Aryennos nodded and looked back at his notebook. “I need to back up just a little, to just after the Highnds site. No one saw her actually change form, not clearly, but Lineva noted what she believed to be a trick of the morning light when she was sure she’d seen the Moss-Queen-to-be, I’m sorry but I can’t make myself use a regur name for her, look jotun-sized until Lineva said something, but she remembered it because it happened on two different mornings. The second time, Nimre saw it too, and at a range that she said made it completely clear. Both times, she appeared to be talking to animals—the first time, a rge bird Lineva couldn’t identify, and the second time it was a bear. Both animals left immediately.”
“Potentially a jotun form,” I said. “Which she wasn’t willing to let anyone else see her in.”
“We know that, but everyone previously just assumed that these were observations made under stress or otherwise uncertain and probably unimportant, so it’s fascinating to actually have a whole new perspective on old reports. That makes other odd details make more sense, too. She was clearly trying to keep anyone from knowing what she could do, but she wasn’t all that good at it. Uraset said that once, she came around a grove of trees looking for the Moss Queen and her skin looked green but that was brief and incomplete, only her arm and shoulder and a bit of her back, and there were two additional times, near a river and a ke, when she insisted that she’d smelled an aquian in the immediate area even though there was no one else around. During that glimpse, the Moss Queen abandoned a pnt wreath she’d been making, and seemed more irritated than usual, and Uraset thought she saw a bird fly away.”
“Her aquian form is green-skinned,” I said. “Imagine that.”
Aryennos nodded “Silosi saw some odd things too, nothing she could quite define other than a fsh of green that might have been skin while looking for her, and at the same time she saw a fox with a wreath of braided grass around its neck running off in the direction they were going in. The Moss Queen reappeared a short time ter to suggest that they take a different route and leave the main road because there was a cardinal tree not far away. Silosi saw a fox at the tree eating fruit and thought it was the same one, it was quite a light golden-orange, and she saw several bits of braided grass that she thought the Moss Queen tried to break up and scatter.”
“She was using the fox’s senses,” Serru said quietly. “The wreath gave her a connection and she saw what it did.”
“That’s a possible interpretation.”
“I am quite certain of that interpretation.”
“You are? Wh...” He grunted as I kicked him with one bare foot, but he stopped mid-word at least. “Uh... well... it certainly expins everything.” He rubbed at his shin, but Serru was beside Terenei and didn’t see that. I hoped.
“Unsurprisingly,” Terenei said, “she sounds like an unpleasant and tiring individual to be around, even before she became the Moss Queen. I’m sure they were soon hoping to escape as well.”
“Probably. She continued to compin about farms to Uraset and Silosi, and continued to be difficult around men, taking offence easily and making angry accusations that just confused everyone, but travelling through the Midnds to reach the Grassnds site was at least a clear fast road and they made good time. That one seems to have given her a variation on her original human form, very simir but with vividly green hair, pointed ears, and a somewhat healthier build, which she stayed in all the time after that. At least where anyone could see. She also gained some basic healing skills that she was quite happy to use on all and sundry, although she seemed to think they were much more spectacur than they were and was disappointed with simple gratitude. She said several times that it was a further sign of being chosen as nature’s voice. Nothing suggests that it was more advanced than a really good Quickheal, nothing specialized or targeted or more powerful. It does look like it worked on people, animals, and pnts equally, which is unusual, to say the least.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Heket said. “People who can heal pnts, I have met, but they can only work on pnts.”
“It would be hard for anyone to develop that as a passion, I think,” Terenei said. “People are typically more focused onto either fauna, and there can be some flow back and forth between people and animals obviously, or flora. Someone at the school when I was there was deeply fascinated by mushrooms. She got quite upset if anyone referred to moss as a fungus, and it usually led to a lecture on the difference. She could grow and cook some really delicious mushrooms, some of them at impressive sizes, but she wasn’t much better with green pnts than anyone else. But then, the Quincunx makes its own rules and if it saw some reason to mix multiple kinds of basic healing together, I suppose it could.”
“It figures she’d be looking for appuse for helping people,” I said with a sigh. “I mean, a thank-you is great, if the circumstances allow for it, but what did she want, a parade every time? I doubt she wasn’t being thanked. And if she’d been paying attention instead of ranting about evil alchemists and unnatural farms and dangerous men, she’d have noticed that straightforward healing is not exactly...” I wanted to say miraculous since it fit best with her chosen-one delusion, but it wouldn’t transte in my head. Of course they didn’t have miracles, they didn’t have gods and the boundaries of natural possibility were flexible. “... unusual around here and anyone can just go buy a Quickheal potion.”
“Ironically,” Serru said quietly, “for someone notoriously defined by her creation of an ever-shifting collective consciousness, she has little perception or acceptance of any perspective or awareness outside of her own. The harmony she cims to treasure is a monochrome one.”
“That would be a terrible world,” Heket said. “Why would the world need countless copies of the same person?”
“Yes.”
I caught Aryennos’ eye and gestured for him to keep going.
He obliged. “More disturbing is that both companions insisted that when they left each campsite, there were more pnts in the immediate area than there had been before, and that some of them were very strange things, pnts that they could only describe as having traits identifiable from more than one that was familiar. The Moss-Queen-to-be just disappeared on them in the middle of the night a couple of cycles from the Axis, but both were absolutely certain she was going there. It was apparently something she was looking forward to, and she believed that it would complete her transformation and establish her new role or status or... or whatever all that was. They considered leaving without a word to be rather rude, but they did worry about her and about anyone who came across her. They didn’t particurly accept the idea that she was uniquely chosen but they’d only vaguely heard of even the possibility of an adult newcomer before so they had no idea what was possible. The first mosslings showed up several years ter.”
“A wreath,” Serru said, and her voice was eerily conversational considering that I could see her knuckles turning white on her p, and Terenei id a hand over one of hers, “has to be made by hand and will st a limited time and she would have to deal with each single individual and they would have to consent to it. But if you are crossing pnts you could perhaps breed an infection that could serve the same purpose without those inconveniences. Stop the wagon, please.”
“What?” Terenei tightened the reins even as he asked. “Why?”
“I... I need a moment.” The wagon hadn’t entirely halted when she swung off the side and walked away, straight out into the scrubby ft ground around us, a mixture of tall grasses and wildflowers and bushes. She never missed her footing, never stumbled in that familiar long efficient stride.
I watched her anxiously, but she finally stopped and just stood, her back to us, not moving.
“Is she all right?” Heket asked worriedly.
“We lost her to the Moss Queen for the full two years,” Terenei said quietly. “She’s only been back for... not even quite the same.”
“Oh no,” Aryennos said, dismayed. “I know that’s bad for a really long time after. I’m sorry. I’ve been...”
“Stop. She wanted to hear it. She just needs to process it. Being Serru, she refuses to let that experience stop her. She stayed with her family for a couple of months, then got restless. Her first trip along her usual route involved much longer stops than normal, including with my family, weeks at a time instead of a few cycles. Then her great-grandfather started preparing for his life to end, and she went home to her family for that. This is the first she’s been back out on the road since. I had every intention of asking to come with her this time no matter what, so she wouldn’t be alone. I... st time things were complicated, but I shouldn’t have let her leave alone then. She’d never let me if I told her why, but she’s been offering for years to show me more of the world, so I had a handy excuse. Nurea needing to get to school and all... that was both convenient and a complication, as were you. I may not know much about travelling but I learn fast and I know Serru very well and I can watch her back.”
“She’s been alone twice while I’ve been visiting sites,” I said.
“Yes, well, no one ever called Serru simple. She needs that too. She’d be miserable with no time by herself, and one bad accident aside, she’s better able to cope with anything the wilderness can throw at her than anyone I’ve ever heard of except maybe her grandmother who taught her. Just give her space. She’ll be back soon.” Terenei hopped down and circled around to fuss over the ornithians and give them some berries.
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” Aryennos said unhappily. “I know I annoy her sometimes without meaning to but this is worse.”
I shook my head. “Terenei checked with her earlier. She knew what she was going to hear. If anything, just travelling with me is probably the worst thing for her, since it’s putting her on the Moss Queen’s list of targets. Or maybe it’s actually a good thing for her. I don’t know. A month or so, even together a lot, doesn’t mean I have enough insight to understand all the intricacies and nuances and her personal reactions. Terenei knows more than any of us on this, and I’m going to trust his judgement.”
Heket nodded. “Also,” she said, “it is abundantly clear that helping Nathan get home is immensely important to Serru. I think she would bear worse than emotional discomfort to achieve that goal, no matter how little Nathan would like her to.”
“I would rather no one suffered anything in helping me,” I said. “All the disruption in the Shallows and Myu being attacked and all... I hate that it’s all over the fact that two people who seem to have come from my world have decided that they don’t want me to reach all five sites. Presumably they don’t have a good reason, since their method involves harassment and threats instead of just telling me why I shouldn’t go. It’s really frustrating that I can’t do anything to make it stop.”
“You stopped the zombies in Ottermarsh,” Aryennos said. “You saved Myu and set that poor otter free. You’re upsetting them because you can already do more against them than anyone except an occasional healer. And by the way, I found some information on that too, and on the Zombie King. I told you it was a treasure.”
“It certainly was,” I said. “But let’s wait on the rest. This is a good time to stretch if you need to.”
There was still traffic on the road, mostly going towards the festival; every st vehicle, mostly horse-drawn but in one case ornithian-powered, slowed or halted to check whether we needed help. We just thanked them and told them we’d needed to pause and stretch, and they wished us well and kept going. I used the time to contempte which form would be best for a music festival, and concluded that it would be easiest to enjoy it with fewer distractions, so I opted for human. If anything minor came up, I had excellent medical supplies, and in an emergency I could always switch to centaur.
Serru finally came back.
“Thank you,” she told us, rubbing both of the ornithians around the bases of their beaks to get happy trills. “I needed that. Shall we get back on the road to the festival? And we can hear whatever else Aryennos found.”
