Chapter 13: Dionaea (Part 1).

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  Somewhere near the shores of Solmaris. Month: 94, Year: 226.

  Dionaea woke suddenly.

  The chill of the morning wind swept through the thin canvas above, tugging at the frayed edges of the sail like restless fingers. The deck smelled of salt, damp wood, and unwashed bodies. They had traveled with the refugees for days now, days filled with murmured memories of lost homes, whispered hopes of reunion, and quiet disputes over dwindling food. Slowly, Dionaea pushed themself upright from the makeshift bedding laid across bare wood, their body still stiff from sleep.

  Her body.

  The dream lingered, fragile and insistent. Orange trees swayed beneath a bright blue sky. A golden-furred dog darted through tall grass, laughter chasing after it; and a boy, only slightly taller, always just ahead. The memory hummed in her dreams in a voice that was no longer hers. It wasn’t the first time Dionaea had dreamed of her memories. Even after more than a year inhabiting this shard, some pieces of her mind and will, still clung stubbornly refusing to fade.

  This flesh was just one of their many shards. But to Dionaea, this one… this one was special. It was not strong or swift, nor shaped for conquest, but it possessed something the others lacked. Perhaps it was the stubborn residue of memory, or the way her eyes wept on occasion, or the way her lips turned into smiles without command, perhaps it was something else. Dionaea had never been able to put their finger on it.

  They had watched it grow, watched it change, and ultimately chosen it for this mission. They had chosen it in secret, taken it behind their kin’s back and blended it among the fleeing refugees. Not for glory. Not for power. But out of desperation.

  Desperation to see.

  Before their kin devoured the world.

  Through these brown eyes, this pointy nose, these skinny arms, Dionaea would witness the cities and monuments the single-sharded had built, the landscapes nature had carved, the stubborn spark of humanity that would soon fade away.

  With this purpose, they crafted a story to blend in with the others: a Haksari girl fleeing the Xarathi, those who the single-sharded call the Taken. Someone who had an unknown family in the mainland, a survivor of the raids, bound for the port city of Solmaris in search of refuge. Yet, her name would be the same as the one the girl once owned this flesh held.

  Sameli.

  It had been difficult at first… fitting with the single-sharded, but the longer they stuck around, the easier it became. These people clung to their flesh like it was all they had. You could see it in their gestures, their habits and even in the way they spoke.

  With time, and with the ever-present knowledge carried by their other shards, paired with the spontaneity of Sameli’s reactions; Dionaea blended and learned. Through Sameli, Dionaea moved as they did. Spoke as they did. Even hungered and crawled, as they did.

  She stood slowly, and walked barefoot to the deck. When she blinked, the world seemed to lag a half-second behind. Sameli felt the weight of Dionaea's other pieces, shards back in the mother land. One by a fire. One training with a sword. One resting under a tree.

  But the farther Sameli’s flesh traveled, the fainter those echoes became. And the more vivid this life grew. Hunger gnawed at her belly. Her joints ached from lack of movement. The sun had burned her skin. But despite the ever present discomfort, Dionaea did not regret sending Sameli on this voyage, as over countless months their curiosity and hunger for experiences had grown larger than their hunger for new shards.

  Sameli drew in the salt-heavy air, then let it slip from her lungs as she looked around, not entirely free of regret. Dionaea felt the weight of those gathered around her, souls hollowed by loss.

  Because they had helped light the match.

  The devouring of the Covean continent and of the Jubel Islands years after that still echoed in their mind. Back then, they had used different shards: faster, stronger, and with powerful magic. They had eaten until full. Consumed without question.

  But there was no purpose in dwelling on it now. Dionaea pushed those recollections aside. This one. This shard wasn't meant for that.

  No. Dionaea had made a vow.

  This shard, Sameli, would never be used for destruction. She would not burn cities. She would not devour minds. She was meant for learning, for seeing the wonders of the single-sharded world. For bearing witness to the final days of humanity.

  The old wood groaned beneath her feet. Around her, the endless ocean stretched in all directions, a vast blue plain beneath a pale, washed-out sky. They had seen the ocean before, but despite that and even after weeks at sea, they couldn't help but marvel once again at the sheer immensity of it.

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  They glanced around as hunger twisted again in Sameli's belly. It had been two days since Sameli’s last full meal, nothing since but a crust of plain bread and a sliver of dried, over-salted fish. She was not alone in that suffering. Haksari and Drakvari stood shoulder to shoulder on the deck, pressed together by shared desperation. Refugees. Survivors. Once, enemies.

  Now, they simply endured.

  Hollow eyes stared into the sea, or into nothing at all. Faces were drawn and brittle, thinned by starvation. But it wasn’t just hunger that hollowed them, it was the weight of what they’d left behind. Land and people, left behind for the taking.

  A cry broke across the deck and their thoughts, loud and sudden.

  “Land!”

  Heads turned. Shouts rose. Hope cracked through the silence like a wave against rock. People surged toward the railing, eyes wide with disbelief.

  Dionaea followed slowly. Beneath the constant sounds of waves and murmuring refugees, a new sound pierced Sameli’s ears: the faint, distant cry of birds. Through Sameli's bare feet, Dionaea made their way past the bodies pressed together, past the children too weak to lift their heads, past the woman clutching a cloth bundle that had stopped breathing the night before.

  They finally made it to the edge of the ship, and saw it in the distance.

  There it was.

  A green smudge on the horizon. Solid ground. A fragile promise of safety, of food and shelter before the coming long night. A fleeting, fragile hope of peace for the refugees who crowded the deck.

  Dionaea watched the port city from afar with quiet wonder. Floating platforms shimmered against the water, and at the city’s heart stood a tall lighthouse, its white stone etched with spiral grooves that caught the sun and scattered the light outward. Even from this distance, one could imagine the vivid streets below, alive with the unrestrained spontaneity only single-sharded minds could create.

  This was the beginning of the journey Dionaea had waited so long to commence.

  The ship Sameli traveled on was one of three arriving that day, wooden hulks groaning beneath the weight of the desperate. Ragged sails snapped in the wind as the small fleet drifted into the harbor under white flags. Each vessel carried hundreds who had lost everything.

  Dionaea lifted Sameli’s hands as she stepped onto the gangplank, joining the slow, silent tide of refugees spilling onto the docks. A dock guard reached for her, firm and impersonal, pressing briefly at her sides, searching for hidden blades wherever they could be concealed. Sameli stiffened at the contact, before the hands moved on and the guard waved her forward without a word.

  In this guise, they were indistinguishable from any other Haksari woman, save for the involuntary smile born of long-held anticipation. Long brown hair lay tangled and unwashed, skin dulled by sun and grime, clothes worn thin by weeks at sea. She carried no bags, only a few small tokens of a life left behind. Even the smell was right, a sharp blend of sweat, salt, and exhaustion.

  Perfectly unremarkable.

  That was the point.

  As they passed one by one through the floating platforms and into firm rock, the Haksari priests chanted prayers, holding candles and spreading smoke through the new arrivals. Dionaea could only imagine what those rituals were for, and even felt hesitation for a moment. But as Sameli passed the smoke unphased; it was clear that if they were made to prevent those of Dionaea′s kin, the Xarathi, from reaching their shores and entering their cities, they were clearly not effective.

  As Dionaea passed the incense smoke and the prayers, stepping onto the stone of the docks, they felt the weight of eyes on Sameli. Not the glazed, hollow stares of the other refugees, but sharp ones: measuring and fearful. City folk. Guards in tattered uniforms. Dockworkers clutching tools like weapons. Women with scarves pulled up over their mouths. A child hiding behind a cart, eyes wide and unblinking.

  They stood apart from the crowd, as if the tide of refugees might wash something onto their skin that couldn’t be scrubbed off.

  “They’re diseased,” someone muttered near the warehouse doors. “You can see it in their faces.”

  “They’re starving,” another voice snapped. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “It will be. Just wait. Give it a few days, then we’ll all be turning into those things”

  A pair of guards approached the line of the newly landed. They held long spears upright but made no effort to threaten, only to keep distance. Behind them came a cluster of city workers, wearing faded cloaks, ink-stained fingers, ledgers in hand. A gaunt woman with graying hair pointed a shaking finger and said, “Start the list. Names and numbers. Keep them moving.”

  Another argued. “We should at least ask about skills. If they’re to stay, we need to know who can work.”

  “Who’s staying?” a dockworker barked, his voice cracked from salt and smoke. “We don’t have room. Or even food. My own children shiver in the cold through the long night.”

  “We’ve already sent some inland, and we will send more” the graying woman said. “The capital and nearby villages should provide them asylum. A few caravans may still take them.”

  “They’ll die on the road,” a man said softly. “Nobody is risking a trip to the capital so close to the long night.”

  “We have to help,” someone else muttered, fierce and low. “We don’t get to call ourselves human otherwise.”

  “And if we feed them, what do we feed our own through the long night?” said another.

  Dionaea turned their head just enough to listen. They didn’t need to hear every word. The tone said more than the content. Apprehension. Grudging compassion. Fear sharpened into cruelty, dulled by guilt.

  One woman stepped forward with a basket of flatbread, holding it out as though from a great distance. Her husband pulled at her elbow, hissing something about “staying behind the line,” but she shook him off and handed the bread to a young Drakvari child with sunken cheeks. She didn’t touch her. Her hands trembled.

  Around her, a few more followed suit, bringing water, rough bundles of boiled roots, even a handful of blankets. Yet most kept their distance.

  Dionaea took none of it.

  They only watched.

  Watched how kindness contorted in the face of hunger. Watched how even generosity bore the shape of fear.

  A woman broke through the noise of the docks, moving with purpose. Before Sameli could register her, a hand closed around her wrist, firm and trembling. Sameli recoiled a step, heart lurching. Had they slipped? Had someone seen through their disguise?

  But the woman’s gaze showed no aggression, only fear, and a fragile hope that looked ready to shatter. Recognition flickered there, not of Dionaea… but of Sameli.

  “You′re mother, what's the name of your mother?” The woman asked, holding back tears.

  They answered the question as Sameli would. “Saevi, Saevi Haerun.”

  Warm arms wrapped around Sameli, sudden and desperate. The woman’s sobs, this time unrestrained. Dionaea hadn’t meant to respond, but Sameli’s body moved on its own, arms reciprocating the hug, a tear slipping free as if familiarity guided it.

  Now, this close, the woman’s face resolved into familiarity. Sameli’s mother’s smile, the dimples on her cheeks, the same beauty mark on the corner of the left eye. Someone from the stories Sameli’s before they became shards. The unmet family on the mainland they were hoping to search for, had found them before.

  “Is your mother here?” the woman whispered, swallowing hard like the question itself hurt.

  Dionaea couldn’t speak the truth, and decided to be vague. Sameli only bowed her head. “She’s not.”

  The woman wiped her tears on her sleeve and forced herself still. No further questions or demands. Just grief and quiet acceptance. Then she lifted her hand and called out, voice cracking with something like hope.

  “Sig! Sig!”

  A large man turned their way from the line of refugees, bread in hand. He left two young women to continue the distribution on his behalf. “I told you! I told you she'd show up,” the woman continued as she held Sameli's arm.

  The large, bearded man smiled warmly at the woman as he got closer, Mirai, if Sameli remembered her mother's stories correctly . “Solenya’s grace, you found her safe and sound.”

  Sig reached them with heavy steps, his voice booming across the docks before he realized how loud he was being.

  “I’m Sig,” he said, softer the second time. “An old friend of your parents.”

  He brushed a thumb near the beauty mark at the corner of Sameli’s eye, his expression gentling. “Your mother had this too,” he said, voice dropping.

  He offered a calloused hand. “If you need anything… you ask me.”

  Sameli returned the shake. “Thank you Mr. Sig. I’m Sameli. Sameli Haerun.”

  “Mister?”

  Sig laughed, loud enough to turn a few heads. “No ‘misters’ here. Just Sig will do.”

  Mirai, Sameli’s newfound aunt, smiled through the last of her tears as Sig gave her a reassuring pat on the back. A young Drakvari woman stepped in as well, placing a gentle hand on Mirai’s arm to steady her.

  “Oh! right!” Sig said, catching himself. “Where are my manners?” He placed his hand on the Drakvari’s silver hair with rough affection. “This here is our newest guest, Zulanah. I think you two are about the same age.”

  The young Drakvari worker bowed slightly and offered Sameli a piece of bread. “You look like you haven’t eaten properly in days. Please, take this,” she said in the language of Auron.

  “May Auron bless you” Dionaea responded as a reflex.

  The young woman, Sig and Mirai stepped back, as if she had witnessed something impressive. Dionaea tried to dissimulate Sameli's expression as they realized they had made a mistake, it made little sense for a Haksari commoner, who supposedly worships Solenya to know the language of Auron.

  “You speak the language of Auron!” Zulanah affirmed with a smile.

  “I - I speak a little bit of Auron's tongue". This was a lie, as Dionaea had taken several different shards with different backstories, they naturally spoke several languages as proficiently as anyone spoke their mother’s language.

  “Ha!” Sig shouted to the air. “Don′t be so modest, girl. It looks like your parents taught you well to take over as a merchant after them.”

  “Yes!” Mirai said in an excited voice. “Its always smart for a merchant to speak many languages, your mom was always clever like that.”

  Good. Dionaea signed in relief as their new acquaintances had come up with an excuse on their behalf.

  “I try to better my Auron” Sig said in the language of Auron, pulling the Drakvari worker closer. “That why I keep this one close.”

  “But he's not nearly as fluent as you,” Zulanah replied in her own tongue. She bowed slightly, placing her hand on her chest as she introduced herself “I'm Zulanah of Kalista”.

  Sameli smiled at Zulanah before taking a few bites from the paper-wrapped bread.

  Mirai touched Sameli′s face. “Poor girl, you're so skinny and dirty” She waited for her to finish eating the piece of bread and took her by the wrist gently . “Come I’ll prepare you a bath.”

  Elise's Journey.

  Chapter 13: Dionaea (Part 2).

  Thank you very much for taking the time to read my story.