Joel Shepherd - Sasha

"Nor I," Sasha agreed sadly.

"Nor any of us," said Errollyn.

Sasha gazed at him for a long moment. She could not, at this moment, be with her Baerlyn friends. Kessligh had gone to Petrodor. The old foundations that had once underpinned her life had all shifted, and now there was a new path before her. She had served Lenayin as best she could in this one, desperate act. Now, she would follow her uman to Petrodor. She was Nasi-Keth, and Petrodor was a stronghold not only for them, but for the serrin as well. She gazed at Errollyn, and wondered if this future she glimpsed was really so strange and unpredictable after all. The serrin had always been an enormous part of her life, through Kessligh, and the svaalverd, and the many teachings of the Nasi-Keth. Kessligh thought she had not given those teachings, and that heritage, the respect that it had deserved. Perhaps now it was time to put old grievances to bed. Time, as the old Valhanan saying went, to put the shoe on the right foot for a change.

"So, Master Errollyn," she said. "Ras'el malhrahn tilosse?" How do you see the road?

Errollyn smiled. "Way' un ei," he said. Steep. No… more than steep. Ei, the active tense of ei'lehn, the root word for "curl," as a girl's hair might curl, or a dying leaf. Saalsi words came often in two parts, which came together and came apart to make new meanings, and hint at many more. Steep and winding, but with a hint of beauty in the treachery. "Leh bel'eraine mahd'se fal svain'ah si." But the view has such beauty. Or no… not beauty. Enlightenment? Svainerlai was an old form of "beautiful," meaning something ancient and beautiful, but the ah probably came from ahshti, a related word that meant, very roughly, "to gain enlightenment from beauty." And so…

She shook her head in faint amazement. The grammar was appallingly vague, by human standards. But then, humans were empirical. Serrin made imprecision into an artform. Serrin words. Serrin thoughts. Serrin worlds. One door closed, another opened.

"What are you saying?" Sofy pressed with intrigue. "Oh please, don't talk Saalsi without me! I need to know what you're saying!"

"You need to know what everyone's saying," Sasha told her. "The Princess of Gossip. It's an addiction."

"Something old and wise and extremely dirty," Errollyn told the younger girl.

"Don't tease me," Sofy sniffed, with a haughty angle to her slim jaw. "I'm very frightening when I'm angry."

"Finish your wine," Sasha told her with a smile. "The night's only young yet. Father may get you back, but he won't get you back so pure and innocent as he'd like."

Sparks swirled and climbed into the night sky from the fire, mingling with the sparks of many surrounding campfires. Sasha watched them rise into one of the few constellations bright enough to brave the light of the rising moon. Hyathon the Warrior, with his belt, sword and helm. The hero of Lenayin, clear in the night sky above the Valley of the Udalyn-brave, proud and free.