"Can we use her stone?" Anaya asked Kaneq, not taking her eyes off of Madiza. Kaneq was silent for a moment.
'No,' her voice then echoed in Anaya's mind. 'Another soul stone of ice, maybe. But river, I don't think so. Ice and rivers are both made of water, but they're too different in nature.'
"Why are you talking about my mother?" Madiza asked, clearly holding back a sob.
"My mother and yours were friends," Anaya said, quietly. "My mother never had the chance to become an anchor for Kaneq, she died before they could do that. But yours did. Kaneq says she was the anchor for a river dragon."
Tears were rolling freely down Madiza's face now.
"Roe," she said.
"What?" Anaya asked, confused.
"That's what my mother said when she died," Madiza said, her voice barely audible. "I don't remember much of it. I was so young then. But I remember the last time I ever saw her. I remember she took the stone off her neck, I'd never seen her do that, she always wore it, no matter what. She hung it around my neck and she said 'wait for the dragon, Madiza. Roe will come back, and you have to be ready, you have to find her when she does. She will need you.'"
"That's why you wanted to go after the dragon. You realised there'd been one here, and you thought maybe it was Roe," Tiu said, her voice sad. Madiza nodded.
"I knew it wasn't her, somehow, I just knew. It didn't feel right. But I needed to be sure, because I though, maybe. Maybe this will finally make my mother's last words to me make sense, that I will find the dragon she wanted me to find. And instead what I find is Anaya finding a dragon she wasn't even waiting for."
Madiza's face was covered in tears, her voice bitter.
And then, Anaya surprised even herself. She took the few steps to Madiza and hugged her. Madiza tensed in her arms.
"No one ever told us this," she said to Madiza. Madiza, who she'd disliked since they met, and it was only downhill from there. Madiza, who had spread lies about her best friend. Madiza, who had tattled to the Madam about her and Tiu more than once, when they were doing something that wasn't bad but was against the endless rules of the school. "No one ever told us, but we were family, once. Your family and mine. Your mother and mine. And I promise you, I will help you find Roe. Me and Kaneq will. But first we will need to complete the anchoring, because without a proper connection, we can't do anything."
Madiza nodded in her arms and sniffled. Then she untangled herself, wiped her nose, brushed the tears off her face. She took a deep breath. Her eyes were still puffy, but also determined.
"What can I do to help?" she asked, and her voice was steady. Anaya smiled.
"We need to find my mother's soul stone. I think, if grandma had got it back, she would have given it to me. Or maybe she wouldn't have. Maybe I was too young. But I think she would have. She made the tapestry. She prepared for a situation where she died before Kaneq came back. She would have prepared for her unexpected death. This wasn't something she would have left to chance."
"Maybe my mother had it. If they were very close, maybe she took it for safekeeping after your mother died," Madiza suggested.
"She and my grandmother were close. Why wouldn't she have given it back to her?"
"I don't know. But if we don't know where it is, if we can only guess, then mother's belongings seem as good as any place to begin the search."
Anaya thought for a moment, nodded.
"I should go through grandma's things too. To see if I find it there. We'll come back together after, to see if anyone got lucky."
This didn't seem like a good plan. It seemed unlikely her grandma or Madiza's mother had the soul stone. Someone would have given it to her, if it was in the possession of someone who knew the meaning of it. But she didn't have any other guesses, not without giving it proper thought, anyway. And as Madiza said, they were as good places to start as any.
"What do I do?" a voice piped up, and almost startled Anaya. Kimo was looking up at her, his eyes excited with the idea of what must have seemed like a treasure hunt to a kid his age. Anaya opened her mouth to tell him to go home, but Tiu was faster.
"You said you were a dragon expert once, didn't you?" she said. "That must mean you have a lot of books and things on them, right?" Kimo nodded enthusiastically. "Why don't you go and see if you can't find something out? Maybe about the anchoring ritual, or even if there's a substitute for the soul stone! We could really use some expertise right now."
Kimo's nodding had gotten progressively faster as she'd talked and when she stopped, he immediately darted off.
"He's not going to find anything out," Anaya said to Tiu as he disappeared into the crowd still milling around them and the dragon. "At least not anything we couldn't just ask Kaneq about. Also, I'm not entirely convinced he has any kind of source materials in the first place."
Tiu shrugged.
"You don't know that." Her face turned into a mischievous grin. "And besides, that will give him something to do while the rest of us search. Makes him feel important, if nothing else."
Anaya chuckled.
"Well played," she said and turned to Madiza. "Let's meet at the school tonight, see if we have something, if we need more time to search?"
Madiza nodded. "Good luck."
"You too. I feel like we'll need it."
____________________________________________
It's a little bit short this time, and also nothing happens, but I poured some boiling water onto my finger, like a moron, and it still hurts more than three hours later, and I've had to write most of this three words at a time between having it against something cool, so this is what you'll get out of me today.
The topic for tomorrow is Scale.
~matleena
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