Moments

Moment of Choice - Part 5

Smells of the fade hit me square in the jaw, the aroma like rotten meat struck by lightning. The anchor crackled to life before I realized it wasn't a rift; the Keeper was casting one of her more elaborate spells. She stood beside a churning fire of her own, this one contained inside a glass cylinder blazing with sparkling purples and greens. One of many rituals she only shared with my brother.

I waited for her to finish, watching as her sleeves dusted the waning countertop, her knotted fingers dropping a wad of grass into her conjuration. Whatever it was supposed to do either failed or worked as the purple light zapped away to leave behind a charred black husk in the glass.

Finally, she turned to me, wiping her hands across a towel. "Emm'asha, at last you come to speak with me."

I laughed at her choice of words, "It's been a long day."

"Yes," her eyes narrowed and she drew out a knife with a slice of blood across the blade. Whether a threat, reminder, or something she forgot to clean the message failed to reach me. "Rhodri shall not be able to safely travel for a time."

"Here it comes."

But the Keeper chuckled, a disconcerting one, "I know that man, perhaps better than you."

"Creators, I hope not," I muttered under my breath.

She ignored my aside, "He's arrogant, but he's one of ours. You're still one of ours."

"Is that why you're here, then? To claim your property?"

The Keeper moved closer to me, but I threw my arms up across my chest, stopping any attempts on her part. "You're my child. I would never leave you behind."

"Ha, 'your child.' I ceased being that the moment you stopped being First. You were rather insistent upon it, in fact. 'Congratulations, you have something greater than a mother. You have a Keeper now,'" I repeated the words burned into my brain. At eleven years old, I lost my mother not to disease or blade, but promotion. She couldn't afford to show favoritism, not when so many in the clan depended upon her. So, I was banded about to a few of the other couples, or left to my own devices to find my path. I was never certain if my brother was lucky to have magical talents or not. She could obsess over him, needing to train him in not only magic, but the ways of the people. I was free to roam the forest, skinned knees and chipped teeth, knowing there was no one to soothe the scrapes upon my return.

I don't know what I expected from her. Perhaps a confession, an airing of her sins, begging for forgiveness. Even a moment of empathy, to admit that she worried what I'd face so far from home alone from all I'd known, a path she set me upon. Instead, I got a clucking of her tongue as she eyed me up and down in my Inquisition attire and said, "You no longer speak the people's tongue. Have you forgotten?"

"Garas quenathra?!" I sneered, needing to hear her say the truth.

She rocked back at the explosion of elvhen, as if I hadn't explored deeper into our people's history than she could ever dream. Some days fell right on top of it. "I am here for you," the Keeper said, cocking her head, "as I already said."

"I know why you're here. but I don't know what you're up to. Rhodri said you want me to be your First."

Anger snarled across the Keeper's face. "That man can never follow direction."

"Tell me about it. I hope someone's warned Eria."

The snarl wavered for a moment, as if I could draw a laugh from the Keeper, but she bit it down. Folding her arms across her stomach she said, "It is true, da'len."