3. The Children of Cera - Into the Wind

The Children of Cera - Into the Wind


  • In twilight under the trees of the Romani Camp, Cherry Amalith's last arrow struck true in the dying light. A satisfied half-smile briefly graced the young woman's olive visage, relaxing her grip on the finely crafted yew bow in her grasp down to her side. Breathing heavy after what seemed like non-stop skirmish drills for the past couple hours, that was a good note to call it a day on.

    With a soft sight, she realized, she could not put off heading back to her grandmother's tree any longer. At least she had gotten most of her frustration from her earlier fight with her Grandma Cera out of her system during all the skirmish training.

    Muttering to herself, "Why can't Granma just declare me an adult?? It wold make all this non-sense with my love life go away." A raven sitting up in a nearby tree cawed three or four times just then and Cherry looked up, "I heard that, Jojo. " She half-sighed with a glance back at her arrows lodged in the various targets and combat dummies where she stood in the southeast edge of Camp. "I REALLY don't want to go back to see Grandma yet either, Jojo but…what she said this morning...maybe Granma can finally teach us something USEFUL to deal with this stupid curse. Com'on, Jojo. Let's go." Cherry carefully unstrung and shouldered her bow on her way back to Cera's Tree, the raven following from tree to tree behind her.


  • …..............................................................

    Morning light was bright and piercing to her lavender eyes as she drifted from the twilight between sleep and a waking state. Squinting her barely open eyes, sleep seemed a very inviting place to go back to, except her stomach growled and made the stronger argument to get up and find breakfast.

    A warm and welcome kiss from Aramuil lightened her spirits, and she sat up smiling and rubbing her eyes. “Good morning, Cherry,” he greeted her with a smile, but she could see the concern in his eyes.

    Smiling to him she yawned, “Morning, Lovey. I guess I didn’t make it all the way through Reverie this time.”

    Watching the concern grow on his face, “It’s alright, love. You have done it before and will do it again. Are you truly sure you are alright? You were still sleeping...disturbed. You should have Tristina take a closer look at you.”

    Sighing softly, Cherry rubbed at her eyes again, “I’m fine Lovey. Really. And you heard Tristina last time yourself.. There’s nothing physically wrong with me nor any magical affliction nor disease. Im just mentally very tied and low energy. If helps you feel any better, already I don’t feel as sluggish I have been waking up the past few days since ..necromancer kidnaped the lot of us.” Glancing up at into Aramuil’s eyes from trying to rub the sleep from her own, she relented, “Alrighty. I’ll go let Tristina have a better look at me, but after breakfast.”

    Aramuil smiled and adjusted his fine suit and gloves, “I wish I see you to Tristina, but a littlle business calls, my dear.”

    Nodding, Cherry crawled out from the tent they had pitched for their camp on one hill in Norwick. She gave Aramuil a parting kiss, “Come back in piece, Lovey.”

    A warm smile and nod, Aramuil replied, “Its nothing so dangerous this time. I will be back as son as I can to check on you.”

    With a final hug, Cherry watched him disappear down the hill. When he was gone from her sight, she plopped heavily back down on her bedroll in the tent. Very tired, she almost lay back down to sleep, but her stomach protested strongly at that idea. She dug a trail ration and few nuts from her back, muttering to herself, “I really should hunt fresh meat. I’m tired of tired of these stale rations.”

    Making do with the trail rations and nuts, Cherry was able to settle her stomach. By the time she finished with breakfast, she was too awake to go back to sleep, and yet still lacked the energy to get up and break camp. Cherry lay back and did the only thing she could do, think. Staring at the ceiling of the tent, she let her mind wander...and wander...and wander. The fact was she couldn’t even think straight, because when she tried to revisit her recent train of thought it was evaporated from memory already.

    She sat back up and rest her chin upon her knees, “I do have that tea..hey that tea..” It was a tea, Illusif had given her, a ea that carried a nice kick to it. Her hands slipped back into her pack and pulled out the brick of tea. She used the last of her water from her canteen to fill a pot also from her pack, setting it by the fire to heat up.

    When the water in the pot was ready, she poured herself a steaming cup of water with a alitlte of the tea broken of the brick and waiting to steep. She wrapped herself in her blanket and waited, humming a tune about ‘Little Teapots’, softly to herself. Sniggling at the irony, Cherry hummed happily to herself for a few minutes, almost forgetting about her steeping tea.

    Before it got cold, Cherry picked up her cup and didn’t bother strain out the leaves, tipping the brew eagerly past her lips. It was warm going down her gullet. A few sips more and she could feel the cobwebs begin to fall from her mind. She drained the rest of the tea in one long gulp. Immediately, Cherry refilled her cup with steaming water, keeping the pot near the fire.

    As her mind came into focus with the help of the tea, her thoughts happened to turn toward Illusif and his lessons in following lime colored path just beyond the boundary of reality. Such thoughts inevitably lead her back to her failed attempts to apply the same lessons to following the silver path to the Wind and the occasional seizures she had suffered since then from trying.

    Over the next several hours, she retrieved more water from a nearby stream as necessary, working her way slowly through the rest of the brick of tea. She paced slowly around her camp in those hours, going over every point Illusif and her grandmother, Cera, had taught or advised her on involving planewalking and following the differently colored paths between planes that made it possible. She tested and retested her own insights against what she had learned from them and what she had learned on her own. Piece by piece and sip by sip, things began to told and even thought about before began to take on different meanings, she saw all the tid bits as a new whole for the first time.

    Thinking aloud to herself in a soft murmur, “So...how did I miss that before?, Grandma told me to go TO the silver path..rather than bring it to me like I had brought the lime path and anchored it to the menhir. Well yeah grandma never quite put it that plainly but still..” She frowned in deeper thought, “So..” With her finger, she spelled out her thoughts, writing in the air as she murmured, “...if I go to it rather than bring the path to me and this plane...then..no one can really follow me..I’d be going on my own.” She bit her lip, “Okkay with me. As long as I get to the Wind. And going TO the path instead of bringing it to me should take a lot less..power from the Weave. And less power...hopefully means no overload. No overload should mean no repeat of last time and no induced seizures...or worse.”

    She went to take another sip of tea and came up with air. Time to make another cup...there was no more tea, the brick was used up. And now that she thought about it...all that tea had to go somewhere.

    ..................................................................................................................

    Cherry began to pack up camp after she returned. This time, she was able to sum up those hours of thinking in the few minutes it took put out the fire and pack everything up right.

    Hefting up her pack, she stood ready to go and stared ahead still in thought. Why not put these new insights to the real test? Right here...and now? No reason she could think of, so Cherry let her vision unfocus and peer through the veil that separated Toril from other planes. The rainbow of paths slowly came into view for the lavender haired girl standing there. Anyone who saw her then would have sworn she was looking right through them if they were stand right in front of her just then. She picked out a path of silver from amidst woven rainbow of pathways going every which way.

    She wanted to reach out for it, but knew the disaster that waited for her if she tried that without the aid of others again. No, “Go to it...go to it...go to it,” she mouthed over and over to herself. She blindly fished a small river stone out from a pouch at her hip and clasped it between both hands. Praying for strength and insight from Selune, to help keep her mental focus on the silver path, suddenly she saw where she must step. Something she had not seen before when focusing on any colored path or any vision of another plane she ever had. The way forward was literally clear as day to her now.

    With her sacred stone clasped tightly between her hands, magical energy surged through her body and forked over her at least once before she took her first step. One foot after the other, carried her toward the silver path, leading her to walk into thin air to all other eyes. Smiling to herself, already she began to feel a sense of calm, peace and somehow more at home. Cherry knew she was heading toward a place she belonged. It was a feeling she had only experienced around Illusif before. She strolled nice and easy down the path, and before she knew it, the misty veil was giving way to a new realm. It another but a car silvery sky in directions but it seemed all the paths she had seen moved through her and leading off to somewhere else. She glanced back and the path she had been following was not a path at all but a silver chord that tied to her and lead back the way she came.

    For the moment she didn’t care where all the other paths lead. This is what she had been looking. for. This was the Wind and she was content to stay there....calm...at peace...at home....the Wind in her face.


  • …........................................................

    The fiend’s murderous, flaming blade swung in a arc straight for the unarmored flesh of Cherry’s neck. Certain the steel would cleave clean through and free her head from her body, Cherry shrieked her lungs out and closed her eyes tight just as the blade bit into her flesh...

    Sitting bolt upright n her cot in the midst of the very same bone chilling shriek, she awoke caked in sweat from head to toe and her heart racing so hard it just might burst out of her chest. She was short on breath and she fought to just breath while her nightmare finished evaporating into the gossamer threads they were draw from.

    Glancing around the divining chamber she slept in, Cherry’s heart sank further when her grandmother did not come to check on her, once reality set back into her mind in place of her nightmare. Cherry knew Cera would have come immediately if were there but even her grandmother could not be around all the time.

    She continued to sit alone in the dark on her cot, hugging her blanket tight, still shaking even now. There was no way she was going back to sleep to face those all to real terrifying dreams of hers. The nightmares were ten times worse than any waking vision she ever had, her subconscious adding its own twisted convolutions to even the most mundane otherworldly sights her condition subjected her to in her slumber.

    The empty divining chamber in her grandmother’s tree had it’s own eerie feeling that did not invite Cherry to get out of bed either in her frazzled state. She had finally learned to find the Silver Path any color path between the planes that she wanted. Finding and focusing on just one of them was the easy part. Following one was another matter entirely.

    It was only with the help others holding powerful foci provided by the mysterious Illusif that she had managed to follow the Lime Path that one night through the menhir, the ancient standing stones.

    Cherry felt so trapped she HAD to find a way along the Silver Path to the Wind. The only place she might find refuge from these recurring nightmares or even the now rarer, most horrific of her Waking Visions. In that moment, desperation and determination surged together in the lavender haired, lavender eyed girl and she lurched over the side of her cot to grab her sacred river stone.

    Clutching the stone between both of her hands, she began a brief set of prayers to hep herself focus. When her eyes opened, they stared ahead into the dark chamber. Her vision going out of focus as she found the rainbow pathways laying just beyond the curtain of reality. The other pathways fell away with her concentration bringing the Silver Path gleaming brightly into her vision. She could almost feel it...it’s promise of peace and mental salvation laying at its other end. All she had to is reach out and raw itself to her and the respite she so desperately sought would be hers. She began to bask in the peace and calm she knew was waiting for her even as she started to reach for the path that would take her to it.

    As al the power surged through her alone and totally unprepared, the pathway fell away from sight and she fell out of bed, hitting her head on the cold stone floor, opening a deep cut and wide bruise. Magical energies thrashed her body causing a whole cascade of seizures while she lay there on the floor. Falling unconscious, her body lay there for hours still convulsing every few minutes.

    ..................................................................................


  • ….........................................

    Progress for Cherry came in fits and starts. At first she had to wait until the next time her curse struck and hope to Selune that she kept her wits about her enough to put to practice what her grandmother, Cera, had taught her about controlling her Visions and Voices.

    It had only been one or two months since Cera and Cherry talked back in the pixie glenn one fateful night. A very long one or two months to Cherry and now she sat amidst three standing stones in the hamlet of Jiyyd. Her small river stone, with the pair of feminine eyes surrounded by seven stars inscribed on its face, was clasped between bot palms. She sat reflecting on the progress she had made and especially on what Illusif, Tindra’s mysterious friend, had taught her just a few days before. “Follower of the Lime Path, “ she sniggered to herself, “Yeah, certainly sounds fancy enough.”

    Frowning in thought she dropped her gaze from the ancient stone of the menhir to the smaller river stone in her grasp, she knew that without the help of Aramuil or Elridith that day, she wouldn’t know even that much of what she sought, a way “Into the Wind” as her grandma calel it over and over again. She sighed thinking to herself:

    That lime colored pathway is just a shortcut around this…plane? No Illusif said not even that just between the different menhir, right? Yeah. So it’s the not he “Wind” just yet but he did show me how to pick out one of the pathways from among the whole rainbow of them. Where do they go anyway? Last night.. Yeah I know.. That’s what grandma talked about last night. She said...said..she said....the way to the Wind is the silver path. And I should never lose sight of the silver pathway wile traveling or just resting in the Wind or I cold be lost forever. Like literally. Not able to find my way home. As peaceful as the Wind sounds....I don’t think I want to spend eternity there. So I guess I should take grandma’s other advice and get stared on this refining what I see through my Vision and Voices. ’Cuz sitting here and trying to pick out other colors besides lime just isn’t getting me anywhere.Except, shifting my Visions and Voices away fromteh terrifying isn’t so difficult now. Neither is starting them at will..or stopping them for that matter...if “m not half scared out of my wits at the time. Oh and I can probably thank my studies for the invasion of the Visions into my dreams too. Selune help me. I just HAVE to find the silver path or whatever way into the Wind. OR for sure I’ll lose my mind despite everything I’ve tried or all the caring and help Aramuil or anyone has ever given me against this blasted curse.

    Closing teary eyes tight, Cherry whispered a few short prayers to Selune. When she opened her lavender eyes again, she let her vision go out of focus to fixate on what lay beyond boundary of reality amidst the menhir. There before her eyes lay once more the rainbow of pathways all leading to or from the menhir in which she sat, all disappearing off toward places she couldn’t imagine. Maintaining her focus n what she saw thought a little more back on what Cera had taught her the night before:

    Now…grandma said Illusif taught a very important step on getting tot he Wind....but to get to the Wind I need to find the silver path...and to find it I need to learn where it goes....and to do that I need to learn where ANY path goes. So.. I have to refine my control of what I see even further? She said something about.. The visions are usually seeing past the pathways so..if I let them drift part way to..instead of ALL the way to other creatures and places..like in between the fiendish and elemental or between the elemental and celestial. And what’s in between? The pathways?

    This thought took her focus off the rainbow of trail ways and back to the ancient stones that mark the menhir. After a moment of disorientation, Cherry found her train of thought again:

    So if that’s true, then shifting my Visions just slightly instead of entirely, will let me see what color pathway leads to…the place I’m seeing...maybe. Wait grandma said that last night.

    She sighed at herself and shook her head, gaining a half-smile. Grandma Cera was beginning to make more sense to her all the time, since she started pursuing how to get ‘Into the Wind’. The thought of understanding what her crazy old grandmother had been talking about all along made her giggle, before a frown crossed her face. It kinda scared her too.

    ….........................................


  • Fiery fiendish death lashed within inches of her face. Thousands of fierce and angry eyes swirled in burning clouds all around. Cherry lungs raw in utter terror and yet there was no sound but the countless incomprehensible voices speaking in a roaring cacophony from the burning clouds that surrounded her. They gave off an unbearable heat that seared the skin.

    When something slender, slimy and powerful writhed along the back of her leg, she found that at least her legs still worked. They carried her at a full sprint out though the burning clouds, the heat licking along her skin all the way. Her terror began to subside after passing through and out of the far side of the clouds, doubling over to catch her breath once she was clear of them.

    She could feel a baleful pair of eyes bearing down upon her, filling her with dread even before she dared to look up. She found it hard to even breathe when she lifted her eyes to gaze upon an incarnation of hatred and evil. It stood more thrice her own size, its eyes glowed red with hatred and wings of fire jutted out from it fiendish hulk of a body. Meanwhile the burning clouds with its swirling hordes and two other titanic fiends or creatures of horror she could not even begins to describe closed in behind her and to either side of the fiery winged hulk.

    The world began to swim around her as they closed in and her lungs burned with lack of oxygen. She couldn’t breathe at all and she feel her knees and even though she wanted to do nothing more than run,, she was too weak to even stand. The clouds and fiendish titans all still closing in and reaching for her, she new she was gong to die.

    In the instant she reached that horrifying conclusion, she sat bolt upright on her cot letting out the blood-curdling scream she hadn’t been unable to unleash. Her body and hair was soaked to the bone in sweat, her heart pounding and threatening to thump up out her throat. Cherry saw she had kicked all her carefully tucked in covers off of her and far flung them onto the cold stone floor several feet from her cot.

    It was the first time the extraplanar things she sees and hears when her curse is active while awake had invaded her dreams, and it wouldn’t be the last. Unfortunately for Cherry she had not dreamed well that night at all.

    Cera and Jeni both came running at Cherry’s first scream. While they kneeled on either side of her cot to comfort the girl, the hulking fiend with fiery wings walked in through the rocky wall from Cherry’s left. The panic and scream that followed, echoed off the rocky walls and drew in a couple of the guards that stayed with Jeni since her own troubles started. It took both guards to hold down the panicked lavender-haired girl while Jeni and Cera administered a potion of Clarity and a little herbal something to help Cherry get back to sleep.

    The hulk was halfway through leaving the opposite wall when the protective magics of the Clarity potion took hold and the sound sight and smell of the fiend was gone. Cherry bit her lower lip and grimaced at the taste of the herbal sedative Jeni and Cera administered.

    When all was calm again, Jeni and the guards left grandmother and granddaughter alone. Cherry looked up at Cera, still in tears from her fright, “W-wh-wha-.”
    Cera shushed Cherry with a gentle forefinger to the lips, “It’s okkay. It’s okkay now. It’s over and if your Voices and Visions come back, Mojo will be right here. Yes she will.”

    Wiping at her eyes and drying them with the heel of her hand, Cherry gave a big yawn. The herbal sedative taking effect, “I- I’m going learn to..control what I these stupid visions..if its the last…thing I do.”

    Cera smiled, watching as Cherry succumbed to the sedative totally and went back to sleep. She whispered, “Mojo hopes you do. She just hopes that it REALLY isn’t the last thing you do, Little Cherry.”


  • When Cherry came too, she found herself lying on her cot back in Cera’s tree. She squinted and rubbed her eyes until the world came into better focus. It was only then that she realized the residual headache, especially around her temples.

    The movement and a groan brought Cera over to her granddaughter’s bedside, she smiled down at Cherry, “MojoMojo, Little Cherry.”

    Resting back on her pillow, Cherry managed a smile up at her grandmother, “I guess it didn’t work that time either.”

    Cera brushed back a few wayward strands of lavender from Cherry’s eyes, “No. I hope you keep trying though. Believe it or not. It will get easier for you to do.”

    The young, lavender haired woman rubbed at her left temple, “It’s not always going ot leave me with a headache is it?”

    Shaking her head, Cera reached for a prepared poultice to lay out on Cherry’ forehead, “No, just when you push a little too hard and the Weave overloads you senses and mind. Yepyep, most careful you have to be. Mojo knows. You must be persistent but not too eager. If you rush things, Mojo says you will regret it. What you fear most will come to pass swiftly and certainly if you are not careful.”

    Cherry sighed and took over holding the poultice to her forehead, “Why can’t that efreet amir just take this tupid curse back, Grandma?”

    Taking a seat on the edge of Cherry’s cot Cera stroked her granddaughter’s cheek gently with the back of her hand. “Mojo has wished that plenty of times but even after going Home with Selune’s help-“

    Cherry interrupts, “You mean transcended?”

    Nodding, Cera pulls the covers back over Cherry, tucking her in, “Yes, that’s what Mojo means. Even with that, wishing he would take his gift back does not change that we have it. It’s not all his gift, part of it was within us to begin with.”

    Frowning, Cherry glances briefly off to the side, “But he magnified what was there beyond all proportion. It.. It’s..”

    “I know, Little Cherry, I know,” Cera smiled reassuringly. “It’s not fair for any of us. Anyway, you’ve had a very big lesson today and you’ve got a long road of learning ahead of you. Once you learn how to control your Visions and Voices, Mojo will teach you the next step, how to follow your Visions into the Wind. Now get some sleep, so sayeth Mojo. Dream well, Little Cherry.” Cera leaned down and kissed her granddaughter on the cheek and slipped out of divining chamber where Cherry slept.

    Cherry murmured to Cera before she left, “G’night, Grandma and you too.”


  • Cera slid her seat by the fire close enough to hug her granddaughter from the side. Kissing Cherry’s forehead, she untied the ribbon that held her own blue locks up in a ponytail. She poke while pulling her granddaughter’s lavender hair back intoa similar ponytail, using her own ribbon to tie it in place, “And teach you we will. Just one more thing”

    Rolling her eyes, the younger Amalith sighed knowing what her grandmother was going to say, “Grandma. Please. Do we have to talk about mess right now? Yes I would love to be able to just hide from it, where none of these Traditions can find me. But really that could never be my strongest reason to want…to need to learn...this.” Her lavender eyes water over, tears forming streaming quietly down her cheeks and her voice breaks, “I- I don’t want to lose it, grandma. I don’t want to go through what you ahd to. Y- you have to help me. I do- don’t know what else to do.”

    Smiling softly, with tender care and concern in her own deep green eyes, Cera wiped a couple teas away from her precious granddaughter’s cheek. “And of your special friend, Teapot Aramuil?”

    Turning her soul searching gaze up to Cera, Cherry leaned over and almost clung to her grandmother, sobbing quietly. “I... wouldn’t be able to hang on with out him or his help... or even the help Sir Eza or Charlie or anyone else has given me. I do- d-don’t think I can make it i-in...in the end. Not without something more.”

    Hugging her clutching granddaughter to herself, Cera took a moment to maintain the strength she knew her Little Cherry needed right then. After a quiet few moments, Cera pulled back, caring hands resting on Cherry’s shoulders, “You are ready then. You understand that you can’t do deal with the Voices by yourselves. Nopenope. Can’t do it by yourself. But it’s true there is there is little they can do stop them for good. Hang on to the hope they can give you though. That’s the most important your special Teapot and other Teapots can give you. Maybe..maybe one day you will do what Mojo couldn’t and beat the Voices...and Visions too.” She sat back with hands back her in her own lap, “Now take that pretty little stone between both hands, like when you pray or meditate upon the Weave.”

    Cherry sniffled and dried her eyes as she sat up and clasped her small river stone between both of her palms. Closing her eyes, she began to whisper prayers to Selune, coming to repeat the same one over and over as a mantra.

    Smiling her more lopsided and bright grin, Cera clapped, “Good! Now listen she should, Right Mojo? Of course. Listen to Mojo now. Before anything else you must learn to control your Visions and Voices, learn to choose where you look and hear into the planes. And..AND you must learn to turn them on before you can learn to turn them off when you want to.”

    Lavender eyes snapped wide open in obvious, if slight fear, “You...you mean I have to INDUCE a vision on purpose?!”

    Cera nodded, “We’re afraid so, Little Cherry.”

    Shaking her head with growing fear, Cherry dropped her hands with the rock into her lap, “N- No..I- I- I can’t. I can’t do that. I WON’T do it.”

    With a sad sigh, Cera started to get up from the fire, “Then Mojo better get back to her tree. She has much to do for the Camp and we can’t teach you if you don’t want to learn, Little Cherry.”

    Shooting her arms out to snag her grandmother’s arm, clinging to it in desperation, “No! You can’t go.. I.. I do want to learn. I do!”

    The elder Amalith turned a stern but caring face on her granddaughter, “Then you must use your Handle, Little Cherry,” Cera nodded to the blessed rock still in Cherry’s lap, “Mojo can show you the way. YOU have to choose to follow and many of the steps along the way will be harder and tricker than most Teapots would ever think.”

    Wilted by her grandmother’s words, Cherry glanced away from Cera and even the fire in defeat. “I- I can’t.”

    Cera took the river stone and pushed Cherry’s hands back around it, “You can. Mojo knows you can. Teapot Aramuil probably knows you can. The Moonmaiden is with you. Mojo is with you. You can do it.”

    Back on the verge of tears, Cherry bit her lower lip, her mind wheeling through a million things a million possibilities, “I’m not in the middle of..of a relapse right now.”

    “Then you know what you have to do, Little Cherry, “Cera gave her granddaughter’s hand a squeeze and gently lifted hers away to sit back and watch.

    Swallowing a lump in her throat, grim determination seta cross Cherry’s face. Closing her eyes, she brought her small stone up in front of her chest, firmly clasped between her palms. After briefly whispered prayers to Selune, she sat in absolutely quiet concentration. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the night sounds of the glenn and fey around them. Cherry opened herself fully to the Weave, allowing it to flood her senses the way it does when she suffers an onset of her curse-induced visions. She managed to attune herself to the flood of magical energies rather quickly but her innate fear of falling to her curse was just too strong of an obstacle to overcome. She froze in fear in the moment and failed to let herself see or hear past the planar boundaries around her. Recoiling, the moment and magical energies were gone. Opening her eyes, Cherry bit lower lip again, turning lavender eyes to Cera, “I can’t do it, Grandma.”

    Smiling kindly on her granddaughter, “Yes. You can. Don’t let one failure stop you, Little Cherry. You’re going to do that a lot learning this. Mojo warned you of that. You just...have to keep going.. You will get it.”

    Glancing back to the simple river stone she held and the pair of feminine eyes surrounded by seven stars etched into it, Cherry closed her eyes again. Her thumbs traced over the etched symbol while she sat back in silent concentration. Once more she let the Weave flood her senses, only this time she so overwhelmed by the torrent of magical energies, she could not shape them nor attune herself properly. Darkness came swiftly to Cherry.


  • The firelight cast a dancing warm glow on Cherry where she sat by a campfire in the pixie glenn. Fiddling with the small river stone she always carried with her, she watched the pixies dance around her in playful aerobatics.

    One of the pixies swooped in low and close to Cherry, singing, "Power Pixies to the rescue! P-p-power power pixies to the rescue! P-P-Pixie..P-P-POWER!! DOOT da DOO!"

    Giggling, Cherry shook her head and smiled to the pixie, "Grandma." The pixie kept on twinkling her favorite annoyingly cheery tune, her flight path carrying her up and away from Cherry. Cherry called up after the pixie, "Grandma!" When the pixie didn't seem to hear her, she sighed, "Pretty Magic Girl C."

    The pixie immediately looped back around to hover down in front of Cherry, twinkling, That's me! That's me! You need help, Citizen?"

    Shaking her head with a bemused smile, "Yes I do. I need to talk to my grandma. Would you please let her out?"

    Pretty Magic Girl C protested, "But it's clearly my turn to be out. I want to play with my friends. You know I don't get to do much superpixie work these days. I look forward to playing with them."

    A knowing nod, "I know Pretty C and I'm sorry, but Grandma and I need to talk. She's going to teach me this…planewalking thing...to help me with my curse."

    With pixie dust trailing lightly behind her, the pixie flitted forth to give Cherry a tiny kiss on the forehead. She shot up several feet into a roll and loop to loop cheering. "I will be helpful then! And once again the day is saved! Thanks to... P-p-power Pixies! DOOT da DOO!"

    A flourish of white magic enveloped Pretty C, transforming her into a darker skinned, blue-haired half-elven woman, who stretched and yawned as if just waking up. Cera stretched out one more time and rubbed a little sleep from her eyes, "Mojo Mojo! Pretty C woke me up early. Does that mean you are ready, Little Cherry? You know this will not cure you of your gifts. What it will do, if you do not give up on it, is keep you from drowning in all those Voices and Visions of Mojo you hear sometimes."

    Cherry's lavender eyes filled with trepidation. Until a few weeks before, she had sought nothing less than a cure for the visions and voices that haunted her. Talk or even thinking of accepting the family curse as something she had learn to live with, possibly for the rest of her life had been absolutely out of the question. Now she could hold out for that cure that had proven so elusive for almost three years now or she could accept her grandmother's help. Learn something that while not a cure, would go a long way in averting her greatest, darkest fear.

    Screwing up her courage, Cherry took a very deep breath to look her grandmother straight in the eye with a serious nod, "I am ready. And I understand, Grandma. Teach me."


  • Cherry called Jojo down to her to hold the raven in her arms. Nearing her grandmother's tree, she ran into one of her fellow warriors. After exchanging pleasantries and a short conversation with the man, he escorted her inside. Mostly a formality, Cherry smiled lightly to Jeni, who dismissed the warrior.

    Jeni gestured with a friendly smile toward the cooking pot, "She's waiting for you."

    Turning, with a gracious nod to Jeni, Cherry saw her grandmother seated upon her favorite stool beside the large pot, stirring something inside it . Taking a deep breath, she took in the wonderful, floral aroma wafting from the steaming pot, "What're you cooking, Grandma? It..smells kinda good."

    Cera smiled up from her stirring, her worried and pnderous expression melting away then. "You're back! MojoMojo, Little Cherry. Come have a seat next to us. There is much to talk about. Yepyepyep.." Cera turned back to inhale the steam directly over the pot, "It sure does smell good! But it's not food. It's Mojo's laundry. I'm trying a new herbal soap, hopefully to give our clothes that spring….the smell of springtime...even when it's not spring."

    Absently rubbing her fingers over Jojo's head feathers, Cherry joined her grandmother fireside. She sat on a stool beside Cera, "I thought you could use a cantrip for that."

    The elder Amalith nodded, "You can, but Mojo prefers to use non-magical means if we can for this. It lasts longer and Mojo doesn't have to waste her magic on it, do we? Nope nope, then we don't have to." Cera nodded again in answering her own question.

    Cherry smiled for a momen,t but as the moment of levity faded, she gazed with her grandmother into the slowly stirred conents of the pot, "I'm..I'm sorry about this morning, Grandma."

    Lifting a heated and drenched garmet up on the end of her stirring stick, Cera checked the prgoess of her laundry, "Don't be sorries, Little Cherry. But Mojo hopes you understands now why we can't be doing that. And Mojo knows it's hard but we are glad I am, that you repect the Romani traditions in Camp now at last. Mojo doesn't agree with all of them but...we prefer to let the Romani flow their own path since they were born here."

    The young sorceress huffed, "But you...you are the guardian sworn by Selune herself. You told me the story of Yeenoghu a thousand times when I was little. Why do I have to let them treat me like this?"

    Cera lowered the damp garment back down into the simmering pot, "Little Cherry, what did Teapot Aelthas tell you about that?"

    Cherry sighed in frustration and hugged her raven snugly, "Yeah, I know, Grandma. " Grandmother and granddaughter sat a long couple moments in silence before Cherry glanced up from the floor again, "Could you at least not call me 'Little' anymore? It doesn't help matters."

    With a smile to Cherry from the pot, Cera explained, "Mojo is sorry. We try but I think you will always be our Little Cherry to us. Mojo, she just can't help herself Just ask you mother or auntie Clover."

    A smile could not helped from creeping across Cherry's face, "I know...you still Ma or Aunt Clover 'Little Sakura' or Little Clover' most of the time too. Which means there's not much hope for me."

    Cera giggled and grinned sheepishly, "Nopenopenope." She started to fish her clothes out one garment at a time and hang them up over by the nearby natural wall, after rinsing and wringing each one out. She continued talking to her granddaughter while doing that, "Mojo wishes you wold let us send by spell to your mother if she minds Mojo declaring you a grown up in the eyes of the Camp so you can work toward spending time with your special friend..Teapot Aramuil...without causing much more noise. Just don't forget the gifts. If you have any questions though..you really should talk to Teapot Aelthas more about that. Mojo personally doesn't keep track of that kinda thing in our head all the time."

    Cherry sighed softly, "Okkay, Granmda. I will...but like I said this morning. If I have to get Ma and Da's permission. I want it in written form so no one can accuse me of making the response up with magic. That's why I sent off the letter."

    Cera nodded, "In that casees, maybe we can finally talk abouts what Mojo had been meaning to teach you." The older, blue-haired sorceress tok her seat back on her stool after the last dress was hung with care.

    Cherry bit her lip and dug the small, round and smoothe river stone that she always carried with her everywhere out from a pouch on her pack. "That's why I came back, Grandma. You siad you were going to teach me Planewalking? How does that help me with my curse?"

    Cera smiled watching Cherry fiddle with her little river stone, "Remembers how you told me how you felt around Ilusif when you met him?"

    Cherry nodded, rubbing her thumb over an etching of a pair of feminine eyes surrounded by a circle of seven stars in the stone's smooth surface, "Yeah. It's the most calm..at home and at peace I've felt since..before I had my first episode of this damned curse."

    Cera smiled, "What if told you that Planewalking will let you go someplace where you can feel like that all the time AND you can hide there so that not even the best of our Warriors could keep following you, even with magical aid to see the invisible? Now Planewalking will let you go many places, some they could still see you but the Wind. The Wind is the way to most other places and a very nice place to hide, especially from the Visions and Voices that haunt you. Going into the Wind is like...finding home again."

    Cherry listened closely, and let Jojo hop away from her lap. The young woman clasped her stone between both hands, leaning forward on her stool, "The...Wind? What is that? How do I get there? How come noone could follow me there? Where does it go? Can we go there now?"

    Cera smiled bright and lopsided, "All very good questions, Little Cherry. Mojo will answer them all, but first you must learn to focus your Visions to see the planes you want to see. You can't go anywehre if you don't know where you want to go. Come, Pretty C wants to go see her pixie friends, we can try your first lesson there."