6: Unavoidable

After the last time she’d been drunk, Alexandrie had sworn she’d never do it again. After all, she’d had so much thinking to do afterward, and that had hurt. It had hurt to think, it had hurt to open her eyes and all she’d been able to think about was keeping the contents of her stomach inside her body.

And so it was with grim determination that she set about the process of distraction. La Chanson was not easy to forget - it lurked (judgementally?) in the back of her mind, observing her attempts to avoid it for just one night -

All the while perfectly aware that if it really left she wouldn’t be able to tolerate the silence.

The loud noises, the lights, colours and smells of the party did their best: Alexandrie didn’t really enjoy any of it. She tolerated it the way she tolerated the taste of alcohol: It served a purpose.

The people crowding around flicked the social switch that had been firmly trained into her. Drunk or not, she knew she hadn’t committed any social faux pas - at least not by Confederacy standards - though she had to admit she had no idea what name she’d given if asked about Spider after a certain point.

By the time Spider knocked on her door, she was sitting on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands. Despite the exhaustion, despite the room spinning, despite the warmth running through her body and all the distracting noises around her -

La Chanson was just the same.

She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to sleep, she didn’t want to think. She simply wanted a normal night as a normal adolescent making normal stupid decisions that didn’t involve volcanoes and appocaly-
apocoly-
apok-
ends of the world.

She didn’t want to think about taking a single step closer to La Chanson. She hadn’t heard or understood everything the gnomes said, but they had said the word “prophecy”.

Tonight, she didn’t want to think about the fact that her existence and everything she could or would do was predictable. She didn’t want to consider that it wasn’t a prophecy if the Lounkon killed everyone who got in its way - and she didn’t want to think about the undeniable connection La Chanson seemed to have with the Deliverance of the Dawn.

With Genofeva.
What had her Grandmère told her?

Not tonight.

“Je veux être stupide,” she muttered, “mais La Chanson dit non…”

And a knock.
Inviting her to go to the rooftop.

Spider said he liked feeling small and Alexa, drunk, didn’t know what that meant. High above the world, looking up into the night sky, she hadn’t felt small. To her, to feel small was to feel insignificant, and there were very few situations in which she’d even come close to that feeling.

Ellinora had made her feel small.

It had been so long since she’d thought of the Edgewater sister…A world and a lifetime had passed since then, it seemed. Everything then looked so small from here, now.

The point, though…Alexandrie, small in stature, had rarely felt small in importance. On the contrary, looking up at the sky gave her a sense of being watched by big, bright eyes all expecting her to
do something
say something
be something
and she nether knew what they wanted nor whether she could give it.

So she looked at the sky because that was expected, then looked at her hands, hoping someone would give her some direction.

Spider had so many wants - she could see them written on his face, the hunger for things he’d mentioned, yearning for things he hadn’t.

What did she want?
Truly?
To know what to do.

To know what she wanted.

And if La Chanson granted wishes, this wasn’t a wish it could grant. To ask that question would always leave her wondering whether it was what she wanted - or La Chanson.

The red glow was the direction from the stars, and it was abundantly clear what La Chanson thought she should do. It had guided her entire life to this point, probably killed people - good and bad people who would otherwise have lived (who were prophesied to die?) to get her here. It had given her guides, given her meaning, given her friends. She’d created birds for distraction and it had sent her another to help the panicked teenager breathe. It sang her to sleep and greeted her in the morning and protected her and looked after those she cared about - while she was with them.

And therein lay a limitation. Like Kazsra. It didn’t protect her family, it did not protect the Ebon elf sisters -
it hadn’t even protected Chevalier.
For all the wishes it seemed to be granting around her, Spider’s ticks were running out, Mysel and Heofonræsele were still joined, still out of time.

What did Kazsra want? Did she wish for things? If Alexandrie would be granting wishes, she should know what the wishes were, at least. Besides, if Alexa was a conduit, she was a poor one: Lucas had been so angry at her for pushing him to use La Chanson, but it had seemed to be what he wanted. Spider seemed to want so much, but climbing walls was all he could do (miraculous though it was).

In truth, Alexa didn’t want anything. Not in any meaningful, concrete way. Was it strength not to abuse abilities if there was no desire for anything they could provide?

The red glow pulsed in the distance and she looked away.

What would it do if she went in the opposite direction? If she simply ran from it?
She’d thought about that a lot - a whole lot. And yet…yet she continued the inexorable trek toward it.
Despite her misgivings.
Despite the fear.
Despite the discomfort with almost everything Spider observed.

Because she really hadn’t considered that she, Alexandrie, might be controlling or directly creating the magic.
Focus it in a direction, yes, but she was not, or hoped, at least, that she was not the originator of it. There were people older and wiser than she to whom that responsibility should belong. An 18 year old half elf with this kind of magic - the way one might be a good dancer or have particularly green thumbs…

It was dangerous. If this was how Spider saw her, she could understand his fear.
All the more laughable that he ask about feeling small.

The Progress Confederacy was a meritocracy. Everyone was expected to contribute their resources to help the country thrive. If she were talented in this way, she was obliged to use those talents for the betterment of the people.
That’s what she’d been raised to believe.
What she’d seen of the world told her that resources were being mismanaged.

The Progress didn’t work - As heretical a thought as communicating directly with divinities - but maybe things were better in the Deliverance of the Dawn, or the Empire of the Burning Lash?
If she could have what she wanted - anything at all - Alexandrie would wish to understand why she had been told so very many lies. And then she would wish for the power to fix the problems she was beginning to see everywhere she went.

Ultimately, it wasn’t that Alexa wasn’t creative. She’d considered that La Chanson could help her create a Praetorian (sort of) here and now - the birds proved it. She’d considered that if she wanted some powerful weapon, or increase the land mass to try to end the tension between the three countries, she could potentially make one. The fact that Kazsra existed told her that with practice she might be able to learn to maintain a bubble of air without thinking (if she really tried).

She could - maybe - create towns, cities… utopias…
but whenever she thought of that, the opposite also surfaced -
as Spider said, if she could create, she could destroy.

She didn’t - if she really thought about it - need to be a dragon to destroy a city. Ellinora didn’t even need to be magical to destroy her chance of friendship with people in court.
She didn’t need to be big, or powerful.
She just needed to want it enough.

And that thought made her sicker than the alcohol and the big, bright starry eyes boring into her as if waiting to see what she would become.

Anything but small.
Anything but good.

It was that thought that had her turning to Spider in horror as she felt eyes on his back and whipped her head around, trying to see -

Anything but good.