AN: For Amy. Send help!
Spoilers: “The Immortals” and “The Lioness Quartet”
Disclaimer: Oh so not mine. But I love them anyway.
------
Tale the First
His one request of her was that she show him Snowsdale. She speaks of it infrequently, but she knows he hears her when she dreams of it. She has never been back and he whispers to her of riding down the dirt paved streets under the colours of Tortall and beside a black-robed Mage. She knows he is only trying to make her laugh, but when he catches her tears, she lets him pull her close and he whispers instead of how they should make the journey.
Cloud is old now, and it is all she can do to leave her friend behind. They will travel another way, one where Cloud cannot follow, but it still feels a bit like betrayal. Cloud tells her it is silly, and she knows it is, but she leaves Stefan with extra sugar and oats when she leaves.
They travel during the day, a pair of hawks racing towards the north. Passing birds remark at their determined path, and it is several hours before she can stop her talons from twitching every time she sees a rodent crawl along the ground. He remains himself in birdshape while she becomes the bird, but from how he describes it, she knows he understands.
Sometimes at night she changes back after he does and forgets to include her clothing. She feels she will never tire of the way his eyes widen and his face softens before he reddens and turns away. This power is new to her, and something she is still unsure of, but she does know she likes it. When he turns back to her with the hunter’s look in his eyes and comes closer, she knows that he does too.
No one notices the pair of hawks that come wheeling in above the town and roost above the smithy. She points out the men that tried to kill her and the women that came to her mother for aid when they were with child. The animals begin to gather and neither of them really notices until the smith himself comes out to shoo them away. She says hello to her old friends, surprised that any of them remember, and they tell her they wondered when she would give up being a two-legger. Explaining that she hasn’t entirely is futile, but she thanks them and bids them well.
Snowsdale is unchanged and unchanging. No new house was put up where Sarra’s once stood, and the ruins are more overgrown every year. In the place where the kitchen used to be, there is a shrine and she knows it is for the Green Lady. The marmot that comes out of the forest explains that the women come here even though the men don’t like to know about it. She thinks that would have made her mother laugh.
She cannot face the graves at first, but he takes her hand and she finds herself telling him about each of them, one by one, until the tears make it impossible for her to speak any more. When she regains control, he tells her that he has seen all he wanted to, but she smiles and tells him there is one more thing he needs to see.
The mountains above her mother’s house and shrine are never free of snow, even in the summer. Their whiteness would be blinding to human eyes, and even as a hawk, she cannot look at them for very long. The birds told her of this place long ago, but this is the first time she has ever been able to reach it.
The sun hits the snow below and is reflected. He starts to explain why this happens, but she tells him to be silent, or he will miss it. This needs no explanation; it simply will be. She catches the first current ahead of him and rockets into the air. Laughing, he finds his own and follows her. The rise together, circling in the brightest light either have ever seen. Here, all Magic draws together and the colours of the world are everywhere. He can see her world and she can see his and finally, there is absolute understanding.
As the air grows thin, she hears the Goddess sing.
fin
gravitynotincluded, May 6 2006