Lillene

Enjoy!

Serenity never did make it back to the Dreaming Tree, but Rissa spent a good bit of her time there while he was finishing up everything he needed to do before they could leave Berinath. Normally, Serenity’s absence would have meant that Rissa didn’t spend any time in the Timestream, but the Dreaming Tree was strong enough and protective enough that Rissa was comfortable looking around with it. There were no attacks, so she never found out if she was correct or simply lucky.

Unfortunately, the foresight the Dreaming Tree provided was barely useful at all; references to the Norns, Mimir and Ragnarok were common, but never in a way that did more than identify the Mimir as a manipulator that changed the course of Ragnarok rather than a direct opponent.

To Rissa, that was worse. It meant the Mimir were a clever opponent. They’d have to deal with the direct issue and also deal with the Mimir before she could be confident the threat was handled.

The Dreaming Tree appeared to agree with Rissa, at least in that the Mimir were the true threat. It wasn’t until the last few days that Rissa was able to convince it, with Elder Jinsa’s help, that they needed to know more about the youth and the mother. Rissa didn’t think the issue affected her or Serenity, but she didn’t want to abandon the problem half-solved either. 

After her searching, she’d found no connection between the prophecy and Earth, so she was at least reassured that it probably wasn’t connected to the destruction of Earth that had Serenity concerned. Admittedly, she hadn’t found anything at all about a threat to Earth, but surely the Dreaming Tree’s support would have helped her find it if it were there?

Skimming gave Rissa nothing. It was her preferred technique because it was the most reliable when she had a good starting point, but a poorly understood prophecy was not a good starting point. Indeed, the only thing she really learned was that they definitely didn’t understand the prophecy. She was even more confident that Serenity was Death’s Kind Hand because images of him kept turning up but nothing seemed relevant in her search for the actual problem.

Rissa tried several other methods. She had a selection of options available and she tried one after another with the help of Elder Jinsa and the support of the Dreaming Tree. Its power was undeniable but its control was poor; supporting her was far better than the other way around. Unfortunately, she still didn’t find anything.

On the last day, Rissa had to admit that she’d found nothing. She simply didn’t have a starting point and none of the methods she usually used to find one were working. She’d have long since given up if it were a potential stock trade; those weren’t life or death. It was always possible to not buy one you didn’t have any confidence in. Essentially the only thing she’d confirmed was that the references to Ragnarok were about the destruction of the civilization on Berinath.

Technically, she wasn’t out of possible methods. For practical purposes, though, she was out of options. None of the techniques she knew would give her better results than what she’d already tried; most would give far less.

She wasn’t looking forward to admitting that, but she still had to.

Rissa tapped on the doorway that led into the Dreaming Tree before she let herself in. She was a little later than usual, probably because she’d been delaying her admission that she was out of ideas. 

“Come in, come in!” Elder Jinsa sounded both energetic and cheerful this morning. 

If anything, that made Rissa feel even worse about what she had to say. 

“Have you had a meal yet this morning? No, of course you have; even so, have some tea. It’ll help you wake up; you look half asleep!” Elder Jinsa did not look half asleep. She leaned forward a bit as she spoke to Rissa. A broad grin made her look more like a cheerful grandmother than the serious Elder she usually tried to act. “Come on in, find a seat! The Tree Dreamed last night!”

Rissa’s right hand shook and spilled hot tea on her left as the Elder’s words registered. The Dreaming Tree hadn’t “Dreamed” since she’d been on Berinath; instead, they’d walked through the Timestream. Rissa had assumed that was the same thing, since Elder Jinsa talked about it as Dreams, but that had to be wrong. The Elder wouldn’t make a big deal of it now if it was the same thing.

That meant that Elder Jinsa was talking about an undirected vision. Rissa had had a few herself over the years and they were always important. The most memorable were the ones where she saw herself die. She hoped that wasn’t what the Tree had Dreamed. “What did it see?”

Rissa set the mug down on the table in front of herself without taking even a single sip. She didn’t want the distraction.

“The Tiger hunts Tortoises to feed her cubs. If the Tiger and her Cubs tussle over the Phoenix’s Embers, the Phoenix shall never rise again. The Dragon must choose which to protect; only with the aid of Light and Shadow can he make the Cycle turn and bring a new balance to the Four.” Elder Jinsa recited the words without hesitation or reference. “It’s connected to the old prophecy. The Tiger is clearly the mother, while the Cubs have to be her young. It’s not entirely clear, but either the Dragon or Light and Shadow are Death’s kind hand; it’s three instead of one which is a little confusing, but that happens sometimes.”

“Dragon,” Rissa muttered. She could think of two possibilities for that. The dragon might well be Serenity; that would match Elder Jinsa’s guess. At the same time, the dragon could just as easily be Althyr; Serenity had mentioned his draconic mentor a few times. Rissa was fairly certain Althyr was the Head of the Council of Dragons, which made him more suited to the title “Dragon” than Serenity was. 

At the same time, Rissa had no idea who the Tigers or Tortoises were. The only Phoenix she knew was Blaze, and that was only his bloodline; she’d have to ask him about embers, but she was fairly confident that was the wrong direction. If the Dragon was Althyr, Blaze definitely didn’t fit as the Phoenix. He might fit if Serenity was the Dragon, but it didn’t feel right which probably meant it was wrong. 

Rissa knew better than to dismiss a feeling about a prophecy. Sometimes that meant she saw something that was too nebulous to actually see in detail. Admittedly, it was nearly impossible to tell those feelings from any others, so she couldn’t count on them being right, either.

Rissa shook her head and picked up her tea mug. It was still very warm; with luck it had cooled enough to be drinkable. “Are you sure they’re connected? The imagery is complete different.”

Elder Jinsa nodded. “The Dreaming Tree is confident, so I am confident. The Dreaming Tree showed me several sequences that were different ways of saying the same thing; some overlapped with the old prophecy far more. This one felt more accurate, more correct. The Norns’ influence on things has waned; it is in the past now, not the future. The focus was on them in the first prophecy but this one was on the coming conflict. Sometimes it looked that way, a fight between people, while other times the beasts’ descriptions were quite literal.”

The tea was, in fact, just barely cool enough to drink. It was also extremely strong and bitter. Rissa recognized it as the tea Elder Jinsa preferred when she was tired and needed the help; it was probably high in caffeine. 

Rissa was not a fan of the tea, but she had the feeling she’d need the caffeine. Some days were like that. She blew on the tea to cool it a bit more as she tried to think. If the dragon really was Serenity, she really needed to find out more. “What else can you tell me? No, better, can you show it to me?”

“The Dreaming Tree should be able to, if you visit the Timestream.” Elder Jinsa’s face didn’t echo the confidence of her words. “I’ll meet you there?”

Rissa set the tea down. She shouldn’t need it for a single vision; hopefully that was all this would be. “Sure.”

The Dreaming Tree’s entry area was different this time, because it dropped her directly into the vision. The Dreaming Tree seemed to want to share it even more than Rissa wanted to see it.

The vision began with blackness. In the distance, points of light glittered. 

A white tiger swam through the darkness until it reached a black tortoise. The two fought, but the tortoise quickly lost and the tiger ripped out its throat. Time seemed to pass quickly; the next thing Rissa knew, a small tiger’s head poked its way out of the tortoise’s belly. All that was left behind was the tortoise shell.

A voice Rissa realized had to be the Dreaming Tree spoke softly. “The tiger eats the tortoise. Time and again it happens, yet no one hears the tortoise scream.”

The Tiger padded up to another tortoise, but this time the tortoise burst into flames before they reached it. There was something familiar about the tortoise’s shell pattern, but Rissa didn’t have time to examine it closely. When the flames cleared, a field of ash and embers lay strewn across the nothing that floated in front of the Tiger. The image seemed to shimmer and split.

In one image, the Tiger rolled in the ash, slowly extinguishing the embers. As the last ember went out, a tiger cub leapt from the ashes and ambushed its mother.

In the other image, a dragon formed from the heat mirage above the hot ash. It clearly had feathered wings like Serenity, but it was colorless and insubstantial. Even so, when the tiger swatted the dragon, it was the tiger that yelped and pulled its paw back. The fur of its paw looked blackened, like it had burnt in the moment it touched the mirage. Behind the dragon, a fiery bird rose from the ash.

The Dreaming Tree spoke again. “If the Dragon defends the Phoenix’s ashes, the Phoenix shall rise once more.”

The darkness and far away lights shifted and Rissa floated in front of two tortoises. One was dark and the other bright; neither was easy to see. Like the last tortoise, the tortoise shell patterns were strange. Rissa didn’t recognize the ones on the bright tortoise, but the dark tortoise’s patterns were immediately recognizable. She saw them every day in the sky above Berinath.

Once more, the white tiger approached. As it did, the mirage of a dragon passed between the bright and shadowy tortoises. The tiger seemed as confident as ever, but when it lunged towards the bright tortoise, it bounced off the dark tortoise’s shell and was batted away by the dragon. No matter what the tiger tried, the other two were able to stop it.

In the distance, a phoenix rose from its ashes.

This time, the Dreaming Tree didn’t have anything to say.

When Rissa returned to the real world, she drank every bit of the tea. She wasn’t sure what she’d just seen, but she was certain that she’d be here for hours talking to Elder Jinsa about it. She doubted she’d have any answers before they left in the morning, but perhaps she’d at least have better questions.

Lillene

I know a lot of this imagery is hard to figure out, but can you tell me what the dark tortoise is?

Also, writing good solid prophecies that are not obvious except in hindsight is a pain in the butt, especially since I’m writing the story as I go and can’t just come back and insert them once everything is done.