[Wk33] The Elven Unification, part 2
“There is no reason we should suffer our rifts.”
Katalyi stood before the elders, hir lavender aura buzzing around hir face and hands. Its tendrils picked up the ends of hir mouth and ze felt eagerness lift hir face in an awkward smile.
The elders were barely interested.
“Katalyi Zhakta, is there a reason you believe we suffer them?”
“They blight our natural auras,” Katalyi said. Ze stood calmly, but hir aura spiked in jagged peaks across hir torso and betrayed hir pounding heart. “We recover, but they prolong our journey with feelings that would have ordinarily run their course much more quickly. There are reasons we have rifts; we can work towards a future where no one experiences them.”
The elders were silent for a moment, studying each other’s auras as they weighed Katalyi’s words. Erudol addressed Katalyi, even as Katalyi knew ze was going to be politely declined,
“Our rifts are a part of us. They are not poison. The struggle is not to be avoided.”
Katalyi was led out of the meeting grounds before ze could think of a rebuttal. Ze walked home in a sad stupor, the lavender gleam ze was so used to seeing around hir arms and on hir cheekbones out of the corner of hir eye, blinked dismally and then faded entirely. Katalyi was too sad to panic.
Tarakyi immediately supported Katalyi. As Tarakyi listened, Katalyi’s aura flickered. Ze listened to hir describe the deliberate nature of hir questions when Tarakyi had succumbed to hir rifts, and believed Katalyi when ze insisted that practicing to keep their auras whole would be a way of practicing to keep their souls intact. Tarakyi searched with Katalyi to find clansfolk with rifts. They practiced listening to the faltering speech of speckled elves, and worked on their efficiency when they asked questions. They celebrated their successes and grimly acknowledged the members of their clan that did not believe in their goals.
But despite exuberant support from the elves that learned, with them, to be riftless, Katalyi awoke one morning to faint speckling across the never-quite-recovered thinness of hir aura. Small but definite tears strained the streams of lavender light as they sprung from hir fingertips to push the curtains from hir window. Katalyi felt hir breath shorten as ze held hir wafery arms out in front of hir. Ze perused their length, scanning the flawless lavender surface of hir skin for spots. As hir aura rippled across hir forearms and between hir fingers, ze felt a greasy fatigue slide between hir bones. The speckles that had flitted across the aura from hir fingertips were everywhere, dotting the backs of hir hands and the underside of hir arms, grating against hir will and hir intent.
Katalyi was immediately convinced that the tears were a sign that ze was wrong to fight them. It did not occur to hir that the rifts themselves could be causing hir self-doubt. Ze presented hirself to Tarakyi and held out hir arms. The rifts were already bigger, slicing through hir energy in gashes wide and frequent enough to make hir appear striped. Katalyi’s lavender-fueled, unhesitating grace spluttered and vanished, leaving hir grasping at furniture for support.
Tarakyi nodded. Ze took Katalyi by the hand, wrapping hir long, tapered, fingers around Katalyi’s, and pushed sage warmth through hir palm and fingers so Katalyi’s wavering lavender glow was enveloped in green comfort. Katalyi’s aura remained speckled, but hir breathing steadied and the tears blinked as though they might give up. They stood in the common area of their home and attempted to apply what they had learned about healing rifts to Katalyi’s condition.
But hir rifts had other ideas.
Each question Tarakyi asked clawed a new tear across Katalyi’s dimming glow. Katalyi’s answers widened each rift until the rifts tore hir skin and left hir bloodied and writhing. Katalyi’s aura throbbed desperately, attempting to heal hir as it normally did without effort, but the cuts glistened balefully after each pulse. Tarakyi was sure ze heard the rifts snicker as they stretched wide across Katalyi’s shaking frame.
Tarakyi pushed hard against Katalyi’s laments that ze’d brought this on hirself by doubting the necessity of the rifts. Katalyi, heedless of what hir mindset was wreaking upon hir steadily devolving aura, insisted that ze was paying for questioning their nature.
“That makes no sense,” Tarakyi said, bandaging hir sibling’s wounds and soothing them with gentle sage currents. “So, what, to get rid of them you have to believe that you need them? What are you even saying.”
Katalyi warbled a panicked something or other and watched in horror as the last speckle on hir forearm tore slowly, silently, across hir arm, towards her shoulders. It expanded to a rift as big as the others, and Katalyi legs buckled. Ze crumpled, the sad thud as hir knees hit the floor pummeling a sarcastic taunt on infinite repeat in Katalyi’s ears. Ze’d never fallen a day in hir life until that moment. Tarakyi knelt by hir side and said,
“We’re going back to the elders.”
Tarakyi picked Katalyi up and swung hir sibling’s limp form over hir shoulders. Katalyi resisted, but couldn’t manage more than a spastic flail as rebuttal. The rifts slunk across hir back and around hir neck until Tarakyi resembled a glowing mushroom in a tattered lavender cloak.
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