Day 1: Gift
The air itself wages battle against her focus. Ciardha closes her eyes and fails to ignore the sticky sheen of humidity upon her skin. Her breath is heavy with it and strands of hair cling unceremoniously to her neck. It is a different heat than the age old summers of Yanxia that she knew, but familiar enough to drag at the thoughts that rattled through the empty cabin upon Tuliyollal's shores. The salty tang of the ocean laps in a one two sweep about the pillars beneath her. The call of seabirds punctuate the seconds and minutes. The press of time never fails to find her, even on so distant a shore.
So much for sailing away from it all.
Ciardha smiles wryly against the thought. She is certain Fray would remind her it is her own doing, for getting on the boat with duty upon her shoulders still. It is a different sort of burden, this aimlessness and uncertainty; the knowledge that she should take action while fearing it all the same. The harshness of the sun upon her crown scolds her for it; the heat sears down each strand of hair and brands her back where the tips have grown long enough to reach again. Wuk Lamat has welcomed her to this new place, but it seems Tuliyollal itself senses her treachery.
The breath from her lips is slow and measured, weighted with burden of the impending choice. The rite of Succession, the support of the candidates and the future of a nation that Ciardha had no right to be deciding. She knew so little of this place and understood even less of its people. She has spent less than a day in this city; how could she make such a choice? How could she continue to follow when she looked at Wuk Lamat and saw a good heart but a poor ruler?
The second breath she releases is no less heavy, but Ciardha shakes her thoughts from its fringes. She empties her mind and casts out her senses as she might have in the Twelveswood. There are no elementals to hear in this distant land but there remains no shortage of voices. The water rustles impatiently, the sun berates incessantly, and the relief of the sea breeze goes eerily silent from their scolding.
Only the familiar bevel of an orange stone remains cool in her grip, holding to its rebellion against the heat despite the fingers wrapped around it. Ciardha further quiets her mind, hones her focus upon this singular point. Her gift has never been something to be commanded, but Venat's gentle coaxing still fills her ears each time she tries. She had called it in Elpis when it was needed, surely she can learn to do so again. If she might begin with something familiar then branch out…
Surely she can find the answers she needs.
Ciardha traces the edges of the stone's aether, carefully fingers each thread of its texture and filament of its weave, the rough edges that give way to something smooth and consistent and enduring. There are patches of colour from the brief glimpses she knows and an endless sea of possibilities between them. Carefully she searches, quietly she listens; for the echo of a moment with staying power, for a thread she can grasp.
If you wanted to know, you could just ask.
A stray thought in a familiar tone; perhaps in her searching she has fallen asleep. She has only ever heard them in her dreams.
"I wasn't trying to pry, just practice."
Ciardha cannot see them, but she can feel the twist of Eury's lips and the press of them at her back. The violets of their hair colour her periphery in the sort of fleeting flashes that are impossible to hold onto.
"Practice seeing into the past?" Their voice is more tangible in her ear even if their presence feels less so. The enigma of the person her soul once was is a mystery Ciardha has never peered into too deeply. Lingering traces of an old fear and the fresh mix of new ones always stop her. She had once feared this stone would cause her to lose herself. She hasn't had reason to doubt Eury's intents since they saved her in Ultima Thule, but there are too many impossibilities for her to stare too closely. Maybe she was simply losing her mind in other ways instead. Yet the comfort of their presence, of their voice and their guidance is a nectar far too sweet to ignore.
Even if she is only imagining it all, Ciardha is so desperate she will take it all the same.
"Practice controlling the echo," Ciardha affirms quietly.
"Why do you need to control it?" Eury asks idly, as if the notion is a strange one. "Has it failed you when you needed it?"
"No…" Ciardha must confess and such a simple question chisels into the already crumbling stone of her certainty. "Yet surely it is possible, you were all capable of commanding it back then. I need to be able to draw upon it."
"What for? What do you need to see so badly?"
"I don't know the answer." Ciardha says quietly. "I don't know which path I am meant to walk, what I am supposed to do. There is no one to tell me any longer and I don't know… I need to know what the right path to take is."
"And you think if you can control your echo, it will give you the answer."
When Eury says it so plainly, Ciardha hitches. The echo has always revealed truth to her, and in so doing has she gleaned what she has needed to move forward. Since the moment her gift awoke on Kugane's streets it has come in the crucial moments. It seems only natural that it should have the answer she needs now… doesn't it?
"It won't." The air about her sways as Eury shakes their head, resettles with the heaviness of thick wool against her skin. "I know better than most. No gift does, not even mine."
"Was your gift the same?"
"Almost."
"You saw the future." It dawns like a realization she has always known, though she is certain they've never told her as much. A thousand questions swarm in her mind, buzzing about her ears yet failing to find her tongue. Could they still see it now? Could they give her the answers she needed? Could she learn it as well?
"I could never command my gift." They answer as if they can hear what she hasn't yet said. "It came when it wanted, and left when it needed."
Eury's words are iced steel, they filter through every corner of her until Ciardha cannot move for the weight of them. For a brief second she saw only the glimmer in the notion of knowing the future, now she feels the full burden of it.
"They don't have your answers. They never have, and they never will."
It is the truth Ciardha hasn't wanted to face, but that she knows deep inside of her. "You're right…" she says quietly. "I knew that and yet… I think I just wanted someone to tell me what I should do. I am too unused to this… this living for myself."
"I am sorry to tell you, it never gets easier." Eury says it like it might, at odds with their own words. "But that is what makes it worth doing. You are thinking about it too simply, that there is a right or a wrong way to move forward. There isn't. The wrong path can lead you to the right answer; just look at how the final days all turned out, in the end."
The melancholy sends a shiver down her spine even with the sun still relentless overhead, distant and screaming at her from a place she can no longer hear.
"All we can do is move forward." Ciardha says what sits in the silence between them.
"And trust in this." The press of a finger against her back, right against the steady beating of her heart. "It's gotten you this far, and it has more answers than you think. Don't get caught up in what should be or has to be. You saw what that did to Elidibus."
It drowned him.
"Step forward, keep walking and do what you know to be right."
"And if it isn't?"
"You take the next step. You've faced greater challenges than this." Eury's voice feels more distant and the rushing of the waves overtakes her senses.
Keep moving forward. Your ability to do so unwavering... that is your greatest gift.