"I can't say yes," you tell her. But you can't deny you feel a secret shiver at the prospect of actually learning something, anything --- not that you could ever, ever, tell any living being that, not even a roach. Illegally becoming a vesperbane? Tutored by a renegade? Even if no one would ever figure it out... Maune makes some low cluck of amusement. "Of course, kid. Saying yes right now would be the act of a damn fool, one I know Tlista wouldn't raise --- and one I certainly wouldn't teach. I was expecting you to say you'll consider it and sleep on it," she says, rising to a stand. "You should know, I have my ways into the village. Seen that small little valley, hidden behind the copse of thick ferns? I'll wait there, every night for... let's say five nights. Come there when you decide you want me to teach you. And if you're too scared, well, leave a note saying as much. If you're feeling merciful." You can't help but nod your head. Your antennae are slumped, and it's not just indecision informing your words. It's late, and you won't make monumental decisions about your future while this low on sleep. "I can't say no right here, right now?" You can't help but ask. The witch just --- assumed you wouldn't. Why? "You could, but you know my offer is too good to be dismissed immediately. You're openminded enough, and you know I'm giving you more respect than the stewartry has or will. Than your mother, even." You don't grant her any confirmation. You lift a tarsus to tap your labium in a thoughtful gesture, and you say, "I just have one question. Why is the Kindling Dream a nightmare?" The ambrosia witch gives a grand sigh. Not one particularly beleagered, but seeming almost anticipatory, like a deep breath taken in anxious preparation. Her antennae curl up into spirals, and she looks down into your eyes. "Nothing is a coincidence. Nothing in this world is meaningless or mistaken. All the injustices that persist, all the suffering that imbues this land? There's always someone who had the power to put things on another path, but preferred this one. For every death and every atrocity, there's someone at fault." There's an energy to her speaking that wasn't here before. You twist your antennae, mandibles working. You aren't sure how this tracks or where she's going. She continues with, "But I digress. You know the story of how the first arthropod alliance fell? The constant tumult and war of the sundered states period?" You don't have a chance to begin a languid nod before the witch takes your tired sluggishness for a negative. "You haven't heard it before? That --- supposedly --- hundreds of years ago, a wingless maiden laid a secret ootheca in the north, and annointed it with the blood of the white dragon? That it hatched the six nymphs of the dream, and they traveled the heartlands for years healing the broken and the cursed?" "Well..." you start. "We aren't really religious. It's not a story my father ever told, but I've heard people mention the nymphs. They... seem important, but no one ever gives a consistent answer. They saved us? Or they would have saved us, but they failed? Or they wouldn't have failed if it weren't for the welkinists?" "The exact story doesn't matter, it's all nonsense. I don't even know if the nymphs really existed. I don't care. The point is what's attributed to them, the Kindling Dream. After some years of ascetic wandering and seeing the state of the heartlands, the story goes, the nymphs --- several instars old at this point --- began to believe the heartlands needed something more, and preached as much. They gathered a cabal of prophets and haruspices, and they all claimed they spoke for the vespers. Claimed that by the vespers, all shall align. The Kindling Dream was supposed to be a final unraveling of the oppressions of the Second Dominion. Equality among all races, liberty unfaltering, and a peace that would last." You nod. It all sounded familiar, even presented in that tone of humorless derision. She spoke with the cynicism you might expect out of the dour ladies at the tavern, hunched over some foul smelling drink. Maune clasps her raptorial forelegs, and continues: "That's the story they'll tell you. They'll say the Pantheca is a memorial for the nymphs of the dream, bodies were sundered with lightning before they reached teneral. They'll say that every day they're --- we're --- striving to bring forth the Kindling Dream." Maune lets her words settle with a measured pause here. Then she opens her raptorials. "It's 'pedeshit. This is the Dream. It never went astray, it was never thwarted." You clench your mandible. "But who would want this? Who would want all the villages destroyed by renegades, all of the world-scars and exclusions --- nobody could prefer that?" Who possibly could? All she deigns to say is, "When it comes to plans, simply look at who benefits and assume it was the intended result." You flare your spiracles, but the witch is speaking still. "There are answers I could give that would shatter your world. But if you still intend to become a stewartry vesperbane, if you really want to go down that road, it's better if you don't know. I'll leave you with a piece of advice. When you're climbing your way up the ranks, you'll learn about a thing called pharmakon, and you'll get curious. You'll want to get to the bottom of it. Don't. You might end up like me, heh." "Okay," you say, not really meaning it, "but another question, what ---" She startles, and jerks up one of her wet red limbs that might be tentacles, and points behind you. "Your mom is coming. We should drop all this deep, traitorous talk." Her voice gets cautiously lower. "I shouldn't have to tell you it's better if Tlista doesn't know our plans, right? Her head's always been clearer than most of her peers, but you can only be so heterodox if you go on to to be promoted as fiend." And just as she said, your mother returns with forceful, definite strides that crush plants in her wake. She comes to stand in front of the ambrosia witch, regarding her. Her maxilae are working, and her abdomen is still, as if holding a breath, like the words to come are a broken toy she needs to fix before she can say them. Maune watches all of this, and her antennae curl back into tight, defensive spirals. She sees something in your mother's stride as confirmation. Maune preempts whatever she'd have opened with. "You always were my second in being damnably curious." Her posture shifts, drawing in on herself minutely. "But it's not the curiosity that's the problem, is it? It's what you do after." While you have to look up to meet eye with her, she has to look up to meet eye with your mother. Tlista looks away, and it seems rhetorical, rather than in weakness. She says, "They call it the path of erosion for a reason, Maune. You can't have forgotten that lesson. Are you really so attached to the vespers? Do you really think they're worth clinging to so tightly, at this cost?" "I have oaths sworn and projects I have to see through. I need the vespers with me for them. I can't give up like you did." She pauses on that, and then, "You can't have forgotten the lesson on ethics. Any means for the greatest end, remember? I do what I have to, in the best way I can." "Projects?" Tlista spits the word. "How long have you been out here, six years? Eight? It took the flourishing scourge less than three. You act like you'll be the next, and yet---" Maune stabs two tentacles in the ground on either side of her. They lift her up high enough that she can stare down at your mother's statue-esque visage. She speaks quickly, and she only says, "Get out. Now." But this isn't just anger or indignation --- you note the faintest tremble behind her words, a shake in her legs. And you remember her urging you not to look around. Whatever she didn't want you to find --- finding it revealed a crack in her confidence. The acknowledgement has her recoil, like one with dark-adjusted eyes exposed to too bright a light. Tlista sighs and turns to you. "Eifre, we're leaving." You're startled enough that it's a second before you react. Getting to your feet, you wave at the ambrosia witch as you turn towards your mother. "Don't wave." Maune isn't looking at either of you as you leave. Her gaze is somewhere distant in the sky. She strokes the sleeping form of her raven beside her. You're lagging behind Tlista as she stalks out of the vale, toward the pool you entered through. It's not a minute like this before she stops and picks you up, letting you ride on her back. When you've dived through the water and arrived back in the forest proper, you finally feel it's time to ask question on the top of your mind. Even as tired as you are, the warring drives of curiosity and trepidation combine to give you more energy in putting off asking questions than you had had while walking. But eventually, you manage: "What did you find in Maune's basement?" After a silent moment, you add, "C'mon, I asked you to promise to tell me." "And I refused. Please, don't worry about it, dear." The path turns into tight incline here, and your mother holds you tight as she climbs up. You say, "It's clear that it wasn't nothing or you wouldn't be acting like this. I feel like I should know! I was in her cabin, I was alone with her. What was it? Was it bad?" "I'll... I'll tell you when you're older, Eifre." "...Fine. I'll remember that!" "I know you will," she replies with something almost like a laugh in her tone. "Fine," you repeat. "If you won't tell me your secrets," --- then you don't have to tell her yours --- "then you have to answer my other questions! It's only fair." Here, the reaching branches of trees encroach on the path. At first, Tlista pushes them out of the way, only for them to snap back, scratching her or you. Eventually, she pulls out out a small knife that does not shine in the torchlight, and cuts down the offending branches as th