“You look lost.”
Harmaelinn’s ears pinned against her head. Funny. It seemed like it wasn’t long ago that she was saying that to some lost soul. The peryton narrowed her eyes. She stood amidst the towers of the crystal forest. It was in the deep of the night and around her, crystals glowed various colors. The colors were warm and gentle, like the sprays of sunset but concentrated into the individual crystals. They pulsated around her, fading from pitch darkness to the brightness of a clear full moon.
The voice that spoke out to her came from nearby. As the light of the crystals returned from a spell where their rhythms matched up and the area around her was plunged into darkness, the face of the slender wolf materialized in a faint blue glow. The ethereal watched her with bright, mismatched eyes that seemed unblinking in the light of the crystals.
Harm looked towards the figure and stiffened, unsure, before turning back towards the direction that she was watching. In the distance was the border between the crystal forest and the silver wood. The border was visible in the light, the transition just able to be made out in the faint glow. But in this particular spot directly in front of where the sky-colored peryton stood, the crystals before her disappeared into darkness.
Had it been lighter, one would have been able to make out the nature of the clearing before them. The thick vines of the thorn circle were like a wall of prickly bramble. Impenetrable and menacing.
Harmaelinn had been here since the afternoon, watching. Thinking. It wasn’t long ago that she had met the wolfdog adventurer. Their interaction hadn’t been long but… but it stuck with her.
’There are always more questions.’
It was true, wasn’t it? Harmaelinn seemed to pride herself these days in trying to find the answers in the world. Not necessarily the answers to the universe, or anything, but her own personal questions. There were so many. And the answers always seemed to be just out of her grasp. She felt like she was moving in the right direction… but what if beyond the mountain of the answers to her questions were just… just more questions?
Towards what purpose, then, was she expending so much energy?
“Are you broken, dear? Usually one answers a question when asked.”
The voice of the wolf had a warm and soothing timbre to it. Enticing. One might think it to be the same sort of voice that draws a fly into a spider’s web.
“I…” Harm’s voice trailed off and she furrowed her brow. She shook her head, breaking her gaze from the distant border of the thorn circle. “I’m just preoccupied. I apologize, that… That was rude of me.” The peryton turned towards the wolf that spoke to her with a warm but distant smile. She nodded her head, a half-hearted bow in greeting.
“Oh don’t fret, sweet one. You aren’t the first to look at the thorn circle with longing.” The wolf neared. For a moment, her voice felt close enough to where it seemed as though she was hovering over Harm’s shoulder.
“Longing?” Harm questioned. She watched her with a quirked brow and a shake of the head. “I… I wouldn’t say that.”
“Mmm, so you say,” the wolf replied with a knowing, toothy smile that gave Harm a not insignificant amount of discomfort. “You wouldn’t be the only one that’s come out here since the veil opened last, wondering when it would open next. Waiting to cross into the mysteries that lay beyond.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Trying to find out when it is that you can cross over next?”
“Me?” The wolf gave a laugh, one that wasn’t quite sinister, but not not sinister. “Oh no, my dear no. I have no business in that place. I’m just… mmm… You could say that I check back in once in a while because I’m waiting on a friend.”
Harmaelinn fell into quiet contemplation for a few more moments. “So… You aren’t curious at all? About the world on the other side?”
The wolf gave a musing hum. Her bi-colored eyes turned towards the thorn circle in the distance before she looked back towards the blue peryton. “Not particularly. My dear, we of this world are simply above anything that can be offered in that place. I have nothing to prove by going there and, at the present moment, there is nothing that that place can give me.” Caesonia shrugged, “so if there’s nothing that I need of it, then why, my dear, would I bother myself with going there?”
“That seems…” her voice trailed off. Something told her that she’d have nothing to gain by questioning the way the wolf spoke of the other world like it was beneath them. That logic seemed… flawed. Harm shook her head. “There has to be something there that makes someone want to go. Some… I don’t know. Answers there that can’t be found here.”
“Mmmm, perhaps.” Caesonia gave her an inquisitive eye. “You’ll have to keep me in the loop, dear. Do let me know how your quest goes if you decide to cross. Let me know if you find those answers.”
The rhythm of the pulsations matched up again and the world around her became dark for a moment. When the light returned, Harmaelinn found herself alone.
The peryton took a breath and resisted the shudder that threatened to shoot down her spine. In the silence of the night she considered the wall of brambles once more. Did the questions that she had have answers on the other side of that wall? Did the questions that she had have actual answers to begin with? And if they did, was there real worth in seeking the answers? Or was this a journey that had no end?
Harmaelinn sighed and turned away from the thorn circle. Something told her that even if there were answers to her questions, she wouldn’t find them here. Certainly not in the middle of the night at a veil that wasn’t even open.
Somewhere, someday, she’d find those answers. Just not here. Not now.
(WC: 1043)