Over the next week or so, Xandria set about the island, distributing the gifts that she had brought with her. She went first to Antum, bringing a number of small saplings with her. She gathered the lumber yard workers and explained carefully how to take care of the trees as she planted them in fertile soil.
"Now," she said, standing and brushing the dirt from her hands, "Be sure to take good care of those trees. The seeds for those trees are extremely rare." She pointed to the short row of small, pale barked saplings. "Those will become great mahogany trees in some years' time, and those will become hardy yew trees." She nodded to the other row of saplings that she had planted, ones with much darker bark.
The workers seemed to be disappointed about the time it would take for the trees to mature enough to make any kind of profit off of.
But Xandria smiled and reassured them. "It will be more than worth your time and effort it takes to bring up these trees. And in the meantime there are still the oaks and maples."
Once the lumber workers were satisfied, she moved on to the docks of Manaron, where she taught the fishermen some techniques that she had learned on the mainland.
She looked out of place among the burly men, and many of them were skeptical about what a woman could teach them about fishing, something that many of them had spent most of their lives doing.
The entire group took one of the larger fishing vessels out into the harbor, and each man watched with curiosity as Xandria moved to the open back of the boat and stuck her hand into the water. Minutes passed before Xandria smiled and pulled her hand from the water with a decent sized tuna, its mouth firmly around her fist.
"That's totally barbaric," said one of the young fishermen as she pulled the fish from her hand and cut it with a knife from her belt. The fish stopped flopping about as its blood fell to the deck boards.
Xandria nodded, smiling at the young man. "That's exactly what it is," she said, "I learned it from a barbarian named Otto not too far south from here." Her intense eyes scanned over all of them. "And now, I'm going to teach all of you."
The fishermen lined up along the edge of the boat, and, with much hesitance, plunged their hands into the water.
"Wiggle your fingers," she encouraged. "Makes the fish think there's a tasty treat in it for them."
It didn't take long until the men were pulling fish from the ocean. Hesitance quickly gave way to competition as they fought to see who could pull up the biggest tuna. Xandria smile, glad to see they had taken so well to the barbarian fishing.
It wasn't long until she was down in the mines of Fayhollow. She didn't bring any new equipment or anything, but she helped them find new, more valuable ore. And with the new, more valuable ore, would come new prospective buyers to the Isles.
And that day, although he couldn't afford it, Ky-ele avoided the mines. Ever since she arrived, he avoided her. He headed up to Glassedge Cliff, away from everyone that spoke of Xandria and her gifts. He needed to be alone. He'd always thought that he wanted to see his best friend again, but now, here she was, and he couldn't be any more conflicted.
He sighed and shook his head as he broke through the tree line, then froze in his tracks.
There she was, sitting at the cliff with her back to him, dangling her feet over the cliff side, just like she had done so many years ago.
"Hello, Ky-ele," she said without looking at him.
Ky-ele took a step away, unsure of what to say or do, almost hoping he could get away before she addressed him again.
She turned her cool blue eyes to him. "Don't go, Ky-ele."
He shook his head. He had heard her voice before, this exact voice, in his dreams. He had heard her speech on the docks a few days ago, but that was to the crowd. Here with just the two of them, her voice was the same, just lacking the harshness of when she spoke in his dreams.
She patted the ground beside her. "Come sit."
He was silent for a moment. "Why should I? You left me. Why should I listen to you?"
She sighed slightly. "Ky-ele. Come on, it has been fourteen years. Can you just put that all behind you so we can talk like civil people?"
"No." He turned and began to talk away.
"I knew they were misleading," she said quietly, turning back to the ocean.
He stopped, and knowing he'd regret it, he turned back to her. "What?"
She sighed as she thought. "A couple years back I traveled to Lunar Isle, not too far north of here. They taught me much of their magic. One technique was to communicate through dreams."
He stared at her in disbelief at what he was hearing.
She waited for him to say something, but when he didn't she continued. "Once I had learned how to do it properly, I tried to contact you. It doesn't always work so well because I don't have the altar or all of the items that they use on Lunar Isle. But, on some occasions, I can manage a strong enough connection where I can have some kind of communication with you."
"When was the last time you did this?" he said after a few moments of taking in what she said. There was a harsh tone to his voice, one of obvious anger.
She thought back. "The morning I arrived here," she said, noting the anger in his voice. "Why?"
"It was you," he said with realization. "All this time it's been you, not just my imagination running wild."
"Ky-ele, what are you talking about?"
"For years now I have been plagued by nightmares, Xandria. Nightmares of you and less than kind words that you had for me. And it is because you tried using that…barbaric magic to get into my dreams," he said, not relenting on his old friend. "You had no right in thinking that what you were was okay."
"Ky-ele, it was never my intention to-" she started, but he wouldn't hear it.
"I don't care what your intentions were. For months after the nightmares started I was hardly sleeping, that's how bad it was. They were coming night after night, probably because it wasn't working how you had hoped." He saw as a guilty look fell upon her face as if he was right. "It was affecting my work, Xandria. I was so tired from being woken up in the middle of the night that I could hardly get anything done down in those mines. My family suffered because of it!" He shook his head. "Get those that you need and get out of here. You're doing no good hanging around here." He wanted absolutely nothing more to do with her, and turned, disappearing through the tree line.
She was left completely dumbfounded, staring at the trees. She sighed, looking back down to the ocean waves crashing beneath her. "That went great," she said with another sigh. She stayed out on the cliff until long after the sun had set, then she stood and made the long trip back to the Celestial Hawk.
Well, here is it. It took me forever to get over some writers block, but I finally made it and managed to get another chapter of this story. Sorry it took so long, and once I have everything transcribed into my new composition book, many, many new chapters will be on their way. This AND my new story, Wylde at Heart (if you haven't had the chance pop over there and give it a read, the next chapter of that will be up once it has been edited [come on bestie {I only josh you, take as much time as needed}]).
Cheers until next time.