Chapter Text
“Okay. Let me loosen it up for you.”
Alinua knelt, a few roots digging into the rocky ground of the ruins, crunching slowly for a moment before branching and branching and branching again, splitting fractally under the earth as they filled the area, stray shoots wriggling up every few inches while thicker roots dug deeper. The ground trembled, a steady rumble punctuated by cracks as the stone bellow fractured into broken chunks.
Erin looked up alarmedly. “Don’t risk a collapse!”
Alinua didn’t look back. “Don’t worry. These roots go all the way down. I can hold it together.” And she could. She could feel the binding of each root as clearly as she had been feeling the endless branches but a moment before. The only question was how long she’d be able to hold it for. She spared a brief glance up at Erin. “Just get the rock out of the way, please.”
Erin gave a small laugh. “Ha. You know, my mother also makes this look very easy.” He raised his hand, and shining shards of stone began to fly into the air, and then a lot of things happened: a rescue, and a struggle for control, and a fight in which she felt helpless. So it wasn’t until much later that, after the final battle with the slime, after the starfire and Kendal, after they finally talked, after the sunrise that gave way to more walking, just far enough away from the ruins to make another camp, after she took first watch because she’d slept most recently, after all of that, as she finally laid down by the fire, a phrase Erin had said trickled through her mind again.
“You know, my mother also makes this look very easy.”
My mother.
A memory rose to the surface, one she’d not thought of in years.
“You make magic look so easy, don’t you?” Her mother’s eyes were tired, but her smile was gentle as ever as she ruffled Alinua’s hair. “Do you want to give those flowers to your new baby sister?”
Alinua grinned a gap-toothed smile. She ran over to carefully place the daffodils she’d just grown in the vase on the nightstand, before peering over the cradle at the little black-haired baby within. She was sleeping, for the moment, her little eyes scrunched shut. Alinua beamed, then gasped. “Mom, she has a scratch on her face!”
Her mother sighed. “Oh dear. Her fingernails are getting long again. We’ll need to cut them. Let me come over, and have a look at that scratch.” She started to sit up in bed, then sighed again, seeing Alinua was already casting, a flow of green spreading from her fingers to the baby’s face. “Oh, Alinua, it’s alright. You don’t need to do that, dear.”
“I want to though!” Alinua said. Wide-eyed, she ran back to her mother’s side and grabbed her hand eagerly. “I can do so much to help, just like when you were pregnant! And,” she added, sitting down on the bed, “now that the baby’s here, you’re tired even more. You can let me do things like that. It’s easy, really.” Alinua frowned. “Although magic has been a little funny lately.” Funny wasn’t quite the right word. She felt like she could cast and never stop, like she could grow a million flowers when trying to make one, or heal and keep going, whatever that would be. Like she had to hold herself back, a bit. She leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder. “Maybe I’m tired too.”
Her mother seemed to stiffen a bit, but nonetheless pressed a kiss to the side of Alinua’s head. “Get some rest then, sweetie. Now’s a good time, since your sister is finally napping.”
“Alright,” said Alinua, laying down on the bed. “I’ll just wait here with you until she wakes back up.”
Alinua rolled over in her blankets and scrubbed at her eyes. A voice in the back of her mind rose unbidden, one that whispered, “You could go back now. There’s nothing stopping you. Your magic’s under control. You won’t hurt anyone. At least, not this time.”
But another part remembered how, when she’d learned she was a chimera bomb, the first thing that rose to mind was the image of her mother and baby sister, and the countless times she’d used healing magic. That magic that was probably just slow poison.
Alinua ran pretty quickly after that.
She had no way of knowing what had happened, if anything had gone wrong, and if so, how much and to whom. And yet, she thought, even if she did know for a fact that no one got hurt, even with her magic flowing naturally as moving her hand, even with complete control… would she really want to go back?
She wouldn’t bring it up, she decided. There were more important things to do right now, and a freedom she’d never thought she’d have lay in front of her. She shouldn’t dwell on a past steeped in loss and lack of control. Not when, above all odds, things were actually going… well, not right, but at least not as horrible as she’d felt they were some hours before. Kendal was alright. Everyone was alright.
She hadn’t hurt anyone.
Yet, even as she drifted off to sleep, the image of faces she hadn’t seen in more than ten years filled her mind. “I’ll never know,” she thought, “if I… well.” The cozy bedroom, the nightstand with daffodils on it, the new cradle in the corner. “If I destroyed that.”