Beyond Hope 42
Mother Maples jerked involuntarily, where she sat near Snowpepper’s unconscious body. It was imperative that the faerie not be disturbed, and she immediately calmed herself, but what had just happened in the parallel timeline had bled into her awareness and rocked her with its implications.
Winkling’s message from the Queen was deeply disturbing. Clearly, the situation must be dealt with, very soon. She fervently hoped that Snowpepper and Sylvie would return promptly so she could turn her full attention to it, but she was only too aware there was no guarantee they would return at all.
While she told the faerie that the fifth card meant that they would be successful, she hadn’t told her the whole truth. Snowpepper needed to believe, for the magic of faith might ultimately make the difference between return and being lost forever. What she hadn’t shared with Snowpepper was that the positive meaning of each card’s image was conditional upon the previous one having been successfully resolved. It was indeed possible that the two could get stuckâ€â€permanentlyâ€â€on any of the stages depicted in the cards, lost in a causal loop that would repeat itself over and over, trapping both Snowpepper and Sylvie in the dream world.
In her heart, Mother Maples had been less sanguine than she had appeared. The fourth card in particular worried her, and though the final card gave her some cause for hope, she wasn’t certain that the two parts of the Sylvie/Snowpepper entity could achieve the resolution demanded by that very perilous card. At this point, however, all she could do was wait.
Breathing deeply, she turned her mind to the message she just received on the parallel timeline from the Queen. The situation must be extreme indeed, if her haughty, proudly independent sister was actually calling to her for help.