Work Text:
Elanor shivered under the open sky. She wasn’t cold. She shook like rabbit babies shook when she picked them up. Every piece of her small frame was awake and prepared to hide at the slightest sound.
They’d been under trees for a very long time, and she felt that without their reaching arms, without the shelter of their caravan, she’d fall away into the sky and be left behind.
Her mother held Dilly, who had looked around them for a few minutes and then gone to sleep.
Her mother, Rose, wasn’t scared of anything. Elanor was too big to be held. Too big for “Nori” and sleeping through the beginnings of adventures. Her mother had always said she’d grow into her name and she had. She had. She wasn’t afraid, not even of the wide-open sky.
Elanor shivered but she walked just behind her mother, a basket in her hands and hope in her heart.
Whatever her mother had to show them was bound to be wonderful.
“Brave same-like Mama.” she signed at her mother’s back, smiling as the fading sunlight felt warm on her hands.
“Brave like Elanor,” her mother said, turning to look at her.
The girl put her hands behind her.
“You say the same thing whenever you’re quiet for too long,” her mother explained.
Elanor giggled softly. Dilly, more awake than she seemed, giggled too.
“There are my little flowers,” Rose said, fondly. “We’ll be there soon.”
They walked and walked. Elanor gazed around in wonder, able to see more once she’d lost some of her fear.
Ahead, a high hill loomed. Below it, sheltered from the wind was an ancient garden of some kind. There was a man-sized gate and a worn path curved away to parts unknown.
Elanor dropped the basket and darted forward off toward the path, but her mother mimicked the sound of a large bird and made her turn back.
Other mothers might have scolded, might have pointed harshly at the ground in front of their feet frowning or stormed over to snatch an arm and regain control.
Rose was not them.
Rose set Dilly down to sit on her feet and signed across the wide space.
“Who with you?” she asked silently.
Elanor pointed to her mother.
Rose shook her head.
“Here with Daffodil. Home with Dad,” she signed.
Elanor realized that she was alone.
“Get Dad, with me,” she suggested and signed back.
Rose shook her head.
Elanor turned and stared hard down the path.
Maybe it went all the way to black sands and towers, like the ones Poppy’s mother, Yarrow, sang about. Maybe Men used it to follow the sparrows.
Elanor looked back to her mother, to her little sister. She thought of her father.
She took one step and then another, each easier than the last until she was close enough that Dilly met her and hugged her.
Elanor leaned down a little and kissed her sister’s head. Rose held open a gate, and Elanor led her sister through it, picking up her basket on the way.
They gasped at the sight of so many berries and they all picked them together filling basket and then their bellies for the journey back.
How had her mother found this place? Who had gone with her? Yarrow? Nori planned to bring Poppy and her mother berries and ask. Yarrow told such grand stories.
Elanor smiled to think she’d maybe be a part of one of those tales now.
When the sky began to darken, Rose asked Elanor to walk in front.
“Try and remember the way back, little flower, you were meant for greater wanderings and you’ll need to be ready,” Rose said.
Elanor looked off down the path she’d been called back from before.
“Little flower, you’ve barely started opening,” Rose told her. “And your family isn’t ready to let you go. Not today, but one day. Not that path maybe. I hope not alone, but I’m no trailfinder, I can’t chart your course. I feel it though. Now take us home as best you can.”
Elanor straightened her back and step forward, leading them back the way they’d come.
She wasn’t afraid. She was made for greater wanderings. She could do this.
Years later, Nori walked away with the Istar and remembered that day.
She missed her mother and Yarrow, the Proudfellows, Poppy, Marigold, her father. She missed Dilly, who never really got to be Daffodil, because the mother who’d insisted on their long names had been left behind by the time she grew past easy carrying. She missed being Elanor, who would have followed that path by starlight if she’d had to, confident that Rose was following behind her, not as trailfinder, but as caravan, as home.
As they stepped under the trees Nori stifled a sob. No trailfinder, no caravan. Home would look so different if ever she found it again. Would they add her name to the list?
She nearly turned back, but the wind in the trees seemed to carry her mother’s words.
She was made for this. She’d practiced coming home and bringing others with her.
Nori was still brave like Rose, like Elanor.
“Can I tell you about my mother, my first mother, before Marigold?” Nori asked the Istar.
“I would like that very much,” he said.
And so she did.