Time has been drifting since she returned from the land of the dead. At first she had been full of energy, full of drive, and that drive had taken her to the Field, and there she followed Zilpah to the Deserts. But never had she stopped to come to terms with her experiences, and that had caught up to her. Kellyn had been as unable to stay in the Deserts as the first time she tried, and really, she was unable to stay anywhere. The Tundra was home base and she supposed she was there sometimes, she still needed to eat and sleep, but mostly she was gone – mentally and physically – to places beyond.
It took nearly a year for her to stop becoming ill from the flickers of ghosts at the edges of her vision. Years indeed to learn to control when she saw them, and talked to them, and when she didn’t. Worse still was the other side effect – when the dead’s regrets and words took hold of Kellyn and dragged her into the past, their need to communicate with the living in a way they had been unable to do before overcoming her own willpower. The strawberry girl was in a constant state of ghost-time whiplash, never able to rest. And even when she could sleep, sleep did not come easily. She had been to the end of the world, after all, and the nightmares that plagued her were worse than the waking illness.
In the end, it was Sorenson who saved her. Her uncle had always been a guardian, a protector, and as a ghost he was no less himself. He could not help with the nightmares but he guarded her fiercely from the over-zealous other ghosts, keeping them at bay until she learned to control it herself. It was a harder thing to learn than time, but Kellyn supposed that she should have expected no less from a “gift” from the demi-god that was her grandfather.
It was only when she felt firmly herself again, firmly in control of the power, that her ghost-family suggested she find the others. Perhaps they had adjusted better, or perhaps they needed help, but either way, the ghosts couldn’t help with the still-vivid nightmares. The other survivors might be able to. So she went to the meadow, and she listened; many of the names she remembered meant nothing there, and she never heard them, but his was different. He’d made something of himself, and his name was spoken in the Meadow attached to the Dale. King of the Dale. Kellyn remembered him as little more than a child (older than Nihlus and Wrynn, but younger than Kellyn, who herself was barely an adult) but she knows time has passed her by.
So she goes to the Dale, one Kingdom which she has never considered as a possible home, because she needs to know about the others.
daughter of cagney and elite