AQREEN CRADLED KRUSHITA IN her lap, kissing her daughter’s head.
“How?” she asked softly.
Krushita opened her eyes, looking up at her mother tiredly. “I just did.”
She shifted in her mother’s embrace, trying to find a more comfortable position. That wasn’t likely, since she had outgrown Aqreen’s lap some years ago. But Aqreen didn’t care. Right now she was happy to hold her precious child close to her body, as she had held her that first time after she had emerged from Aqreen’s womb, gurgling quietly in contentment as her mother gazed down in wonderment. This? I made this? Beautiful!
“I’m tired, Ma. Really tired.”
Of course she was.
She had just saved the train. Thousands of people. Including herself and her own mother. Aqreen couldn’t begin to imagine the power and energy it must have taken to accomplish a feat of that scale. Could even Jarsun had done something like this? she wondered.
She knew Jarsun’s powers were formidable, but she had never actually seen him at war, though she had heard tales of the Krushan in battle, and of course, the legends of the Burnt Empire were told throughout the world.
But a mere child of seven?
That was unheard of.
Only the myths of the stone gods told of such feats. And even they were taken with a heavy dose of salt and skepticism these days, except by the fanatically devoted.
Aqreen passed her palm gently over the dozing girl’s brow, humming a soft lullaby, one that had always comforted Krushita and helped her fall asleep during those first troubled months after they had fled Aqron, when every sound in the night, every voice had seemed hostile and strange and frightening. She rocked her daughter gently from side to side, ignoring the protests of her aching muscles and joints. She would ease her own pain later. Right now she was a mother first, a woman second.
Krushita’s thumb had found its way into her mouth, and she sucked at it unselfconsciously, something she hadn’t done since she was newly weaned. Aqreen made no attempt to dislodge it or admonish Krushita. If her daughter wanted to suck her thumb, she could damn well suck her thumb.
She had just saved the world, or at least the world as they had known it for the past five years.
Krushita could do anything she damn well pleased.