[It's late one night, a few days after her retrieval from the Crater and return to the city proper, when Summer finds herself lying awake wondering whether knowledge of the future is a kindness.
It's something she's had experience with, now, in a variety of ways. G'raha had kept the future from her, back when she'd first arrived in Sumarlok moons ago, and they'd discovered that he remembered much and more of the goings-on of their star than she did because he'd already lived through something she hadn't. He'd told her, then, that he would leave her the joy of experiencing it firsthand. And she'd wondered, yes, but she'd never really wondered — even when the other shards similar to her remembered things she didn't, even when they pressed her about facts and people and locales she couldn't recall because she'd not even met them yet — because she'd had faith in the only thing that really mattered: that it would turn out all right, because G'raha had given no indication that it wouldn't.
There's an irony to all that, now. A deep melancholy, too — to suddenly be cognizant of everything he must've known and had to keep from her, the things he'd known were in her future that he'd hidden in order to leave her a measure of bliss in ignorance. He must have looked at her and known that she would have her soul ripped from her own body in Garlemald. That she would be unwittingly and unwillingly pitted against Zodiark. That the skies over Thavnair would turn red. That he would leave her, again, and make her most horrible nightmares a reality by his own willing choice, for the sake of the star they were both fighting to save.
Tis not so very hard to stomach, all told, for all that she might not like it. Raha has always known more of her future than he rightly ought to, even from the very moment he'd first reached out to her from the First under the guise of the Crystal Exarch. It's something she's used to trusting him with. She's used to trusting him with the whole of herself.
But she lies there in bed and finds herself turning Azem's crystal over and over again in her fingers, the weight and balance of it making it roll smoothly over each in its turn while her Elpis blossom turns faintly violet at her bedside. For the second time, now, she's come to hold the knowledge of someone else's future in her own hands, and — and she's not the Crystal Exarch, for all that they both love their secrets. He kept his counsel for the sake of ensuring the success of his aims. She keeps hers because secrets are precious things, in and of themselves.
The secret she's harboring isn't hers to keep. But she's not sure it's hers to give, either.
Would it be cruel to tell him? Would it be crueler not to? Would he even listen, even believe her if she tried? Does he already know, thanks to whatever intervention Hythlodaeus surely must've made himself long before? Does he know and wish he didn't? Would telling him only make things worse?
I wonder — is Emet-Selch adrift somewhere in this aetherial sea, in defeat finally remembering your time together in Elpis? How it must gall him — to be entrusted with knowledge of the Final Days, only to be rendered powerless to act upon it! So many lifetimes dedicated to restoring his beloved Amaurot in blissful ignorance. Oh, folly.
Not just his beloved Amaurot, she thinks bitterly. Theirs. Their Amaurot, their world unsundered. She's seen it, now — not just a ghost of a memory beneath the waves but true, whole, alive. Stolen away, and for what? The ephemeral answer to a question posed desperate and flawed in its very design.
Fuck you, Fandaniel, she thinks at no one in particular, and lands the smooth orange stone in her palm, gripping it until the carving of the sun presses a soft indentation of its shape into the flesh beneath it.]
You'd come running for a friend. I wonder if you'll do it for a familiar old familiar.
[She's always exhausted, lately, and making use of Azem's invocation in a place like this is always particularly taxing. But there's only one person she's seeking to call to, this time, instead of seven — and if the golden glow that encircles her bed is dimmer and paler than usual, it's at least none the less complete for it.]
Please, Emet-Selch.
[She squeezes the crystal tight, and calls, and wonders what answer — if any at all — that she'll earn when she eventually reopens her eyes.]
look i know i wrote a novel but also i just have a lot of feelings
It's something she's had experience with, now, in a variety of ways. G'raha had kept the future from her, back when she'd first arrived in Sumarlok moons ago, and they'd discovered that he remembered much and more of the goings-on of their star than she did because he'd already lived through something she hadn't. He'd told her, then, that he would leave her the joy of experiencing it firsthand. And she'd wondered, yes, but she'd never really wondered — even when the other shards similar to her remembered things she didn't, even when they pressed her about facts and people and locales she couldn't recall because she'd not even met them yet — because she'd had faith in the only thing that really mattered: that it would turn out all right, because G'raha had given no indication that it wouldn't.
There's an irony to all that, now. A deep melancholy, too — to suddenly be cognizant of everything he must've known and had to keep from her, the things he'd known were in her future that he'd hidden in order to leave her a measure of bliss in ignorance. He must have looked at her and known that she would have her soul ripped from her own body in Garlemald. That she would be unwittingly and unwillingly pitted against Zodiark. That the skies over Thavnair would turn red. That he would leave her, again, and make her most horrible nightmares a reality by his own willing choice, for the sake of the star they were both fighting to save.
Tis not so very hard to stomach, all told, for all that she might not like it. Raha has always known more of her future than he rightly ought to, even from the very moment he'd first reached out to her from the First under the guise of the Crystal Exarch. It's something she's used to trusting him with. She's used to trusting him with the whole of herself.
But she lies there in bed and finds herself turning Azem's crystal over and over again in her fingers, the weight and balance of it making it roll smoothly over each in its turn while her Elpis blossom turns faintly violet at her bedside. For the second time, now, she's come to hold the knowledge of someone else's future in her own hands, and — and she's not the Crystal Exarch, for all that they both love their secrets. He kept his counsel for the sake of ensuring the success of his aims. She keeps hers because secrets are precious things, in and of themselves.
The secret she's harboring isn't hers to keep. But she's not sure it's hers to give, either.
Would it be cruel to tell him? Would it be crueler not to? Would he even listen, even believe her if she tried? Does he already know, thanks to whatever intervention Hythlodaeus surely must've made himself long before? Does he know and wish he didn't? Would telling him only make things worse?
I wonder — is Emet-Selch adrift somewhere in this aetherial sea, in defeat finally remembering your time together in Elpis? How it must gall him — to be entrusted with knowledge of the Final Days, only to be rendered powerless to act upon it! So many lifetimes dedicated to restoring his beloved Amaurot in blissful ignorance. Oh, folly.
Not just his beloved Amaurot, she thinks bitterly. Theirs. Their Amaurot, their world unsundered. She's seen it, now — not just a ghost of a memory beneath the waves but true, whole, alive. Stolen away, and for what? The ephemeral answer to a question posed desperate and flawed in its very design.
Fuck you, Fandaniel, she thinks at no one in particular, and lands the smooth orange stone in her palm, gripping it until the carving of the sun presses a soft indentation of its shape into the flesh beneath it.]
You'd come running for a friend. I wonder if you'll do it for a familiar old familiar.
[She's always exhausted, lately, and making use of Azem's invocation in a place like this is always particularly taxing. But there's only one person she's seeking to call to, this time, instead of seven — and if the golden glow that encircles her bed is dimmer and paler than usual, it's at least none the less complete for it.]
Please, Emet-Selch.
[She squeezes the crystal tight, and calls, and wonders what answer — if any at all — that she'll earn when she eventually reopens her eyes.]