why me?

[small_magics]

Isibel spends her last day on the island flying, and then she rejoins her expedition, and packs, and sleeps, and in the dawnlight she gets back on the boat to sail back to the Elven Lands.

She is kept quite occupied with small magics to keep the ship operating smoothly, and also with notebooking - writing quite small, as she brought more than enough notebooks for three weeks but then unexpectedly used many of them to draw and write with the demon and has only half of one left for several days at sea.

They land on the shore of the Elven Lands on schedule, and disembark.

Comments

[small_magics]

Petrivoch speaks up. "Whether you shrivel up is your business, but whether you save the world is everyone's business. If the problem is just that you'll find your dragon's attention distracting, meditate into hyperfocus and you'll be able to concentrate. It's a discipline of elven meditation; my Bondmate can teach you if you have the time and want to learn. She's here in Karahelanderialigor."

"That may work," says Isibel, head bowed. "Thank you."

[pythbox]

"And I am sorry," says Ancaladar. There is a general murmur of agreement.

Then they start talking about which dragons will visit the island. Saravasse volunteers to lead them.

[small_magics]

Isibel speaks quietly to Petrivoch about his Bondmate's exact location.

She finds her.

She explains the situation.

The other elf wastes no time in setting Isibel up in a guest house and setting a rigorous schedule suitable for the world-saving deadline in which Isibel will learn meditation.

Isibel proves rather adept at it, all told. Inside a moonturn, she can narrow her attention to the finest of points, like a needle so fine as to be half-invisible, or sunlight focused through glass. She thinks of nothing else beyond her chosen object of meditation. The practice isn't without its dangers. She could easily neglect a terrible injury, for example, were her mind elsewhere than her body when she was hurt.

But that's much of the point, that she can feel no suffering when hyperfocused. That she will do work, and nothing else. That she will be able to look for whoever seeks the Dark, and nothing else. That she will be able to study magic to be able to bring it to bear, and nothing else. That she will be able to be the savior of the world.

And nothing else.

She can't stay in hyperfocus forever. She's up to an hour when her teacher pronounces her ready, and she can only do an hour when the focus object is something interesting - a book, usually. She can last only minutes at a time trying to meditate on her breathing or on a star. But of course the object here is not to make her Bond free of distress for her. It's to make her productive in spite of distress.

She'll get better with practice, and if she has to spend much of every day in miserable desperate awareness of scrutiny, well, the world is at stake, she is only one elf and there are millions if not billions of people on the line, where would she be now if Harrier had refused his commands from the Wild Magic?

The teacher advises her to add a trigger to each session of hyperfocus that will end it early (because, of course, one of the things she neglects when her mind is sharpened to a blind single point is anything that could lead her to want to cease to be so). For practice purposes, she uses a word from her teacher. For later, she will need something else.

Isibel supposes that as long as she has to give over her entire self into the hands of the dragon - and his obviously much more content existing Bondmate - she may as well let them trigger her. The demon could snap his fingers in front of her face, or something. Let them decide when she works and when she weeps.

At least she'll still sleep at night.

Elves sleep at night.

She's ready in time to return to the island with the rest of the expedition, and if anyone notices that she is withdrawn and upset, they are all too polite to ask.

She drifts into the forest towards the cluster of unicorn statues, already half-dead, and makes a reluctant but definite beeline for the dragon's cave.

[endragoned]

The demon lands in front of her on an open stretch of path.

[small_magics]

"I See you," Isibel sobs, and then she falls to her knees and buries her face in her hands and bursts into open tears.

[endragoned]

He gets down on her level and wraps his arms around her and hugs her gently, his wings arched around them like a tent, murmuring something in his own language.

[small_magics]

Isibel - cannot seem to stop crying. Not yet, anyway. She could hyperfocus on explaining - oh, he probably thinks someone's coming to kill him, that she's here to warn him, doesn't he -

Inhale. Choose object. Blur everything else into black disappeared irrelevance. Exhale. Focus.

"The Wild Magic told a unicorn to tell me that I must Bond with a dragon in order to save the world," Isibel says levelly. Her voice sounds too careful, too even, every syllable an exact length and every space between words the same size, but she's not paying attention to that. Breathe. Is that the complete explanation? It is a sufficient explanation.

The focus falls away and she cries again.

[endragoned]

"I don't care about the world," he says softly. "I care about you. If this is how you feel about this thing, then do not do it."

[small_magics]

"I care about the world. So many people could die. They may have already started dying because I waited to learn to concentrate on things, but I couldn't help that, I don't think I'll be able to work otherwise, whatever work I must do. I might die anyway, if I do nothing. There's no helping it." She doesn't hyperfocus for these sentences; she pushes them out between sobs and miserable sniffling inhalations.

[endragoned]

The demon hugs her some more.

[small_magics]

"I have to," Isibel says in a small voice. "I can't consign so many people to suffer and die just because I will be unhappy."

[endragoned]

"You can," he murmurs. "People do that. Even people who are not demons."

[small_magics]

"Not me," says Isibel. "I can't."

[endragoned]

He sighs, and hugs her.

"I love you," he says. "I don't want you to be unhappy."

[small_magics]

She looks up and meets his eyes. "I will also be unhappy if darkness takes the world," she murmurs, not addressing the first statement. She doesn't know what to do with that. She can't process. She can never process again; she's going to have to make do with some combination of instinct and status quo and Bondmate opinion, and what she has written down. There is not going to be another chance to write herself into books and read her thoughts in plain words. Not with someone watching.

[endragoned]

"If you are sure," he says, "I will take you to my love."

[small_magics]

Isibel bows her head.

"I have to," she whispers.

[endragoned]

He scoops her into his arms and stands, stretching his wings.

[small_magics]

She closes her eyes and focuses on her breath for as long as she can.

When she can't hold it anymore, she's stopped crying. She's just sort of numb.

[endragoned]

By that time, they are in the air, headed for a different part of the island.

The dragon is hunting.

When they land, he is just in the process of scooping a giant turtle out of its shell, his wings spread to catch the sun.

[small_magics]

"I See you," Isibel says softly.

[endragoned]

"Yes," says the dragon.

He looks up from his meal. His eyes are still brilliantly green, greener than grass, greener than leaves. Green like fireworks.

[small_magics]

It's not hard, on a surface level, to just look. She knows what it means, but she's already made her decision about that, and now she can just - stare. They're compelling eyes, they draw her gaze, she feels a bit like someone has dropped her off a cliff and she might wish she could fly or that the cliff hadn't been there but it's not hard to fall.

[endragoned]

The first obvious thing about the bond is that they love her, both of them - that's not always true, with co-Bondmates, but it is true here.

The second is that there are not really three people here. There are two, in three bodies. The demon and the dragon are not at all shy about Isibel seeing into their thoughts, and in the newness of the bond that is still possible. They are one, in a way that dragon and Bonded usually aren't. Two separate experiences of the world, two separate voices, but one unified mind.

And they love her, and they are sorry.

[small_magics]

It's delicious and terrible, like poisoned fruit, she loves them and it's going to kill her and she loves them and she's going to die, because it's better than she imagined and worse than she thought.

She can see why the dragons might have predicted that she'd learn to tolerate the mind-reading. Their presence with her is so benign and tender and if anyone has to read her mind at least it's them, at least it's only this twinned-self who love her so much.

And it's worse. Because she hadn't expected to be able to feel it. She had expected to know she was being watched, to put aside the notebooks, to toss and turn before she could manage to sleep every night, to flinch at odd moments with the memory. She hadn't known that her own self-knowledge would be her window into the process as it happened. But she can feel her thoughts echo as they form, constant sensory confirmation that she's being watched.

She's sorry. She's sorry they have to have her in their heads, when she's going to be a creature of despair and a mechanical unthinking knife of focus by turns. She's sorry she didn't run for the hills and let Liselen chase her till the darkness swallowed up everything. (Or maybe she isn't. She'd have to write, to know for sure, and she can't, she can't, she's being torn open now but that doesn't mean she could hold the blade even if it'd lead to neater cuts.)