debate. But I suspect from the descriptions that it was more platonic.
>> using her magic to create the people she now thinks of as children, with a lot of help from Emrys.” <<
Okay, so basically they did have children together and raise them cooperatively, and they sure care about each other. Just because it's an atypical love and family arrangement doesn't mean it isn't real.
I'd really enjoy a discussion of this from the perspective of Emrys and/or Athare, because they're the only ones who really know what's going on between them.
>>“There would even be Motharans who’d be happy to learn from you, because they aren’t all the same.”<<
I love the way you've elaborated on the seeds I sowed for cultural diversity, so that the religions and societies aren't monolithic.
No typos found.