Biographies of the Alternaverse
The Tragedy of Pool and Melati
Full disclosure: I never meant Pool to become nearly as big an Alternaverse character. Originally I just wanted someone for Cholla to get mad at, and then someone to fight with Scouter. Even as I was sketching out the Alternaverse 2.0 in preparation for my take on Final Quest, Pool was destined to be a background character, and at most, a study on the pain of mortality.
Then Melati happened... sorry not sorry.
Timmain on the other hand - yeah, of COURSE she was always going to be the Final Boss!
The Beginnings
Leetah had always resisted declaring herself lifemated to either Scouter or Shushen during their five centuries together, cherishing her independence. After Shushen's death at Sorrow's End, however, Leetah and Scouter became closer in their mourning, and three years after the founding of Oasis, they Recognized. Pool was born two years later. Leetah had always imagined tragedy accompanied the wolf-blood, but she could never have predicted the destruction her offspring would leave in his wake.
From birth, Pool had always had a "magic feeling", but when Pool's healing powers emerged in early-adulthood, he found he could sense the pain of creatures around him. Pool refused to kill for his food, and eventually gave up eating any animal flesh. This and many other differences of philosophy led to a deep rift between him and Scouter.
After his sire's passing from old age, Pool devoted himself even more to fighting death in all its forms. One way was in forcing Recognitions to raise the birth rate in Oasis - something Leetah had long refused to do. But after forcing Recognition between Maleen and Skywise's brother Cricket, Pool Recognized Maleen's lifemate Ruffel... setting in motion a tragedy that would unfold over millennia.
Ruffel's pregnancy was uneventful, and Pool assumed he and Ruffel would be bonded lifemates. He had no intention of sharing her with Maleen, as he assumed their own Recognition superseded any ties of love alone. Ruffel never corrected him, yet she showed no sign of turning from Maleen either. The two elf-women remained firmly bonded as their pregnancies neared term, and Pool was too afraid to press the issue and force Ruffel to choose one over the other. Perhaps they might have negotiated a threemating of sorts in time. But time was one luxury they didn't have.
Ruffel began hemorrhaging in childbirth, as her afterbirth tore. Pool tried to save her by shriveling the blood vessels with his healing magic - only to be stopped by the soon-to-be-born infant, who was already a powerful healer in the womb. Next Pool pulled the infant from the womb, breaking her shoulder in the process. But it was too late. Ruffel bled out, and Pool was left grieving... and cursing the infant responsible.
It was a girl, as Ruffel had predicted. And she was completely unharmed. The broken bones had already knit together. Instinctively, the baby’s magic had protected her.
She had protected herself… but she had done nothing for Ruffel.
Worse, she had rebuffed Pool’s attempts at a healing.
He had always hated and feared the unseen Enemy. But now at last it had a face – a swollen, bloody newborn’s face.
**Lifetaker!** he exploded.
The baby started to cry, a thin, indignant howl.
Leetah scooped up the child, wrapped her in a fresh cloth. “A daughter,” she whispered. “Ruffel gave you a daughter.”
She gave me death! he wanted to scream. She gave me this curse! A healer who takes life!
- The Face of the Enemy, Part One
Behind the Scenes: In my original notions, it was going to be Meerkat who was going to Recognize Pool and die, and then Melati would resurrect her later after mastering Cradle-tech. But then I got my hands on the prologue of Final Quest, and saw Ruffel's death-by-lightning. The rest was history.
Pool fled Oasis for the New Land, leaving Melati to be raised by a series of foster-mothers - first Maleen, who had her own newborn Yosha, then Cholla. As Melati grew and her healing powers developed, Haken's lifemate Chani took an interest in her, and soon the Lord and Lady of Oasis had claimed her for their own. Melati became the favored child of Oasis. She had no desire to connect with the father who had abandoned her. But when she was fourteen, Pool returned, determined to make amends.
“You’re angry with me. You have every right to be. I was not ready to be a father to you. When I Recognized your mother, I could think only of the joys of fatherhood. I was not prepared for sorrow. When your mother died… something in me broke. Something I could not heal. I tried. I wanted to love you, for her sake. But I could not, and so I left you with those who could.
“But now?” she asked. “At last you are ready to love me?”
“I know you have no need of love from a near-stranger. But it would please me if you would accept it, all the same.”
“And why should I? After all these years?”
“Because… even if you cannot feel love for your sire… perhaps you could feel pity. Please, daughter. I look into your eyes and I try to see Ruffel. I hear your voice and I think of hers. You are all that remains of her.”
- The Face of the Enemy, Part One
Melati rejected Pool's efforts at reconciliation, and the longer he remained in Oasis, the more Pool grew disgusted with the lessons Melati was learning - probing deep into the minds of animals, accepting death and suffering without question, even inflicting suffering in pursuit of her own goals. When he caught her performing experiments on a dying human, he exploded with anger.
“Is this how you teach your healers?” Pool was raging. “By torturing dying animals?”
“I wasn’t–” Melati protested. “I was just trying… I wanted to fix him!”
“Hunters do worse when they bring down a kill,” Haken dismissed. “Not that you would know.”
“No, I would not. I live to protect life. To nurture it.”
“But not your own young.”
“I am here to remedy that failing. But I see I have waited too long to return. You’re raising her to be a second Winnowill!”
- The Face of the Enemy, Part Two
Perhaps he and Melati might still have mended their fractured relationship, where it not what followed. Upset and distracted by her fight with her sire, Melati went climbing with Yosha in darkness. When a lock-sending to lend him courage suddenly became the beginnings of Recognition, Melati rejected him, causing him lose his balance and fall to his death. Melati tried everything to revive him, but her powers were unequal to the task, and his spirit fled his body.When the Sun Folk found the pair, Maleen blamed Melati, and Pool cursed her for a lifetaker.
Yosha's story might have ended there, but Melati's gift for grief and denial was just as strong as Pool's. Unlike Pool, however, she had a plan to resurrect her lost love. She stole his body away and sealed it in wrapstuff, until the day came when she could reverse death.
She practiced on lesser beasts - snakes, birds, lizards - until she could kill a creature then revive it. She learned to shapechange animals, altering them into nightmarish forms, then experimenting on their new body parts. After three years of studies in secret, she unwrapped Yosha's body, healed its injuries, then tried to summon her soulbrother's spirit so she could force it back into the healed body.
But while she could repair almost everything, one section of his brain had been completely destroyed in the accident - the part that controlled sending and magic.
It was all she could do not to be sick as she realized the enormity of her mistake. She had recaptured his spirit as she had planned, but she had trapped it in a broken mind. The exclusively elfin part of his brain had not survived: sending, the potential for magic – for Recognition… the very essence of his soul – was gone. Yosha was gone.
In time, he might be able to speak. He might be able to reason. But he would never really be who he had been before. An elfin spirit could not express itself in a beast’s body.
- The Face of the Enemy, Part Three
Behind the Scenes: The notion of "The Master of the Shapechanged" as Mel's flesh-shaped Frankenstein-boyfriend came first. He was going to be one of her acolytes, a Red Snake who was so dazzled with her, he'd let her do any experiments she wanted, and remake him into a work of art. But then logic intervened: Oasis was never big enough that an elf could just go "off-radar" and get modded-out without someone raising a fuss. So Beast's first life as Yosha was born. And then I watched Danny Boyle's Frankenstein play WAY too many times...
The reborn elf had no memories, and showed no sign that he was even the same spirit as Yosha. While she briefly considered a mercy kill, Melati realized she would rather keep a shell of Yosha that lose him forever. So she taught the new elf, which she named Beast, to speak and to interact with the world. She kept the scars on his face and his crooked arm because she could not bear him to look too much like Yosha. And in time she found herself falling in love with her creation. When faced with the choice between destroying Beast's memories, and trying to reshape Yosha's brain properly, she barely hesitated.
“I can’t! I can’t lose you! I love you, Beast!” I couldn’t send to prove my sincerity; I could only scream the words out and beg, “Please, please believe me! I loved Yosha – I always will. But I love you too. And if getting him back means giving you up – then I choose you!”
I was weeping hysterically. My legs could no longer support me; my hands slid down to frame his face. “I choose Beast!” I cried through the tears, and I meant it. Suddenly everything was clear. There was no choice to fear; I had already made it. “Yosha was my soulbrother, but you are my lifemate!”
- The Nature of the Beast, Part Three
Melati kept Beast's existence a secret from all of Oasis - even Lord Haken. She hid him in a series of caves, each one further from Oasis. For over three thousand years, they lived contentedly. But Melati never lost her desire to give Beast a proper elfin brain - so that they could finally Recognize. She continued her experiments in fleshshaping, both on creatures in the wilds, and on Beast himself. Over the years, he gained a clawed and scaled arm, clawed feet, and a long tail - all modifications he requested to better move about in the desert environment. Garbled rumors of seeing a shapechanged elf in the wilds led to the legend of the Master of the Shapechanged.
Finally, Melati perfected a fleshshaped incubator, which she used to help Cholla become a biological mother at last. Due to her weak heart, Cholla was unlikely to survive a pregnancy. Pool had always refused to help his old friend for that reason. But Melati forced Recognition between Cholla and Klipspringer, with the intention to left her "Cradle" gestate the resulting fetus. Sure enough, Cholla miscarried in her first year of pregnancy, and the premature infant was transferred to the Cradle. Maize was properly "born" after another year, and all of Oasis rejoiced, though some were heard to wonder aloud whether Maize would grow up like a "proper" elf.
Melati worried too, but when Maize learned to send without difficulty, she believed she had a solution to her difficulty with Beast. She would build a larger Cradle, and grow him an entirely new body - or multiple bodies to suit his moods. But she was lacking the knowledge of how to grow a new body from only cells.
When the Palace appeared over Thorny Mountain and was thrown back into time, the High Ones sent out a messenger sphere holding their collective wisdom. Haken sent Melati to recover it, so he could use its power and knowledge for his own creations, but she stole it for herself. From the sphere, she learned the secret of shell-growing... but it came at a horrible price.
Leetah touched Melati’s forehead, then pulled her hand back sharply. “Great Sun! What has she done to herself?”
“Joined with the messenger sphere.” It was not Weatherbird who answered, but Timmain, who stepped out from around the corner of the doorway.
“The sphere – where is it?” Haken demanded.
“Destroyed before we could arrive. Your adopted daughter has been meddling with energies well beyond her abilities. She has tangled her own awareness with the messenger sphere’s, and I cannot separate them. Swift suggested close kin could do what I could not. But as her blood-sire has rejected her, we brought her here.”
Weatherbird found the stricken Melati and bought her back to Oasis to be healed. But this meant exposing the secret of Beast to the world. It did not go well.
Maleen crossed the floor. She stopped an armspan in front of Beast. She stared up into his silver-blue eyes, searchingly. He stared back, his expression caught between terror and defiance.
“Yosha?” she asked.
His expression hardened, and he looked away. Maleen turned on Melati with a shriek.
“What did you do to him?” she rushed at the dazed maiden, raining blows on Melati’s head. “What did you do?! Curse you – curse you – couldn’t you just let him be?!”
“Maleen!” Cholla warned.
Melati swayed under the blows, unable or unwilling to defend herself. Beast seized Maleen’s wrist and yanked her back. Maleen screamed and turned her fists on Beast. “My son – my son!!” Later, Cholla would think it was the worst thing she could have said.
Beast’s clawed hand caught her about the throat. He squeezed down until she lost her voice, then whirled her around and slammed her hard against the starstone wall. “He’s not here!” Beast roared in her face. “He’s gone and he’s not coming back – you can’t have him back!”
Melati and Beast could not remain in Oasis, so they claimed sanctuary in the Palace. Melati slowly began to recover from her psychic overload from the messenger sphere, and as she assimilated the knowledge, her healing powers grew even more powerful. She also attracted the interest of Timmain.
“You have a remarkable opportunity, child. And a choice to make.”
“What choice?”
“You currently hold the memories of two souls, Melati and the Timmain-That-Was. You are recovering Melati, day by day. As she re-emerges, the memories of Timmain will fade. Yet it is not to late to make another choice. You have an exceptional talent – one that I can help you develop. With care and patience, your mind can be shaped to retain all that you have learned – to make you into a living messenger sphere. A repository of all elfin knowledge.”
“Retain… all your memories?”
“And those others charged me to guard. The sum of countless lives.... As I will teach you – so you will teach me!... While Timmain studies the Egg and the Scroll of Colors, Melati is in the world: leading, loving, healing. Together we can learn all the lessons of the Multitude. Two vessels… yet one soul… a single being, like no other among our kind!”
Melati yanked her hand away as if burned.
“I am not your vessel,” she hissed.
Siege at Howling Rock, Part One
Timmain accepted Melati's choice, for the moment. But she kept a close watch on the healer. And on Beast, who was destined to play a great role in the Siege at Howling Rock. When the corrupted Kahvi fought the elves at the Rock, Beast was the only one who could withstand her corrosive magic. The pair fought, and in the end, Beast was able to rip the corrupted starstone out of her heart, killing her. But the magical eruption that followed - combined with Kahvi's own latest healing magic - healed Beast's mind, and resurrected all of Yosha's memories. When Melati found him on the battlefield, his first sending reawakened their long-overdue Recognition.
But Timmain interfered. She was afraid of what sort of child Melati and Beast might make - a child with starstone in its blood, invisible to the Scroll of Colors. So she sent off a fragment of her own soul to inhabit the embryo forming, creating a "tether" binding her to the newly-created Naga.
Behind the Scenes: So I thought I had exhausted the "let's pile on Timmain" theme after the Messenger Sphere arc. Kahvi was my main Alternaverse villain for my take on the Shards War/Final Quest and I was going to stick to it. Then issue 12 of Final Quest dropped and Tim-Tam became a thing. And I wasn't going to take that lying down. ;)
The Schism
Pool had been sleeping in wrapstuff for many years, but Timmain awoke him, to tell him of Beast's existence and the conception of his granddaughter. Pool quickly sought out his estranged daughter.
The reunion went poorly. Melati revealed that she had long ago removed all of Pool's Wolfrider genes from her blood, effectively ending his unique bloodline. Overcome with hatred, Pool impulsively cursed her child, vowing:
**...With you as its mother, it is already doomed. Your very soul is rotten, and just as you can only Recognize death, so you can only birth it. The question is how many will have to die. But for the sake of this whole world, and the world you mean to settle, I pray that child dies in your womb.**
Pool sought comfort from his own mother, Leetah. But she rejected him after seeing the effects of extreme old age, which brought back all her traumatic memories of Scouter's final years. Spurned by both mother and daughter, Pool left Oasis forever, intending to die in the homeland of his father.
“I know I have little to offer. You have a healer already, and I doubt there is much I could teach him now. But in truth, you won’t have to put up with me for long. The death-sleep season is beginning; I doubt I will last until winter. I am ready to die, I no longer fear its coming. I only ask that I can live out my last days here, and that in death my shell can be given over to the Evertree, so that I may become part of the Holt... I have denied my father’s blood too long. But it runs true in my veins. In life we quarreled; in death I wish us to be reunited.” He had failed to pass on Scouter’s blood to a new generation of elves. But he could use it to feed the forest. It was a different sort of immortality.
Unfortunately for all elves, Pool came to the Evertree at the very moment that Sunstill's violent death would trigger a massive psychic upheaval in the spirit pool that had colonized the Tree. For generations, the spirits of Wolfriders had gone into the Evertree, forming a semi-conscious collective. Just as, for generations, the strife within the Evertree Wolfriders had divided the tribe into two competing philosophies. An uneasy truce had long been maintained among the living, but when the aging ex-chieftess Sunstill tried to defy Hunt-chief Furrow, he pushed her to her death from the Tree's upper branches.
Sunstill died in terror and rage. Her absorption into the Tree's spirit pool triggered all the latest frustrations of the Wolfrider dead. The Tree demanded justice.
The core trunk of the Evertree began to shiver. A small fissure opened between two of the braided tree-trunks. Something began to emerge – an ear, long and poined, and covered in a fine dust of crushed bark and moss fragments. For a moment, Wesh and Tayr both dared hope that the Tree might release the three prisoners inside. But what slowly emerged from the cleft in the wood was like no elf they had never known before.
A head poked out, followed by a pair of shoulders. The shape twisted until the head stared directly at the elves. A elfin face, carved out of hardwood, crowned with mossy hair. Sharp cheekbones, a pointed chin, a high forehead and long nose delicately sketched in lichen.
They all knew that face.
“Mother?” Sparkstone whispered tremulously.
Eyelids of bark slowly lifted, revealing empty knotholes for eyes. The shape suddenly lurched out of the tree, freeing a long gnarled arm and a four-fingered hand.
“We are more than your mother,” the Sunstill-shape said, her voice creaky as old wood. “We are many seeds, many souls. We are the Evertree.” The shape raised its hand and pointed at Furrow. “And you have killed us!”
Behind the Scenes: Anyone play Elder Scrolls? I knew I had to bring the "fungoids" into the Alternaverse after they popped up in Final Quest. Initially, I had thoughts of them simply being some weird elf tribe in the deep jungle - you can see a hint of them in Bluestar's recollections of shape-changed elves in Behind the Walls. But as the Evertree became the new focus for the second act of Final Quest, Sun Girl and I developed the idea of them being animated wood-puppets, like Elder Scroll Spriggans.
The Evertree killed Furrow for his crime, but the vast collective of spirits would not be so easily appeased. They had watched for centuries as the Way had been stretched and bent, and they were intent on forcing a new peace on the feuding Wolfriders, a peace dictated by their own collective wisdom. The Tree imprisoned several Wolfriders, subjected many more to psychic attacks in an attempt at dominance. Only Littlefire's powerful sendings and the combined healing powers of Duskwind and Pool could break the Evertree's hold. Against all his instincts, Pool turned his powers to wound, and weakened the Tree enough to free the imprisoned Wolfriders.
But in doing so, Pool came in communion with the Evertree. He felt its pain, its sense of injustice. It mirrored his own anguish. Pool thought he had finally found someone to understand him.
He looked up at the trembling branches of the Evertree, so old and brittle. The once-healthy Tree seemed withered, rotting. The voices that once spoke in harmony were now discordant.
He had done that, just as surely as Furrow and Sunstill and Littlefire had. He had torn open a wound then refused to soothe it.
**You cannot leave us like this!**
It wasn’t right, he thought. A healer was prepared to cause anguish at first, knowing it would soon pass. But he had hurt and then he had left… just as he had left his loved ones time and time again.
**Paingivers!** the Tree accused the retreating elves.
I am a paingiver, Pool thought. Whether I will it or not, it is my true gift.
**We call for a healing!.... We need you!** the Tree begged. The face in the trunk turned towards Pool.
“We need you…” it whispered. “He needs you.”
Pool found himself taking one step towards the Tree. Then another.
The face changed, losing its feminine features, growing mossy facefur.
“Son… come home to us…”
**I’m coming, Father. You call for healing, and I answer.**
Pool gave himself to the Tree, letting it crush and absorb its body and consume his soul. In doing so, he hoped to find peace. But the Evertree had grander plans. It foresaw a world where everything was bound in a closed ecosystem, living, growing, dying peacefully, always nourishing the Tree. No strife, no pain, no competition. One single Way - the Green Way - which all elves would be taught to accept.
Pool would finally have his victory - his vindication.
Behind the Scenes: Pool's death is a shout-out to Miranda Richardson's end in Sleepy Hollow - and yes, that includes the copious amounts of blood. Cutter's body being converted into mulch for a new Father Tree was far far too Disney - if you're going to play with body horror, let's see some proper gore.
The Green War
The Evertree's first conquests were the remnants of the Hunt - green dreams soon compelled them to return to the site of the great battle. The Evertree Wolfriders fractured for good - the Holtbound following Littlefire and Kit, while the Hunt returned to the Evertree and let themselves becoming indoctrinated by the greensong. Next the Evertree - and Pool - slowly converted Timmain, playing on all her fears for the future of the elves on Abode... and her growing conviction that the world had reached a tipping point.
**Adapt or die. And learn to live with our choice. There will be no more half-measures, no more compromises. We must abandon this dying world or else sacrifice our very souls to reclaim it.**
Next, the Evertree sent out psychic feelers to the trollkin of Blue Mountain, and the elves at Oasis. It failed to capture Leetah, but it drew in Savah's spirit, first seducing her with the greensong, then confining her spirit within the roots of the Tree. Timmain became increasingly bound to the Tree, to the point of considering it a form of Recognition.
Meanwhile, things were not going well for Melati. She had moved with her family to Homestead, and was raising Naga to become a powerful magic-user. But as Naga reached puberty, her powers were growing increasingly erratic, and she complained of a constant feeling of persecution. Something bad was coming. Something was calling to her. She had to be ready to fight it. She set fires in her sleep and lashed out at anyone who startled her. Fearing for her safety - and those around her - the elders of Homestead, Haken and Sylas, agreed it would be best she go to Abode, to train at the Great Egg.
Naga saw the command as a banishment, and blamed her mother for abandoning her. For her part, Melati found her thoughts turning to Pool's "curse" as she worried what Naga might do with her unbridled powers.
Melati was right to worry. The unease Naga was feeling was the result of the psychic tether linking her to Timmain, now being manipulated by the Tree.
Timmain struck the first blow in the Green War, by invading the Great Egg and dismantling its Core of starstone, which she took back to the Tree and incorporated into its trunks. She also took Naga, hoping to use the secrets of her blood to properly meld starstone and living matter. To induce her to cooperate, Timmain claimed that that she and Naga shared a soul, the product of Naga's "flawed" conception.
In her captivity in the tree, Naga finally came face to face with Pool. The encounter was deeply troubling for both. Naga met the monster of all her childhood tales, and Pool saw a girl who far too closely resembled his lost love Ruffel.
“Aren’t you my grandfather?” Naga spat.
“No. Pool takes no credit for you. Once, he planted the seed than became your mother. But she banished him from both her past and future. It was better that way. He would grieve to think his blood runs in your veins. Pool died knowing he was the end of a great line, and now he will found a still greater one – one that will endure long after his former progeny drive themselves to self-slaughter.”
“I thought Pool was a healer!”
The bark skin of the tree-shape twitched about its mouth. “He was… the truest healer… one who used his magic to embrace life… not pervert it…”
“This is a perversion! All of this!”
The Pool-shape raised its arm, and root-claws shot out from its fingers. They threw Naga back against the wall, and pinned her about the neck so she could not move. “Stop this, Timmain!” the shape hissed. “End this! We cannot hear. We cannot listen – we will not listen to this abomination!”
“Patience, my bond.”
“No! The sight of her sickens us. Her very existence is an affront to nature! Can you not understand?”
“This is about more than Pool–”
“She looks like her! She sounds like her!” The elf-shape looked back at the struggling girl. “Is this Melati’s work? Did she shape you thus? Did you? To torment us? To torment him! You have no soul of your own, and you have his eyes, but you wear her skin!”
Timmain tried to force Naga to submit and bind souls with her, but Naga came the same realization Melati did so many years before - Timmain did not want a soulmate, she wanted a vessel, an extra body to control - in this case, one with starstone in its blood. Naga fought back with all her might, delaying Timmain's victory long enough for a rescue party to arrive.
The collapse of the Great Egg had been a tragedy. Aurek died, giving up physical form to hold back the collapsing rocks long enough to let the survivors escape. But now a coalition of Egg survivors, Homestead elders, and Palace-elves had come to the Evertree to rescue their kindred. Chief among them was Melati, who was willing to sacrifice herself to save her daughter.
Melati and Beast had quarreled often following the decision to send Naga to Abode. And Naga's kidnapping had driven a wedge of bitterness between them. But when Beast offered to go on a suicide mission to save Naga, Melati refused to let him go. Instead she walked into the Evertree's territory alone, and apparently unarmed. After stripping naked to show her lack of weapons, she came face to face with Timmain and her captive daughter.
“You used her as bait to bring me here. Here I am.”
“You have all your lord’s arrogance. Naga is of far greater use than you now. You spurned your chance to unite with me, and I will not deny I grieved that loss. But I should have had more patience. Your union with Beast created a far superior vessel.”
Naga was staring at her, silver eyes silently pleading. Melati saw the pain in them, the fear. Even unable to send through the shield, she felt her child’s torment as an ache in her belly. Or perhaps it was something else. But she forced herself to say:
“She’s not. She’s unstable. You must have seen that.”
“You feared she would surpass you,” Timmain challenged. “A beast in distress will always choose its own life over that of its offspring. Even wolves maim or kill their cubs, if they fear a challenge.”
Melati summoned a bitter laugh. “Oh, Timmain, how I wish you were right! I’d gladly be surpassed by a child of mine. But she’s broken, you can see that. Something’s… imbalanced in her. On Homestead she would only grow more unstable. A threat to herself and everyone around. She’s no good for you. Feed her to the Tree and she’ll only hasten its death. Ask P–” a sudden catch in her throat silenced her. She tasted bile deep in her mouth. “Ask your old friend,” she said instead. “He tried to warn me. He told me she was a deathbringer.... She isn’t what you need, Timmain. Let her go.... Take me.”
Timmain agreed to the trade, and surrendered Naga in exchange for Melati. She quickly invaded Melati's mind and began to strip it of all its secrets - of the Messenger Sphere, of the starstone blood, of everything.
Then Melati ignited the troll's blast-bottle she had hidden inside her abdomen.
The blast crippled them both, and started a fire that set the Tree alight. Even dying, Timmain continued her psychic attack on Melati. But Naga reached out through the "tether" binding them and distracted Timmain long enough for Melati to use her powers of mind-wiping to erase all of Timmain's memories. Naga tried to reach her mother through the fire, but Melati commanded her to run and save herself. With the last of her strength, Melati extinguished her pain receptors as the fire reached her.
As the Tree burned, Pool found himself faced a second, greater death. But this time he couldn't face it. He detached himself from the burning Tree and tried to escape in a puppet-shell of animated wood. But Naga found him, and fulfilled the curse he had laid on her in the womb. The death she was destined to bring was Pool's.
Pool's spirit was drawn deep into the bedrock by Aurek, who forced him into a deep dreamless sleep. Timmain managed to survive the fire, but badly burned and comatose, she was encased in inert starstone and propelled into interstellar space. Melati's spirit found Ruffel's, and mother and daughter were finally reunited in the spirit pool after four thousand years.
Spirits can always find their way to you… through sorrow, through anger… only one thing can hold them away. Fear.
Is why he never found you?
The mother-presence flickered with a touch of sadness. Pool could never accept the finality of their parting. He could never find contentment in the world that was left him. He could never accept the truth before him.
Some sorrows cannot be helped, the mother-presence seemed to say. But he could not bear to be without control. He was terrified of his own fears. So he stoked his anger to hide it, until she stopped trying to reach him. Even spirits outside of time had their own sort of patience, and hers was exhausted.
Not everything can be healed.
No… Melati thought. Not everything should be.
But much still could be set right. Starting in this endless moment.
Melati would return to corporeal form, once Winnowill grew her new body. At last she could move past the trauma of her past, and begin a new life with her family. But for Pool there could only be silence and sleep... and the determination of others to never let him wake again.
Behind the Scenes: I really went back and forth a lot about whether Mel and Ruffel should have a reunion, given that Ruffel had seemingly made no contact with Mel for all these years. And it seemed more in Mel's character to literally have no conflict or guilt regarding Ruffel's death. But it seemed fitting for Mel to make peace with Ruffel before she could become a more confident mother to Naga. And Stargazer's Hunt gave me the perfect quote to explain the earlier silence and give the two of them their moment.
Pool gets nothing, though. As satisfying as it might be to have Ruffel tell him off, her silence is a far more fitting punishment for him.
RIP Pool, you were by FAR my favorite villain to write.
Elfquest copyright 2020 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2020 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.
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