Name: shadowsong26
Story: A Mirror
'Verse: Feredar
Colors: Halloween Orange #18. All I long for is to roam -- must this be my only home?
Supplies and Materials: photography, graffiti (October Bingo square 'rain'), silhouette, life drawing, eraser (Unthreaded AU), pastels (Year of the OTP Event; July prompt "power swap"), stain, resin
Word Count: 806
Rating: PG
Characters: Taz, Dallu
Warnings: Discussion of/reference to Islander internal prejudices.
Notes: Constructive criticism welcome, as always. I could have also done this as a full roleswap--meaning Dallu as an Islander with Kes and Lif as his younger sisters, and Taz from the North as his navigator--but this honestly seemed way more interesting to me so here we are. Although I might revisit the other idea at some point, we'll see XD possibly involving other characters shuffling origins, lol...


There are very few Unthreaded mages born in the North. Most who travel--either to the Islands as navigators or just to travel--will settle with their foreign partner if they fall in love, rather than bringing one home.

Still, when there’s a good chunk of the population that will travel, will maintain their ancient ties to the Islands and sail the world, there are bound to be a few.

Like Dallu. Who has never had sparks dancing at his fingertips or behind his eyes; who instead of feeling the energy in the air, forming cores of thunderstorms, feels the ebb and flow of the tides against his chest; the waves echoing his heartbeat and his heartbeat echoing the waves.

He is the only Unthreaded water-mage in his home, or in any of the other settlements where his family has ties.

So when he reaches the age where some of his cousins and siblings and friends are planning to travel south to seek their Captains, he knows he has to go, too. Wherever the sea will take him.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Unthreaded mages don’t have much in the way of status in the Islands. It’s not exactly forbidden to marry an outsider, at least not in Taz’s Clan, but it’s not exactly celebrated, either.

But it does happen. Old threads resurfacing after generations; or bastards born from casual or serious relationships on the mainland.

Taz’s father is like that. He’s not exactly sure where the air-mage worked their way into his bloodline, but one or two has cropped up in every generation in his line. Her sisters, like him, are air-mages.

And Taz…

Taz is in a strange space. Because she’s Unthreaded, yeah; her father and his line are known to be. Her mama, sure, is a water-mage, but from one of the lowest-status lines in the Clan anyway.

But Taz doesn’t feel the wind singing behind her; or the waves under her. She feels sparks in the air, charges and attractions and repulsions. She reads and shapes the weather, like the navigators from the North.

The navigators who are outside the usual rules and outside the pecking order and outside the chain of command.

But one born to the Islands, who would rather be a Captain herself then bind herself to one the way her (somehow) distant kin come South to do?

No one quite knows what to do with a girl like her.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

It was raining, the morning they met. Pouring around the dawn, a storm that didn’t bring thunder but threatened it.

Taz had finally--finally--found a Captain willing to take her as an ordinary sailor. Secrets like hers wouldn’t keep in the Islands, and anyway she’d never been willing to lie about herself just to get what she wanted. What she knew she could be.

Dallu had made it south at last, trying to work out where he was supposed to go. The others would seek out their Captains, there was supposed to be a spark when they met, but he was something different. Explaining that to those who saw his coloring which usually marked out a navigator, though, wasn’t always easy.

And then she saw him.

And then he saw her.

A pale boy, wandering the docks, absently holding the rain out of his face with one hand.

A tall girl, wrapped in stubbornly bright turquoise, with familiar, foreign sparks in her eyes.

Not wrong, just--out of place. In a way that no one--not Taz’s Unthreaded sisters; not Dallu’s kin who had come home after a life at sea--had understood before.

Until now.

Taz closed her eyes, reaching for the core of energy in the clouds above her, unwinding it to let the early dawn shine through.

Dallu pushed the last of the rain aside--an easy trick he’d learned in the winter snow at home--and made his way along the dock to her.

A mirror. A Captain. A navigator.

…a friend.

She tilted her head, studying him for a minute. She wasn’t a true navigator, she refused to let sparks or whatever destiny was supposed to hold for her drive her path--but he was…like her, and not like her. And sure as hell not forcing her hand. More like--a guide. A compass, telling her where she could go, once she knew how to read it.

More than anything, she wanted to learn how to read it.

She grinned, something wild and thrilled and thrilling, and offered him her hand.

He took it, of course. She was like him, and not like him. Like a current, or a hurricane, strong and pushing him forward and on into the future.

Whatever this was, wherever she was going--that, he knew, as sure as he knew the waves and his own heartbeat, was exactly where he wanted to be.