an open source of flame to make it simple, but there wasn't one. "W-what d-do y-you m-mean?"
"Your potential death, for example," she said. "You could freeze to death on this floor, right now. It wouldn't particularly upset me."
Tavi thought it a fine thing to keep focusing on his firecrafting. "Wh-why not?"
She smiled at him and brushed a strand of hair back from his forehead. It crackled, and a few bits of ice fell down over his eyelashes. "All things die, young Gaius," she said. Her eyes went distant for a moment, and she sighed. "All things. And I am old - far, far older than you could comprehend."
"H-how o-old?"
"You have no frame of reference that is useful," she said. "Your mind is exceptionally capable, but even you could scarcely imagine a quantity of one million objects, much less the activity of a million years. I have seen thousands of millions of years, Octavian. In a time such as that, oceans swell and die away. Deserts become green farmlands. Mountains are ground to dust and valleys, and new mountains are born in fire. The earth itself flows like water, great ranges of land spinning and colliding, and the stars themselves spin and reel into new shapes." She smiled. "It is the great dance, Aleran, and the lifetime of your race is but a beat within a measure."
Tavi shivered even harder. That was a good sign, he knew. It meant that more blood was getting to his muscles. They were slowly getting warmer. He kept up the firecrafting.
"In that time," she said, "I have seen the deaths of many things. Entire species come and go, like the sparks rising from a campfire. Understand, young Gaius. I bear you no ill will. But any given single life is a matter of such insignificance that, honestly, I have trouble telling one of you from the next."
"I-if that's true," Tavi said, "th-then wh-why a-are you h-here with me?"
She gave him a rueful smile. "Perhaps I am indulging a whim."
"P-perhaps you aren't t-telling the whole tr-truth."
She laughed, a warm sound, and Tavi abruptly felt his heartbeat surge, and his muscles slowly began to unlock. "Clever. It is one of the things that make your kind appealing." She paused, frowning thoughtfully. "In all my time," she said at last, "no one had ever spoken to me. Until your kind came." She smiled. "I suppose I enjoy the company."
Tavi felt the warmth beginning to gather in his belly as the firecrafting finally gained momentum. Now he'd just have to be careful not to let it build too much. He might be tired of the cold, but he didn't think that setting his intestines on fire would be any more pleasant in the long term. "But i-if I died, would you have anyone to talk to?"
"It would be bothersome, but I suppose I could find and keep track of some other bloodline."
The shuddering finally - finally! - abated. Tavi sat up slowly, and reached up to rake his wet hair back. His fingers felt stiff and partially numb. Bits of ice fell from his hair. He kept the firecrafting going. "Like Aquitainus Attis?" Tavi suggested.
"Likely," she said, nodding. "He's a great deal more like your predecessor than you are, after all. Though I understand his name is Gaius Aquitainus Attis now. I'm not sure I understand why a legal process would alter his self-identity."
Tavi grimaced. "It doesn't. It's meant to alter how everyone else thinks of him."
Alera shook her head. "Baffling creatures. It is difficult enough for you to control your own thoughts, much less one another's."
Tavi smiled, his lips pressed tightly over his teeth. "How much longer before we'll be able to send them a message and let them know that we're coming?"
Alera's eyes went distant for a moment before she spoke. "The vord seem to have realized how waterways are used for communications. They are damming many streams and have placed sentry furies to intercept messenger furies within all the major rivers and tributaries. They have almost entirely enveloped the coastlines of the western and southern shores of the continent. As a result, it seems unlikely that it will be possible to form a connection via the waterways until you have advanced several dozen miles inland from the coast, at the very least."
Tavi grimaced. "We'll have to send aerial messengers as soon as we're close enough. I assume that the vord know we are coming."
"That remains unclear," Alera said. "But it seems a wise assumption to make.