The Near Infinite Names of Autumn Aubrey (Psychological Fantasy Progression)

The part of the singing stairs lullaby that sounded in my mind on the way to my first Restoration class was much too clear for me to ignore.

"Who is Caerulus?" I asked aloud to Alexei.

My white haired guard was walking beside me instead of his usual distance behind me. I had not even needed to threaten him into doing it. As soon as I had left Anna and I'd quarters, he had taken up beside me without a word.

"That is a name that very few know, but I am not surprised that you are one of them." He glanced down at me as he spoke and there was just enough curiosity in his eyes for me to see that he was.

I nodded in agreement and stood up a little straighter. "Yes. I know many things that most do not. I am powerful in that way."

If I could make him so much as smirk, I would consider it a great victory. Nami had not exactly tasked me with trying to bring more life out of him, but I had taken it in as my duty regardless.

"So, it is pointless for you to not answer me. This is her lullaby, is it not?" I demanded in the most forceful tone I could speak in. It was meant to be something in between the way that Azza and the titan Schwarz spoke, but Alexei seemed to be unaffected.

He ignored my questions completely and continued up the crystalline stairs. "You did not run from me this morning, have you accepted defeat?"

"Yes," I lied. "There was nothing else I could try to do. I cannot escape you."

It was difficult, especially when I saw a brief slip of disappointment pass through his mask of stone, but I bit the inside of my cheek and kept myself from smiling.

I thought I would have to work much harder to get him to lower his guard, but all it had taken was one lie for him to fall into my trap

"Who is she?" I asked again, trying to move away from my lying before I fell head first into accidentally revealing my plans.

Alexei smirked. "Ah, right, yes. Caerulus is a she."

I rolled my eyes. "Is or was? I already know that she is a girl."

"You have seen her in my mother's memories." He whispered quietly without it ever sounding like a question.

"Twice. Her hair is all long and shiny like silver, and her skin is pale and blue," I whispered back, my heart thumping nervously in my chest. Nami knew that the barriers in The Well no longer restricted me, but talking about memories to anyone other than Sam or Anna felt wrong. "Is that a glamor or does she actually look like that?"

Alexei nodded and pointed a finger up towards the second floor landing that we had nearly reached. "Isn't that one of your sisters? She looks to be in distress."

I glanced up and saw Plia slowly coming down the singing stairs one by one.

"Stop it," I whispered harshly and smacked his hand down. "This is why you volunteered to be my guard, isn't it? So you could learn things from the memories I live through?"

He turned his one white eye back down to me, but did not speak.

"You can't do that. You are my friend now, and I'm not scared of you. You have to answer my questions." I continued, ready to do any number of childish and dramatic things to get what I wanted.

Evidently, he saw how ready I was and decided that resisting me was not worth the trouble.

"You should know by now that even if it appears that you are alone, it is likely that you were being watched or listened to. Be very careful of when you mention what you are burdened with or your life here may very well come to an end," There was no threat in his voice, no attempt to scare or intimidate me either. He was telling me the truth, and I paid far more attention to his words as he continued because of it. "You should go to her, she is unwell."

It took me a long moment to realize that he had not given me some vague and frustratingly mysterious answer.

He was talking about Plia.

What made it even worse was that he was not trying to distract me, he was still telling the truth. The little underwitch had collapsed on the last stair before the landing and had curled up into a ball on her side.

No matter how bad I wanted to press him further, I could not just leave her there, she was my friend too.

"Plia? Did you not eat enough last night?" I asked her after I took the last few stairs to the landing as quickly as I could.

She rolled away from me to the sound of a frustrated whimper. "There is never enough. Leave me alone."

I knelt down and put my hand on her back. "I cannot do that. Whenever I tell someone to leave me alone, I don't actually mean it. Are you hungry? I can-"

"I can't do this anymore. I'm going to leave Lun." She interrupted me and cried as she curled even tighter into herself.

Her cloak nearly swallowed her whole. She was so small that if I had just stumbled upon her and did not know her, I would have thought her to be a child.

"Why? Did something happen?" I asked as I sat down on the stair beside her head. Without knowing if I was assuming we were closer than we were, I reached over and smoothed her thin hair back from her face like Anna or my mother would have done for me.

She was crying, but not in the silent, expressionless, way she did during her afterglows. "I'm not like you, I don't know what is going on. Tana spent half her life here, Mallory only cares about something if she thinks it is pretty, and you have your dad to help you understand things."

"Wait. What?" I asked and shook my head in confusion.

"Precept Zetta barely ever let us have lunch. What if the Restoration teacher never does? I can't take it. I'm so nervous I couldn't eat breakfast." She continued without pulling away from my attempts to comfort her.

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I slid away from her suddenly and waited for her to meet my eyes. "No, what did you say about my father?"

"I didn't mean anything by it," She sniffled as she looked to where Alexei stood. "He is, isn't he? Everyone talks about it, but that makes the most sense."

"What does everyone say?" I asked, feeling anger burn to life in the tips of my fingers.

All the color left Plia's face as she sat up and slid as far away from me as the crystalline stair would allow. "Please don't be mad at me, you're terrifying when you're angry. I feel bad enough already."

"I'm not mad at you, I just want to know what people say about me." I said honestly through my clenched teeth.

The little underwitch told me far more than I thought there was to tell.

"Some of the older moons thought he was your lover, but after meeting the two you already have, I don't know why you would have left him out. So, I don't believe that," She dried her eyes on her cloak and gave a big sniff before continuing. "Mallory thought he might be your brother, and Vanda thought he was your knight, but you aren't even twenty yet. His hair is white and underwitches don't get knights. Tana is the one that said he was your dad, and that made sense. Not for the reasons that she said, but it did make sense."

She said so many things in such little time that I understood what Anna must feel when I gave the same kind of rambling flood to her.

"Plia?" I asked when she was finally forced to take a breath.

"I'm sorry." She muttered and buried her head in her hands.

I tapped her on the shoulder. "Look at me. None of that is true."

She did as I asked.

"Master Alexei is not my lover, I do not have a brother, and my father is dead." I said as I stared into her pallid blue eyes.

Truth. Otherautumn agreed in my mind.

"I'm sorry." Plia apologized for the second time and I was certain that she would cry again.

"And," I said as I stood and offered her my hand. It took much from me to swallow my anger and push away all the furious questions I had, but I did. "I am nervous too, but you can't leave. We have our pact, remember?"

She had been there to comfort me after Tana had tried to expose my seal in Zetta's class room. I had heard her take up for me several times against the honey haired underwitch. And, what was most important, was that she looked far cuter when she wasn't crying.

There would be plenty of time for me to be angry later. I had to be what I would need someone to be for me if I was the one who was upset.

That's what friends were for.

"I don't have a dad either." She sniffled and cast her eyes back down to the blue green crystal beneath her feet.

I was not strong like Arthur, but I did not need to be. Plia was very, very, light. So light, that when I reached down and pulled her up by her wrists, I nearly sent her flying into the air.

"If I ever find one, I will share him with you. Then we can really be sisters," I said as I helped her find her balance. "And if Precept Cherith doesn't let us go to lunch, I will sneak out and get you food myself. On my power, I swear it."

Plia wiped her face again and a smile broke through.

Anna would have been proud to know that all the taking care of me that she has done was not for nothing.

I looked back at where Alexei still stood. "Come, Father. I do not wish to be late."

"You are crazy," Plia said through a small laugh as we started to leave the landing. "But it is good. Not violent or bad like Tana thinks."

If the name I had called Alexei bothered him, I could not tell, but I would keep it up my sleeve just in case I needed to throw him off one day.

The walk to Cherith's door was long enough for me to settle myself and ask Plia a question that I had been meaning to ask every new moon besides Tana.

Putting on my own mask of stone and forcing myself to not look back at my guard, I tried to keep the same tone that I would have if I asked about her last meal. "How are you with glamors?"

"Alright, if I have had enough to eat. Why?" She shrugged as I stepped through Cherith's door.

Where there had been nothing but open air in front of me, great big waxy leaves smacked against my face at the same moment that my sandal crossed the threshold of the classroom.

In a flurry of flailing arms and panicked steps, I threw myself back and watched as all the sudden greenery disappeared.

"Better than you, I saw that all the way from the stairs." Plia muttered and then covered her mouth like she had said something wrong.

I pushed her through the door. "Well, you go first then."

She vanished from my sight.

A radius of iridescent light surrounding it, Her little hand reappeared without the rest of her and she pulled me through the glamor.

Leaves, leaves as big as my chest and as long as my arm appeared around me like so many giant hands. Everywhere but the grey ceiling above and the grey stones beneath my sandals was washed with color.

I was not in a classroom, I was in a jungle.

Plia and I moved through the mess of massive leaves and vibrant flowers until they opened into a hollow place amongst the greenery.

Auden lay lazily on the far side of the room, all four of his silver eyes closed and his paws resting on a cord of twisted vines. Six tables, each as wide as my shoulders and as tall as my chest were spread from one side to the other in a wide arc. Mallory and Tana stood behind the two in the middle, both focusing on something that I could not see.

Vanda stood on the other side, holding her finger in front of her lips and looking at Plia and I.

Just as soon as I realized she was asking us to be quiet, a flash of watery blue came up from Tana.

"Better! That is almost perfect. See how you just helped it sprout?" Vanda said to Tana as I went to the high table and saw what the honey haired underwitch had done.

"It felt much easier that time. I understand what you meant by listening to it." Tana said. She was looking down at the small seed that she held in her palms. A tiny sprout of light green growth stretched up from it and seemed to be the reason for the smile that was spread across her face.

Vanda pulled me to the high table and placed an unsprouted seed in my hand. "Here, Ire, you try."

The kind faced underwitch no longer wore her uniform. The billowing white robes that she was wearing looked very similar to the ones that I had seen Cherith wear before.

Precept Cherith has already taken Vanda from Lun. Precept Zetta's words came rushing back to the front of my mind.

"Are you my teacher now, Precept Vanda?" I asked her and let the seed settle into the palm of my left hand.

I received my answer in the way of a soothing voice speaking from behind me.

"Not quite, but she is my apprentice. Each of you will give her the same respect that you would give me," Precept Cherith said as she walked to where we all stood, her long robes flowing behind her like white wake on water. "Let us see where you are, Underwitch Ire. Try to help the seed sprout."

Vanda opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing until Precept Cherith gave her a nod of approval.

"Try and listen to it, it will tell you what it needs from you if you can." She said with a smile.

I really did not understand what she meant, but when I felt the weight of what I held with the aura building beneath my palm, I tried.

"Now what?" I asked aloud without losing my focus.

Precept Cherith took a seed from the table and sent a sudden green growth up from it without a moment passing. "Give yourself to it."

I did as I was told.

Plia screamed as the seed burst into uncountable pieces and I reduced it to nothing.