Five chapters and no reviews--what is this? Come on, readers!
(Sorry about the editing inconsistencies that cropped up in-between some of the chapters when I submitted them.)
But enough about that. Back to the story, in which things are only going to get better for the motley Tipa caravan...
Joyous Reunion
Anaїs Nin was surprised, in spite of all her worry and grief, to see that the edge of the protective aura radiating from Leuda's crystal met the ferry sooner than it had when she went to Leuda with her own caravan. For the first time in the entire journey from Mount Vellenge to Leuda, she felt a ray of hope shine into her heart. The miasma streams stood still and the protective auras around towns were enlarging since the defeat of the Meteor Parasite. Perhaps her family and home would be safe after all, even if her fellow caravanners never returned home—or if the miasma was still a threat, the townsfolk of Tipa had more time to seek refuge.
As Dah Yis had promised in his attempt to cheer Anaїs Nin up, the citizens of Leuda had hung welcoming banners all over their town and thronged the port in wait for the ferry that had brought the caravan home. Indeed, the warm welcomes of those who remembered her from the motley Tipa crowd brought the smile back to Anaїs Nin's face, and she enjoyed meeting others that Dah Yis introduced to her. But all the same, nothing could have prepared her for the surprise that met her next.
"Hello there!" called out Hana Kohl to someone in the crowd. Anaїs Nin, following her glance, realized that Hana Kohl spoke to a young man who wore clothes of a color that Anaїs Nin had never seen in Selkic attire: bright fire-orange that contrasted sharply with the short, rough-cut blue hair partially held back by an orange headband. The man was marked with a scar that ran along his jaw line from below one ear to his chin, and several more scars on his chest and shoulders—but his gaze traveled from Hana Kohl to Anaїs Nin, and on seeing her there came a gleam of delight to his silver eyes that she recognized…
"Do my eyes deceive me?" murmured Anaїs Nin in disbelief. It couldn't be. A stone sahagin that she killed in Conall Curach dropped his bandana, as she had recognized it from their first meeting in Shella six years ago. She had believed him to be dead… Thinking that it must be a trick of the light, Anaїs Nin rubbed her eyes, which, she was startled to discover, were brimming with tears. However, when she was able to see clearly again, he still stood there.
"I'm no trick of the light, Anaїs Nin," said the young man, walking toward her and clasping the hand that had wiped away her tears. Indeed her ears, and her hand, did not deceive her: the man's gentle-sounding voice was unmistakably that of De Nam, and the way he held her hand felt exactly as it did when they had parted ways in Shella. "Surely you must remember the day we met."
"My caravan—we came to Conall Curach—I—I thought you were dead, it's all we could find of you…" sobbed Anaїs Nin as she used her other hand to retrieve the torn piece of cloth that was once his bandana from a pocket, but she couldn't say another word. She was overcome with crying, her joy at seeing De Nam alive still hedged with doubt and disbelief.
This scene surprised Hana Kohl. "How long have you known Anaїs Nin of Tipa?" she asked of De Nam through the hardest of Anaїs Nin's crying.
"Six years, at least," he answered. "I had been living in Shella, researching the connection between myrrh and miasma, when the caravan from Tipa stopped there for a period of rest. Both Anaїs Nin and the Yuke woman, Khetala, were interested to hear of my research, though I think Anaїs Nin was the more interested one of the two. She and I continued to exchange letters since. But why did you and Dah Yis separate her from her caravan to bring her here?"
"It all started when we plundered the labyrinth of Rebena Te Ra for our last drop of myrrh," explained Dah Yis. "I saw that the miasma stream to the northwest of the labyrinth, the one that nobody had crossed for eons as far as we knew, stood still. Hana Kohl wanted to return home once we had our chalice filled, but I convinced her that we should try to cross the miasma stream. We did, and it shocked us to see that there was a wagon tethered to a hitching post at the foot of a forbidding mountain."
"Mount Vellenge," corrected Anaїs Nin, having by now regained her composure. "The wagon belonged to my caravan—we had gone there to destroy the source of the miasma."
Briefly placing a reassuring hand on Anaїs Nin's shoulder, Dah Yis continued, "It was this caravanner that we found just a hundred or so yards away from the wagon—she'd caught her death of miasma poisoning, apparently in a desperate attempt to outrun a memory-eating demon named Raem. Hana Kohl realized who the dead Selkie woman was and revived her with a life-giving magicite stone, and we bade Anaїs Nin come home with us."
"She really wanted us to help her look for the four friends of hers who had met the same end that she did," added Hana Kohl, "but we were already a week late in coming home—would've been two weeks late if we didn't make haste. Eventually she resigned and wrote home to tell the Tipa townsfolk to flee—presumably telling her own family to come to Leuda if they could. But it may appear that I need not have worried, with the miasma streams standing still now—the Tipa caravan's attack on the source of the miasma must have been successful; even today it appears to have started thinning out, if the crystal's aura widening even a little is any indication…"
"It can wait until the crystal ceremony—I have some explaining to Anaїs Nin that I need to do," De Nam finally told the caravanners. With these words, he led Anaїs Nin away from the crowded ferry port and to an inn that served wayward caravanners and others, proceeding to take her to the table farthest from the door. Thankfully the inn appeared to be deserted except for three men and a woman who all sat together at a table near the bar. There Anaїs Nin was finally able to ask him: How had it happened that he was here now?
"Your caravan wasn't the only one that I had bidden come to Conall Curach so that I could show the success of my experiment," explained De Nam, "I also sent a letter to Amidatty from the Shella caravan with the same request. It was he who—miraculously—discovered my mangled body floating in the water. It took the magical efforts of the entire caravan to revive me, but they managed, even though I remain badly scarred from the battle that took my life. I don't know exactly how long it was between my last letters and my untimely death at the hands of a pack of those stone sahagins, or how long I had been dead before the Shella caravan found me. But for my oath to return unburdened I could not return to Shella afterward, so I've been at home in Leuda since. Unfortunately, somehow the Life spells caused me to lose the residual miasma in my body, and my resistance with it—the price I paid for having my life back, I guess."
"I'm sorry to hear that," murmured Anaїs Nin apologetically.
"Don't be," said De Nam with a soothing note of encouragement in his voice. "I thought I had met my end at Conall Curach, but losing my resistance to miasma doesn't mean that my work had to be for nothing now that I'm revived. It just means that if I want to be able to live in the miasma again, I need to start over at the beginning. As our elders say, 'With every revival, there is opportunity to start anew.'"
As he quoted these optimistic words of the elders, De Nam stood up, an action that surprised Anaїs Nin. He took a step towards her side of the table at which they sat, continuing, "And even if I decide that it's not worth the pain that it caused me the first time now that the miasma seems to be thinning out at long last, there are other ways of starting anew. Do you remember my letter, in which I asked you to come to Conall Curach with your caravan?"
Anaїs Nin said nothing, merely nodded slightly. De Nam took another step toward her. "Do you remember the gift that I sent along with the letter?" he asked.
She gasped in surprise. De Nam had sent to her a bolt of blue silk—the very same one she took from her caravan's wagon when the Leuda caravanners bade her return home with them. Anaїs Nin hadn't told any of the others in the Tipa caravan, but blue silk was traditionally a Selkie man's betrothal gift to his beloved. She was certain that De Nam had meant to propose marriage to her when she and her caravan arrived in Conall Curach, but finding only his worn bandana there had destroyed her hopes. "You sent me a bolt of blue silk," she answered at last, feeling renewed pain mingling with her renewed hope. "I don't know why I kept it after my caravan went to Conall Curach…"
"Yet even now I see hope reviving, like myself, and like you, if what my cousin tells me is true," said De Nam, at last dropping to his knees before Anaїs Nin, his look part apprehension but all earnestness. "And you would be right. I've loved you since the day we met in Shella, Anaїs Nin, all those years ago. I've loved you across all the distance that separated us through those long years, and now that you and I are together, I ask that nothing ever part us again. Anaїs Nin, will you marry me?"
The question winged through like beaming sunshine to Anaїs Nin's heart. She, too, had loved De Nam, but she had never realized just how much so until she believed him dead and gone forever. Now her heart swelled with joy and hope at the prospect of the future that they would share. "Of course I will, De Nam, of course I will, because I love you too," she answered, breathless with joy, as she leaned forward and stood up, lifting De Nam to his feet as she did so.
A dull thunk sounded that interrupted them, found moments later to be a moogle that had bumped itself flying into the inn sign. The moogle was too eager to spread the news that it had just heard. "And now a moogle flies to spread word of our engagement," said Anaїs Nin in an amused voice.
"Then let that tiny moogle tell it to the whole wide world," laughed De Nam, drawing Anaїs Nin ever closer to him. "This is a happy moment—the like of which I've never known." He kissed her then, with all the passion of a man separated from his beloved for far too long.