The spirit shook her head. Not visibly, of course, but Dasha could feel the intent. 

"No. Actually, I am her twin."

"...You've got to be kidding me."

"Why is that so hard to believe?"

Dasha opened her nonexistent mouth, but she couldn't come up with a response. 

"I- I don't know, it just is!"

Dasha felt the other woman's gaze upon her, and she shrank uncomfortably, looking for a place to hide.

Fia's aunt let out a sighing whistle. 

"It's normal, you know. To feel vulnerable. You need to be on the brink of death to be allowed to cross over here, and one's spirit isn't really meant to be stretched out like this. But the judgment is ultimately not ours."

"So there is someone else watching!"

"Not exactly. It is a complicated matter. I'm afraid I do not understand it all myself, even after all of this time."

"All of this- How long have you been doing this?"

"Since I was very small. But I have been trapped here since I was nineteen- Do not panic!" She hastily added, sensing Dasha's horrified expression. "You will be able to safely return to your body, I swear it."

Dasha had not even thought of that yet. It was hard to think straight anymore. How she was here, where here even was, how to get back, if she was alive or dead... 

But the oath. Oaths were not a thing to be taken lightly, and there was a determined weight behind the woman's words that sent shivers down Dasha's spine. 

Fia's aunt looked at her again, her gaze softening. 

"Do not be afraid. I know this must all seem very strange to you, and that far too much has happened in such a short time, but I will aid you, to the best that I am able. Do you wish to return the others to the valley?" 

Dasha took a full three seconds to try and process any of this. Nope, too tired, too alien, too... The fact that she couldn't think of a third descriptor was probably more proof of her rapidly dwindling stamina. 

She would deal with whatever this was later- Provided it didn't all turn out to be some dying dream. 

She nodded. "Noonin and Fia, you said we could help them get back home safely?" 

"Yes, in the same manner which you and he were rescued from the monsters and sent to the cavern tunnels instead." Fia's aunt gestured towards the purple thread. "We are going to teleport them."

Dasha wondered if an incorporeal spirit could faint from sheer frustration. She just wanted five seconds to go by without something happening that radically altered her life, or her perception of the world and reality, was that too much to ask? 

She looked back at Noonin and Fia, still traversing the mountains by moonlight. Fia was swaying and stumbling in place, clearly falling asleep as she walked. Noonin had no idea how to carry her with only one arm, though Dasha could tell he was considering it by the way he looked between his arm and the child.

"Dasha?" Fia's aunt drew her attention back again, her tone even and gentle. "I need you to focus, we don't have an unlimited amount of time."

"Teleportation isn't real. It's the sort of thing you read about in stories." Dasha flatly grumbled.

Fia's aunt twitched her lips, amused. As a spirit, Dasha could literally feel the mirth radiating from her. It tasted warm and sour, like citrus juice with sugar on a hot day.

"Out of curiosity, after you started sensing things that you couldn't see, and then after you started to see the sigils and signs that write the form of this world, and then after your spirit was torn out of your body to join me here, I have to know: Just how did your mind decide that teleportation, of all things, was where you drew the hard line of impossible at?" 

"...Listen, I've been attacked three times today, I've witnessed three deaths, one of them not real, and I think I can taste my eyeballs if I poke my not currently existing tongue in the right direction. Don't expect a whole lot of logic from me right now, okay?" 

"Fair enough!" 

Fia's aunt laughed, and Dasha was gently buffeted up and down by the ripples of her enthusiasm.

"How are ya so..." Dasha clamped her mouth shut. She at least had enough presence of mind to be tactful.

Fia's aunt caught her anyway. "What? Go on, speak."

"I mean, your sister is dead, your niece is wandering about in monster country, and your spirit is trapped away from its body out here. How are you acting so... I don't know, this?"

"Oh..." She suddenly sounded smaller, more subdued. "...Another time, perhaps. Memory is a painful thing to recall. Suffice to say, I have grown accustomed to my helplessness."

Dasha thought of how most of her childhood had gone, born cursed as a plague-wing, and unable to change a single thing about it all. Her heart ached, and she nodded sympathetically.  

"All right. Now you said that we were getting them home safely?"

"Yes. And you."

"Me?"

"Did I not swear to you, that you would go back again in safety?"

"Well yeah, but- No, nevermind, you're right, you did promise. Carry on."

Fia's aunt clapped her hands. "Right! There is a long and convoluted explanation for how this works that you would no doubt find absolutely fascinating, however in the interest of our limited time and energy, I shall save it for another day. Instead, I shall tell you what part you need to play, and you must follow it to the letter, understood?"

Dasha nodded. She was curious about all of this, but...

Well. Another time. When her brain was working properly again.

"First off, take my hand- It's not literally my hand, but you understand." Fia's aunt extended hers, and waited.

And waited.

And waited. 

"Dasha? Why aren't you moving?"

"Sorry, just- You know I'm a plague-wing, right?" 

Dasha's voice sounded blankly resigned as she uttered the words.

"So? You can't bleed or cry or sweat on me here. Ancient knows, you've been so careful not to get anything on Fia that could infect her when you were carrying her. Why would that be an issue?" 

Dasha blinked. 

"No, it's just... I mean most folks... Ya know?" 

Fia's aunt winced, and she stiffened slightly. 

"Ah. Yes. Sorry, I've forgotten. I have been here for too long, I'm afraid."

Even when it was perfectly safe, other Avar never wanted to come in contact with plague-wings, not if it could be helped. Sometimes, not even if it was necessary. 

Dasha couldn't exactly blame them. Some strains of the plague curse were especially unpleasant, and the stigma of carrying the red marks on one's wings was a heavy one. 

On the other wing, getting abandoned by her nomadic tribe during migrations the second she was old enough to safely leave had stung, even if she had known it was going to happen.

Tentatively, Dasha reached out, feeling her warm fingers slip into the older woman's cool grasp. 

Fia's aunt led them towards the purple thread. 

"We need to loop this around the pair of them, then try to guide them to where we want to go. We can't get them back to the valley, or to an exact location, but even several days somewhere further down the mountain will help. We will have to hurry, as we won't get a second chance for this."

"Wait. When I tried pulling on the thread earlier, I don't think that it liked me doing that."

Fia's aunt nodded gravely. "That is why we will only have one chance. Your shell, I mean, your body is already looped in as well. That's what I was doing before I followed you out to here."

Dasha stared at Fia's aunt, really stared at her. If she looked long enough, and hard enough, she could feel the same spidery cracks, splintering across her spirit in even greater and more fragmented numbers.

"Are you going to be all right?" She croaked. "Those don't look- I mean, they can't be- I- I'm-"

Fia's aunt placed a figurative hand on her shoulder. It was difficult to actually describe, as neither woman had a physical form at the moment, but that's what it felt like she was doing to Dasha. 

"Listen dovelet, I have been here, been doing this for far too long, not because I choose to, but because I had to. Now, I have a chance to protect my kin, to aid some worthy people, and to do something good in this world, for once. Allow me to do so, and to bear the cost of doing so. I have so little else."

And oh, didn't such thoughts and feelings echo so closely to Dasha's own over the past several hours, when all she wanted was to get the others home safely, and then disappear. Dasha felt the pain to her soul, as she recognized that exact same dead chord in the other woman's tone.

"I'll make you a deal." She replied, gripping Fia's aunt tighter. "You won't give up, and I won't neither, and come what may, we both try to get through this, ya hear? Everyone gets back safe and out alive, and everyone includes you."

Fia's aunt was quiet for a long moment. Or perhaps it only seemed long, when there was no steady rhythm of breathing or wing beats to keep time by. 

Then she nodded. 

"Very well, Dasha. I shall give you a greater share, though not more than a third, of the fractures that this attempt shall gift us. Let's both try our best to live through it, shall we?"