.
Despite the night, the moonlight and the soft glow of mana-loving plants around the little pool certainly revealed my blush. The Fairy Queen’s face was quite close to mine, and her hand gave a little squeeze to punctuate her question.
My sister spoke before I could find my voice.
“Your Majesty, if you could delay your plan to ravish my sister, I would very much like to focus on the rather odd thing you just said.”
With a smile, the Queen continued to stare into my eyes. I finally unfroze and pulled away, protecting my chest and bumping out Kiki in the same move. The pixie more or less ignored the offense, simply paddling from my bosom to Amana’s to take up a similar position.
The Queen pursed her lips with a mischievous glint in her eye and looked over at Amana. “Has your mother discussed anything at all about Little Tiana’s soul? Did she tell you that the one currently inhabiting her body is not the one she was born with?”
The look on Amana’s face was instant and severe. All sense of relaxation had vanished. Although her body only shifted slightly, her mind had clearly gone into a wary attitude.
Tenre’s voice became sharp, but she was speaking to Amana. “My father, your mother and I are already aware and we have accepted her as part of the family. Let it go.”
I remembered my aunt telling me, This Tenre has not yet decided whether she accepts you as her niece.
At the time, I assumed it was because of my monster parentage. Had she already known about my transmigrated soul, instead?
“Although,” the Queen mused, “people occasionally awaken to one or more past lives. It can cause temporary amnesia to the current life, and other identity issues. I’m told you possess our first Tiana’s memories. Is it possible that the original inhabitant of your body was simply yourself without the benefit of your prior life memories, Esteemed Mother-in-law?”
I had thought of that, myself, which is why I had a ready answer. “Both Oranos and a certain celestial being have already told me that she was a different person than myself. When she died fighting the dragon, the celestial beings sent her soul to a new destination and revived her body with my soul in it. I received her memories along with her body, but they are not my own.”
After a breath, I continued. “But Your Majesty, if I am your mother-in-law, it was only prior to living many other past lives. I only remember fractions of all of them, including that one. The only prior life that feels as if I lived it myself was my most recent.”
Tenre noted, “You lived in that same dreadful world that Orestania’s summoned hero comes from, I understand. Was it truly as terrifying as my sister described to me?”
Ryuu’s summoning is still not public knowledge, so Mother must have told them about it.
I was about to say, No, you guys are misunderstanding, but images from a variety of troubled places from during Robert’s life and before came to mind. Maybe my life was ‘peaceful’, but that peace didn’t extend to the soldiers serving on battlefields. And Earth was absolutely that horrible for civilians in places like Syria. And to more people who died in World War Two than live in the entire Kingdom of Orestania. The horrors of Hiroshima or Nanking, or the events that took place in Cambodia in the seventies or Rwanda in this century… I couldn’t actually say, no, it isn’t.
“It can be really bad, but life can be good in that world as well,” I answered instead. “Most people there live their lives more peacefully than on Huade.”
I turned to my sister. “Your Highness, I am truly sorry for what happened to your original sister. If you consider it deceitful, then I will no longer address you as a sister.”
She grew troubled. “Well… if you are actually my great-grandmother…”
“It seems wrong to me to name myself that,” I objected. “She was something far greater than this humble one.”
Yeah, ‘this humble one’ sounds weird in English, but we were speaking Fairy. I actually said the word ‘marcorhe‘, and I can’t come up with a better translation.
“But… if you are the same soul…”
“That is misleading you, Your Highness. I do not know how to be an ancient immortal descended from the higher realms. I can only be the very young half-fairy that I am. You were not wrong in seeing yourself as my elder sister, or in seeing me as a child needing your guidance.”
“Even though you have the spiritual body of an immortal…” the Queen observed.
I jerked a little. “I… I do, but it’s strictly embryonic, right? Can you actually see it?”
She laughed. “I’ve been studying the problem for so very long, trying to find a means to return us to immortality. I have never stopped resenting having my birthright stolen during childhood and I want it back. The instruments I and Manlon have developed can see many things. They can also detect the bare beginnings of a new vessel of my own as well, although it hardly matches the one Deharè has grown. They also measured the effectiveness you have achieved. Is your core the secret to your extraordinary power?”
“Partially,” I said. I had managed some pretty amazing things in Cara Ita before starting my core. “I only began my nucleau recently, but I was always fairly strong.”
“What are you two talking about?” Amana asked. “What is a ‘spiritual body’?”
The Queen considered her answer, then mused, “Think of it as the true body of an immortal. The soul dons a spiritual vessel or body instead of flesh, in order to isolate itself from flesh’s mortal nature. Monsters nullify that nature by intermixing their flesh with miasma and mana. Fairies do so by replacing a portion of our flesh out of pure mana. True fairyhood is achieved when we fully mature that process by reaching at least fifty percent pure mana.”
She began stroking my arm, knuckles sneaking brushes of sidebewb on each pass, while she continued, “But we fairies remain welded to that flesh. Just like mortals, we cannot change bodies except by returning to the wheel of reincarnation. Only an immortal can abandon a nonviable body and gain a new one, or preserve a body in one realm while wandering off to another for longer than a brief visit.”
I shifted away slightly, but it didn’t make any difference. She continued, “I understand that the pioneers, like my mother-in-law Senhion here, preserved their higher realm forms when they descended here. They created hybrid bodies that could fully support their higher-realm magics in our world by blending monstrous and magical biologies. More than likely, their higher realm are still preserved, awaiting their return.”
Amana looked at me again. “Pioneer?”
The brushes were getting less covert. “The pioneers were the first Elders, the immortals who descended to Huade. My mother-in-law was particularly special among them. Most immortals begin as lower realm souls who find a way to ascend, but an immortal can also be born to another immortal. Senhion began as an Immortal because her mother was one of the rare immortals who choose to give birth.”
Tenre nodded. “As such a being, she came to Huade from the higher realm to command a company of Elders. She was our leader by the time she died.”
I fended off the Queen’s hand as it again moved to my bosom while saying, “The supervisors were the leaders from beginning to end. Senhion was merely the most senior field commander.”
The Queen tipped her head. “Supervisors? I don’t remember such a thing.”
“As an Elder, you were a five year old child, though?” Tenre answered with a perplexed smile. “She is talking about the gods of Huade, Esteemed Stepmother. Father says they don’t actually claim godhood themselves. They are simply Immortals, but of higher realm than the Elders. They supervise Huade from the next realm above us, because it is the closest they can approach to the mortal realm.”
With a frown, I asked the Queen, “You were a strega?”
She nodded. “I was but a mere child when the Affliction hit us, as Tenre mentioned. My mother cut away all the affected miasma in order to save my life. The little scrap of me that survived recovered into a distorted form that Oberon eventually fashioned into a lesser fairy. I cultivated myself up to true fairyhood in the millennium that followed.”
I looked down at Kiki, still lounging in Amana’s cleavage. “Is that what happened to her, as well?”
“More or less,” the Queen told me. “But she had a fragment of her nucleus remaining, which was quite rare. Her pixie bodies have been destroyed repeatedly over the millennia, but she just keeps growing back from that nucleus, which means she probably still qualifies as an Immortal.”
“Huh?” Kiki suddenly piped up. “Why probably? Kiki immortal!”
“Why don’t you go back to your upper realm body then?” I wondered.
“Mmm,” she pondered, then struck her fist to her palm. “Oh! Kiki too small! Not yet not yet!”
“According to Evaron, she lost too much of her original mind. Her initial remnant was only the fragment of her nucleus that remained after a human weapon tore her to pieces,” the Queen explained. “He continues to patiently work with her to recover more of herself.”
“Evaron? Who’s that?” I wondered. It was not a Fairy name.
“Great-grandfather!” Amana retorted, a little annoyed. Then she tempered her expression a little. “That’s right. Mother didn’t tell you about any of us.”
I finally connected ‘Great-grandfather’ to the River Lord of the Hart. So I finally had a name for him.
Evaron has the same nomen character as ‘Senhion’ and ‘Oberon’. On in the Elder language meant ‘strength’. So he was yet another survivor who first regressed to some lower form like lesser fairy, then cultivated up to fairyhood.
“Deharè didn’t tell her about us?” Tenre asked, with a disapproving scowl.
“Not individually. She thought it would upset a child to learn about relatives whom she wasn’t allowed to meet.”
“It was at my recommendation,” came Oberon’s voice from out of the woods.
My arm flew instantly to my chest as the King emerged into the light with his royal regalia absent. he wore simply a raiment resembling a knee-length chiton…
…which dissolved, to my consternation, as he waded into the pool. I averted my eyes as his manhood went on display.
He crossed over to take a spot on the opposite side of the Queen from me, then reached across her back to gently remove her hand from my shoulder, turning the move at the end into putting his arm around her to pull her into his embrace.
“Trying to seduce my mother now?” he asked her. “Seducing every one of my daughters wasn’t good enough for you?”
She gave a full throated chuckle as she snuggled into his shoulder. “Life is so terribly long, My Liege. I need variety.”
Oberon looked over to me and his lip quirked with humor momentarily as his glance flicked down to my arm still guarding my bosom. “As you learned earlier, we received communications from your king today. I had planned to summon you to discuss them, but we had to give our attention to preparations for Lâsin’s raid.”
I nodded. “I can understand that.”
I had already realized he didn’t have sufficient time to discuss it when I arrived at the party. I’m sure he was aware the attack was about to happen.
At that moment, I was thinking very hard about how to find a quick way to leave this meeting. I had long been accustomed to being in a bath with four naked women– Mother’s maids strip to bathe me– but adding a naked man was a bit too much, both for Tiana’s maiden heart and Robert’s manhood.
He scratched his cheek. “I apologize for putting you on the spot like that during the raid. I had intended to bring you into view after negotiating a truce, but Lâsin couldn’t be persuaded.”
The Queen had been frowning down at my arm. She lost her patience at this point, demanding, “Will you stop hiding yourself, Mother-in-law! Be proud of your beauty!”
With those words, she yanked my arm firmly off my chest. I tried to switch arms and found that Amana had suddenly allied with the Queen. Heaving a sigh, I sat with both arms firmly trapped at my side. I was so accustomed to being exposed at this point, I couldn’t find the energy to fight anymore.
“I was wondering about that, Esteemed Grandfather,” Amana said, as if the brief tussle with me hadn’t happened. “Why did you bring her out in the open like that? That was dangerous!”
“Lâsin and his people probably had no idea what she looks like,” he explained. “I intended to confront him with those images from the start, but they had to first witness her in the flesh. They could see her miasma and mana in real life, but not on the recording.”
“I was fine, Your Majesty, Your Highness,” I told them. “Actually, I was happy to be able to contribute.”
After a pause, Amana sulked, “I told you to call me Big Sis.”
“I…” I stopped from saying, I wasn’t sure if it was still okay. But I realized she was saying it was, so I just nodded and corrected, “Big Sis.”
“So,” Oberon hazarded as he accepted a large cup of sake from a servant, “Now that this raid has at last passed, we can discuss your request to return to your king.”
