Even though she couldn’t float in spider form in my world, she had been floating beside me here in the Mists. Now she flashed down and under me and I slowed, then stopped. I didn’t know what she was doing. She had no physical form with which to catch me, but I felt a sort of warm pressure on my back.
Relax, set your feet down, you can have ground beneath you whenever you like. Perhaps I should have phrased it that way.
“Perhaps,” I said, righting myself and visualizing ground beneath my feet. And there it was, solid enough to stand on, though I saw nothing in truth. “How did you catch me?”
I have more power here in my world. I can… exude a sort of force, which has presence in the Mists… It’s hard to explain.
I didn’t much need an explanation. I was just happy she’d done it.
“I… think I’m done in the Mists, if that’s well with you?”
It is, yes. I’m glad you got to see my home. Just… imagine yourself walking out of the Mists back into your world.Take two or three steps and…
“Oh!” I gasped as I did indeed walk right out of the Mists. “I thought I was farther from the edge than that.”
Distance is like the Mists themselves, ephemeral. You travel more by thought than physical motion. Now you can see why we were so fascinated with your world. It was so vast and… weighty.
“I guess it would seem that way, wouldn’t it?”
“Perhaps,” Lady Kitsune said in a scolding tone. “If you spoke to your Lumani in your head and through your spirit, you’d Bond with them sooner?”
I blinked at her. Poplar was also nearby, looking a little awed and terrified.
I spoke with Auwei in my head all the time when I wasn’t alone. I just… preferred to use my voice, but… Kitsune was right. If we were supposed to be Bonded, two in one body, then I’d have to get used to speaking to Auwei more… internally.
“Thank you,” I said with a solemn nod to Lady Kitsune. “You’re right.”
She seemed a bit taken aback at my formal and apologetic tone. Then she nodded and that was that.
When Ash came out of the Mists, she wore a beatific smile, eyes shining… and her Lumani was nowhere to be seen. It took me a second to understand, but Lady Kitsune knew immediately. “You Bonded? Good.”
Ash nodded, still seeming a little stunned. “I feel… whole,” she said, then her grin grew.
Maple took a while to return, but he hadn’t Bonded.
We walked back to Silverveil in various moods. Ash seemed light as air. Poplar was still trembling. Maple just seemed confused, while I was… disheartened. Yet another of my companions had Bonded, and even though I’d been to the most mystical place in the world, I had not.
Don’t give up. You have two months left, Auwei said cheerily.
But by the end of the second month, we still hadn’t Bonded.
Chapter 9
An odd thinghappened at the start of the third month… our groups were dissolved and remade with new instructors. Less than a dozen Chosen remained at Silverveil. Poplar and I were the only ones left in our original group.
They always do this, just to shake things up for those who remain, Auwei explained.
My new instructor was a dashing man, still in the prime of his early adulthood, named Crown, with the avatar of a Crowned Eagle. I’d heard some of the girls talking excitedly about him in the past, and up close, I could see why. He was handsome, with an air of vitality about him.
Poplar and I were merged with the two remaining members of the Stone group: Pebble, and the young woman I’d seen him with, whose name turned out to be Hearth. Though she wasn’t as tall as I was, she was the only girl — even before everyone had left — who might outweigh me, and who had far more curves than I did. Some might call her plump, but I hoped she’d grow into her full figure. She was also the only other twenty-year-old in our entire class at Silverveil.
With the shake up, my anxiety was spiking, and not just because I hadn’t Bonded yet. There was another, very important reason for my stress. The Noble-House Tests would be in two weeks. But, given travel time, I’d need to be Bonded soon if I wanted to make it to the capital in time. They purposefully put them before the end of the Silverveil Bonding period. It was a motivator. If I wanted to join a Noble House, I’d have to go through those tests, and they were only held once a year. If I didn’t Bond until after those tests, I’d have to wait a whole year to try, and even then, I might not get in. I had one week, maybe less, to get my act together and Bond, but the more I worried about this, the further and further that goal seemed to stretch before me. I was, at the same time, very close and impossibly far from achieving it.
Crown grinned at all of us. “You’ve probably been working your asses off trying to Bond, so here’s a new strategy, take the day off. Wander the campus, even out on the hills, or sleep or lounge in a bath, I don’t care. I’m here if you have any questions, but today, try to take all that pent-up frustration you’re feeling and just… let it go. No one ever Bonded through frustration. Take today, get your energy back, and redouble your efforts tomorrow.”
The four of us stood there a little dumbfounded by this.
“What are you waiting for? Go!” He made a shooing motion with his hands, still beaming happily. “Have fun for a day!” he called after us as we began to disperse.
