I met the young man. He seems sweet.
Similarly and secondly, the glass fawn is a lethal danger and simply getting within a hundred meters or so of the creature is likely fatal.
So, naturally, she did exactly that.
She made light of it when I spoke to her, because of course she did. Of course.
My guess is that she needs help and that she’d likely scold us for showing up to offer it.
I’m in my ninth decade now and I think I’ve finally reached an age where I don’t particularly give a damn if Valentina scolds me. Better late than never.
Look here, if you’re able to go, go.
I doubt there is anything to be done tonight, but I know there are more than a few of you who could be there by tomorrow morning. She’d never ask you to, but I am asking.
Valentina may, at this moment, be walking through a dimension gate with no way to know if she’ll come out the other side whole or at all.
Honestly, I expect she won’t. This rift is a nasty piece of business.
Recent evidence suggests the glass fawn is from outside our reality. Not from the shadow place. Not a threshold gap. Not from one of the braided timelines, a mirror world, or the long hallway. I’m talkin’ a full outsider. Val and I believe that enduring hole on that mountain of hers is what’s allowing the creature to remain. So, she’s going to shut it, whatever the cost.
When…if…the worst happens, that green apprentice of hers will be left wandering alone in the woods. He’ll need us.
I won’t call her plans foolish. Nobody can do the risk-to-reward calculus on that course of action but she herself. That kind, weird old bat knows her business better than we do.
But if she does step through…and if she does come back injured or changed…I want her to see faces from the community she helped build, even if she just rolls her eyes at each and every one of you.
There’s a crawler node on that mountain. “Stone jaw,” in crawler tongue.
And I know many of you have your own methods of expedited travel.
Use them.
If she’s angry, blame me. What’s she gonna do about it?
We don’t want that apprentice of hers to try anything drastic, especially if he panics. I can only guess what she has tucked away in that camp of hers.
That fella is terribly fresh and maybe a little cursed with outsize talent.
Well.
Who am I to judge someone else as strange, eh?
Now, that’s enough chin-waggin’ from me.
If you’ve got prayer or something like it, send it Valentina’s way. She can be irked by my requests all she wants after she’s back home safe and whole. Knock on wood.
If you’re hearing this later, Val, and you think me stubborn and cantankerous, well just ask yourself who my role model might be.
I love you all. Spare a thought for your elder tonight and I don’t mean me.
Clara Rodriguez, signing off.
Valentina stood dangerously close tothe Hole in Nothing. She was making her final attempt to will shut the rift, to heal reality and cast out the fawn by severing its tether to the outside. It was her last chance to avoid stepping through.
The teenagers sitting fireside fell silent, watching Green and Valentina poised like statues on the wrong side of the barrier.
Long minutes passed. Green hovered his hand just behind her collar. She was swaying like a reed and he worried that she could pass out at any moment. He tried to add his own will and hope to her efforts, desperately wishing to protect his new friend and guide.
