By now, gentle reader, you’re probably wondering two things: How do I exist, given my father’s death at the Fall of Kullos, and what all of this has to do with the danger that we currently face – the threat of the void-creature that has compelled me to take illegal action with my Time Intervention. Well, wonder no longer…
*****
It was about a week after the Fall of Kullos, and Dreya the Dark woke up in her Black Tower to discover she was in bed alone. That was unusual these days, but she supposed it was very like Cat to want to be up and about, now that all of her injuries had fully healed. The sorceress rose and opened a window, breathing deeply of the crisp, morning freshness. There was something in the air, something intangible that told her today was the day. As she dressed, she became more and more sure of it. All the interminable Council meetings that had plagued her existence the past few days were now done. The Guardians had been officially sanctioned in a typical bureaucratic waste of time, in Dreya’s opinion.
How had Jessica put it?
“There’s no putting the genie back into the bottle.”
Sara had had to explain the allusion, but once she got it, the sorceress thought it rather apt. The Chetsuan twins were currently living in the Black Tower with Cat and herself until they had a chance to find their feet in this world and get a place of their own.
It would soon be time for the Three Guardians to start figuring out the extent of their new powers and what they were supposed to do with them, which meant this day might be the last that they had to themselves for a while. So yes, today was the day.
Dreya walked down the hallway and tapped lightly on a door. Sara opened it.
Speaking softly, Dreya offered, “Sorry to disturb you, but I just wanted to tell you – today’s the day, so I’m going to need—”
“—Oh my gosh, you’re actually doing it?” Jessica’s voice interrupted, her voice bubbling with enthusiasm. “That’s super exciting! Give us ten minutes, and we’ll be right down, OK, love?”
Dreya thanked her and walked down the steps, following the sound of a spoon against a bowl, telling her Cat was having breakfast in the small sitting room.
She leaned against the door frame, lingering for a moment as she took in the picture before her: Catriona, her girlfriend. She thought back to the moment that upstart druid girl flew into her life, delivered flowers and proposed, sort of. Funny how things worked out, sometimes. Cat was brilliantly smart, wonderfully quirky and beautiful in body, in magic and most especially in spirit. In one way or another, she’d shared that spirit with a being from the higher planes who was like light in a box, an assassin and Cleric of Nature who shared her soul with a leopard god, and a Dark-aligned sorceress whom many considered a tyrant-in-waiting, with vestigial Piskey wings that most people ridiculed or reviled. Who else could have a spirit that big? She was amazing…
…She was also eating a large bowl of ice-cream, which was an odd choice for breakfast. Dreya frowned in puzzlement for a moment, but then dismissed it with a facial shrug. Cat was a big girl, and she could eat anything she liked.
Sensing Dreya’s presence, Cat turned to her and smiled, which was like the sun bursting from behind the clouds.
“Good morning,” Dreya greeted her, stepping over to where Catriona was sitting, and leaning close in invitation.
“Morning, Dreya,” Cat returned, brightly, giving her the kiss that was sought.
“You were up early,” Dreya observed.
“I was sick this morning,” Cat stated, by way of reply.
“Aww,” Dreya sympathised, preparing her own breakfast. “Do you think you’re coming down with something?” she wondered. “You should call Mandalee, get her to check you over.”
Catriona nodded. “I already called her, she’ll be here any minute, but I’m pretty sure I know what she’s going to say.”
“Cat, are you self-diagnosing again?” Dreya admonished her. “You know that’s never a good idea.”
“In this case, I think I’m uniquely qualified to know what’s going on.”
The smile on her face was that of amusement. A look that told Dreya she was being obtuse, failing to see something that Catriona believed ought to be obvious.
“Dreya, listen to me,” she insisted. “I was sick…this morning!” she emphasised.
Even then, it took a moment for Dreya’s puzzled frown to shift to wide-eyed understanding.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Do you really think—?”
“—Well, we knew it was a possibility, and the timing fits.”
Dreya nodded. “And it would explain the ice-cream breakfast,” she quipped.
“Yeah,” Cat laughed. Then she grew serious. “If I’m right, how do you feel about it?” Cat asked her.
Dreya immediately stopped what she was doing and moved over to sit beside her, letting her girlfriend see that what she was about to say was purest truth.
“I told you, you have my total support, whatever happens. You know that.”
“Yes, I do,” she assured her, smiling once more. “I just wanted to hear you say it. Last time, it was just sympathic.”
*****
The ‘last time’, gentle reader, was a good six to eight weeks behind them, depending on how Catriona counted her time on Earth.
Catriona had just met Daelen StormTiger for the first time, outside Justaria’s white cottage. Daelen’s early-warning system that told him of any activity by Kullos or his own dark clone had been disabled due to some outside interference. That allowed his dark clone to catch him unprepared. Usually, he would have Ossian Miach Kaidool by his side, to tip the balance of power, but he was in stasis in his tomb, half a continent away.
Speaking to Catriona telepathically, fighting the pain of Pyrah’s Ysirian sympathic barriers, Daelen fretted, ‘If my clone and I fight all the way to Michael’s tomb, we’re going to leave a trail of devastation right across Elvaria.’
‘Can’t you teleport?’ Cat wondered.
‘Not with him here, we can block each other’s powers,’ Daelen explained. ‘That’s why I need Michael in the first place.’
‘So, you need me to get Michael for you? I have a friend who could teleport me there.’
‘The defences won’t let you pass without the right power signature,’ Daelen told her.
‘Actually, I have a sort of tool, a staff, that has higher planar energy inside it.’ she had told him and asked if that would work.
‘Maybe,’ Daelen allowed.
‘Maybe? We don’t have time for maybe! There must be a way to make sure I get in!’
‘There is one way, but there are risks to you. I can’t allow it.’
‘Not your call,’ she insisted. ‘Be clear. Be concise. Get out of my head for thirty seconds. I decide.’
While Cat kept his dark clone talking, Daelen did as she asked.
‘If I leave part of my essence inside your body, I will have no control over where it goes. It could enter your digestive system, causing stomach ache and nausea. It could enter your bones and cause painful inflammation, like arthritis that may not be reversible. It could enter your brain and link us telepathically, permanently hearing each other’s every thought, both conscious and subconscious – and I’ll admit I’m not always proud of some of the things my subconscious mind comes up with.’
Catriona wasn’t happy about some of her subconscious thoughts, either, so she would try not to hold his against him.
‘Trouble is, it might not be possible to tell those two kinds of thoughts apart,’ he warned her, before continuing his list of possible symptoms, ‘which could affect your ability to concentrate, to think. It could cause dizziness, disrupt your sense of balance until you can’t walk or even stand.’
OK, this was starting to get scary, now.
‘And if I left my essence inside you for too long, you could start to grow into dimensions that your body isn’t equipped to handle. I don’t know what that would mean for you – it’s never happened – you could even die. But I’ll take it out of you long before there’s a real risk of that.’
‘Well, that’s OK, then.’
‘One more thing,’ he continued, hesitantly. ‘I only mention this because you’re young, female and, if you’ll forgive me, presumably fertile…’
When he was finished, Catriona swallowed, nervously, but quickly composed herself.
‘Thirty seconds.’ she insisted. ‘Out of my head. You promised.’
The instant he left her mind, she reached out to Dreya. Some of these complications could affect her, too.
In the end, though, Dreya simply projected, ‘Support’, telling Cat it was her choice, and she would back her either way.
Catriona had chosen to do it, no matter the risk. She could not allow another child to lose their parents as she had. Not if she could prevent it. Besides, the chance to learn so much about Daelen’s true nature was irresistible.
*****
The others all arrived at once. Sara and Jessica came down the stairs, just as Mandalee walked in the door, immediately asking, “OK, where’s my patient?”
Mandalee was one of only a handful of people who had free access to the Black Tower. In fact, all of them were in that room.
“In here!” Cat called out to her best friend.
Mandalee walked in and greeted everyone with, “Morning, all!” Then, even as her friends returned the sentiment, she ushered Dreya away from Catriona’s side so she could give her a private examination. Scrying for this particular condition was more intimate than her usual techniques. After a moment, she asked Cat, “Do I have the patient’s permission to share?” Cat smiled and nodded. “In that case,” Mandalee declared, “congratulations, Cat – you’re pregnant!”
Cat jumped up and hugged her friend, tight. “Thank you!” she cried.
“I didn’t do anything!” Mandalee objected. “I just delivered the news.”
Next in line to hug the mother-to-be was Jessica, who quipped, “I reckon you’ll be delivering something else before too long, love.”
“How long is a Faery pregnancy, anyway?” Sara wondered, following her sister.
“Eight months for a full Faery,” Cat answered, “add human blood, and it can be a week or two longer.”
“But you’re asking the wrong question,” Mandalee told Sara. “What you should be asking is, ‘How long is a pregnancy for a Timeless Guardian who is carrying a baby who is one-quarter human, one-quarter Faery and half higher planar being’?”
“The answer is, of course, nobody knows,” Dreya concluded, embracing her girlfriend. “In fact, there’s only one thing I know for sure about your pregnancy,” she continued.
“And what’s that?” Cat asked.
“Your baby is going to be amazing.”
“Yes,” Cat agreed, “she is.”
“She?” Dreya wondered.
Cat shrugged. “Just a feeling.”
“Well, whatever happens, you know you’ve got all the help you need in this room,” Mandalee assured her.
Sara and Jessica murmured their agreement.
“There is just one thing I have to warn you about, though,” the cleric stressed, in all seriousness. “For the sake of your baby’s health, you’re going to have to give up shapeshifting. I know you’ll miss it, but there’s no way to know what effect it might have as your baby develops inside you. Sorry. I hate to spoil the mood, but it’s important.”
Cat assured her she was right. “I will miss it,” she agreed, “but I’ll give it up for my child, no question. And it’s not forever, right?”
Mandalee nodded. “Of course.”
“Actually, now that I think about it,” Dreya considered, as Cat gave in to her craving for more ice-cream, “I know another thing about your pregnancy – we’re going to need a bigger icebox!”
The others laughed at that.
Dreya didn’t think there was anybody outside this room, in front of whom she would feel comfortable opening up like this, but with these people, she could actually lower her otherwise constant guard.
“But I have something for you,” she told Cat, “even better than ice-cream.”
“The last time you said something like that,” Cat recalled with her mouth full, “you came back with dragons.” She swallowed, and concluded, “I have to say, Dreya, I’m not in the mood for dragons.”
“It’s not dragons,” she assured her. “It’s something I picked up on Earth when I went to that shopping mall with these two,” she indicated the Chetsuans. “I’ve been planning to give it to you for a while, but I wanted the moment to be special. I woke up with the feeling that today was the day, and your news clinches it.”
“Dreya, you’re being enigmatic again,” she objected, playfully. “We’ve talked about this.” As an aside to the others, she explained, “She likes to be enigmatic, sometimes. She thinks it’s one of her many attractive qualities.”
“It is,” Dreya maintained.
Cat gave her a mischievous smile. “I never said you were wrong.”
“In that case, I shall continue.”
With that, she invited everyone to follow her outside. As they did so, Jessica sneaked a small object into Dreya’s pocket.
When they got outside, Cat saw that the three colour roses that had framed the Black Tower’s doorway almost since the day they met, were now shaped into a heart. Mandalee, Sara and Jessica moved to stand at the base of the steps, but Dreya asked Cat to stay at the top with her so that they were standing within that heart frame.
“What’s going on?” Cat asked with a blush.
“When you first came to me and challenged me to a contest of magic,” Dreya began, “you put these red and white roses here. The next day, at my request, you moved the black ones here to join them. At the time, I called it a symbol of co-operation in magic. Looking back, I think, deep down, I just wanted my flowers to be close to yours because I wanted to be close to you. I also remember how you ‘proposed’ to me. Of course, I know it was just a slip of the tongue, but I like to think maybe it was a foreshadowing. From what we know of our counterparts on the old Tempestria, the Cat and Dreya there were never in love. Now, I can imagine all kinds of Timelines, but I can’t understand how that one was ever possible.”
Cat was listening to her girlfriend’s speech, turning a deeper shade of red with every line. She had begun to guess where it was going but couldn’t bring herself to pre-empt it. That would be highly presumptuous and potentially embarrassing if she were wrong. She was stunned by Dreya’s open declaration of love. Yes, there were only three other people there, but even that would have been too much for the Dreya she’d first met to even contemplate.
“What I’m trying to say,” Dreya continued, “is that while you proposed by accident, it was no mistake. From that first day, you’ve been working your charm on me, so that – and I never thought I’d hear myself say this – you are the only thing that I care about more than my magic.”
“Dreya!” Cat gasped, bringing her hand to her face.
She knew what Dreya’s magic meant to her, and what that cost her to say.
Dreya dropped to one knee and opened a small box that she fished out of a pocket. The beautiful silver ring inside sported a blue gem that reminded Cat of the one atop her staff. Preparing to slip it onto the fourth finger of her girlfriend’s left hand, she asked, “Catriona Redfletching, will you marry me?”
Tears in her eyes, Cat answered, “Yes! Yes, Dreya, I would love to marry you!”
Dreya slipped the ring onto her finger, and Cat pulled her to her feet so she could wrap her arms around her fiancée’s neck and kiss her. Mandalee and Sara laughed, cheered and applauded, while Jessica was just overwhelmed with a flood of emotion.
“That was beautiful!” she sniffled. “I’m so happy for you two.”
The two Chetsuans ran to embrace the happy couple, and Dreya explained how they had kept the ring for her, so Cat wouldn’t accidentally find it before time.
Mandalee hung back for a moment until Cat beckoned her best friend over.
“You knew about this, didn’t you? These flowers have your signature all over them.”
Mandalee smiled. “It was all Dreya’s idea. That’s what counts. Her talents just don’t extend to nature magic.”
She had been working on it while her friends were away from the Tower, but Dreya had kept the changes hidden with illusion magic.
The sorceress came over to join them. “It was either Mandalee or my undead guards, and since Mandalee Blessed the red and white roses in the first place, it seemed appropriate.”
“It’s perfect,” Cat told them. “It’s absolutely perfect.”