Ignis comes in to ask about my progress. Fyera comes in to draw me out of the room by the teeth, if necessary. I'm waiting for them both, tail manic, and this time, when I knock something over, half the room almost does catch on fire. With a sweep of my wings, I draw time back in towards myself and all the candles sit upwards again, waiting. I stare them both down, watch their mouths agape, and tilt my head, trying to remind them that I am more than capable of creating miracles, that their shock is unnecessary. "I've made progress," we say. "I've found something."
I who? This is the royal we.

I haven't slept in days.

Ignis sits, and she stops Fyera with a paw. Fyera's mouth opens again, this time in protest, but come on, Fyera, please sit down. I nod to them both and spark up the willow-scented candle with my mouth. It's down to a shell of its former self, and is roughly a tenth of the size of the other candles. The flame flickers precariously when I light it, but it will hold long enough to explain. I sniff in so close that the flame almost tickles my nostrils (this has happened a few times, also) and pick up the knife just as memory takes me. I get the memory, the vivid memory, of a white Canis situated below and above the tree, through the tree, a thousand afterimages like those Blossom described, as if her very being is superimposed over the universe.

Voices ring through my mind, ones besides my own, and with them a stream of memories of me tracking her down across ages. I dream of the night she blew herself out like a great gale. I dream of her with her sister, her in the forest, and she's everywhere, drawing everything together.

"It's the willow again." I say, dropping the knife in excitement. "The tree. I need to find it. She brought me into all of this. She has to know..." I realize I'm pacing, and that Fyera and Ignis both have their mouths open again.

"The knife was glowing, Rena. There was blue energy up the veins." Ignis tells me.

"Um, yes, of course." I say. "I can get it to do that now. I'm not... entirely sure what it means."

Next thing I know we're standing in front of Avery. My tail is waving, because we did a good job and I think we're going to get to see the tree now, but Avery tilts her head. "You're talking about Lotus. Keeper of Hope? Her body was buried underneath a willow."

I gasp. "Rain said that a long time ago."

"It's hard to say if you'll actually find her, Rena." Avery mutters, hastily. "I think you should realize that the tree moves, constantly. It's not a plant, at least not in the way we think of it... it's a magical construct. It's said that flowers stemming from its root system could cure anything, up to and including terminal illness. The bark is said to whisper back one's own past lives to them. The legends about this plant are each more extreme than the last, and all of them amount to it being one of the most sought-after trees in the universe, but no one can find it in spite of that. She moves so quickly, it's as if she's fleeing being found."

"But she's not fleeing," I respond. "She's looking for someone." The Auspicia has been to the tree dozens of times. Sometimes it gives her what she wants and sometimes it's very cross with her, which is sad, but I can understand. "She's looking for me right now."

"Alright. Would you at least mind taking a sizeable patrol with you. The Auspicia's woods, near the wreckage of the old castle... they're dangerous parts to be in, almost devoid of life." Avery nods.

"Could you and Indy come with me?" I ask.

"I'd be honored." Avery responds.

---

We travel north for what seems like the days, but it messes me up whenever the sun rises or the moons fall. The world sweeps into one cosmic now, teeming with noise no matter how far we go into the woods and however fall the sounds of bugs and prey fall. At last, we come to a point where the only noise is our breath and the ringing in my ears, growing ever louder. I look behind me, just to check that Avery and Indy are there, and they are. Indy's been making jokes for a while now, to lighten the mood. Good old Indy. I wish I could enjoy their presence but I'm not there anymore. I can barely understand what they're saying.

Is their job to calm me down?

"Of course, that was the first time I'd tried a turtle bowl." Indy finishes. "I was confused, as one is when consuming a turtle bowl, but after that, I knew I had to try everything out there. Rena?" he calls.

I push through a few bushes, the knife clenched so hard in my mouth that my jaw is numb. "We're close." I mutter, letting it drop.

"Are you certain?" asks Avery.

Can't believe I'm leading her. This is all wrong.

Indy continues, "I've been trying to think of a good pun for the expedition for a while, actually... hide and tree-k is unbelievably bad, so I figured I wouldn't even share that, but there it is. Rooting around?"

"We're coming up on the old castle grounds." Avery says. A deep anxiety fills her voice. "Rena, are you completely sure that it's back there?"

"How do you know?" I ask, looking up. "The forest looks the same as it did earlier."

"Look down." Avery says, and when I do, I realize that the ground is sloping beneath us.

As if forming a path for us to follow, it continues to drop in erratic patterns, until we reach a point at which the trees seem to be caving around us, so that as many trunks fill the skies as canopies. I look back at the path, which has been made inhospitable by the altitude of the climb back up, even though it never felt as if we were going especially far downhill. Still, the surrounding area is nothing but trees, a great variety of which should never be in a forest like this. Exotic reds, oranges, and greens crowd out the sky, with a few bioluminescent blues and even stranger hues, not to mention several trees that are flowering so violently that no leaves can be seen. Thick brambles crowd around my paws, and several creep up towards the blade. It's as if we've stepped into the afterlife-- for certain, not another living being has been here in years.

"Where are we?" I ask.

"Inside where the castle used to be." Avery looks up at the trees. She knocks over stone with her paw, and I realize that the ground is full of teeth. It's almost so thickly buried by foliage as to be unrecognizable, but when I wipe away some of the leaf litter on the ground, I can see clearly that burned stone lies scattered across the ground. At no point is it even high enough to breach the plants, save for where some bushes and trees have grown over it, as if consuming it.

"But it blew up twenty years ago. That's not long enough for an entire forest to grow." Indy says.

Avery's face is mutinous. "Every single one of these trees is a Sentient who was burned to death when the palace exploded."

My heart stops. All the trees spin around me, their beautiful colors a mockery of the life which once lived there, and no air stirs them the way the wind picks up the lithe bodies of the humble plants atop Lira City's Defender tower. Branches pause in the static poses once attributed to Sentients unaware that these would be their last seconds alive. These are the skeletons of my dead subjects, and now they point forwards.

I pass through, petals draping me, and I emerge into a solitary stroke of sunlight. The willow whispers to me, windlessly, and when I pass through her draping branches, I see that the interior is covered in white petals that don't belong to the tree itself.

"Were you waiting for me?" I ask, looking up through her canopy into the sun.

No. I returned.

"Why did you send me out?"

I was looking for something.

"Do they hate me?"

I am loved so violently it would tear a thousand bodies asunder. I am loved as a god, as a mortal, as a sister, as a mother, I am loved as well as I have been forgiven, I am loved, I am loved.

"I don't deserve it."
I am to lay my head to the tree.

So I do.

The scent of willow overwhelms me, not the fake scent of a candle but the scent of a potent, living thing, mingled with the slighter scents of ash and a familiar pelt. I wander back through years, into a time where this would have been the throne room of the greatest kingdom Dreamland-- perhaps any world-- had ever known. I stand staring across a gold room thick with incense, and I recognize the room on fire, back at home. I have always been stuck in that room. I only found it again.

A single white Canis cuts into the room, looking up at me with awe in her eyes. It is not the first time we have met. Her Verhamera-given gifts are shortened down to mere nubs, and when she speaks, it is a voice like bells but certainly lacking in magic, such that it doesn't ring through my head the right way. Something was stolen from her.

Outside is a world on fire. It is a time ridden with despair.

Her eyes fleck pale blue when I approach her, and then I know what I am looking at.

"Lotos."

We find each other over and over again.

"Someone is making an attempt on your next life." she warns, and now she is little more than a fortune teller who has requested an audience. I, too, have changed. Avery sits by my side, younger and perkier. The stranger's horns are of a reasonable size, but I recognize them still, as I recognize everyone.

"Can you give me a straight answer?" I ask, poise and violent grace. "Can you please just tell me who it is? The world is on fire. It is sickening of these games."

She shakes her head. "You don't want to know. You're going to curse me for telling you."

I laugh. "It doesn't matter what I want."

She looks resolutely into my eyes. "You wanted this."
"No, I didn't." I respond. "How could I possibly want..."
"How many times have you lost everyone? How many times have you played through these same pawsteps? You wanted one more chance to be young, you received it, and all of your sins came back to you like shadows. This plague. These Sentients. This home. Her. Him. Everything comes back around, and you face it at your weakest, at a point where you're hardly able to answer for it. Call yourself the light of this world. Let me hear it."
"It needs me." I say. "Like a plant indoors, nurtured by an artificial sun."
"The walls have come down."
"Then show me the way out."

She draws her face to mine and marks me by the tongue as a sister would, right on the forehead between the horns. When she draws back, I know her as a sister, and her pale blue eyes are familiar. "The betrayer is close at paw. Seek him out."

It's not a straight answer, but she turns to the left, opening her mouth, and a great darkness seeps through the room. She's yelling at me, but all I hear is ringing in my ears, tolling out across everything. It takes Lotus from me and the room, too, until all I can see is my own paws.

"I saw you." I tell Indy, bolting up, and he swivels around like an owl. "Well, not you, but..."

The knife is glowing more potently than ever, even though I'm not touching it. Indy's face breaks into an expression of incredible sadness. "I saw you too, Rena."
There he is. The blood pact. The energy courses through both of us, does not burn him... takes him as if he was always meant to have it. He is the most brilliant light on this world, and within him I see the mirror of myself.

"Indy."
"I think it was me. I think I was the one who..."

"Close at paw."

"You know it's true, Rena."

"No." That's not a very brave answer. It's just the best my addled brain has right now.

Avery awakens, and the three of us hold in the field. It is the first time she's met us both in the same room, even though she's read about us meeting a thousand times, in a thousand places, in dozens of bodies.
Indy looks at me-- stars help me, he looks at me like I can save him.