Reclamation

Aria undid her pouch and drew out one of her namestones. She dropped it into an empty socket. It landed with a sharp click. She leaned her palm against it and closed her eyes.

For a long moment, she did nothing but stand there looking intently at the insides of her eyelids and feeling mildly foolish.

Then, something stirred. Her heart began to beat lightly, quickly. Something shifted. She could taste iron in her mouth and feel the air tingling in her lungs. The floor pushed heavily against the bottoms of her boots, just like the stone pushed against her palm. Her awareness stretched down to the floor and out to the stone. She met no resistance. She passed through the pressure and expanded, spreading herself out through the floor until she found the walls. She arched up to meet herself where she filled the control console. She wrapped herself solidly around the room as if she was embracing one of her children.

Aria opened her eyes. She saw her hand on the stone, but the awareness of it was superimposed over the sight of the rest of the room, all of it, seen from all angles. She looked up from the floor and down from the ceiling and out from all the walls. She felt the disturbances Jay's breath made in the air and the heat from his body, and her own. She felt the gentle pressure where feet stood. She felt portions of the room stir, as she might feel her heart beat, or her lungs breathe.

Past all this lay another great space. She knew that, and she knew it was at the same time far beyond her and immediately within reach, and…Aria leaned toward it.

There was someone else out there. She could hear them crying in that distant vastness.

Don't go, don't go, don't go!

Aria gathered herself together and willed herself to look toward the plea.

It was like looking out the view wall toward the stars. Aria felt the old vertigo rock her mind.

Over here, over here, over here! cried the other voice.

Aria knotted her resolve and looked harder. The stars here were connected with strands of scarlet light, into a vast web that was even bigger than her new, expanded perspective. Yet some part of her knew that if she reached, if she stretched, she could encompass all this as well, see it from every side as she saw the room. The vacuum was darkness without form. This darkness would have form, if she shaped it.

The idea delighted her. She reached toward the web, spreading herself wide to surround it.

Welcome! Oh welcome home!

Light suffused her, as if all her pores had become eyes. Joy came with it, riding on the pulses of light that fed into her.

"Who are you?" Distantly, she felt her mouth move. The question took a long time to travel through her awareness to where the light touched her.

I am the Mind. I have waited very patiently for you to come back to me. You will see. I have been very careful with myself. I am all in readiness.

"I have never been here before," she said, hoping it understood her tone to be gentle.

Not you yourself, but the Eyes were here even before I was. They had to come back. I have waited for you to come back. It has been so hard to be blind and alone.

Sorrow washed through her, and bereavement. "Can you see now?" Aria asked gently.

Yes! Yes! I can see everything you see. Will you not look farther? Again, the pathetic eagerness. The voice belonged to a child that wanted to show how clever it could be.

"I'm not sure I know how to look farther," she told the Mind. "You must think me very stupid."

You do not need to know. That is what I am for. You only need to see. This is how.

And Aria knew. She knew, had always known, would always know.

She looked, and she saw. She saw herself standing with Jay in the chamber. She looked at a different angle and she saw a cluster of Vitae stretching a clear film across a corridor threshold. At a different angle, their transports crawled over pulverized stone in the shadow of a broken wall. She looked at yet another angle and she saw…ruination.

Smoke, fire, and smoldering ashes arched up the sides of a crater. Lumps of stone and glass fused to her line of sight, making blurred patches in her vision.

"Nameless Powers!" she cried. "Nameless Powers preserve and forbid! What have they done!"

"Aria?" She didn't look away from the smoldering crater, but she still clearly saw Jay reach out a hand toward her. "Aria, what's happening? What has who done?"

Her shoulder shrugged impatiently. "I can't see Aienai Aria! I can't see Mother, or Eric. Where is Eric?"