you can throw me if you want

[truthwright]

It turns out that there was really not much point to making a schedule. Kas and Helen visit the witch clan whenever Helen feels like it, and stay as long as she wants, and go when she wants to be somewhere else, and it all adds up to plenty more time spent with the clan than away.

After the aquarium jaunt with Ranata, it's a little more than a month before they visit the clan again.

Comments

[carillons]

Helen definitely listens to that.

[alicornucopia]

"I don't know what she did," Ranata is saying. "I don't know anything about what she did, or how. It sounds like any number of curses - why wouldn't she have - or couldn't she? - but if she could make him immortal -"

"Helen's the important thing," says Castarilan, "even if he's not fixable we can look after her."

[carillons]

"I love you, Granatee," Helen murmurs in their ears.

[alicornucopia]

"You're still - how does this work? I can't tell when you're listening or not," frets Ranata. "I love you too, Helen."

[carillons]

"I don't know how it works," she says. "I just - listen for you, and there you are. And it helps me not be scared."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay," says Ranata. "I'm coming. I'll be over the national border soon."

[carillons]

"Good," says Helen.

[alicornucopia]

"I'm going as fast as I can."

Ranata decides to save the question of whether she'll be able to fix Helen's spinach for when they're talking in person.

[carillons]

"I know," says Helen.

[alicornucopia]

"The queen will find whoever did it and make sure they can't ever do it again."

[carillons]

Softly but still very, very clearly: "Are you sure?"

[alicornucopia]

"It might take her a while, but she will find them."

[carillons]

"Okay," says Helen.

She hugs Kalavar, and listens to Ranata, and waits.

[alicornucopia]

Ranata is out of things to say, but there is still the rush of wind, and her breathing.

[carillons]

The time passes with an occasional 'I love you' or 'where are you now?'.

[alicornucopia]

Ranata always answers her - "I love you too." With the number of miles yet to go.

[carillons]

Eventually the number of miles becomes small, and Helen says, "Can you see the building yet?"

She remembers the approach with Petaal; she can say what it looks like from the air.

[alicornucopia]

"Not yet, I need to get my bearings - I'm coming up the street now."

[carillons]

"Okay."

She hugs Kalavar.

[alicornucopia]

"I'm going to go show the front desk people Castarilan and then he'll come find your window."

A minute later, there is a hummingbird at the window.

[carillons]

Helen goes to it and opens it, and Kalavar buzzes up to Castarilan as a fuzzy bumblebee.

[alicornucopia]

In comes Castarilan, and presently there's a knock at the door.

[carillons]

She hears it with a funny echo, because it's where Ranata is and where she is.

She stops extra-listening and runs to the door and opens it and hugs Ranata the huggiest hug of all hugs that have ever hugged.

[alicornucopia]

Ranata hugs her back hard, and says, "Let's get Kas tied to the cloudpine, and go home."

[carillons]

"Okay," she says, looking dubiously at Kas and Petaal where they are snuggled up and glazed over. Petaal is coiled around Kas as a constricting snake of some kind; the species is hard to tell under the ice.

Helen cannot imagine how they are going to get Kas tied to a cloudpine branch.