Trick's Malachite Dream

[Narrator]
Warmth. The coarse texture under her knees, that complicated feeling of knowing you will have to clean it out afterwards but still enjoying the moment.

Trick raises her face from the pristine waters, looking down at the mirror- perfect, if not for the ripples that still remain from her drinking. The sun shines above, making this gift all the more precious. She stands up, fighting against the sand's efforts to slide her into the lake- the oasis.

From a distance, she hears familiar music. The sound of family.

[Trick]
Trick looks down again, stares at her huge golden eyes in the water. She had never fully grown into her ears and eyes, which is what gave her a strangely kitten-ish appearance. But they look even more out of proportion now in her young face. Not quite young enough, though, for this to be a memory. She reaches up, feels the smooth, soft, unnotched edges of her ears.

She gets to her feet and looks in the direction of the big sturdy tents that house her family. She feels that pain deep in her chest. She rarely dreams of home like this. Those dreams have been replaced with nightmares where she relives the death of her brother over and over.

Pleasant though these dreams are, there's always a price. The price of waking up to find that she is still among the Soulless and can never go home. But she trudges through the sand towards those tents anyway.

[Narrator]
Trick reaches the tents, only to be met with joy. Her brother dances, throwing grains of sand up into the air with every daring step, skip, and hop. Her parents pace in place as they play their instruments with smiles on their faces, only ceasing the admiration of their child to stare into each other's eyes.

They are so engrossed in the activity, they don't seem to have noticed Trick's return.

[Trick]
Any observer--and she has the prickling fear there is an observer even if her family has not spotted her yet--would be forgiven for thinking Trick was somehow vanishing. She drops that fast. From her standing position into a crouch--like a vertical fetal position. The loose-fitting red robe flutters, billows and then settles around her.

She watches, in the shadow of one of the tents, her pupils blown out as if trying to let in as much of this pantomime as possible. While not feeling as if she belongs within it.

[Narrator]
The singing melts into laughter, then back again. Both are music to Trick's ears, even if one hurts more than the other. It feels utterly alien, being back here. She feels as though she both belongs and does not, as though she deserved and were not worthy of their presence. Of their gaze.

They are looking at her. The Shadows cannot hide her. They cannot take away who she is. The singing and dancing and laughing and smiling stop, her parents staring.

Her brother looks at Trick, a neutral expression on his face.

[Trick]
Trick's pupils get so big that they almost blot out the gold entirely. Like twin solar eclipses as she looks from her father, to her mother, to her brother. That look on his face like a rapier into her heart, pain and love and guilt so thick it's choking. She lowers her head further, her soft undamaged ears pressing flat to her skull--still kitten-floppy cartilage it makes them stick out to the sides a little. Not quite the streamlined effect she has as an adult.

The sun is so bright, the shadows so fleeting. She awaits judgment but can't take her eyes off his face--drinking up this chance to strengthen her memory of his appearance. The way he'd looked before the Shadows had stolen both their kittenhoods.

[Narrator]
Her brother steps forward. Trick feels smaller, tiny, insignificant as he does so. Or is he growing larger? Both could be true. When he is next to her, the Tabaxi looks much like he did that day. Hauntingly so.

He kneels down on the sand, large eyes looking into her own. A voice devoid of passion or any emotion rasps its way out of his throat. It sounds nothing like moments ago, with the happiness of dance and song. No. It sounds like someone who slept with their mouth wide open in a desert while moisture fled and sand made its way inside.

"Why?"

[Trick]
Trick chokes, her body shuddering as if trying to reject this. All of this.

"I didn't know ... I swear I didn't know. I'm so sorry ..." She can barely get the words out, but she must. She needs to say them.

[Narrator]
"Why?"

His paw reach out to her own, trying to grab them closer.

[Trick]
She doesn't pull away. She would never pull away from him. She can't help it as tears spill over, "I don't have any good answer. I was stupid and reckless and almost done and I didn't ... I didn't know it was you. You were just a number to me. The ninth. That's what happened to me, what I'd become. I didn't know it was you." The words are an insistent, thundering flood, a raging river pounding through a wrecked dam. Choking, stuttering, but unstoppable.

[Narrator]
Silence. Through tears, Trick can see that hole on his chest. That void, a missing piece that completes the puzzle of her grief.

She feels the sand grow green, miles upon miles of ground rock, and her brother's mouth opens, rotten flesh tearing at its edges.

And then it all burns.

Trick is still knelt down, but on an ocean. No. Water that barely reaches an inch of depth before becoming solid fills the horizon, and soft flames float all throughout the space. One such flame is in her paws, where her brother's were moments ago. It does not hurt to hold.

Trick sees a small river boat approaching from afar, slender and long. It moves even though it is empty, and a lantern hangs from its curved, raised bough.

[Trick]
Trick's body hurts as though she had caught fire herself. She can't look away from her brother even as she catches the expanse of green around her. A scream is torn from her throat when his face tears. And then as it all shifts, and water begins to seep through her fur.

Her eyes are dragged down to the flame in her palm where her brother's paw had been. She staggers to her feet, curling her other paw around that flame protectively, to shield it from any wind. She starts running towards the boat, recognizing that lantern, shredded by hope and pain and sadness.

[Narrator]
The flame in her hand reacts to her protective gesture, growing stronger. It is warm, but not hot. Like holding someone in an embrace.

When Trick reaches the boat, there is nobody there. It floats slower with her approach, as if inviting her to climb on. An oar is stored inside, badly hidden between the planks that serve as benches. How would an oar be useful in such shallow waters?
When she looks down at the flame, Trick notices she is old once again. The silver amulet dangles from her neck, glittering as it catches its twin's light.

[Trick]
"Don't go ..." Her voice is raspy, like that same sand-blasted tone her brother had used. Like her throat had been open to the scouring desert wind, "Don't go out."

She clambers into the boat, rendered clumsy by her intense focus on keeping that flame burning. On curling her body around it, putting her own flesh between it and anything that might threaten its continued existence.

"I can't row ..." Her voice aches in her throat, "I can't row and keep him safe. Please don't make me fail him again ..." She's not exactly sure who she is speaking to, but it has the feel of the prayer she'd awkwardly tried to send to Kelemvor before sleeping.

[Narrator]
Trick feels a voice around her, like the ripples in the water. It touches the top of her head and flows down to her feet, touching her entire being, from beginning to end. It sounds both young and old, tired and prepared, rushed and calculated.

"You hold the means already. Open the door on your heart, child."

[Trick]
Trick--honed for survival, handling her dose of Tabaxi intrigue with silence instead of riddles--makes a desperate, frustrated sound. "I don't know what that means." She looks down at the lantern hanging around her neck, half hoping it has a door that opens. That this is somehow a riddle only by means of being frustratingly literal.

[Narrator]
On cue, one of the amulet's faces clicks open, its clasp slipping. The inside of the lantern is fully available, if apparently too small for the flame.

[Trick]
Trick looks down at the flame cupped in her curled paws, a strangling kind of hope rising. She lifts her paws slowly towards the now open lantern, "I'm sorry." She whispers again, tilting her face so her tears don't drip on the flame, "I will come for you, I'll find you and I'll make things ... I'll make things as right as I can. I ... I would like to see you home to mother and father, in some form. That would be enough. None of you have to forgive me. I want it anyway."

[Narrator]
The flame only flickers in response, maintaining its life.

[Trick]
Trick's heart sinks. She'd been hoping the flame could make a temporary home in the lantern, "Will you stay with me? I mean ... if you don't have a better place to be?"

She takes her eyes off the flame for a moment to look at the lantern itself more closely.

[Narrator]
As Trick's attention shifts to the lantern, she feels it tremble, if for but a moment. The flame suddenly jumps, taking its place inside it as the door clasps closed.

[Trick]
Trick clasps her paw around the amulet for a moment, quaking. Then she picks up the oar from its haphazard hiding place and looks around, trying to discern where she should row to.

[Narrator]
Trick sees nothing. Only the flames, softly drifting in the shallow water, and the lantern of her boat. Then, she feels her amulet, tugging to her right.

[Trick]
Trick has only a common sense understanding of how rowing a boat works. She's never done it before, but she sets to it now, trying to go in the direction the amulet seems to be guiding her.

[Narrator]
The oar sinks into the water, defying logic. Looking over the edge, the space where the oar meets the bottom still appears solid. Still, it pierces through nonetheless, as though not caring about physics.

Slowly, painfully, Trick begins gathering her bearings, and moving in the direction her amulet tells her to go.

She barely has to row for a few minutes before she feels a jump in time. Her fur is longer, her nails are curled, and her joints ache. But she is at the base of a dock made of bone-white wood. Her boat is already tied to it, and lanterns rise up from its sides to almost form a path forward. Into an island of sand.

[Trick]
Trick feels uneasy in this new version of her body--some of her flexibility gone. Her claws overgrown and a little flaky from dryness. But she carefully sets the oar aside and climbs out of the boat. Now that she no longer holds the oar, she puts one paw back to the lantern amulet as she follows the path lit by the lanterns.

[Narrator]
Trick walks her path, feeling the weight of age not experienced.

"Time flows ever onwards."
More lanterns light in the distance, illuminating the path ahead.

"What was done can only remain so."
The amulet continues to beckon her forward, deeper into the path.

[Trick]
Trick goes where the lantern leads, her notched ears--the fur a little worn now with age--pressed back as she listens to that voice that seems to transcend time and space.

[Narrator]
The sand beneath her feet starts to become less coarse. Soon enough, it is dirt, and her joints feel stronger.

"Regrets eat away at our self."
Dirt soon gives way to stone. Trick feels a spring to her step once more. Moving is not so hard.

"Do not chain the you of today to the self of the past."
Stone becomes sand. Then dirt. Then stone. Then sand, dirt, stone, sand, dirt, stone, sand dirt stone sand dirt stone sandirtstone sandirtstone sandirstone, thinner and thinner bands until what is beneath her feet cannot be told apart. Before Trick, there is now only a large brazier of silver. Coals litter its basket, ready to burn.

"Live, child. Live. Live knowing you have learned. Live knowing you can be better."

[Trick]
Trick pads to the brazier, grateful to have back the body she is accustomed to. She's still clutching the amulet in her paw even as her joints become more flexible, her claws glossy and healthy and sharp. She stands in front of it.

"How can I let go of the regret, without letting go of him? While he's still ... not with you? Not here? Not in any proper place? Are you ... asking me not to go to him?"

[Narrator]
The amulet tugs forward, hovering over the brazier and pulling Trick's neck softly.

The amulet clicks open, and the small flame falls to the coals.

As though they were oil, it spreads quickly and immediately, rising up into a pillar that forces Trick to step back. Her eyes are glued to the flame, and she sees it. In the edges of the fire, where it dances, so does he. As it sings in crackles, so does he. As it fights to live, so does he.

It's beautiful.

"He lives on through you- collect stories. Love. Learn songs, learn dances. Become who you wish to show him. Remember. Remember, and his pyre shall burn."

[Trick]
Trick stands, the flames reflecting in her eyes, red splashed across the black and gold. She reaches out one paw towards the flames, not afraid they will burn her. She swallows past the lump in her throat, letting the tears fall again, this time each one carries the reflection of her brother's dancing spirit before it seeps away and disperses into her fur.

"Will you take him, if you can? If I can't have him, if my family can't have him. Take him to where he can't be hurt anymore, by me or anyone else? I'll find him, I must. But ... I'll try to do it because it is part of my life. Part of who I want to be. Not because of the ... the regret." It's a very tall order, to let go of the guilt, but she will try.

[Narrator]
"One day, he shall be with me. Your work, your dedication, gives him a second chance."
The flames swirl, and Trick feels warmth suffuse her body.

"To learn is to live. Reach your destination better than how you started."
The light becomes blinding, the warmth too much. Trick feels time slip from her paws, and when she realizes it, she is sitting up in bed. The amulet dangling from her neck feels warmer than metal, but no flame burns within it.

[Trick]
Trick stands in that heat, letting it grow. Letting it almost burn. And she would have stayed in that swirling flame with her brother if she hadn't woken up. She scoops up the amulet first, staring at it to see if there are any visible changes to it. Then she looks around for Ravik, digging in the blankets as if he could have somehow hidden his whole hulking form in them without it being obvious.

Not finding him, she shoots out of bed like a child fleeing a nightmare, grabs up her armor and makes a very cursory effort at lacing and buckling it up, leaving half the fastenings hanging loose before she swirls the cloak into place around her, grabs up her things and darts out into the hallway, going in search of Riga's quarters.