Millennial Mage

Tala felt as if the afternoon and evening after the revelation passed in a blur, and before she knew it, she was curled up beside Rane, unable to sleep.

The stars shining down from the top of their sanctum seemed too bright to her eyes, even when they were closed. The wind moving over the surroundings seemed too loud, despite none of the sound reaching her ears.

She even knew that Alat was isolating her from her threefold sight, yet still she felt like she could hear it, and it was horrible.

She almost woke Rane to try to talk through what she was thinking, but something about the steady rise and fall of his chest was soothing in its own way, and she didn’t want to disrupt or lose that.

She kept playing the earlier conversation over and over in her head, but the results were the same every time.

She would never have children of her own.

Oh, sure, there had been some hemming and hawing, claims that advances in Magic—or her own magical advancement—might correct the issue, but the underlying message was clear: Don’t expect to ever have children.

-I’m here, Tala.-

I know, Alat. I just… She couldn’t say it, but they both knew. This had been Alat’s lot in life the whole time. She’d never expected to have children of her own—even with the understanding that she and Tala were the same person, it wasn’t quite the same—and so the alternate interface hadn’t received the same blow that Tala had with the news.

More than that, they both knew that Tala had been aware of Alat’s effective infertility, and while she’d been somewhat sympathetic, she hadn’t ever really talked through it with her.Tala felt like it would be rather hypocritical to bemoan her current state, when her other self had been in the exact same situation for literal years without it ever coming up.

-I don’t mind, you know. We touched on the topic occasionally—on all topics surrounding my lack of ‘my own’ body, really—and you were always incredibly supportive. Moreover, I knew that I could have children through you. They would have been as much mine in spirit as yours.-

I did try to be understanding, and I am glad you saw it that way. As to your body, you don’t really manifest that often. I know you can, but you don’t.

Alat sent the feeling of a shrug. -I don’t really feel the need. To be fair, there are a few things that Enar and I want to run by you and Rane, but that’s for another time.-

Tala arched an eyebrow but didn’t press her alternate interface on the topic.

-I do think Rane would want you to wake him up. He wants to be there for you when you need him.-

I know. I really do, and you should know that I know that, but he spent the entire afternoon running around making sure that we are all set for our trip—our honeymoon. She grimaced. And I’ve gone and made the trip about me escaping this news.

-That may have been what triggered it, but I think how you act going forward is what will set the tone for the trip.- After a moment’s pause, Alat added, -But why don’t you express your actual fear?-

She swallowed, then chastised herself. Alat was her. If she couldn’t express her fear to herself then she had no hope at all of doing anything about it. I… What if he doesn’t want me?

-I’m listening.-

What if he doesn’t want to be married to someone who’s broken. Expressing the thought—even internally—seemed to wrench something open inside her, and she began to weep, shaking silently.

She both blessed and cursed the fact that Rane was such a heavy sleeper. She didn’t want to wake him with this, but she also desperately wanted him to hold her.

She cried silently for a long moment before Alat said anything else.

-Firstly, you aren’t broken. You could honestly argue that you are too awesome, and that’s what is creating the issue.-

Spoken like a closet narcissist.

-Hey now, this isn’t the time for personal attacks, especially not on yourself.-

Tala huffed a laugh.

-But even if you were unable to have children due to something actually being wrong, that doesn’t make you unlovable, Tala. Love is often mistaken as a feeling, but it isn’t. Love is a choice. If people treated love as a feeling that came and went, never to return—even in a safer, less insane world—how would any relationship last? Rane has chosen to love you, and you him. This fear is understandable, but don’t you think you owe it to Rane—and yourself—to talk to him about it? Ask him how he feels?-

Tala hesitated, then nodded, willing away her tears and the mucus from her face. Yeah, I think you’re right.

-...but you’re going to wait until tomorrow.- Alat sighed.

I don’t want to wake him. He’s exhausted.

-Not so tired that he wouldn’t want to be there for you.-

And I want to support him, too. We’ll both be happier if he sleeps tonight. It’s been almost a week since either of us slept.

-Ahh, the newly married life of an immortal couple.-

Tala felt herself blush, even though the thought had come from her own mind. Yes, well… Can you just help me sleep?

-Of course, but do you really want me to?-

Yes, please. I think it will help, even if it does feel like cheating.

-Alright. Sleep well, Tala.-

Goodnight, Alat.

* * *

The next morning, even as the sun was rising within their sanctum, Tala and Rane sat on their surprisingly comfortable thrones, looking out over the lush landscape.

They both had special drinks with a concentrated coffee base, exactly as they’d planned as a kickoff to their honeymoon.

Hers was vanilla at the core of the flavoring, and his was mint through and through.

Despite the stunning views, delicious drinks, and impeccable company, the shadow of the previous day’s news still hung over them.

Rane held out his large mug for Tala to clink, and she did so, an unbidden smile tugging at her lips at the action.

“To us.” His voice was soft, the tone kind, and his look meaningful. “Married at last, together for as long as we live.”

She could sense his love radiating through their soulbond, further cementing that it was a state that he was willfully in, rather than an emotion he was experiencing.

He loved her.

Even as she lowered the mug, her eyes welled with tears.

Rane moved quickly, setting his drink aside and snatching her up in an embrace. “Hey, hey, now. What’s all this?”

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“I’m broken,” she heard herself speaking before she could think to stop herself, “I… I can’t have any children. Why would you want to stay with me?”

He stroked her back. “Tala. I didn’t pursue you and marry you as a potential baby-making factory.”

The word-picture made her huff an involuntary laugh.

“I love you, and while I would have loved any children we had, my love for you does not depend on them, whether or not they ever come to be.”

She pulled back to look at him. “But… I’m not what you signed up for. You wanted a wife, a family. You wanted children, grandchildren, descendants through the ages. We talked about it, and you were clear. So was I. I agreed to that, and now I can’t deliver.”

She hitched, scrunching up her face.

“I literally can’t deliver.” Tears threatened to overwhelm her yet again.

“Hey, hey, now.” He pulled her closer. “You wanted—want—all those things too. You aren’t stopping me from reaching a personal goal. We’ve hit a barrier toward our shared goal.” He pulled back this time, meeting her gaze with obvious determination. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She gave another huffing laugh. “That will make our honeymoon rather more local than I had anticipated.”

He blinked a few times before giving a slight smile. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

She curled back in against him. “Really?”

“Really.”

They sat like that for a while, watching the sun rise and enjoying their drinks. Finally—far more in control of herself—Tala shifted to look up at Rane’s face once more. “You know…”

“Yes?”

“Just because we can’t conceive, that doesn’t mean we can’t practice.”

He took a moment to parse what she meant. Then, a soft smile spread across his features. “I’m always up for a good practice session with you, love.”

* * *

When mid-morning arrived, Tala and Rane stood at the northern gate from Alefast, Waning, ready to depart.

Terry was at their side, practically dancing from foot to foot in excitement to be out once more.

The married couple was relaxed, newly bathed, and ready to be off. The tension of the news was a mere background feeling for the moment.

Their true first stop was to be old Marliweather for the long anticipated experiments with Tala’s attraction amplification and the rends in reality.

There were some quick stops along the way—Rane had really enjoyed working with some of the stone samples that they’d been given, and one or two were from known deposits that were basically on the way.

Thus, they’d be traveling up the eastern side of the central mountains for the first part of their journey.

Their unit was there at the gates to see them off, along with Master Grediv. A few others had heard of the departure—due to Rane’s whirlwind of preparation the day before—and they stopped by as well, while Tala had been doing final checks on Irondale.

The town had been closed up for a bit less than an hour, and Lyn was doing her own final checks on their stores with Alat.

Enar was apparently checking on all the trees in Irondale and the sanctum, focusing especially on their newly acquired forest. While Tala and Alat could easily see everything within their soulbound space, actually parsing out what everything that they were seeing meant was a much harder process, and Enar had taken a liking to arborism.

Finally, the last hugs and well-wishes were exchanged, and it was time for Tala and Rane to depart.

Terry trilled at the sky and flickered away.

Rane shot off like an arrow, imparting a large amount of kinetic energy onto himself to reach his maximum velocity without magical resonance almost instantly.

Tala had to crouch and leap, but with her surface expansion scripts, she didn’t damage the ground as she took off after her companions.

She stepped down on the air to gain height and increase her speed, racing after Rane and Terry.

It was early in the year, and snow made much of the surroundings white.

Most trees were bare, and there was a stark beauty to the landscape, especially highlighted against the mountains to the north and west.

It’s funny how many important things happen to me in the winter.

-Well, it is a large part of the year, especially this far north.-

Yeah, well, that still shouldn’t make it the most prevalent time in which important things occur.

Alat sent the impression of a shrug. -Who knows, then.-

It wasn’t that important, honestly.

Tala quickly caught up to Rane, even though a large part of that was him briefly slowing down to be at her side.

This first leg of their trip was utterly uneventful, even taking into account the lovely winterscape laid out around them.

They ate lunch on a mountain peak on the eastern edge of the range, the process of getting to the top essentially no harder than going anywhere else.

Terry was a bit irritated, as it was harder for him to flicker up to the top of such a place, but he was mollified by a large helping of jerky and by his hunting of a massive mountain goat that was magical enough to make things interesting.

The goat’s magic was focused entirely on resiliency, meaning that Terry faced his old issue of wearing down a defensive opponent, but this time it was combined with the nimbleness of a mountain goat who was unafraid of normally precarious positions.

Essentially, Terry ended up flickering around over sheer drops more than half the time.

Still, with his ability to aspect mirror Flow’s cutting edge onto his talons well mastered, the outcome was never in any doubt. It was a sporting clash, and after it was complete, Terry had goat for dessert before the three of them headed down the north-eastern side of the peak.

Tala and Rane were staying relatively close together, each leaping forward in their own way as Terry flickered around them, and together they kept up a ground-eating pace.

As the afternoon progressed, Rane led them a bit north of the ‘ideal’ path in order to stop by a known source for one of the stone types he’d especially enjoyed working with.

A sample of the material had been among the gifts presented to them, and he’d made a few game pieces with it, seemingly appreciating its ability to take and hold fine detail, as well as the variegated patterning within the stone.

It didn’t take too long to find the source as the precise location of the material had been a part of the gift.

There was a nearly two hundred foot cliff, much of which was composed of the particular subtype of stone.

Rane looked her way. “So… can Kit grab a large chunk for me?”

Tala smiled back. “Yeah. I think she can.”

Kit was quite eager as Tala placed a manifestation of the devourling on the cliff-face.

The soulbound storage couldn’t simply open wide enough to take in the whole cliff, but she could sweep back and forth across the half-mile of cliff-face, trying to grab the sections that were the desired material.

All in all, it took about an hour, and left the cliff reasonably well intact still. There were only a couple of sections that fell after their collection was done, and once the soil shifted, it revealed new bedrock capable of supporting the edifice.

Rane was watching closely as the process concluded. “You know, I can’t decide if this is better than stripping back the landscape to get access to the material, as it leaves more of what was here, here, or worse, because it makes it look like it’s all still here while undermining at least some of it.”

Tala gave him a level look. “I can put it back, if you want.”

He held his hands up in surrender, even as a grin blossomed across his face. “No, no. I’m quite glad that we were able to get so much, so efficiently.”

She smiled. “Alright, then.”

With that task complete, they continued on their way. The unhappy news only occasionally flitted through Tala’s thoughts, and did not remain, as she did her best to dismiss it.

They had only gone a mile or so when Tala realized something. She hadn’t seen Terry in a while.

-Huh… yeah. I usually am helping him with his own threefold perception, but…-

Tala felt her bond with Terry twitch slightly. There wasn’t fear coming through it, but it was… concern? Confusion?

It was still odd that she got emotions from Terry but not Rane, but that was just the different nature of variations between soulbonds.

But that was hardly important at the moment. She flagged Rane to follow her, and they diverted toward where she could feel Terry.

When they arrived, the avian didn’t command her attention; instead, what caught her eye was a little boy.

He was sitting on the forested, mountain slope, near a rather deeper patch of snow.

His eyes were nearly completely white as he stared at nothing. Tala had never seen a blind person before—any blind human in the cities would have been healed immediately—but it was still obvious that he couldn’t see.

Aside from his being blind, quite a few things stood out about the boy. In her limited experience with children, there were those who were so cute they could get away with murder, and those whose parents claimed they were cute. There tended to be no in-between.

This boy was of the first kind.

His hair was white and his clothes looked travel worn but not old or degraded.

One hand was slowly turning the crank on the side of a large barrel, and the other was scratching Terry’s belly, pinning the avian in his lap, and he gave a shy smile vaguely in their direction as he spoke softly, “Oh, hello. Please be welcome. This batch is almost done. Until then, stay a while, and listen.”

Rane and Tala shared a look before moving forward side by side.

This should be interesting.

They landed lightly some dozen feet from the boy, and he didn’t turn to look directly at them, but the smile still blossomed wider across his features. Before he could add to his invitation, however, Tala spoke, “We are on a journey, and this was not a planned stop on the way.”

He shook his head slightly, seeming hesitant even as he responded, “Rush, rush, rush. Are you and yours really in such a hurry? Sit and pass a moment with me. I don’t mean to be a bother, but I do so miss company.”

Tala and Rane hesitated again, sharing a look.

Their hesitation seemed to give the boy a bit more courage as when he spoke again, it was a bit louder than before, “You must be this little guy’s bonded. Please do be welcome. I’m Simon, and if you have the time, the ice cream will be ready quite soon.”

As they watched, Simon moved his hand away from Terry’s belly and as the bird moved to sit up, like a stage magician, Simon pulled what seemed to be a small candy out of thin air and popped it into the avian’s mouth before catching him and keeping him from escaping with a scratching hand.

“He really is being ever so kind to try my latest treats. I am eager to learn which he likes best.” There was a shyly content look on the boy’s face. Then, a small frown creased his brow, and he seemed to be conceding something to himself as well as them, “Though, I suppose he does have a hard choice ahead. They are all excellent.”