Changes Occurred, Changes To Be

The decision had been made to return to horses. Islana wasn't arguing about it. She still had questions and maybe it was foolish to think that Kaithak's spirit had been put into the falcon. Thinking about it more, that seemed like a selfish thought. A way to keep the boy with her. A better thought that maybe he had been a god, testing them in some way. A better thought than a child who was dead. So, the falcon was perhaps a gift.

Questions, they did seem to be her lot since arriving in Arcadia. The first questions were easy to answer. Job - hunter. Meet people - no. Keep her head down, her walls up. That had been her plan.

Who knew that her need to help others would have taken that plan and thrown it out the window? First there was the homeless man and the workers. Which led her to Hendrick.

That first meeting with Hendrick had led her to Jyin and meeting Wim, and the investigation into the cult. And that investigation, what came during it, what came the night she was rescued and the aftermath, changed everything for her.

If Islana had ever been wrong about someone, Wim would have to be up near the top of that list. It was possible to be an opportunitist a Lord and still a good person. Islana never would have thought such a thing possible. She now realized that judgment had nothing to do with him. The man had even help to rescue her. It was a mistake she had been happy to retract.

Her thoughts turned to Jiyn; the first person to break through the wall Islana had built up around herself. He was the first person she told about Lord Vasant. That moment, in the shrine, had been a significant move forward. The outcome of that day had been terrible and it wasn't what Islana wanted to dwell on but that moment had been important to everything that came later.

The investigation into the cult had brought her to Gonyaul and Alexis. Her friends, her new family. In a sense, they had both mentored her, in their own ways. They had seen her through the cult and the aftermath. She had broken, and then pieced herself back together, into someone different, more mature. They had been there for her. That wasn't something the young woman would have even thought possible when first arriving in Arcadia. There is a saying about people coming into your life when you need them, she had never known it to be more accurate.

The two others that had helped save her that night, Voah and Hunter. Those were still kept at arm's length, for what might be obvious reasons. Would that ever change? Islana had learned, since her time here, almost anything was possible.

There was another change that night, the one regarding her power. She still wasn't sure where that was leading but the dramatic shift that had occured, felt less scary to her then it would have at one point.

Boyce, had been met later. Islana still couldn't believe that she had opened up to him in such a short time. The young woman couldn't say if it was him or her or the combination of the two meeting at just the right time for that to occur. Whatever it was, Islana knew it was a good thing.

While the young woman knew she still had things to deal with, things within and out of her control, she was far from the girl who had stepped from the ship onto the new land that would become her home. You are not the same Islana that you were when you first came here. Alexis' words came back to her. How true that was.