The Face of the Enemy
Part Three
The snake writhed on the ground in its death throes. Even cut cleanly in two, its whole body convulsed with muscle contractions as its lifeblood drained away. Melati waited until the snake had gone completely still before she put away her dagger.
She counted the time by the shifting of the cactus shadows. When she reckoned an hour had passed, she knelt down and placed the two halves of the snake back together. Her healing magic flowed through her fingers, knitting the severed bones and nerves, stitching flesh and sinew back together. When the basic framework was restored, she turned her attention to the jelly-like marrow of the snake’s many tiny bones. She leeched moisture from its tissues to fill its shrivelling blood vessels, and coaxed fresh blood cells from its marrow. Then, when she was certain she had enough blood pooling inside the inert conduits, she restarted its heart.
Muscles twitched as blood returned to flesh. Lungs filled with fresh air.
Now, the true test….
The brain had gone cold; the spark of life – the soul – had fled. Even the greatest healers gave up hope once the spirit was gone.
But Melati worked on. She drew on deep reserves of magic, and the training of a High One. She shut out the distractions of the outside world and focused her entire being on the snake’s quiet mind.
A spark crackled to life deep inside its brain. Then another. Then another. The light grew steadily, until it struck a critical threshold, and erupted into a great cascade of skyfire.
It was no different than firestaring, really. Light, life… it was all simply energy.
The snake’s tail moved as impulses began to race down the spinal nerves. The animal thrashed, righting itself on its belly, and struck at Melati with fangs extended.
“Scat!” Melati drew her hand back with a hiss. The snake slithered away.
She shook her hand to ease the sting. The venom was no more than a mild annoyance to her. In seconds she had purged it from her blood. The puncture marks took only a moment longer to seal up.
“See if I bother to bring you back to life next time!” she growled. But the snake had already disappeared across the sand. Melati rose and turned back to Oasis.
* * *
Three years had passed since Yosha’s fall from the cliffs. Life in Oasis had continued, ever-changing yet ever the same. The youth’s name had been carved in the list of the Heroic Dead, just as Haken had promised. And as so often happened among elves, death had prompted new life. Longfeather and his lifemate Drell had recently welcomed their third child, a daughter named Saffron, and she was the darling of both youths and elders.
Except for Melati, who hated the sight of the infant. Some smelly squalling Go-Back’s spawn could never fill the void Yosha’s death had left. She wasn’t even born of Recognition! Drell could easily have had her by any male, had she not already chosen Longfeather’s bed.
Yet so many seemed content to move on, as if one elf could be a replacement for any other. Melati was starting to understand, now, why her sire had fled Oasis after her mother’s death. It wasn’t easy to forever be reminded of what you had lost, yet to be constantly urged to forget.
Yet Yosha’s mother had stayed. After spending nearly a year in a deep depression, Maleen returned to the Pride and climbed astride her tuftcat once more. When she wasn’t hunting, she often helped to look after little Saffon – not that the infant lacked for caregivers. Spending time with the baby often reduced her to tears, but she claimed they were not all bitter.
Melati remembered dimly the few years she had spent in Maleen’s hut, being nursed and raised alongside Yosha, after Ruffel’s death in childbirth. Maleen had been prone to tears then too. Melati’s presence had been a constant reminder of Ruffel’s absence. But unlike Pool, she had seemed to draw strength from her pain. Just as now she seemed to find some strange joy in reliving the early days of her motherhood with Saffron.
Well, that wouldn’t last much longer. Once she had Yosha back, she would forget all about the floating Go-Back baby.
Melati was getting close. For the past three years she had immersed herself in the study of healing magic. She had told her grandmother Leetah that she meant to atone for Yosha’s death by ensuring the list of Heroic Dead grew no longer. And fool for sentiment that she was, Leetah took her at her word. She never even thought to search inside Melati’s thoughts during their locksendings for a hidden motive.
Chani proved harder to deceive. Her foster-mother had taken note of her frequent disappearances shortly after Yosha’s death. “I know you value your freedom, child,” she’d said. “And our lord will not hear of your exploits beyond the walls from me. But you must tell me… what are you doing all alone out there?”
Melati had had the lie ready. “Sometimes I go to where I buried Yosha, between the roots of a cloud-tree. I put my hand on the trunk… and it’s almost as if I can feel his spirit. And sometimes I just go walking. I listen to all the animals… I can feel their vibrations, like a million tiny beating hearts. So much life… it helps to feel it. I don’t know why, but it does.”
“You know you are still too young to be outside the walls by yourself.”
“I’m almost eight-and-seven now. And I’m not some helpless farmer – I’m a magic-user, a strong one! There’s nothing out there that can hurt me. I never go out of sight of the walls.”
**I worry about you. You’re hardly sleeping. You never play music anymore. You spend your days studying with Leetah and Haken, then you spend all night wandering the Thorn Fields like… like a wild animal.**
Her sending conjured an image – a distant memory of a gray wolf pacing the hillside, and a young child calling out for her mother….
**I fear I’m losing you, child.**
**I’m not Timmain,** Melati insisted. **I’m not going mad like she did. I swear. I know what I’m doing.**
In sending there was only truth, and the conviction in Melati’s thoughts was strong. Chani had never been an over-protective mother. Yet she pressed one last time. **Truly, Melati, is there anything you need to tell me?**
Melati stared back, the picture of innocence. She felt Chani’s sending penetrating deep inside her mind, searching. She was the first elf born on the World of Two Moons, and her sending was powerful. But Melati had learned well from her brush with that human’s mind, the day Yosha had died. Among the other talents she had sharpened was the ability to raise the walls inside her own mind.
Still, Chani’s tireless probing demanded some secret yielded, and Melati gave her one. **It was my fault Yosha died,** she admitted, letting her eyes fill with tears. **He didn’t want to climb at night, but I made him. I said I’d locksend with him the whole way… but I got scared. I closed my mind. And that’s when he lost his balance and fell.**
Chani heard the truth, and withdrew her sending. “Oh, my poor child….”
“I need him to know how sorry I am. I’ve tried to talk to him through the Little Palace. But he won’t answer me. I told you – I think his spirit is out there somewhere. Maybe in the cloud-tree, maybe in the sand or the rocks. But I can’t rest until I’ve found him… until I know he forgives me.”
Chani knew more than most elves about regrets… and how difficult it was for spirits to reach back into the physical realm. She nodded gravely, and had never asked about the matter again.
The encounter only bolstered Melati’s confidence. I can hide my thoughts from a High One! If she could do that, surely restoring Yosha was nearly within her reach.
Still, she would not rush the endeavor. His broken body would keep forever, sealed in wrapstuff and hidden in her secret cave. She wouldn’t cut open his cocoon until she was certain she could succeed.
The damage to his body was easily fixed. Her experiments in the Thorn Fields had proved that. Over the past three years, she had crippled all manner of beasts, then restored them to health. As her power had grown more refined, so had her experiments. She had drained tuskhogs of their blood, then forced their marrow to make more. She had sliced off body parts of snakes and ravvits, they reattached them. She had tried her hand at fleshshaping, trying to remake a lizard as a bird. There had been failures, of course – many wretched mistakes she had been forced to destroy or abandon. But each setback only brought her closer to her goal.
And the triumphs – remembering them made her heart sing. Once she had made a klipspringer fall from a mountainside and watched its body break apart. It took the better part of a night, but dawn saw the beast back on the cliffs, unharmed. Once she had made a ravvit change his fur for scales, and watched the funny little hopping lizard bound away. Once she had even dared to sneak into the zwoot pen late at night, and quietly killed their best milking-mare. The next morning Mirith collected a full pail of milk from the restored beast and noticed nothing amiss.
She was confident she could repair Yosha’s body. His mind would be more difficult. His head had taken such catastrophic damage. And she could hardly kill an elf to practice resurrection. A human might serve; their minds were somewhat similar in construction, if horribly stunted. But since that dying old man had staggered into the Thorn Fields three years ago, not a single human had passed within a quarter-moon’s ride of Oasis, and she couldn’t take the risk of such a long absence. She certainly couldn’t ask for help, not when even Haken – who had risked the Palace itself to revive Chani from her long death – had told her Yosha was lost forever.
How they would praise her when she returned to Oasis with her soulbrother on her arm, reborn and stronger than ever! She would go down in their histories as a healer without parallel. When elves yet-to-be-born told tales of the greatest magic-users, her name would be spoken in the same hushed tones as Sunstream, Rayek, Weatherbird, even Haken himself.
You’re raising her to be a second Winnowill! Pool had accused. But he was thinking too small. She would surpass Winnowill. The powers that had been denied Haken’s firstborn even after thousands of years would soon be hers. If the Pride and the farmers still gave her wary looks, those looks would be tinged with awe, not disgust. Even Pool, that high-headed windbag – deserter! failure of a father! – even he would have to bow his head and acknowledge her as his better.
She needed only to choose her moment now. And during the season of Bloomtide, she had her chance.
* * *
When Pool had asked for a rockshaper to help Aurek in the New Land, he had promised the work would not take more than a year. In fact, it had taken nearly four. But now the Great Egg was complete, and after being feted by the elves of the Palace and the Grandfather Tree, Door and Spar were due to return home.
Haken ordered no effort spared to welcome back his great-grandson. The Pride and the Jackwolf Riders competed to see who could bring in the most meat. The bakery ovens fired day and night to produce enough bread for a grand feast. Door’s grandson Longfeather directed the other airwalkers as they hung lanterns and banners from the highest peaks. The Bridge of Memory was draped in multi-colored silks.
The Palace touched down in the central flat, and elves – Oasis folk and visitors mingling together – arranged themselves in two great circles that ringed the crystal structure. Palacemaster Rayek had brought his whole family from the New Land, and Melati found himself pushed forward to be introduced to Swift the Seeker, the fabled Wolfrider chieftess who had led the quest for the Palace.
“We met once, long ago,” Swift said to her. “You probably don’t remember.”
Melati summoned a vague smile and waited impatiently for the wolf-chief to move on.
“Your father came with us,” Swift offered. “But, ah… I think he’s with Leetah in the Palace right now. Perhaps after we eat I can rustle him up for you.”
“No. Thank you.”
Surprisingly, Swift did not seem fazed by her curt refusal. **I know what it’s like to war with one’s sire,** she sent easily, as she let Rayek draw her away to greet another old friend.
Cricket was also among the Palace visitors. Melati hadn’t expected to see him; he had quit Oasis once Maleen was back on her feet, and she had imagined he would never return. But he walked up to her and gave her a gentle hug.
“You’re looking well.”
“You too,” she said. Suddenly finding herself on the verge of tears she blurted out, “I miss him.”
“So do we all, cub.” He squeezed her hands and gave a bittersweet smile before moving away.
I’ll bring him back to you, she vowed silently.
For the sake of appearances, Melati remained for the feast’s official commencement. As the honored one, Door was offered the first cuts of roasted meat, the finest cheeses and the best vintage of honeywine. Then he took his seat at Haken’s right hand, to endure the boisterous congratulations of his many descendants. He had sired a race of Gliders, just as he had famously promised. But enough Wolfrider and Go-Back blood had made it into the mix that they seldom behaved with typical Glider reserve.
At the first course of grilled vegetables and cheeses, Melati ate heartily. When the meat course arrived, she gorged. Drinkbearers passed through the crowd, and she refilled her goblet again and again with dreamberry wine. As the third course came around, she asked Chani if she could be excused.
“I think I’ve had enough celebrating, Lady Mother,” she said, rubbing her stomach.
“I don’t wonder. You’ve had enough wine to drown a zwoot, and you ate like you were trying to outdo Coppersky!”
She walked back to Tallest Spire, making a good show of reeling from the wine. But as soon as she was inside, she used her healer’s powers to purge the dizziness from her head. She stole down to the basement rooms, then opened up an old tunnel Door had shaped then sealed years ago. No more did she need to scale the cliffs – as her powers had grown, she had sensed all sorts of half-finished and forgotten tunnels under Oasis. Now she could simply reopen them at will and stroll under the walls.
She ran through the Thorn Fields, her eyes fixed on the rocky cap that rose above the plateau. The festivities would drag on all night, she knew from experience. The revellers would drink and eat and dance themselves to exhaustion, and by sunrise the hardier Wolfriders would still be celebrating. Still, there was no time to waste. She didn’t know how long it would take to heal Yosha’s husk – even with the energy from a full meal in her belly – and she had to finish before the Palace left.
The Palace was the key. It alone could supply the power she needed to call Yosha’s soul back into his body. She had toyed with the thought of stealing the Little Palace for the night, but she doubted its strength would be sufficient. Besides, there was too great a risk of being caught and forced to explain. This night was her best chance. She didn’t know when she would have another.
She opened the secret door in the rocks. She ran down the cave stairs in darkness, then concentrated until the lanterns hanging from the ceiling flared to life.
The cocoon lay on the stone plinth where she had left it three years ago. She drew her dagger and sliced open the layers of wrapstuff. She did not bother to look at Yosha’s mangled body. She closed her eyes, laid her hands on his cold flesh, and set to work.
She started with the long bones of his body. She shaped his skeleton back together, sealing the myriad fractures he had sustained. She forced his shattered ribs back into shape, then set to work on his internal organs. She felt the heat pouring off her body and into his. A brilliant aura rose to surround them both.
When she came to his head, the work grew harder. So much had been lost; so much had be regrown to exacting standards. But the dreamberry wine was doing its work, reviving the memory of their final locksending on the cliff. Melati could visualize the pattern of his thoughts, and thus the pattern of the organ that had shaped them. She delved deep into the memories, letting the sensations wash over her. Yosha’s fear, overruled by her strong will. Her own uncertainty washed away by his calming presence. Her disgust at her own weakness, and his gentle encouragement.
His love….
Tears fell freely down her cheeks as she allowed herself to truly remember that moment, just before she had locked him out of her mind. The love he had offered her, and the deep, abiding calm of one who was at peace with himself, who wished nothing but for others to know the same serenity. She could have taken his offer then. She could have taken all he had to give her, and remade herself as the soul he had always imagined her to be.
But she had been afraid – to know, to be known. To be loved, perhaps. And her fear had killed him.
But now her love would bring him back. She reached out with her thoughts, calling to him. **Yosha, my soul’s brother, come back to me.**
Slowly, inexorably, his head wound shrank and closed under her touch. His marrow began to produce fresh blood. His heart began to beat. Her lifeforce poured into him, reigniting the potential of his newly-healed body. She did not bother with the finer details – the expanses of scar tissue on his skin, the awkward protrusions of hastily reset bones. She kept all her attention on her call, pitched for Yosha’s soul alone – the soul she knew as intimately as if she had Recognized him.
**No… this is not Recognition, the union of two souls,** she vowed. **There is only one soul here, Yosha, shared by two forms. You know this, as do I. Come back to me.**
She could feel him, just out of reach….
**Why do you resist? Your shell is here! I’ve restored it! We can be as we were before – better! I understand now, Yosha! I’m ready. I wasn’t before, but I am now. We can be together as we were always meant to be!**
He was there – hovering over his husk. She could almost touch him…
Her spirit brushed against his, tried to lay hold. But just as she couldn’t stop the earth from pulling him down to his death, so she couldn’t quite draw his spirit back into life.
**Yosha, please! I need you…**
The whole room was vibrating with magic. Melati cried out, as her legs began to buckle with the effort. She screamed in frustration. “AAAH! Why? Why do you stay apart from yourself? And me! Why do you stay apart from me?!”
She felt herself losing her grip on his spirit. She lunged for it, summoning one final burst of magic. The aura around them both erupted in a psychic blast, throwing her clear of his body. She hit the stone floor hard, striking her head. For a moment, she blacked out. When she came to, the residual glow was beginning to disperse around Yosha’s body.
She rushed to his side. His head was still badly scarred – a mass of ropy skin covered the left side of his scalp, with a long seam cutting diagonally across his face. But she hardly noticed. She had restored his left eye, and it stared up at her sightlessly, a haunting shade of blueish-gray like the sky before a cloudburst. Gently she brushed his eyelid closed and waited for him to react to her touch.
He did not move; and she continued her inspection. The joints of his right arm had healed crookedly, leaving his elbow and shoulder distorted by strange knots of bone. A reddish mark, almost like a burn, lay over his breastbone, where she had focused the intensity of her healing magic. She touched it, found it smooth as an infant’s skin. She felt for his heartbeat.
“Yosha!” she called eagerly. “Yosha, wake up. Wake up! You’ve slept long enough.”
But he didn’t stir. Though his heart started with a jolt of her magic, it faltered as soon as she withdrew her touch. “Yosha?” she urged. **Yosha, can’t you hear me? I know you’re in there – I felt you!**
Was his spirit still stunned, after the violent transition? **Yosha?** she tried again. **Don’t be angry with me. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I… I didn’t know what else to do. Please answer me. Please wake up.**
She had sent to sleeping elves before. She had touched unconscious minds and brought them around. Even inside the deepest death-sleep, the elfin mind continued to respond to sending, however faintly. But from Yosha she felt nothing. His husk seemed just as empty as before.
His heart failed in its beat, and this time she did not try to restart it. She left the body on the stone table and staggered towards the door. She needed fresh air, she needed water. She needed to spur her exhausted mind to thought. There had to be another way, another answer. This could not be the end.
The end… for the first time since Yosha’s fall, she allowed herself to truly contemplate the possibility of living without him.
She fled from the cave as fast as her trembling legs would carry her. She opened the door rock and fell to her knees on the gravel outside, weeping miserably in the dawning light.
I’ve failed you, soulbrother. Again.
* * *
Pain. Blinding pain, like the light of a million suns. Pain everywhere, stabbing in every pore of his skin. A hard surface, unyielding, agonizing as his frail body thrashed against its solidness….
His body… a core, a head, limbs – disparate parts all somehow united in thought and deed, all screaming out in agony. A cage for sensation, where before he had been free….
Light, searing against his open eyes, muted when he closed them….
Emptiness above him. He tried to rise to meet it, to escape the surface underneath his bruised body. He tried to fly….
He couldn’t. He fell. He jerked; he convulsed. His cage of flesh wouldn’t obey – didn’t know how. He fought against the rock, lashing out with heels and fists. He raged, and his throat gave his anger voice.
He rose into the air, higher than ever, and for a moment he almost recaptured the feeling of freedom. Then something pulled him down again, and he fell… and fell…
Fear. Terror of the purest form. He remembered falling!
* * *
Melati heard the wordless cry. Hardly daring to believe her ears, she raced back into her cave.
Yosha was alive.
He had fallen off the table, and lay flailing on the ground. His head and hands were bloodied from striking the table, and his mouth was open in a low animal moan. He was trying to rise to his knees, but he couldn’t make his limbs obey. He thrashed about like a newborn zwoot.
She called his name as she ran towards him. He looked up. His silver-blue eyes were wild as a human’s. But he seemed to recognize her, if only as a fellow creature. He reached out his broken right arm, grunting excitedly.
“Yes!” Melati exclaimed. She was laughing through her tears. “Yes, Yosha, it’s me! It’s Mel – you know me, don’t you?”
She reached for his hand, and extended a gentle sending. **Oh, Yosha, you’re home, you’re home!** She touched his mind, eager for his reply….
And heard nothing.
She stopped in midstride, hand still extended. The smile fell from her lips.
He didn’t notice her sudden change. He seized her hand and pulled on it, hard enough to stagger her. He kicked his legs and held her arm fast until he could lever himself off the ground enough to manage a clumsy crawl. Melati tried to break free, but he was strong, strangely strong. As she tried to back away, she only pulled him with her.
“No, no, wait – no,” she babbled helplessly. Her heel struck against stone and she fell back onto the stairs behind her. The broken elf kept coming, grunting and moaning. His scarred mouth was twisted in a grimace that might have been a smile. He pawed at her shoulders and face.
**Yosha, Yosha, please!** she sent. She took his battered face in her hands and pressed her smooth forehead to his scarred one. She reached inside his mind as she done with the dying human, and found the same silence, the same absence of that part of the brain that linked one mind to another’s.
“No…” she whispered, “Oh High Ones, no….”
“Nuhhh!” the elf moaned back, as he struggled to hold her. “Nuuuhhhhh….”
She tried to close her arms to him, but he pushed them apart. He groped and wriggled his way into an embrace. He sniffed her hair. He touched her mouth with clumsy fingers, then touched his own. His eyes seemed barely to have any glimmer of intelligence in them. He was as insensible as a wounded beast.
And that was all he would ever be.
It was all she could do not to be sick as she realized the enormity of her mistake. She had recaptured his spirit as she had planned, but she had trapped it in a broken mind. The exclusively elfin part of his brain had not survived: sending, the potential for magic – for Recognition… the very essence of his soul – was gone. Yosha was gone.
In time, he might be able to speak. He might be able to reason. But he would never really be who he had been before. An elfin spirit could not express itself in a beast’s body.
“Oh, Yosha…” she moaned in despair.
The broken elf moaned in reply and nuzzled her neck, a wounded animal seeking comfort. Reluctantly, she let her arms fold over his back. She could feel the places in his spine where the bones had knit poorly. No wonder he could barely move. She sent out her magic to straighten his spine and free the impacted nerves. He let out a long sigh at her touch. She felt him relax in her arms. His moans turned to a contented whimpers.
“Poor… poor beast,” she said, as she stroked his hair. It felt just as Yosha’s had – slick and cool like heavy silk. She probed lightly with her healer’s senses, and tasted the growing calm spreading through his bloodstream.
This was the only way she could truly know him now, in the imperfect language of animal chemistry. For that was all he was: a witless animal. Could she condemn his spirit to existence inside such a cruel cage? She had been raised on tales of Timmain, the Fell One, who had spurned the gifts of her kind to live as a beast. But even deep in the wolfsong, she had kept something of an elf’s soul, Chani said. She had shaped her animal body to bear an elf’s mind.
Would Timmain be able to help? No – Melati knew the Wolf’s answer to infirmity. Kill the body and free the spirit. Perhaps it was the only answer.
“I just wanted you back, that’s all,” she insisted. “But not like this. I should have listened… I should have understood why you didn’t want to come back.”
“Mmm…” the elf breathed into her hair.
“It’s not right. I… I can’t keep you like this. I know you’d never want to live like this.”
“Muh… muh m–muh….”
She tightened her hand around the back of his head, running her fingertips over the shiny scar tissue. She could shatter his mind with a touch, as she had the human. It would be easy, relatively painless. She would set his spirit free, and destroy this broken husk, the evidence of her folly. It was the only kind thing to do.
“Muhl,” the elf grunted. “Muhl.”
Her hand stilled. “What?” She drew back enough to look him in the eyes. “What did you say?”
He gestured with fingers curled into a claw. “Muhl,” he insisted. He snagged a lock of hair on his hand. “Muhl,” he repeated, more fluidly. Again he smiled, a crooked spread of lips and flash of teeth. He laughed, or perhaps it was merely a catch of breath.
“Yes! My name is Mel. Do you remember? Do you remember me, Yosha? You – your name is Yosha. Can you say it? Yo-sha! Say it.”
He bobbed his head in effort trying to keep up with her speech. “Muhl,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Mel.” She took his hand and touched his knuckles to her breast. Then she folded his arm back so he touched his own scarred chest. “Yoh-sha,” she said slowly, deliberately.
He opened his mouth and tried to form the word. “Y-yohh… ssss…” he grimaced as if rejecting the sound. He looked at her regretfully. Melati sighed and shook her head.
“No, you’re not him,” she said. The Yosha she had known and loved was gone. Yet she could not kill this helpless newborn who wore her soul brother’s face. He might be nothing but a beast, but he was all she had left. And who was to say, if she killed him now, that the spirit she released would be the same as the one she had entrapped? Perhaps she had already destroyed Yosha’s soul – not when she let him fall on the cliff, but when she forced him back to life.
If that was true, she hoped never to find out. She would keep his body alive forever, rather than face what remained of his spirit. As long as this creature drew breath, she could believe that Yosha’s soul was still inside somewhere, even crippled and silenced.
“You’re just a beast,” she said. “A poor… lost beast. But I will care for you. I’ll find a way to keep you safe.”
“Buh?” he asked. “Buhh-ss?”
A good as name as any, she thought bleakly. “Beast,” she said again, more clearly. She repeated the miming gesture with his hand. “Mel. Beast.”
“Buh-sst!” he grunted, more confidently.
She nodded, swallowing her tears. She hugged him close, and he melted against her, relieved. “Muhl,” he lisped, as trusting as a child.
“Pool was right, you know,” she murmured tonelessly. “What he said to me, the day you died. I am a lifetaker, whether I will it or not.”
The elf – Beast – made no answer.
“I know you always imagined we’d Recognize. So did I. I thought… you’d always be there,” she admitted. “When you weren’t there… I was lost. Now that you’re broken, so am I. And if I am death made flesh...” she traced the spiralling pattern of scar tissue on his scalp, healing the cuts and bruises he had dealt himself, “... so are you, now. We both wear the Enemy’s face.” She swallowed the tight ball of grief that threatened to seal her throat. She let it sink deeper and deeper into the pit of her stomach, until the tears dried on her lashes, and at last she felt a weary sort of peace.
“This is our Recognition.”
Elfquest copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.