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

[endragoned]

The demon wraps his arms around her and cries.

He doesn't want to hurt her. When he was only his one-self and the other demons hated him violently, this was part of why: because sometimes he sees someone hurting and he doesn't want them to be. And now he can feel it, and it's so much worse, he would die if that would help, but if his both-self died it would kill her too and if only the demon died the dragon would be half a soul forever without him and she would still hurt.

"I'l sleep," the dragon says desperately, "I'll sleep your whole life, if I wake up I'll go to sleep again—my love, my love..."

[small_magics]

Isibel hugs the demon, tightly, tightly, eyes closed. Usually a dragon teaches their Bondmate elfmagery from where it's hidden under the exchange the elves' ancestors made, but there are other Elfmages, she can go back to the Elven Lands, she can learn from them, she can do whatever it is she has to do, but even if the dragon sleeps a thousand years there will still be the demon and that is not how he works, is it? It scarcely matters if it's one of them or both, the problem isn't how many eyes but that things never meant to be exposed are visible at all.

[endragoned]

"I sleep, too," the demon murmurs. "I sleep for days - I slept for a moonturn once. I'll do it as much as I can, my love." And he kisses her forehead, the way he'd kiss the dragon's nose, lightly and lovingly.

[small_magics]

She leans into the embrace. She loves them. If anybody had to read her at least it's them. Maybe she can hold together with the privacy she'll get when they're sleeping. She'll miss them, probably - certainly - but she can live with missing people, even these people. (She thinks. She'd have to write to be sure. Will she be able to do that when they both sleep? They'll still be able to see anything she chances to remember having written but it won't have the immediate sting. Maybe if she can write anyway, around that, she'll be all right.)

She doesn't understand how the reading can be so pervasive. She doesn't feel like she has more attention to spare than she ever did, or as though - outside of hyperfocus - other things are being neglected. But there they are, background hum of love-attention-invasion, like they can't even look away, try though they might. She needs just a moment - she takes a breath and concentrates, lets it out, concentrates, inhale, exhale, and that's all, she just needed a little break, a moment away, where she might not be doing anything productive but she wasn't conscious of being watched at it.

[endragoned]

When her attention returns, her Bondmates are bewildered but relieved. Feeling her focus like that is deeply strange, but at least it doesn't hurt. It's possible not to hurt. That's a start.

[small_magics]

She can't do it for more than an hour and that only when she's focused on something interesting or at least complicated. Magic will probably qualify. She's loved magic all her life. She'll do her best to recover her equanimity, here with them, while the Bond settles - she'll go back to Elven Lands; the boat will be making several trips and she can simply take the next one - she'll find the same teacher who taught her to focus - she'll work on magic. She'll try to figure out what in the world she's supposed to do with it.

[endragoned]

She can fly now, or as close as a wingless creature can get. Either of her Bondmates will carry her anywhere in the world she wants to go.

If she doesn't want to wait for the next boat, she needn't.

[small_magics]

She doesn't think the demon could land among elves and receive a pleasant welcome.

The dragon could.

[endragoned]

Then the dragon will fly with her, and the demon will -

He has no idea.

Stay here, perhaps; he is still afforded some privacy, although the way that flight of dragons earlier was talking, it is only a matter of time before the whole world knows that there is a demon on the loose. He can stay here, and... would she like it if he made more good food for elves? He'll do that.

[small_magics]

Isibel hugs him as hard as she can, which isn't very hard really. He should be invisible when he sleeps, perhaps, or he could disguise himself as something other than a demon - aren't they supposed to be able to do that? - and accompany them. She'll be awake, soon enough she'll be a competent Elfmage, a Sarion, and then she'll need to go - wherever she needs to go to stop the darkness, and not even elfmagery will let her fly without someone to carry her. (This may be a flaw in the sleeping plan, at least if there is any intention of implementing it before the danger is past.)

[endragoned]

He can, yes - he is not very good at it, and he cannot fool any kind of mage, but he can fool the ordinary eyes of ordinary folk. Or at least he could, ten thousand years ago when last he tried.

He can try again, he supposes.

Invisibility is a good thought. If she can find somewhere to put him where no one will stumble across the sleeping demon. In a box, perhaps. (He has done that before.)

[small_magics]

The dragons know what he is; perhaps they'll help. Or Magania. Or a box, if he wouldn't mind a box, or - she can't think, she's already generated more thoughts than she expected to, and hyperfocus is only good for tasks, not for problem-solving, she can't think anymore, she presses her face to his shoulder and sobs.

[endragoned]

The demon hugs her.

"We will fly," he murmurs. "To the elves. To the other dragons. We will fly."

[small_magics]

She nods minutely. Will he carry her - she doesn't think she can walk very well, right now, ribbons or no ribbons -

[endragoned]

He scoops her up and kisses her forehead again.

[small_magics]

Isibel closes her eyes. She needs to stop again, just for a minute, a minute will do - breathe, breathe, breathe -

[endragoned]

When she notices the world again, they are in the air.

[small_magics]

She thinks of the map, of the direction they'll want to go to reach where her teacher lives, and she sighs. Perhaps when the Bond has settled some it will be better.

Or maybe she'll recognize her own thoughts marching across their minds forever even if theirs ultimately settle into, not invisibility, but the difficult cipher it takes centuries to learn to read.

(She has no protection like that; the mindreading is a property of dragons and the dragon will be able to read her whatever they do. Maybe if he sleeps the demon will be awake but unable to get any detail from her? Maybe? She can hope.)

[endragoned]

When the demon and the dragon met and Bonded, they were like this almost from the start. They understood each other instantly, and recognized their sameness amidst all the differences, and that was that.

They hope it will not be that way for Isibel.

[small_magics]

Let it not be so. Let there be an end. Let the Wild Magic be not that cruel. She can come out of this if it's short enough, if they can find enough stopgaps - but if they can't she may just save the world and then overdose on dream-honey, and there is a thought she never thought she'd have, she never ever wanted to die, she couldn't imagine it, she believed in theory that such suffering could exist but she didn't know what it would be like and didn't think even this fate would qualify. But having no quiet place in her own mind to retreat where no one will look - and feeling it every time she has a thought, whispering across the other mind -

Well, they can live without her, right? She'll learn magic and save the world and if they haven't figured something out by then there's dream-honey, they can live without her.

[endragoned]

They do not want to live without her.

But they already knew they were going to, if by some incredible chance the demon is not killed. Elves don't live forever.

Perhaps, though - if the demon is killed - the dragon can sleep for a thousand years, and never take another Bondmate, and he and Isibel can die together as dragon and Bonded used to. Perhaps that would be best.

[small_magics]

Perhaps.

Once she wanted to live forever.

She can't quite grasp the feeling now.

[endragoned]

"My love, my love," the demon murmurs, kissing her forehead again.

[small_magics]

"Beloved," sighs Isibel.

She thought one day she might love someone - not like this, never like this, but that she'd meet some elf and they'd be drawn to each other in the way that elves are, and then they'd probably have a terrific fight over betrothal pendants and proper wedding ceremonies because the way elves are married also involves thought-sharing, but she would never have agreed to that. Now that's hardly likely at all; even if her personality survives what's to come she's going to be damaged. Maybe she was never meant for that special connection, or maybe she would have found someone who'd be content to remain unmarried yet -

She bites her lip sharply, meditates on inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale, there is only breathing, certainly nothing that she not only wouldn't like read out of her thoughts but would also be mortified to put into words, only breathing, breathing, breathing.

[endragoned]

"Oh, my love," the demon sighs, smiling a little. He loves her so much. He loved her even before; they both did.