11. Secrets: Seeds

Carlie lounged by the trunk of one of the ancient trees in the Forest of Wonder, settling her pale bishop's robes around her. Idly, she plucked at long copper curls that shone against the cream-colored garment. She was one hundred and thirteen years old, barely middle-aged in elf years, but even so, as the time passed there were fewer people and places familiar to her. The forest outside Diorre was one of the only places in the world which never seemed to change, remaining as it always had been; a fact that puzzled many who wondered how it could border Altena and still be absolutely temperate.

Her hands involuntarily played with the object they held, a stone Leroy and Shayla had brought her. An odd, eye-shaped stone that seemed to be looking back at her. It was an artifact, certainly – she could feel the Mana inside it – but as with every such item that she had run across, it was too little to be useful for anything, really. Still, she found it oddly comforting.

It was a slight fluttering in the air that didn't exactly match the breeze that made her open her eyes, to see a curious figure she hadn't expected to see, here or anywhere else. The shock was great enough that she paused for a moment, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her; but her memories of nearly a hundred years before didn't lie to her.

It was a fairy.

"That stone… the Mana… it drew me…" she uttered, floating some distance away but looking just as Carlie remembered, small and ethereal.

"Where do you come from?" she exclaimed, and the winged being flitted over to her questioningly.

"You can see me?" the fairy asked. "We show ourselves when we believe we are threatened, but it's very few who can see us on their own. Nowadays, anyway."

"But..." Carlie was still getting over her surprise; it was leaving her feeling tongue-tied. "You shouldn't be here at all! Aren't you supposed to be the seed of the tree? The tree's nothing but a sproutling right now!"

"If only it were that simple," the fairy replied. "Things are not always as they seem, young one. We are the bits of Mana from the Goddess who will be formed, but distorted, incomplete, not unlike the monsters of this world. We can touch Mana, somewhat better than the humans, but we are not truly a part of it any longer. What has changed is not whether or not we exist, but how strongly we are tied to the Goddess."

Carlie pondered that a moment. "So... where does that leave you now?"

The fairy looked morose. "We used to exist in the Goddess's dimension, Her reality overlapping yours, but the pulsations of the two world differing. It made us immortal, untouchable, unless we chose to enter this world, the Tree bridging the gap between worlds.. But we are only barely held by the Goddess now, and we are spilling over into this dimension. We are doomed to be pulled to wherever we feel Mana – the lake, the snowfields, the jungle."

"But who then are the Goddess's heirs?" The picture of the world, and Goddesses old and new, had always seemed so clear to her; new Goddess growing, and once she reached her maturity in another nine hundred-odd years, the fairies would be born anew as her seeds and heirs. She had preached as much for decades; but she had also preached that barriers were breaking. Uncomfortably, she realized the separation between the worlds which the fairy spoke of was just another barrier. It wasn't just barriers that were shattering, but many of her hopes along with it.

The fairy motioned in a circle. "Look around you. You are half elf, and the elves of this forest have always understood that Mana is a part of all living things. Just as we are connected to the Goddess, just as people are connected to the Goddess, so is everything in this forest connected to the Goddess, and as long as there is life in this world, there is a little bit of her left, for she, too, is part of something bigger. The trees and grass miss her, too. Can't you feel it, Priestess?"

Carlie closed her eyes to meditate, and let a long moment pass… it was faint, but once she opened herself to the forest, she could feel it, ever so faintly, the feeling of the Goddess herself.

"The plants," she said, opening her eyes. "They're all connected."

The fairy nodded. "Connection to the Goddess… it may eventually be our only hope. The new Goddess is not fully formed; she is disjointed, indistinct… Few remember her, and so many have forgotten what Mana is really supposed to be. The sorcerers can't touch Mana the way the fairies can, but that doesn't stop them from trying. They grab whatever they can, in whatever artifacts they can find, and they would have us amplify the shards for them."

That triggered something for Carlie, and she recalled the disturbing rumors coming out of Altena the past couple of years. "Artifacts," Carlie replied. "Anise is trying to duplicate them."

The fairy's expression grew dark. "She is," the being confirmed. "But we won't let her."