This Is the Sign, part I: The Return to Tipa
The caravanners from Tipa returned home at three hours past noon following their harvest of one last drop of myrrh from River Belle Path the previous day, a full eleven weeks before the time that they were due to return.
Here, like at Marr's Pass and the fields of Fum (and Leuda, according to the moogle that brought good news), the aura of the town's crystal was already widening; this year it met the caravan a good sixty yards before the bridge into the town. Even today a group of Clavat children had discovered a new tree to climb and were swinging from its branches.
"Sam! Theo!" David called out to two boys of twelve and eleven who were trying to carve their names into the trunk of the tree—two younger brothers that he and Lydia left at home in their time abroad as caravanners. Both boys jumped up, startled and then delighted, running eagerly into the arms of their older siblings, while one of the other children sprinted across the bridge to tell the whole town that the caravan had returned.
"The safe field's gotten bigger—didn't you know?" Theo asked Lydia.
"We knew, even before we reached the fields of Fum on our way back," Lydia answered. "We all went to Mount Vellenge and destroyed the source of the miasma there. We'll tell everyone about it later, when we address the whole village."
By word-of-mouth from the children who played, word quickly spread throughout the tiny village of Tipa that the caravan had returned early, albeit with one less person among them. The open space around Tipa's crystal filled with villagers who tried to make their exclamations of surprise and anxious inquiries heard.
"You're back—and it's still three months before the myrrh festival!"
"The crystal aura's widening—they say the miasma's thinning out!"
"Where is the Selkie who was with you—did she get killed in a fight? What happened to her?"
"There was a letter saying the town would fall—that we'd all have to get out! But then there was a letter from Dimo Nor to tell us that all was well…"
Khetala raised a large hand to call for silence as the wagon rolled into the open expanse. "Settle down, settle down, my friends and countrymen," she began to say. "It's true, we have much to tell this year, given the circumstances of our return. Hear me well, as I will explain the phenomenon that surrounds the widening aura of the crystal and many other things that you all, as my fellow townsfolk, wish to know."
Then Khetala told the townsfolk about the caravan's journey to the Lynari Desert four years ago and how the mysterious Clavat wanderer Gurdy had, by a series of poetic verses, pointed the caravan to a means of crossing any miasma stream with a single magical element. This was the unknown element, she explained, that held dominion over earth, water, fire, and air alike. Khetala then proceeded to explain that there lay a miasma stream west of the Rebena plains that matched this unknown element. Only by finding it in the desert could the caravanners cross, though they had not attempted to do so until so very recently. Beyond the miasma stream lay the eerily still village of Mag Mell populated only by large green furry-looking sleepy creatures called carbuncles and a few moogles in their nest, and even beyond Mag Mell there lay the mountain that for centuries was only ever spoken of in rumors and whispers: Mount Vellenge.
"Every child of every race today hears stories of an ongoing battle between a queen of memories who turns good memories into myrrh and a great evil demon who uses bad memories to turn the miasma into monsters, as they vie for dominance over the world that we live in," David began to cut in. "It was at Mount Vellenge that we learned just how real those clashing forces were, as real as the crystals and the drops of myrrh that purify them, and as real as the miasma and the monster-forms it assumes. We learned that the very source of the miasma was nested at the summit of Vellenge, and Khetala led us there intending that we destroy it."
"But before we speak further of Mount Vellenge," Khetala started explaining again, "there is something else that I must make known. Three years ago now, we witnessed the death of the Black Knight, a Lilty who had lost much of his memory. In his dying words the Knight gave the demon a name: 'so long as people live, Raem will make them suffer,' he said. Raem. That is the name of the demon that ravaged the Black Knight's soul. I knew that Raem would thus attempt to ravage our souls, as well, if we went to destroy the great bulbous parasite creature that sent the miasma forth over our world."
"Then how did you survive with your memories intact?" questioned a fearful old Clavat woman—Maladye, the wife of town elder Roland. "Is that what happened to Anaїs Nin—this demon Raem got hold of her and stole her memories?"
Lydia looked significantly at Khetala before answering the old woman's question. "We didn't—all survive, that is. Raem would come after us to take our memories once we successfully destroyed the source of the miasma, so, according to Khetala's plan, we had to drop the crystal chalice and run as far away as we could, hoping that the miasma killed us all before Raem caught anyone. It was either severe memory loss or death by miasma poisoning, there was no other way."
"Damn you for a fool among Yukes, Khetala!" an angry Yukish man burst out. It was MacWeise, Khetala's father. "You would have led the entire caravan to its death for an end you would never even succeed in reaching! You may have cut off the miasma at its source, but it's still a threat, as your Selkie friend was only too right to point out in a tear-stained letter to her family!"
"Wait a moment—then how did it happen that any of you is even still here, let alone carrying a full myrrh chalice?" asked the town elder, Roland, as much out of wonderment as to cut off MacWeise's sudden tirade.
"I'm very glad that you ask," Khetala explained calmly, taking Dimo Nor by the shoulder, an action that surprised many people. "This brilliant Lilty remembered that we passed a moogle nest on our way up the mountain, quite close to the miasma-spewing Meteor Parasite where it lay waiting for us. On hearing the roar that told us of Raem's waking once we finally annihilated the parasite, Dimo Nor seized the chalice and ran to hide in that moogle nest. The resident moogle told us that our Lilty friend lay in her nest, himself fading in and out of consciousness, for over a full day before he was able to set out from there again. He found my body first, as I had simply run until I could go no further, and saw that I had dropped a life-giving magicite stone when I fell. By the good grace of Mio, Queen of Memories, Dimo Nor—who had never yet cast a spell in his life—was able to cast the Life spell that revived me. Over the next two days and nights we searched, finding David and then Lydia."
Dimo Nor stepped forward at last. "At that point, having failed to find Anaїs Nin and learning from our moogle friend that Anaїs Nin had gotten knocked out and thrown down the mountain in her desperate bid to outrun Raem, we despaired of ever finding her. We hadn't an inkling of the real nature of what separated her from the caravan until inspecting our wagon to find her belongings—and only hers—missing, and later observing that what used to be the miasma stream was now standing still. Khetala did suspect that another caravan had been able to cross and took Anaїs Nin with them after reviving her, but…"
"Roland did say that much was true after he got your letter, Dimo Nor," interrupted a middle-aged Selkie woman—Rah Sie, Anaїs Nin's mother. "Both your letter and Anaїs Nin's letter, the tear-stained one that told us of the impending doom, relate such an assault on Mount Vellenge and say that she was then separated from the caravan and taken to Leuda."
"We didn't know for sure what happened to Anaїs Nin until more than two weeks after we left Vellenge and were on our way back to the fields of Fum," Dimo Nor continued, "when a moogle flying from the south cried out to us 'Good news from Leuda!' It told us that it was Leuda's caravan that crossed the miasma stream and found Anaїs Nin; that they'd taken her to that shore. And saying of which, has she written anything home since the letter saying she feared the worst?"
"No," answered Anaїs Nin's father, the merchant Zeh Gatt, "no, she hasn't."
"She was still aboard the ferry at the time she sent the letter," added a Selkie girl who was about seven years younger than Anaїs Nin—her sister, Tala Ne. "She told us to come to Leuda if we could in the event that the rest of you didn't return—this isn't anything to smile about, Lydia, what the hell are you looking like that for?" she suddenly accused.
The joyful Clavat caravanner only smiled wider. "On the contrary," she began, "it's better this way. Anaїs Nin left us to bear the good news."
"Either that, or she thought the excited moogle would spread the word for her," Dimo Nor chimed in.
"What good news?" asked another voice in the crowd, probably that of a Lilty.
"I went to Leuda long ago with the caravan before the year that Dimo Nor and Anaїs Nin first became caravanners," Khetala explained. "There I learned of a prophecy that foretold how a Selkie daughter named Anaїs Nin would stand with those chosen to 'march upon the edge of night, and even unto death, from whence she will return to bear the light of golden dawn.' She, Anaїs Nin of Tipa, did just that—she helped us destroy the source of the miasma, and then cast her body into the miasma to save her soul from a demon that would devour it. But her being found, revived with magic, and taken to Leuda—I should have known—what would come of her reaching Leuda was the sign of the Great Revival: the dawn of a new Golden Age."
Zeh Gatt sighed impatiently. "You're not making sense, Khetala," said he, "how would Anaїs Nin being taken to Leuda be a sign of a great revival?"
"I thought it made no sense too," Lydia answered for Khetala, "until our erstwhile moogle messenger told us it had more good news. It said, 'You'll never guess who else is alive and safe in Leuda, thanks to the caravan of Yukes from Shella!'"
"You all might remember our return last year," added David with the indication that he was now addressing the several Selkies that formed Anaїs Nin's family (as hers was the only family of that race in Tipa), "that when we returned, Anaїs Nin was hopelessly out of sorts, and remained so almost until we were ready to depart again."
Tala Ne nodded, recalling aloud, "We know she did cry a lot—who knew it was because she'd fallen in love with the ambitious young man she'd met in Shella (I don't remember, was his name De Nam?) and discovered he'd been killed by monsters in Conall Curach?"
"As it turned out," explained Khetala, voice rising with excitement, "the 'sign of the great revival' was a marriage of two souls returned from death! De Nam was the one that the Shella caravan found and brought back to the world of the living—that he, too, was now alive and safe in Leuda—and he asked Anaїs Nin to marry him, almost the moment they were reunited!"
"What?" came Rah Sie's astonished cry, echoed in broken exclamations of surprise from several other villagers.
"You heard right," said Dimo Nor boastfully, thumping the ground with the butt end of his spear in emphasis. "Anaїs Nin's going to get married—and we all plan to be there when it happens, so tonight we'll celebrate our myrrh festival, and tomorrow we set out for Port Tipa, on the ferry bound for Leuda!"
Another Selkie from Anaїs Nin's family, her cousin Foo Kloo, shook her head at Dimo Nor. "But if that's why you came home so soon before the actual day of the myrrh festival, then you don't need to be so hasty," said she in an effort to calm the keyed-up caravanners and the excited townspeople. "Stay and rest at least a few days—and even more importantly, give us some time to prepare to welcome the newlyweds back to Tipa if Anaїs Nin and De Nam would wish to settle down here."
"I know what any of you would say," added Zeh Gatt in a stance of dignified resignation, "that if what you tell us happened to Anaїs Nin is true, then it's all as the good Queen of Memories wishes, and I would not try to prevent Anaїs Nin from being married to De Nam of Leuda. All the same, however, Foo Kloo is right. Give us time to prepare to welcome the newlyweds should they be inclined to return to Tipa."
All the while, the crowd of townsfolk dispersed, in haste to prepare for the myrrh festival and excited with the prospect of welcoming a new face to Tipa in the near future. For Tipa, what Khetala said was true: this was the sign of the Great Revival.
A/N: Just so you know, I only allow characters to repeat facts as events occur in order to enlighten characters like the townsfolk who don't know what's going on, in case anybody's bothered by repetition. But before I cut to more fluff, keep your eyes peeled for a battle coming up as Raem finds out the five Tipa caravanners have thwarted him!