XXXVI.

Touching another Viera was different from touching a human—it was a wholeness, a singularity. Mjrn had grown taller since Fran last saw her, but the lily-softness of one fresh bloomed lingered on her skin, and her exuberance—fast-running pulse of youth—betrayed her among the adults.

Mjrn was speaking in Vieran, and it took Fran a moment to realize that she was answering her, telling her how tall she was, and how strong. The Wood rejoiced around them—she could not convey to her human companions that it was a living entity, more than a place—the air was cool this deep in, the Mist was calm. Fran thought she saw the ghost of a smile on Joté's face, but it vanished when Mjrn's inquiries fell into a gasp, and then silence. She was looking over Fran's shoulder—to the humans.

Fran assured her in Vieran that they meant no harm, but she only stepped back and met Fran's eyes, asking what was wrong.

"I am not staying," Fran told her in Dalmascan.

Mjrn held her hands tightly, mirroring the language with the distinct clarity of one still learning. "Why not?"

Fran hesitated, but Mjrn—quick girl—saw what she hoped to hide and turned to Joté. She, in turn, glanced downward.

"Joté?" Mjrn said, more a reprimand than a question.

"It is the Wood who creates the laws," she answered. "I merely enforce them."

"But our sister is back!" Mjrn cried. "Why should the Wood not rejoice?"

"That is above our reasoning," said Joté.

"We are born of the Wood!" she pressed. "We hear Her always, one with Her will. We should share the same reasoning!"

"Mjrn," Fran injected, "the Wood does not stretch on forever. Beyond the trees, there is nothing to hear. She is only a piece of Ivalice."

"Then why does She reject other pieces?" Mjrn snapped back.

Fran shook her head, Joté reciting the usual excuses she foisted upon Fran in her youth while Mjrn met them with still more fervor. Perhaps she had been wrong to bring them through here—the humans. The Mist illusion that transformed Golmore Jungle into a snapping, howling forest ran the full perimeter of the Wood, along every edge, up both sides of the cleared foot trail to the mountain, and had been renewed yearly—the full power of priestesses from all seven villages within—for eons before Fran ever walked the Wood. Fran had not lifted it—could not have hoped to—but only thinned it for a time to ease her companions' hearts. A human could step right off the path and into the forest and find themselves embraced by the jungle without resistance if they deigned risk what lied beyond. Such a fragile barrier—fear—yet so arresting, so effective. Perhaps she ought to have let it stand.

She was grateful for her language now, listening to Joté voice the insults her kind had for humans, even if rightfully. Regardless of the volume with which it was spoken, Vieran always weaved through the air like a whisper, and Fran hoped that Balthier would not hear. They had done more than enough to earn Joté's censure—even if she did not know the particulars, nearly every detail of their existence was a fine example of what was wrong with humans. And Fran knew well enough that the actions of humans were far-reaching and indiscriminate—all too often she had heard them lament the fate of Landis: no quarrel with Rozarria or Archadia, yet conquered all the same, ravaged and ruined and divided because of its bountiful crops, each empire striving to control the other's food supply.

Fran was about to interject—to make the same overtures of peace that humans always made throughout the blood-stained ages—when one of the humans did it for her:

"It will be war."

The breath went still between Mjrn and Joté, words dropped away on the breeze, and the pair of guards glared—she had heard the princess chance a step forward as she spoke.

"If we don't meet with our enemies," Ashe continued, "if this meeting doesn't happen, the country south of you will rise against the countries north and east and west of you, and you will be caught in the center of it all."

Joté studied her, and spoke with a scoff: "And you think this will be stemmed if your meeting does happen?"

Ashe shook her head. "The people who would stop us—who would use the fall of my country to see their own glory—they will call for battle and rally the people, and it will be unending war. They will not respect the rules of the jungle, or the rules of the mountain. Already they've sent their fleets into neutral territory. The machines of the Archadian Empire will never stop, and if you think you can remain in isolation simply because you do not care for what they do, you will wake up one morning to find them right here at your gate."

Fran stood very still, only her fingers flexing when Mjrn wrapped an arm around hers and gripped her hand.

Joté's voice was low: "I have lived a very long time, human. You are hardly the first to be so arrogant—to consider your life the virtue on which the world spins. We are not so wholly unaware of the world outside the Wood as you think, and life there does not change as much as you are desperate to believe. You humans come, you make noise, declare yourselves to be whatever you believe suits you best, and you go and are forgotten. This is the way it has always been—in your histories as well as ours. In the end, you are all but words written on the wind."

Ashelia looked away, and Joté turned to Fran, speaking still in Dalmascan: "Your presence here is blasphemy. You must go back the way you came and never return."

"That cannot be all!" Mjrn begged. "Ivalice is changing. How can the Viera stay and do nothing?"

"Ivalice is for the humans," Joté told her. "The Wood alone is for us."

Mjrn lurched forward, fists tight at her side. "You would have us just hide here in the trees! What if I go with Francesca? Will you forsake me, too?"

"I will not take you," Fran interjected.

The girl turned to face her, eyes wide.

"You must remain away from the humans," Fran went on. "Live together with the Wood. This is your way."

Mjrn stepped toward her. "Fran—"

"You mustn't be like me. I won my freedom, yet my past has been cut away forever. No longer can my ears hear the Green Word. Do you really want this solitude?"

"Sister…"

She shook her head. "No, Mjrn. Your other sisters remain to you, but you must forget me."

Mjrn gave her a hard, glistening stare, then told her quietly, in Vieran, "You are no better than Joté."

And she walked away, sheer wisps of fabric curling in the breeze behind her like a thick Mist. Fran closed her eyes, turned her face to the ground.

"I am sorry to make you do this," Joté told her in Vieran, shaking her head.

"If she goes against the laws of the Wood," Fran replied, "she will be no better than I am. It is better that I do this—better I than one who must uphold the laws herself."

The Mist at their feet swirled then, the vines on the gates writhing just faintly and the orchids climbing the nearby trees fluttering their petals in unison. Fran thought she heard a whisper there—felt it beneath her skin, a tremor in the rhythm of her heart—and she clutched at the soil beneath her feet with eager claws, drank that surge in and committed it to memory for fear that she would never taste it again.

Joté gazed at her, midnight blue eyes steady, certain. "The Wood says you have earned your passage," she said in Dalmascan. "Go straight to the mountain, and pass through on your return without delay. What the Wood tolerates, Eruyt does not—you are still unwelcome here."

"Thank you," Fran said with a nod. "We will go quickly."

She could feel the humans behind her release a unified breath, the very tension in their muscles tangible through the Wood's Mist, and Ashelia spoke again:

"We will never—I swear to you, I will never forget this."

"Of course you will." Joté did not even say it all that unkindly, something akin to pity in her gaze. "You humans—you destroy all that you touch, in search of some goal you cannot name, some place you cannot reach. All we can do is stay out of your way, and hope your time here will be as brief as you seem likely to make it."

The princess nodded, then turned as Fran passed to follow her away from the gate. The others took stride after her as well, but as she left the coolness of Eruyt—as the sensation of the Green Word drained from her limbs—she slowed to a halt, and looked back to Joté.

"The Wood…" she said, the Vieran at home on her tongue. "I fear She hates."

Joté paused, and replied in the same language. "She longs for you—for the child gone from under Her boughs."

"A pleasant lie," Fran whispered.

Joté shook her head. "She is jealous of the humans who have taken you."

"I am as them now, am I not?"

Joté gave her a slow stare, but said nothing.

Fran blinked, taking in a small breath and nodding once as she spoke: "Goodbye, Sister." And she turned fluidly, walking away with the bewildered humans at her heels, leaving Joté on the other side of the gates. Dozens of Viera abandoned their hiding places and neared their priestess's side, eyes tracing every step of the outsiders—silent to the humans, no doubt, though the whisk of their breath in the trees and the knolls had beat in Fran's ears for the whole discussion.

Fran strode smoothly at the head of the group, scarlet eyes fixed on the fern-laden distance. She could feel the warmth of Larsa's eyes upon her for several moments before he broke from the group and took up pace at her side.

"Fran, are you alright?"

She didn't look at him. "I will be."

He took her hand quickly and stopped her. "You're a good sister."

She paused for a moment, looking into his eyes, and then took her hand out of his and passed it over his hair. "Thank you."