The Sentinels a voice from down the ages, so in haunting in its song

10 days old, eyes opening! family welcome

each day might have seemed identical to any whom watched deirdre and emaleth, but to the babe not a one was the same. none were so different that they caused her to panic, fortunately... except for the first few moments, but only a brush from any she was used to now was required to quiet her, as well as the consistent contact of her sister. deirdre had not yet accepted that this life was her next one; she lived in the past, in the womb, still, which prevented her mental acceleration and slowed the impending and inevitable Great Forgetting. the cub had been told, someway, somehow, that it would happen... she was not yet ready, she did not yet understand. and all she could do in her neonatal state was ponder it.

but the milk was sinfully sweet, and those that surrounded her were warm and inviting; deirdre was a veritable eve in the garden, so tempted by the lush red apple ripe for the taking. day by day deirdre contented herself with the idea, contented herself and thought: well, maybe.

on the tenth day, as this thought reverberated within her head, her eyes opened. for the first hour she was not even aware of it. all around her were stationary, and her vision was not at all keen to see the hardly perceptible rise-and-fall movement of The Giver, breathing. it was only when The Giver moved to relieve herself that deirdre was aware of The Strangest Something, which was in fact Blue Willow moving. this was something deirdre had become used to, but not like this!

deirdre revealed her horror. for her world had shifted again, and this time she bore witness to it with her own eyes. nothing was distinguishable, everything comparable to something stuck on a contact lens that you could hardly see beyond. but movement could be noted, and she had seen it, and the sound that came from her did not hide her distaste for this disturbance. always more questions! and never an answer!

and so the first stage of The Great Forgetting had begun; for deirdre had been told all of the answers, she had simply lost her connectedness to them in this moment. in accepting even the idea of a future here, she had, knowingly, accepted that she must relearn all things. but she was not stupid with youth yet; she still knew and understood some things. like the anchor beside her, her companion in this journey, for instance. and that this was not the end to all things, simply the end of one.

the creme cub cried for that end, and for her fear of what this could mean—now or later—for her.

the druid liked to think he had been able to communicate with emaleth and deirdre during their quiet suspension within blue willow's body. the mind of an unborn child must be a most intriguing thing indeed, he believed -- who could know what they thought or if they dreamt, if they knew the tongue of their mother and if they knew many things, things forgotten upon reentry into the world. each soul was old, outliving its body until it was drawn down into the shell of another, or into the as-of-yet empty form of an embryonic child. taltos was not so foolish to share this notion with others, lest they believe him mad, but it was a belief he had held since his own childhood, if his beginning could be called that.

he watched the pale girl bob her head and cry out, and his heart was broken at the fear in her tiny voice. yet, there, there, her eyelids were finally parted, and she beheld the four walls of the den. taltos moved into her field of vision, obscuring it with his muzzle, that she might be calmed and then reopen her gaze when her heartbeat had slowed to its natural rhythm.

he was correct in his supposing, though they would never know of it. his words had been vibrations to she and emaleth, but their mother shared with them pictures of the words. deirdre herself watched them avidly when feeling compelled to; but for the most part, the witch was quiet and unresponsive, preferring to linger against the back of her sister. deirdre could not turn her cheek to the visions she conjured—through him—of donnelaith, nor to her mothers own individual dreams and visions of the family there already were to meet. but these things were difficult for deirdre to grasp. she preferred what she had within here. the constant Other, the warmth, the food.

she preferred it all to change itself, but then, not to what she was coming to love.

still, at the moment she prepared to forswear all things to go back! this was no gift to her, but a strange, dizzying horror! her stomach churned as she moved her heavy head too quickly, the beginnings of motion sickness gripping her... but then there was a black shroud that stopped all things terrible, and deirdre herself seemed to stall in her judgments as she sucked in an anxious breath.

when things stilled, her heartbeat slowed. deirdre hiccuped and was at peace again; there was no longing to go back to what had just happened. it was monumentally confusing to the small babe, and she was none-the-wiser that this darkness was the doing of the man she would love for all time. deirdre was hopeful that the thing that had happened was not meant, and that all was put to rights by her frightful cry. deirdre did not think herself ready for this, and whatever else was to come. her heart was ill-prepared.

he stroked the top of her head in a soothing motion with his tongue, murmuring an old, old song to the babe. shortly thereafter, however, lasher turned deirdre 'round with a few gentle proddings of his forepaw, so that she faced back into the light, though with her tiny hindpaws still enmeshed in the pelt covering his chest. "look there," he instructed the baby witch -- would she falter and cry again, or would she open newborn pupils to the world around her, and see, and know?

lasher was still, waiting for her reaction with held breath. emaleth remained slumbering, and he turned his eyes upon her with a silent grin before watching deirdre again. "look," he repeated. did she dare?

the old song in which he sang put her in something of a trance; she did not even notice, fully, that she was turning. and she was still in his safe embrace; her open eyes only saw the darkness of his furs, but that darkness was what she had known. when he removed himself, the light that came was near blinding. she let out a frail whimper, astounded and pained by the new brightness that assaulted her sensitive eyes. 

she could not hear his suggestions; the tiny witch thrust her face into whatever part of him was nearest to her, so that she might hide her eyes there a little while longer. deirdre was kept quiet only for both her father and her sisters contact; if not for them, surely her cries would be endless in this moment! but she was mute, a good sign despite her quavering body. and at length, as he encouraged, deirdre seemed to lift her head a little bit so that a single blue eye could catch the world in its watery lens, where nothing was clear.

i don't want to miss this! ah!

Emaleth dreamt of the stars; of blurry galaxies that swirled with light and color against a canvas of black— no, not black— of nothing. She dreamt of their births and of their deaths, of their spinning in the sky as she watched from a thousand worlds below. She did not know it for a memory, though she felt that she had somehow seen these things before. Before what? A light came, blinding, and the small child felt suddenly cold. She stirred awake, and these memories of stars were forgotten.

Her eyes opened— opened!— and yet the child remained unaware of this change. She lifted groggily to her feet, for her own movements had become more sure and steady as of late. Instinctually, Emaleth began to search for her sister, relying on touch and smell. Except for that! A bright light in the darkness, moving, tickling at the edges of her mind— it seemed familiar, though she could not place it.

She moved towards it, accepting this new thing without concern or protested, eyes widening as if that would allow her to experience more of it. Emaleth was determined, and so focused on this new sensation, she did not stop until she bumped directly into the bright form. It was then that scent and touch informed her, and she babbled of bafflement in their shared language, "what!"

deirdre shook, but after a brief press of her face against his fore-ankle, she turned her eyes upon the world, and watched in silence. lasher, awestruck by the moment, hung suspended in a great sense of wonderment, one that was only magnified as emaleth stirred. surely she had been touched by the fine energies emanating from father and sister -- she woke and searched immediately for her womb-mate. taltos helped her with a brush of his long paw, bringing together the witches -- love blossomed deeply in his chest as he watched the bobbing heads of his two daughters search for the light with their new eyes.

she need not even ask what was before her to know it in her own way. this, around her, was the thing that spoke to her. energies that had experienced this an innumerable amount of times surrounded them, buzzing instruction and guidance and telling her what she saw in a plethora of different ways. deirdre squinted against the snow she looked to, the light searing; and as she turned her head she turned to her favored shade. deirdre did not know this was emaleth until a sound came from her, familiar and known. deirdre did not know that the thing beside her was the thing she had loved so much, the one she had spoken to for all of her days here. deirdre only looked on to her sister, her edges nonexistent; not a thing around her had a limit, it seemed they were all one big great thing. her sisters darkness meshed with the darkness around them. there was no difference her terrible vision could see between it; her sister was the world, as was the one who comforted her. that she looked any different did not occur to her. for now the only thing she could do was watch, and judge things by the way her sister responded.

Emaleth may have blended with the rest of Deirdre's universe, becoming one with the darkness of their home and the coats of their parents— but in contrast, Deirdre had become a beacon among them. Neither could perceive what the other saw, but for both, the other had solidified as everything. She could not make out the details of her sister's form, nor did she realize what she hunted was her ever-present companion. In the moment that she collided with her sibling, their furs intwining, an invisible arm emerged from the darkness to pull them both against its body.

The Source! This she recognized immediately upon touch, as she had recognized her womb-mate. Hungrily, she sought to decipher meaning in the darkness, its quality somehow different from the blindness she had known before. It was overwhelming, this additional sense, and Emaleth needed time to adjust. Her breath was shallow, as if she would lose this sensation were she to breathe— and finally she looked upon the white blur that was Deirdre.

She splayed a paw out, seeking to touch her companion in wonderment. Her sister was something, something separate from the universe! It was mind-boggling, and the dark child— not realizing she, too, was separate, and that she merely blended with her surroundings instead of being an invisible piece of them— struggled to understand. Wonderment apparent in her tone, she told Deirdre, "it has changed again, this world." (and to her father, this would sound something akin to: aadaaa goo eee baaahya.)

emaleth spoke in her baby's tongue -- the two came together, reaching out to comfort one another against this new thing, and lasher felt tears enter his eyes, spill down his cheeks, for the pleasure and blessing of sharing in this moment with his beautiful children. the awareness of their opened eyes, their shared language, their wonderment and acceptance, all mingled into a mélange of sheer joy and adoration that inserted itself into their father's heart and lay glowing faintly there like a hidden gemstone.

"little witches," came the druid's whispered pronouncement. born from witches, born into the love of a healer and a witch's keeper -- yes, yes, the spirits who had chosen the bodies of emaleth and deirdre had chosen wisely.

her vision was too indistinct to identify anything through that, and so although she stared at her sister she was not certain of what it was, until it moved, and that her sisters voice had come from it, but was that her constant companion? so many questions! they fled through her head by the second, up until the very moment when her sister placed her paw against her. deirdre did not look at that, but she felt it, and had seen the darkness reach to touch her.

why?? deirdre gasped, and rest her head wearily against her fathers foreleg. it was safe and warm and stable, and this, too, she recognized as a thing she had known for Alltime. her eyes drifted, but the changing of things brought a dull ache to her head. she looked too fast toward her sister, and lurched in a drunken fashion forward, feeling her stomach tumble as motion sickness set upon her. she whimpered, the discomfort and fear clear as she watched the earth come closer to her. her reflexes were confused with the rest of her, and her limbs were not near long or strong enough to catch herself fully in her stumble.

Although Emaleth, too, was disoriented by this new sense— she was quick to accept it, quick to ignore the odd sensation to focus on the other wonders it provided. She leaned, now, against her father's chest and simply watched her sister... the only contrast stark enough for her to truly see. Deirdre babbled in their tongue, a worried question, and the dark child returned calmly, "it is how this life must be." Truly, Emaleth did not understand much more than that— and she hoped it would be enough to soothe her companion.

But mere moments later, Deirdre lurched and stumbled over the Source's paw, falling unceremoniously to the ground. Her sight was yet so poor, however, that the dark child did not yet understand what truly happened— only that the bright light of her companion had shifted. Were it not for the whimper, Emaleth would not have known that something was wrong, and even so simply believed it to be in protest of this new change. She told her, then, "it will be alright, dear one."

they seemed fearful -- the pale one tripped over herself, and he felt the unease rising palpably from the pair of them. "little emaleth, little deirdre," lasher intoned, at last saving them from their consternation and taking them into his arms, the whimpering pair. though he had no milk to give, he sensed that they now delineated between himself and blue willow. softly he sang to them, of starry nights and the glitter of summer skies, and the deepest forests where the gods dwelt and bid their worshippers approach.

she and her sister shifted in their balance of one another as the moment demanded it. if one did not know one thing, another always did. and if one was uncomfortable, the other was there to change that in their way. emaleth whittled her worries asunder with few words, and The Bringer—who swept them to him—quelled the noise in her head with his murmurings, which she could hear but not listen to. it was beautiful, very beautiful, but she could not interpret it—so that one might relate to the understanding, it was like listening to a foreign song: although it could not be interpreted in hearing it, it was heard and adored.

the third-born daughter of taltos was still and accepted this change. her eyes unknowingly shifted from sister to father; they were the same in coloration, and so she could not tell the difference. with her worry abated, she could only stare onward quietly to digest this occurrence. now that she did not move so frantically, it was not so terrible. in and out phased the time where anything was ever different from this, as she began to accept it.

As Deirdre's discomfort subsided, so did little Emaleth's— and she shifted to curl against the Bringer's chest, now that he held the pair close. She, too, quieted and stared upon the bright light of her companion and wondered that she was so different. Yet unable to see that her own fur matched that of her father's, and feeling no different than she had before, Emaleth thought she was still part of the Everything. That only Deirdre had coalesced into something that could be truly seen; for even the Bringer was an inky black that was difficult to perceive against the darkness of their cavern.

She cooed softly, absently rubbing her head against the Bringer as his chest and throat vibrated in song. It sustained her as much as the Giver's milk did— albeit not a physical sustenance, she loved and needed it all the same. His words flowed through her and nestled within her, imprinting upon the far reaches of her mind, though she did not yet understand the meaning of the words.

if they knew the words of the glen, or had known them, lasher would not know. but he sang nevertheless the old melodies with which he had been raised, slipping from the donnelaith songs to the snippets of french arias he recalled from his time with julien. even suzanne's wordless croonings rose in his throat as emaleth nuzzled close; the man brought deirdre to the same place, against the seat of his heart where his love for them ran rampant and close. and here he held them, and here they would reside until they slipped into slumber, the triad.