Tuya wasn't in the Hollows.

She flew upon the earthy back of the great eagle Batu, her hands grasping his snowy head. In the Hollows, there were two types of trees and they all had holes in them where either scared bruised women or hateful scarred men lived. But now, in this once faraway land, Tuya discovered a new world growing beneath Batu's beating wings.

Trees of all sizes and colors rose toward the starlit sky, no holes in their base. Back in the Hollows, bark was either red or brown with green leaves except for the season of the slow death where they shifted into their dying hues. Here, Tuya's silver eyes saw beneath her an abundance of vibrant colors creating a dense canopy of life.

If you think this is impressive, you should see my home, Batu projected, sharing an image of his tree that rose for miles into the air, its branches spreading across the sky, piercing clouds and shading the land from the sun. Upon the branches, there were more flowers in eternal bloom than one could describe if they spent their whole lifetime describing.

We will go to Leveria someday, Tuya thought back to him, infusing the thought with hope and love. She wanted to see all the faraway lands with her own eyes, to learn about the people who didn't grow up under the oppression of the tamers. This new forest was just the beginning of their journey. A journey that would someday take her to Batu's Mirrevar.

Batu pulsed with appreciation, then his sorrow permeated their mental connection. He was the wisest non-human she'd ever shared a mind with, having taught her the word love when she was a little girl and showing her what it meant even today. When you lost someone you loved, it meant pain. It meant a hollow feeling, like a giant hole in the base of a tree. Such pain could poison even the loveliest of homes, if that was where a monster seized control of your body and forced you to kill your family.

Tuya pressed her head against the back of his snowy head. She knew what that was like. Sarnai was with her today, even if she was long gone from this world. After all these seasons, Tuya had finally taken the memory of Sarnai to the faraway lands. She could take away Batu's pain as easily as she could take away her own, because love meant making pain smaller for those who lived, but it also meant pain would never go away because of those who were gone.

Neither great eagle nor this young woman unlike any other and exactly like every other communicated through their constant link. They shared in their losses, having at least together ended the man that caused both.

Tuya kept expecting to find tamers like Makhun chasing them, hollering slurs of khorota, wielding clubs, sending their minds after them. But Tuya hadn't seen the gray smoke-like mist of taming consciousness in several rises and falls of the big lightmaker sun. The Hollows were behind them. Many, many miles behind. But Gurgaldai ezen Celegan was always only moments away. If she broke her link with Batu, he'd find her.

I'm not letting go of you, sister, Batu said through their link.

Tuya patted his neck. "I'm not letting go of you either, brother," she said in Leverian, the language spoken in his homeland by people who wore shiny metals and fought beneath the tree that he thought of as home.

Batu, his eagle eyes empowered by Tuya's lightseer abilities, narrowed his focus on a weird creature in the treetops below. It had bright orange hairs, like fire, surrounding a little brown face dominated by big black eyes. It swung and leapt through the canopy, a long curly tail trailing behind it, oblivious to the great eagle gliding through the night sky. Tuya thought it adorable, like a little wilder living free.

Batu thought it food.

The giant eagle dove, Tuya's hair billowing behind her as they plunged toward the canopy. She clenched her legs tighter on his back, squeezed her arms around the back of his huge neck, her fingers grasping at feather. Batu!

Her brother was stubborn, closing off his thoughts. But she felt his elation, normally contagious when congruent. While Tuya did enjoy the thrill of soaring and even diving, she didn't savor the thrill of killing such a cute creature.

Batu's talons grasped it. The think let out a noise that was anything but cute, a shrill "eek" that made Tuya almost want to kill the thing herself.

Good evening, food, Batu thought. He cawed as he squeezed the creature in his big talons.

Tuya never heard a noise that made her more thankful that it was her eyes and not her ears that Norali had blessed with supernatural ability. Stop playing with your food and kill it already!

Batu soared over the treetops, the creature's tail skimming them as the life was strangled out of it. Unfortunately, Batu didn't have a grip on its throat and that noise went on and on until it abruptly gave way to silence.

Finally!

Batu perched on a high branch, several hundred feet above the surface in this forest of impossibly high trees. The sounds of him devouring the once-adorable four-legged animal nearly as grating as the animal's panicked cries.

In the Hollows, animals were rare, having been tamed near extinction with little thought toward preservation and sustainability. Sure, there had been patches of forest untouched by the tamers where wolves, bears, and other creatures endured in small packs slowly eroded by the tamers. In this new land, Tuya's senses were bombarded by life that was lusher than even the canopy's rainbow of colors.

She slid off Batu's back, sitting on a branch thick enough to support several women even though it seemed like it was closer to the stars than the mossy floor. Tuya scanned out with her senses, grasping just how different this Great Atmana Forest was than the land where all the trees had holes and none of the people were whole.

Among the insects alone, she could see and sense more life in this one tree than you might find in an entire region of the Hollows. Then there were the birds. Colorful, loud, feathered creatures that flew their small bodies in groups that seemed more numerous than the stars. Her eyes, capable of seeing the smallest objects in perfect detail from miles away, were too obstructed by the forest's thick canopy to take in the full scale of the fauna below. But she knew one thing, unlike the earliest days of her life in the Hollows, she'd never have to worry about going hungry here.

I'm still hungry, Batu projected, spitting bones down into the forest. There were so many branches between them and the ground that Tuya doubted any of them made the full trip to the bottom without getting caught along the way. And thirsty.

Tuya's own throat felt dry. Juxtaposed by the moisture on the trees and in the air itself, this contrast felt wrong. She sought out fresh water, untainted by the salt of the sea where she'd grown up.

The sunrise isn't too far off, she projected.

Batu pulsed agreement, eager to be done flying for the night. Since the destruction of the chimaera, they'd taken to flying by night and sleeping where they could find cover during the day. Tamer eyes weren't like Tuya's. They couldn't sense Batu well in the darkness and they were invisible to tamer minds as long as they stayed linked.

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The two-legs here aren't tamers, Batu projected.

Farawaylanders, Tuya thought back to him, from the Great Atmana Forest.

Tuya had met many Atmana women, though they rarely lasted long in tamer captivity even with Tuya's help. While most of the Celegans had been pale folk with dark hair and eyes, the Atmana had looked somewhat more like Tuya. They didn't have her complexion, sandy brown like where the sea kissed the sand. They were more of a reddish-brown like the bark of the big trees back in the Hollows. Like most folk she'd ever seen, outside of Darrakh's sunshine-colored curls, they had dark hair like her too.

The Atmana, Tuya projected. Yaha taught me about them.

Her silver eyes grew moist at the thought of Yaha. She bit her lip to keep from crying out.

She would've loved seeing you here, Batu communed. Free.

But never free of this pain Tuya thought to herself, clutching the pearl on a seashell necklace that had been Yaha's, a gift from her spearmate Olono who died the day Tuya met them. She breathed in, like her first mother, Zaya, had taught her so many seasons ago, before Sarnai showed her what it meant to have a friend, before Masarga taught her what it was like to be someone's mother, before Darrakh showed what it was like to be someone's spearmate.

But Gurgaldai and his tamers took them all away from her. She hadn't seen Zaya in more than half the seasons of her life, since the rainy day Tamer Zalmug took her away from her. Given the life span of most women in the Celegan Hollows, that they were constantly bred and immediately killed if they produced a girl babe, it was unlikely Zaya still drew breath. Darrakh was gone, dead by Tuya's spear when Gurg had tamed him and forced his body to fight Yaha. Yaha herself died a few days later, trading her life so that Tuya might escape Gurg's chimaera.

Tuya hoped Masarga lived, that Gurg didn't hunt down every last one of the wilders Tuya and Masarga had trained in the seasons before she flew away. She wanted so badly to reach out to her, to let Masarga know she was in the faraway lands. She had the power and the connection to find her. Masarga had a strong mind sense, stronger than any Tuya knew besides her own and Gurg's. If Tuya took her mind to the Hollows, if Masarga lived, she'd find her.

But Tuya couldn't. For Masarga's safety, Tuya mustn't seek her. For the safety of all the wilders in the Hollows, Tuya must not let Gurg find her. It felt like suffering pain and knowing the numbroot was there to ease it, but if you took the numbroot you'd never feel good again. All Tuya could do was hope that her little wilder was alive. She knew she'd be doing the best she could, and knew that it would always be good enough.

Tuya didn't feel hollow. Love didn't make one hollow, even when losing it left holes in your wholeness. This must be what Zaya had felt that day, wishing you could be there for your daughter when she faced horrors every day but believing that she was strong enough to face them.

We will help your women, Batu transmitted. But first we must help ourselves.

Batu was right. That didn't make Tuya's tears stop falling. Through the veil of sorrow, she sought water. Creeping along the branch, finding other angles to examine the land below this dense canopy, she found a strong flowing river in the distance.

There.

Batu suppressed the urge to caw. Any two-legs? They act like water is theirs.

Tuya was already ahead of him. There were millions upon millions of life forms crowding her mind sense, making it very hard to detect any specific creature unless she knew what to look for. She sought out large life pulses, typically associated with creatures that had higher sentience like people or great eagles or, unfortunately, chimaeras.

Tuya found only one in the area of the river besides herself and Batu. A wolf. A particularly strong one.

Batu projected humor, as if insulted. Keep your pointy tree close, sister. One wolf is nothing to worry about. Might even taste better here with all these colorful creatures to chew on.

Tuya grasped her spear, held in the loop of her tattered wolf hides. Yaha taught her well in the ways of the Mahagan Spears. With her ability to sense her foes with wilding and her ability to anticipate the future with her lightseer eyes, one wolf ought to be nothing worth of worries. Her mother had been cautious, but she'd also taught Tuya to never doubt what she was capable of. That seed had grown and she needed to keep nurturing it now that the person that gave it light and water was gone. A wolf would make for a good sustenance for her belly and her mind.

She scanned the canopy. In the Hollows, Yaha had been able to traverse the treetops because she could jump with Zafrir's blessings pushing her skyward and letting her fall without the ground hitting her back. Here, in Great Atmana, the canopy was so dense that a surefooted athlete could navigate vertically as well as horizontally. Tuya traced a trail in her mind, her eyes and mind seeing the path down from this several hundred-foot height in moments. The trees were wet, but Tuya reckoned that if she fell at any point, she'd be able to grasp something, trusting her heightened reflexes to preserve her.

How about a race, brother?

Amusement, pure and prideful, pulsed from the great eagle. Two-legs cannot keep pace with my wings. I'll have the whole river licked dry before you get there.

Careful, Batu. Yaha always said pride precedes plummet.

You be careful, Two-legs. Plummeting is nothing to fear when you have wings. Where are yours?

Batu was very pleased with himself. Tuya almost felt sad to humble him.

Humble me? You can't humble confidence like mine, sister. It is a part of me. Like my wings.

One bird's confidence is one woman's arrogance, Tuya pulsed, grinning as love and humor built up within the link, their congruence making the feelings more intense from the contagion.

I'm pleased you recognize yourself as arrogant. Very self-aware. For a two-legs.

Tuya chuckled, patting his wing. "I think you'll find me tougher game to best than that orange shrieker."

I don't know. The meat was tough, barely anything before the bone. Hence, my continued hunger. A thing that will be gone while you're still stuck in a tree wishing you'd gone with me.

How many fish do you think you'll need to be satisfied?

Why? Do you want me to make sure I save some for you?

Tuya laughed, Batu's joy also thrumming through their link. I don't know if I can keep up with you, she transmitted.

That's what I've been trying to tell you. Climb on, sister.

I can use the exercise. Besides, you can use the humility.

Why? It won't fill me nearly as much as you eating your false sense of having a hope.

I wonder what your tears will taste like, brother.

You'll have to rub some dirt in my eye then. I'll make sure to scrape some up for you when you start getting close.

The only thing I need to rub in your eye is the sight of me spearing fish while you're trying to navigate this canopy. Many have underestimated me, Batu of the Flower Tree. Yet here I stand where they never imagined I would.

Tuya gazed into the forest, a tear gliding down her cheek. She was in the faraway lands. She had flown away from the place she began, where she was treated like less than dirt. This beautiful place full of life promised many discoveries even though Tuya made no promises whether she'd stay here long. She made no promises at all, but her heart knew what it wanted.

Crying already? You haven't even lost yet?

Tuya wiped at her eyes with a dry, dirty hand. Nor will I. I'm going to win, Batu.

She didn't think of the river several hundred feet below and through the forest. Her mind returned to the beautiful blue-eyed man atop Celegana's Spire. The man that had already begun taming the Great Atmana Forest, this spectacular wonderland where the trees didn't have holes. The man that would bring the pain of the Hollows to every corner of this world.

I'm going to win, she repeated to herself, spear in one hand while she clutched Yaha's pearl in the other.

Tuya shot through the treetops, like a spear thrust in lion form. She would prove wrong those that underestimated her. Starting with a cocky bird who overestimated the value of his enormous wings in a forest as dense as the Great Atmana and who underestimated a girl unlike any other and exactly like every other.

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