I.

I may walk far, the sentence read, but I do not walk alone; though I move through the far reaches I do not go unattended. For love is at my left shoulder, and fortitude at my right; and the sun has my heart, and the powers my eyes, and the dark places and the pitiless places hold nothing for me to fear –

II.

This is why the Powers love humans, in spite of our many foibles: where an angel fears to tread a human will blunder in, pushing buttons and pulling levers and saying "What are all these sharp things for? What happens if I push this switch? What do those things do when they mix up? Why are you lot all hiding under the table?"

In the case of one Dairine Callahan, this was especially true.

Not that people called her reckless (At least not to her face). Not that some people thought of her as totally batshit insane, dude, what a little freak, she'll punch you in the face if you even think about making a joke about her mom, or even saying anything about it –

Or at least, if they thought that, they kept it very quiet.

So. It was more like…

She plunged into things. She was a focused and laserlike genius. Nothing, nothing at all, got into her way and had much time to think about getting out of it because. Because. Hey. Stop Dairine from doing something she believed in? Maybe you should just jump in front of a freight train instead. It would probably be quicker and less painful.

III.

Sea, the sun was a sea; a red-hot sea where slender flaming creatures gamboled and leaped up in high curls and looked at space with superheated diamond eyes and then plunged back into the fire. The sun was a thrashing hot wild wild wild deep place full of secrets and strangeness and a soul bigger than the world, where gold-frond trees grew and blew out in seconds and the ground was hot as a frying pan so standing on it you'd dance as the soles of your feet blistered and popped and where you'd find hot searing food and hot wine that burned down to your stomach and set your mind aflame and where you'd find a garden full of wobbling bright-burning flowers that when you picked you'd find crisping your palm to dust and dust and dust and ash –

IV.

"Are you going to Wellakh this weekend?" Nita asked, leaning against the doorframe. Dairine brushed her thick red hair behind her shoulder and looked up from the watercolor she was working on.

"I was thinking about it," she said. "Why?"

Nita made a slow wry smile. "Homework?" she asked. Dairine puffed out an exasperated breath.

"I'm gonna take it. Besides, I don't have much."

"Okay, okay," her older sister said mildly. "I guess we don't have to worry about you for lunch on Saturday. That's all I wanted to know. How are your lessons going, anyway?"

The younger wizard splashed her paintbrush into the murky glass of water set by her paper with slightly more violence than was strictly necessary. "It's slow," she bit out. "It's hard, Nita. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I don't know why it's so hard either. I don't know if it's because the sun's so big, or if I just can't do it… at this rate, I'm never going to find him."

Nita walked in and settled herself on Dairine's bed, which creaked slightly. "Dari," she said softly, "don't get to wrangled up about this, okay? Sometimes things come slowly."

Dairine took her brush and rolled it in the pat of red pigment. She painted one long crimson swipe across her painting – an abstract nonobjective piece, a wild and fiery jumble of reds and oranges and yellows. The splash of brightness she'd added fuzzed out and away into the water.

"I talked to a star myself, once," Nita murmured quietly. If Dairine had looked her older sister's expression would have looked remote as another star, thinking of something else entirely. "It's not hard if you look at it the right way. Look, if I can do it you can, Dair."

Far above, the moon was beginning to unveil her pale face – gently.

V.

She walked barefoot across the hot whispering grasses, soft and ticklish on her tender feet. When she reached the sand her soles began to blister, and the blisters burst and began to bleed, so the cuts on her feet filled with grit – red footprints were left, and when she turned and glanced behind roses were rising with glacial slowness from the barren landscape.

"I am looking for an old friend of mine," she said to the one springing up in her last footprint. "Can you help me? Do you know his name?"

"I am newly-brought into this world," the rose replied, in the soft leaf-whisper petal-rustle of the plant talk. "I know nothing of what you're looking for, or where you're going, or anyone adrift that you're searching for."

"How do you grow here?" the girl asked, somewhat irritated at the flower's unhelpfulness. "Maybe you didn't notice, but you're in a DESERT. It's hot. It's dry. Don't you need water and nutrients and stuff?"

"Deep down below, there is water," the rose told her. "The ground is full of ash and old memory – it is food enough. The planet remembers what has gone by."

"Does the planet know where I can find who I'm looking for?" she asked.

"The stars might. The stars see everything that walks round and round and back and forth upon this earth."

The girl stood up. She looked up and stretched, stretched to stand on her very tippy-toes. "ROSHAUN!" she screamed – "ARE YOU HERE?"

Are you even anywhere near?

VI.

The subsidized gate left to her did not whirl through the dark – it was more like a flash of night, an extended blink. Dairine closed her eyes at home and opened them again in the studied opulence of Wellakh. Jewels glinted in the corners like small-creature eyes.

Dairine shifted her backpack to one shoulder and walked through the room without looking at anything.

VII.

She hadn't talked to anything that wanted to eat her before. Maybe that was the problem – Nita talked to all sorts of dark and strange and twisted things and came out of them with deep behind her eyes and in her head. Nita slid her body along the huge flanks of sharks – Nita laid back in the belly of a strict rumbling predator and let it carry her where she wanted to go. Maybe she was more accustomed to talking to the oh-so-big things, the dangerous things, the things that could move an inch and crush somebody flat without even noticing. Dairine, on the other hand, blundered and shoved her way into things and went blustering out like a miniature tornado. Maybe Nita had just learned to listen better. You probably got good at that talking to trees, right?

The sun – the SUN – the beating feeling of pressure all around her, on her face, on her eyes. Dairine rolled away in her protected little bubble and covered her face with her hands. Heat pulsed along the backs of her hands.

Boom, boom, boom – it was like a heartbeat, a massive pulse, waves on the shore, or heavy bass at a concert: bass so heavy that you couldn't see or feel anything else. Only feel all the bones in you aquiver. Only feel the air in your lungs vibrating.

Hello, HELLO, she shouted in her mind and with her voice. The little words got tumbled in and lost in all the head noise, the thrashing beat of the living fire. HELLO? HELLO?

Even just the greetings take hours – it feels fast but the sun speaks in a big, steady, slow rhythm, for all that it lives superquickly. Maybe understanding is starting to seep in, in between the thump-thumping. Maybe it's in the head.

.. ….. HHHEHHHHH

...HH…… HELLO

CARBON-BASED … … .. .

HHHEHHHEHHLLOOOO

WWZZZZARRRRRD

…

VIII.

She dreamed of sitting in the deep garden, holding a sunflower in her hands. The gold of the petals matching the jewel she wore on her breast – the one that had turned, pale gold, rich gold, to pale again. Someone's hair fell over her shoulders in wheat-colored cascades.

"You're so annoying," he told her, in a crisp precise voice. He put a spin on his words, a bit of an edge; and she was so entirely glad to hear him and so entirely happy that she wasn't even offended. "You're shouting all the time. I'm all right, you know. I'll be back when it suits me."

She could feel them sharing weight, leaning back-to-back, his shoulder blades rising up like wings. "RoSHAUN," she said tightly. "You can't just leave off like this. You can't just go away for awhile. The planet doesn't quit turning, you idiot –"

He shifted his weight. One thick strand of white-blonde hair pulled away from where it lay across her breast. "Turning, not turning?" he said airily. "For Wellakh, for Earth… what does it matter?"

"Okay," she returned. "Okay, okay, so maybe for Wellakh it doesn't – but it DOES, Roshaun, the planet still needs to turn for day and night, even if one side is dead –"

"You don't understand," he said haughtily. She felt his weight leave her and stumbled backwards slightly.

"Roshaun," she said desperately. "ROSHAUN. I don't need to understand this! Just because you want the planet to stop doesn't mean it WILL –"

He was walking away. She could hear his footsteps brushing light as mothwings across the grass, and she whirled and saw his slender too-tall form with his hair longer than any girl's down to the butt flaring out behind him and she ran for him, ran like a desperate predator, a spurned lover, a wizard, not like a GIRL, and she reached for his shoulder –

And woke up.

Her nose had been bleeding in the night – the tang of copper was on her tongue. Her pillow smelled of smoke and regret.

IX.

"Dreams?" Nita asked her, thumping the cover to her manual down. "Like, lucid dreaming or just normal dreams with stuff from wizardry and people you know in them?"

"I don't know," Dairine snapped back, raking her fingers through her tangly hair and scratching savagely at the scalp. "I don't know. They don't seem to make sense, but it feels like I'm totally in control of what's going on. Nothing that he says ever makes any sense. None of my arguments ever work. Nita, I don't know how much longer I can do this –"

Her sister stopped her in the middle of the kitchen, and hugged her gently. Dairine closed her eyes against the cotton t-shirt Nita wore and breathed in her sister's smell: the chocolate she was snacking on, dust, Nita-essence or whatever you wanted to call it. Good smell. Home smell.

"There's probably something in the manual," Nita murmured. "I'm sure you could look it up. Of course, who knows how helpful the manual would be in a situation like this? It sounds like some kind of personal thing. Hey, maybe it's something unique to you."

Dairine pulled herself out of the hug and blinked hard. Once. Twice. Got a grip. "What would you do, Neets?" she asked.

Her older sister turned away thoughtfully and pulled open the fridge. She seemed to contemplate the pitcher of fresh-mixed lemonade but there was no focus in her eyes. "What would I do?" she asked. "Hold on a second here. I want to savor this moment of you asking me for advice."

"Niiiiita…"

"Okay," Nita said, smirking slightly. "I guess what I'd do is, I'd try to take control of the situation there earlier. I'd try to see if I could get deeper into the dream."

X.

…HHH… H. H. H.

HELLO

HELLO WIZARD

Hello

Hello, hello, hello, Sun, hello, hello

HELLO

I HAVE HEARD YOU

I HAVE HEARD YOU OF LATE, SEEKING CONVERSATION WITH ME –

I DO NOT OFTEN HEAR THE VOICES OF THOSE WHO ARE NOT THE RULERS.

Sorry – I'm sorry if it bothers you – only the Prince, he died, or he went away, a while ago, and the jewel was left to me. So I have to learn to use it now. I'm sorry…

THE PRINCE…

I FELT HIS PASSING

THE WELLAKH RULERS – THEY DO NOT DIE. A WELLAKH GOES NOVA – A WELLAKH GOES INTO ME. I HAVE NOT RECEIVED THIS ONE.

BUT

IF HE IS GONE

THEN I WISH HIM FOUND –

BECAUSE CONVERSATION IS NOT SUCH A BURDEN.

I WISH THE GUARONTOR-INHERITOR FOUND.

XI.

She dreamed

Again

of sitting in the deep garden, holding a sunflower in her hands.

The gold of the petals

matching the jewel she wore on her breast – the one that had turned

pale gold, rich gold, to pale again.

Someone's hair fell over her shoulders in wheat-colored cascades.

"You're so annoying," he told her,

in a voice of mild affection. And it made her glad. It reminded her, at the end, that maybe they'd been friends – even if they'd fought sometimes – they'd been friends.

She could feel them sharing weight, leaning back-to-back, his shoulder blades rising up like wings. "I've been looking for you," she said in a voice of dry pain. Her throat was as parched as the Sahara. "Your parents are worried. Your sun misses you."

He shifted his weight. One thick strand of white-blonde hair pulled away from where it lay across her breast. "The sun…" he said softly. "The sun has known me for a long time. The sun knows every new guarantor from the day we are born."

"Will you come back?" she asked him. "Please, Roshaun." And it hurt so much to beg, but she was desperate, and hoped he wouldn't throw that away… "Please. The planet needs you. I –" – and this was the kind of thing that made talking painful – "I need you. Nita has a partner, a best friend – what about ME?"

"Childish," he said, with dry playfulness. "But sincere. Still. This is a peaceful place. I am glad to be close to the Sun. And coming back would be difficult…"

She turned about, there and then, and there he was: Prince Unlikely, sitting and looking lovely, cupping a sunflower of his own in one long-fingered hand. "That doesn't mean anything!" she said, and was mad at him – all of a sudden, it was eating her up. "Life is hard for EVERYBODY, Roshaun, and you sure didn't get the toughest cut of the meat! At least if you can come back you can say you TRIED, and didn't just give it up FOREVER!"

And she was going to go on when he turned his eyes up, dark holes cut into space, and smiled at her gently.

She reached down and took his hand, and he stood with her.

The Sun was shining golden from inside his heart.

END

11/6/05