Chapter Text

Her name is Yfandes, and she sees the future.

In a blue place, she sees the whole world spread out along silver threads. She sees it in fragments, murky and confused, everything that will ever be laid out in a million fragments.

Her spirit lives in the blue, but her body is in a field, and she walks alongside someone else. They are both shaped like horses, glowing white under the moon, and their hooves are shining silver. They move together easily, familiar, like two old friends.

Gala, I think it’s happening soon, she says to her friend.

She is a horse/and she is a woman. Her mane flows long and white in the moonlight/and her hair is dark and pulled back in two neat braids. Her eyes are a horse’s eyes, round and blue, framed by long white lashes/and they are a young woman’s eyes, brown as the mud by the side of a river.

Her friend neighs/laughs, tossing her white mane/her auburn curls. Yfandes, you’ve been saying that for a year.

No, really. I think he’s here, in Haven I mean. I felt him. But it isn’t time. Not yet. He isn’t ready.

I hope you’re right. I know it’s been hard for you.

It has been hard, these ten long years alone, watching her friends Choose one by one. Gala has less time for her, these past few years.

They nuzzle each other, snuffling through round nostrils.

Yfandes, it’s worth it, I promise you.

I know, Gala.

She stands half outside of time and she sees it, a wall of ice and darkness across a thousand possible futures. She sees the paths through it; so narrow! But one of them, the widest of those winding promises, is hers. Theirs.

You will love him so much, Gala says to her.

I know. I already do.

Two white horses walk through the moonlight, prancing, playful, the taste of fresh meadow air in their lungs, the feel of dirt still warm from the sun under their hooves/And two girls walk hand in hand, in a blue place, through a web that reaches everywhere. Near and far, past and future. Somewhere, a baby takes her first breath and cries; she does not yet know that she is loved, or what love is. Somewhere, a young man in green with flaming red hair holds a silver-haired woman as she weeps. Somewhere a forest burns. Somewhere, lightning flashes over a raging river. The fragments are uncertain, they shift and change.

(One shard is constant: mountains, falling snow, a place far from here. A pathway carved by dark magic, that must not be crossed. She stands with him, her Chosen, she will not let him face this alone.)

Yfandes, are you ready for this?

A horse’s whicker/A girl takes a deep, steadying breath.

What must happen, will happen... But she shivers anyway.

She sees the places where possibilities diverge – the places where a word must be spoken, a hand must be held, a line must be crossed – the places where she can only nudge, but no more.

The path is hers, but not to walk alone. She will try her best to guide him through it. Him, her dearest and closest friend, the son of her heart, whose name she does not even know. Whose face she sees in her dreams.

She is not sure if she can ever be ready for this, but she says to Gala, I am as ready as I need to be.