For the longest time, she was nothing. Nothing like her previous life, anyway. Faintly there was the existence of others, the familiar feel of spirits against hers, the knowledge that they were there. But she couldn’t speak to them or feel them against a corporeal form, simply because she didn’t have one. Perhaps she was a weak spirit – perhaps others could interact, could visit the plain of life, and could see each other. Neraza couldn’t.
What she could do was watch what happened in life, and so she watched. Her children, his children (their children) were beautiful. They lived and they loved and she smiled inside. But not always. Later, they fought and they hurt and they died and a piece of her died again with each of them. With Bethanie, who could not recover from the injuries she sustained saving Nylee. With Sorenson, torn apart by monsters as he protected Alisdaire. With Alisdaire’s babies that never had a chance, though she’d named them (Bombay and Achara). With Alysanne and Nylee as they fall together from the height of the waterfall. But for every hurt there is a bright point – a grandchild, a great-grandchild, a friend with a smile and a hope.
But watching is all she has – until the day that the world shakes again. There is light and dark and warm and cold and everything is wrong. But when it rights itself, the shaking ceasing and the noise fading, there is group beneath her feet. She is solid and warm and real – and she realizes that wherever she was before, this is a new place. A place filled with the dead – and the living. From afar, she watches Beth and Sorenson with the girl who is somehow realer than the rest of them. But though she longs to touch them, to talk to them, it is not them who the mare seeks first.
She looks for him. Always him. The others can be later, if there is a later. But if this is to be taken, she must first find him. She cannot bear to be separated from him again.
