![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
k_a_webbQuiar stared at her siblings, who both seemed as shocked as she was. “Why is it happening?” she asked, trying not to show how she felt, but she was certain that Athare could tell.
Silence followed the question as, it seemed, Athare tried to work out if she could answer. That was the issue with knowing the future – telling someone too much about it could affect whether it would happen or not and she was always very careful about what she said to who. Often that did mean cryptic hints about things that were coming, things they needed to be prepared for, which, sometimes, irritated them all, even though they understood why she had to do it. Finally she nodded, making her decision.
“Okay, you know that what’s happening here and on Raenarin is having an effect on when the wards will come down on Athare?” Quiar nodded, because she did, although it wasn’t something she understood as well as she wished to. “Things are happening on the other worlds too, they always are, and some of them are unexpected.” Athare bit her lip. “We planned for the possibility of something else coming, because that seemed the most likely thing, but someone, at some point, made a different decision to the one we were expecting them to, and that’s changed things. So that, obviously, is affecting what’s happening to the worlds which are connected to those that have been changed, and, to be honest, it’s a big mess. One that I don’t have time for, but that doesn’t matter.”
“It never does,” Raenarin said, her voice quiet. “As much as we appreciate your help, Athare, we can cope with these things alone if you do ever need to take some time out in order to actually look after yourself. We need you to be strong at times of great crisis and the next one that’s coming is when the fae’s wards come down.”
“That’s true, sweetie, and I wish I could take the time off, but I know that all I’d do is worry about you all. It’s better for me that I’m here to help you.” Athare smiled. “Knowing that you worry about me is the greatest tonic and knowing that, if I did have to for whatever reason, you could deal with things together. Even though this isn’t the perfect Web it’s one of the best I’ve seen for the worlds working together. Other Athares have said the same and they wish that their Webs could be more like this one, because they find that a lot of their worlds end up arguing about how things should be done.”
“We argue,” Gaelom said, and Quiar could remember a couple of huge ones, that almost ended in a couple of her brothers coming to blows.
“Yes, you do, but in the end you all come together to do what needs to be done. You are true siblings, all of you, which was something I didn’t expect, and I am so grateful for, because it means I have a lot more freedom than most of my counterparts.”
“Are the other Webs that bad?”
“Some of them are.” Athare sighed. “Those that I know personally aren’t in such a good position as us, but they are better off than some of the Webs that they know. One that I’ve heard about is a Web that’s pretty much the same as this one, apart from the races being on different worlds, and they don’t work well together at all. All they seem to do is argue about how things should be done, before going their own way, which means that they were in a very difficult position when the wards came down around the fae settlements.” She shrugged. “From what I’ve heard recently things are still bad there and it’s not somewhere I’m sending any of my Moonjumpers until it settles down, if that’s even possible.”
“Lucille wants to learn more about the other Webs.” Quiar looked at Athare. “It might help if she could talk to you, as you know the most about them, through your counterparts.”
After a moment Athare nodded. “She is one of the few I think should learn about the other Webs. It might become important in the future.”
Quiar studied Athare. “You can’t tell me about that, either.”
“Not yet.” Athare ran a hand through her hair. “I wish I could, Quiar, but there is more than I know and cannot tell than things I can tell you, because I know about futures that have happened, futures that might happen, and futures that, fortunately, I will never have to deal with, as well as pasts that have happened that people don’t yet know about. Telling you who she was in the past might affect your relationship with her and that is something I can’t let happen. Not now.”
Their eyes met. “Her past is not an issue. It’s who she is now that matters and I trust her with my world and my people. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have chosen her to be my Moonjumper, but I did. Being cryptic really isn’t helping right now, because it’s just making me wonder more who she was in one of her past lives if it’s worrying you that much. Maybe she was a slaver, someone who took my people away from their world.” Quiar shrugged. “She isn’t now, and I’ve come to accept that it was something that needed to happen, so all she was doing was the right thing, even though I didn’t believe that at the time. I need to remember that the bigger picture is just as important as what’s happening here, because that happening meant that people ended up in the places they needed to be in the future.”
“You still hurt. I can feel it.” Athare put her hand to her heart. “I’m sorry I had to let it happen, but I always have to put the big picture first, as much as I would love to be able to focus on what my people need.”
“Is that hard for you?” Raenarin asked.
“What do you want the answer to be? Do you want me to be stronger than you or to find this harder?” Athare reached out and squeezed Raenarin’s shoulder. “Sometimes I want to change things. I want to stop certain things from happening, because they’ll cause me or one of you pain, but I can’t. I know how important it is for us to let everything happen as it should, even though I don’t always want to, and occasionally things still go wrong, so that we end up in a position when we’re likely to have two major crisis within a decade or two of each other.
“As much as I hate having to stand back when bad things happen to people that I care about I do my best to get the right people into the right places at the right time, because that’s really all we can do. Sometimes it’s the hardest part, especially when I’m trying to get someone like Emrys to where he needs to be.” She smiled. “Emrys is very like me. If there’s something happening he wants to be able to do what he can to fix whatever the problem is, even though he can’t always. Maybe that was why it was so easy for me to connect with him. Other Athares have chosen other fae, to see what sort of an effect it has on the creation of the Web, but I think Emrys was the right choice.
“Riordan almost worked as well, but he has a much stronger connection to the Web from quite early on, as he is always the fae who discovers Tegan. Once that happens he doesn’t want to walk away, at least until Tegan’s life ends, and even then it’s hard for him, as he has children and grandchildren on Athare. Choosing him does make creating the Web a little easier, because the fae looked up to him, but that doesn’t make him the right choice at a later date. Another Athare tried Piaras, which worked well enough, due to his family connections. He didn’t have any reason to stay on Athare after the creation of the Web, so he could move on. I just didn’t feel anywhere near as close to him as I did to Emrys.
“He was just the right person for the job. When we were together he learnt everything he could, even though he knew he wouldn’t remember it all when he woke up, because he realised faster than I expected him to, even with what the other Athares had told me about him, how important the Web was going to be. Then, once he got here, he did everything he could to create the Web that we’d planned on in the beginning, and when that didn’t work out as well as we hoped he came up with a wonderful secondary plan.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.