Heart of a Chalyn: Chapter 94

This is another of those pivotal chapters. Key to the endgame.

The slow build to realizing the Thunderbird, the Ayohotulee, is the big plot point. But there’s more going on.

First, the shadow world, the Mists, is here, present, and actively engaged in getting this melding done.

The force they sense is the One, and the pillars that appear around the mound are her emissaries.

For the first time, we have Mouse’s companions join as part of a greater world.

Yonah and Fia.

Their backstory is the inciting event for the entire Rootstock Saga epic. They lived before their time. The first Joining. The first Chalyn.

And in the mists, they remembered their names.

“Our story came and went,” said Fia. “Not before we learned about the cycles. When we lost our substance, we chose to remember our names. We swore our children would not wear the Watchers’ shackles.”

They severed their bond and tried to return. As Masaki returned through Dara. As Joren returned through Seth.

“I thought I could send you back on a tether,” said Yonah.

But cleaving a chalyn leaves less than two parts of a whole. For all their planning, they overlooked the bodies and the minds they had tethered. Joren nurtured Seth. Masaki shadowed Dara.

Yonah and Fia took their tethers for granted.

Once they sought to draw them in, they found their parts had made a greater whole.

Lamochatee and Ava will remember the lives that spawned them, but they are not them.

They have their own names.