Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
The seven hundred and seventy-seven minds whispered and murmured, turning that memory of love in their thoughts as they’d done so many times since they’d begun to stir from their regenerative rest.
Seeking to understand how it could be, if it was even real.
They had died a near-true death in the final war against She Who Was Death. They had been nothing but dust. Particles that had found their way to the ocean. Not all of them, just a few. Two or three mere specks.
But their maker had created them so that a single speck was enough.
It had settled on the waves, then become a thing of weight that slowly, over a century, made its way to the very bottom of the deepest ocean trench in the world, a place so dark that light wasn’t even a concept.
Then it grew, became, fed of the energies of the world that created Cascades and archangels…and the Legion. For their maker could harness such energies. Once, long ago, another archangel had told them that their maker had “calmed the entire world, so that it became a place of civilization and prosperity. Before…before, we were savages in a savage world.”
The Legion didn’t have knowledge of the time before their making. That was not their purview, and they hadn’t been curious in past wakings. They hadn’t wanted to learn…to become more.
Aeclari, they whispered now. You Sleep again.
The first aeclari had not answered them for many eons, their rest beyond the Legion, but today, so soon after their decision to return to their long Sleep once more, they had barely slipped under and they stretched out their arms. Legion.
The Legion rippled. Aeclari, we are waking. Yet they sensed none of the turbulence of war, no energy pulses of a Cascade.
If you are waking, then you are needed. That is how you were made. To respond to the need of your aeclari.
The Legion settled, content now.
Legion, the first aeclari said, we have heard of your last rising. We are proud of you.
Theirs was not a relationship of love, only of Legion and aeclari, but this Legion had known love in another rising, understood more of emotion than it had at the time of the first aeclari. And so they saw what they’d missed then—this aeclari thought of them as their children, to be nurtured to become all they could be.
Then they had been new-made, unknowing of such subtleties.
That the first aeclari were proud of them made them feel things that were warm deep within. We are…happy, aeclari. We…miss you. So many years it had been since they had seen or heard the voices of the first aeclari.
You are different than I made you. A profound depth to that voice that was of the Maker alone. You have become again.
They waited, wondering if the Maker was displeased.
We are happy for you, Legion. It was the aeclari who spoke now, the Maker and the Huntress. You have become far more than we ever dreamed when you first rose. We cannot change your purpose, for that is embedded into the very reason for your existence, but we can tell you this—even once the reason for this waking is past, you need not ever return to the deep unless you wish it. You have become far beyond that.
The Primary was the one who spoke, the Primary’s brethren having been stunned into silence. How did we become? They had been formed of the elemental dusts of the planet, captured particles of Cascade energy, and the power of a being who was not an Ancestor but had been born of them.
Love, was the answer. We could not create that in you. It had to be born. Now, your destiny lies in your hands, our Legion. We go into our Sleep with pride.
Aeclari, we will miss you.
A sense of two pairs of great wings hovering over them, a last glimpse of the first aeclari as they had been once, in their time. Perhaps we will see you again in another life, our Legion. Be well. Be free. Be all you choose to be.
The Legion settled again, but they were half-awake now, their minds attuned to the power flows of the world and to the aeclari who were awake…the aeclari who loved them.
We are loved.
Strange words even now, a strange thing to be understood.
No war. Stirrings, but there were always small stirrings. Such were not the province of the Legion.
Their aeclari were not under threat…but they did need them.
So.
The Legion sighed, and in that sigh was the beginning of their slow waking.
35
Misha. Caterina.
—Two cherished names woven into a tapestry of the Milky Way in Honor and Dmitri’s home
At just over seven months along, Elena was finally getting to the stage where people were giving her a second look, but were too polite to ask if she was putting on weight.