Good News from Leuda
Sunrise a fortnight and a few odd days after the descent from Mount Vellenge found the caravan from Tipa camping in a field perhaps a day's journey from the once-windy Selepation Cave, which for almost two years had been quiet since the Tipa caravan's previous visit.
David was the first to rise. Once he had packed his sleeping blankets back aboard the wagon, he cut a loaf of nearly-stale bannock bread into four big pieces for himself and his fellow caravanners and poured milk from a large jug into four earthenware cups before waking any of his fellows. "We're near the fields of Fum; soon we'll have fruit and vegetables to eat too," he reassured a sulky-looking Dimo Nor; he knew that the Lilty did not like stale bread, but it was all that they could spare for breakfast.
The caravanners ate in relative silence, with only a wistful comment from Lydia about how she wanted the wind to rise from the cave again because then they could go there and collect their last drop of myrrh "and be done with it." David gave his sister a dubious look at this remark; he did not want to think about how cold it had been in Selepation Cave. But at last came something that none of them expected: a moogle flying toward them and calling excitedly, "Kupos from Tipa! Kupos! Kupos!"
Khetala stood bolt upright at the sight of the moogle flying to them from the south, as did David. It did not look like a mail-carrying moogle, as it did not have a letter between its tiny teeth, even though Khetala recognized it as a mailmoogle that had brought many letters to the caravanners over the years. "You have no letter, so why do you call out to us?" asked she, puzzled.
"Good news from Leuda, kupo!" answered the moogle exuberantly despite the fact that it was out of breath.
"Leuda?" Lydia repeated.
"Yes, kupo, Leuda," said the moogle, "You might know that the streaming miasma is standing still now, and better yet, the crystal auras around towns are getting bigger, even the ones that need their myrrh soon."
The caravanners seemed to all take some comfort from this news, as it meant that the miasma would thin out in due time as they predicted (perhaps even quicker than they originally thought), but they still were at a loss as to why this moogle was so excited. "But why Leuda, of all towns?" Dimo Nor asked impatiently.
The moogle bounced up and down with excitement over giving more good news: "The caravan from Leuda went through the miasma stream they thought nobody could cross when they found it standing still, kupo, and they found your Selkie friend Anaїs Nin lying dead at the foot of the mountain there and revived her with magic! They took Anaїs Nin to Leuda with them, kupo!"
"These are ravings," answered David in disbelief. "Even the moogle we met on Mount Vellenge when Dimo Nor went around reviving everyone with a Life stone said she didn't see a trace of Anaїs Nin, so we figured the monsters tore her apart. She can't possibly be alive now."
Dimo Nor, however, did not fully disbelieve. "Ivy said there was no blood where she thought Anaїs Nin landed at the end of her tumble-down when she went to check, and that was the only time she left her nest once I hid from Raem in there," he explained. "So it is possible."
"It's true, kupos! Come to Leuda if you don't believe me," replied the moogle.
"I thought so," Khetala summed up. "Did I not tell you? Real bandits, if they had looted the wagon, would have taken whatever they could—and as it was, only some of Anaїs Nin's belongings were missing." She breathed a sigh of relief. "So Anaїs Nin is alive and safe in Leuda."
"And I have more good news, kupos!" interjected the moogle messenger. "You'll never guess who else is alive and safe in Leuda now, thanks to the caravan of Yukes from Shella!"
David repeated the name of the Yukes' island town soundlessly, cudgeling his brains to think to whom the moogle might be referring. Who might someone from the Shella caravan have found and brought back from the dead, that that person would now reside in Leuda?
"I knew it!" Khetala cried out in a more joyous tone than any of her fellow caravanners had ever heard from her.
"Knew what? What did you know, Khetala?" asked Lydia eagerly.
The moogle flew in circles and figure-eights around the caravanners. "No, don't say it, kupo—let me tell the good news!" it said. "You happen to remember a Selkie named De Nam, don't you?"
"We do," answered David in realization.
"So he is alive? You have seen De Nam in Leuda yourself?" Khetala questioned.
The moogle was bobbing up and down with excitement again as it announced: "I sure did, kupo! And the news is all over Leuda by now—De Nam asked Anaїs Nin to marry him! They're engaged now!"
It took some time for the caravanners to register their astonishment at all of this good news combined. "But that's so wonderful!" breathed Lydia at last.
Dimo Nor, however, seemed dismayed when he spoke again. "And why didn't you tell any of the rest of us that Anaїs Nin was in love with De Nam all along?" he asked Khetala. "Then we would've known why she took Conall Curach so hard after the letter that told us all to come there last year!"
Lydia laid a hand on her heart in pain as she remembered the fateful visit to Conall Curach and the battle with a behemoth and a large pack of stone sahagins. Once the battle was over, they had turned to find Anaїs Nin on her knees, clutching a torn piece of faded purple cloth in one hand and singing something in the Selkic tongue. The rest of the caravanners soon realized that the cloth was De Nam's old bandana, for Anaїs Nin's song was a lamentation; they could tell by the doleful tones of her voice. But any time that David, Lydia, or Dimo Nor tried to speak of it afterward, Khetala bade them be silent.
"I alone realized how broken Anaїs Nin's heart was," explained Khetala. "You see, it was not De Nam's last letter that made her hopeful so much as the gift that came along with it: a bolt of blue silk. What Anaїs Nin never told us in light of that letter, and certainly hadn't the heart to tell us after Conall Curach, is that blue silk is traditionally a Selkie man's betrothal gift to his beloved."
"De Nam meant to propose to Anaїs Nin when we got there," summed up David. "Our visit, when we thought he was dead, destroyed all her hopes. That's why she sang that Selkic lament—but why didn't she say something? We could have offered her some comfort if we only knew what troubled her so."
"Selkies are by nature independent folk—Anaїs Nin must've thought the burden of a broken heart was hers alone to bear, so she did everything she could not to let on, even to me or Khetala," said Lydia mournfully. She got up and went to the wagon, retrieving a quill, ink, and parchment. "Even if we don't go to Leuda to meet her again until we've gotten the last of our myrrh and gone home, though, I'm going to write to her," she explained, "she probably thinks we're all dead now; I have to reassure her that we're all well, so the rest of Tipa is safe."
Dimo Nor nodded assent. "I hadn't thought of that!" he realized aloud. "Then by all means, we need to write home, too, in case Anaїs Nin wrote to say that we might not be coming home."
"Very well," concluded Khetala. "Before we set out to the fields of Fum to stock up on food, Lydia and Dimo Nor will write. David, you and I will start packing the wagon—if my recollection serves me correctly, the tree at River Belle Path bears myrrh again this year, so we will top off our chalice there before returning home."
"Wait a moment!" Lydia cried out. "How long will it take us to reach Port Tipa once we board the ferry?"
"A day or two, depending on the state of the river," her brother replied.
David could tell that Lydia was already formulating a plan by the way Lydia began counting on her fingers and muttering things like, "Two days from this side of Jegon River to Port Tipa…a day from there to River Belle Path…"
"That works!" Khetala interrupted Lydia's mumbling. "It cannot take us more than two days of fighting the monsters of River Belle Path before we reach the myrrh tree. We can have our chalice full several weeks before we must return to Tipa for the crystal purification ceremony. River Belle is but a day from Tipa. We will have time to accompany Anaїs Nin's family to Leuda to attend her wedding and back again, and then she and De Nam will decide among themselves whether they wish to stay in Leuda or settle down in Tipa."
Already Lydia and Dimo Nor both wrote as if their hands were on fire with excitement to hear of the good fortune that befell the fellow caravanner thought lost from the fray, as well as to tell of their valiant attack on the source of the miasma. At last, almost two hours later, they finished writing. While Dimo Nor sent his letter along with the moogle that had brought them the news from Leuda that Anaїs Nin was alive and safe, Lydia waited until the caravan reached the fields of Fum and sent her letter with the next messenger moogle she met. All the same, though, all of the caravanners felt their hearts lighten considerably at the delightful turn of events.