Location: Arbola Forest
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52nd Year, Summer
Nathily’s room in her parent’ kaza, once a sanctuary of childhood dreams, had become a self-imposed prison. For nearly two weeks, she’d remained cloistered behind the door, the walls feeling more like a cage than a home. She spent her hours staring at the dust motes dancing in the sunlight, her mind endlessly looping through the past.
Once she remembered a night six years ago—a night she had recounted to herself many times. She had been staying at a borrowed bed in an Azora outpost after a minor failure in her early training. She recalled how Emcorae, too, had struggled with the unknown after a long day of training with Alfranco. She had imagined him falling into bed, exhausted, his mind a chaotic race of competing thoughts about Baal-Zebub and the weights of the world.
“Just like him,” she whispered to the empty room, tracing the falcon-wing pommel of her Falcone where it sat idle on its stand. “I am wrestling with weights I cannot name.”
Her isolation was frequently interrupted by the soft, concerned knocks of her parents. Rian had come by twice one day, his voice booming with a forced cheer that only made her wince.
“Nathily? The sun is high, and the wind is fair for a run to the Great Weir-Tree,” he’d called through the wood. “Your mother has made honey-cakes.”
“I’m not hungry, Father,” she’d snapped back, her voice thick with the sharp edge of teenage angst. “And I’m busy.”
“Busy doing what, little bird?”
“Busy being a failure!” she’d cried, throwing a decorative moss-pillow at the door. She heard his heavy, disappointed sigh as he walked away.
When the silence returned, the memories rushed back to fill the void. She thought of their endurance races through the forest—she could still see Emcorae’s cocky, human grin and hear his voice insisting that “there is no second place on the battlefield.” She realized now that her “failed” mission in the woods hadn’t just been about a flag. El-Janus had been right: she was seeking a victory just so she could share it with a boy who was leagues away.
Later one evening, Fara’s shadow appeared beneath the door. No words were spoken, but the scent of raspberry tea drifted into the room. Thankfully, her mother knew better than to bother her. Glad to be alone, Nathily pulled her knees to her chest, resting her forehead against them. Her gaze drifted to a small, jagged scar on her shin—a souvenir from a summer afternoon four years ago.
She remembered the way the sunlight had dappled through the canopy as she and Emcorae raced toward the Glade. He had caught his foot on an exposed oak root and gone down hard, disappearing into a thicket of briars with a cry that made her heart stop. When she reached him, he was sprawled in the dirt, clutching his thigh and gasping for breath.
“Nat,” he had wheezed, his face twisted in a mask of theatrical agony. “Tell Alfranco… tell him I went down… defending the pass.”
She had hovered over him, her height making her feel like a giant bird of prey as she frantically checked for blood, only to find him peeking at her through one half-open eye. The moment their gazes met, his “mortal” grimace broke into that crooked, infectious grin. He wasn’t dying; he was simply making her look at him.
“Gotcha,” he’d whispered.
She had swatted his shoulder then, her laughter echoing through the silent trees—a sound of pure, unburdened joy that felt like it belonged to a different lifetime. Now, the silence of the kaza felt twice as heavy. The scar on her leg had faded to a pale line, but the memory of that laughter was a jagged edge that cut deeper than any briar. She didn’t just miss his strength or his advice; she missed the way he made her feel like a girl, happy and free.
Days later, as she again avoided having the evening meal with her parents, Nathily was leaning back against her pillows, her mind drifted to the years past when she was sitting on the floor of El-Janus’s kaza. She could almost smell the faint, sweet scent of the pazzierra leaves that stuffed the cushions—leaves that, as the mysstro had explained to a fidgeting Emcorae, stayed fresh only if they were allowed to fall naturally from the branch.
“Pazzierra means patience,” He had explained to the curious boy. “If we pluck the leaf before the tree is ready to part with it, we are out of harmony. The gift is only granted if we wait.”
Closing her eyes, Nathily felt like she was the one failing the pazzierra’s test – yet she didn’t know what to do about it.
She leaned her head against the cool wood of her bedframe, and continued to think about her early lessons with El-Janus. She remembered how the moonlight had filtered through the trees as the Mysstro challenged her and Emcorae to look into the nature of the Divine.
“Now tell me,” El-Janus asked, “Who is He who has no beginning or end?”
“That’s easy—Yahway!” Emcorae had blurted out with his usual confidence.
To Nathily’s surprise, El-Janus hadn’t corrected the boy’s bluntness. “If you choose to call The All Father by that name, so be it. The Amorosi call Him El-Aba. But know this: His existence is necessary to all worlds. Yet,” the master’s gaze had darkened, “The Evil One, Baal-Zebub, is just as old, and in his own dark way, just as necessary.”
Nathily recalled how Emcorae’s face had twisted in confusion. “How can that be? Didn’t El-Aba create everything alone?”
“Emcorae,” El-Janus had sighed, “you must realize the gods are not like us. Alyssa herself has given us this knowledge: in the beginning, Baal-Zebub was filled with the essence of what is Good. Our Lord loved Zebub and created Illyria to please him, because Zebub desired ‘something new.’ It was this very desire—this restlessness—that led to his downfall. He could not be content with the presence of the Lord; he wanted to pluck the fruit before it was ripe.”
[Finally, we see a history that is at least partly, correct!]
Meanwhile, El-Janus had looked directly at both of his pupils then, his eyes burning with a warning they were too young to fully grasp. “Evil is a succulent fruit from the outside, but take a bite and you discover the taste is not what you expected. Few who pluck this prize ever return to the light, for they slip deeper into Illusia’s grip. Trust in the light, children, and hearken to this: even in times of greatest darkness, you shall find your way.”
Nathily’s breath hitched, her throat tight with a scream that refused to break the surface. “Enough with all these memories!”
She was furious at El-Janus for sending her home, angry at her parents for their gentle, prying kindness, and most of all, she was mad at missing Emcorae’s laughter. The years of discipline, the “Patience Tree,” the cosmic weight of the Goddess’s grief—it all felt like a suffocating pile of dry leaves, and she was the spark, terrified that at any moment she was going to explode into a thousand jagged pieces of starlight and rage, with no idea how to gather herself back together.
A Mother Always Knows
Days later, Fara sat on a low, moss-cushioned bench in the kaza, her hands busy with a spindle of silver thread. She was the picture of Amorosi elegance, her long, wheat-colored hair braided with small, dried blossoms. She wore a gown of deep forest green, cinched at the waist with a belt of braided copper. Her face, though serene, bore the soft lines of a mother who felt every tremor in her child’s heart.
Across from her, Nathily was a jagged contrast. She had spent the last two weeks cloistered in her upper room, emerging only for meals she barely touched. She wore her old traveling tunic—faded, dusty, and frayed at the cuffs—as if she were still trying to cling to the road she had been forced to leave. Her eyes were rimmed with the red shadow of sleeplessness.
“Rian sits in the council chambers and worries about the world,” Fara said softly, her voice like the rustle of leaves. “But when he comes home, he sits by the hearth and worries about the amora who won’t look him in the eye. We missed our fierce girl, Nathily. The one who used to challenge the wind to a race. Where has she gone?”
Nathily pulled her knees to her chest, huddling on the floor. “Maybe she’s gone, Mother? Maybe El-Janus was right? I feel like a fragment, a hollow reed.”
“You are a hollow reed because you have let someone else breathe through you,” Fara replied, setting her spindle aside. She moved to the floor, sitting beside her daughter and taking Nathily’s cold hands in her own. “Tell me what’s wrong?”
The interior of the kaza suddenly felt smaller to Nathily, the amber-polished oak walls closing in on her as she arose and moved toward the window. Outside, a pair of white-tailed hares nibbled on bramblethorn fruit in the moonlight, but Nathily didn’t see them. She was looking past the trees, toward the burning horizon.
“He’s not out there, you know?” Fara looked at her daughter’s “un-maiden-like” attire with a soft sigh.
“Who?” Nathily asked, though the heat in her cheeks gave her away.
“Your… friend… Emcorae,” Fara said gently. She sat at the foot of Nathily’s bed, her eyes reflecting the same emerald light as her daughter’s. “You think your heart is the first to be pulled toward the sun, Nathily, but you must understand what we are. Dallegheri calls us the ‘Halfway People.’ We are born of the dust, yet we are granted the time of the stars. We occupy the narrow ridge between the fleeting breath of a human and the endless reach of the gods.”
Nathily turned away from the window, her voice a small, defensive rasp. “Emcorae isn’t just a ‘breath,’ Mama. He is… he is everything.”
“To you, yes. Because you are young,” Fara countered. “But he is a creature of the suns. He burns bright and fast. To love him is to love a shooting star and wonder why your hands are empty when it vanishes. Even the Goddess Alyssa knows this sting. Do you think she consorts with Pan because she is happy?”
Nathily blinked, caught off guard. “They are together always. Is he not her kind?”
“Pan is a distraction,” Fara said, leaning forward. “Alyssa is in love with the god Rhokki yet she her love is unrequired. That hopeless longing forces her to seek comfort in the arms of others just to endure the silence of her own immortality. She has spent tens of thousands of years learning a lesson that you do not have the time to fail. If a Goddess cannot find peace in a love that crosses the boundaries of kind, what hope does a Pupil have who cannot even master her own focus?”
Fara reached out, gently lifting Nathily’s chin so their gazes locked. “You are clutching the arrow so hard your hands are bleeding, Nathily, but the target is already miles away. You cannot be an Azora if you are trying to force the world to act according to your wishes. Like the pazzierra leaf, you must let go, or you will wither before you ever fly.”
Nathily felt the air leave her lungs. The truth of it stung like a lash. Fara rarely spoke such harsh honesty, and for the first time, Nathily saw the terrifying scale of the cliff she was standing on. She didn’t know the secrets Fara guarded regarding Alyssa’s true relationship to her; she only knew the weight of the expectation.
Finally, the warrior-veneer cracked. “I… I think… I love him, Mama,” she whined. “I know he’s ‘his kind’ and I am mine. But how can I stop my heart from beating?”
Fara’s expression softened into something profoundly sad. “Patience. Time. Letting the Goddess spin your fate. These are the only virtues that survive the passing of ages, Nathily. Yet know this—even the gods suffer from longings they cannot fulfill, but still they move forward to shape their destinies. I tell you this because I love you—and because I once learned these secrets the same painful way you are learning them now.”
Nathily leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder. The amber light of the kaza seemed to dim as the sun dipped lower. “What if I’m not strong enough to be what Alyssa wants me to become? What if I’m just… me?”
“Then you are exactly who you need to be,” Fara whispered back, pulling her daughter into a firm embrace. She didn’t offer easy platitudes or tell her the pain would vanish. Instead, she stood and gently tugged at Nathily’s hand. “The walls have heard enough of your sighs, little bird, and the air in here has grown stale with old memories. You don’t have to be a legend tonight. You don’t even have to be a Pupil. Just come walk with me.”
Nathily hesitated, looking at the Falcone resting cold and silent on its stand. The thought of leaving the room felt like stepping into a void, but her mother’s hand was warm and grounding. Slowly, she stood, her legs feeling heavy and strange after weeks of stagnation.
“Where?” Nathily asked, her voice still thin. “I don’t want others to see me. I don’t want to talk with anyone else.”
“Just us,” Fara agreed, a small, knowing smile touching her lips. “Just a walk to the Great Weir-Tree. We’ll wear our cloaks with the hoods up to let others know we want to be alone. We’ll watch the stars come out. The forest has a way of reminding us that the world keeps turning, even when we feel we’ve stopped.”
Nathily nodded silently, allowing her mother to lead her toward the door. She wasn’t cured, and the hole in her heart was still a jagged, empty space, but as she stepped out of the kaza and felt the first brush of the night wind against her face, she realized the arrow hadn’t shattered. It had simply been waiting for a steadier hand to draw the bow – it’s a shame I didn’t know about all this at the time, I’d have gladly pulled that bow so hard she would have snapped in half!
The Apocrypha of Azazel 