Second Sight
Tam had never understood why some elves would willingly shed their skins. Her childhood had been filled with loss and blood – to her, death had always been ugly, and enemy to be fought. That the elf lived on in spirit seemed precious little consolation. Life was flesh, and the heady sensations that went with it. Life was chasing the bloodsong and outrunning the great stillness. What possible consolation could be found in being a hollow wind whistling through the trees, or trapped within the Palace’s crystal spires? Spirits lived in pure thought. They could see and hear but never quite touch. To spend eternity thus, insubstantial, separated from loved ones still alive, able to commune in sendings but no more… when she thought about it too much, it stuck her as almost crueler than simply winking out of existence.
But now she understood. Leaving one’s skin wasn’t a loss; it was a transformation.
She soared through the emptiness of space, freer than the highest-flying bird. Her earthly eyes had seen the blackness between the stars and thought it cold, but as a spirit she knew better. Space wasn’t empty; it was scattered with new treasures to explore. Streams of solar wind tickled her spirit’s aura. As she passed through tails of gas molecules, she swore she could taste them like spices on her tongue. When she struck a passing spark of radiation, she tingled all over with static.
She had been so wrong; the spirits weren’t deprived of sensation – they were awash in it. Purer, subtler awareness than a crude husk could ever perceive.
**Come on!** Fahr sent, laughter in his spirit-voice.
She saw him ahead of her with her spirit-sight. He was a dancing ball of light, flitting towards the great yellow star. Chasing after him required no exertion, no fumbling of limbs. She simply thought herself at his side, and there she was. Their auras spun around each other, aglow with joy. Spiralling together, their spirits fell into the corona of the star, into an invisible fire that writhed and breathed like a living thing. Tam marvelled at the flames dancing over her aura, heat without limit, heat without pain.
**This is what I’ve longed to share with you,** Fahr cried. **The stars are alive!**
**Yes… yes! I never understood before. I saw their light… but I could never feel them. Oh, Fahr! Now I truly hear your starsong.**
**This way.**
**What, deeper?** She contemplated the depths of roiling ball of fire.
**Come on, Tam. Don’t tell me you never wondered what it would like to swim in fire.**
**Swim?** she exclaimed. But Fahr was pulling her spirit further down. They passed through layers of heat, some mild as a warm breeze, others crackling with the taste of lightning, still others thick and turgid like a river in spring thaw. They flew under great arcs of burning gas. They dove into waves of it, they splashed and swam and swirled each other about in a spirit’s dance. Tam might have been content to float on the star’s surface forever, letting the currents carry her across the glowing globe. But Fahr drew her deeper still, into a world where the pressure was so great she could feel her astral form compressing, transforming.
He showed her the very center of the star, where the miniscule seeds of its life were baked in tremendous heat and pressure, until they fused together with a burst of flame. He took her through the loops of energy that held the star together, like threads sealing a seam in a bag. He taught her how to ride on a spark inside the loops, travelling out towards the star’s surface, then plunging back to the center in a dive more thrilling than any ever made astride a giant hawk.
Time meant nothing to spirits. Tam could not begin to reckon how long they spent playing inside the star. But finally Fahr grew restless to show her more.
**Come, let me show you why I picked this star.** He led her back into the gentle stillness of space. After the overload of sensations inside the star, Tam found it a pleasant idyll. But soon they reached Fahr’s next destination. As she saw the rocky planet grew ever larger, she found she was hungry for new experiences.
**It’s like our Mother Moon!** Tam exclaimed.
**Yes. But it is a world of its own. It circles its sun by itself.**
They sailed down over the planet’s surface. It was a desert world, searing hot from its proximity to its sun. Mountains and craters scarred its terrain, creating intricate overlapping patterns of fractured rock. Tam dove down into one such fissure. She followed it deep under the planet’s surface. When she reached solid rock, she plunged deeper still, to taste its particular mixture of minerals. Then she swam back up to the surface, through deposits of gold and greymetal.
They played a game, trying to find the largest crater, then the smallest one, then the one with the most interesting features. They found the terminator that separated the planet’s day from its night, and they skated on the frost that gathered beyond the sun’s rays. They found tiny little creatures, scarcely more evolved than bacteria, growing in the shadow of a crater at the planet’s northern pole. Then Fahr suggested they visit the next world.
**There are more?**
He laughed. **There are always more!**
The second world was wreathed in heavy clouds. From space, they looked peaceful, yet within them thunderstorms raged, and the air tasted of poison. At the planet’s surface, the heat and pressure made soft metals turn liquid and pool on the reddish ground. They sampled each little puddle they could find, then counted lightning strikes from the storms that raged forever overhead.
**Surely nothing can live here.**
**Haven’t found it yet. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t here. Who knows. Maybe there are spirits living in the lightning. Maybe they’re saying hello to us.**
**Let’s find out.**
They chased down the lightning. They leapt onto the electricity as it sprang back into the clouds, then rode the next bolt back down to the planet’s surface. They let themselves float on the wind, and soon flew all the way around the entire world. Then they spread their spirits out on the rocks, bathing in the strange orange glow.
**Wait until you see the third planet,** Fahr sent. **You’ll think you’re back on Abode.**
Abode. The sending conjured memories of her birthplace, of the friends and family still walking its surface. Tam felt exhilarated and oddly mournful at once. She wished they could all be here to share her joy.
**Let’s go, then!**
But she felt something tethering her to the rocky plain. A presence, holding her gently pinned. Were she still in her body, she might describe it as a hand rested on her arm.
**Rayek – what?**
**And sweet water to you, lifemate mine,** he sent lazily. **I’ve come to inquire how much longer you intend to dally out here.**
**I don’t know. A while. Skywise is going to show me a world like ours–**
**Mm, I’ve been studying it from the Palace.**
**That’s nothing. Come with us. Come see it for yourself – feel it for yourself!**
Rayek’s aura flickered in dry amusement. **While I always enjoy… feeling things with Skywise,** his sending dripped with sarcasm, **Savin has prepared a meal of seared bluefin and fried cuttlefish, and I do not intend to see it go to waste.**
**All right. Have fun. We’ll see you later.**
**You’ve been gone a year already.**
Tam started at that. **No! Can’t be. We just got here. Skywise?** But Fahr’s spirit only shrugged.
**I’m aware time holds little meaning for spirits,** Rayek continued. **And I won’t say Savin and I cannot… amuse each other,** he added with a wicked spirit-smirk in Fahr’s direction.
**Har, har, blackhair.**
**And we value your freedom. Still, we do not think it an unreasonable request to dine with our lifemates at least once a year.**
Tam sighed. **Well… can’t you both come join us?**
**Tempting. But as I said, Savin spent a long time preparing this meal, and I do not intend it to see it wasted. And while it pains me to have to do this…**
**No, it doesn’t,** Fahr sent irritably.
**Not really, no,** Rayek admitted. **Now, you have until the count of eight to return to the Palace.**
A tremor shook Tam’s aura. Had she been in her skin, she would have felt her hackles rise. She hated ultimatums. **Or what?**
His spirit glowed with wicked delight. **You know what.**
**You wouldn’t!** Fahr charged.
**You know I will. Eight. Seven.**
**He’s bluffing,** Tam insisted.
**You’ll find out soon enough. Six. Five.**
**Just one more planet,** Tam bargained. **We’ll come back tomorrow.**
**Four. I suggest you start back now if you wish to be home in time.**
**Aw, come on, blackhair!** Fahr pleaded.
**For Freefoot’s sake!** Tam cried. **You’re being childish.**
**Three. Two.**
**You get me sick all over the floor, and you’ll have to clean it up!**
**We do what we must, lifemate mine. One.**
Rayek’s aura started to disperse. Tam felt the pressure ease from her hand and she knew he had returned to the Palace.
**Scat, scat, scat!** Tam raged as she pictured herself back inside the crystal pod, and within an instant she was there watching Rayek calmly stride towards the two wrapstuff cocoon lying on a stoneshaped pallet. He was already drawing his dagger.
No, no, no, I am not getting husk-shock again!
She plunged down into the nearest cocoon. She felt Rayek’s hair ruffle at the edge of aura as she forced herself under the layers of wrapstuff and skin and sinew.
Rayek sliced open the cocoon. The body of Swift, Blood of Ten Chiefs, opened its eyes.
“There are you,” Rayek said cheerfully.
“I hate you!” she spat, though her voice was too weak and drowsy to summon the necessary venom. She slowly lifted her head, fighting the sensation of vertigo. She had cut that much too close. The last time she had waited too long to re-enter her body, and learned all about the phenomenon of death, only in reverse.
Rayek only clucked his tongue chidingly and turned to Skywise’s cocoon.
Careful not to make any sudden moves, Swift sat up, rubbing her sore head. After a year of total freedom of dimension, her body felt much too small. Her skin seemed almost painfully tight.
Coarse, earthbound sensations flooded her consciousness. The bright light of the Scroll Chamber. The sound of Rayek’s dagger slicing through wrapstuff. The smell of seared fish and sugary wine. The red-and-white blur coming towards. Swift blinked repeatedly until her vision focused.
“Well…” Savin drawled. “ Look who’s back.”
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