The other side of Reincarnation

　Leaving the Horizontal Line felt strange in a way I hadn’t fully prepared for――not bad, exactly, just strange, the specific vertigo of stepping outside a boundary I’d spent two years building with my own two hands and a voice in my head that never slept.

Funny. I built that barrier to keep the world out.

Didn’t stop to think about what it would feel like, stepping through it from the inside, back into a world that still doesn’t know I exist yet.

　Eris walked a half-step behind me, closer to Ace than to me, one hand resting absently in the wolf’s fur the way you’d hold onto something solid in unfamiliar water.

　She’d been quiet since we crossed the threshold of the barrier itself――quiet in the watchful way, not the sad way, cataloguing every unfamiliar tree and unfamiliar bird call with the wide-eyed attention of someone who’d spent most of her short life confined to places she hadn’t chosen.

「You alright?」 I asked.

「Fine,」 she said, too quickly.

　Then, more honestly, a moment later――

「It’s a lot. Being outside somewhere that isn’t――that isn’t yours. Somewhere I don’t know the rules of yet.」

Fair.

More than fair, actually. I forget, sometimes, how much of my own calm here is borrowed from years of practice she hasn’t had the chance to build yet.

「You’ll get the rules figured out fast,」 I told her. 「You’ve been figuring out everything else fast. Feels like a pattern, at this point.」

　She managed a small smile at that, though it didn’t quite reach all the way.

Ace. You’ve been quiet.

I am adjusting to language, came the reply, steady and articulate in a way that still caught me slightly off guard every time I used the link. It is strange, having thoughts that arrange themselves into words rather than simply existing as instinct. I am uncertain if I like it yet.

Take your time. I remember what it was like, relearning how to have a body that worked properly. This probably isn’t so different.

You are comparing my situation to your own infancy, Ace observed. I find that oddly reassuring.

Didn’t expect a wolf to develop a sense of humor this fast either, if I’m honest.

I am not a wolf. I am an Aetherfang. There is a difference, though I concede the distinction may not matter much to you.

Noted. My mistake.

　I caught myself smiling at the exchange, and glanced over to find Eris watching me with faint curiosity.

「Talking to him again?」 she asked.

「He’s got opinions already,」 I said. 「Strong ones, about being called a wolf.」

「He’s not wrong to have them,」 she said, and reached down to scratch behind Ace’s ears, which he tolerated with the specific dignity of a creature who’d decided, apparently, that some indignities were worth the affection attached to them.

　The first two days of travel were uneventful in the specific way that felt, after everything, almost suspicious――ordinary roads, ordinary weather, the kind of quiet that used to make me nervous back when Doran was the one reading the treeline for signs of trouble.

　I caught myself doing the same thing more than once, old habits transplanted from a person I’d lost onto instincts that were now entirely my own to maintain.

He’d be proud of that, probably.

Or he’d tell me I was being paranoid over nothing.

Hard to say which, honestly.

Miss both versions of that argument.

　We passed through a handful of small villages along the way, nothing large enough to be worth Mirror Skin’s use――I kept my aura suppressed and my hood up, and nobody looked twice, which felt, after everything, like its own small victory.

　Eris handled the transactions in most of these places――buying supplies, asking directions, the small ordinary interactions that still made me faintly nervous given how many strangers over the years had looked at me a half-second too long.

　She was good at it, better than I expected given how sheltered her life had been up to a month ago.

　Polite, quick, disarming in a way that made shopkeepers relax around her without quite understanding why.

「You’re good at this,」 I told her, after the third village in a row where she’d talked a suspicious innkeeper into a fair room rate without breaking a sweat.

「I had to be,」 she said, simply. 「Before. Small kindnesses were the only currency I actually had, most days. Learned to spend them well.」

That’s not a skill anyone should have to develop that young.

Doesn’t mean I’m not grateful you did, given how useful it’s turning out to be now.

　It was on the third night, camped just off the main road, that Eris finally asked the question I’d been quietly expecting since the day I found her.

「Can I ask you something?」 she said, poking at the fire with a stick, not quite looking at me.

「Go ahead.」

「What actually happened to you? Before me. You’ve mentioned――pieces. Doran. Fenrik. The Church. But never all of it together. Never the whole shape of it.」

　I was quiet a long moment, weighing how much of it to actually give her.

She’s earned more than pieces, at this point.

She’s trusted me with everything she’s got left. Feels wrong, holding mine back indefinitely in return.

「I lost my parents when I was eight,」 I said, finally. 「Two dragons killed them, for a reason I still don’t fully understand――something about what I am. Not what I’ve done. Just what I am, existing at all.」

　I paused.

「Then I lost two more people I’d come to think of as family, six years later. The Church did that one. Also for what I am, as far as I can tell, though the details are still murky.」

　She didn’t say anything, just listened, which I appreciated more than any response could have given me.

「Before all of that,」 I continued, quieter, 「I lived a whole different life. Different world, even. Different name. That ended too――someone I trusted killed me for money, in that life.」

　I let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh.

「So. You could say I’ve got a pattern. People I let myself love, taken from me, over and over, in ways I never see coming until it’s already too late to stop.」

「That’s not fair,」 she said, finally, quiet and fierce at once. 「None of that is fair.」

No. It really isn’t.

Nice to hear someone else say it plainly, instead of just thinking it myself in the dark.

「No,」 I agreed. 「It’s not. Doesn’t change that it happened, though. Just means I get to decide what I do with it going forward. That’s the only part of any of it that’s actually still mine to control.」

　Ace, quiet through most of the exchange, spoke up through the link, gentle in a way I hadn’t expected from something that had introduced itself with such clinical precision about its own species classification.

You are still here, though. Despite all of it.

Yeah. I am.

I do not fully understand human loss the way you experience it. But I understand persistence. It is, in its own way, a kind of strength that does not require power to prove itself.

Didn’t expect a philosophy lesson from you tonight, of all nights.

I contain multitudes, Ace said.

　I nearly choked on my own breath, because that was very specifically my line, delivered back at me with what I could only describe, even without seeing his face, as smug satisfaction.

Did you just――

Eris told me you say that often. I decided to test it myself. The reaction was worth the theft.

Oh, you’re both going to be a handful, aren’t you.

　Eris, catching the tail end of my expression, laughed――a real one, unguarded, the first properly loud laugh I’d heard out of her since I’d found her half-dead in that clearing.

「What did he say?」

「Stole my own joke and used it against me. Immediately. Without remorse.」

「Good,」 she said, still grinning. 「Someone should keep you humble.」

Yeah.

Maybe someone should, at that.

　We reached the outskirts of Roshan on the fifth day, the city sprawling out below a low ridge we’d climbed to get a proper look at it――walls thick and well-maintained, smoke rising from more chimneys than I could easily count, the unmistakable hum of a place large enough to actually matter in whatever passed for this world’s economy.

Bigger than anywhere I’ve actually lived since the mountain.

Bigger than anywhere Doran ever took us, even on the busiest stretch of our old circuit.

「That’s a lot of people,」 Eris said, quiet, some of her earlier nervousness creeping back in at the sheer scale of it.

「That’s a lot of opportunity,」 I said, trying to sound more confident about it than I entirely felt. 「Funds. Information. Maybe even people worth knowing, if we’re lucky.」

And maybe some people worth being careful of, too.

Can’t forget that part, however hopeful I’m trying to sound right now.

　Ace fell into step beside me, silent now in the way that meant he was taking in the scale of the place with his own kind of careful attention.

This is very different from your domain, he observed.

Yeah. It really is.

I do not know if I like it yet either.

Welcome to the club, I thought, echoing Eris’s own words back at her without meaning to, and felt something steady settle in my chest despite the nervous unfamiliarity of the city ahead.

Whatever’s waiting down there――new work, new danger, new people who might or might not know what I am――I’ve got two people with me this time who chose to be here.

That has to count for something, walking into somewhere new.

　We started down the ridge together, toward Roshan, toward whatever came next.