Rising Shards

”For what felt like hours, she just...sat there.” Tik said.

It was almost more unnerving than if they’d just moved. In Tik’s projected memory, she and River sat in the wreckage after finding out that my father (River’s brother) had taken part in a horrible accident and had been exiled for it. River and Tik were still, desperately trying to process the news.

”I finally said something, but maybe I should have stayed silent,” Tik said.

”We can fix this,” The younger Tik said. ”We don’t even know what happened, we can find them...”

I didn’t hear what River said as she went through a whirlwind of emotions at once, that started at panic and despair and quickly turned to anger. Both their voices turned to scattered noises, like two out of tune violins playing scratchy notes at each other.

”River understandably didn’t know what to do,” Tik said. ”It was her own brother exiled after all, potentially responsible for the destruction around us. I tried to calm her down, but that just made things worse. Nothing we said here was anything more than desperate attempts to process a tragic event. I don’t blame River for anything she said, while I didn’t recognize it here, she didn’t really mean what she said, she was just in a great amount of sudden pain. But still...”

River’s voice came through clearly again. “If I didn’t pick you up from your stupid training. Atrians...you’re not even an Atrian, there are no Atrians anymore! All that’s left of them is all the garbage that lasted past all of them dying…”

”Not to interrupt,” I said. ”But is your Atrian the same as the one I learn about in school?”

”Similar, yes,” Tik said, freezing the memory for a moment. ”The world I came from believed that only a select few had the ability to harness powers. There was a scarce understanding of what Cani are. It wasn’t even common knowledge that the population was entirely Cani.”

”I remember Mom said something...” I said. ”Sorry, I don’t know if that’s important. I mean, I told you about it already, and you were from the same...town, so...”

”Zeta, it’s alright,” Tik said.

”Mom said...” I turned to Stella, trying to read her expression to see if she was alright hearing me talk about our mother again. We were getting better about it, but I still worried every time I mentioned her or our father that she’d have a bad reaction. ”She said they hated Cani here. And filed down her fangs, I think.”

”It wasn’t a pleasant place for any of us,” Tik said.

”But you got that Atrian training, was that an exception?” I asked.

”In some ways, yes,” Tik said. ”It would take a long while to explain it in depth, so for now I’ll say that there were many issues with Cani life at Quatra, and factors we couldn’t even begin to speculate on moved us to this very moment.”

Tik continued the memory, where her younger self and River’s argument was getting worse.

“You’re jealous,” Tik said. “So you lash out at my dreams.”

“Ohhh, sorry I’m making fun of your dreams,” River spat. ”To sit around in some boring temple pretending to do magic with a bunch of other losers who’ve been doing it longer who conned you into thinking you could do it!”

“Shut up!” Tik shoved River.

“Don’t start, Tik.”

“Come on! Show me how stupid my Atrian training is! At least I’m not scared to leave!”

Tik shoved River again. The two strained against each other, not exactly in an all out brawl, more of a sad scuffle.

”We both had no idea how to process any of it. We’d had fights before, but this was akin to two wounded animals hissing at each other.”

River shoved Tik back, and Tik stumbled, losing her footing.

Everything went dark.

“Lyric?” River said, her voice raspy. “Oh no, no. No.”

When the vision returned, blood was everywhere. Tik was upright, but a jagged piece of the wreckage was stabbed through her chest.

River crawled over to Tik.

”Please, let me explain,” Tik in the present said.

I tried to say something, but the words caught in my throat. Diast and Stella seemed similarly stunned, while Kara and Mars were stoic.

”I didn’t die that day,” Tik said. ”The person you see before you isn’t a ghost.”

”That was going to be what I asked next.” I said.

”While our scuffle did severely injure me, River also ended up saving me in more ways than one.” Tik said.

The past Tik sputtered, blood pooling in her mouth.

“It’s gonna be OK, you’ll be alright.” River said.

With shaking hands, River patted around Tik’s pockets until she found her Atrian crystal. She held it to the wound, and the crystal began to faintly glow. It wasn’t working. River reached into her own pocket and grabbed her own crystal, pressing the two together.

”Come on, come on–” River started before it looked like the crystals exploded.