Temate watched as Tuiteam Righ lifted its cane. Despite Toni’s mocking of his reaction, Temate had been genuinely amazed when the Righ had done its magic. When it created the Seed that Toni carefully tucked into the camping bag he’d given her. He smiled softly as she stood, shouldering the bag and looking at him.

  “You sure you don’t want me to carry the second Water brick? Or Pip, Pip could carry it.” Toni motioned towards the child sized Spiras standing next to her.

  “NO! Moonless Light don’t make me touch that” Pip shivered, “disgusting material. I can ‘andle the spare gear that fits in ‘ere but that?” Pip slid away from the two shaking their head.. They held up a small cotton sack which rattled with the spare equipment from the torn bags. Temate nodded at the two.

  “Don’t worry Pip, I can handle this, they’re only gallon bricks. I know how uncomfortable all our artificial stuff makes you, I won’t make you do something you’re uncomfortable with.” He patted the second brick hanging from the side of his bag, the two bricks handles tied together. Temate turned to Tuiteam Righ and nodded. The Righ had waited patiently for Pip to go grab the bag.

  Rather, it had expined to Toni a few things while she and Temate had waited. First, apparently Tuiteam Righ has already pced its blessing upon them. It couldn’t say what form it would take but it would be a Harvest blessing of some kind. Linked to endings, falls, harvest, or simir things somehow. Theoretically at least.

  The Righ also expined that it did not know what the world it was sending us to was like, but it could guess a few things. Temate couldn’t remember the exact words it used, rhyming and all that. It boiled down to a few key things.

  The world they were going to would be magically attuned. Any world mostly technological was a no-go due to the Poison. Temate had a few guesses what the Poison might be, pollution first among them. It would be whatever that world's version of the Harvest season was. Harvest King, Harvest Court, made sense. Most importantly, it would be an isoted world close to their own. That had been interesting enough for Temate to ask a question.

  “What do you mean by close to our realm, and isoted?” Ah right, he’d been using the world realm not world. That felt like semantics.

  “Realms are but isnds, adrift in a sea. Some are closer than others you see? We’ll send you to one as close as can be. Isoted… hmmm.” The Righ began to think.

  “Some people know ‘ow to make boats to leave the isnd, the ones who don’t are isoted, as ya call them.” Pip said as they returned with the bag.

  So essentially some worlds and/or realms have the ability to travel between realms. Like how some nations learned how to sail the ocean, some didn’t. Alternatively, like the difference between a civilization that had achieved star travel, and one who hadn’t. In this case, the fae as a whole prevent these isoted worlds from being interfered with, positively or negatively. At least when it came to other realm traveling cultures. Sorta like any of those intergactic preservation forces from games and shows.

  Now Temate was staring once again at an act of magic, or Magic as Toni would describe it. The Righ lifted their cane up in their budding arm and began to weave it along the tree’s. It looked almost like a conductor waving their baton before the band. Rapid, fluid motion. Each action was precise, intentional, and it was beautiful. Each motion evoked whistling winds from the trees, winds which you could see.

  Cool lines of wind, lit by the blue and orange lights of Tuiteam Righ itself, filled the room. Each one whistled a different tone, creating a cool, mournful tune. It was a goodbye, different for each person who heard it. For Temate, it was a goodbye to his friends, the many stories he had written and told and the many he never would. For Toni, it was a goodbye to family. To her mother, the firearms engineer she aspired to be. To her father, the stoic man who taught her to fight her own battles.

  However, that was not the only thing they heard. Mixed among the song which made them think of goodbye’s was another song. Growing louder as the Magic continued, a warmer song. A song of welcome, of beginning, of new adventure. A song which filled the both of them with excitement and energy.

  The cold music faded, the warm music grew. The hearts of the two humans started beating faster in their chest. Toni looked at Temate and saw him smiling. Not the soft, little smiles she’d seen so far. A wide smile that could be better described as a wild grin. Like a predator about to pounce. She pulled his sleeve and he looked down at her. She smiled back with wild abandon.

  “Now that’s a reaction.” She said

  Then, Tuiteam Righ began to sing. The words made no sense to either Temate or Toni, not because they were in a nguage they didn’t know. Instead, it was in a nguage neither could even begin to imagine how it would be spoken. It was the sound of a burbling stream, the roar of a warm fire, the crackling of lightning and rumble of thunder. It was the sound of light skipping across water, of color painting itself across the sky.

  Then the sound stopped as did the Righ’s cane. The canes motion left gleaming golden trails of light which formed a complex pattern. Flowing imagery indecipherable to either of the two humans. The overall image though was clear, it was a door. An ornate, opulent door of light with the Righs cane pressed right into the pce where the handle would be. Then the Righ turned to look at them, a smile on its face. It was enjoying this, showing off. Pipuck grasped both Toni and Temate’s hands firmly.

  “When the Righ opens the way, ya don’ leave my side. Ya run and follow me understand?” Pip whispered. Temate nodded, Toni blinked.

  “W-why, what happens if w-”

  “Ya would not want to fall into the ocean from a boat. Less so would ya want to fall into the Between from the Path.” Pip said seriously, his eyes intense as she looked into them. She nodded too.

  They looked forward towards the Righ. Two humans and a fairy. One human, a storyteller and master of games. A man always prepared, always thinking, intention in every action; when their mind did not drag them along. One human, a hunter, an aspiring maker of weapons. A woman who was not afraid, nor incapable, of action but preferred a smile and kind words. The fairy, a Spiras, light given thought. Banished to guide and aid the two humans, with a history still unknown.

  Tuiteam Righ twisted their cane and the door of lights pressed into the wall of trees. They parted around it and a path extended onward, towards a sun that could have been setting or rising. Perhaps it was both, Temate had no time to consider this, Toni didn’t bother and Pipuck ran. Hands grasped the two humans behind them as Pipuck ran forward, the three travelers stepped foot on a road untraveled by any other before, which would not be traveled by any after. For this road was made now, for them, and even should others go from here to there, a different road would be made for them.

  Behind them, Tuiteam Righ pced all four hands on its cane and whispered that none but it may hear.

  Through golden twilight’s burning glow

  Two souls and a fairy walk fates road

  Their bodies ignite, their spirits unbind and grow

  Along trials and trails past peril’s abode

  Every step forward, towards their March of Bone

  End Prologue