Opalite Wires

"You're a Scholar," Aranth repeated.

"Since...since when?"

"Since a couple days ago. At the celebration." And when Salt continued to stare at him blankly, Aranth sighed. "You weren't paying attention to, I guess. I really thought you were -- nodding and everything."

It was getting worse. A couple days ago? Salt stood and began to pace the room -- this was stupid -- what had he even been thinking about? Oh, right, it was --

"No!" he yelled aloud, to anchor himself, and he fumbled around in his sash -- but Aranth had already taken out the roll of ribbon, sometime when he'd been thinking, and with a small knife cut off a portion of it and tied it around his thumb. Salt stared at it, and forced himself to think.

I am Tonsor --

"Out loud," Aranth reminded him, and Salt swallowed and nodded.

"I am Tonsor Salt Enval. I am in..." He looked around. "My house, I guess. My room. It's..." He glanced at the calendar on his desk, with its freshly torn sheets leaving bare the true date. "It's the third of Spring Lowest. Two days after the annual branding ceremony."

He paused, and Aranth tilted his head, searched his eyes, snapped his fingers. "Hey, hey -- stay here. How are you feeling? Do you feel better?"

"A little. I just...can't believe..." Three days. And not only that -- "I'm a Scholar?"

"To be honest, you could have been assigned anything and it would have been surprising," Aranth told him.

But Salt had already worked it through. "No...it doesn't make sense at first, but Scholar is the best choice." Because of the curse, it wasn't as if Salt's hair could be trusted to harvest -- and because of the curse, it wasn't as if he could fulfill any other jobs. He was too absent-minded to teach, to lead, to protect -- especially not to help care for children, which was the lowest-ranked job in the entire clan.

But if Salt were a Scholar, they could solve multiple problems. They could --

"Hey," Aranth said, calling him back, snapping his fingers again. "What are you thinking about? Why is you being a Scholar the best choice? Don't get lost now."

"I was just thinking," Salt said, "that it makes sense because if I go to a faraway university, they won't have to deal with me anymore."

Aranth pursed his lips. "And at a faraway university, there may be someone who can help you. You're only getting worse, Salt. I don't know why we bother with these dumb ribbons anymore when they're obviously not helping you remember to stay put in reality." He threw the spool on the ground.

Labels: salt

and Salt jumped, startled. "Do you think it's true?"

"Huh?"

"Do you think it's true?" he repeated. "That there aren't any shadows in the limits."

Salt blinked at them, then set his eyes back up at the horizon, which for Tonsor was less about sky meeting ground than it was about ground meeting higher ground. The boundary was limned in a dull, pale white — a combination of runoff luminant and elemental garbage. Above it, shrouded in mist, were the outlines of buildings, bulky and slim, all tangled and netted in glowing wires. The architecture of Tonsor, by contrast, was shallow and uneven where ironwood was allowed its traditional knotty growths, rather than filed down to smooth lines, and between houses were only a few wires, stretched or draped across eaves or on trees stripped and reappropriated to bear the wires' weight. The wires were heavy — not made of feathery opalite, but conductive ore.

Everyone always talked about the limits like they were completely different, but this was really all there was to it — a difference in buildings, a difference in wire. The diversity of the populace, of course, was quite different, as the folk up there didn't dare venture beyond their safety veil into what those of Tonsor thought, with amusement, must seem to them like the gaping maw of hell. Hell, their home. Their home which was less dark than it was not eye-burningly bright all the time. It was —

Amanth snapped his hooves suddenly beside his ear and Salt jumped, startled. "Hey. Were you listening to me?"

"Um." Salt fidgeted. What had Aranth said?

"I think there are shadows," he said. "I mean — wouldn't there be more shadows? Since there's so much light to cast them?"

"Sure," Aranth agreed with a sigh, "but I'd already given up on you ever responding to that and moved on to Fallish. Salt, honestly, how are you supposed to be a Scholar like this?"

Labels: salt, tonsor

but after that time, Salt found himself in his wandering thoughts returning back constantly to what she had pointed out to him.

"You are attentive. That's it exactly. You're too attentive."

It was a reversal of what he had been told his entire life -- that he and his bloodline, despite their prime blood, were stricken with a slyph's curse. That the curse was not in fact a constant state of dreaming but a constant state of heightened awareness...

Well, it changed nothing about his situation, but it did change the way that he looked at things. Somehow being too aware felt better than being too dreamy, and this time when Luserna drifted by and began to berate him for not paying attention, he interrupted, "I have been paying attention."

She stopped, startled -- the others looked up as well, fixed their eyes on him, and Salt went on.

"I have been paying attention," he repeated, "to your questions. And your problems. All of them. The way you don't bother figuring out anything for yourself, but ask everyone else for the answers and berate them for not knowing them. I know the way your eyes glance over to check your appearance in every building window we pass. I know the way you flick your ears at everyone but the people who talk to you, and the way every word you say is punctuated by the wrinkling of your nose, like you're disgusted that anyone bothers to try to tell you anything. So," he concluded, "I'm listening. Shut up."

Labels: salt

"Nothing."

She laughed. "Don't 'nothing' me. That's the first time that I've ever seen you sit still. What's the matter with getting a gnome on you?"

Everything. Binding elementals to a duty so closely related to a person was dangerous. Undines could cause moodswings, thirst — slyphs, inattentiveness and insomnia — salamanders, fury and berserking — gnomes, apathy to an extent that one would neglect eating, breathing. It was the traditional understanding that the summoning and binding of an extremely lower-class elemental could aid one in problems, and he knew that it was this that Boula was referencing — a superstition so commonly quoted here that it was like medical truth.

"Elementals should never be used for duties like that," he told her. "It's dangerous. It's like — working the weather just to suit someone's fancy when they walk home. It's just too much power."

She looked confused.

"But if you have a strong enough elementalist...one that can really communicate, and is versed enough to make good contracts..." When Salt continued staring at her, Boula faltered.

"I've just never heard that before."

"It's inner-area style." And a stupid one. But it made him nervous to speak strongly to a baa'er, so he softened his response, to keep her from feeling insulted, and to keep himself from being attacked. "It's common here for elementals to be used, but not so much in the outer, where Tonsor lands are."

"That's..." Her eyes narrowed at him, and he started, clenching his hand and preparing to defend himself.

"Tonsor...is close to dark areas, isn't it?"

"It is," he said, with relief. So she had only been thinking. He continued on with agreement, encouraging her. "That's right, Tonsor is close to the darkness. It's for that reason," he admitted, "that elementals are not used often — they get twisted by the darkness — it makes their worst states display. And even if they're at their best here..."

He tried to find words to explain. How those who unknowingly drank undines from clear water returned to it, insatiably, until they drowned. How those who insulted gnomes became their stone ottomans. How it was that Salt himself was rumored to be the way he was — distracted constantly — because of how an ancestor slighted a slyph.

"...I've seen them at their worst."

He shrugged.

Labels: salt

despite the baa'er girl, who turned out to be rather feisty but not as bitter as the majority of baa'er that Salt had encountered at Tonsor. After that first incident, it was clear that Nivus had pulled Luserna aside for a talking-to, and it must have done something, because she no longer objected to everything the baa'er girl said, only ignored it. And eventually she must have softened up or gotten bored of even that treatment, because she began acknowledging Boula relatively openly, especially when it was learned that she was quite good at biologic, something that eluded all of the other five.

She was actually good at all of her courses, and Salt appreciated this greatly, because he himself struggled through most of his, not because he was an idiot — how could he be, with the license he had? — but because he kept missing his classes. The other five regarded him as something of a daydreamer, which caught him off guard because he felt himself quite attentive.

"Well, you are attentive," Boula told him when he began to alternately thank her and apologize profusely for helping him again with his homework. She tugged her bag from beneath her bed and began to rummage around in it. He heard her hooves scuffle against the papers and cardboard notebook covers inside, trying to get a good grip on it. Once she managed to tug it out, it came out with a variety of other things: candy wrappers, writing utensils, a compact mirror...it was strange to see the wrappers in particular because he never would have thought Boula the type to keep trash in her bag, much less the type to eat candy in that much volume —

"See," she said, with triumph and annoyance. "There you go again."

"What?"

"That's it exactly. You're too attentive. You focus so much on what's going on that you can't keep track of things. Like when class is. Or what people are talking about." She sat back and looked at him, nibbling her lip. "I wonder if you should try getting a gnome on you."

Labels: salt