~Bilana- in Wunerigohable, a small village~

“Time before you go mad?” I repeated stupidly.

“Yes,” he confirmed and went back to his pacing. I watched him as he paced through my room in the dim light of my candle, my head moving with him as I continued to question, “Why would you go mad?”

“Because I’m Psetha.”

“What does that have to do with this?”

He stumbled over the chest at the foot of my bed and swore harshly.

“Because all the Psethas go mad!”

“All the Psethas? I thought…”

“What? You thought what? That I was the golden-eyed Psetha from the Chant of Psetha?” he sat down on the carpeted floor and sighed, messing up his long, already messy hair even more with his hands, “I’m not. Well, I am but I’m not that Psetha.”

I frowned, “What does that even mean?”

“It means, dear—what was your name if you’ll excuse me?”

“Bilana.”

He nodded and went back to his speech, “It means, Bilana guaşe, that ‘Psetha’ changes from one person to another after a time. That time grew shorter and shorter with every new Psetha and considering when you’ve started dreaming of me, it’s really short now.”

I considered what he said, “So I dreamt of what would happen when you go mad?”

He just nodded as he wiped his face with his hands.

Silence filled the room, minutes passing by as none of us said anything. Finally, “You’ll catch a cold if you sit on the floor like that,” I said and moved towards him, pulling him up gently. “Are you hungry?”

He stared at me, still silent, and then nodded.

“Then let us go to the kitchen.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I threw some wood in the wood burner and set fire to them, lighting up the room.

“It should get warmer in a minute.”

Then I started preparing food to eat. There was some leftover cırdıngış—a type of food made by boiling a mixture of flour, salt and water in the water from boiled meat— so I put it on the wood burner to heat it up. I talked about insignificant, daily stuff as I prepared the food, trying to take our minds off the topic at hand.

A tha going mad. I didn’t want to think of what I knew would happen if that came to pass. I gave him the hot food with its dip in a separate bowl and urged him to eat. He started dipping the pieces of boiled dough in the sauce and eating it, somewhat relaxing at the taste of it, and I was glad to see that. I didn’t speak until he finished eating and our cheeks were warm in the heat of the wood burner.

“Now,” I said. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

~Psetha- in a village somewhere~

I nodded and told her. I told her everything I had found out in my travels through the whirlpools. I told her that this world was a fragment of Dunaye, the whole world. I told her that Psetha hadn’t willingly given up his seat as the soul of Dunaye, that it had been humans who wished to get a hold of magic and tricked him into his death. I told her that that was how the human who dealt the killing blow became the new Psetha and witches came to exist.

I told her that the humans who became Psetha could never control the powers they had stolen, and eventually, they went mad. That it was the reason why the role of Psetha changed hands after a while. That one day, soon, I would go mad as well and have to give up my seat— willingly or forcefully.

She listened to me go on and on, never chiming in with questions of her own, though I was sure she had many. She just…listened to me, and I was thankful for that, for I didn’t know if I could keep talking if she cut in.

When I stopped speaking, silence filled the room. I could almost see the thoughts buzzing about in her head. Finally, she asked one question,

“What do we do now?”

We. She had said ‘we’, and I was thankful for that as well. Normally I wouldn’t have asked anything of her, but she had dreamt of me so it would be better for her to be with me.

Just in case.

“I want to fix this situation, somehow. So I want to learn more,” I said, “and fast.”

I stood up and looked her in the eyes. “We can’t learn anything here. We need to travel to the other fragments.”

She met my eyes head on, still sitting.

A piece of wood twitched in the wood burner.

She stood up then, still looking at me. “Then I guess we need to find another whirlpool?”

I nodded, “We need to find another whirlpool.”

~Bilana- in Wunerigohable, a small village~

I tilted up my head to look at him in the light from the wood burner. Long, messy, dark hair—black I supposed— tied messily at the nape. It was unusual to see black hair— any dark hair at all, really— and I wondered where he was from.

His eyes were dark as well— again, unusual— and…and I was staring.

I cleared my throat and asked, “What is the plan?”

He blinked and shook his head. “We need to leave first. As soon as possible.”

I crossed my arms and tilted my already tilted-up head even more. “And why is that?”

“Because there is the Watch. They are a group of witches with fortune-telling abilities. They might already know I’m here. They might already be on the way.”

I considered what he said for a few minutes and then nodded. “I understand. Leave first, plan later. Let me grab some stuff, and then we can go.”

He sighed and smiled nervously. “Thank you.”

I smiled back.

~Psetha- in a village somewhere~

About 10 minutes later, with a bag of clean clothes and durable food joining us, we were out of her house. We walked through the village as quickly as we could in the darkness of the moonless night—I wanted to leave this place as soon as possible— and I noticed a little late that Bilana guaşe had stopped. I looked at her—she was staring at a village house— and whispered, “what is wrong?”

She looked at me and answered just as quietly, “This is my thamade’s house. I-I can’t leave without saying goodbye to her.”

Oh.

I walked back to where she was and we watched the sleeping house together as minutes passed by.

“Goodbye,” she whispered in the end and cleared her throat. “Let’s go.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go inside and say goodbye properly?”

“I don’t want to wake her up. I know she wouldn’t approve anyways. Let’s go,” she said and pulled on my arm.

She kept pulling long after we were out of the village, and it disappeared behind us.