Memories of What Was
High above the beach, Nita sat, perched on air made solid. Her brown eyes were faraway with remembrance as she stared off at the impossibly distant Tamins mountains, so alien, and yet so familiar. She smiled faintly. It had taken a long time for Nita to be able to come back here, but eventually she had.
She breathed the crisp, clean air, and lost herself in memories.
Memories of Quelt, of a warm, brilliant smile and exuberant handshakes, of the only wizard the planet really needed. Worries about the Great Vein, talking to the wind. Her willingness to talk, and her shattered ideals, placed aside for her people.
Of Demair and Kuwilin, one bald with narrow features, the other with soft, downy hair and an easy, never-ending smile. Perfect paintings of jijis flowers and bright splashes of colour filled Nita's head, mingling with the feel of peach-coloured sand beneath her bare feet, and the many tastes of shesh.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimmer of light off a rounded dome. The Relegate's Naos. An image of the Lone One on her throne, staring at Nita with a look of desperation on her coldly beautiful face rose from her mind, making her shift uncomfortably.
Where was Quelt now? Where were Kuwilin, Demair, Druvah, and all the other Alaalids? What had really happened to them, after they had gone shooting like comets into space? And what was happening on the planet now?
Once Nita had arrived above Alaalu, she hadn't looked below her. She had been too caught up in remembrances of what had been to see what there was now. The young wizard had been sitting there for about twenty minutes now, inhaling the sweet air and making her peace with the past.
Now she looked down at the land below her. The azure sea was unchanged, tiny waves rippling the water and breaking on the beach, but the terrain was different.
All over the beach, large cone-shaped structures reared from the sand, made from the same tiny granules that formed their foundation. All over them, the keks swarmed, busily adding clumps of sand to the cones. It was as though the tiny cone-shapes the keks had built on the shore for as long as the Alaalids could remember were the scaled-down plans for these structures, and these were the real thing. The blue-green crablike shapes of the keks seemed slightly bigger, somehow, and their movements were less frantic, more purposeful, more calm. It won't be Alaalu anymore. She thought. They'll come up with their own name eventually, something that means home to them.
Watching them for a while, she wondered what they would say now, if she were to call out to them in the Speech. Would they say the same thing as always, or something new? Yet, something stopped her from speaking to them. Let them work by themselves for a while, before they start hearing voices from the sky. She decided. Eventually they, too will hear and speak the Speech, will have wizards, and will make their own Choice. But let them stay in ignorance for a little bit longer, before they have to decide. What will they choose, I wonder?
Her manual, sitting on her lap, fizzed. That would be Kit, full of ideas of what to do next. She stood up, intending to get back to Earth through Rirhath B, and perhaps see Sker'ret on the way.
Did we do right? "Goodbye, Quelt. I hope this is what you wanted."
As she opened her mouth to begin speaking the spell, a warm breeze gently caressed her cheek. A familiar voice whispered…
"Everything is fine…"