Nightsun and Wingfoot

[Anna]

Nightsun lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him, a slight furrow between her brows. She'd never shared a memory before. She had not heard of such a thing. "I have never done this before. My brothers and I have all the same memories; we have never shared them before." The little furrow increased as she thought about how to accomplish this sharing. She had no clear and precise images in her head. Her 'memories' of the vastdeep were compilations and impressions, more a sense of it all rather than a visual.

*I will try,* she said simply, opening her mind to him completely, unthinkingly, heedless of all the other memories, thoughts, and feelings within that she had not first shielded in a sheltered corner of her mind.

The essence of Nightsun did not pull him, nor did it enfold him. It surrounded him, but did not confine. Memories of a happy childhood, faces of parents, aunts, uncles, cousins - frighteningly few but surrounded in timeless love - drifted by. The lingering regret and sorrow for parents passed on as spirits, the quiet joy of the rare and precious touch still today. The deep wellspring of love and respect for her brothers, her knowledge of their protectiveness, and an amused acceptance of that care, as well the more immediate pain of knowing that she had, in her wish to ensure their happiness, instead made them unhappy.

Memories of the vastdeep waters, dark and flat in the distance, rolling into hills as they approached the gold-sand shores. White froth of seafoam was accentuated with the sense of wild power, exhilaration, and a lonely, vast peace that settled in the soul and said, “Here, here is strength beyond measure, inexorable, endless, uncontrolled and unconfined. Here is immortality, and permanence ever-changing.”

And within that image, that sense, the reason for Nightsun’s wistful affinity with the vastdeep. Her own overwhelming sense of peace and continuity, her knowing of the endlessness of being, her pleasure in the smallest of life’s joys equal to the greatest. Her spirit was as free and unconfined as the vastdeep, and held to her physical form by mere threads, but threads as strong as spider silk. She had not been lonely over the long centuries of wandering with her brothers, no.

Over all, suffusing the memories of the vastdeep, the steady, timeless span of wanderings, was the warm, pure love that was the essence of one small, dark-skinned and night-haired elf. Amid the sigh of surf, and the crash of waves, the exhalation of wind through grasses, and the rustle of leaves in a breeze, there murmured a simple sound. Under the trickle of a brook, the thunder of a waterfall, the splatter of rain and the cascade of birdsong, the unique sound formed a bedrock. It crystallized the essence of everything.

**Is this how one shares a memory?** Nightsun’s voice whispered, all but lost within the flood. **Do you see the vastdeep waters?**

[Kris]

**Is this how one shares a memory?**

Wingfoot couldn't answer. He was swirling in the midst of a sensory flood, Nightsun's memories pouring over him.

Her childhood, her long years of wandering, her loneliness and her power to speak to the spirits of those long passed, all crashed down upon him like the deep gray waters of the entity she called the Vastdeep. Wingfoot shuddered in mingled horror and awe at the images of a sweeping body of water that shimmered and seethed, white-headed waves crashing on rocks, flowing up on sandy beaches, rocking and writhing and rearing. It wasn't like a lake or even a river. It was alive, and it was a monster.

But even as the memories of the swirling waves receded, Nightsun's memories swooped in and threatened to carry him off. Confused and frightened, Wingfoot felt true horror as Nightsun's communion threatened to draw his soulname out of him--and as she bared herself to the point of revealing her own soulname to him.

He pulled away from her, physically and mentally, shaking with the realization of what had nearly happened. Nightsun stared at him in confusion. "Did I do it wrong?"

Wingfoot swallowed to wet his parched throat. He didn't dare send--not after that--not right away.

"Nightsun," he gasped, "you almost gave me your soulname. You can't do that! You can't just give that to me, or take mine without asking!"

[Anna]

Nightsun reached for him, astonished that he would think that she'd have taken his soulname. He flinched away from her and a sharp pain stabbed through her heart. She drew her breath in a sharp gasp and stepped back from him, her arms coming up in an instinctive protection against Wingfoot's rejection, each hand clasping the opposite shoulder.

"I...was sending," she murmurred in a small voice. "I was not reading. I would never take another's secret name, though I have no fear in my own being known. It is who I am and I see no reason to hide that." Her fingers tightened, and she felt her throat tighten as well. No one had ever pulled away from her in fear before, asked her for something, then reject her when she tried to give it. It hurt, with a sharp, piercing pain that was equally unfamiliar. She didn't know what to do with it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. She didn't want to cry. She didn't want Wingfoot to see it, and think himself the cause. But she was going to cry and she could not stop it. "The night will soon be gone," she managed, only a hint of a tremble in her soft voice. "The sun will soon rise. You must be tired. I will go so you may rest, Wingfoot." She took another step back, and another, then turned to walk back to her fire circle.

[Kris]

"The night will soon be gone," she managed, only a hint of a tremble in her soft voice. "The sun will soon rise. You must be tired. I will go so you may rest, Wingfoot." She took another step back, and another, then turned to walk back to her fire circle.

"Wait," and Wingfoot caught up with Nightsun, placing his hands on her shoulders. She stared up at him, eyes wide and gleaming in the moons' light. "Nightsun . . . I didn't mean to accuse you of seeking after my soulname. I know you didn't do it on purpose. But when you . . . when you opened yourself like that, you nearly--I mean, I almost . . ." He stopped short, gritting his teeth. Words were not going to be enough to explain this--especially not with Nightsun looking at him as if he'd just cut off her hands.

*Nightsun, I could almost touch your soulname, and if I'd wanted to I could have taken it. I know you don't see that as a danger, but you should! What if I'd wanted to harm you, or force you to harm someone else? I could do that if I knew your soulname; I could force my will on you. The name is there for a reason--it's our protection. Your protection, and mine. It keeps us safe from any magic-user who might seek to use us for their own ends.* Wingfoot reached up to touch his fingertips to her chin. *Do you understand?* he sent gently, hoping to ease the earlier sting of his rejection.

[Anna]

There is only truth in sending, and sometimes more truth than those who were communicating wished or realized. Nightsun reached for nothing, she merely received what he offered her. The emotions and flavors twining within, around, and about his words told her more than the simple words themselves. Should she send to him, he would perceive the same as she.

But she hesitated, still smarting from his withdrawal. It saddened her, this faint, sharp spice in his send that was the lingering fear he'd just felt. Why? Why was he afraid? Of her? His words didn't say, and emotions were too undefined to identify the source. There had been no fear in his sends before.

"No," she said, holding still beneath his hands, but not leaning into him as she had before. "I do not understand. My soulname is the essence of who I am, but any who spend time with me will know that anyway. You do not wish to harm me. Where was the danger? Why would any wish to take my will from me? To ... to force me to do their bidding? Where is the joy in that?" She hesitantly lifted a hand and placed a light finger on his chin. "When we leave this world of touch, taste, and scent behind, we are nothing but our souls. The names we use now are shed with the shell, retained only in memory, given in habit, not need. There is no fear, no danger. If this is so for spirits, why is it not so for us? Are we not strong enough to resist this usage, this robbing of our will? Can any of our kind truly do such a thing to another? I cannot conceive it."

Nightsun dropped her hand and her eyes glimmered in the silver light of the moons. "It saddens me that you can. Has life been so cruel and harsh that you have been used so?" She shook her head slowly, then stepped back. "I am weary, and the day has been long. The sun will turn the sky gold and rose very soon, and I must sleep." She reached up again and patted Wingfoot's cheek gently. "Be peaceful, dear one, and ease your fear. Dream sweetly of that which brings you peace."

She took another step back, out from under his hands, and turned away. She slipped quietly back to her firecircle and found the grass mat she'd woven earlier in the day. She spread a rough-tanned, thick fur on the ground and settled the grass mat over it. She settled on her sleeping mat and curled an arm under her head. The day's heat had faded and the temperature dropped to something pleasant and comfortable. Overhead, the stars shown with a distant, white sharpness. The moons were more gentle, their white luminescence contoured with pale grey shadows. Nightsun's eyes drifted shut and she had no time to consider the emotional ravines and cliffs of the evening. She only had time to realize that she may have erred badly in heeding the spirits who'd led her hear, and that her mistake had hurt the ones she loved most. How would she make it right?

[Kris]

The images inundated him until, at last, Wingfoot found a quiet place in the grass to sit, and let them wash over and through him. Nightsun's life, pouring through him like rain through fresh grass. Her memories bubbled up in perfect clarity, and Wingfoot felt his breath catch in his throat as he realized why she'd taken his fears so . . . so personally.

She'd never known what an enemy was. Her brothers had literally kept her safe from any threat. Wingfoot's appreciation of their scouting abilities increased, as did his admiration of Nightsun's own strange talent. She'd taken what she'd learned from listening to spirits and applied it to her life and her brothers'.

How hard could it be for one who'd never truly known danger to imagine, much less understand, the many threats to elves that there were in this world? Wingfoot had heard tales in his young life about the Wolfriders' first days in this world, how they'd battled their own throwback tribesfolk as well as pureblooded elves who sought to rein in Timmorn's children. The truth in those tales had made his folk what they were. To explain things truly to Nightsun, he would have to tell her those tales . . . explain his folk to her as completely as he could.

Wingfoot got to his feet and retraced his steps. The night, he saw, was the stark blackness one saw just before twilight broke; even as he walked, it began to shade to a vivid, almost quivering deep blue. He came back to the place where Nightsun had been, and found her on the ground, wrapped in a sleeping fur.

He couldn't explain the tenderness that broke over him, like a foam-capped wave, when he saw her. But Wingfoot lay down beside her, placing an arm over her. If nothing else, he would be her protector until day came, and it was time to move on.