In Loki's Honor

The war raged across the peninsula. After mom's show of force, utterly crushing the token army they sent to test the waters, people mostly left us alone. With Apricot, and Lily scouting our borders along with Alloralla and Arista fighting on the diplomatic front with lots of promises of divine retaliation, the others merrily veered their armies away from us.

But we remained a thorn on their sides, a stretch of land those warlords thought to be the greener grass just because they couldn't touch it. The Church didn't help at all, still vying to take Kasumi away from us.

We felt powerless. What should we do? Send Apricot to [Assassinate] every Noble in a thousand miles range and throw the whole peninsula into chaos? What of the people? At least those away from the fighting were still living in relative normalcy.

No. The solution needed to be less bloody and more definitive.

One night, Barbara and Kasumi sat on a hill, stargazing. I was between the two, doing what mimics did the best. Pretending to be an object.

Green rocks flew lazily in the air high above us. Years ago, it was just dust but now the rocks that are floating up are as big as a cow now. Out into outer space they went.

"The Sylvis Ring seems to be spinning," Kasumi said.

"I can see why it seems like that," Barbara replied. "Is all that floating rock really going up there?"

"Yes."

We had just received confirmation from one of the Elder Fairies that Nenandil was up in space with Pandora, trying to fix the shattered Sylvis. They were working on a massive spell that was lifting all the moonstone that fell on the planet two thousand years ago.

I remembered mom's efforts to create a floating island where she and her friends could be safe, up in the sky. Back then, the dragons had destroyed it along with everything she held dear but nowadays, dragons were legend. The last alleged sighting of a dragon took place three hundred years ago.

The two talked for an hour about trivial things. How Barbara was uncomfortable officiating the divorce between Marge Montgomery and her wastrel of a ex-husband. The adventures and exploits of Snowdrop's two dozen kids.

Oh, right. I knew I was forgetting something in this chronicle.

Snowdrop completed the Unicorn King quest. Several thousand years too late but it didn't matter in the long run. The meadows and valleys of Clovehaven now had white foals with pearlescent horns walking around, others flying and teasing their landbound half-siblings, honestly, if they came in more than one color and with cute tattoos on their hips, we'd be sued.

The idea is to let the unicorns and pegasi pick their mates between the horse and centaur populations. This may cause some dilution of the Unicorn King bloodline but said blood was very potent. Even if only half of Snowdrop grandkids keep it, they would have dozens of possible matches to further spread the lineage around. So long they each had more than three offspring, the population would keep growing. Then the fourth generation could find mates among themselves, the second-removed cousins no longer carrying a risk of inbreeding.

Not to mention most of Snowdrop's wives are already carrying new foals again. Some are going for their third pregnancy. Legend had it that no female could resist the allure and charm of the Unicorn King, nor want for another male after tasting him. Seems it holds true for the gender-fluid [Unicorn Queen] as well.

The conversation between the two shifted to the Aspects. In which ways the six were similar, how the history books got their stories wrong, and then Kasumi had to run her foxy mouth.

"They are seven, actually."

"Really?" Barbara squeezed me. "Oh, yes. There's Rosewise of Windemere. [King] Locksley court magician."

Kasumi chuckled, "actually, she was King – ouch!"

I slapped that vixen's butt with a ribbon whip. The [Saintess] realized what she was about to do and jumped away.

"Nethe! Why did you..." Barbara stood up and stared at me without finishing her question. Only after a long stretch of silence did she cast a hurt look between me and Kasumi, then demanded us, "What is going on here?"

my thoughts were a jumbled mess. I had no idea how to broach the subject without hurting her even more. Either in the short term or in the long run.

The [Saintess] was the one to pick up the slack. Kasumi approached and grabbed both of the halfling girl's arms as she knelt. I stayed trapped between their hands.

"Barbara. Do you remember how Nethe said that Elizabeth, Eleanora, and Isaac were reincarnation of old friends?"

"Yes."

"You were there too. But remember how we didn't tell them who they were because it would bring unneeded drama to their current lives?"

Barbara nodded. Her little heart was a mix of conflicting feelings. She felt at the same time betrayed, curious, anxious, fearful, bashful, and sad.

"You are keeping it from me as well. Because it would bring unneeded drama to my life."

"Everyone in this world has lived several lives. In some they were happy, in others they died tragically. Netherbane there was my husband in a past life. Elise was a [Rogue] playboy who didn't grow tired of chasing skirt back when he met the Goddess Haru in Windemere. Elise. That tiny ball of shyness," Kasumi chuckled, "Can you imagine her as a brash scoundrel?"

Barbara freed her left hand, wiped the tears, then stared at Kasumi. "And you and Nethe were married in the past."

Kasumi met her gaze, "Yes. Were. This life, I'm just a friend." She too sounded hurt. Though she had accepted her role this life, she still longed for the comfort of the past.

"Did you have kids?"

"What? No!"

"Did I have kids?"

"Also, no," that airhead of a [Saintess], Kasumi fell for Barbara's trap, hook, line, and sinker.

"how did we die?"

The kitsune's jaw hung open as she noticed how badly she'd screwed up. Barbara even had a faint victory smug grin in her face.

I replied straight away.

Now it was my turn to be sad. Though all I could remember from Nenandil and Pandora were from mom's memoirs on the [Lost Sage's Encyclopedia], the feelings were so accurately translated in that book that I could relate as if I did remember those.

Barbara felt like a child that had thrown a tantrum for nothing. In the middle of a social gathering. She felt small and petty. It pained me to be so keenly aware of her feelings but it was a familiar's duty to shoulder and soothe her masters' heart.

"No, that would be absurd!" Barbara protested.

I challenged.

"Also no."

Barbara was wavering between accepting and revolting. Kasumi let go of her hand and hugged the halfling, giving her the last push she needed.

"We love you, Barbara. Not only because we were family once. But because you are lovely. Barbara is lovely. We'd love you even if we didn't have our memories. Nethe loved you since they were born. Before they learned who they really were."

"Did..." Barbara mumbled and stared down at me.

"I remember the good and the bad. The same is true for all of them. You think you miss the joy but you are also spared the pain. Are you sure one is worth the other?"

Kasumi's last sentence had a sinister and ominous tone to it. It made my spine and bindings shiver. Because I knew. I read on mom's book what heinous pain Barbara’s soul was put through. Worse, I let my sorrow leak through our bond.

"Was the pain that bad?" She asked in a faint whisper, dreading the answer.

Kasumi used some magic. Some serious magic. A divination by the flavor of it. I felt the Divinity and the resonance with my Fate magic echoing in her spell. The [Saintess] was having trouble regaining her specialty magic. The Church ran a smear campaign to make people stop praying for her. When the spell ran its course, she sagged and it was Barbara's turn to support her body.

"What's wrong?" The halfling Baroness worriedly asked.

Kasumi's mouth widened in a weak grin. "It was well worth it. I needed to know how much I could tell you. Barbara, please pay attention."

"Yes?"

The kitsune's eyes were unwavering. "Your former self asked us to not tell you anything. She wanted you and your future incarnations to live without the burden of the past. No, that's wrong. She wanted you to make new memories, have new adventures, with us but without the worries of the past. We are not burdens in your life, are we?"

We gave her some time to think. Her eyes swam, trying to take in the whole of Kasumi, me, the night sky, the planetary ring of green rocks, perhaps even trying to glimpse our former selves as phantoms behind us. As she went through rounds of inner conversations and reflection, her anger simmered down into faint embers.

Then she pressed my front cover against her forehead and the tip of her nose. I could feel a budding warmth spread in her heart like the first dawn of Spring thawing the snow.

"I'm sor– no, that's not right. Thank you. Thank you, Nethe," She lowered me to meet the kitsune's eyes. "Kasumi. I think I understand my past self. Why she requested that. I also see that this secret is a burden on you. I just... I don't want to be coddled. To be sheltered, protected like some kind of [Princess] locked up in a tower. I feel like a child, a squire that can only stand on the sidelines and watch history unfold from the first row."

She paused but it didn't seem Barbara was done. So, we gave her time to think and speak her mind. More importantly, we gave her space.

"Did that sound ungrateful?" Barbara wondered out loud.

"Not at all. Speak your mind, Barbara Ambrose," Kasumi replied with a welcoming soothing voice. "We know your heart. It's a beautiful one, just like it was ages ago. We love you unconditionally."

From that angry resentful mischievous bitch that goaded us into a duel with the [Prince] to this. I was amazed at how fast she grew after she left her gilded tower in Auvani.

Barbara squeezed me and stared at Kasumi. "I–I love you too. Erm, not romantically. But—"

Kasumi put a finger on her lips. "We understand."

I felt a shiver as something felt extremely right in that exchange.

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Hundreds of miles above the world, a fairy and a golden orb finished cracking open two other golden orbs and taking in their power. The Divinity contained therein washed over the whole planet and its two remaining moons, speeding up the healing process by an order of magnitude. The fragments of Sylvis, the green moon, darted up, joining the ring of debris, and merging with the other rocks, then merging again as each rock grew bigger and bigger.

More fragments rose from the deep earth. From the ocean floor. They too flew up, spinning uncountable times around the planet until they joined the others in the ring. The rocks would spin around the world, join, and clear their orbit of other debris and fragments. Just like the planet formed from a gas cloud, so too would the moon become whole again.

Whole but never again the same. Many fragments flew away from the orbit errant rocks that would never find their way back. A few would stay on the surface, either destroyed or blocked from coming up. But in the scale of celestial masses, this loss was negligible. Pandora even intended to use the leftover Divinity to create more mass out of whole cloth.

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But whether the shiver was from Fate magic or something else, I would never know. Perhaps Barbara's declaration was enough to satisfy Lorna's Game. But it definitely had something else mixed in with that.

Because the whole Clovehaven valley and surrounding lands shook like an earthquake. Then we felt gravity fail for a moment, only to return with a vengeance.

We were lifted up in the air, people, valley, forests, hills, lakes, prancing little ponies, and everything else.