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Affinity tried to play back in her mind what exactly had happened that night. The indigo fires had risen from the spiraling pathway of the caern, and she had watched from Mouse's shoulder as Canth led several of the newer residents along its twisting turnings. Initiation into Entropy's sept.She'd asked Mouse with kind of mixed feelings whether she'd be expected to do what they'd done, and Mouse had turned to her with an unusual intensity and asked if she wanted to do it right then. The wyld energies that were usually subtly entwined in Mouse's mien were vividly shining, and Affinity had agreed instantly. Sheer attraction to that energy. And Mouse had said it would mean they'd be ... she didn't know the right word for it. Partners? That she'd be one with Mouse and the caern. Affinity's essential nature already was aligned with that and overcame any reservations she'd otherwise have had.
And then the walk itself, the forms of two girls alone with the caern. No sooner had the fires risen to encompass them both than she'd found herself following Mouse not through darkest blue on familiar ground, but in all kinds of strange places. Midnight sky with stars, jungle, desert; weirder places that had no common names, decorated in pearly blue or sheerest glow of faint silver. All the shades of nature, tans, browns, greens, blues, and black to white, had been represented there. A few sparkles of nature's brighter shades as well, the red of a cardinal or rose, the orange of a lily, the yellow of a turning leaf, the purple of a butterfly's wing.
Infinity had lain before her. As she followed Mouse through its twists and turns, she saw distantly her past life, as though it were not hers but some stranger's. Bits and pieces lay scattered around the scenery. A woman's curve of cheek, a tear falling from one eye, against a green jungle leaf. The point of her fang dagger in a star's gleam. Her waking from the plague in a creek's gurgle. The chittering of rats blended into the sound of birds as they stepped across a cloudy plain. There was more of her past, but some of it she skipped over in her mental playback, on purpose. It had all been there, though.
The green maelstrom within Affinity swirled with indigo and silver. Mouse was there too, always. Affinity felt she had known Mouse for years, though they had met only a few weeks previous. There was something within Mouse, something that was Mouse, that she was destined for. She felt it, then forgot it, then recalled it dimly in the way one remembers knowing something that one's forgotten.
And then she'd taken one more step in glowing indigo sands under a silver sky and been back in Entropy, at the center. Mouse had hugged her and taken her back to the cave. Something within her had sung loudly.
Affinity remembered that she'd looked at her wrist, and the bracelet that old man in the museum had given her had crumbled. The last of the dust had fallen away as she brushed it off her wrist. How strange.