Wish-Granting

     The Freezing Potion turned from a pale, icy blue to a clear concoction that flashed subtly blue and purple, red and yellow when Skyleur held it up to the light streaming in through the broken windows. Like a gemstone, she thought.

     Part of her wanted to dig through the rubble of this room to see if there were more of her notes or her journals still strewn around, but she decided that no good could come from that--she'd already discovered what she set out to learn, and the only thing she was likely to find in those pages, apart from a few scrambled thoughts about potions she had never tried to brew, were the thoughts of a sorceress who was too enraptured with the dark to recognize what she had become. There was no value in that. Not for Skyleur. Not for anyone.

     Instead, she took her potion and climbed the last stretch of the spiral staircase. The yawning entryway to the war room stood open on her left. Like all the other doors in the tower, this one had long since been reduced by time to rubble, but the hexagonal table that lay beyond still remained, as well as scraps of paper scattered across its surface and pinned to the walls. Maps, sealed into that room and preserved by magic even older than Skyleur.

     Eviamnora would like hose, Skyleur thought. There were likely places marked on them that all of Neopia had forgotten. She promised herself that she would bring her sister here and show her these things, some day, when she was ready for her family to discover what she had discovered herself.

     To her right stood the awning balcony archway, and beyond that, the wrought iron railing on which she'd cracked the scroll's seal.

     Skyleur took a deep breath and stepped out onto it.

     For a moment, she thought she'd been wrong about where she'd find Nicarina. Unlike the other spaces in the tower, the balcony was relatively free from rubble. There had been nothing out here for the invaders or later adventurers to steal or destroy, so through all the years since she had stood here last, only the wind and rain had touched these stones.

     But a stony voice sounded nearby. "My lady."

     She was pressed so closely against the tower wall and the shadows clinging there that she blended into them. Skyleur had overlooked her at first, but as soon as she spoke, the Aisha was able to pick out her outline. Nicarina always had been fond of hiding. Of sneaking and eavesdropping.

     Skyleur turned fully to face her old confidante. "Not anymore," she said.

     Nicarina stepped out from the shadows. "The Woods have not been kind to you."

     Skyleur looked down at her dress. It had been torn the night she'd inadvertently fallen asleep in the woods, and the following days of weary travel had been no gentler on the delicate purple silks. "Or they've been too kind," she replied.

     "It's interesting, isn't it? The perspectives time shows us."

     "I'm sorry, Nicarina."

     "I'm not."

     Skyleur regarded for her a moment. What did the Korbat have to be sorry for? It hadn't been she who had betrayed--

     Of course it had been.

     Skyleur always thought it was the two advisors who had fled who had revealed the tower's secrets to her enemies, but neither of them had Nicarina's bravery or cunning. Neither of them were close enough to Skyleur to have known what the invaders would need to get close to the tower.

     No one else would have known that it was the Starlight Potion that would foil her plans.

     "It was your wish," Skyleur said, half whispering. Not the Lupe's wish to make a name for himself, though maybe that's why the Lenny had chosen him. Not Skyleur's need. Nicarina had wished for the tower to fall, for Skyleur to--to what?

     And then she'd pretended that nothing had changed. She'd stood beside Skyleur in the war room commanding the tower's defenses, stepped out with her onto the balcony--

     To see it done, Skyleur realized. To watch her wish on the Lenny's falling star come true.

     Nicarina nodded, a small, stiff nod, all she could easily manage in her current form.

     Skyleur tightened her grip on the potion. Anger boiled in her. Nicarina. The one Neopet she always thought she could trust, her confidante, her best friend.

     I guess best doesn't mean all that much when I didn't have others, Skyleur thought bitterly.

     "I wished for a way to save you."

     A jolt ran through Skyleur. "Save me?"

     Nicarina nodded again.

     Skyleur wanted to cling to her anger, but hadn't she thought before that the Lenny might have known what she needed, might have been acting in Skyleur's own interest? What did it matter if the wish had come from Nicarina and not been spooled out of her own heart?

     It was different because she wasn't the one in control. With Sruthair and Zinifar, even with Eviamnora back home, she'd been in control of what she revealed, what she confessed of her past. This was different--being confronted this way was different.

     Different, and so much worse.

     She'd felt powerful, in a way, telling the others what she had done. It had been hard, but it had also been liberating, and she'd felt--well, powerful. In control.

     She was neither of those things here on the ruined balcony with Nicarina. Here she was revealed entirely. Nicarina knew her, and she couldn't dress up what she'd done with pretty words, wrap her past in promises to be better. Not even the potion held promise anymore. All she could do was stand here, be seen, and hope Nicarina would--

     Would what?

     Forgive her? Absolve her of who she had been?

     "Why did you come back here?" the Korbat asked.

     Skyleur told her everything. The doubts, the dreams. The nightmare she'd had in Zinifar's wagon, too.

     When she'd finished speaking, Nicarina nodded again, though Skyleur couldn't read anything in her stony expression. "Well, have you? Made your peace with who you used to be?"

     "I thought I had, but..."

     "But you thought you'd be able to wrap it all up in a neat bow and let it fade out of everyone's memories, old wounds smoothed over?"

     "I'd hoped..."

     Nicarina glanced at the UnFreezing Potion in Skyleur's paws. "You hoped you could find me and transform me back and that would be the end of it between us?"

     Skyleur let the bottle fall from her paws. It cracked against the balcony's stones, and the liquid seeped out, glinting all the colours of the rainbow in the afternoon's harsh light. "I'm sorry."

     "You said that already."

     "For thinking--for thinking that I could undo what I've done," the Aisha added. "I wanted to be able to make things right. I didn't mean to--I never imagined that you wouldn't want--"

     "To fly again?"

     Skyleur felt tears welling in the corners of her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but only succeeded in sending them falling down her cheeks.

     "Your tears won't--"

     "I know," Skyleur said.

     "Then why bother?"

     Skyleur rubbed her eyes, trying to stem the tide of tears long enough to see Nicarina clearly, to puzzle out her expression. It was as cold and calculating as it had been when she set her thoughts to a problem the two of them needed to solve--the face of a seasoned spymaster who refused to be taken in by an act.

     Nicarina thought she was acting. That her tears were a show, that all of this--

     At the same moment she realized what Nicarina meant, Nicarina seemed to realize that it wasn't an act at all. Her expression softened a shade, and she leaned forward, as if she might wrap a wing around Skyleur. She didn't--the movement was slight, just a suggestion, but she had moved.

     Skyleur reached into her pocket and withdrew the Old Paper Sruthair had given her. The page from her journal. She pressed it into Nicarina's hands. "You knew me. Even when I'd lost myself, you knew I could be saved. You gave up everything to try. I'm sorry I made that necessary. I'm sorry for everything you've endured since then. I'm sorry I disappointed and betrayed you, and I'm grateful--thank you. Thank you, Nicarina, for the wish that you made. I only wish--"

     Skyleur stopped herself. She would not wish for Nicarina's forgiveness. Not now, not ever. If Nicarina wanted to resent her, that was the Korbut's choice to make, and using magic to take that away from her was no better than the other things Skyleur had done.

     "No. I can't wish for that," she said instead. "I understand if you can't forgive me. I had hoped things could be different, but I'll have to find a way to make my peace with this too. I've done you enough harm, Nicarina, it's not fair for me to stand here and try to convince you to-- to convince you that--" the last words stuck in Skyleur's throat. She'd imagined having her oldest friend in the world back. She'd imagined the time they'd spend catching up and talking about their plans for the future, the things they might do together, and the thought that those hopes might never be realized...

     She took one last look over the spilled potion on the balcony, then out over the forest, up toward the midday sky.

     I wish for the strength to move on, she thought. For the peace of knowing that I did what I could to make things right, and for the courage to accept that some things can't be fixed.

     It was always her own wish that she'd been meant to grant.

     It had been a decade since she'd fallen out of the sky, but better late than never.

     Skyleur stepped toward the stairs, but Nicarina's stony whisper stopped her.

     "Skyleur. If you really mean..."

     The Aisha turned again to look at her old friend. The Korbat's eyes were fixed on the journal entry, on the joyful past that they had shared.

     The Korbat continued without looking up. "I never meant for the tower to fall. I didn't expect her to bring an army to our door. I never wanted all this time to pass, I just wanted you to see that--"

     "It's okay," Skyleur said. "I meant what I said. Thank you."

     She turned again to leave Nicarina in peace, but again the Korbat's voice sounded behind her.

     "I can still fly, you know."

     Silence settled between the two of them for a moment.

     "I think it's going to take some time," Nicarina finally said. "I still feel--it still hurts, when I think about it." She stretched her wings out. "I think staying here as long as I did--it wasn't good for me. I don't think this place has ever been good for either of us. Something in the walls, maybe, or..."

     "Come back with me," Skyleur said.

     "Back where?"

     ***

     Skyleur stopped at Eviamnora's open doorway and watched as the Poogle laid maps out on the table in the center of the room. Nicarina flit around the edges of the table, scribbling in old names for the places marked on them. Neopia City. The Lightning Swamp. The Great Cliffs. On the more detailed maps, she sketched in the places where great battles had been fought or ruins stood, even back in the time of the tower.

     She'd started thinking of it that way now--not as her old life, but as the time of the tower. It helped, some, to put distance between her and that place and time. Nicarina had been right about that much--the more distance there was between her and the tower, the better.

     Nicarina and Eviamnora had become fast friends--the two shared a love of secret things, and though Eviamnora's desire to bring those things to light conflicted somewhat with Nicarina's secretive nature, the two were united in their desire to discover as much as they could. It didn't hurt that Eviamnora's room at the top of the house was a fortress unto itself, nearly, and the Poogle was more than willing to let her new friend roost there, hidden away from the rest of the household when she wanted time to herself, which was often. Nicarna hadn't quite decided how she fit into the new world--Skyleur had a decade to find her place, but it had only been a few weeks for Nicarina, and she wasn't sure who she wanted to be yet, yet alone where she wanted to be.

     Skyleur kept her distance from them both. She wasn't quite ready to tell Eviamnora the story of her trip into the deep woods, and even when she was ready--that story was part Nicarina's too, and she wouldn't tell it, not even to her sister, without the Korbat's permission.

     Things were still rocky between her and Nicarina. They talked sometimes, but it was hard, and there was so much they needed to talk through that it was sometimes too overwhelming to think about.

     But they had all the time in the world to work things out.

     The End.