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ellaofoakhill · 2 years

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How Far We Must Go And Have Come

“Your friend Valdr’s another of the Great Sage’s students?” Ansli asked as they pulled into a clearing off the road.

“Yes, Master. He’s already paid his respects,” Ella said, unhitching Coarser. He shook himself, and strode to the succulent grass about the clearing’s edge.

“I see.”

“You really taught Elmum all her fightin’ stuff?” Selva said as she clambered from the front seat. Meline smiled; she’d been shy at first, but Ansli’s undemanding presence quickly drew Selva back out of her shell.

“Enough to get her started,” Ansli said, taking a small package of incense. “Two thousand years as my live-in student, two thousand more of us wandering together before she struck out on her own.”

“Was she the best student you ever had?”

Meline looked around. Ansli’s eyebrows almost met her hairline. Ella dropped the tarp; she was clearly trying not to laugh. And got a sharp poke in the side. “What have you been telling this little girl?”

“Children sometimes reach wild conclusions, Master!” Ella said, massaging her ribs. She turned to Selva. “I am nowhere near Master’s best student, Selv. In fact, she may have chased me away once or twice.”

Selva looked shocked. A light blinked on. “Elmum, did you ever chase Havel away?”

Ella did laugh that time. And got poked for it. “I should say not,” Ella leaned over to pick the tarp back up and murmured, “Havel’s a good student.”

“Yeah he is!” Selva said. Meline smiled as Havel came out of the wagon with one end of the tent canvas under his arm. By the colour of his ears, he’d overheard. Vaness came out holding the other end. Her grin said she had too.

“Shall we set up camp first, Master? Grandmaster?” Havel said.

“If you handle making camp,” Ansli said, turning to Ella, “Meline and I will arrange the shrine.” Wait, what?

Ella’s eyebrows flicked up as she bowed. “As you wish, Master.”

And so Meline followed Ansli up to the shrine, carrying half the accoutrements while Ansli carried the other. What was this about? They’d no chance to talk before the wedding, and so far as Ella was concerned this woman was her second mother. Maybe this was an interview of sorts? An interrogation? Meline strangled the latter thought.

The shrine to the Great Sage was a colossal mound, dwarfing Celia’s. Five araucarias grew from its flat top, keeping the mound in twilight even on the brightest summer day. Each was over a million years old. Ringing the mound were their smaller cousins, and mossy standing stones. Trees and stones softly glowed with the countless glyphs carved into them. At the base of the mound were other stones. Puny next to the mound, each was three times Havel’s height, and had a recessed niche. Before each stone was a pedestal covered with offerings: a few coins, gems, some food. Walking sunwise, they came to a blank stone. Ansli began arranging offerings while Meline set up a small awning.

“Did something happen recently?”

Meline paused in tying down one corner of the awning. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

Ansli had the plates arranged in the pentagram. “You are not the same young woman who married my Ella.”

Meline snorted. “Young, Master Ansli?”

“You only have some grey in your hair.” Ansli ran a hand over her silver bun. “But even my rheumy eyes see you are both more and less turbulent than you were.”

Meline tilted her head, resumed tying. “Turbulent?”

“To anyone knowing what to look for, you clearly thought Ella above you. The idea of anyone else having a romantic history with her would’ve upset you. Am I wrong?”

Meline moved to the next pole, and continued tying. “No, you’re not.”

“But you merely laughed when I mentioned that very thing at the inn.”

“Were you testing me?” Meline looked over. Ansli was laying out the grain.

She shook her head. “I was testing my insight. Intelligence isn’t knowing the right answer, but how to find it. And when that woman propositioned Ella—”

“Thank you for interrupting that, by the way.”

“I thought it better than you starting a brawl.” Meline smiled. “Can I guess that your reaction was spurred by concern, rather than jealousy?”

Meline’s hands kept tying while she thought about that. Ella’s desperate “No” had driven everything else from Meline’s mind. If she’d been motivated by jealousy, surely an attractive elf fawning over her wife would’ve driven her forward. “That’d be about right.”

Ansli had laid out emeralds and turquoise and chrysoprase, and was laying out granular gold. “Would it be true to say that you are acting now out of compassion, where before you acted more out of fear?”

Meline moved to the next pole. “I suppose.”

“Then you have grown.” Ansli’s back was to her, but Meline thought she was smiling. “Rather, you are in a state of growth.” Ansli laid a brick of soap on the fourth plate. “The crossing can be traumatic. Guardians know our sickening wounds, and often strip away the poorly healed scars above them.”

Ansli turned her head. Her silver eye glowed in the dark, but her true eye genially met Meline’s. “I am not your teacher, and so have no authority over you. If you would, though, I’ve a thought for your reflection.” She laid a wild rose on the fifth plate.

“What is it?” Meline asked as she moved to the final pole.

Ansli smiled. “There is someone important in your life, with whom you are very close, whom you neither love nor live for.”

Meline looked pensive when she returned. Her greeting kiss felt more perfunctory than usual. She did not seem upset, though Ella cast an enquiring glance at her master. She got a mysterious smile and a wink.

Meline and Vaness stayed at the campsite with Coarser, Vernon, Vesi, and Owen.

“This is way bigger than the wedding mound!” Selva was closer to whispering than she had been in a long time, looking up at the shrine.

“And much older.” Master led the way. “A dozen generations of elves have entered and left the worlds between the raising of this mound and now.”

“Whoa.” Selva held the hem of Ella’s bliaut. “How long’s that?”

“Over a million years,” Ella said. Everyone was hushed. The sigils at the inn were nothing; this place all but sang with spiritual power. Tarklafer would’ve vaporized in an instant if he’d dared set foot here.

“The Great Sage was a walker like Felix, right?”

“That’s right,” Ella said, “though the Great Sage has a lineage, where Felix has received teachings, but mostly travels.”

“What’s a lineage?”

“It means a teacher has passed a collection of lessons to students for more than three unbroken generations. In the case of the Great Sage Beyond the Moon, the earliest fey writings we understand already mention their lineage, so it’s at least eight hundred thousand years old. This shrine strongly implies it’s even older.”

“Oh.” Selva looked up at the araucarias. “That’s really old.”

Ella mussed Selva’s hair. “Yes, it is.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Havel quietly brought up the rear. Did he look just… a bit sad? He had never—Ella almost stopped walking.

She had never fulfilled her promise to introduce him to the Great Sage. And never would.

There was no way to know they would die before this trip. The Great Sage’s constitution had been fragile for centuries, and they were ancient by the standards of gremlins. But they had seemed as much a part of the world as the hills and the sky. For them to die…

Ella stifled a self-deprecating snort. For them to die was an inevitable fact of their birth.

They sat in a close square under the awning. Ella lit the incense and lamps. Master led the chant. Ella was the only other who really knew it; Havel and Selva followed as best they could.

She had been so impatient and so grief-stricken, the night they had given her the task of the copper ore. Her first teaching on impermanence. That lesson had taken so long for Ella to understand, because… she laughed to herself.

Because she had not wanted to hear it. She ploughed through every task they set for her, every single one meeting with frustration.

It was after dawn. Ella numbly heard their footsteps behind her. Valdr was pursuing his spiritual practice at his home, while Ella was still here. It was a bit lonely now, without him; their little chats at meals—few words were spoken, but more from care than taciturnity—were fewer and quieter. Tonight, Ella’s task was to disassemble and reassemble the broken fragments of a plate precisely the same way every time. As before, she strove her best, and at first thought she was finally accomplishing her task, patient and mindful. That belief shattered the moment she saw the finest chip of glaze on the ground, and the slightest crumble of clay from one of her pieces. She had almost thrown the sherd off the cliff. Still trembling with white-hot caustic fury, she instead let it fall through her fingers.

They had knelt beside her. Other times, their presence had been a heavenly balm on burnt skin. That night it felt like a slap across the face.

“What are you trying to teach me with this?” she had asked. “No matter how hard I try, it’s all useless? Pointless, even? Every task you give me is impossible. Why?” The tears trickling down her face made it worse.

The Great Sage looked at Ella with a compassion that twisted her guts. Something in their expression made her think they had come to a decision. “You’re trying to accomplish the impossible.”

“I… what?”

They nodded. “You are trying to make water run uphill.” Her face must have looked blank. “What makes these tasks impossible?”

“I can’t put them back th—” There it was. Plain and obvious. And so almost invisible. Aren. Yvn. Melani. Mother. The tears came harder and faster, acid with grief. “They can’t come back.”

She turned and pushed her face into their shoulder. Their thin arms were about her. It did not help. “I want her back! I want my mom back!”

A wail of abject suffering tore through the trees and over the cliff. The sun warmed her back as Ella doubled over, wracked by a pain she had not let herself feel. The rage was long past. It had died that day on the cliffs…

“… Teacher?” She straightened, offered them a rag to wipe themself. They took it, offering her one. “You know what I did before I came here. In this anger and pain I still don’t understand.” She raised her eyes so they met theirs. “You know I took revenge for her murder.”

They nodded.

She asked a question that had floated in her head for a long time, and just now realized why it floated there. “Why… did you take a monster wrecked by vengeance as your student?”

The morning sun made their eyes look like jet shot through with silver. “I took a young woman imprisoned by her own misunderstanding as my student,” they leaned forward, “because she asked.”

They finished. Ella felt a burden fall from her shoulders. She wiped her eyes. Her heart was overflowing with gratitude for this blessed being who had changed the course of her entire life. She glanced over at Master. She had been a student of the previous Great Sage. Had they helped her as much?

They rose, and began cleaning up the ceremonial accoutrements. “Havel,” Ella murmured, “I owe you an apology.”

He looked confused as she helped him take down the awning. “For what, Master?”

She shook her head. “I forgot what the Great Sage taught me of impermanence, and so broke my promise to you, to introduce you to them. I’m sorry.”

Havel held the awning while she untied it. “I think it’d be greedy of me to ask for another teacher. And he taught you, right?” Ella nodded. “And now you’re teaching me.” Another nod. “So I am learning his lessons.”

Ella had no idea how to reply until a familiar finger jabbed her in the side. She gave him a hug.

“Thank you, Havel. I’ll do my best.”

He hugged her back. “You always have, Master.”

#the fairy tales of ella and meline #tftem #how far we have come and must go #chapter 64 #my original work #fantasy #backyard fantasy #fairies #fae #fey #healing #lgbtqia+#magic #strong female protagonists #coming up with a title for this one was less than fun #will hopefully come up with something better on re-write

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