“I just want to be prepared.” She doesn’t speak while I squirm with the words fighting to fly off my tongue. “I need to do my best.”
“Let me help you.”
A smile spreads wide across my face. “I was hoping you would.” Ninon is smiling too, but she turns away from me before I can relish in it.
We spend a long while combing through the stacks. Ninon pulls out anything she can about bonding from personal accounts of draconem here in the Realm, to more educational texts and historical accounts and events—including one from the time right before Zhoric took power. There’s not much else here that’s quite that old. While she assembles a pile for me on a large slab of rock that acts as a low table, I scan the shelves for anything on mind walking. I’m not having any luck until a name stops me in my tracks.
Atlanta of Nevoba, b.y. 15 od, s. Thera et.Voxil.
It takes me a moment to register this is the Atlanta I know. Born in the year 15 Of Dyeus, sired by Thera and Voxil. Thera must have been her mother and the other…whoever sired her. Crossed out as it is, either she or someone else didn’t want him as an official part of her lineage. Knowing what I do of Atlanta, and my own history, it fits.
I open the book and my chest constricts at the title:
The Nuance and Practice of Mind Walking Between Bonds – The Close and the Many
Atlanta wrote a whole book on mind walking? I turn the book in my hands, daunted by the size.
“What did you find?”
“Something on bonds written by Atlanta,” I answer with a shrug, then raise my chin towards the books in herstack. “What about you?”
“I can’t seem to stop finding them. Clearly it’s an important subject.”
“Any you care to read and relate to me?”
“The thought of you reading one, let alone ten of these, was too good a dream to be true.”
I laugh. “I’m only half teasing. I’ll read them.”
She picks up more than half the stack she collected. “I’ll handle these.” The books look heavy and cumbersome in her arms and in the dim light I finally notice the dark circles under her eyes.
“Go sleep.”
“You’ve set me up with a week’s worth of reading. I’m not sleeping.”
I fix her with a hard stare. “You will sleep or I will take those books from you. You can’t fight me.”
She blinks at me. “You need me.Don’tfight me.”
“I’ll be the death of you.” If only if she knew how true I fear my words are.
She shakes her head with a tired smile, passing by me to plant a light kiss on my cheek. “You give me life.”
Ozias told me I didn’t have to do this alone, but the guilt of asking Ninon when it’s clear she’s already overexerting herself on my account claws its way up my chest and into my throat. When I don’t follow her, she calls down to me from part way up the stairs. “Are you coming?”
I swallow hard. “I’m going to stay and keep looking.”
“Don’t strain your eyes,” she replies, the sound of her steps echo until I’m left in silence.
Once she’s gone, I skim Atlanta’s words. I begin reading, getting the basics of mind walking and how and why it happens within the first few pages:
Mind walking occurs when our dragon forms send a metaphysical human form to our bonds or potential bonds. When we mind walk, we allow the other half of ourselves to journey along predetermined paths to our bonds. Those with the strongest potential are easy to see and follow, like a well-trodden trail. Others are more difficult and need crafting, while some are impossible. No matter the strengthor validity, they all take work to maintain. However, even the most comfortable path may not be the right one as far as creating an everlasting bond.
Reading on, I learn that mind walking is a trait that all bonded pairs use to stay connected with one another. There’s information on why that is, and references to other books that explain more on those subjects that I’m certain Ninon must have found.
My vision is already burning as I flip through the pages until something catches my eyes:
For strong potential bonds, it’s rather easy, if not impossible to avoid, mind walking, especially if there is already some deep emotion seeded for the other within one or both of the partners.
