I AM ...
Gurgling river was soothing in a way, just as the sun rising had. And out in the shadows of the mountain valley and its riverbed the restlessness of her soul did not stir, not soothed regardless of the calm world around her, regardless of knowing there was no place safer on Earth than right there and then.
The blues of her eyes watch the golden and rosy shade embrace the outlining of the clouds with a glowing just past the ridges of the mountain tops, bare feet resting between the soil and coldness of water passing over them, and the blades of the grass brushing past her exposed skin with the soft blow of the wind as she sat listening to the everlasting still of the world, she used to be a part of. A world of tranquil her younger self had once known before the world she changed into a battlefield, a sense she had wished for all to know.
Emiliya's gaze faltered down to the passing water, fingers tracing a fading line into its downriver stream as she pushed herself straighter to lean her chin upon her knees. In the world they lived there was no way to escape the peace, not even the one she found by being revived, not for long.
Even if she had wished stay in serenity, the course of her story needing to be told would no let her, the things that had to become had always meant to happen no matter how hard she would come to resist what was bound to be.
The world never spoke of her as a Saint for her name had not be known, no face had been remembered and no tale was to be told because there were no stories based on her truth. That was the sole reason she was known as a myth, as lore and nothing else. Because most of what the people knew in the present was based on speculation heard in passing, things created over time based on the little that remained, the fifteen years alterations became to be even as some began to be written down on paper for the children to be told. And no one spoke of the woman as a hero or a villain, but always as a woman one with Ravka, for standing beside her people as one regardless of being a Squaller, vanished in the place that heaved heavily under the border wars from time to time ever since it had first been taken on her eight year.
The people that knew her truth however had never lived to see her ending, ceased to speak of her or and stopped to remember her since altogether. And yet in the end it was to her advantage, the many reasons why she would be able to roam without her eyes falling upon her for being, but the scar on her face and that alone drawing attention to her.
She turned to look past her shoulder upon the growing rustling of the long grass behind her, but where in one world she would be alarmed, she did not phase in this one. Because she knew the face approaching would be a friendly one. Since for she needed not fear what lurked in the shadows, need not look over her shoulder with ever step taken.
"Morning." Her eyes found their way back towards the water, saw the shadow of him settle by her side, a silence remaining as they each just stared at the quiet world around them.
Brown appeared in the bottom corner of her eye after several minutes of unnoticed hesitation on the Healer's side, a piece of worn at its crinkles and folded paper being handed over to her, "Before I take you someplace,"
The blue hues looked up at her friend with a slight frown, carefully taking it between her fingers. But before she even had the chance to unfold it, the quiet voice of Cian halted her movement shortly. "It's the last of her, of Raisa, at least on paper."
The lids of her eyes blinked rapidly before finding them back on the discoloured letter, slender fingers careful to reveal the tidy yet slightly smudged writing. Her irises glided past the words, careful not to miss any detailing, "Dear Cian,"
"I have to make this quick if I want to make this letter work. And believe me when I say I'm uncertain this will get to you in the first place, or if any of us will meet again at all."
"Something's changed. The sphere covering us like the blanket of fresh snow we have woken up to alike is dreadful, I haven't yet figured it out and I don't know if I will before something goes wrong, but it's like a door is closing, closing fast."
"Morisyer's presence isn't doing us any good, not the Second Army nor the First. Because beyond this all, whatever that may be, something's brewing. I'm sure of it."
"And whatever happened to Eme, the stories are making its way through the Armies. Just bear in mind that whatever it was that caused this to happen to her, to affect a Shadow Summoner in the ways I've seen and heard so far, it will be bad once it boils over."
"So, I need you to get out, wait no longer than we agreed on and leave Ravka while you can. Start over if you must, but don't wait for me. I have a plan if it goes wrong, I always have a plan, but I can't promise making it truth. Just promise me to get to the other side of the Fold at last."
"With love, Raisa." She stared at the words, let her eyes run over them once again, and another. There were dread in the words written, Raisa had never been one to fear, and yet the entire letter was a goodbye without wanting to say the words. Raisa knew there was a rare chance of coming back from it, and no matter her request, Cian had stayed until he no longer had a choice to accept, she was gone, that no letters would be answered and no body would be found.
"There's a reason those woods are feared now. It's said to reek of the death, haunted by ghosts, bones barely into the ground." The thirty-six-year-old scrunched his nose up as his eyes wandered down the river, arms heavily leaning upon his propped-up knees, "He's saying he's doing it for us, for Grisha, but is he?"
And perhaps the worst of it all was knowing she felt it coming, that the final words on paper were a plea for the last of three to make it out of Ravka and live to tell the tale of the generation unafraid.
Emiliya reached out for him, palm of her hand gently meeting his lower arm, gazes finding each other's, "I truly am sorry."
"About everything." In the end no matter how they were to put it, she was the reason why they had gotten this close to the man in the first place. If she hadn't gotten that deeply involved with Aleksander, none of them would've been in this position, perhaps death would've greeted them in another way or they would still be fighting amongst their fellow Grisha, but never be in this situation.
The redhead bit her lip shortly, as her nostrils flared up with the deep breath that she sucked in, "She was afraid, in her last moments she was terrified, Raisa Hayek never was. And I know you keep saying it isn't my fault, but I was the one that died, and Aleksander may be the reason she's dead, but I'm the reasons behind it all."
"Eme-" She cut him off, felt his arm move away under her touch to grab her hand. Instead of letting him, she moved from his attempt to blame her for the death brought upon Raisa and all the others. Feet causing the once relaxing noise of the stream to be cut off by the splashing of her feet further into its aquatic. "No, stop saying it isn't my fault, stop saying it isn't something I shouldn't be worried about. For Saint's sake, she died being terrified, no one there to comfort her."
The water soaked into the bottom of her dress, slowly creeped its way up the fabric the further she emerged into it. Eyes skipping from the trees to the other end of the shore, to the farthest point she could see down the river to the highest peak of the mountains surrounding them, as she tried to blink the sensation of tears away, to avoid the heartbreak of Cian rising to his feet and contemplating to follow and stop her from hurting her own soul even more for something that hadn't been in her control no matter how hard she convinced herself it was post-mortem now she had been revived. Not heard his calls for her to stop, through the loudly beating of her heart in her ears and her heart wrenching vulgar thoughts.
Tears shimmered at the edges of her lids, redness flaring up across the bridge of her nose and edges at the top of her cheeks as the blood rushed into her face at the appearance of her waterworks. Her voice cracked and had to push their way out through her tightening lump in her throat the more words she tried to speak. "She died alone and afraid by the hands of the one person that I brought that directly into your lives in the first place, because I was young and so foolish to get involved with him. They died alone and afraid because I died, because he unleashed my passing on them."
"I took her life away from her, from them." She couldn't look at her best friend as he approached her, chest breaking under the pressure of the pain heaving on her heart, rib cage and lungs. "Stop, stop it."
"I took her away from you, your future." The sight of her friend's face was barely even there, blurred by the salty liquid painted over her irises, lashes dampened from touching the gathering water on the brink of the skin of her under-eye, breaths rigid. "Stop blaming yourself."
Their eyes passed shortly, but it only tore her insides to shreds even more, the guilt carried with the burden a former lover put on her without realising the cost of it all, the blood spilled, the hurt and darkness that spread through it. Her choices to be with a man she no longer saw eye to eye with in the present, destroyed the future of her friends, her family because of Aleksander's poor choices after her initial passing.
"Hey, look at me. Look at me." He tightly and yet reassuringly folded her hands between his own, pressed his forehead into hers as his glossy eyes fought to find hers between the small gap of her lids revealing her liquid covered eyes. "None of that, I swear, none of that was ever your fault."
Her nose was so blocked by the mucus at that point she had no longer sniffled, instead it was hard to breathe and swallow between her cries. The heart-breaking sight that grown onto her friend's face, the water beginning to coat his own face no matter how much he had tried to resist them from pouring down, to keep himself together and failed to.
The girl untangled one of her hands from his grasp, heartbeat clogged ears barely taking notice of the sharp and shaky inhale the thirty-six-year-old had drawn into his lungs as her fingers found their way up to his chest, stopping right above his heart as she closed her eyes. "She loved you Kai, more than you know."
A choking sob broke through her tightly pressed lips at the pull of her aching at the escape of the words she had spoken. Barely able to draw back in oxygen as the only way to breathe again where her throat for trying through her nose cut her options for air to fill her lungs harshly.
Cian moved his forehead away from hers, eyes searching the skies only shortly before drawing the girl into a tight embrace, face leaning against the top of her head. "I know. I know."
Perhaps in a way this was the mourning they each needed, a grieving process he had endured but never been able to close entirely because there was never a body, had not found a way to share the pain with the world even if he had been with himself and nature alone. The survival of Emiliya had never been one the books could have foreseen, but he could feel everything lost and aching he once pushed down. There and then instead of keeping strong, dealing with emotions and the way the Army taught him to, the remaining weight of loss and grievance got lifted a little more.
The best of friends stood there for a good fifteen minutes, letting their pain release into the world until their cries died down and the tears dried on their cheeks and none were left to be shed. Stood there in the silence until the sun no longer fought to creep past the edge of the mountain peaks and the pink and soft golden glow had faded into blues and white clouds.
The blues of her eyes could see just past the beige tunic and the arm wrapped around her, no doubt keeping the both of them standing at this point, watched as the water flowed uninterruptedly past them until it disappeared into the vast distance. The river's water hadn't been cold, the dampness of their clothes had indeed stuck to their skin as if it were a second layer but they never felt the coldness of its liquid.
Cian moved beneath her weight, eyes darting between where he gaze had been on the moving waters and the serene face of the girl. Her eyes moved towards her friend in question, but she never got an answer as he broke their eye contact before grabbing one of her hands gently to guide them out of the waters. "I want to show you something."
Their feet left behind a trail of water, leaving the soil beneath their feet dampened as they ventured through the long grass and its wildflowers. The Stepan cottage vanishing behind the horizon as they sought their way down the declining grounds. The temperature summery enough to air-dry their clothing as they went. And the sight before them open fields and the mountains of nothingness but the beauty of peace and nature, not a home or humans others than themselves in sight.
Silence had covered them until they had been well on the way with no protest of her, too amazed by the serenity of the world Novyi Zem knew to question anything, at least the foremost peacefulness the country side in which she had found herself then. "You need to know you're not the only person I've been helping."
The blue hues looked up from her fingers brushing past the flowers and through the grass to meet the back of her friend's tunic as his pace slowed for her to catch up instead of lingering few steps behind him but still within a hand's reach.
When she said she would not hold his hand, it wasn't serious. It was one of those things they did as a gesture of reassurance that one remained safe and living, one done out of comfort, support and habit. Between them it had indicated an indescribably deep connection, in the identical manner in which their eyes could speak without words needing to be spoken on what had been going on in their heads most of the time.
Cian looked back at her shortly before facing the invisible path before them once again, "Just promise me you're not going to laugh."
The redhead furrowed her brows before mentioning how she wouldn't, not that she knew what it was about anyways, though she hoped he had not done anything stupid for him to mention so. But the words that were to come were not the ones she had expected to be, how much time and events she missed out on apart from the pain, struggles and losses he had endured.
"There's someone I want you to meet." Emiliya was lost, eyes moving across the field before her feet thinking, there was no one else back at the house, no signs of another soul living there or has she missed something? "He's been here since he was a baby, we suspect his mother must've found a way out of Ravka or maybe Kerch, not so sure which of the two but, they found a way to get the child here years ago."
"He had no one, and no one deserves to be alone." The dark-haired man looked down at her with a soft smile growing on his face just remembering those words, "I know that because those were the words you told me when we first met."
"What's his name?" Emiliya bumped into his arm with her step, fingers unconsciously trying to twist the ring that continued to sit mindlessly on her finger, in fact she forgot it was there or that it no longer was able to be twisted and turned but only slightly moved.
"Rhŷn."
The young woman turned on her feet with quick steps to get ahead of her friend, one of her eyes squinted shut to block the still rising sun with a smile growing on her face. "Rhŷn?"
The sun was blinding but she still caught the thirty-six-year-old to roll his eyes at her response, even spotted a hit of slight disappointed through and a faint smile upon his own lips. "You promised not to laugh."
"I'm not laughing, I'm smiling." There was a great history to the name, it was a name of a friendship between three Grisha and a First Army that had grown and endured plenty. And though she had the feel to tear up at the thought, it was one based on remembering the good and happy memories behind the name but to her wounded soul that responded to its reference. "It's thoughtful of you."
"That name was one of the last left from the past, before it started to crumble into pieces, you know?" The elder boy spoke the words with such power to it, but he was never wrong. The name originated from the one that lived life with an open mind and little judgement, and a will to fight. Despite only hoping to see the familiar face whenever being located elsewhere, to pray he had not died, meeting again brought some normality in the peculiarity of being a Grisha that did not fit in anywhere in particular. "The name at the time was, is, a hope for a better future."
"Look there's only few of us in this area but-" The girl's security fell, a cautiousness sneaking up her skin as she questioned if anyone knew about her existence her in Novyi Zem, or if anyone knew about her at all.
But before she could ask anything else, just behind the ridge another cottage similar to the one she had awoken in had appeared on their line of sight. The shadows of figures becoming clearer with every step they had taken as Cian had shortly squeezed her shoulder reassuringly before moving away from her. "I think we're about to find out."
She could see some of the shadows had been children, seven to be precise and three adults, but none of them had noticed the other adults approaching the home. Not until a dark-haired girl had risen her gaze from a wooden table beneath her fingers and the children sat around her, to find their approaching silhouettes.
And as her eyes had fallen upon the girl, one boy in particular had his attention drawn away from the table, eyes lingering just a little longer on her before getting up and beelining for the man at her right-hand side. "Papa!"
Without a second glance she knew the children had lived in another world than the ones she and the Stepan boy had, one without fear, a world without hate and death lurking around each and every corner. And so, after all perhaps it was possible, there was a way children could live in a place without war and death lurking past their shoulders with each breath taken.
The preteen had crashed into the man's torso, receiving a warm-hearted laugh combined with a grunt at the blow of the growing boy's impact. And his eyes had soon found her figure, searching look crossing his features as he studied her face in particular. Emiliya smiled at the boy as she greeted him, one delighted to see the man who primarily raised him into who he had been today after being apart so he could save her.
"What happened to her face Papa?"
"What did I tell you about that?" The blonde's face fell with an apologetic look as similar words had left his mouth in a whisper, but the redhead understood, it wasn't common to see a scarred face: "I took a nasty fall, that's all. It doesn't hurt, your Papa took outstandingly brilliant care to make sure it didn't."
It was strange to say that word, almost unearthly. Never had she thought to be saying the words, never believed she'd get the chance to see such a day. To speak of him as a father to a boy he had given shelter to as his own, was something she would need to get used to. And as the two best friends their eyes met, they need not say words to understand she hadn't taken it as an offensive thing, but rather that she understood in the same way as Cian was embarrassed for the boy for asking such a thing in the first place.
The thirty-six-year old's gaze dropped down to the boy as he lay his hands on his shoulders, requesting if the boy could look after the others for a little while, one he had not protested nor question but just did as the younger boy returned to where he had once come from, instead her eyes found the dark-haired girl to rise to her feet and vanish into the building.
Cian gestured his hand towards the cottage the woman had just now vanished into, solely to keep the children from hearing what was to be spoken off, a voice she had only vaguely caught onto calling another name as they themselves had stopped before the small house, "Zyair, we have a visitor."
He had stopped the Vass girl from entering, questioned what exactly she had been looking for or if she had any idea what it was that her mind had been set on finding, since she seemed sure of one item having possible answers.
"Do you have a copy of the Lives of Saints, the one the Palace's library had?" The girl sighed, she need not think about the place or its location, not of the colour or the information within it because she knew that that particular book needed to have the answers, even if none of what she became was going to be found in it. "That awfully looking red book with golden lettering that no one ever touched?"
Emiliya nodded, "Do you remember if it ever said anything about a Saint's resurrection of sorts?"
The thirty-six-year-old mentioned how he hadn't been entirely sure if it had mentioned something of sorts, let alone doubted the availability of more than one existing copy. "Look just stay put, I'll figure something out, maybe they know more, just give me a moment to gather some information and gain enough of their trust to get more done. But we'll figure something out, I promise you, we will find a way end the suffering of Ravka soon."
"I see Sleeping Beauty has finally decided to join us." Their gazes were drawn away from each other upon the words, the blue hues of her eyes finding a golden skinned boy leaning upon a mahogany table as he stood eyeing the two best of friends. Or most specifically the magical appearance of the girl being the reason the eleven-year-old boy spend days on end under his care, instead of Cian's.
Emiliya raised an eyebrow at her friend, as if questioning her mere presence for getting such a response upon first meeting a stranger that most certainly knew about who she was. But after all, how was he or the woman not to know, Cian trusted them, left the eleven-year-old under their supervision as he tried to mend the twenty-one-year-old as much as he could to get her back to the living, a task he succeeded to do so but took much longer than an average healing.
And she figured then the other woman had been named Jena, but what she had not known was that Jena escaped Ravka for other reasons than being Grisha or to flee from a war, that she had known of the lore originating from the redhead herself but not that she in fact had been the source of a story most children since her death had been raised to, had been spoken of amongst the Armies still but for entertainment or encouragement before battle: specifically, ones that took place during storms.
"Listen, can you look into me for something?" Cian's voice faded into the background along with the silhouettes of the three as the went deeper into the building's shadows.
The twenty-one-year-old sighed, stood watching the emptiness of the inside of the building shortly before turning away. Ad the redhead stepped into the sunlight, its rays soaking into her skins as her feet moved closer to the long grass, fast to find the children had roamed within them and no longer sat at the outdoor table.
The wind does not stop, not even when it appears to be calming down just as how a wave does not stop when it crashes against the shore, it will always find its way back again: the same way as Emiliya had, risen from the source in which she had died and then some. Just because a story appears to end doesn't mean the story stops, all you had to do was turn the page and wait until at some point the end did come: an ending that would come once the full story was done being told even if most of it had yet to be written.
Emiliya's story was one still being written in past and present, she had to get the one thing done to make sure that last page would be worth telling the story, even if it wasn't going to be known by the people the way her disappearance had.
The blues of her eyes stared at the stainless skies, fingers dancing past the blooming flowers passing her with each step, the laughter of the five children vanishing in the background. There was a sense of freedom, that nothing could hurt her there and then, but she couldn't live that truth yet, not with the turmoil running through her veins and growing in the air of Ravka across the True Sea, past the Unsea.
That was the world she had been fighting for all along, the world she wished would become upon the falling of the Fold and an ends to a war that had brought death from generation to generation. All she wanted for Ravka to know, to experience, was a peace she had felt and seen right there and the: children who could run wherever they liked without fearing coming to close to the border or make a wrong turn into the hands of the wrong people.
As much as someone can try to save you, as much as you can save them, the ending is inevitable regardless of the meaning behind it, no matter the cause of the true ending. She sank to her knees, figure almost entirely being engulfed by the green surrounding her, fingers touching the soil and the clenched her teeth before speaking the words that were always going to come, to the skies,
"I am the storm and I am coming for you."
Sorry for the way too delayed update, I meant to post last week but as some of you know I am half way a crazy week at work needing to run my part of the store by myself and am actually living off 2h of sleep a day since last Monday due to it. My priority was to make sure I survived my shifts and then try and keep myself running properly enough to survive to make at least this Teusday for a single day off. Genuinely struggling to simply stay awake and have any kind of social interaction/staying awake once I get home because im mentally, socially and on a scale of sleep depriv just drained atm. Thank you for baring this super delayed update and sticking around patiently on my end!
To anyone I was meant to get back to regarding questions, dms or requests of things of this book, I will get back to you later today when I finish shift 6 out of 8 of this week, I am terribly sorry for not getting back to you sooner.
ITS 2AM I WAS HALF ASLEEP WRITING THE ENDING, OBV NOT PROOF READ
PUBLISHED 4 JULY 2021