Chapter 66 part 2

Jenn sighed as she lay down on her mattress. Ever since Embris had moved into the building that she slept in, she'd rarely had any time to herself in there. This was one of the rare occasions that she was alone in the room. A small blessing that she was grateful for.

It had been three whole months since the snowfall had started in the mountainous world that her people had started to build a settlement. Jenn planned on going over there the next day to take a look to see if the weather was cooperative as well as what kind of damage might have been inflicted on the structures they'd left behind.

She hoped nothing had happened to them and that other than their lack of supplies being a problem, that nothing would have actually occurred to them if they'd have stayed. She wasn't absolutely convinced that would be the case, but she at least hoped it would.

The centaurs had been more helpful than Jenn had expected, even though Chonyne had to return almost immediately, without her having any time alone to say good-bye to Blossom. Not that Jenn was really surprised, given how the other centaurs had watched them like hawks, as if they were troublemakers and had to be supervised constantly.

One centaur had actually seemed to make it a point to find an excuse or reason, Jenn couldn't ever be sure which it actually was, to talk with her. It was the centaur born under the Time Star. The one that knew all about the stars and had declared Jenn to have been born under the Demon star. Although, she'd yet to explain anything about what that may or may not have meant for Jenn.

Her name was Star, which Jenn though seemed rather redundant, but at the same time, she wasn't going to criticize how the names were selected. She just hoped that she wouldn't need to listen to an explanation about why or how she came to have that name.

Not that Jenn felt it really mattered. So long as she stayed on friendly terms with them, then she thought that things would stay good enough.

"I thought I'd find you in here," Star said as she stared to walk in the building without so much as asking for permission. Which was something others had been complaining about and Jenn suspected that the centaurs didn't find it rude, as with how their own shelters seemed more open.

Plus, she recalled how she and Embris had been in one of the shelters and when the other centaurs came over, they didn't bother knocking or asking for permission to enter. Instead, they just entered as if that was the most normal thing to do. Which Jenn hadn't even thought of until she started to have to field complaints about it happening with others.

"Need something?" Jenn asked, wishing the conversation was over already. Even though she didn't know what was on Star's mind.

"Yes, I thought I would let you know that the… uh, elevators you wanted others to build are able to bring people up to the top of the trees and I was wondering if you would be willing to take me up there," Star said, sounding a little unsure when she mentioned the 'elevators' which Jenn fully understood, since she doubted that anyone present among her people, other than Rick, would know what they were. "It's been too long since I was able to consult the stars."

Jenn nodded. "I can, but that's not going to be the primary reason for them, you understand?"

"Of course. You built them for your people. The kind of thing anyone born under the demon star would do."

Jenn sighed, not wanting to get into that. If she did, she was sure that she'd be put to sleep by a dissertation about those born under the demon star as well as everything that that fact entailed.

"Well, I guess I could let you take a ride up with me while I go take a look myself," Jenn replied as she started to get up, wondering if the ropes used to make them would hold the weight of a centaur. She hadn't thought about any of that until that moment. Largely because she hadn't thought about having a centaur go up there in the first place.

"Soon we'll also need you to introduce us to the one you're afraid of us coming to the knowledge of," Star said as Jen neared the door, startling her.

"Wait, what?!" Jenn yelped in surprise, as if her foot had been stepped on.

"Just what I said," Star replied, as if that was the most normal thing to have said in the first place.

Jenn sighed. She had wanted to keep Versith from knowing about them, but if the centaurs wanted her to know about them, would that mean that she should? If nothing else, it would make it easier to go to and from that world, since she wouldn't need to worry about Versith from learning about it with her already knowing about it.

However, she couldn't say that Versith might try to impose restrictions on that, so it might be difficult to even return Blossom to Chonyne in that case.

"Is that why you wanted to see the stars?" Jenn asked, understanding a little more about Star's reasoning for wanting to go above the trees, since the mist had kept her from being able to see the stars since she'd arrived on this world.

"In part," Star answered calmly. "I still wanted to see them so I can feel their comforting gaze. That they're still directing us, even on a world far from where we're from."

Jenn had a feeling she was talking about the centaurs rather than including Jenn and her people with that. Though, she couldn't be sure, but she also had a feeling that staying close to Star was an important thing to do. Why she felt that way, she couldn't explain. It somehow felt like it was even more important than the feeling of what she needed to do in order to keep Beth from getting killed like in the dream that she'd had.

"Well, follow me then," Jenn said, hoping she'd be able to figure out an excuse to not only go up herself, which she'd been trying to do since she'd proposed the project, but also to let Star up as well.

Jenn made her way over, not sure if she wouldn't need to go through Tchisa about this, just so she could at least have the semblance of an excuse to go up herself. She'd wanted to avoid that, but it was the only surefire way she could think of. After all, unless she went out as the Blue Rose, she wouldn't be able to have any real authority over anyone that hadn't been assigned to her. She had the rank of 'Captain,' but that hardly helped her out any in regards to things like this.

She hoped that it wouldn't require any special permission, but other than having gotten the project started, she hadn't had any involvement, so she couldn't say for sure that she'd have an easy time going up the elevators.

"Why did you want these in the first place?" Star asked as they walked across the village towards the primitive elevators.

Jenn shrugged. She'd had an idea, but after having gotten everyone excited about the idea of the elevators, she realized that it probably wasn't practical, given they didn't have the means to do everything that she'd had in mind. Such as using the elevators to carry materials for the towers up to the top of the trees and then lower them down onto the towers. Materials like large wooden beams that would be difficult to otherwise get them towards the top of the towers as they were being built.

While she'd had an idea of building a city on top of the trees, she hadn't really felt like it was a good time to start on that, but she couldn't help but wonder if maybe that would start on its own anyway, whether she wanted it to or not, since she'd opened up the top of the trees with the elevators.

"What is it that you're thinking of?" Star asked, almost sounding like a mentor, rather than how she usually sounded to Jenn.

Jenn shrugged, not sure how to explain it. "Just some thoughts about how what I wanted the elevators for might not be as useful as I'd thought."

"Why's that? Surely you'd have thought of ways to make them viable for what you'd wanted them for, right?"

Jenn shook her head, not sure how to explain it. She'd had in mind small platforms that would be used to lift them up into the trees, which maybe would be big enough for Star in be lifted up, but otherwise, she couldn't say that the elevators would be able to lift up the wooden beams that they would need for the construction of the towers. Or at least in regards to how the others had mentioned in the meetings that they'd had in regards to planning out the building of the towers.

Finally she settled on a simple answer, clichéd as it was. "It's complicated."

Jenn imagined the elevators to have been small platforms raised up and lowered by ropes. She didn't expect them to be very big, as the more space on it, the more weight the ropes would be required to bear. As such, she couldn't imagine it being very effective at bringing up the construction materials for the towers.

In fact, she couldn't even recall why she thought it was a good idea in the first place.

However, when she reached the location they were built at, she felt stunned. Not only were the platforms much wider than she'd expected, at least ten feet square, but the looked like the ropes were made out of metal. She wasn't sure where all that metal came from, but it certainly wasn't what she'd expected.

By the elevator, she saw Tchisa was already inspecting it. As she approached, she couldn't help but wonder if this might actually work. That it wasn't as bad of an idea as she'd started thinking it was, even though she was pretty sure that the beams of wood were probably going to be too much for the platform itself.

Not that she said anything. She certainly didn't want Tchisa to think that Jenn hadn't expected her idea to work at all, since she had thought it would work. At the time she brought it up, she thought it would, but since then she'd realized some of the problems with it and started to doubt how well it would work.

Until she forgot about it due to other things that required her attention at the time.

"Ready to go up and see what it's like on top of a blackwood tree?" Tchisa asked, nearly making Jenn jump when she realized the woman was talking to her.

"Uh, yeah," she replied tentatively. "Though, Star said she'd like to go with us as well."

Tchisa nodded like she expected that to happen. Though Jenn wasn't sure if she was just making it seem like she thought that or if she was rolling with events better than Jenn felt that she herself was doing.

"Naturally, I mean, she did mention to me about wanting to see the stars of this world before she returned through the gate to her own world," Tchisa replied, making Jenn feel like she wasn't aware of things going on in the world like she should have been, which just illustrated more to the point of why she should be in charge in the first place.

"Remember, only you are born under the demon star," Star reminded Jenn, placing a hand on Jenn's shoulder. "That alone makes you worthy."

"What's that centaur talking about?" One of the other women nearby asked.

"Not a clue," another replied. "Help me with this."

Jenn couldn't say that she was worried about those working on the elevator to know about what Star really meant about her being born under the demon star, since she recognized them as part of those she'd saved when she'd first gotten herself out of slavery herself.

"They're almost ready to take us up there," Tchisa said, pulling Jenn's attention away from them. Though, Jenn was at least happy that everyone had seemed to have accepted the word 'centaur' as a part of their vocabularies instead of coming up with something else.

Jenn nodded, starting to feel a little uneasy about how this would turn out.

The metal ropes certainly seemed promising, but she couldn't say that she fully trusted the wooden platform. No matter how thick it was. She couldn't be sure that she'd essentially signed her own death warrant with this, but she certainly hoped that she was just being paranoid about this whole thing. Although, no matter how uneasy she was about it, since it was her idea, she didn't feel that she should let someone else face the danger while she'd watch from the safety of the sidelines. That would be the coward's way out as far as she was concerned.

When the elevator was ready, Jenn kept a hand on Star's lower shoulder, mostly because she needed something sturdy to hold on to and Star was the sturdies thing that came to mind that was on the elevator. Aside from the fact that she knew Tchisa was with Polelin, since they had her perform the ceremony already. Which still felt weird to her for some reason she couldn't quite explain.

As the village below them got smaller and smaller until the leaves of the giant trees around them blocked them from view a few minutes before they reached the mist ceiling of the forest, Jenn could feel her heart pounding faster and faster until she worried that it might just pop out of her chest, if it didn't crush itself in the process.

Then before she knew it, the sky opened up around them as they rose above the mist. Jenn couldn't help but feel bad for those who had to climb the trees all the way up here in order to get the elevator hooked up to rise this far. She felt lucky that no one had died in the process. Especially since she recalled how high they were when they first reached the mist.

The sky was an afternoon sky, with the sun getting ready to set. Which Jenn couldn't help but feel was rather beautiful among the mist and tree tops that still extended at least another twenty feet or more above the mist.

"Jenn, there's more to see," Tchisa said, snapping Jenn out of her admiration for the view.

As Jenn looked, she saw that a platform had been constructed, partially using the base of some of the branches on the tree to support it. Then there was a bridge that led out over the space between two trees.

As Jenn stepped off the elevator and onto the platform, she couldn't help but wonder if this was an extension of her people's interpretation of her idea with the elevator and to use that to take the beams to the towers so they could be lowered into place from above the mist.

She couldn't say that she wasn't impressed or surprised by it, especially when she had no idea where they got the materials for all this, since she certainly hadn't had heard anything mentioned in the meetings about more resources for construction.

"We've been building homes for those who're working up here," one of the young women that had helped bring the elevator up said. "Though, our primary focus has been to create a path to where the headquarters tower will be so se can take the materials over there and lower them as we need to."

Jenn wasn't sure how long that process would take, since it was about a day's walk on the ground to get to that area from where they were, so she wasn't sure if that would be feasible before they were supposed to really start working on building it. Although, she supposed that they could work some of it closer to the ground, since the mist was in fact rather high up off the ground and it would probably be easier than sending them down from up at this height until it started to get just a little taller and closer to the mist itself.

As they approached what Jenn could see was a house built on the side of the tree above the platform, with a ladder leading from the platform to the structure. Sounds could also be heard coming from the structure, letting Jenn know that someone was enjoying a break from whatever it was that they were supposed to be doing and instead engaging in a more intimate activity.

Though, unless she looked, she wouldn't be able to be certain that whoever was making the noises was in fact alone or not. Which Jenn certainly wasn't going to do. Mostly because she couldn't think of a reason to actually take a look.

Besides, it wasn't like she cared that much what everyone did at every part of the day.

"We should have a house that you can… uh… shit," the young woman who spoke earlier started to say, until her gaze reached Star.

"I will be fine, human," Star said, almost like she was above it all. "I will stay out here waiting for the stars to come out."

"A nap sounds good," Tchisa remarked before nodding at the young woman who took it to mean fro her to show them the way. Though, Jenn only realized that as the young woman started to do that without saying anything more as they started to cross the bridge.

Jenn also made sure to keep as far from the edge as she could, since they didn't seem to have gotten any handrails set up and Jenn certainly didn't like the thought of how high they were and how far any fall from that height would take. Even if she'd be able to use her magic to make sure that she survived before she landed at the bottom.