Page 84 of Legends and Longing

Nodding, Shiloh pulled out an older book on the area around the portal I had hoped would be helpful. It provided very little new information but I was glad to have found it anyway. “They picked two other families, one to pass down what they knew of the history of our people and another was probably cultural.”

Still wandering, Shiloh came back over to the kitchen and gave me a hug. “Unfortunately, the family that was given the history seems to have been wiped out in a hurricane about fifty years later. The area they were living was hit by a mudslide and no one survived.”

Fates above.

“We didn’t find out about the tragedy until it was too late and there was no one left who had the original knowledge.” Swallowing hard, Shiloh sat down on Raxius’ lap and snuggled into his Master. “A lot of the documents they’d started collecting were also destroyed.”

That answered a significant amount of my questions in one short story, so it made me wonder what other questions would be easily explained.

“Since there wasn’t another generation for the spell to jump to, it didn’t have anyone else to pass the knowledge down to.” As he started leafing through the book, he shrugged. “I don’t have much information about the third family. They’re mentioned casually in letters and diaries but then they disappeared.”

Our people should have stayed together.

“The last Seer I talked to said that was why my family was never allowed to live in one town together. We could see each other in small groups but never everyone at once.” Studying something I thought was a sketch of the portal, Shiloh frowned distractedly. “Is this edited correctly? I’ve never seen this sentence written this way.”

What?

“Can you read our language?” He’d been confused anytime he’d heard it, so I’d never considered his ability to read.

Although clearly I should have.

“Yeah.” He perked up, smiling again. “I was hoping that would help me with the spoken language but it didn’t.”

Pouting dramatically, he sighed as he went back to studying the page. “Most people I’ve talked with only know specific words and phrases. One whole branch has taken to using Latin for spells and that’s just weird.”

Latin?

Latin American?

Latin as in the robed men with the collars?

“My family didn’t want me to go through the portal but the seers said I had to.” Frowning, he traced his finger over a sentence before huffing and going back to his slightly confusing explanations. “If something happened to me, my family wasn’t sure where the spell would jump to. My sister’s pregnant, so that’d be weird if it went to the baby. From what we know, the spell is supposed to go down the family line to the next generation, but we’ve been fairly lucky.”

What?

It took me a moment to realize I’d stopped moving and to process what he’d said.

“Your Daddy is just a bit stunned at the moment because it sounds like you said you’d talked to a seer lately…as in recently?” Raxius was chuckling through our bond, making me wonder what I’d missed. “And yes, he also thinks the baby thing would be confusing…but weird might be a better word?”

Yes.

It would.

“Um, I told you guys we had the younger seers from that generation on our side when the portal closed. Right?” Shiloh glanced between us, looking confused. “We keep track of the lineages. So we kept track of as many of the seers as we could considering they usually like living out in the country.”

The English word duh was the first thing that came to my mind.

Unfortunately, based on Raxius’ laughter, he heard that as well.

Ignoring him seemed like my best plan, so I focused back on what Shiloh had said and did my best to respond neutrally. “We have not had active seers in our communities in generations, so it was a surprise. However, I should have realized that based on the other things you said.”

They had seers.

Live ones, not just their writings.

“I think that’s logical based on everything you knew.” Raxius sent a hug-like feeling through the bond. It was so clear it was like his arms were around me instead of our mate. “So we’re going to figure out what other questions we need to ask and how to document them.”

Shiloh wiggled on his lap, looking like he’d done something wrong if I was reading his expression correctly. “I’m not used to just randomly volunteering information.”