Prologue
There is no time.
No form.
Onlybecoming,and even that does not belong to me.
A voice, deep and resonant, booms around me in the darkness.
“Place the tether where the tipping point is strongest. Let the continent that stoked the fire be the one to face her judgment.”
A second follows, smooth and feminine, layered with warmth.
“Yes. She must be nestled deep enough in the chaos to feel the earth's rise and fall…its fury, its sorrow, and its slow unraveling. She cannot serve properly if she does notachewhen the earth does.”
These are my creators. The gods.
A pause stretches, then a third voice–this one lined with weary clarity in her tone.
“There has never been a weaver created for a world so unstable. The humans cling to chaos…inciting it, even.”
The termweaverpulls against my conscience.
I don’t know what it means, yet I feel the thread anchoring itself within me, coiling down into my core and claiming me.
Another voice breaks through, tugging at my awareness.
“This is why wemustget this tether correct. We cannot intervene, but our creations can.”
A low thrum stirs from within.
Warmth spreads outward, expanding my awareness as sensation deepens into substance. I feel the outline of the body I’ve been given.
“We cannot afford another collapse,” the voice continues, “but she will observe. She will decide without our influence.”
“Can we not infuse just this one with our will?” a fifth voice interjects–clipped and sharp, with restrained fury. “Too much rests upon this. The ripple of her decision will extend beyond her world.”
The first voice I heard sighs deeply before his response curls through my mind.
“She will not remember her purpose or our hope for this world. That is the only way we know the tetherwill take. The planets have rejected every weaver burdened with divine will.”
The soothing, warm feminine voice drifts closer again.
“She will learn the world anew. She and the planet alone will decide what is worth saving. This is as it should be.”
The weary one speaks once more, her tone laced with heavy memory. “You sound attached already, but we must remember, if she succeeds in saving the planet, she sleeps again. She is not to remain. Not tolive. Weavers do not linger when their task is done. They cannot walk their planet as gods.”
The words settle into me.
“No name,” the first woman agrees, though this time softened with grief. “No legacy. No future. She wakes, she experiences enough to make a decision, and then she returns until the next reckoning.”
“The tether is beginning its descent.”
I feel the earth reaching for me suddenly–its pain, its weariness, its soft and trembling hope. It does not want to die. It wants more time. It wants to besaved.
A final voice, one I haven’t heard until now, enters.
“She’ll find love, you know,” they whisper softly. “Even without memory. The weaver is meant to seek out light in the darkness, if there is hope to be found.”
