An Age of Mysterious Memories

B 2 C 4: Catch the Breeze

Based on what Lil said, I can definitely still create their tether, probably without problem. I need to cautiously find out what the other tether is like now. For that, I’m going to need everyone, my whole inner circle.

As I start to rise, I realize it’s late into the night, possibly going on early morning soon. Lil and Lu have been patiently cuddling with me, napping, this entire time. “Thanks, you guys, you’re the greatest.”

“Fo sho!” Lil excitedly tries some new slang in response. I raise a single eyebrow as I chuckle. Lu just sifts my hair for a moment then pats me on the head. After that, Lu starts to shove on my shoulders, pushing me away and upwards, helping me stand.

“My legs fell asleep, now they’re all tingly, pins and needles!” Lu exclaims, with mock anger. Oops, that’s my fault. Reading my thoughts, Lu replies, “Darn skippy it is. Tehe.” In penance, I try to help wake Lu’s legs up, in the manner one would expect, then I help her up.

“Do you guys, um, do you think Te might maybe be up? Or maybe wouldn’t be too mad if we woke her up? Could you, would you maybe please come with me, to see her?” I stammer my desire, barely able to get my questions across as my jaw starts to lock, and the rest of my muscles begin to quiver.

“She doesn’t sleep much anymore, Reggie pal. A couple hours a night in the cuddle pile on some nights. Or other times maybe not at all, or maybe napping wherever she goes off to train at. I honestly wouldn’t even normally know where to find her, but now that you ask, I can feel she’s awake, nearby.” Lil’s explanation fills me with mixed emotions. Teuila is still driven, still striving to be what she’d always wanted to be, for herself, and her family.

“And for you.” Come three voices simultaneously, as Teuila cautiously approaches the entry of my tent, standing far enough away to not block my path. It’s surreal that they all share the same thought. Lu gives me the mildest shove, barely more than a tap. Even with how meek the shove was, I still wobble slightly forward. My panic is fighting to rise to the surface, but I’m mostly keeping its symptoms to weakness of muscle at the moment.

My limbs shake as I take a single, slow, plodding step towards Teuila. I take another step, and I’m out of the tent. I reach one hand back, begging for the comfort I know is only inches away. Luni takes my hand. Teuila drops her gaze momentarily, before raising it to meet mine again. While our gazes are parted, I feel the swath of mixed emotions swirling through Teuila, due to me needing comfort. When our eyes meet again, her smile is the warmest, kindest I’ve ever seen on her face.

Finally, we stand face to face, once again. As I throw my arms around Teuila, my hand is still linked with Lu’s. This flings Luni around to Te’s backside, almost comically, especially since my muscles feel so weak right now. My inner circle forms a group hug with Te at the center. I realize just how badly that she, too, needed comfort. Not that my Teuila would ever have let on.

I start out timidly mumbling completely incoherently, but finally finish with joking chastisement. “You know, if you’re not resting enough, your training could backfire, then you might end up being the one that needs protecting.”

Teuila’s face screws up into one of incredulity, as it has most times that I’ve teased her. “You, I, what? That’s what you have to say to me right now? You, you big dummy! You, you, you’re, you’re ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!” Yet she’s laughing, hugging me tighter as a tear rolls down her cheek.

Though I’m shaking, and our emotional bond causes us all to slightly ride my wave of panic, we all laugh quietly. Teuila removes one arm from our embrace so she can bonk me lightly on the head, pap me lightly on the cheek, and gently sock my shoulder.

No one, other than me, has been wearing any of the protective equipment, not even Te. I realize that the fact completely escaped me, and that it warms my heart that my family feels safe enough to be naked once again. Well, they all do wear fur coats. Sort of. Lu is wearing her adorable dress though, of course. She might actually have gear on, under it, since I remember that the dress hid it so well. I rattle my brainpan, chuckling, trying to rein in the strange train of thought, so I can ask what I wanted to.

“I want, I need, all of you, sometime, maybe now, please now, I. I want to. Can we please go to the waterfall? I have to test something with Te. I can’t do it without all of you, I’m not brave enough.” I realize I’d been holding my breath, so I suck in a ragged inhalation.

Teuila just nods her head, barely perceivably. Lu cups my cheek with her palm and similarly nods. Lil breaks up the somberness of the moment, excitedly adding, “Duh! Of course we will buddy! Barely even gotta ask! Plus, we’re all curious too!”

I manage to chuckle at Lil, through the weariness that my panic instills in me. It’s fighting further past just muscle stiffness symptoms, into headaches and racing pulse. There’s a tightness in my chest, but I can manage for a while longer yet. The other day was an extraordinary, herculean effort, to last as long as I did. I gnaw on my lips, discomforted by the idea that it could still be harder yet, to work through this. The idea that my moments of ability to be near Teuila might draw shorter and shorter.

We quietly, closely march to the falls. We consistently bumped into each other on the walk, because none of us could bear giving any of the others any space. Now that we’re finally reunited, it’s almost awkward, and mildly hilarious, how close we all want to be. I think this is the first time, since before the dam, that we were really all together, in these forms. The events that transpired at the dam alone felt like they took too much time of my life away from my beloved inner circle. Every turn in the tale of my life that asked me to once again operate apart from them was agony, for far, far too long.

I guess that makes me, what’s the term? Codependent. In our world, where life and death can hang in the balance, decided by any random factor, even one as simple as how comfortable you slept the previous night, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. Our shared happiness, and shared safety, relies on the health of all of us. I’m glad that my family faced few dangerous trials in my absence.

“Oh! Oh Teuila, I got our equipment back! I, um, they were in here somewhere, shoot, I don’t see them. I know I got the bracers back, I swear I did. Please believe me, I got them back for you.” As I try to explain, and seek the bracers in my inventory, Teuila rubs my cheek with her thumb and smooches my forehead.

Luni asks, “You mean these?” She opens her harp, and two empty bags unfold, one attached to the inside, one just stuffed next to it, which falls out. Lu digs about in one bag, then the other for a bit. She pulls the bracers out, and beams a smile at both of us as she hands them to me. “You set them near Te at some point while you were checked out, but she asked me to hold onto them, til you could give them to her again.”

I furrow my brow, slightly perplexed. More things that I did while on autopilot? Still, the sentiments behind Te’s actions reach me. I clasp her hands, handing over the bracers. She lets out that elongated single laugh of pure bliss. “Heeee.”

Staring at her wrists as she places the bracers upon them, I notice curious details. “Hm, the iconography on those Te, something reminds me about archery. It reminds me that when I first saw the equipment. Well, I didn’t see it, I was blind at the time. The first time I sensed your form as Valkyrie, I thought those bird things were a bow. It’s too bad we never figured out what they really are, or how to activate them.” Luni and Teuila exchange a glance, before breaking into sweet laughter.

“What? What’s so funny?” I scratch my head quizzically.

“They are, they are bows, gooftop. They unfold. We had to find out, in um. Well, let’s just say we had to use them, punkhead.” Teuila’s answer is filled with yet more creative terms of endearment. I can’t help chuckling, through the terror, against the tremors working their way deeper into my torso.

“Oh! Did the missing copy or copies of Gae Buidhe ever turn up? The beaver that was wielding it kept running away, then uh. Then. Then. Flood stuff, and when we were getting everyone out, none of them had it.” I barely manage to finish explaining, as my mind begins to spiral, and my vision starts to blur.

“Sorry pal, I kinda want to lie to you and say we found it, to set you at ease, ‘cause I know how much it’s going to worry you at the back of your mind, but nah fam. Nobody found it. So yeah, it’s out there somewhere. Really really sorry Reggie buddy. Try not to think about it too much? Please?” Lil tries to console me, cutting my thoughts off at the pass, knowing exactly what I feared.

I sigh, and look up at the falls as we arrive. I motion across to the east bank. Lu strips, tucking away her dress in one of the bags in her harp. The four of us swim across the shallowest portion of the river. I draw a ragged breath once across.

“Te, my, um, my Teuila. May I please, um, do you consent to me trying, the, the tether? Again? May I send you that bond?” I nervously ask, my breath catching in my throat. Teuila takes my hands and kisses my cheek in response. Then she nods, stepping back only just barely far enough, still holding my hands. I manage to gulp out, “Here, um, here goes.”

I pour my energy, my heart and soul, into a bond with Teuila. As her form elongates, my fear shrinks. After a bright flash, her Valkyrie form stands before me, and I can look upon her, unafraid. She starts divesting her armor, but remains in the padded cloth. I worry for a moment that she thought I wanted to do this for more spare gear, but as she pulls me close, I know that’s not why she dropped the armor and weapons.

As we embrace, I swear I can see the future, our idyllic life together, as Lao desires. One where we work to become our best selves, pursuing our own paths, yet remaining a family. In it, I’ve taken on that adult form, as I have right now. Wait, what? I look down, nervously, as I’ve become slightly taller than even Te’s Valkyrie form. I see her laughing, lightly pounding on my chest with one fist, rubbing her eyes with the other. I hear her sniffle, and a quiet happy laugh escapes her.

“Uhhhhhh, Reggie buddy? Did you mean to do that?” Lil’s question helps keep me grounded. Suddenly I’m shorter again, and my tether to Teuila wobbles like a ribbon being waved vertically in the air. I calm my breathing, and take a step back, struggling to maintain it. Eventually the tether stabilizes.

Lil, can you sense what I’m planning? Do you want in on this? I look to Lil’s face. I see their wide-mouthed grin. Their eyes are sparkling, as if I just offered them everything they’ve ever wanted. I crack half a smile. I happily send Lil a tether as well, and wait a moment for it to stabilize. Teuila is gazing at me curiously, perhaps she hasn’t caught on yet, or maybe she’s not certain if she wants me to sacrifice this much.

To give them both their power, to free them from needing me, I flick the bonds up and down. I try to match the wavelength that seems to be needed for both evolving, and returning. Before anyone can object, if they hadn’t really caught on til now, I run a few paces away, and summon a radiant sword copy from my inventory. I send it crashing through our invisible tethers, severing them. I can only watch as my maximum energy plummets, transferred to Teuila and Lil. That took eleven hundred energy for each of them, over two thousand energy gone, most of everything I had.

Lil immediately starts goofing off, transforming and reverting, changing up and down in size between their two evolutions. Teuila however stares at her own hands, still in Valkyrie form, looking stunned, maybe somewhat disappointed.

I start to mumble, trying to explain, “This way, you don’t, um, you don’t need to rely on me. You don’t need, need, me. It was always your power after all, not mine.” I gulp, fearing the worst as Teuila continues to seem absent.

Suddenly Te marches over to me, drops to her knees and sighs. Once more she lightly pounds on my chest with one fist, then the other in turn, over and over. “You, you big bully. Who said I wanted to not need you? What if, what if I can never feel you again? You, you jerk, you utter and complete jerk.”

I reach down to cup Teuila’s chin, tilting her gaze up to meet mine. I just think directly into our shared wavelength. “You can still hear me, can’t you?” Teuila’s eyes shoot wide, and her smile broadens vastly. She leaps up and socks me relatively hard in the shoulder before picking me up, twirling me around, and leaping a kilometer directly in the air. We reach the apex of her leap in a matter of seconds.

“I love you, I love you, I know I can’t say it enough, I’m sorry it’s so hard for me, but I love you more than anything. You have always given me the best gifts. You gave me my family, my little Luni, yourself, this form, everything, everything I could ever want.” She shouts, barely audible against the breeze as we plummet. Her emotions pour into me, even if I can’t hear every word. I let happy tears fall from my eyes, they actually catch the breeze and fall upward.

Teuila holds me aloft, in the most private place we could ever be, someplace it feels like only she could reach. As we hold each other by the shoulders spreading out horizontally, we spiral, spinning in the air. Her powers slow our fall to a crawl. It seems like she wants this fall to last for hours, and I wouldn’t dare complain. Eventually, while we’re still high above the canopy, dawn breaks, and it seems like the world has celestial bodies now, when it didn’t previously.

Metaphorically, it feels as if Teuila herself placed stars in the sky, just for us. That’s probably a little much, and too sappy for me to ever tell her, oh, wait, argh. Teuila grins at me, hearing my thoughts, she’s barely stifling her laughter.

We’re in the presence of a beautiful sunrise. It feels like we could reach out and catch it. Reaching my hand out however, I find it only catching breeze. I chuckle at myself, then wrap my arm back around Teuila. I spot Lil soaring below, slowly spiraling upwards to meet us, with Luni atop their back. What a time to be alive. I sink into utmost joy, letting all my worries and fears pour from me as if I’ve uncorked a bottle and intentionally spilled it. I feel like I could soar to the heavens on happiness alone. While my own soaring is unlikely, impossible even, Teuila probably could make the journey.

As I’m reveling in the utter bliss of our descent, it looks like the world below us shakes. The mountain, well, the volcano, far, far to the north, spews plumes of ash. It’s a fairly majestic, if slightly unnerving sight.