Chapter Text
Her Sight was cast to a hulking bird that rode the winds like a warship cuts through icy seas—unrelenting and sure of its place. She was home in Rask, soaring through the mountains above Kanamen. She could see the bird’s shadows rippling across the treetops beneath her and a grey horizon in front of her.
The wind on her lashes, the whole world ahead of her—this was how she was meant to live.
She stayed with the bird until it dove into the forest, then she scattered her Sight across three more animals—a vole deep in the ground, a squirrel high in a nest, and a hare in the dry fields—before finding a rook. It was perched on a cliff with its mate, black feathers glistening like the back of a jeweled beetle in the sunlight. The sun was warm and inviting on her face as the rook snapped it’s head to and fro, looking for bugs and lizards to eat.
She wasn’t the bird, she couldn’t control its movements, but she could feel what it felt and she could see as it saw. She felt the physicality of the world—the temperature, the wind, the dust against her cheeks—and she could see the sprint of a hare as a sharp image instead of a single streaking blur. The world was vast and beautiful, and she'd been granted a thousand pairs of eyes to look at it through.
The rook crept along a branch, towards a brave, oblivious anole and Saiva leapt into another’s vision just as it lunged to impale the lizard.
A blue expanse spread out into front of her, cold against her body. Motes of detritus drifted in front of her and light streamed in beams from a distant surface. A fish. Fish disoriented her too much. She grappled for another creature to throw her Sight towards and came up empty, so she let the fish pull her through the ocean, a bubble of silence around them.
And then her Sight drifted a final time and she was pulled deeper into her sleep, past the dreaming and towards something dark and restful.
She came to slowly, prodding the edges of her mouth like the sour taste on her tongue might leave. It did not.
Her skin felt sticky and damp and there was something cool dripping over her face.
A towel.
“Welcome back,” the voice sounded like Madja, but it was distant like her ears had been stuffed with cotton. “You scared us all for a few days there.”
She moved her arm and groaned at the whole-body sensation that came of it. Pain. Lots of pain. She wanted to be a bird again or even a fish, floating painless in a quiet place.
“Slow, my dear. You just got over a blood fever.”
That meant very little to Saiva right now; she just wanted to sleep.
“Let me get you something to eat. I believe my Lady made a soap for lunch you’ll be able to eat.”
Saiva didn’t hear anything after that; she faded out again, drifting in a lovely, floaty in-between where her worries were very, very far away.
A hand on her shoulder woke her next and her head was lifted slightly. Something warm was pressed to her lips, which parted on their own.
Too tired. So tired. So much pain.
Something warm slipped down her throat. Something salty and savory and nice. Full of flavor.
She swallowed three more spoonfuls and drifted back to sleep.
Voices faded into her dream space, she pushed them away. An instinct deep inside her gut prevented her from seeking out a bird to escape into. There were people near her: she could not throw her Sight.
She slept.
This time, waking was easier. It was light in the room and the sheets about her felt cold, like they’d been recently replaced. Not warm. Not sleepful.
She cracked her eyes open and found Madja sitting beside her bed in the chair that Rhea had occupied before. She was reading a book, fingers skimming lightly over a page, glasses resting precariously on her nose.
Saiva tapped her fingers twice on the bedsheets, drawing the healer’s attention. Madja brightened and removed her glasses, saying something, voice croaking and distant, that Saiva didn’t catch.
“Could you sign that please?” Saiva requested. This made Madja smile.
“You’re awake. I wasn’t sure if you would come all the way back this time. You’ve been in and out the last few days.”
Everything was a blur, so she took Madja’s word for it. She looked around the room. Nothing had changed, not really, but there was a pile of crumpled sheets by the door and more medicine-type things lying on all the surfaces. A box of clean bandages, basins of water, bottles and pots and a mortar and pestle.
Saiva remembered something… a fever? Blood? Maybe a cut had soured or a stitch that had opened again.
“Was I sick?” she asked Madja.
The healer nodded. “We feared you might die, but you are rather stubborn, I think. You've weakened, but you're on the mend. Especially your hip. I would say that it is healed enough for you to sit up, but I would advise against trying to move that leg. You may move your right leg, but try to keep your left in one position.”
She could sit up.
She could sit up!
“Help me up?” she requested. Yes, everything hurt, and yes, she was sore all over, but sitting up sounded wonderous.
Madja said something again that Saiva couldn’t hear, and when Saiva frowned, Madja signed, “Are you having trouble hearing me?”
“Yes.”
Madja nodded, but didn’t look concerned. “That will pass eventually. Try not to worry about it too much. I put drops in your ears to help with the bloodfever.”
Medicine was not Saiva’s realm, but even that seemed strange to her.
Madja seemed to laugh at the expression on Saiva’s face. “I have never treated a nymph before, but since you have come to us, I have read as much literature as I could find on nymphs. Many medical texts suggested that easing a nymph’s senses could help them rest. You jumped at every little noise when the fever ran through you. The drops were just to dull the noise.”
That… made sense. Saiva could have used something like that once or twice in her life. She had terrible headaches sometimes, a symptom of her hearing and her Sight.
“Could you leave some for me?” she asked, while Madja helped her sit up, tucking pillows behind her until she was leaning comfortably as if she were in an extremely plush chair and not a sickbed.
“Of course,” Madja said. She was close enough to Saiva that she could hear her enough to make out the words.
Madja handed her a bowl of light soup—a pale broth with some carrots and potatoes—and then moved to the dresser where she picked up a bottle and put it on Saiva’s bedside. Madja motioned to the bottle in a way that read ‘for you’ and then returned to her chair.
Saiva sucked down the broth, hardly chewing the carrots or potatoes in her haste to be food in her stomach.
This time, when she fell asleep, she was upright. She was nearly to unconcsciousness when she felt Madja carefully slip a pillow between her head and shoulder. Her soup bowl and spoon were taken from her hands just moments later.
The last thing she heard before sleep took her was a quiet thing that she didn’t think Madja had meant for her to hear.
“Sleep, my dear. You’ll need so much strength these next days.”
This time, her Sight was cast to her sisters and it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Saiva had never been able to see her sisters, fully grown, in the daylight, but there they were, congregated in an afternoon market, arguing about a pie at a bakery stall. Their shared cell in the keep had been a dim, rugged thing offering only a grey light to compliment already wan complexions. But here, now, through the eyes of the baker, she could see that Hallath’s hair was yellow-gold, not a murky bronze, and Anor had a thousand faint freckles that were slowly coming back to life in the sun. Palla’s hair wasn’t brown, but a curious, deep green from a distant nymph ancestor, and Embria’s cat-like eyes were a honey gold in the light.
Mel stood at the front of the group, tall and proud as ever, her raven hair brushed straight down her back. She loomed over fierce little Efae, who had, since Saiva had last seen, meticulously shaved all of her hair off to reveal intricate maze-like tattoos.
“We don’t need to buy a pie, Heba bakes enough to feed a village,” Mel said, arms crossed, accent thick and rich as honey.
“She does not bake this pie,” Efae argued. “It is yam and apple, you know how much I like yams.”
“Yes, you’ve only said as much thrice in the last hour, how can I ever forget,” Mel said exasperated. “We are on a budget.”
Efae rounded on the rest of the group. “Who wants to try a yam and apple pie?”
The majority of hands shot up. Mel sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Fine, what do I care if we all start cramping from a sugary diet? Here, have it.” She tossed her coin purse to Efae who immediately paid the baker and accepted a boxed pie.
The group left the baker’s view, so she blinked and reached for Mel’s sight. Although she led the group, her gaze never lingered on one place for long and Saiva knew how Mel worked; she would not last five seconds without making sure all of her sisters were within sight. Everyone else thought Mel was the calm, collected woman who assumed the role of elder sister out of a sense of duty, and in a way that was correct, but Saiva knew better. Mel was notoriously paranoid. The constant, baying anxiety had kept them alive for seventeen years and she was not soon to forget it. In a new, unfamiliar city, Saiva imagined Mel was having difficulty coping with every new worry.
She wanted to comfort her sister desperately, but all she could do was watch her. Watch through her.
Mel’s attention snapped on a produce stall.
“Oh, Bless the Mother,” Mel muttered to herself as she changed trajectory and made a beeline for the green-laden crates. She gave everything a cursory scan and then she was scheming aloud. “Heba, these would make an excellent salad to go with the lemon bread. Vessa, pick out some squash, enough for two nights. Tanith, do you see any rhubarb?”
Saiva could not smile, not while locked into Mel’s sight, but she felt the smile in her, warm and blooming. Fish were awful, voles were boring, squirrels passably less-so, and birds were her favorite, but her sisters’ were the gazes that she owed her heart to. Hopping between Mel, Tanith, and Palla, it didn’t matter that she wasn’t there in the warming afternoon sun with them, it was enough to feel their love and listen to their bickering and know that she was home. Thousands and thousands of leagues from Rask, and she was home. They were all home.