Winterbound, Part 17 - Purpose

Anaya's brain went blank for a long second. She felt like she should have been processing Kaneq's words, but nothing was happening. She didn't see what was going on in front of her, didn't hear anything but the blood pumping through her ears.

...last anchor...

She was drifting. Her mind was trying to desperately grasp something that didn't make any sense. She barely noticed it, a part of it furiously working, the other frozen in confusion.

...your grandmother.

Her heart filled with warmth as she thought about her. Warmth, and sorrow. Grandma was the only parent she had ever known.

A moment passed. Two. A million.

"Anaya!" someone was shaking her shoulder.

She blinked, shook her head. It was Tiu.

"Where did you just go?" Tiu asked, seeing that Anaya was back with her. Anaya turned to look at her, slowly.

"Grandma was Kaneq's previous anchor," she said, quietly. Tiu's eyes widened in surprise.

And then the murmur of a hundred voices pulled Amaya's attention to the crowd around them.

They were all staring at them. At Kaneq. They were whispering to each other, or talking in low voices, their eyes wide with wonder, or fear, or both. No one came close to them. They had formed a tight wall ten meters away, and no one dared be the one to step any closer than the others.

"What is the meaning of this?" came a familiar voice from somewhere in the crowd, and it parted, letting the Madam onto the open area between the mass of people and the dragon. There she stopped and glared at the dragon, but more importantly, the girls sitting on top of her. Madiza slipped down and bowed.

"The dragon flew us home," Madiza said. She clearly tried to keep her voice neutral, but Anaya could hear the bitterness underneath.

"And where exactly have you three been?" the Madam snaps. "You have been gone for a over a week. This isn't surprising from Anaya and Tiu, though I am highly disappointed in all of you, but you, Madiza, I would have never expected you to behave this way. You are a good girl, a good student. This is unacceptable. I take it you even lost the school canoe you stole under false pretenses."

Madiza looked chastised, but anger wasn't deep below it. Anaya turned back to Kaneq. She didn't care about Madiza being told off. She didn't even care if the telling off turns to her at some point. None of that was important.

"So now we know who your anchor was. We know why you were drawn here. We know why I'm your anchor." It still felt weird to say it out loud. "So why are we here? Is there something here we need?"

'Do you still have something of your grandmother's? The more personal the better. Something that holds her within it. Having something of her with us would make the anchoring easier. It would be best she was there with us, but that will not be possible.'

Grief made the fabric heavy.

"The tapestry," she whispered, without a moment of hesitation. "She left me one of the tapestries. I still have it. I remember watching her make it for me."

She was lost in the memory for a moment.

"I have it at the school."

The threads of the loom in her mind vibrated with joy. 'Perfect.'

"We need to go get the tapestry," Anaya told Tiu as she slid off Kaneq's back and started in the direction of the school. "Come on."

"And where exactly do you think you're going? Stop and come back, or there will be a loss of privileges even higher than there already will be."

The voice took her off guard. She had all but forgotten the Madam was there, lecturing them. Anaya simply stared at her for a breath, then burst out laughing.

The look on the Madam's face was priceless. She had never seen anything like it. It was everything she hadn't realised she wanted to see.

"My dragon needs me," she told the Madam. "So I'm going to the school, and then I'm coming back, and I'm helping Kaneq get home. I don't care what privilege you take from me."

And with that, she turned around and walked right into the crowd that parted in front of her, Tiu following her. She could hear her laughing silently, the air vibrating with the shakes.

~x~

The tapestry was on the wall, in the spot it had been since she came to the school. Tiu had already been there, then. Brought in a few years before Anaya. Anaya had been feeling shy, and sad, so she had stayed in the room, in her hammock, that first night. It hadn't felt safe in the hammock, nowhere would ever feel safe again, but she felt more safe there than anywhere else. She had been crying.

Tiu's footsteps coming into the room had startled her. She had tried to stop crying, wipe the tears away. It had been pointless. Tiu had stopped by her hammock and peeked in.

"Hello," Tiu had said, although Anaya hadn't known her name yet. Anaya had simply sniffled in response.

"You're new here." It hadn't been a question. Tiu had waited anyway, to see if Anaya would say anything. "That means something bad happened to your parents, doesn't it?"

"My grandmother," Anaya had managed to say, and then the sobs had taken over her again, helpless and hopeless, and forceful.

Tiu had simply nodded, her then small face serious, and climbed into Anaya's hammock. And then she had wrapped her arms around Anaya until she had felt... well, not good by any standard, but a little better. Until the sobs eased and the tears stopped flowing, for the moment. Tiu would be there many more times in the coming weeks to hold her through the tears and fear and sorrow.

"What's that?" Tiu had asked her, was Anaya seemed like she could talk again. She was pointing to a roll of fabric that was one of the only things Anaya had brought with her to the school.

"It's a tapestry my grandmother made for me," Anaya had said quietly.

Tiu had climbed out of the hammock to take a better look.

"Can I open it?" she had asked Anaya as she got to the roll. Anaya had nodded. So that's what Tiu had done. She stared at it for a while after she'd spread it out on the floor.

"It's beautiful," Tiu had said, her huge eyes shining with amazement and excitement now. "Let's hang it on the wall!" And then she had remembered herself, and her new roommate's sadness. "Can we hang it on the wall? Would that be okay with you?"

Anaya had hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Tiu's face had brightened up again.

"Will you help me?" she had asked, and Anaya had nodded again.

"I'll go get a hammer and nails!" Tiu had darted out of the door and been back almost in the time it took Anaya to climb out of her hammock.

And so they had together hung the tapestry Anaya's grandmother had made her. They had been too short, and even climbing on the table they had managed to get it just high enough that it didn't touch the floor. In all the years since, they hadn't bothered moving it any higher.

"I'm sorry you don't have your grandmother anymore," Tiu had said as they had stood side by side looking at the newly hung tapestry. "But I'm happy I have you as a roommate and friend now."

And she had grinned at Anaya.

Anaya now put her hand on the tapestry and smiled a sad smile at the memory. The tapestry felt different now, somehow, knowing her grandmother had been Kaneq's anchor. Somehow just knowing that revealed something new about it.

And then she pulled back, a little, startled. 

"What? Tiu asked behind her.

"It's Kaneq," Anaya breathed. And it was. She had never seen it before. She had always thought the tapestry beautiful, but never seen any specific picture in it. Not the pattern, the way the colors fit together, the lines that crossed the canvas, they all painted the picture of Kaneq. The Kaneq Anaya was beginning to know, that her grandmother must have known incredibly well. But there was something else there too, beneath what the eye could see. Her grandmother had woven Kaneq into what you could see, and herself hidden within.

Tiu looked at the tapestry, too, head tilted to one side. For one breath. Two. Five.

"I can see it, too," she finally said. "I'm not in her head, and I don't think I would have recognised it if you hadn't said it. But you're right. I can see her in there."

"Tiu," Anaya said, her mind racing now. "I think grandmother knew she was the last of Kaneq's anchors. I think... I think she knew, and she feared what would happen if she died before I could take on the responsibility. She knew her friend would be lost."

Anaya held her hand up again, laying it on the tapestry.

"She wove herself into it.She wove herself into it, so even if all the anchors were gone, when Kaneq found me, she could still be there with us, to help us when we needed to finally anchor."

She wasn't sure when the tears had begun to fall. Her face was already wet with them. Tiu took her hand, then wrapped her arms tightly around her.

They stood there for a long time, looking at the tapestry.

Finally Anaya sighed and unwrapped herself from Tiu's arms. She wiped the last of the tears away and smiled, though some of the sadness lingered at the corners of her mouth, in the set of her brows.

"Will you help me take the tapestry down?" she asked. Tiu nodded. And so they got to work.

_____________________________________

The topic for tomorrow is Scramble.

~matleena