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k_a_webb“On another Quiar you did choose to leave.” Jarek smiled. “The Web is home to millions of stories. The Webs… they’re home to more stories than I think any one person could ever tell, Lucille. We both know that there are other Webs, some of which are parallels to this one and others that have been created at different times in what I can only think of as parallel universes. Athare thinks she can create the perfect Web and I don’t think it’s possible because there is no such thing as perfect, especially not when you involve people. People are flawed. The fae are intensely flawed. Everything we did we chose to do for selfish reasons, which I think shows more when you remember they were the race who couldn’t bring themselves to live with those who were created to save this world from the fate that Kalinia had due to the choices we made there.”
“I want to find a way to tell them all.” Lucille shrugged. “Maybe I’m mad to believe it’s possible, but I really do. The stories of the Webs need to be told. The stories of the fae need to told, preferably to as many worlds as possible, so that those who didn’t know they existed know to be aware of them.”
“You’re not mad. I believe telling all of the stories is one of the most important things we can do – we just have to find the right people. Doing that isn’t going to be easy, unfortunately, because they’re rare. Much more rare than I want them to be, as I have been hunting desperately for someone to do that for me. The hardest part of it all is finding someone who is open minded enough to be connected with at all times. I don’t think sending dreams is enough for things like this. Too much gets lost between the dream and the page.”
“Dreams can be a beginning though. They can open the mind to the possibilities and when that happens it makes it much easier for us to connect with the person who is going to write our stories for us. I think, although I’m not certain, that the worlds are looking for someone, as they want their stories told as much as we do. Sometimes I think they may want them told more than we do, considering everything they’ve been through.”
“One of the things I know is possible for people who’ve learnt about their past lives is to learn about their time before they received a body. I’ve known a couple of them and it’s fascinating to find out that they could hear everything that was happening, although there was nothing they could do about it. When it comes to certain races, like the Weavers and the Dragons, I believe they evolved while they were in the jars, giving them the ability to do what they felt needed to be done.”
“How do you know about the Dragons?”
“Lucille, I was there.” Jarek watched the ongoing battle, but they were both using the conversation as a distraction. They didn’t want to see if anything they’d done had caused things to go worse than they had before, as the very thought of that was too much for them, although, so far, things seemed to be going better than they had before. “I was a part of the group who created the Dragons and I spoke to Jaromir afterwards about why he’d made certain choices and it turned out that it hadn’t actually been him, which was fascinating. The more I learnt about him the more I talked to him about the fae, so he knew about how our lives worked.”
“Merry was there as well, then.”
Jarek nodded. “That was the first time I met him. We didn’t fall in love during that first life, but both of us chose to stay with the Dragons during our next life when we could easily have left them far behind. In the end we did, because things changed more than either of us expected when Jaromir lost the love of his life, even though Draven was doing his best to keep things together. We were living our second lives with the Thirteen Families when Kalinia started dying.”
“When we have some time you’re going to have to talk to me about that.” Lucille grinned at him. “There are so many stories you could tell.”
“Yes, there are.” He looked around at the battle. “I think this one is going to last longer than the one before did.” He nibbled his bottom lip. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but we’ll find out eventually.”
“All I know is we did the best thing we could and if that saves even a couple of lives then I’ll be happy.”
“Logic and emotions don’t work together. That’s something we both know. Right now I’m much more emotional than I am logical, because I’m afraid for the people I care about. I could be in there fighting with them. Instead I made the choice to be standing here with you, which is one of the hardest choices I’ve had to make during this life, but I don’t think it’s something I regret… although I don’t think I’ll know for certain until the battle ends.”
Surprising herself Lucille reached out and took hold of his hand. “No, you won’t, so the best thing you can do is focus on other things. We’ll see how this one ends and then we’ll decide what to do next, okay?”
“From what I can see we made the right choices. That doesn’t change the way I feel right now and I really want it to. I’m still scared we made things worse, because something could still go wrong.” He sighed. “Until I made the decision I didn’t know how hard it was going to be to stand here, watching this happen, even though I’ve done the same sort of thing before.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It was during one of my lives on Janoch. I’m sure you know what happened.” Lucille nodded. “Well we were going through witness accounts to see if there was anything we could do to fix what happened, because that was when I could still use my ability to go back in time and change things. Of course at that point we didn’t realise the whole problem had been caused by someone wishing they weren’t Janochian, which meant there was nothing we could do, except, maybe, get him out before he caused so much damage. In the end, though, we decided that it wasn’t going to work.” Jarek sighed. “He’d been too close to the point of no return for too long for me to have done any real good. If I’d tried to move him he could well have gone off in the middle of town.”
“How did things get that bad?”
“We all thought she’d gone to another world for a holiday. That’s what she told us, without mentioning that she was no longer connected to her bond mate, and I don’t think he quite believed it had really happened. He’d been without a bond mate for three weeks, which was too far back for me to be able to go. If I could have gone back a couple of weeks it would have been enough, but I couldn’t even get back the full three days, so I was no use whatsoever.”
“None of that was your fault.”
“Knowing that doesn’t change how I felt at the time. We were so certain we could stop it from happening that it was a painful disappointment when we found that was impossible. Of course that didn’t stop me from trying. All I did was give myself one of the worst headaches I have ever had, which really wasn’t helpful, and I ended up passing out for three days, so by then I really couldn’t do anything to help. I couldn’t even be a part of the clean-up operation, which didn’t seem to bother anyone who wasn’t me, but it was something that made me feel even more guilty than I had before.”
“Do you think you might be able to go back that far if you lived another fae life?”
Jarek looked at Lucille and she could tell that was something he hadn’t thought of before. “I don’t know. The fae abilities, as a race, have been fading away, but if I lived my next life as a Gold, with what I know, I might be able to go far enough back and change that. Doing something like that would have repercussions throughout the Web, though, and certain things, like this, may never have happened. Changing timelines like that… it isn’t something I’ve ever done. I know people who have. I might even be able to contact one of them. That is a possibility – albeit an utterly terrifying one, because… what would our lives have been like if that had never happened?”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.