Part Eight

INSTEAD OF PUSHING through the crowd to get to the main entrance, Lichen took the side door. He stepped out into an empty hallway and hurried to get to the connecting hall that led to where Meris had exited. Meris wasn’t in sight, though. Lichen kept walking, instinctively knowing he needed to go outside.

The sunlight was bright when Lichen stepped onto the plateau outside the front entrance. Lichen shielded his eyes with a hand and glanced around, hoping to see Meris, but he wasn’t there.

Someone is climbing, the Earth told Lichen.

Lichen sent a pulse of thanks back to the Earth and hurried to the path that led deeper into the mountain range. The walk was easy for the first mile, gently meandering through the crags with only a slight upward slope. It split into three different paths after that. The leftmost path led to the top of the mountain where funerals were held, backtracking through the range until it reached the heights and the nearby river. The middle path looked like it would also be easy, but it suddenly climbed upward just around the bend ahead, going high to the airy summit where the Air Caste lived. The right path dipped lower, heading to a clearing that overlooked the beach below and was the most direct route to the ocean from the Monastery if someone had no reason to go to the town or the docks. Lichen took that last path.

He stopped short just outside the clearing. Meris stood in the center, looking up at the mountain above him. His body had lost the scales and returned to fully human in form, but there was something about the way he stood that spoke of coiled strength just waiting to be unleashed. His mouth was twisted with some sort of emotion, and Lichen could guess what. Above Meris was the ledge where the previous Dragon of Water had jumped, and Meris was standing near where her body had landed.

Meris turned to look at Lichen, and the twist to his lips evened out into a grimace.

“She was so selfish,” he said, and despite the pain showing on his face, his voice was clear.

Meris could be talking about a number of women. The Oracle had been called that before, and Lichen would certainly classify Master Lagoon as incredibly selfish. Yet Lichen knew Meris was focused on his sister.

“Was she?” Lichen asked, trying to be open to a conversation because it sounded like Meris needed to talk.

Meris nodded and let out a heavy breath. “She had options. She knew what the Dragon of Earth had done, vanishing for twenty years until he could return to a much more stable environment. I would have gone with her out to sea for as long as she needed, for as long as the Monastery needed to get their heads out of their asses. But she didn’t. She chose this path instead, and that’s why she’s selfish.”

He turned back toward Lichen, tears running down his cheeks. Lichen moved closer and opened his arms in a hug Meris buried himself into.

“She ended her own pain, but did she ever once think about what her suicide would do to those she left behind?” he asked into Lichen’s shoulder. “Did she have any idea how much pain I was already in, trying to help her escape from the Monastery while dealing with my own hecklers for being the twin of a Dragon? I don’t think she cared she compounded—quadrupled—my pain. To find what was left of her, shattered at the foot of a cliff… It broke me. And she didn’t care. She didn’t.”

There was no way to respond to that, so Lichen simply held Meris close and let him cry out his sorrow. If a few tears wet Lichen’s face, at least no one else was there to see.

The sun was beginning to set, the sky exploding with brilliant purples and reds over the darkening ocean, when Meris began to calm. He pulled back from Lichen just enough to wipe his face on the shoulder of his shirt, but he remained curled in Lichen’s arms.

“What do I do now?” he asked, his voice soft and still choked.

This Lichen could answer. “You live on for her, but also for others like her who have seen the worst a human can do to another human. Teach the kids in the Monastery, who have been stuck under the thumb of people like Master Lagoon for so long, that there is hope and another way forward in life where happiness is achievable. Show the Monastery how to escape from the pain that left your sister here, so no one else is forced to choose the selfish path.” And Lichen, who had his own painful history here, would do the same.

Meris nodded, but he looked at Lichen for a few long seconds before responding. “Will you help me?”

Lichen grinned and reached up to gently wipe some of the residual tears Meris had missed off Meris’s cheek. “Whatever you need.”

He didn’t know who leaned forward first, and Lichen didn’t really care. All he knew was their lips touched, a press as gentle as a wave lapping at the shore, but it deepened quickly until the full tidal wave rolled over them both, yanking them down to the soft grassy ground of the clearing like undertow on the sea floor.

And for the first time in years, Lichen felt truly, fully happy.