Fae held Olivia’s hand as the flood of memories came to an end.
It had been… a lot. Too much. Fae understood the emptiness that Olivia felt, the numbness. She was going to have a lot to process, and it was going to take a long time.
“Don’t slow down for my sake,” Olivia said, shaking her head. “I…” She gazed up at the golden tree, and a small smile ghosted across her lips. “Thank you.”
“I will always do all I can to help you,” the Orphan of the Dawn said, her voice gentle and warm.
Olivia nodded, gave Fae’s hand a gentle squeeze, and then let go. She looked at Fae and Sonya. “What can you do for them?” she asked.
“Nothing quite as dramatic as what you required,” the Orphan of the Dawn said. “I believe this shared reliving of your memories helped Fae and Sonya to understand more about themselves, too.”
Fae nodded. “We… really are the same,” she said softly. “That loneliness… that isolation…” She flinched, instinctively. It was hard to admit these things out loud. And… she was just starting to realize it for herself. Like she’d spent her whole life blindfolded, and was only now able to see properly.
How did I not even know myself?
Her thought, and Sonya’s, as well. They stared at each other for a moment, then nodded.
They were in the same boat. Coming at this from the same place.
“Homesickness,” Fae and Sonya said as one, softly, tentatively.
It was a hard thing to say. And a strange thing to say. Fae had never even left home. How could she have ever been homesick before setting off on her journey?
That was why she’d struggled to realize it. Because it seemed so absurd.
“I felt homesick,” she continued on her own, “even in Grimoire. Even in Greyson Manor, under my parents’ roof, alongside my siblings. Even there, it was like… I didn’t… quite belong.”
“Homesick isn’t a perfect word for it,” Sonya said. “But… in a way… it’s the best word.”
“That sense of knowing you’re not where you belong,” Fae said. “And yet… not knowing where you do belong. And feeling totally alone in all of it. And it was… so frustrating. And difficult.” She thought back to her life in Grimoire, before being swept up in this adventure, and her heart grew heavy. “How do you tell your parents, or your siblings, that you feel homesick in the same house as them? If I’d ever told Shana… she would have just thought it was her fault. She would have tried to fix it. I couldn’t do that to her. Or dad… he would have… been the same.” She bowed her head and let out a long, bitter sigh. “It was easier being away from them. It was so easy, so natural, to put up all those walls. But… it didn’t fix anything. It just made it a little bit easier to ignore.”
“Was this pain…” Sonya started, placing a hand against her chest, “really what connected us from the beginning?”
“Is that all you can see?” the Orphan of the Dawn asked. There was a smile in her voice. “It is not just pain that connects you. Even though there has been great pain, that has not been all that has defined your lives so far, is it?”
Sonya looked hesitant, and Fae faltered. Olivia stepped forward, speaking first. “Our lives haven’t been only pain,” she said. “We all had the same things: family that loved us, both parents and siblings. And we all had our art, a passion that carried us through the hardest times. And that shared passion illuminated our way here.”
“But this… this can’t be our ‘home,’ can it?” Sonya asked. “If we’re looking for a place to belong, if that’s what we need more than anything… then why were we brought here?”
“I exist beyond time and space,” the Orphan of the Dawn said. “Only I could see the connections. And only I was able to help bring you three together across time and space.”
“Even though that meant… losing our families,” Sonya said softly. “Losing our homes.”
“As I have said… it wasn’t meant to be this way.” Sorrow filled the Orphan of the Dawn’s voice.
“Wasuryu,” Fae said, glaring. “He ruined… no.” She looked up. “Nearly ruined everything.”
“That’s right,” the Orphan of the Dawn said. “The way things were supposed to be… you three would have met here, together, beyond time and space. And then, you would have left from here, healed, to return to your own times, your own homes, your own families.”
“Everything… was supposed to be okay,” Olivia said, bowing her head. “I should have been able to see my brother again.”
“We were never meant to disappear for so long,” Sonya said, understanding dawning on her. “But that’s…” She clenched her hands into fists, and they trembled. Then she turned a fiery glare on the golden tree. “So why can’t it still be that way? Why can’t we still be returned to our own times? If you could have done that before, why not now?”
“Because your ‘own times’ are now the same,” the Orphan of the Dawn said, sorrow in her voice. “You should not have been waylaid. You should only have met here, not on the road to me. But you have now seen — Renault is not what it was when you left. You have lived those years, ageless though you were until Fae rescued you. You cannot go back —”
“Why not?” Sonya demanded. “You exist beyond space and time, so you can send us back anywhere, can’t you? Can’t you… just…” She trailed off, her voice trembling, and she bowed her head.
“I… am sorry,” the Orphan of the Dawn said. “Anyone called can come to me from any time. And those who are meant to intersect can come here from separate times, meet here as if in the same time, and then return to the time from whence they came. But that is the key. I… cannot send you wherever you wish. I can only send you back to wherever you came from. The years that have passed… I cannot give them back to you, once you have lived them.”
“But we didn’t live them!” Sonya said. “So why —?” Her voice cut off with an anguished sound, and she turned away, shaking her head.
“We lived them in the worst way,” Olivia said softly. “Decades were as nothing while we were Sealed and Broken. And yet… the time passed, nonetheless. I have heard it said that even Masters of Time Magic cannot travel backwards in time.”
“Would that it were possible,” the Orphan of the Dawn said. “For your sakes, if nothing else. What happened to you was horribly unfair, and I am powerless to fix it.”
“And it’s all his fault,” Fae said. “We need to make sure we direct our anger at the right target.” She looked up at the golden tree and managed to smile. “You saved us. Despite all that happened, despite all that went wrong, we still made it here, together. Wasuryu didn’t have his way with us. I… I can’t understand the weight of all that you two have lost —”
“But you can,” Olivia said, taking Fae’s hand in hers. “We’re linked. You feel what I feel, what Sonya feels. You know exactly how much it hurts.”
And Fae did. She knew it, she could feel what they felt — Olivia, in the midst of her numbness and emptiness, a sense of hollow, painful loss; and Sonya, struggling not to be crushed under the great weight of her despair. It was all so… so heavy. Even though she felt it, could she ever really understand it?
What had she ever lost? How could she relate to the weight and pain of the two so closely linked to her? All of her siblings were still alive and waiting for her. Her parents, too. Her family home, her city… it was all just as she’d left it.
So how could she talk so high and mighty about being angry at Wasuryu? She’d been transformed and changed by him, but only very recently, and the Orphan of the Dawn had saved her through the Sojourner. Olivia… she’d been the Sealed Vessel for over one hundred years! Sonya had been utterly broken for decades, left to wallow in despair in a dark, inescapable prison.
Years, and family, that they could never, ever get back. And only now realizing that, realizing that everything they’d known was truly lost…
What could Fae possibly understand?
“You’re looking at it all wrong,” Olivia said. Fae stared at her, confused for a moment. But then she understood. Her thoughts, her doubts, her questions… Olivia and Sonya could hear all of them.
“That’s right,” Sonya said. Her voice sounded strained, and unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “It’s… not about who’s suffered the most, or anything like that. And despite what’s been lost… you’re right. We have to direct our anger at the correct target. The Orphan of the Dawn… it’s not her fault.” She let out a long, heavy sigh. Slowly, she turned her gaze on the golden tree. “I think I understand, now. What we really need. What we three were brought here for. Homesickness… You’re a place and a person both. Home… some people say it’s where the heart is. It doesn’t have to be a place.” She turned back to look at Fae and Olivia. “We’re connected. Since birth. Across time and space. But before we left our homes on this journey… we had no idea. We’re not linked by pain. At least… I don’t think that’s all of it.”
And the pieces fell into place. Fae understood.
“We need each other,” she said softly. “We’ve… always needed each other.”
“And you’re the one who made that happen,” Olivia said. She rarely showed much emotion, even now, but there was a faint earnestness in her voice. “Fae… you saved me. You saved Sonya. You stood against and outwitted Wasuryu where we couldn’t. And…” Olivia looked aside. “You did more than just save us from the Dragon.”
Fae looked where Olivia was, and saw that she was staring at their sleeping friends: Madeline and the Star sisters.
I…
“I lost everyone,” Sonya said. “But when you arrived to save me, I didn’t just gain you as a friend. Because you didn’t save me alone.”
“Your friends became our friends,” Olivia said. “So… thank you. You’re…” And she hesitated, and Fae could feel the faint hints of embarrassment, of uncertainty, before she continued. “You’re my hero.”
There’s that word again.
Fae knew the other two could hear that thought, but it ran through her mind too quickly to halt it.
Hero. That word had followed her along this journey. And she’d always felt uncomfortable about it.
Saving others was fine. But getting a special label because of it? Being called, of all things, a hero? That just…
“Haven’t you been running from that title a bit too long?” the Orphan of the Dawn asked.
Fae gazed up at the golden tree, taken aback. “I…” she started, at a loss for words.
“To be a hero is not so frightening a thing,” the Orphan of the Dawn continued. “There are so many different kinds of heroes. Perhaps all you need is to broaden your own definition.”
“It’s not complicated,” Sonya said. She adjusted her glasses and lowered her gaze, somewhat embarrassed. “A hero… is someone who saves people. Isn’t that enough? If it feels like too lofty a title, then we don’t have to use it. But I do think it’s quite apt.”
“I’d… prefer if you didn’t use it,” Fae admitted. “Or at least… don’t make a habit of it.” She sighed. “I’m not trying not to be a hero. I just… don’t think I deserve to be looked at that way. I accept that I saved both of you. And I’m glad I was able to. Even so…”
“As long as you understand,” Olivia said. “I wasn’t going to go around calling you ‘hero’ every chance I got. It’s enough that I was able to finally say it, just once.”
In the embarrassment at being called such a title again, and in the feeling of the other two’s emotions so clearly, Fae had gotten distracted. But as she started to find her way back to the central topic…
“Oh,” she said softly, raising her eyebrows.
It’s… not there anymore.
She, Oliva, and Sonya all noticed the same thing at the same time. That sense of homesickness, of loneliness, had vanished. And the walls built up to protect that part of their hearts, to keep people from noticing, to try and manage something they couldn’t possibly manage alone…
Those walls were starting to crumble.
“Home,” Fae murmured, gazing at the long expanse of golden grass. A warm breeze blew past, and once again, she thought she heard her mother’s voice on the wind. She turned, and Olivia and Sonya did, too — they’d heard their mothers’ voices, as well.
But it was gone in a moment.
Yet in that moment, Fae was beginning to realize, and to accept, the truth of what had brought her here. And of what she really needed.
Home… it didn’t have to be a place.
From the moment she’d been born — from the moment Olivia had been born, from the moment Sonya had been born — they’d been broken. There’d been a hole in each of their hearts.
Only now, together, in this place, could that brokenness be made whole.
“We can’t go back to what we’ve lost,” Sonya said, softly, grief tinging her voice. “But… we finally found each other. We finally found what we could never find before we left. And I think, now, finally, having found that…” She turned, gazing out at the endless golden fields under the shimmering golden sky.
We can move forward.
All three of them thought the same, fixing their gazes not on a place, but on a future they couldn’t yet see. A future of uncertainty, and yet it wasn’t quite so frightening.
Because they could face it with a new hope in their hearts. A hope they’d only found now, in each other, and a hope that promised them that they could face whatever was yet to come.
Because they would never face it alone.