[adrr.com  > Stories for Heather > A visit to grandmother's house]   --  [Heroes, Swords, Other Tales] Send us a comment -- click on the check mark and visit the forum

Well, I think I ought to go back to filling in details, rather than telling new stories, though you should have seen Tindalasse when they sent in the people with the make-up and hair kit to get him ready for his formal "presentation" portrait, acknowledging him as the "Star Heir" to the Bitter King. Indigo caught it all in a scrying crystal -- seems like half the Shidhe watched the whole thing. She saved the magic for me to see and sent it when Porkchop came for a visit.

Anyway, this story comes before the other one, where I met the Couranth, and explains the dragon magic I had. I'm not sure how these stories got backwards, and Amber hasn't budged out of that pilar of fire she has become, so I can't ask her why she has them backwards in her book.

Anyway, my Dad came in, looking a little serious. He said that he had heard from his mom a while back and she hadn't sounded healthy when they talked. Since she hadn't seemed to be doing well, would I mind just spending spring break with her to kind of cheer her up and kind of fill him in? I could take the rail station from the light rail in town to a connection right next to where she lived at the foot of "the mountain" (that is exactly how it sounded when he said it, though it was hard to pin down just why it sounded that way).

Of course I said yes, packed up some clothes in my traveling duffle bag (it has wheels and a handle) and told my falcon to get ready to travel.

As soon as school was out Friday, I grabbed my bag, gave Mom and Dad a kiss and let my silly brother (he had come home a day early on break) drive me to the mass transit station.

The little girl's grandmother wasn't doing well, so her father asked her if she could spend the week of spring vacation with her, just to sit and love on her, to see if that would help her pull out of it.

When the little girl arrived at the rail station, her grandmother did not come to get her, so she took a cab.  She told the falcon to be ready, because things did not feel right.

When I got there, grandmother was supposed to come pick me up in her car. She didn't show and no one answered her cell phone, so I just took a cab -- figured I'd show everyone that I was responsible and could think things out.  When I got to the house it was dark and the house seemed even darker, without any lights on but the pale glow of the fireplace. I could see my grandmother through the window and the wind was cold -- too cold, it cut like a knife even though wind isn't supposed to bother me at all if it is just natural cold.

When I opened the door, the place had a reek of old evil, kind of like cat urine gone bad (yes, even worse than a regular accident with a cat) mixed with the smell of burning metal.

Then, when she entered the home, she realized that things weren't good.

There were wind wraiths, they had been eating at her grandmother, and when the little girl came in, they attacked her.

Now, we were inside, my falcon had landed on my shoulder and come in with me. And the room was "tight" -- I guess that is the way to describe it. There were dream catchers hanging from the ceiling all over and whatever the black clouds were that were sucking the life out of my grandmother, they couldn't touch the dream catchers without losing parts of themselves. I could feel us edging over, half-way into dream, half-way still in the real world, and I let them have it with everything I had, and the falcon was there with me, as if we had merged, with our eyes and wings and force altogether.

Now a little girl wouldn't usually be a match for wind wraiths.  But her POW and her familiar's POW were linked together and were added together for the struggle.  So instead of the three wraiths draining her magic and her fatigue and feeding off of her, she dominated them.  They were locked in struggle and she wouldn't let go.  Finally she had them battered down to nothing.  Using the power of the glyph, she bound them to a match stick.  She took the match and threw it in the fire and they were consumed.

Good thing they couldn't attack with the wind, but the dream catchers nailed them everytime they tried anything but a straightforward fight with me for mastery, and I had more power and force than they had, and eventually in the ball of feathers and fur and wind and cold and ice and storm that seemed to be embroiling itself and myself in the dreamlight, they were crushed down to nothing, which I forced onto a small stick by the fire -- turns out it was a match stick that had spilled as my grandmother had been planning to use to light a new fire when the old one went out, and then fell asleep.

That freed her grandmother and the house was suddenly filled with light.  The wraiths had caught the old woman in her sleep or they would never have taken her.

The fire seemed to consume them, though there was a rush of the sulpher smell you get from matches, suddenly everything smelled right again, the lights were on (and not blocked by the wraiths) and it was my grandmother's house. They had been trying to eat her slowly, but I got there in time.

The rest of the week was wonderful, with grandmother telling the most wonderful stories and cooking all of her favorite foods.  It was the best time they had ever had.

At the end, her grandmother gave her two gifts.  One was a ring with the dragon rune, shaped like the worm orobourous.  It was a three point dragon rune, strong against chaos (neutralizes chaos taints like the Kygor Litor spell, forms a barrier against chaos effects of 3² and when she strikes a chaos tainted creature it does 3d6-d6 [2d6] of additional blasting damage to the tainted creature [3d6 if the creature is enlightened] -- it is a six point rune power used to create this three point rune).

This is still my favorite ring!

The other was a piece of rock that the grandmother had brought back from a long journey.  The grandmother called it "truestone" and it had the spell mindspeak in it.  She told the little girl these things would bless her on her journeys and that they were a fair gift for having destroyed the wind wraiths rather than binding them and trying to use them.

It sure seemed obvious to me that I didn't want that chaos stench following me around, but it apparently isn't obvious to a lot of people that they are better off without keeping things like that around. I was amazed at how proud my grandmother was of me, and the rest of the week was so good as she regained her health and we talked of her life when she was a young girl like me. Though she did not have the falcon of course. That was one of the best weeks of my life.