Try Another Route

From Lira:

When one thing doesn’t work, we’re told to try another line of inquiry. And it’s not that I didn’t get anything from the tarot cards. I just didn’t understand what I got. So I started another line of inquiry. It’s only logical.

It turns out not all sorceresses need to be half naked in order to be in touch with whatever divinatory force they channel. Some of them wear robes. OK, I’d try that. And there’s something about the sense of sight that makes things more difficult, since oracles are meant to see with their mind’s eyes and not their physical eyes. OK, I could do that too.

I spent a few hours getting the study more full of the things I thought I’d need, and then I waited for a waning moon.

Honestly, if belief is the crux of all this, I wasn’t sure I’d get anything, because I was struggling to believe that I could see anything without the sense of sight. It just doesn’t follow logically. But trying new things means reaching out of one’s comfort zone, so I put on the sort of music oracles seem to prefer (or at least a few of them: this was loud music; that’s all I remember about it really), lit candles, tried to create atmosphere, and then I took away my sense of sight.

I took some deep breaths. Would it be easier to search for Awenia, or for Her Fae Majesty herself? I settled on the latter: after all, she created me. Surely there would be some kind of chimerical bond between us.

Even though I couldn’t see through the thick veil, I closed my eyes anyway; it seemed to be the right thing to do.

I stood there, with my arms in what I had learned was the “receiving” position, and I considered HFM. For the most part, she’d been dismissive of me when we’d met in person, except for a couple of discussions about which books to keep away from the tourist population. I considered the timbre of her voice, the music of her laugh, the effortless sense of power she seemed to carry with her wherever she went.

And then everything went darker than it had been before, as if that were possible. She seemed comfortable wherever she was, even though there was an edge of worry. She was in a small place, which was odd. I got the impression it was an island, but everywhere is an island as long as you think of islands as being really big. And Nathaniel seemed to be with her, which, OK, was good. But something stopped me from stepping through to wherever she was, some kind of ward that wasn’t keyed to HFM or anything I’d seen before.

White hair, an angry countenance, cold beyond reason, a little bit of a frown, a wave of a finger, and…

Then it was gone. And no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get it back again. It was like someone saw the window through which I was looking and just blacked it out completely. I mean, as a Chimerical Librarian, I am not all-powerful, so it doesn’t take much to block me out, but this was total disconnect. It was like the website suddenly went down and not even the Way Back Machine had a record of it.

I hope HFM isn’t in danger. And I guess, since I can’t find here where she is presently, I can just concentrate on making my way back to Awenia. So I’ll concentrate on the Library, and Ari, and I’ll hope for better results and no scary faeries.