18.9
Jewel had been six winters old seven times across her collective lives, She was at her eldest going to be forty winters old this year, and yet Anna was absolutely sure that this was one of the worst of the lot.
Her face in this body was so squished up the cavities of her snout went up into her face and over her eyes! It made it so hard to get a proper whiff of anything and when she did sometimes the smell simply clung inside her head until she stopped being able to notice it! That was assuming her nose passages were clear enough to even use properly! Most of the time her face was dripping and clogged with mucus in quantities that made her want to forgive all her silent complaints about the quality of the first Gem’s body.
Jewel’s first spawn had suffered nowhere near the mucus that her soft flabby pink one did!
And this was apparently entirely normal!
No wonder children were often so upset and ill tempered!
Their lives were a horrible overwhelming mess of unpleasantness!
Anna was according to the inspection of Tsulogothulan, Leo, The wise woman that had delivered Alexander’s son and the weaving circles in both Valasect and Rochford a perfectly ordinary (and apparently ‘adorable’) little girl.
She had a tail, technically, but it was so small she easily kept it tucked under her child’s shift, she had hatched with teeth sharp enough for meat but after her first year she lost all of those, being replaced with dull flat, and most of all tiny man teeth.
Anna had scales, but the specks were so sparse and ‘artful’ that many didn't even notice in low light, and those that did seemed to think they were just peculiar freckles. They offered no protection from scrapes, bruises, heat or cold!
They were essentially only good in that many people seemed to find them pretty.
Paul and Smithson liked to joke that Anna was their ‘gold dusted little lady’. She was glad it made them smile, but still her scales were otherwise worthless!
Her eyes were getting better at least, but still felt awful, she could barely see any distance at all and was near blind in what should have been dim light, and whenever she caught herself in one of her other self’s eyes she could not deny the fact that she resembled nothing so much as a diminutive child version of Elizibeth Bathory!
She’d apparently taken so very strongly after Paul that the older she got the more she could see the family resemblance. It churned uncomfortable feelings in her memories every time she was poured into this particular cup.
To see and feel herself looking out from those eyes was a disturbing sensation.
Still It was not the time for her to be so upset!
Tonight she had a proper dress at last, it would only fit her for a few years. But it was more or less in the proper cut to allow her to move as freely as she wished, though Anna was so horribly clumsy compared to any of her spawn. Barely able to toddle and perhaps briefly run compared to all the rest of her sister-selves who had grown and matured well beyond her.
Her clutch-mate among the trio was indistinguishable from her sister-selves after only a year!
Gem the second had finished filling out to the size of her predecessor barely two years later. But Anna? Anna was just like a girl, everything she had ever secretly wished for as a child was true now, she was exactly how she had so long yearned to experience.
And it was awful!
Being a normal child was terrible and now Anna had to grow through it! No wonder Gwenn had become so martial! Being like this was enough to fill her with an endless fury that could only be truly soothed by the presence of her Mother-Self.
The wholeness of memory that could let her partly forget the flabby, weak, clumsy thing she was the rest of the time. She was so jealous of her other selves now and how they had grown to their ‘completion’ in short years.
While Anna was-
“Stop frowning Anna, it will stick like that if you do.”
Her Mother, that is ‘Jewel’s Mother’, who insisted that Anna call her babcia gently pinched at her cheek, and the heat rushed to her face, this was not the time for her to be so centered on her own trials. This was the night! In Burning Depths Ford, Erhard, The Archpriestess of Asherah and her Wyrmself were enacting the ritual!
Stolen story; please report.
And they would be able to see it from the courtyard of Fort Rochford! The completion of work that had begun before Anna had hatched! It was heady, overwhelming, her memory clear only for the amount that all of her had been mulling over it before Jewel had been needed in the Capital.
Paul, Leo, Smithson and almost the entirety of her household had remained in Rochford. Jewel had flown alone to Burning Depths Ford. She would be back in only a few days, but this morning a bird had arrived informing them that the ritual would complete tonight right after the last light of the setting sun.
Leo had gathered them up, all of Jewel’s household so that he could enact the ritual to secure their souls as soon as the Leuhtąnae rose into the sky. A shelter large enough for all the souls of the realm with room to spare. Forged by a sacrifice of nine True Wyrm eggs, Jewel’s own sorcery, and so much labor and treasure of the Realm. All culminating into a veritable lake of Erhard’s soul silver and the miracles of the Goddess Asherah called down from the sky.
There was so much more to it but Anna did not recall more than the itch of those memories despite how much of them had occupied the ruminations of all of her selves.
She did know and feel how important this culmination was though, how could she not? Everyone in the courtyard was abuzz with it and they did not share a self with one of the main parties enacting the working!
The last lights of the sun set behind the hills and mountains surrounding Fort Rochford. The crowd was now silent, all of Jewel’s footmen, Dariusz and his family, Smithson, all who served her in Valasect, her brother, her mother, his wife, his infant son, all of their staff who had yet to pass winter and earn a name for his fortitude.
The villages and cities all over the realm of Cantor reborn would be offered this assurance in the days ahead, instructions on the rite to be performed by their local priests and god watchers, all who followed the way of the Pantheon would be given the opportunity in time as well, perhaps even others, but tonight Leo would anoint Asherah’s blessing and the security for their souls himself on those Jewel held closest.
Her sister and Imre would be arriving tomorrow with Gem, they had been delayed by a washed out road. But word by bird and Gryphon rider assured they were safe and secure.
Anna wished her clutch-mate self could join them tonight but all the other spawn were still here. They did not have the same fear as the others. Leo would not be assigning them a blessing to the stone, a valid worry he assured regarding what it might even do if he tried.
None of Jewel’s spawn needed that protection anyway, they were already secure by their nature as Wyrmspawn, Poor Gem had taught them as much.
Anna suddenly turned as a gasp went around the courtyard, she turned to the east, following everyone’s gaze, her eyes so much weaker than her sister-selves, but even she could see it, the way the sky wobbled, stretched, bulged so much like it did in those memories she had of weddings in Kaeketeh.
Then shining white, like a silver sun, the Leuhtąnae bled up over the horizon, flowing like the heaviest cream poured upward into the sky, smearing up until it suddenly stuck in place, the flow cutting off and then the entire sky rippled.
The stars shifted in their place, and then all settled, a crystal clarity filled the air, Anna marveled, the light of it was silvery, like starlight but so much brighter. It nearly made the courtyard feel like an overcast noonlight, but the shadows stood out so sharply!
It was sorcerous and wondrous!
The ritual had been completed, Her wyrm-self would be leaving the next morning, flying at speed for home. But now it was time for Leo’s work.
Her court priest raised his hands, and intoned the words of the ritual that he had practiced for this night. That he had done on a select few of Jewel’s household with the smaller Leuhtą-un in Valasect’s shrine. But that blessing had been broken in preparation for this.
Now Anna saw him walking between the crowd with a clay bowl of water, blessed by Asherah.
“Mother of men’s souls, Shining Light Asherah, knower of fate’s river as it flows over the lands of the world. In the light of the heavens do I call to you, shelter your child in its comforts, so that they may be kept safe and be known and live anew in time.”
Anna could not see the touch of the divine, she only saw Leo place his wettened thumb on the brow of her Mother, that is Babcia. Then move on to Alexander and repeat the same words. On through the crowd, placing the touch of Asherah’s water to mark them, invoking the silvery light that hung over them.
A mass of soul silver wrought stone that Anna recalled was nearly two thousand feet across hovered in the sky. Looking so small for the distance it had been placed within the sky. Yet against the stars and the silvery light it cast upon the mountains it also seemed impossibly vast.
A place in the heavens for the souls of her family, of all she cared for, of all the living in the realm.
Anna let her memories dwell on the pain that had still been fading as she grew, the ache of her Father’s passing. The guilt of her part in it and Muriel’s. Their souls were yet lost, but with the silver white light of a new body in the night sky shining down on her Anna knew that what she had helped do as herself was right.
She would not have to lose any soul here in this courtyard now, not like she had lost Muriel and her Father, No one else would have to suffer that either who knew the rite Leo was performing and perhaps she would one day find where the currently lost souls had come to rest after this.
After all, Jewel did not want to say goodbye.