The Longest Day

Chapter Three

When Tahni woke the next morning, she wasn’t sure how she felt.

Part of her wanted to cry with the knowledge that she was about to leave her father and brother and put herself in very real danger. Another part of her wanted to scream at whatever cruel being had cast this fate upon her. A third part wanted to simply curl up in a ball and hide away where no one would be able to find her.

But she couldn’t do any of those things. She had to be strong. She had to hold herself together.

Throwing her legs over the side of her bed, she sighed and pushed the thoughts from her mind. She refused to let herself dwell on things she couldn’t change.

She dressed quickly and did her chores, borrowing a large map from her father’s desk before she made her way to the clearing for the third time in as many days.

She and Vita spent the remainder of their morning hunched over the map to figure out the best way for them to get to the Rohnalian Mountains and stop Slay. Later, they spent their afternoon with their toes dipped in the shallow stream as Vita explained to Tahni exactly what her gift was and what it meant she could do.

Late that night, when Tahni lay awake in bed, she silently mulled over everything she had learned. She already knew that Vita could make images float on water and put visions in Tahni’s mind, but what she hadn’t known was that prophecies were the essence of the Seers’ powers—the main reason they were given their gifts, in the grand scheme of things—and that each individual Sister or Brother of the Sense would eventually receive their own unique one.

Vita told her that some Seers were known to have waited over 40 years to receive their prophecies. She was considered lucky in that sense, having received her own at the age of only twenty four.

And, as with anything truly extraordinary, Brothers and Sisters of the Sense were few and far between. While Vita had spent her time at the Seer’s Seminary—the place her mother had taken her when she was only thirteen to develop and nurture her gifts—there were only two other Seers there: a boy and another girl.

But while prophecies were the focus of their powers, that did not necessarily mean it was all they were restricted to.

Vita’s gift allowed her to do almost anything regarding visions or images. She could show anyone anything in any way. She could paint pictures in a person’s mind to convince them they were in a different reality. She could make someone who had never even laid eyes on a coastline believe that they were swimming in the ocean.

What was more, was that although her gifts were more or less limited to tricks of the mind and making images appear where they shouldn’t, Vita had a particular connection to Tahni over other people.

Because Tahni was her prophecy’s victim—the person whose fate her prophecy had claimed—Vita was able to feel Tahni’s presence, and the general nature of her thoughts. It was almost like a sixth sense that Vita could access when she needed to.

Tahni had spent the afternoon with her mouth hanging open in awe as she listened to Vita explaining all of this, the breeze playing gently in her hair.

Now, as she lay in the dark thinking about Vita’s gifts and the journey they were about to embark upon because of them, she drifted off to sleep, waking only a few short hours later to bright morning sunlight pouring through her window and the familiar sound of Kobi outside, chopping wood for a fire.

‘Well-rested’ was certainly not the term she would have used to describe herself as she tried to remember if she’d collected everything she would need when she and Vita left later that day. The thought itself made her stomach churn uncomfortably.