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“You are troubled with your memory?”
She glances over her shoulder at me. “I’ve been trying to remember what I was doing here, what happened to my research team. But it’s all just fog in my head.”
Her eyes catch mine, wide and for the first time filled with a vulnerability that strikes at my heartspace sharper and deeper still than her declaration against younglings.
And I am the biggest fool in Lina’s forests. My Brooks is lost in an unfamiliar place. I have known this from our very first encounter. But it is worse than that - what memories she has of how she got here, her purpose, are taken from her. Because she has been sleeping frozen for so long? Or because of some injury she has suffered before sleeping through the many seasons? I am busy mourning a future I only imagined while she has been suffering the loss of a part of her past.
I drop to my knees beside her. Bow my head.
“Forgive me, linasha.”
She arches her brows, proud features twisting into a look of bafflement.
“For what?” she says.
“For the lack of consideration I have given to your situation, your feelings.”
“Oookay?”
She draws out the first part of the word, her tone ringing with confusion, but no anger. I take some small measure of comfort in this.
“I will not fail you again,” I vow, meaning it in all ways. For once, the voice does not bubble up to refute me. “I am here to help you. I will not stray from that goal.”
“You’d move the entire forest, right?”
There is a disbelief that rings in her tone, but I do not mind. She has no cause to believe me yet, but she will. Before long, she will see the depth of my devotion to her.
My Brooks turns from me, looking back to the males. They wait patiently, barely moving. Frozen in place while they wait for her to recall what happens next. Even frozen, they unsettle my spirit, but my linasha studies them, searching for the answers they must hold.
“I don’t think the forest is where I need to start,” she says, voice softer, but a quiet sort of determination filling it. “I need to go further back. This is the last thing I remember, this board, but I can’t remember why I’m here before them.”
“They do not seem like good males. I do not like their faces.”
My Brooks gives an amused snort. “Smug bastards, huh? I don’t like their faces, either. And I don’t understand why I would have come here. To them. If I needed something, I would have gone to-”
She turns fully to me, her eyes wide, realisation shining within them. And I am stunned by the way that expression emphasises her beauty, those brown-green eyes so bright, her lips turning up at the corners into a small, but joyous smile. I am struck afresh with the knowing in my heartspace - that if I had seen this expression in the waking world, I would have been just as certain that she is my linasha as I am now standing before her in dreams.
“That was it,” my Brooks says, her voice breathy. “Brannigan. I went to see Brannigan.” She grins. “Maybe you are helpful after all.”
She turns, closing her eyes for a moment. I rise to my feet, coming to stand beside her as around us, the scene fades, replaced by some other grey room. Smaller, with just one table and one person sat behind it. A female, with severe features, her brown hair tied back so tight, not a single strand is out of place. Her blue eyes stare up at my Brooks, narrowed slightly. Like the males before her, she is unmoving, as if waiting for some cue from my linasha.
“I always thought Brannigan liked me more than most of the other grunts,” my Brooks says. “But she still scared the shit out of me. I wouldn’t have come here without good cause.”
“You feared this female?”
I can see why. There is a sternness to her expression that reminds me of some of the more impatient elders. The ones who were quick to raise their voices to inconsiderate younglings. But my Brooks is not a youngling. If this is one of the last things she remembers, it cannot have been so long ago, surely?
“Feared, respected, admired like hell. I wanted to be her. But then they gave me a new mission.”
I sense she is talking to herself more so than me, so I remain quiet. The stern woman speaks into the silence that falls between us.
“You wanted to see me, Officer Brooks?”
My Brooks swallows hard, then steps forward, hands going behind her back as she stands straight, head held high. It is the posture of a younger warrior speaking to his mentor - respect written in the way she holds herself.
“It’s about my latest… mission.”
She says this last word as if it leaves a foul taste in her mouth. It is not a word that translates so readily in my headspace, but I get the sense that it is like a warrior’s duties. She has been told to patrol, or to keep watch, and she does not feel comfortable with this. Only it is some duty that Mercenia has given her, and even my imaginative headspace cannot begin to guess what horrors that might involve.
