“...Where are we going?” Taakeyrr asked. Xsabaskis had led them away from the crowd and well out of anyone’s earshot, but was still going, almost tracing their exact path back from the Waterfall Basin.
Xsabaskis sighed, but answered, “The Crystal Crags.”
“Again? …
Why?”
“I’ll explain when we get there.”
Taakeyrr didn’t understand one bit; Xsabaskis hated the Crystal Crags, there shouldn’t be anyone or anything in particular there, everyone should be at the river they’d left behind, and if there was anything important to do...the Spirit sure had acted like everything was solved.
“You’re not trying to go back into the Heart, are you?”
“No. Nothing to do with the Heart. It’s not bad, I promise. There’s just something we have to do, and we can only do it at the Crags.”
Taakeyrr still didn’t understand, but she didn’t think pestering Xsabaskis was going to get her anywhere. When prodded, Xsabaskis tended to just get
more defensive.
But Soaitsae said, “Xsabaskis, and actually slowed to a stop. Taakeyrr pulled up sharply beside him, and Xsabaskis glanced back, did a double-take, and then stopped as well. Quietly, Soaitsae said, “I think we’ve done enough keeping of secrets, even if it’s to try and protect each other.”
For a moment, Taakeyrr was certain Xsabaskis was going to refuse, and they would be stuck standing here until they were the bones Mother Nature had wanted them to be. Xsabaskis was always so stubborn, always felt like her way was right -
“...All right. But can we keep walking?”
Soaitsae agreed, and Taakeyrr, caught by surprise, did so as well. She felt a little guilty for being so astonished; Xsabaskis
was trying to do better, just like Taakeyrr was. Maybe it was time to be a little more judicious with the benefit of the doubt.
“You remember when the Spirit blessed the Waterfall Basin.”
It wasn’t a question, but Taakeyrr had to say, “Of course - it was right after Kopi healed me. It fixed whatever the entelodont did to my head. ...Or what I made the entelodont do to my head.” She blinked, then looked up at her sister, head tilted shrewdly. “Wait a moment - the water healed both of us, but…you weren’t hurt, were you?”
“No,” Xsabaskis said. She looked over her shoulder, eyes on Soaitsae. “And I know you asked if I got anything, and I said I’d been starting to feel sick, and the water made me feel better, but...that wasn’t true. I panicked.”
“What did the water give you, then?” Soaitsae asked .
“...A secret. There’s….when I got out of the waterfall with Taakeyrr, I knew there was a…
ritual, is what it’s called. A ritual. It’s just...steps for doing something, except, the thing that happens in the end doesn’t seem like it should happen from what you did. It’s something that seems...magic. Or impossible.
“But the catch is, it’ll only work once. I think it’s all the Spirit could give me.”
Taakeyrr shifted to her Eagle Eye, as if Xsabaskis would somehow see it and would realize how ridiculous that statement was. “What couldn’t the Spirit give you more than one of?”
“The Spirit’s not all-powerful. She couldn’t find and get rid of the Sowers, or Mother Nature, without us helping. She’s a god - not a primordial. And this is...a big thing she gave me.”
“What did she give you?” Taakeyrr asked, letting some of her impatience leak into her voice.
“The ritual I learned...” Xsabaskis said slowly, hesitantly - and then she actually stopped, turned all the way around, and confessed, “I can use it, one time, to - to bring someone back from the dead.”
Taakeyrr and Soaitsae stared in stunned silence; Taakeyrr would never had predicted that.
Ever. The Spirit giving out the power to bring someone back….
did seem out of her domain.
Xsabaskis went on, her head bowed, “And of course, my first thought was our mother and Sretash. And I panicked when you asked, because - it would have to be a
choice. We’d have to chose who to bring back, and I could barely even think about it myself. I didn’t want to torture you with that, too.”
She sighed, heavily, and Soaitsae stepped forward to gently nuzzle her shoulder. Taakeyrr could see his limbs trembling slightly, though, and there was a still slightly dazed look in his eyes.
With another sigh, Xsabaskis said, “And then, after I had some more time to think, I wondered if the Spirit didn’t want me to use it on them. Or - not quite that, but...that she meant for me to use it for somebody else. If somebody died and we needed them back. So she would give me only one so I wouldn’t go bring back our family right away” A slight hesitation, and she admitted, “I thought it might be Taakeyrr. Especially after we found out her Eye still worked at least a little; it would’ve made sense for the sowers to go after you again.”
Remembering confronting Svar - though she hadn’t know it was him - just before Mother Nature appeared, Taakeyrr realized with a shudder that Xsabaskis wasn’t far off. Thank the Spirit corruption couldn’t affect someone with the Healer’s powers, and that they hadn’t had time to orchestrate her murder via corruption victim the way Kopi’s had been.
As if detecting her sister’s thoughts, Xsabaskis said, “Then Kopi was killed, and if he hadn’t come back, I was going to use it for him. ...Or after Quicksnap got corrupted, I thought if the raptors had to kill him to stop him from hurting someone, I could use it then. ...Or if Beech got yanked away but hadn’t wanted to go.”
Taakeyrr managed to get her jaw working. “But now that it’s all over…”
“I don’t have to save it.”
“Why didn’t you ask the Spirit if you could use it twice?!”
“I don’t think she
can. Listen - we know death isn’t her domain. Things get mad when she interferes, Mother Nature got furious when she gave a dead Guardians
powers to someone else, and called it
cheating.” Xsabaskis huffed. “Besides - the Spirit’s not cruel, and she’s not stupid. She didn’t make you ask her to fix your Eye; all she needed to know was you were okay giving up the healer powers and that Kopi wanted them back. There’s no way she doesn’t know I
want to bring two animals back.”
A long silence fell over them, broken only by the wind rushing through the sparse foliage of the regrowing forest, and the birds singing in the distance.
“...You know who it has to be,” Saotisae said. “Kassisiss is...I miss her terribly. But I know she would agree, that Sretash was the one robbed of most.”
“I don’t want to leave our mother alone,” Xsabaskis said; her tone made it clear she had already made a decision, that this wasn’t an argument - but that it had been a painful decision with many painful arguments.
“And either she isn’t,” Soaitsae said, “because if there’s a place animals go afterward, it should be full of relatives, friends, new animals to meet, and I’ll be along to be with her sooner than you two would be to Sretash… or there’s no awareness and it won’t hurt her whether he’s there or not.”
“I guess.” Xsabaskis straightened and shook out her feathers, before turning back to continue leading the way. “I just hope if it’s the first one, she’ll be able to tell what happened.”
Taakeyrr said, “Well...you’re right,the Spirit’s not cruel...I’m sure she’d have warned you if that was true.”
******
Despite all that had transpired inside its walls, the Crystal Crags looked about the same as ever; a pleasant beach, bits of sun sparkling off the water and the crystals in the wall, the very distant waves hidden by a protective layer of mist.
Taakeyrr wasn’t sure she ought to say it, but it seemed a little odd that this ‘ritual’ was taking place at the Crystal Crags if the Spirit
hadn’t meant for it to be used for Kassisis or Sretash. ...Then again, the Heart was nearby, or at least, the portal to it was, there was clearly magic here, and it was a shore so it made sense as an arrival point.
At the bottom of the slope, Xsabaskis said, “We’re supposed to find a crystal in the wall at least a bit bigger than whoever we’re bringing back. Doesn’t matter what kind; it just needs to be big enough. Doesn’t matter what kind, or what color.”
Soaitsae and Taakeyrr each suggested two large crystals, but after a moment’s study, Xsabaskis shook her head. “Not big enough,” she said about the first one, and, shifting from foot to foot, added, “I get the feeling I’ll know it when I see it.”
Sure enough, Xasbaskis eventually paused in front of a long stripe of emerald nearly as long as she was. “...This one. This is it.” She turned back to the others. “I need someone to get water from the sea and bring it back here. I need to go to one of the trees,” she jerked her head toward a patch of the conifers that clung to some of the cliffs, “and get some of the berries. Someone willing to come with me with a shell or something to hold them in?”
Water? Berries? Was that all it took to bring someone back from the dead? Taakeyrr was a little skeptical, but agreed to go fetch the water.
I guess if an elk made out of light can just blow on a wall and make us all appear inside the island, she thought,
this shouldn’t be so unreasonable. She tried using her Eagle Eye on the emerald while she waited with a conch shell of water for her sister and father to get back; unsurprisingly, the Eye revealed nothing. It
was just a shiny rock, no intentions for the Eye to pick up.
“I take it from here,” Xsabaskis said. Her father gently set down half an oyster shell full of fat red-purple berries. Awkwardly, Xsabaskis stooped over them, and used her hand to squish them, until they had become a mostly-juicy liquid. Delicately, with the very tip of her jaw, she lifted the oyster shell and tipped the juice into the saltwater. The berries sank to the bottom; Taakeyrr watched as the liquid changed to a vivid red-purple, more evenly mixed than she would have expected.
A hiss drew her attention sharply back to Xsabaskis - for some reason, the dilophosaur had just plucked a feather off her side. With a bit of awkward head-tilting, she managed to dip the dip the tip of the feather into the conch shell. She held it for a moment, then pulled it back out, and touched the back of her knuckle to the water inside. Taakeyrr twitched as a ripple, too big and too regular for the light touch Xsabaskis had given it, spread across the water. A little thread of gold seemed to be carried in the ring of movement until it reached the edges and vanished.
Soaitsae said softly, “That’s what the water looked like at the Basin…”
Xsabaskis, jaw tight and eyes sharp, slowly lifted her hand from the water. None of it dripped off, but when she suddenly dragged the back of her hand across the emerald, an incredible amount of colored water came off her hand and stuck to the wall. It shouldn’t have; Taakeyrr stared at it, waiting for the water to start dripping downward, but it didn’t. Xsabaskis went back to the shell for more.
Taakeyrr stretched a claw out toward the shell, opening her mouth to ask if she could help, and Xsabaskis growled, “Don’t.” Her eyes never left the shapes she was making on the emerald - a curved row of short, thick, evenly-spaced vertical lines. “It needs to be me. You don’t know what to paint.”
“‘Paint?’” Taakeyrr repeated, but Xsasbaskis didn’t answer, just continued to follow whatever instructions she had been given by the Spirit. The short lines were joined by longer, curved ones, then more short lines...a lot of short lines, all the way until they were barely more than ovular blotches.
And then Xsabaskis drew a long, curved line connecting all the little vertical ones about a fourth of the way down.
By the curved lines, she added two long, straight lines, connected at an angle. The same at the back, but longer, connected to a forward-jutting line. It was starting to look disconcertingly recognizable - and especially so when Xsabaskis drew something Taakeyrr had only days ago experienced very close and personal - a dilophosaur skull.
The moment Xsabaskis lifted her hand from the emerald for the final time, the entire stone shimmered, like something had rapidly flown across and then revealed the sun - except in the span of time it had taken the crystal to glint, something darker had appeared behind it. Taakeyrr leaned a little closer, and just had time to realize it was shaped roughly similar to the dilophosaur skeleton Xsabaskis had created with the berry-water before it moved.
She jumped back, and whether because of her or because they also saw the movement, Xsabaskis and Soaitsae sprang away as well. The dark shape twitched again, and then it seemed to be growing larger, and wiggling and -
The crystal shattered. Taakeyrr instinctively turned her head away, but all the shards fell straight down with a little patter like exceptionally hard rain.
When she looked up again...she couldn’t help a gasp. Despite the fact that she should absolutely have known and expected it, she had not been prepared for the sight of a young dilophosaur, semi-transparent and entirely chilly gray green, aside from his crest and brow feathers, which glowed faintly with his beyond-purple markings, and his eyes, an even colder pure blue.
But even with the colors wrong and the markings too exaggerated - Taakeyrr recognized him. Of course she did. “Sretash!”
The dilophosaur looked up sharply - and Taakeyrr’s stomach plummeted as she remembered how Beech had been when she had first come back - confused, amnesiac, a shell of her former self. Could they
get Sretash to go into the water if he had no idea who -
“...
Taakeyrr?” The dilophosaur blinked, and turned to the others. “You - you all are here! Or - or...I’m…no,
I’m here, that’s what happened!“ He twitched, feathers fluffing. “...It’s been a
year.”
Xsabaskis opened her mouth to say something, and Taakeyrr assumed she had something prepared to say, something meant to set...to set
their brother’s back-from-the-dead at ease. Taakeyrr had no idea how she was going to do that when it was
Sretash right in front of them - but before she could find out, Soaitsae had rushed forward.
“Sretash - Sretash, I’m so sorry - “
Sretash jumped a little in surprise, but when Soaitsae did his best to nuzzle his intangible son, Sretash bent toward the contact in return. “It’s okay - it wasn’t your fault. ...I’m so glad to see you all again - and really see you!”
Taakeyrr almost wanted to ask what that meant. What she did instead was join Xsabaskis in bunching up as close as they could to Sretash. It was a long moment of sitting in near-silence except for occasional whimpers and clicks that everyone hastily tried to supress - if only for now.
Xsabaskis finally said, “I hope - I hope bringing you back was okay.”
“Yeah,” Sretash said. “It didn’t hurt.
This uh...color change, this is weird. ...Is it green because you used an emerald?”
“I don’t - how do you
know that? ...How did you know it’s been a year?”
“I’ve been back for less than an hour, you’re already big-sister-questioning me?” Sretash pouted. Taakeyrr saw Xsabaskis’s resolve actually crumble in an instant, but Sretash was already answering, “It’s - I can’t remember stuff from...you know. After-death. I can’t remember that all clearly. I think...because I’m here.” His tail slowly swished from base to tip, and he tilted his head slightly in the way he always had when thinking about something, and Taakeyrr’s heart pinched at the abrupt familiarity. “...That makes sense. Yes. But the point of what I was saying, is, we must know what’s happening somehow because I know all about this past year, and I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about some of them...and obviously I wouldn’t have been talking about sowers when I was…not-green.”
“Well - then you know the plan,” Xsabaskis said. “We’ll fix that - bring you back properly. ...If you want.”
“Of course I want that!” Sretash said. “...Well. Being like this might be safer, sort of, but - “ He opened his mouth, seemed to struggle for words, and finally just said with a piteous whine, “but you two are already a whole year older than me, I can’t let the gap get any wider!”
“We should get to the river, quick,” Taakeyrr said. “The Spirit didn’t say how long that stuff will last!”
“...I shoudl warn you,” Xsabaskis said in a low voice. “I don’t think it’ll fix the damage.”
Damage?“Oh - is that why my eye won’t….well. That’s all right.” Sretash’s voice suddenly became a little steely. “Let’s not dwell on that, I think that’s going to be something to rehabilitate myself through later.”
“We’re rehabilitating everyone together,” Xsabaskis insisted. “But you’re right. Later. Let’s not push it, especially right now. Taakeyrr’s right, we should get you to the river before it doesn’t work anymore.”
Soaitsae turned to her. “You’re
sure it can’t work again?”
Xsabaskis bowed her head. “I’m sure.”
Sretash said, “She’s right. I...we must have been able to tell what gifts you got from the basin; I know it was always one.”
Soaitsae closed his eyes, but softly clicked his understanding. “...Then this is what she would have wanted,” he said at last. “We’ve missed you so much, Sretash.”
Taakeyrr waited until the absolute last minute to turn away from her brother when they started for the river, and she was finally rewarded for her patience. Well - “reward” might have been too positive a word for what she saw. She found the damage; it was the right side of Sretash’s face. His eye was shut, the closed lids right in the center of a pale, almost white, starburst pattern; the flesh from some of his lip was missing, revealing some of his teeth even with his mouth closed, and also marred by the pale ghost-skin; and his crest….his crest was spiderwebbed through with cracks, like it might fall apart if someone nudged Sretash too hard.
The scars from his death, Taakeyrr realized. Just like Beech’s missing leg and the marks on her neck. Xsabaskis was probably right, the river would probably keep those. But….better a one-eyed but solid dilophosaur than a one-eyed dilophosaur without the ability to properly touch anything.
It struck her then what was going to happen. This wasn’t a brief visit, and that would have been miraculous enough .But it was more than that -
she was going to get her brother back.
The walk - the trot, really - back to the river felt like it took longer even though they were clearly going faster. Despite needing the breath to run, they couldn’t help talking - Sretash apparently was indeed aware of all that had happened since his death, berating the two sisters for taking so long to talk, wanting to know when he would get to meet Beech, swearing that he knew Taakeyrr had been keeping
something secret and he hadn’t been too surprised when he’d realized she was the Eagle Eye.
Xsabaskis apparently had recovered enough from the shock to be somewhat back to her old self. “That’s a
lie,” she insisted. “You did
not know about that.”
“I think you’re just jealous, Xsabs.”
“Can’t be jealous of something you didn’t actually do.”
“She’s totally jealous,” Taakeyrr said, feeling a ridiculous thrill at ganging up on someone
with her brother again. “Is that the real reason you didn’t tell us who the healer was?”
Xsabaskis sighed, long and heavy. “...Y’got me. It felt good to know something you nosy dilo-physes didn’t know for once.”
Their twin indignant squawks made Soaitsae actually laugh out loud.
There were fewer animals at the riverbank by the time they got there with Sretash; they had no trouble finding a clear spot. Of course, there was some alarm over a sudden dilophosaur ghost. Xsabaskis just said, “Long story, add it to the list of weird stuff that’s been going on lately.” To her credit, or maybe to the weirdness of the past few weeks’ credit, that seemed to make most animals seem to reconsider their reactions.
“...I’m nervous,” Sretash admitted, hovering near the river. “I’ve been gone a long time.”
“Doesn’t seem to be a matter of there being, uh…” Xsabaskis swallowed heavily, and rephrased, “I don’t think that matters. Beech’s body got burned by a firebird and she came back fine.”
“...That’s true.” Sretash continued to stare into the water rather than get in.
“What’s wrong?” Soaitsaie asked. “Sretash - look at me.”
He did so, and after a moment, admitted with an embarrassed snort, “I’m worried I’m going to mess it up. Not getting in the water, but...after. You went through all this effort to bring me back, and I could do something stupid and be right back in the same situation tomorrow. I know that’s not likely, I tjust…”
Xsabaskis said, “It’s not about getting my time’s worth. It’s about you getting to come back the way you wanna be. ...If you don’t wanna get in, you don’t have to. Not too late to change your mind.”
Sretash seemed to seriously consider for a moment.
Soaitsae finally said, “We’re happy to have you here however you want to be. But don’t miss out on what you want because you’re worried about us. Please.”
The semi-transparent dilophosaur flicked his feathers, took in a slow breath he didn’t need….and stepped into the river. He had to duck lowe to sink under completely, but managed it...and finally, a bedraggled dilophosaur unquestionably related to the other yellow-gold, brown-stripped, red-crested dinosaurs joined his family on the shore, water dripping from snout to tail, mouth open in an ecstatic dinosaur grin.
The right side of his face was still visibly scared, and probably would be for the rest of his regained years - but nobody seemed to care about that as they tucked in close and embraced their gift from the Spirit.
Reference: (spoiler for the post if you haven’t read it)
Actual Post Summary
Xsabaskis takes her father and sister to the Crystal Crags and reveals what she wanted to talk to them about. Her gift from the Spirit was a one-time ritual to summon a dead animal back as a ghost (yes, this was cleared with Shinko way back during the round with the blessed waterfall). Since it was a one-use thing, it meant Xsabaskis couldn’t bring her mother and brother back, and the idea of having to choose paralyzed her long enough for her to consider that it might be meant to bring someone else back; Xsabaskis shares possible candidates she considered before they either ghosted on their own or didn’t even die in the first place (yes, this was something I was holding onto as a possibility through the game). But now that the sowers are gone and there’s, y’know, a river that fixes ghosts, Xsabaskis figures there’s no time like the present, and tbh the choice is obvious, if you can resurrect the kid or the parent resurrect the kid.
After gathering some supplies, Xsabaskis performs the ritual, and Sretash returns, shattering a dilophosaur-sized emerald wall, oops. While his memories of the afterlife are very hazy, he does know everything that happened since he was gone, implying that he and his mother were able to see Naelus from beyond the grave.
The quartet of dilos return to the river; Sretash hesitates because y’know, when you die young you get kinda sensitive about accidentally dying young again, but eventually does jump in and returns to proper life, albeit with some damage to the side of his face from his final injuries. Because ghosting is full of consequences. ...There’s not much time left in the round, I know, but others are welcome to see the family reunion and this weird new dilo what the heck