"I'm "wake, bee. Ye can come in."

"Daddy said you were sleeping," Thia said. The small girl sounded offended as if her father had lied to her.

"I was sleepin" but I'm up now."

Thia stood next to Koy's side of the bed, running her fingers over the patterned blanket with a curious look at her bruised mother. "You're still down, not up."

Koy patted the bedspread next to her, reaching despite the ache it brought in her protesting limbs to help the girl up onto the mattress. "Ye're right. I should've said I'm restin"."

Thia's wide forest-green eyes studied her mother's face in that calm, unflinching and precocious manner that sometimes unnerved Koy though she could never put her finger on the reason. "It hurts, aye?" The girl pointed at the visible discolored blooms along her mother's skin, affecting Koy's own particular phrasing along with her accent that matched Matt's more frequently.

"Aye, it does."

"But it doesn't make you cry, Mama?"

That Koy was willing to go to such extremes in the ring to retain an Opal, that should have made her want to cry at how far she was spiraling from her principles. But that wasn't what her daughter meant. Koy answered honestly. "No, it doesn't make me cry. But remember, bee, it's not fer lil ladies like ye." She knew it was a hypocritical reminder. "Do as I say but not as I do."

"Not yet," Thia said in a hushed response.

"Mebbe not ever, but fer now, let's leave it at not yet."

Thia straightened her back and looked up at her mother. "Aye, let's." The girl gave a mischievous smirk, enjoying imitating the manner she believed a grownup would use. Koy let her sneak that final word in but raised an eyebrow at her daughter, an unspoken warning to tread lightly and not go too far in sassing her mother.

For the time being it worked as Thia's attention turned to the charm bracelet still dangling from Koy's wrist. She reached out to lightly rub the crudely carved wooden centaur between her fingers. The charm hung to one side of the wild boar in the center, flanked by a small wolverine on the other side. "This is for Troth?" Thia tilted the centaur charm up as she asked.

"Trothfang, aye, tha's very good, bee."

"He is the bad one?"

Koy paused and considered the answer. "It's a lil trickier than tha I'm "fraid." Growing up, Koy had learned at Thia's age that Trothfang was the negative aspect of the god Everild, represented by the boar, and Kuniyo whose grace could be seen in the wolverine was the positive side. That was the simple explanation taught in her home and her temple until she was old enough to ask more challenging questions.

"But he is scary, Mama. He likes blood and breaking everything, aye?"

"Tha's true, he's more mean than I'd like ta be, or tha I'd hope ye'd be, but he's jest all the way at the far end of the same thing." She wondered how much the girl would be able to grasp.

"Be honest with yourself, it is not so much for her sake you share this lesson now." "What's the same?"

Koy gently guided Thia's fingers to touch the boar charm. "Who is this?"

"Everild." Thia stated the answer with a quiet confidence. That one she knew.

"Correct. And this?" Koy raised the carved wolverine.

Thia turned it aside in her hand, needing extra time to remember the name. "Kun-iyo?"

Koy smiled and nodded. "Aye, tha's "em. But would ye know it, they are really all the same bein", Thia. Jest the different sides tha ye need ta make one." Koy pointed from Trothfang to Everild to Kuniyo and back again while Thia's eyes followed her mother's finger.

When Koy saw her daughter was still trying to comprehend what she had said, Koy took another stab at it. "Here, tell me, who's this?" Koy lightly touched her finger to Thia's chest right under her chin.

The girl squirmed and let out a few giggles, "it's me, Mama!"

"Ye're right, it's ye, my Thia bee. Now ye're "lways ye, but wha did I say when ye had yer crayons in the livin" room yesterday?"

Thia's face darkened at the memory. "You did NOT like it when I used them on the wall." The gloom at remembering broke with a sneaky smile, "but I only wanted to make it pretty." Thia defended herself again until she looked up and saw Koy was not smiling back in a similar fashion at the recollection. "I'm not supposed to use crayons on the wall," she repeated a phrase she had clearly heard the day before, it not other days before that.

"Tha's right. And then wha happened later when ye helped tidy up the livin" room?"

"You said it made you happy when I helped."

"Aye. So now who colored on the wall and Mama didn't like it?"

"I did."

"And who cleaned up so Mama felt glad?"

"I did."

"Ye're right "gain, very good, bee! So there was Thia who helped and Thia who colored on the walls. Which Thia are ye?"

The traveling the girl did down the lines of logic could be seen on her part-elfin face as she plodded her way to a possible conclusion. "I'm all the Thia's?" She lifted the sentence to turn it into a question while looking up at Koy.

"Is tha yer answer then?" Koy liked to push her daughter to find a confidence in her mind.

"You also want see how extraordinary that mind is," MoonBeryl silently chimed in his observation. The Opal had become more brazen in his prodding of Koy's deepest concerns that Thia's mannerisms and intellect went beyond what a small girl should possess at this age. Koy could not articulate these fears fully, not even to herself, but they lurked there, clearly visible to the Opal she could not hide herself from.

"Shush now, not while I'm with my daughter." Koy rebuked MoonBeryl but did not deny he had hit on a buried truth.

Thia, unaware of the internal dialogue happening in her mother's head, took a moment to consider Koy's challenge. With a decisive nod she straightened from her slouching seat on the bed and answered, "Aye, Mama, all the Thia's, they are all me." She jabbed her thumb towards her chest to reaffirm her point.

Koy leaned over to kiss the girl's head. "Very good, bee, very good."

Bolstered by finding herself in the right, Thia touched the wooden charms on the bracelet again. "Just like them. All part of one," she said while tapping the boar for Everild.

Would another child see the connection so quickly' Yes, Koy told herself, of course they would.

"Jest like all of us, bee. People can have good and bad inside of "em, all wrapped up in one. It's jest fer us to choose who we want ta be more like, but both will "lways "xist. We wouldn't be able ta have one without the other."

"It does not need to be as dramatic as you are taking it, Koyliak. You can admit when your rigid rulings on what you want with me, with us even, have shifted. Time and circumstances are known to change such things."

Koy heard the Opal but ignored him. He was right and she hated it. Luckily, Thia was over any further lessons. "So if you are still resting can we read my Frilly Tilly book now, Mama?"

"Aye, bee, go fetch it from yer room and we'll see wha ole Tilly's up ta today.?

Thia jumped off the bed and raced down the hallway, the echo of MoonBeryl's words left to ring loudly in Koy's ears.

Koy would always take Matt's visible anger over the drained indifference he now showed. She was pushing him out too far, leaving to chance that he could become untethered and keep floating away from their family, from her, with no means of finding his way back. She saw it as she watched him walk ahead of her without glancing back. The panic brewing inside rose higher, bubbling and begging to spill out, her heart banging in a frenzy against her ribcage. He was retreating into a ghost in the shell, a shadow of the man she knew him to be.

She recognized the lifeless motions to his gait. She remembered them from those first few months after he returned from his disastrous space mission that led her to believe he was dead. He had been shiftless then, lost and unsure of what to do, who to be without a fleet to command and a war to fight. Finding politics helped him then but that was gone too. And that wasn't the only thing missing.

Koy knew that for every ounce of himself he poured into those Opals, whether it be ShadoWeaver or IceDancer now, Matt suffered the loss of their presence deeply. It's what kept her in a perpetual state of anticipating the worst. She knew he would keep pressing on no matter what it might cost him, cost them, until he possessed them again. She didn't want to find out how much of himself he could hand over to them.

That's what started her uneasy alliance with MoonBeryl. But it had turned into something far more entangled and endeared. The hollow space left without his daily presence existed for her but she was used to gaps and tears in her heart. This one felt closer to a dull ache than the wound losing Lirisa had left her, raw and unable to fully heal. She lived with it. She also had stopped chiding Matt about his relationships with the stones because she knew she was guilty in part of the same thing. Normally she tried to convince herself that her focus on the Opals was different, her actions merely defensive and self-preserving, but the last few weeks showed her otherwise.

Matthew Simon was the only person equipped to truly understand her struggle while poised to be the most offended by it.

On other days his desire to go to bed instead of peeling away at the layers of half-truths and omitted thoughts she hid under would have been welcomed. She could be spared and graced with another day's peace. But it would be a superficial one. Leaving him in the dark for another night meant keeping him from being able to fully see her once more. Time and again the lesson that tomorrow was not guaranteed had been shoved unmercifully in her face and still she did not learn. If it all ended tomorrow, could she carry more regrets"

"No." She did not raise her voice but the force in it made its way towards him from the front door where she slipped off her heels. "Go tell Sil she can go home now and come meet me back in the kitchen after ye've looked in on Thia. I" need ta talk ta ye "bout somethin."

It was a small sentence but that last one crawled up her throat, digging in as if the words were made of broken glass that did not want to be dislodged. She had learned one thing after all these years with him. Sometimes she needed to share her feelings with him instead of waiting for him to pry them out of her.

"I'm not hungry," he muttered loud enough for her to hear. Those words, combined with the tone in which he spoke them, likely told Koyliak all she needed to know, even if the speaker himself remained unaware. With another sigh, he walked through the house in search of Sil and Thia. He found them both in Thia's bedroom curled up against one another. The book Sil had been reading lay half open on top of the covers. He'd come home innumerable times to this same scene (with a host of varying babysitters); inevitably, he always smiled.

Tonight, he simply turned and stalked toward the kitchen, pausing in the doorframe.

"Girl's asleep. Both of "em". He spoke as if that news was the worst thing possible in the world. "Am I taking her home or is someone picking her up?" He apparently hadn't listened earlier when Koy had instructed him to send Sil on her own way.

Unable to stay still in the interminable seconds until he returned and she had to force herself to follow through with her decision to be honest, Koy busied herself with checking and in some cases re-frosting the cupcakes she had prepared earlier that afternoon. Thia wanted to bring them into school in the morning because her teacher said they could celebrate Thia's upcoming birthday in class. She straightened up at the countertop when she heard him return.

"She's got her motorbike outside, remember?"

"Oh. Fine."

Back to Thia's room he strode, the motorbike reference triggering thoughts of the Vespa he'd won in Apple's Seaside Tournament. The one he'd given to Koy. The one she'd never touched.

He knew he shouldn't have expected anything different. Regardless, in the here and now, her inflexibility infuriated him.

Despite his growing ire, he gently separated Thia from Sil and shook the girl awake. Sleepy eyes looked up at him for a few moments and then widened in a moment of panic.

"Mr. Simon! Oh! I'm sorry! I fel..."

Panic gave way to embarassment.

"We're home now. You can go."

Too relieved that he wasn't yelling at her to pay much attention to his rudeness or his agitated mannerisms, Sil scooted off the bed and down the hall. Matt remained in Thia's room until he heard the door close and the girl's bike thrum to life in their driveway, simply staring at her sleeping form. Ever since he and Koy had lost IceDancer and MoonBeryl, he'd felt the most comfortable around Thia. Rather, he felt the least distressed and distraught. She comforted him, brought him a small modicum of peace not just as his daughter, but as something he could never quite put his finger upon. He gave up trying to figure it out and just basked in the momentary respites.

He had no idea how long he stood before tearing himself away to walk back toward the kitchen and the maddening woman who awaited him.

Stopping again in the doorframe, he leaned against it and crossed his arms, watching Koy bustle about and having no earthly idea why, at this time of night, she seemed to be intent upon making frosting from scratch that he could only assume was to be smeared all over a large batch of cupcakes that sat in their tins upon one of the countertops.

Koy felt the weight of her husband's gaze eventually and turned to face him, a dull knife smeared with green buttercream frosting in her hand. "Achordin ama; taisar ama," she said her father's life motto in Gweth quietly to herself. I do not fear; I fly. She relied on it like a prayer more often than she would ever admit, especially not to her estranged father.

"I told Thia she could have whaever kind of birthday cupcakes she wanted fer her school party tomorrow and she asked fer stars and fists." Koy took a step to the side to show Matt the small sugar paste stars and tiny fists she had been carefully pressing into the frosting. She started to smile but then remembered the task at hand.

"Have a seat." Koy pulled out a chair at the kitchen table for him. The panic washing over her again made her cheeks burn red and her movements in her own home awkward. She started to move a chair for herself but stopped, choosing to hold onto the back of it with both fists clenched and standing. She didn't offer him anything to eat. He had told her he wasn't hungry and the thought of food right now made her woozy. She started and stopped herself a few times before launching into a nervous, hurried speech.

"I want ta tell ye somethin" "cause it involves ye and I don't want ta be doin" big things without ye. But when I tell ye, ye're probably goin" ta be both happy and "xtremely upset with me. I won't deny ye tha but I jest ask tha ye let me spit it all out "fore ye tear inta me. And mebbe somewhere in the back of yer mind later on once everythin's settled in ye'll see I'm workin" on doin" better "cause it's been killin" me not ta say anythin" but I'm jest' I'm very confused and overwhelmed."

All that composure and indifference she had worked on these last few weeks crumbled away as a frenzied Koy overloaded her husband with a rambling precursor to whatever news she wanted to share with him. She gulped in the suddenly thick air and dared to peek at his face, not knowing what she'd find there. "I need a drink," she said as an afterthought but made no move to pour one.

Instead she released one white-knuckled hand from the chair's back and ran it over her flushed face, bringing it to a rest at the nape of her neck, sweaty under her dark curls. She remembered to breathe again. If her brother Beldron could see her right now he would relish in pointing out to Koy that her current wariness of her husband's ability to go from apathetic to enraged faster than she could blink was exactly what he disliked and consistently warned her about the man she married. The uneasy way she watched Matt, tense and prepared to spring to her own verbal defense, spoke to his potentially volatile state once he shook off the yokes of ennui. She reminded herself again that of the two bad options it would be better to see him angry than detached.

For his part, Matt remained where he was in the doorway, half of Koy's spasmodic rambling unheard as he tried to get over her initial "Have a seat' statement. Have a seat' Just what in the hell did that mean' Have a seat' She'd never said that before to him, at least not in that way. What he could sense was that her panic was forced - not that she was faking but that she was straining against her better judgment to spew out what she didn't want to say but had to say. This, again, was Koyliak in a nutshell. To let things build and stew until she became a volcano of blurred words and explosive emotion was her motif operandi. And now, with no opal to serve as receptacle, Koy had only one more place to turn.

For better or for worse, they both had pledged.

He had a sinking feeling about from which end of that particular spectrum they were about to fall.

Winter 2014

The thing my sister never understood, or rather refuses to accept as fact, is that not all creatures crave the power she presents in her mysterious, seductive packaging. ShadoWeaver is a force to reckon with, I can concede that point (not to her directly of course but I would be as ignorant as she can be if I did not admit it to myself). But expecting one blanket approach to work, even on these barbarians keeping us captive, is simply foolish.

She loves to play puppet master but I prefer chess.

When it comes to a creature like Koyliak, the intrigue of my sister's abilities will never appeal to her. ShadoWeaver perhaps had one chance to approach her, and maybe if she had waited longer Koyliak might have been more open to the idea of allying herself with the other being Matthew desired most, but my sister does not play the long game well. She blew that chance years ago that night on the beach when Koyliak resolutely cowered and cringed in the face of such magic.

Now of course I have chipped away steadily at those fears. She may still at times feel concerned at associating with me on the basis of my being an Opal but I have given her too many concrete examples of why she need not fear me. Trust me, it has not been easy suffering through the ceaseless cycles of panic, anger, paranoia, anxiety and the constant presence of frivolous thoughts of fancy dresses, but I have the time and wherewithal to continue.

Of course such commitment and investment may lead one to believe this singular elf must possess some equally astounding power at her core that I hope to one day unleash with all my chiseling. This is most certainly not the case.

Koyliak owns no great power beyond any other common elf. She will never directly free me from these confines. But for now she holds court as my queen because she is currently my most prized piece on the board. She is not the only piece mind you. But she serves as my vessel who will forge for me weapons that will stay dormant until they too can be properly shaped and utilized.

If I were an artist, maybe Koyliak would be considered my muse. There is no rhyme or reason to it other than finding myself situated to succeed where my stronger sister failed, that victory thereby inspiring me to press forward and reach for greater triumphs beyond the elf. Perhaps I should call Koyliak my catalyst instead. It was only some stroke of luck that led me to a creature who shies away from sheer power but desperately clings to subtle support and security.

Time is one luxury given to all of us in spades. Maybe we will never be free. Why not then take the time to experiment, to see how far I can reach and how many avenues I can travel down with any who will bend to my growing will"

Take the storm for instance. Sanyumato flashed with fury because in our depths we rage. Though we never discussed it much after, I know my sister counts it as a failure when we found ourselves still stuck where we started once we lost control. Again, at her worst she is so woefully short-sighted. We flexed our newly formed fingers and found we had created an extension of our once great power. We simply did not know how much harnessing the mind of an infant requires. I consider it a happy accident we found this new force for us to tap into without that being our initial objective.

Unlike my siblings, I accept that we have only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to understanding ourselves and what extraordinary things we may one day do to any that get in our way. It is this idea that has shown itself more and more vividly to me over the years since that early triumph. For that I will give thanks to my catalyst for jarring me out of my previously petty concerns. I would not find root to grow if she had not unintentionally pulled me into this new consciousness.

I am grateful, yes, but if what she loves or she herself one day falls onto this gradually destructive path, I will not hesitate to chalk it up to collateral damage, a loss in the name of a greater science.