Prologue: Three Paths Diverged
A Dream
I awoke with a name on my lips. Jasmin. The tears that fell were impossible. Only the living should be able to cry like that. And I was most certainly no longer among the living.
Roisin had been a part of me. I had been her. And I had loved Jasmin as deeply and completely as any woman could love another. I might not remember my life as Rose, but I remembered love. Roisin's love was real. Lafleur was real.
The goddess was waiting for me when I stumbled my way back through the darkness into the meadow. I must still have been crying or looked like I had been, as she rushed over to me and took me in her arms. As disorienting as it was, I somehow didn't mind it. She was warm and smelled like home.
And I was desperate for home. With Jasmin.
"I forgot how bad it was," she said softly into my hair, still clinging tightly. "How are you holding up, Rose?"
With some effort, I coughed back my fear, but the pain stayed. "Why does it hurt so much? Why did I have to leave her?"
The goddess loosened her grip and lifted my chin to look me in the eyes. "Leaving them behind is part of the process, Rose. Sometimes, we get to see them again. In the same way or in new ones."
Biting back the words I wanted to say, I asked hopelessly, "Will I see Jasmin again?"
She considered her words, biting her lower lip, before she offered me a week smile. "Not exactly. At least, I don't believe that's part of the path, Rose. You will almost certainly meet some people many times. More times than is reasonable. But not her."
I couldn't really be surprised. Jasmin was gone. Just as Roisin was gone. Salora had taken Jasmin's place, and Roisin had died to make sure that happened. I had died to make that happen.
"What about Lafleur?"
"Oh, that Jasmin." She pushed away from me. "That was the first one?"
What did she mean? Were there more Jasmins I was meant to meet in all of this? Why did goddesses insist on speaking in riddles?
"You know we don't have a choice, Rose." How did the goddess always know what I was thinking. "Salora told you that. It's as true in Lafleur as it will be on Terra Earth, or was. I still haven't sorted that timeline properly. And it's as true in any of those places as here. Divine beings are restricted."
"Fine. Why did you react that way when I mentioned Lafleur?"
"You'll go back," she said slowly, "but you'll be someone new. Someone who doesn't remember that they were Roisin."
"Does that happen with every path from this meadow?"
"Some yes. Some no."
"I have to go back. To save Jasmin. To save Salora. To save Roisin."
"You can't change what's been written."
"Roisin did."
"Roisin was special, Rose," the goddess said.
"And so am I. Salora said as much. I'm going back."
I confidently walked toward the path I believed would lead me back to Lafleur. It didn't. And the goddess didn't help matters. Three paths separated me from Lafleur before I found my way back. But in the time between, I learned things.
Perchance, to Remember
As before, I followed the left-hand rule for labyrinths, keeping to the left until I lived a life as a poet. They sang songs of goddesses long dead in a world called Antel. Why were all the goddesses dead?
The poet was a nameless wanderer. They'd forgotten their home and family. It was all they could do to travel around all of Antel and share the tales of goddesses of betrayal, rage, decay, delirium, and abandonment.
When the poet was nearing the end of their life, they were not greeted with the faces of old friends. They didn't have their love hold their hand into the darkness.
At the last, the poet simply lay down one evening and passed into the meadow.
The goddess was unhelpful, shrugging her shoulders at me as I asked how to return to Lafleur, memories of the poet and of Roisin mingling together.
As I continued following the left-hand rule, I found myself in a world of darkness. The sun had burned out the moment the planet formed. Creatures had evolved to live without light, without heat. We had two goals: to exist and to replicate. It turns out I wasn't good at either.
Most creatures in that dark world lived to be hundreds of cycles old before their systems shut down. I made it fifteen, hardly long enough to say I lived at all.
I couldn't understand what the point of a world like that was. Who would dream of a world without light. A world where the only point was existence itself. Meaningless. And all it did was steal time I could have used to help Jasmin, to save Roisin. To do something.
When the third left-hand path carried me to a new world, I was reborn a warrior. Though 'war' was unconventional in that world. It was as close to utopia as one could imagine. Warriors were the sacrifice made to keep peace and prosperity constant.
The world didn't have a name. People simply called it home.
As a warrior, I fought for my life at least once between every time I slept, killing indiscriminately, never once afraid for my own death when the time came. It was peaceful, knowing that my death would contribute to good in the world.
There was something freeing about knowing that death was just part of public safety, but at the same time, I dreamt of more. When at the last it ended, I died much like Roisin: a smile on my face.
That time was different, though. Roisin died knowing she did all she could. The warrior me died knowing I had accomplished something just by living as long as I had.
But more than that, all warriors died with a smile because we knew that the peace of the many was more valuable than the safety and comfort of a few. If a hundred people in a year had to kill each other in ruthless combat to keep everyone else safe and happy – millions upon millions of lives – then that was where happiness lay with us.
That was the moment I understood. It was hopeless, no matter what the goddess had to tell me.
The Light of Forgetting
"Do you see, Rose," the goddess greeted me patiently as I returned to the meadow, "that death can be beautiful? It can be freeing. It can also be meaningless. You should be grateful that, as Roisin, you were able to make your death mean something."
I glared at the goddess. "Gratefulness is for people who find a way to win, even if the goddesses, even if fate itself, war against them." Spinning about the meadow, I levelled my gaze back at her. "And pride is for those who find a way to protect those they love without having to sacrifice everything. How do I get back to Lafleur?"
"It won't matter, you know." She shook her head and cocked her hip to the side. "Even if you go back. Even if you find her. She won't know you any more than you know her. Saving Roisin is not an option. Saving Jasmin of Lafleur is impossible."
"Answer the damned question," I demanded of her, "or else the next life I lead, I'll let myself fade away, wasting all of this potential. You can't stop me."
"You are the absolute worst, you know that?" She smiled, letting me know she wasn't precisely angry. "The reason you can't find your way back is that you keep trying the same thing in hopes of achieving different results. Roisin was all lefts along that path," she pointed to the exact one that I had tried over and over, "but to return to Lafleur, you can't try to go back to Roisin. You have to accept that she's gone."
"So what, do I go a different way?"
"You take a different path. The world is different through different eyes. A wise woman once told me that —"
"Perception is reality," I finished her sentence. I didn't know how I knew what words were coming, and I wasn't exactly ready to explore that deeply. "Do you know which way to go?"
"You'll figure it out just fine, Rose."
"One last thing before I go."
She raised a brow. "Oh? You're finally going to ask?"
"What do I call you? Calling you 'the goddess' feels adversarial."
"For now, you can call me Phyllo," she smiled playfully. "The whole thing about hiding names is true, too, Rose."
"Good enough, Phyllo," I waved over my shoulder as I rushed to a new path, letting my feet carry me between the trees as they chose.
I don't know how many forks I travelled. I don't know how many left or right turns I took. But eventually my ears were met with the sound of wind rushing past. Like I was approaching a great cliff. As quickly as it struck me, it was gone, and I awoke.
Rose was gone. Roisin was dead. All that remained was me. I was Nyxara.
A lesson was fresh on my tongue as Lafleur's beautiful world came into focus. Darkness only wins if you can't count the suns that pass you by.