[DH] Sisterhood – 5 Mar. 2019 – Taffeta

1496 DR, 12 Ches


It’s weirdly like they were never apart. More than two tendays – the longest Aila can remember ever being separated from her sister and father – and all that time not knowing when she’d see them or her grandmother again, whether they were suffering from the Lassitude, even whether… But now that all seems very distant. Everything’s normal again.

‘Very comfy indeed!’ her father is saying. His grinning face glows in the orange hearthlight. ‘I’d recommend it – if you don’t mind seeing nobody but Oriloki for days on end! He’s a fine host, but oh, Cyrrollalee’s knees, he talks like a dusty schoolbook.’ On the other side of the fireplace, Idari giggles and nods. ‘Well, I thank all the gods that he took you in and kept you clear of that horrible sickness, dusty or not,’ says her mother, somewhere between joking and reprimanding.

‘Anyway,’ says Nerry, ‘What about your adventures, my long lost ladies?’
Aila groans. ‘Da, now you’re talking like a book too!’
‘Go on, love,’ says Taffeta as she gets up and moves toward the kitchen, ‘Why don’t you tell them about the feywild?’
‘What’s that?’ gasps Nerry, ‘The feywild? You went there?’
Aila smiles and nods.
‘Well! Well, well! Let’s hear it, then!’

She looks into the jumping, popping flames in the fireplace. ‘We were trying to get some help,’ she begins. ‘Ma said we there were some people in the Feythorn who might know how to cure the sickness. They were sort of tree women, and they were very nice but they seemed a bit sad. They said the… the planes were out of balance.’ Aila struggles to remember the dryads’ words, which at the time seemed very mysterious and confusing. ‘And something was taking the life out of their place, and maybe out of Daring as well, so the sickness might have been because of that. They said we should find the… great keeper? In the feywild. Oh and they gave Ma a blue crystal thing to help us find the way.’

‘Well, my wandering vine!’ says Nerry to Taffeta, who has just come back into the room with four steaming mugs, ‘What next – will you be taking Mam off to pick flowers in Evermeet?’
‘Now then, don’t let her hear you say that or she’ll be asking me every tenday!’
Aila takes the mug and holds it in both hands. It’s a little too hot but after days walking the hard frozen earth and nights shivering under the sky, she welcomes it as she welcomes the chair’s soft cushion and the adults’ cosy nattering.
‘Anyway, you’ve interrupted Aila’s story.’
‘Oh, Ma,’ she says, dragged out of her thoughts, ‘Go on, you tell it.’
‘But I always tell the stories! Can’t I have a holiday?’
‘Go on Aya!’ chimes in Idari, using the name she used to call her big sister when she was a baby. Normally it makes Aila cringe, but not tonight.

‘Okay, okay. Well, so, we went to Purple Hill and we saw Faye coming up the other side – this fiddle-player we met in Port Ffirst.’ That was another story… ‘Anyway there was Faye and some other big folk we didn’t know. A half-orc in a big black cloak, she was called Kalta I think… and a nervous man called Lem, and heavy fellow who looked like he’d moss growing on him or something – Ma, what was he called?’
Her mother thinks a moment. ‘Finn… no, Giniam? Ginead! That’s it.’
‘And they had a girl called Lido with them who kept hiding. Her face was sort of dark grey and she had white hair I think.’
‘A dark elf!’ exclaims her father. She nods.
‘The others said this girl’s friends had gone to the feywild to try to cure the sickness but they’d been attacked and maybe killed, so they were going to find them and help them. And then while we were talking lots of little people with butterfly wings started flying around and talking to us. They asked us lots of questions but then Ginead offended them and they got sulky. Anyway we went on and it got darker, like the sun was going down, and everything was getting... strange. And the drow girl took out a crystal like the one the tree spirits gave Ma, and she said it would show us the way.’

‘What was it like in the feywild?’ asks Idari.
What was it like? Aila thinks. ‘It was… there was a lot of… everything. The clouds were all pink and red and orange and the sky was this really deep blue dark blue, and at first the ground was covered in flowers, like Purple Hill but more, like they were so thick you couldn’t see any grass or anything, just bright purple everywhere. Later the flowers stopped and it was grass but really tall, like up to your waist, and you could see it stretching off forever, and it was rippling like it does when there’s a strong wind but you couldn’t feel any wind at all. It felt very still and quiet but it wasn’t really quiet, there were loads of sounds like birds and crickets and leaves and everything, but it was all at once like a kind of, I don’t know, like when your head’s under water and if you concentrate you can work out what the sounds are but really it’s all just one underwater sound and after a while you don’t notice it at all. We camped in a place where there were lots of bushes, really tangled bushes, like you almost couldn’t believe anything could be so twisted and tangled up. And in the middle of the night… or… well, it should have been the night, except it looked like it was still sunset, but while were sleeping anyway, we woke up and there were all these tiny red dragon things hovering around like hummingbirds, and they talked to Ginead in a language I didn’t understand. They didn’t seem to like Lido.’

‘One of them took us through a big dark forest, and then suddenly we were really high up, like we’d gone up a hill or a mountain except we’d just been walking along flat ground all the way so I don’t know how we got there, but there we were on this rocky hillside and there were massive jagged bits of rock but also bright green grass and all different coloured flowers and an amazing sparkling waterfall and a really clear pool of water. Lido said she’d come here with her group and the others had used a magic rope to go through the waterfall. Then she’d seen fire and there was screaming and she ran away to get help.’
‘What did you do?’ asks Idari, riveted.
‘Ginead made a raft and he and Ma went across to waterfall and Ma jumped through.’ Aila looks at her mother, whose bare feet are stretched out towards the fireplace and whose head is resting on the back of her chair, eyes closed. ‘Um…’
Nerry looks at his wife and smiles. ‘Let’s leave your ma to rest, shall we?’

‘Okay,’ Aila continues, uncertainly. ‘Well, so I don’t know what happened exactly, but there was a bit of a flash behind the waterfall, and then Ginead jumped through too and there was more light flashing. After a bit, Ginead paddled back to us on the raft and said Ma was fine but there was a little fire trap behind the waterfall so we might get a little burned going through. He took Lem, then Lem came back for Kalta, and she went through and Lem came back for Faye, and then came back again for me.’

Aila feels her mouth dry up and her spine tingle as she remembers what happened next. Smashing into the wall of down-rushing cold water and through, a sudden bright light, hard rock hitting the soles of her feet and making her stumble, then her mind catching up with her sensations and realizing that the intense numbing cold had been briefly followed by an intense numbing heat, almost indistinguishable at the time but leaving her feeling scorched and tingling. And then her vision clearing…
‘We were all in this sort of cave, and it was all lit up by this tall kind of snake person who was on fire and swinging a spear around. It was fighting Ma and Ginead. I saw Ginead hit it on the head with his big hammer and Ma saw me and came towards me, and the snake person tried to stab her with their spear but Ginead blocked it with his shield. Ma touched me and I felt sort of warm and peaceful. I had my bow and I aimed at the creature but I wasn’t sure if I should fire, but then they stabbed Ginead with their spear so I… I shot them.’

She feels Idari’s light hand rest on hers and she lets it rest there for a comforting moment before a twinge of embarrassment makes her pull away. She picks up her mug, pretending that’s why she moved her hand. She isn’t sure whether she’s trying to deceive her sister, her father, or herself.

‘I shot them in the shoulder but they kept attacking, and Ginead fell down. Then everyone was fighting the snake person. I saw Lem run in, and Kalta was attacking with her big sword, and Faye shot some kind of ice magic, and then Ginead got back up and took a big swing with his hammer and there was a big flash like lightning and the snake thing just sort of crumbled into ashes.’
Aila remembers seeing her shaking hand still holding her bow out in front of her, uselessly, and then her mother gently wrapping her in a hug and asking whether she was okay.
‘There was a tunnel and we went down it, and there was a cave with bodies lying on the ground. Ma and the others checked them and said some were still alive. They were dark elves, like Lido. Ma did something to one of them and she woke up and said “where’s Lido?” and Ma said “I’ll go and get her” and told me to stay with the others and she want back down the tunnel.’

‘There was a big yellow glowing ball there too, Ma had picked it up but she gave it to Ginead when she went back to fetch Lido. The elf told Ginead to put it in the wall quickly. She said it would restore the balance. There was a hollow in the wall and Faye took the ball and put it in there and the whole wall sort of turned gold and came to life and it was a huge dragon! Ma came back with Lido and Lido was very upset when she saw the dead elves but the dragon brought them back to life and said everything was going to be okay now. She said her name was Zmee. She said she could restore the balance between the three planes now. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.’

‘Woooow!’ says Idari, ‘You met a dragon! A real gold dragon! I wish I could meet a dragon.’
‘Yeah, she was pretty amazing. And she gave us all presents. This is mine.’ Aila reaches inside the neck of her shirt and pulls out a golden locket, shaped like a teardrop with delicate patterns engraved on it. ‘Ma got a bracelet.’

Looking at the hearth-fire reflected in the locket’s polished surface, Aila feels a momentary queasiness at the memory of the towering serpent creature lashing out with spear and flaming tail. But then she remembers the homely, soft flames that sometimes flickered around Zmee’s mouth and nostrils as she spoke in a gentle rumbling voice about the balance of the planes, the special energy connecting her cave in the feywild with the dryads’ grove in the Angelbark forest; and about the disruption of the balance that had come when the drow priestess Iraya had activated another connection, this time to the Shadowfell, and had started drawing energy toward that dismal plane; and about the brave but unsuccessful attempt of this small sisterhood of rebel drow to thwart their leader’s plans – unsuccessful until their youngest member, Lido, had brought new allies to their aid.

Hearing the great dragon calmly recount this story, and confidently foretell that she would now be able to set matters right, Aila felt comforted but also homesick for her own family’s little fire and their mugs of tea and small evening stories. But now she’s home, and here’s the fire and the family and the tea, and her story that had felt endless and hopeless has come to a happy end.

‘I’m… I’m glad Oriloki kept you all safe,’ she says quietly, looking into the fire.
Her father reaches over the ruffle her hair and then rests his big hand on her shoulder. ‘And I’m glad you and your ma kept each other safe too,’ he says.
Her sister grins at her and then fishes a stray tea-leaf out of her mug and flicks it at Aila.
Her mother shifts in her chair and starts to snore gently.

Everything’s normal again.