War-Forged 701: Portents

As each of you spoke (or, in two cases, maintained wary silence) Kaia did not immediately appear to be listening. The god’s head had lifted and swung around, and her starspun gaze rolled with deceptive deliberation across the landscape before her as she took in the mortal realm. No, she did not appear to be listening, and anyone stumbling across the scene might indeed have felt that way.

But for you gathered mortals, you knew otherwise. The weight of Kaia’s regard was not dependent on her physical gaze. (And why would it be, for a star made flesh? They did not commune with voices and gazes, but with their souls, with their very essence.) Kaia’s awareness of you shivered in your bones, blazed in your blood, a trembling, living connection that blossomed between you and her. Even when she was not looking at you, Kaia was seeing you.

It was finally when Calleigh approached her that Kaia’s head turned again. She lowered her neck as the child approached, and the verdant curls of her mane tumbled in every direction. Where they touched the ground, colours seemed to deepen, and flora burst into life from nothingness. Kaia watched silently as Calleigh was pulled away, and then her gaze moved to Irileth as the mare spoke. Kaia followed her gaze, looking upwards.

And then suddenly she was standing before Fox.

I have seen your heart, little one; I see it now, as you see mine. There is nothing for me to forgive; have I not told you to trust in yourself? You are all of you mine, as I am yours in turn. Balance. You did not create this storm, and if it was you who called me here… it was done from devotion, and not malice.

Kaia touched her muzzle gently to Fox’s forehead, then pulled away. Her gaze swept over the group, though again there was a… hitch, a stumble, when it hit Fijalahr. Her gaze bounced over him as if he were a pebble in a wheel-rut.

Deliberate? she said finally, echoing the words of Taend and Credence. She could feel the confusion and fear and every other small minutiae of emotion that made up a mortal’s existence, echoing through the bond between them. She could feel the shape of their anxieties, the suspicions they would not put into words. Words! What small, constraining, useless things, when Kaia could read the truths in their souls!

This was no act of my brother Fire, she said firmly. Any of us… any of us could create a storm; there is less division among your mortal elements than you give credit to. But this was not… this could not be us-

Kaia faltered, her eyes flaring white again. That splinter of discordant unease deepened in her “voice”. If she had been mortal, you might have suspected she was confused.

This is… wrong. This is wrong!

Kaia flung her head high, and the storm winds whipped her mane around her, the gems along her frame flaring bright.

I wish to tell you to not be afraid. I cannot! You must- keep your faith. You must hold the center, maintain the balance. If not-

The storm broke overhead, the flash of blinding lightning simultaneous with the roll of thunder that shook the very ground. Rain fell like a sheet of stones from the sky, violent and cold. As the lighting flashed again, it illuminated Kaia as she stood there, again, so still she might have been a statue again, save for the lashing tendrils of her mane and tail, and the way her eyes flickered in time to the storm. There was nothing mortal about her in that moment, and everything ancient and cosmic.

I must go.

Seven heartbeats followed, seven flashes of lightning. At each one, Kaia appeared before one of you without having seemed to move, her eyes as wild and unknowable as the raging storm as she touched you gently on the forehead with her muzzle. Find the path, my beloved, she said to each of you, privately, the words wrapping roots around your bones, your soul. Her distracted concern could not be hidden, not in the intimacy of that moment; but neither could the love that she felt for you.

She reached Fijalahr last, and again her eyes flared, confusion seeping from the god’s every nuance. Her gaze seemed to flicker, as if unable to focus on him.

Who? she started to say, or perhaps, what?

Then the thunder boomed again, the world rendered blinding white as lightning lashed the sky. When it faded, Kaia was gone, her statue back on its pedestal as if it had never shattered.

Alya’s was repaired as well, but it was changed. Living plants threaded through the broken pieces, held the statue together. And this was not the only change: where on each of you Kaia’s muzzle had rested, a silvery wooden chain draped, and at its center sat a small, glimmering ruby.

Fijalahr alone bore no token from the earth mother; his circlet lay at his hooves in the mud, and the silverwood was charred, blackened.