Chapter 4
Dark and Light

Maldonden agreed to let Diaga and I stay to watch the Agles and the Shadrows celebrate their entry into the Elemental Plane. The other Saichens were wary of Diaga and held their children close to themselves when we walked together.
“Mother Ashna, why are the Saichens afraid of me? The Mawkawins won’t put feathers in my hair anymore,” she asked on one of our walks outside the village.
“You did something that they didn’t like dear Diaga.” I told her with my hand on her head. She pulled away from me and sat on a large boulder.
“What did I do? I asked Sevus and Duken why they were fighting and they said it was to bring up their resistance to pain. I asked them what pain was and Sevus pinched me,” she showed me the mark on her arm. “I told them that I could help them so I shocked them.”
“You…shocked them?” I knew Diaga was doing something strange with her hand, but I never knew she was Moving an Element.
“Yeah,” she began as if she was reminiscing on a fond story, “I saw him Ashna, I saw Airos and I just Moved him. He resisted a bit, but he let me shock them.” Her eyes sparkled and a cruel smile curved her mouth, making her look like some twisted monster. I was confused by Diaga’s actions. She was only a child and she was finding pleasure in hurting things.
“Diaga? Why?” I was worried about my child. My child…. I was worried?
“I dunno… they wanted to be strong against pain.”
We walked back to the village in silence and a new feeling overwhelmed me, guilt. I was thinking about the time I met Diaga. Was she suppose to die then? Did the man know more than he let on about her mother? Why was I there to rescue her? What controlled that coincidence? Was she going to be something that caused more than pain to young pups? We stepped on the elevator that took us to the treetops. Diaga looked to me with childish curiosity.
“Mother Ashna, what’s wrong?” she tugged at my robes. “Are you sad?” Sadness, another feeling, why did I choose to live amongst the mortals like my kin? They were too complicated. The elevator stopped at the top of the tree. A Seadowe, a man-thing with large fin ears and a dorsal fin down his back that turn into a tail, skitted side ways on his webbed feet to avoid Diaga. He almost lost balance and grabbed a branch with his hand that was also webbed. His blue skin turned a deep purple with embarrassment.
“Pardon me,” he said and his large eyes looked down to the ground as he hurried off. Diaga started to cry.
“Why are they afraid of me? I did nothing wrong!” she buried her face into my robes. “They asked me to!” she wailed, “They asked me!” I picked Diaga up and hurried to our hut. Once inside I began to rock her in my arms.
“Calm down Diaga. Everything will be alright.” I cooed to her.
Please stop crying, you’re making my head hurt so much.

The entire village was decorated in ribbons and banners. Shops set up to sale various goods and trinkets and there were games to be played. The village opened its gates to the Elementalist colony outside the edge of the forest. To Elementalist, it was an opportunity to study the Saichen culture and learn more secrets about the Elements. During this time of celebration, the Saichens had forgotten Diaga’s incident and Sevus and Duken were eager to play with her once more, but she suddenly became distant and hid herself in her room.
“Diaga! Come on out! We forgive you. Let’s play! There are pups like you out here as well! You should come out.” Sevus and Duken stood by her door and looked at her curled up figure on the mat. “Please?” When she didn’t answer, they shrugged and went to play with the Elementalist children. I took their place by the door.  
“Diaga?” I called to her. She shivered on the floor. I walked over to her and placed my hand over her head thinking that she was ill. Her body was drenched in a sweat and skin was hot to the touch.
“Sevus!” I called and he came rushing in. “Go and get Lucnas and tell him to bring his kit, Diaga is ill.” He nodded and rushed away. I brushed Diaga’s hair out of her eyes, which had become fogged and distant.
“Diaga, Diaga? Speak to me. Let me know that you’re still here.”
Lucnas entered with a sack. He was an Agle, something that looked like a feathered lizard with wings and no tail, but tail feathers. He crouched down beside me and placed his clawed hand on Diaga’s head. He was the village doctor and sometimes aided the Elementalist.
“She has a fever, alright.” He said, as he looked her over. “Now to find the cause.” Diaga squirmed in pain. “Pupils are dilated, skin is tinged green… poison perhaps… pain when touched…it’s in the nerves….” He muttered these things under his breath. I waited in the corner of the room. Perhaps death was making another grab at her soul.
Lucnas gently removed Diaga’s robes and turned her on her side to take a look at her back. When he found nothing, he looked at her arms and legs. At last he found what he was looking for.
“Spider bite, from the Black Jewel. I’ve seen several cases of this in the Elementalist village. It’s easy to cure, but deadly if not. She’ll be up and playing in time of the ceremony.” He handed me a vial of medicine and told me administer her several drops to her in the morning and before bed. In the mean time, Diaga was to stay in doors to rest. Sevus crouched down beside Diaga.
“Soon you’ll can come and play!” he smiled at her and she smiled back through her tears. Something bothered me about her smile.

Diaga was starting to feel better a day before the ceremony and I permitted her to go outside. I kept a watchful eye on her though, in case she decided to play another nasty trick. She still had the chills and wore an over sized robe, making her thin body look thinner. Sevus and Duken yelped in joy when she arrived at the pool. It was a place where the Seadowes lived and provided water to the rest of the village. The water was found on a rocky cliff that was at the same level with the village and multiple bridges connected them together.  
Duken and Sevus hugged their friend. She winched in pain, but was happy for their company.
“Diaga! Diaga! Look at what the Seadowes are selling!” said Duken excitedly. He took her hand and led her to one of the shops with Sevus following close behind. I hoped that her illness would hinder her ability to Move the Elements.
Someone tapped me on my shoulder. I turned around and found myself face to face with the highly decorated chief of the Elementalists.
“Ashna I presume?” he said with his head held high. I nodded, not lowering my gaze. His cold silver eyes stared into my own.
“Yes.” I answered him, “And you must be chief Grivwire.”
“That I am,” he said with a smile, “May we walk?” He held out his hand to me. I looked over my shoulder to see Diaga laughing and smiling with her friends as they examined necklaces in the shop. I turned to Grivwire.
“Not far, I wish to keep Diaga in my sight.” I took his hand and he led me to one of tables beside the pool.
“I wish to speak about Diaga,” he said to me. “The Saichens claim that she is an Elementalist, a powerful one. Is this true?” I was uneasy around this man; he seemed to want the full control over the Elements that surrounded him.
“Yes, she is an Elementalist. Her mother was killed by humans, four and a half cycles ago.” Grivwire’s jaw tightened. “The humans who murdered her are dead, taken by my own hands.”
“So you murder as well?” he asked me. I was shocked, I never thought of it that way.
“N-no, I took their lives because they were going to kill Diaga if I didn’t.” What about the mob? Did they deserve to die as well?  Grivwire placed his elbows on the table with his fingertips pressed together. His cold steel eyes pierced me as he looked at me with seriousness.
“That was the point. Diaga, as you call her, is not natural.” He said in an under tone voice. “Her mother, my wife,” he shuttered at the word, “Found it far more pleasurable to love a Darkheart than her Pureheart husband. She is a Darkheart spawn. We ousted her and her mother out of our village. The impure thing would taint us all.”
I was stunned. My mouth moved to speak, but I lost the ability to do so. I knew what Darkhearts and Purehearts were. They were basically spirits who took mortal forms. I knew that they mated together. I finally found my voice.
“Diaga is not tainted. A Pureheart and a Darkheart does not make an evil. They balance each other out.”
“Do you know nothing about the Elements?” he said a bit louder and those that surrounded him quivered. Some Saichens at near by tables looked around for the disturbance.
“I have lived for thousands of years, Grivwire, I am kin to the Embodiments. Do not tell me that I know nothing about them.”
“The Light and the Dark do not balance, neither does the Fire and Water or the Earth and Air.”
I laughed, I laughed loudly. “Look around you! You’re in a village where they must balance in order to live.” Grivwire was getting angry, I could see it in his face and I could feel it on the Plane.
“Our people have spent thousands of years since the beginning of the Elemental Realms trying to understand what makes the Elements behave the way they do, Ashna. And over those thousands of years they have saw the Elements change. They don’t behave the same way anymore.” His face had gotten close to mine, “What makes them do that? If we can find out, we can control them to behave the way we want them to.”  He stood up and stormed away. Some Saichens flinched at his energy draw. What did he mean by the Elements not behaving the same anymore? Was this connected to my dream?
Diaga came running up to me squealing with joy. “Look Ashna, look what Sevus bought me!”  She showed me a pearl stringed necklace with an eight-pointed star as a charm. “It’s our friendship necklace! I bought one for him too!”  She squealed again and ran off to play. It was good to see her back to acting like a child instead of some tainted being that humans made up for their stories.
Later on that evening as I was putting Diaga to bed, Grivwire arrived to apologize for his actions.
“I did not intend to offend you, Ashna,” he said over a cup of juice I had made for him. “But it’s frustrating not knowing what the Elements are doing.”
“What are they doing?” I asked him as I sat across from him.
“They’re being difficult. They don’t respond to us. I’m surprise the Saichens are even around.” He took a sip of his drink. “You mention that you were kin to the Elements, perhaps you can speak with them?”
“How? I don’t know where to find them.” The truth be told, I never really had spoken to my siblings.
“We could summon them, but they’re unresponsive.” Grivwire pondered for a moment. “Tomorrow is the Agle and Shadrow entrance into the Plane, maybe you should go with them?”
“Maybe I should, but who will watch Diaga? I am afraid she might lapse into one of her moods.”
“I can watch her… I am her father…in a way.” He finished his drink and bade me farewell.
The Dark and the Light don’t balance, Dark consumes the Light.

“But Mother Ashna, I wanna go into the Plane too.” Diaga whined. “Please?”
“No,” I told her as we walk on the bridges leading to the center of the village, “You are too young and still ill. You will stay with Chief Grivwire and behave until this is through.”
“But I don’t wanna stay with him, he scares me.” She clutch to my robes with a fierce grip when we met up with Grivwire.
“Hello.” He said to her, but she hid her face. “Come on now, I won’t bite. Ashna tells me you are quite the Elementalist. I can teach you a few tricks.” In his hand he held a small flame of fire. This broke Diaga’s shyness a bit and she reached out to touch the flame. He put it out with the snap of his fingers. “Now if you want to learn, you must come with me and let Ashna do her duty.” She slowly moved away from me and took Grivwire’s outstretched hand.
“Behave yourself.” I told her as she looked at me with water eyes. Grivwire led her away.
There was dancing and singing at the center of the village. The Agles and Shadrows, which looked like faint ghost in the noon sun, dance together in uniform, symbolizing the balance between Dark and Light. I joined them in their chants and dance. Other Saichens had begun as well. The night and day were equal, balanced, but something unexpected occurred.
My mind was hazy with the euphoria of my fellow dancers, we moved as one and I felt the Body I created fading. I once again was becoming an Embodiment to the Unknown; I lost my gender, my feelings, my identity. The sky was turning black, the dancing stopped, but the Elements did not cease moving. I lost all awareness of who and what I was.

The sun was eclipsed; this never happened before, the object of the night over powered the object of the day. The Elementalist panicked. The dancing Saichens had all become nothing more that a swirling miasma of color. Those Saichens who did not join the Entrance stood in awe. In the middle of the mist danced Ashna’s Body. The Elements danced with her in the twilight created by the moon. She was controlling them.

The world was a swirling color of Elements and how they bonded with each other. They followed It, It told them when to make the trees grow, It told them when to drop the sun and raise the moon, It set for them when mating was due and when birth was to happen, It set the date to die, It saw everything, the past the present the future. Because It was Time.
The Dark consumed the Light. The Balance was upset because They were afraid. Afraid of doing things that shouldn’t be done and They couldn’t stop it. They didn’t have the power to. It wasn’t Their right. Those who controlled Time could though…

I had awoken from my dream, shivering with the realization of what I was. My body was froze in mid-dance and the Saichens surrounding me where taking their original forms. They were laughing with energy pulsating through them. I straitened out. Grivwire rushed to me with Diaga in his arms.
“Well? Did you talk to them?” I took Diaga from him and rushed away from him. “Ashna? What happened?”
I was the Embodiment of Time and I could change everything about the Realms.  I collapsed in a corner of my hut with Diaga in my arms. I rocked her as I cried, overwhelmed by what I witness. Who else controlled my Element and how was I to find them? What were they doing to cause my brothers to go into hiding? Why was the Dark consuming the Light?

The balance is upset and there is nothing you can do about it.