It was peaceful there, Jolene felt--a place that she could go whenever she needed to get away. Or, well, when she needed to get away every two weeks or so, by her own count for when her desire to go and ability lined up. She'd been spending more and more time here, iven the opportunity, since she went Squire, and had put some sincere effort into revamping the place; her past self's old bedroom had been dusted, top to bottom, and carefully cleaned and reorganized. She'd swept the steps that led down the tower the bedroom rested at the top of. Now her project was cleaning the courtyard, and especially, it was escaping the threat presented by the Corrupt Senshi who had said that she would take Caer Sidi's starseed. She was, she had to admit, deeply afraid of that possibility. But up here, she didn't have to be. Up here, she could lose herself in the simple act of sweeping the courtyard, upending centuries of dust and pushing it into neat little piles.
Back home, she would never have been allowed to do this sort of thing. Cleaning wasn't something that a girl of her breeding got to do, really; the house was tended by maids, and she knew that she was sort of a mess in this particular arena, and not particularly good at things that were probably considered basic life skills by people who didn't have people for that.
But she could sweep, and she could weed, because plants had overgrown parts of the courtyard, breaking up between the stones and sending cobbles out of their resting places. The whole thing was a mess, Caer Sidi knew, but it was her mess. Her place, that she cherished.
Here, in the quiet, while she cleaned, there were often snatches of memory. She had seen her past self, moving among the other people who inhabited the fortress, the other hands who helped her protect it. She'd heard her lament her inability to leave, and ask for stories of the wider world from the people who were there. But a Knight must always be at Caer Sidi, to maintain the wards and the magic that kept it and its treasures protected.
Beyond the fort, Caer Sidi the Squire was well aware, was a strange, stretching fog. She wasn't sure exactly what it covered, only that it meant that she would never wander much further than the front gate. Something--memory, intuition, she didn't think she was quite able to guess, really--told her that it wasn't safe. Better not to risk being lost forever, or discovering that the fog concealed a sheer cliff, or something else awful.
Besides, it didn't go high enough to conceal the sky, not from within the fort. She could look up, and see the tableau of stars, and know that this special, magical place in the universe belonged to her and her alone.
There was one place, though, that was still barred to her. Most of the building opened easily, and she had found barracks, a kitchen, a few other places that indicated exactly how lived-in this place had once been. But there was one door that stayed locked, no matter how much she pushed or pounded on it or snapped out demands to be allowed in.
She was sure that it had to be the treasure room; the place with all the magical artifacts that it was so very critical that the Knight of Caer Sidi protect. And, she thought, it was quite rude to keep her from it--there were rites, she gathered, that ought to be done to keep some of the more volatile artifacts magically pacified, and anyway, she was the Knight, and this was her Wonder, and she, frankly, deserved to be allowed into it.
But perhaps that was something for another time.
She sighed, and returned her attention to the courtyard. There was so much work to do, out here, anyway, to begin to make it presentable. In her memories, the courtyard was all polished stone, and some of it, in the shape of the very same insignia that sat on the back of her hand, had been made iridescent and shimmering. At the center was a fountain, choked now with all sorts of odd plants, and Caer Sidi wasn't quite ready to tackle those--or any of the other weeding--today. When that was her aim, she came up with thick gardening gloves and a facemask--no need to risk any strange pollens or that some of these ancient, magical plants might have thorns.
As she swept, she hummed, and she wasn't quite sure what song she was humming, but it had her feet moving over the ground in time with it, and for a moment, she swore she heard it being played, echoing through the courtyard, interspersed with drunken singing and bright laughter.
It felt like home, and like coming there, and like this was, truly, a place where she belonged.
The threat the Corrupt Senshi made loomed over her, and she knew that there was only one way to protect her starseed. But she also knew that she couldn't make it happen just because she wanted it to. It was something of an adjustment, she supposed; she was self-aware enough to admit that in her ordinary life, generally speaking, she was not used to being told "no." Not used to having to prove that she had earned things, rather than having them given to her. But that was part of this, wasn't it. Learning to be less selfish, less arrogant, less foolish.
A good Knight would know that the gift of Transcendence could only come if she worked for it. Gave herself to her Wonder, truly and fully, and let that be her guide.
And if she ended up glowing because of it, then that would just be a bonus, really. But the point was not that. The point, whole and entire, was to make this beautiful, ancient fortress, rotted and crumbling and overgrown as it had become, beautiful all over again.
[wc:1018 words]
