The Blinking World

Some time ago, on a slow morning of the lovely kind, Aramina woke to find she had finally slept the night. The mortal weight had settled in her joints, in the tissues between them. There was a crick in her neck. She sat up and stretched and felt the energy crackle in her muscles, felt a quiet groan crawl up her throat. These would be her mornings, now. She would always wake like this.

A triplet knock on her door, then Lark walked right in. “You slept.”

“I did.”

“Did okay?”

“I think so. No visions, no dreams.” Aramina rolled her neck, letting her eyes fall shut. “None of those nightmares, either. I thought it would be more like blinking.”

Lark chuckled, soft but dark. “Yeah, well. I wouldn’t know.”

Aramina looked at her. “It will be alright.”

Another chuckle. Lark looked tired — worn, more than tired, in the eastern light of the open window. Her short hair matted to her temples, unbrushed, and she had dressed in yesterday’s clothes. Gentle wind curled through the room, carrying with it horse musk and old sweat. Pieces of straw clung to the corners of her dappled shawl.

Aramina pushed aside her sheets, dropped her feet to the warm wood floor, and stood. “Did you sleep with the horses?” she said.

Lark blinked at her. Her left shoulder curled inward, defensive. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”

“Okay. How’s Akher?”

“Restless. Eager.” Lark tasted something bitter. “Young. You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“I still have one good blink in me. It will be fine.”

Lark began to pace. “And if it isn’t? What happens if Akher blinks back in without you? What happens if you blink and it scatters your bones through the wolfswood? What would you have me do then?”

“Grieve, then go.” Aramina stepped to intercept the next pace, then caught Lark’s hands in her own. The fingers were stiff with cold, but at least the rope-burns had healed well. They would need to ask for more balm before they left. “But it won’t come to that. Everything will be okay. Akher and I will run the parcel, we’ll blink through the wood, and we’ll meet you on the other side. You won’t even have time to miss me.”

“You’re stupid, and a moron, and if this goes wrong I’ll never forgive you,” Lark said, and her nails dug into Aramina’s hands. The left shoulder inched higher. From the window echoed an equine snort, loud and lofty, as Akher clomped past the house.

“It will be okay,” Aramina said.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not.” She pulled Lark close. “I believe it.”

Some time later, on an instant of an evening of the forgetful kind, where time is too short and ambitions too many, Aramina held a battered notebook to her chest as Akher, muscles bunching beneath her, raced for the tree-line. Seven conjured wolves, material beasts of shaggy grey fur and monstrous maws, snapped at their heels. They had never tasted life; they would not break for a simpler prey, or for any distraction. Once the chase hit the wolfswood, the dogs would have advantage of familiar magic and terrain, and Aramina would need to blink to get out alive.

Aramina raised her head and watched the silver-barks blur in her shaky vision. She was not used to being injured; she was unused to being tired; and she was both right then, an inconvenience she hadn't bothered to account for, and a drain on her focus she had never trained away. But — it did not matter. There was nothing left to do but learn.

Akher shouldered through the border brush, erupting into the woods in a shower of twigs and torn foliage. The wolves followed, snarls and snaps and barks rising from their throats. Aramina tucked the notebook beneath her clothes. Akher leapt a moss-heavy log, dug her hind legs in on landing, and pushed hard to the eastern edge of the wood; the shift in momentum nearly took Aramina out of her seat.

“Right,” she gasped. “Right. Akher, be ready.”

Akher snorted. Their thick pelt gleamed, slick with sweat. They were of a wild breed, powerful and enduring rather than strictly fast, but the breakneck pace was too much to hold for long. It was time for a blink, and Aramina could not know if she was ready — she had no time to prepare for the very last time.

It came easy, at first. Horse and rider snapped out of solid being, their conscious light the only thing keeping them from scattering on the strung-out breeze. The wolfswood rose around them as towering specters of trees, their pelts white and their few leaves an iridescent red. The ground bled every shade of red, from the burnt gold of fallen leaves and watery pink flowers clustered around white roots to the vivid crimson of the tangled brambles and crouching brush. The sky was black and speckled, adorned with pale golden stars.

There were no wolves here. There was no danger. There was no life, either, not in this silhouette of an existence that Aramina had, for so long, called home. But even then, where Akher swam seamlessly through the Blinking World, Aramina found herself jostled by the air, by the spectral forest. Her physical being seemed to catch on the knots and stitches of this world that she had all but grown up in. Her body hurt. The notebook burned against her stomach, like a red coal tucked beneath her clothes.

Her eyes began to water, just as the first checkpoint slipped in and out of sight, and she blinked. She could not help it. But that was the end of her spell, as it had always been, and the Red Forest gave way as the wolfswood crowded to take its place.

Akher disappeared from beneath her, still blinking. Aramina slammed into the forest floor. The brush crackled under her weight, loud as a shot, and a forest of twigs bit into her newly vulnerable skin. Pain laced her exposed face and hands. The book jammed under her sternum and its cover folded from the force of it.

Aramina lay there, stunned, near tears. She couldn’t believe she had blinked. Never before had she needed to. She could have run in those red halls forever, lived there forever, if she just hadn’t blinked.

She would never see the Red Forest again.

She would live, and she would die, and she would never see the Red Forest again.

Aramina curled up where she had fallen and quietly, very quietly, with her nose pressed between her knees — cradled in the winter-dead arms of the wolfswood, the one who was no longer Manifest began to cry.