Seifer calls them a coven once, when he thinks they are out of earshot, and Rinoa doesn't know if he means it as a compliment.

It hearkens back to a time, after all, when The Sorceress was more powerful, and more fearful. Before Zefer and his Sorceress, and before the decades of quiet that came between her and Adel, when no one knew what to think, when one savior was not enough to undo a history's worth of fear.

She tries to see them through an observer's eyes. Edea, tall and wise, clad in all black with silver-streaked hair. Herself, the mirror, with a white duster than has replaced the blue one she wore during the war. And Elle. Their light. Neither a part of the succession, nor fully outside it.

She tries to see them, when they gather near the rocks at the foot of the lighthouse. Where they trade stories, and try to make sense of their past.

Sometimes, the stories are good. Edea has years of connection to the source, after all. Years in which she healed, when she read planet and people for their hurts, and though her magic may be gone, she is a mentor for Rinoa, already so in tune with the world. Edea teaches her how to use her gift. She teaches her that it is a gift, that it does not have to be a curse, and she teaches Ellone how to control hers. They share the pain they feel from others, so as not to carry the burden on one woman's shoulders alone.

And often, the stories are bad. The feeling of losing control, that they all have felt in some way. The feeling of sharing your thoughts with another, across time and space. The horrors of possession. Edea learns to speak of the time Ultimecia stole her body, and Rinoa and Ellone cry in each other's arms, when they relive those terrible moments when Rinoa was junctioned to Adel. When they all saw the world through the eyes of a tyrant, when they felt, through arms that were not their own, the motion of spells meant to torture, maim, kill. When the maddening thoughts were their thoughts.

So maybe, they are a coven of storybooks. They gather, after all, to cleanse.

.

"Is what we are doing dangerous?" she asks Squall one night, walking down the beach with her fingers loosely threaded through his, sea foam clinging to their ankles in the starlight.

"Would not doing it be dangerous?"

She is about to answer, when she is hit with a second meaning to his response, and then a third, and then she tightens her grip on his hand, and he stops walking and pulls her close. His skin is warm against hers and she takes several deep breaths, trying to clear her mind. Of the evil she has seen, of the evil she may be preventing—or creating—with every thought she has towards her powers.

When the tightness in her chest is finally gone, they start to walk again.

Somewhere down the shore, the rising tide washes away four sets of footprints, where Squall stood with them earlier. Lover, sister, mother, and he their grounding force, in their never-ending quest for peace.

For The Successor Challenge 2017