and my ears will listen

[truthwright]

Time goes by. Shura's mother lets her cut a cloudpine branch, and she and Helen go flying together.

Helen celebrates her eighth birthday by baking all her favourite people a cake again. And then she goes away with Kas, to Iceland and Russia and back by way of Alaska.

When they fly in, Kas on Petaal's cloudpine and Helen on her own, Helen is wearing blue jeans and a pink T-shirt.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"How can you tell if someone is a prophet if they never make a prophecy?" asks Inkeri.

"If they have the right goddess and domain and no obvious birth blessing. Prophets occasionally appear even in clans that don't birth-bless, although then it's harder to be sure," the queen replies. "You should tell your friend not to come to me in mortal garb again."

"I can tell Helen you said so."

[carillons]

Helen notices she is listening to the queen. She decides to stop.

[alicornucopia]

After a minute, Inkeri catches up to her. "The queen doesn't want you to talk to her while you're wearing mortal clothes," she reports.

[carillons]

"I know, I heard," she says. "Then I stopped listening."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh. After that she told me that even when I am not making prophecies I'm still a prophet and this gives me special clan status and I will learn more about that soon," she volunteers.

[carillons]

"That's cool," says Helen.

[alicornucopia]

"It might be," allows Inkeri. "Your dad seemed very upset about my prophecy."

[carillons]

"That happens sometimes," says Helen.

[alicornucopia]

"Has he heard prophecies before?"

[carillons]

"No, but he gets very upset about stuff sometimes," she says. "And it doesn't always make sense why."

[alicornucopia]

"I wonder why I was supposed to tell him that prophecy."

[carillons]

Helen shrugs.

[alicornucopia]

Inkeri doesn't seem to have anything else to say, but she flies alongside Helen companionably.

[carillons]

Helen smiles at her.

[alicornucopia]

Smiles.



Kaydi is a full year older than Helen, and her daemon settles when she's just eleven. Lexaryn is a tree swallow, and very vain about it. She separates on the first try, and Lexaryn is barely within thirty feet of her for the next week, showing off.

Shura has been anxious about separating, and keeps asking Kaydi about it and getting told, "Everybody does it, don't be a baby."

[carillons]

Whereas Helen prefers to hug Shura when she expresses such concerns.

[alicornucopia]

Helen does not have the important attribute of having, in fact, walked across the Waste - "And even when you do, your birth blessing will help. I'm scared." (Shura is hugging Nicoa hard. He's being a Dalmatian; he's been being mostly mammals in deference to her nervousness.)

[carillons]

"I'm sorry," says Helen. "It's okay to be scared. Kas was scared when he did it."

[alicornucopia]

"He didn't have to, though, did he? He's not a witch, if he didn't then he wouldn't have been a little kid forever."

[carillons]

Helen says, a little hesitantly, "He kind of had to. Somebody he cared about was in trouble, they were going to die, and the only way to save them was for Petaal to be a witch and fly to where they were and rescue them."

[alicornucopia]

"...Oh. I think that might be worse," muses Shura.

[carillons]

"Yeah," says Helen. "And he was really scared, he says, and it was awful and scary and sad, but then he rescued his friend and hugged Petaal a lot and everyone was okay."

[alicornucopia]

Shura nods. "I know witches all do it, but it hurts if Nicoa even goes - over there." She waves at a tree.

[carillons]

"Yeah, it does," says Helen. "We pulled pretty hard once, and it hurt a lot."

[alicornucopia]

"And you have the thing. I don't have that thing."