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

[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."

[carillons]

"I don't really know what the thing does," says Helen. "Maybe it hurts me less to pull, or maybe it's just going to be - easier another way, less distance maybe? I don't know."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh. I guess there's no way to tell."

[carillons]

"But it does hurt," she says. "I'm a little bit scared too."