Left on the veranda of New Che-Uin, with the rooftops of the city below sparkling in the eveing's golden light, Tsukenna and Kalile regarded each other.
"This Auntie Okie," Tsukenna said, addressing Kalile B'Urendi. "She was such a strange old woman. I didn't trust her - I thought..." She hesitated for a moment, wringing her hands and staring into the distance before speaking again. "I thought she was crazy." Again she paused, longer this time, at the brink of a dark thought that had left her ragged as it clawed within her. "Did she... do something to make my children disappear?" When her eyes met Kalile's, there were tears welled beneath her irises, and a flint of anger sparked in her depths.
Kalile's gaze held hers unwaveringly as he answered, "I greatly doubt it." He touched the back of Tsukenna's hand with his fingertips in assurance, and added, "Okie is kind and strong and wise, a child of Mirico, with deep ties to many of our greatest allies and friends."
Tsukenna looked puzzled, still suspicious and wounded. "Why does she stay in Iridia then, if she would better be here?"
A shadow passed through Kalile's gaze. "Some who come from Mirico cannot live here, for it has for some time been a dangerous place for those like us. When she was yet a young woman in Mirico, a raid came upon her village, led by turned Ambassadors seeking to expel all human beings from the Hidden world.These raids were common in Okie's time, as some in Nature made great efforts to bar Man from its lands. Okie was spared in the raid, but her husband Alel, and their daughter and son were lost - it was presumed that those taken would be cast out into Iridian realms, so Okie went there, hoping to find them again." He regarded Tsukenna carefully before he added, "There was nothing left for her here."
"She had a daughter with her at the house in And'yolek, but the girl, last I saw her, was ill, dying of cancer."
Kalile looked reverently grave, folded his hands and nodded, absorbing the news. "Okie has raised and buried many children, most of whom were not of her womb. Her strangeness comes, not only from her origins in the Hidden Realm, but also from the sadness of a broken world. For just as you have been separated from your young ones, Earth too has lost its children. Now, through us in the Hidden Realms, it calls out to these lost children, asking... hoping for their return."
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