Episode 219: Festival Sounds (Terren)

Terror and hope clashed, giant waves battling at the arms of a sea.

“They can’t come here,” Dorsa insisted. Terren felt her order passing through, her rank.

He stood taller than her. “Wait. She’s my twin. She won’t hurt you.”

Dorsa turned back, her hand lingering in his. Betrayal.

He felt it stab himself, her hurt rippling like something darker than he had ever touched before. Confusion enveloped him, and he fought to cloud his vision while she dragged him away.

“She won’t hurt you,” he repeated. He could feel the beat of Rayka’s wings. Nim was near.

He breathed in the scent of barn and wild. It was more vibrant, and she was more vibrant.

The group argued, and Dorsa let his hand go.

Dorsa was gone. The air was silent, the minds gone.

He could see again, the earth and the tall trees. He could see Rayka’s blue wings.

He could hear nothing, in a way that the silence of the world and even the grace of Rayka’s wings were too quiet.

“Terren?” Nim yelled.

She fell from the sky. He caught her. No, she had walked. He wrapped her tighter in his arms and blinked away the vision.

“Nim.”

Her husband was there too. “What happened to you?” His dreads, a match to hers, didn’t jingle when he walked.

It was too quiet; his mind hurt.

“Where were you?” Soren asked.

Their minds raced, thinking of the baby in their arms and the selkies. Corn. Soren couldn’t stop thinking about corn.

“Just… camping,” Terren replied.

He had dreads too. He had himself. How long had he forgotten his body, in the passion of the minds of Dorsa and her people?

“Do you need a ride home?” Nim asked.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Terren climbed onto Rayka and held his arms out for the baby.

Nim was worried. She shared a glance with Soren, and Soren wrote it off as fatigue.

He would have to hide things better.

Nim passed him the baby. He wrapped his arms around her. He could feel her mind, a buzz of curious and new. She was a bright light in a storm of darkness. He could feel her, and he loved her. His niece. Nim had other babies. They were missing.

He caressed her mind for information.

This was her fourth child. Her twins were home: Caden and Tsura. Her son, Meldrey, was adopted. He was hair. Soren’s mind lit up to Meldrey.

Then there was this girl, who they thought was a boy.

“She’s cute,” he said, emphasizing she.

“Who is cute?” Soren asked.

Aiden. Terren chuckled. “Your daughter. She needs a better name.”

Nim’s mind went numb and she fell off an internal cliff of misery. She was too tired. He had been missing too long. His mind stopped drifting to find Dorsa. She would be there tomorrow, but Nim was here now.

“Oh,” Nim said aloud. Her mind ran much deeper, gold in a vein.

“We. Are the best parents ever.” Soren climbed onto his dragon. “Aiden can be a girl’s name though.”

“Why don’t you ask her what her name is,” Terren said.

“Maybe we should have just taken the other exit,” Nim joked.

He was worried about her, about her trial. She believed things had gone wrong at home, but Terren could sense nothing in the distance.

“Do you know her name?” Nim asked. “You’re the mind reader.”

He was. One of a kind, in the Dells.

“Maybe,” he teased. “Let’s go.”

“Well aren’t you helpful.” Nim urged Rayka to move, but Terren told her to wait. Soren had something else to say first.

Rayka started walking, slowly, as a compromise.

Terren smiled. He missed his sister.

“What if you were older?” Nim asked, almost wished. “And you were needed? There’s a crisis by the way.”

“You know, Nim and I go camping all the time and we’ve never disappeared like that.”

They hadn’t. They had never been so trapped. So afraid of others.

Nell, he thought Nell might understand. He would have to seek him out. They could read one another’s minds, Nell would be calm. He resolved to see him.

“I wasn’t able to let anyone know,”  Terren admitted. Without Dorsa around, he had more power. Without her dad, he had even more.

Her dad had taken Dorsa away from him. The second he hesitated, he had wanted Terren gone.

Terren wanted him gone. Whatever he did to Dorsa.

“I am older, in spirit,” he teased. He encouraged Rayka to take off. “Congratulations, baby sister.”

Congratulations for everything he missed. He needed to be there now, be with Nim and Soren and his nieces and nephews.

“Queen sister,” she corrected as Rayka took to the sky.

Once airborne, she glanced back at him. “Are you really okay?”

“Really, I’m sorry.”

She relaxed a little more, but she needed rest. He held the little girl, Rhoda, tight in his arms. They would find her name soon enough.

“Go with Soren. I have your daughter.”

She hesitated, so he soothed her with trust and love. He would defend his niece with his entire being.

Nim took off in the air, and Soren caught her.

Terren sang Rhoda a lullaby, one he wished he could sing to his own children one day.

Not today. Today, Rhoda’s eyes blinked. He sang lower, to her soul more than her ears.

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