Opalite Wires

more thoroughly. He had treated it with utmost care, as if handling a document written on ages-old slips of onion skin, but he realized now that it was really more hardy than he had thought initially. Rather than a thin slip of paper, or even like parchment, it felt like a slab of aged leather.

Aged, slightly furry leather. The wing was covered in dull flakes, something between featherdown and fish scales. He rubbed his thumb carefully across one and rather than coming apart on contact, as he thought it might, it looked a little brighter. He rubbed more dust off, and contemplated how he might read the wings. Surely there had to be books on it.

He set the wing back, then descended the ladder, moving a step or two down and then eying the shelves immediately beneath the hanging wings. These too were dusty, and he rubbed his thumb across the spines, squinting at the text before he realized that he could not read any of the titles here either.

Well, there was probably a book on that as well...

Labels: seph

impulsively, and Boula laughed at him.

"You sound offended!"

He grimaced. "You sound enthused."

"'Ugly' means something else when for un-ungu," Boula conceded. She tucked the books in her bag and then raised her hands, held up chunks of her hair. It was dense and did not flow through her hooves but rather stuck out almost parallel to her shoulders, all tight curls in multiple shades, splotches and fades of black and brown and gray and white.

"I am piebald -- or baa'er, in the older pastoral language," she said, knowing that it would mean something to him.

"S...sun?" he tried tentatively, and she shook her head.

"Close. It's more like 'cloudy' or 'eclipse.' It just means that my hair is worthless. That is," she said further, separating a strand of it, "it's not a color or texture that's easily dyed or worked with. It's ugly. That's all."

He hesitated. "Is ugly really the correct...that is, ugly, in Common Low it has a negative connotation, so 'ugly' would be improper."

There he went again. Boula shrugged. "That's why I said, in pastoral, it's baa'er. But ugliness doesn't mean anything."

"If that's so, then why did the Gia ungu avoid you?"

Now she looked uncomfortable. "Well...Gia is very pure...and they are a very small and competitive clan, so I imagine...well, I imagine they probably fear something unreasonable, like I'll lower their crimp or color, just by being near them." She shrugged again. "It's their loss. Outside of the pastures there's more than the thread and silk and spell of your hair."

But even to Seph it sounded as if she was saying it more to herself than to him.

Labels: seph

The light was paler here -- he felt chilly -- he looked up and saw that there was quite a clear view of the sky from this area in campus, un-obscured by the eaves of other buildings and the intricate tangle of opalite wires. The color of it was indistinct -- almost gray-looking, or maybe a gray-purple -- from here it didn't look so much like the sky as it did the belly of some other roof, and for a while he did nothing but stare at it, contemplating the frame of the cliffs at one side of his vision, upon which he knew was Anthem High. He missed the blue of the sky.

"Seph," said a voice in surprise, and he jumped; he turned around and saw that Boula was staring at him, had her bag half-slung over one shoulder. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you." He twisted around and removed the books from his bag, then handed them to her. She blinked and then took them from him, gratefully.

"Thank you. I was actually just about to stop by The Libra and get these."

"I'm surprised I was able to catch you," he said. "Someone told me you'd just come out of class when I was on the second grade of campus and I thought you might have left."

She looked further confused.

"Someone knew that I'd been in class? Who was it?"

He hesitated. It didn't seem necessarily that they had been friends, but --

"Were they ungu students?" she asked, and at her nod she scowled.

"They must have taken the transegress out of Wungsen. I was searching for them because we were assigned to do a project..." She wrinkled her nose and shook her head violently, with what Seph presumed was ungu frustration. Her hair flew up everywhere.

"I saw where they were going," Seph ventured, "we could probably catch up."

She sighed and shook her head, this time in negation. "I just wanted to see if I could get in touch with them today and actually see it. We've been working on the project already for the past couple nights, by sylphs."

"Why don't they want to see you?"

She looked confused again; then she seemed to remember who he was.

"Because I'm ugly," Boula explained candidly. "They're all of the clan Gia, which has exceptionally pure blood. I just don't think they're used to seeing ungu like me."

Labels: seph

carefully, eying the buildings and seeing if he could spot the title "Wungsen" on any of them. The path had sloped downward slightly, and this next area of campus was a grade downward; finally the ground at the present elevation stopped completely, and he looked out over the shelf, onto the roofs of buildings below.

He knew of Fallish University's history; but even with warning the quarters of campus whose war-age architecture had been preserved for historical reasons unnerved him. The roofs were scorched and pocked, the eaves lined with hammered-down barbed wire and occasional glitters of old, antagonistic adem.

He took an elevator down and walked around, noting the black pavement and black buildings. He felt like the air smelled different here, still sort of ashy and smoky, and indeed there were probably still some slyphs hanging about, carrying these nostalgic whiffs around, ghost-like, memoryless: another side-effect of the Tragic War. Even now students still tried to reason to their teachers when they did specularly horrible on an exam: But professor, I was stricken by a mnemosyniac.

He realized his thoughts were drifting and made himself focus. Wungsen, Wungsen. Or was it Wungsten?

Labels: seph

It was only a sector away from The Libra, and he made it there in what he counted was only about a single flicker, though it might have been one and a half, and his brows furrowed with frustration. Not knowing exactly how much time passed was unnerving — he never knew if he was wasting any of it — he had gotten used to sleeping in the perpetual glow of the wires, and things had even stopped having a tinge of the wires' rosey-orangey color now — he simply didn't see it. But he still didn't have a handle on the time, and it was unnerving. He never knew if he was wasting any of it, and always felt like he was missing or forgetting something. It was like night all the time.

The campus was open and huge, sprawling, the majority of Agatava grade. There were no gates, only misshapen statues that served as guardians of sorts; their multi-eyed gazes occasionally glittered and with them came the glitter too of almost-empty air. Seph hesitated, seeing an ademic security wall; but it was of faint color, and after studying it slightly he saw that the marquees were only simple, vague wards against things like murderous intent. He walked through without event.

He searched for a map, or at least an information office, and after wandering for another flicker (Maybe? Ugh) he found only buildings held only classrooms, or else fancy sculptures and scientific donations and art. After he left a building named Prass Hall he heard a clop, clop noise and looked over in instant recognition. Was that —?

There were three ungu plodding toward him, chatting together. They were all quite tall; two of them had horns whose size rivaled that of their skulls, tapered into long spirals, and the last was more of Boula's size and build. They were all colored white. The hair on their heads was so short that it didn't look like they had any at all, and Seph stared for a moment, intrigued at how their horns protruded directly from the skull. Somehow he'd thought ungu horns would be planted against the head like the antlers of deer, but now he realized that those horns were actually part of an ungu's skull.

"Excuse me," he called to them, and they looked up and eyed him in much the same way that he imagined he had eyed them earlier — curious, discerning. He saw them blink with the realization that he was a skyling. "I am lost. Could you help me?"

"What are you searching for?" said one of the male ungu.

"Well —" Seph hesitated. "Well, I'm searching for someone in particular, an ungu girl, but if you could point me to a place where I could get general information, or send out a commit..."

"An ungu girl," said the ungu girl of this group with interest. "There aren't many ungu here. Who is it?"

"Her name — her selfname," Seph corrected himself, "is Boula. I believe her full —"

"Oh," said the girl. "Her."

"Do we know her?" said one of the male students with confusion, and she nodded. "Is it one of the ugly ones?"

"The one in our class," she explained, and Seph bristled slightly but it wasn't noticeable. The girl turned back to him.

"We have a class with her," she explained, "which only just got out. If you head to Wungsen Building that way, you'll probably still be able to catch her."

"Thanks," he said noncommittally, and left.

Labels: seph

stepping down onto the floor with a thunk and scratch of his talons. He moved to a wall, slid aside a panel from it (I didn't know those panels could be moved, Seph thought with surprise) and then removed what looked to be a large board from a space behind the wall. The board turned out to be a table with short, stout, collapsible legs; Seph helped him set it up in the middle of the floor, and as soon as the table had flattened somewhat, Alban set down large bowls on top of it, which slid slightly as Seph and Earling continued to attempt to stabilize the table.

Seph was too busy trying to tug white sheets from beneath the table's legs, and as a result did not notice until Alban handed him a spoon that the bowl that had been set on the table were filled with dirt.

No, not dirt, he told himself, and he looked harder at the bowl before re-realizing that indeed, it was filled dirt.

Earling sat on the floor opposite Seph, his long legs crossed, knees pushed up in sharp arches; Alban sat beside him, ladling dirt first from the larger bowl onto Earling's plate, and then politely into Seph's plate before dumping dirt onto his own. Seph looked down at his plate, years of training freezing his look of horror before it could creep fully onto his face. The dirt on his plate was gleaming slightly, and was quite dark and rich; when he prodded at it with his spoon, it came apart in clumps, and he could see there were things embedded in it, cappillary-thin roots woven through grains of it and little clots of what he assumed was plant matter. He maneuvered the dirt again and this time unearthed something like a noodle that, upon noticing its exposure to light, flexed with slow irritation.

His entire body chilled. He glanced up at Alban and Earling discreetly, and saw they were both eagerly and loudly shoveling the stuff into their mouths.

Well — maybe the dirt of Anthem Low was different. Maybe it wasn't dirt in the sense that dirt was dirt in High. Swallowing, Seph looked down and began to tease loose dirt onto the dip of his spoon, and then slowly brought it to his mouth and tipped.

For a moment he couldn't do anything — just let the stuff rest on his tongue, trying to overcome his urges to spit. It didn't have any real taste — it was just chill, and soft — experimentally he chewed, and his teeth came down on something dense and chewy that it stuck to the depressions of his teeth and only clung deeper when he tried to work them loose with his tongue. Inevitably he swallowed and he could feel the dirt inch down his throat like...well, a ball of mud.

It really was dirt.

He thought back wildly to Etiquette. Did he have to eat all of this? Would it be an affront if he didn't? Alban had put so much on his plate...

Labels: seph

The normal sounds of steam and heat did not obscure a sudden muttering. Seph tilted his head slightly forward, trying to pick out the words.

"Who...?"

Not Alban's voice. There were at least two people in there.

"...my...across the way..."

"Guest?! Are...can't believe..."

"No, no, no, no, it's...High..."

The conversation didn't sound entirely happy. Seph grimaced uncomfortably but before he could decide on turning back, the door opened. Alban smiled at him broadly and said, as usual, "Come in, come in!"

Seph stepped in, stifled his cough, and tried not to make it too obvious that his eyes were scanning the room for signs of the stranger. As it was, he didn't need to search too hard. There on the perches to the opposite of the room lounged a passerine man. He was reclined in such a way that his shoulder blades rested on an upper perch, and his legs stretched out before him. He had claws for feet that were as large as Seph's head and they gripped the perch, keeping him in place.

For a passerine, he was quite big, both lengthways and wide; his feathers were smooth but slightly sparse over his belly, and were a color somehow between black and gray, with ruddy red on his edges, the tips of his primaries and crest and elbows. He was clad like most passerine in nothing much more than shorts, and a metal band around his ankle.

He looked just like the passerine that Seph had seen earlier. Alban cleared his throat and said, with somewhat deflated cheerfulness, "This is Avuckkakea Earling."

The entire name was all open-back vowels and ejective consonants, but the "true name" -- that is, what Seph assumed would be the passerine's individual name -- sounded smoother. The passerine man twisted his head and regarded him with a single big black eye. The feathers of his neck ruffled, so it seemed for a while that his head rested on a fuzzy dome pedestal of greater diameter than his skull.

Seph was unused to reading the expressions of passerine, but it didn't seem that this man was happy to see him, per se. Seph rifled through the pages of Etiquette in his mind and settled on nodding his head in greeting. The passerine regarded him a while more and then tilted his head forward abruptly as well, and he leaned forward and allowed his wings to flex, slowing off streaks of paler gray and white.

"So," he said, and his voice was rather high, and as he spoke on the words seemed to undulate between sounds and syllables, dipping up and down abruptly, as if they were climbing mountains in his mouth. "You come from the sky?"

Emphasis made it hard for Seph to understand what he had said; but then he realized, and answered quickly, "Oh, yes, I come from Anthem High."

"Anthem High?" the passerine said in confusion, and Seph shook his head, "Ah, I mean, High Anthem."

"A true skyling," Alban observed, as if with pride, and Avuckkakea Earling clicked his beak together several times, with ambiguous meaning. The sound was loud, louder than clapping, and though Seph didn't understand it he noticed Alban beginning to grimace.

"Food's ready," he said with some feigned cheer.

Labels: seph

Seph visited Alban all the time. At first he would arrive home and find that the professor was reading on the floor of his hallway, cross-legged, with a book in his lap that rivaled the size of a small child; Alban then would look up with his broad smile and say, "Would you like to come over for dinner?" Later, Seph became accustomed to having the same words scrawled in midair, on the blinking part of his curtain. The letters would be faded and bloated and patchy, which told him that Alban had wrote them some while before.

Seph would usually agree, because that was easiest, and because Alban's food was better than anything than he could come up with, both talent- and money-wise. Usually there were variations on soup (especially when Alban was grading or formulating tests, or else in the final drafts of his papers), but sometimes there would be a gem of a thing, a small and well-dressed specimen of poultry or other unknown creature, sometimes little legs and ribs all fat and meaty and gleaming with oil. The only time Seph winced was when there were feasts of dirt and worms, which really only happened when Alban's roommate returned and dined with them as well.

The first time this had happened, it had been without warning, and ever since then Seph had been slightly more careful about agreeing to see Alban for dinner, though even with some observation it was hard to tell if the passerine man had already arrived a great time before or was still due. Even so, though, Seph found that the right kind of grub was not too reprehensible, and the right kind of dirt too was rich and dense and rather like chewing crumbled-up cakes, though with less sugar and softness and more grit and odd chewy bits.

Labels: seph

"Well," he said, "actually, I work at Fallish University. Which I'm sure you've heard of."

"You work there?" Seph had assumed that Alban would be a student.

"Yeah. I'm a professor. Actually, I guess the more appropriate introduction earlier would have been, hi, I'm Professor Alban Lita."

Prof Lita!

Seph kept himself composed, nodding with interest. The only evidence of his recognition was easily hidden by a spoonful of soup.

"What do you teach?"

He smiled again. "I actually teach about High Anthem. Well — more specifically, I teach about the internal and external interactions of Low Anthem. So if I ask about your life up there, that's why. Despite the fact that the Tragic War happened ages ago, and despite the passing of some things such as the Perdon Law which require somewhat comprehensive cooperation between both Low and High authorities, it seems to me that there's still a pretty big disparity when it comes to those of Low and those of High. Evidenced by the fact that there are very few High transfer students, much less High migrants at all."

It was an interesting idea, and Seph forced a polite smile.

"What about Quartzal?"

"The highest district in Low? The population is roughly five-sixths migrants from High Anthem, but ask around and see if that place isn't regarded so much as a high district in Low, or a High district in Low."

He smiled to himself again, then stretched out, giving a great yawn and kicking out at the folds in the cloth; for a couple moments the air close to the ground was dense with down feathers fluttering about.

"More personally, I am mostly descended from High blood, but my grandfather was half-merhin. I enjoy cooking and playing boules, and my favorite color is violet. Not sure if there's anything interesting beyond that. Would you like more soup?"

Labels: seph

My first name has three syllables and an extra back-to-frontal vowel that isn't seen in written Low. My short name -- Seph -- removes this ambiguity.

I lived in a small apartment in High Anthem, District Cirromedius, and worked as an intern at a wares distribution company as an extra-year student at Volo College Apokremnos University for room and board and a small stipend. I studied linguistics, with an emphasis on evolutionary development of words and writing systems. I briefly worked with the Mercury. (Very briefly. I was kicked out for being lazy too soft.)

I left High Anthem thanks to the recently passed Perdon Law, which states that citizens who have attained a certain gross percentage of debt can relocate to Low Anthem and continue to pay in small increments monthly, without too much extra interest, and without imprisonment or employment blacklisting. The stipend was not really enough to cover rent and food. Low currency is worth more and minimum wage is what a manager might earn up there. My education made it easy to transfer.

I've never I've been to Low before. (Who hasn't?) The upper grades, like Quartzal and Gravier, are popular places for students to party. Which I've done. In younger years. Of course, when you grow older things like that Well, I still do now, but not as frequently.

I am part of a large, complicated, and busy family, who has lost interest in constantly monitoring the whereabouts and doings of their children, especially one of the youngest. They work in one of the wares distribution companies. I left behind a girlfriend as well. (Be vague about this.)

Labels: seph

"Tell me about yourself, skyling."

Here we go.

"Well," Seph said, and it was with practiced uncertainty, "my name is Seph...I moved here from Anthem...er, I mean, High Anthem."

He trailed off himself, beginning to tug and fiddle with his tatty scarf, and Alban laughed.

"Well, don't be shy, I won't bite! Not you, anyway. How long ago did you drift down?"

"Not too long ago," Seph said, and then hesitated, and added, "I think?" And Alban laughed again.

"I guess you wouldn't be sure, would you? Do you know how to tell time at all yet?"

"I know it has something to do with the flickering of the wires."

"That's correct. It's really not too hard. Upside you have dynasties counted in years, counted in months, counted in weeks, counted in days, counted in hours, counted in ticks of a dial -- am I right?"

He went on before Seph could really reply.

"Well, here it's really the same, but like how your unit is the waning or waxing of sunlight, ours is flickers of the wires. So I guess we haven't got the dynasties, but we just count in one big block from the Tragic War, and we still have months and weeks and days and hours...simple. It's just a matter of noticing when the partim line dims."

"I do know about the partim line," Seph sighed, "I just can't tell when it dims or not. The quality of light looks all the same."

"Well, true enough, I suppose. Your eyes should adjust soon, though." Alban began to fiddle with ladles and bowls and spoons, and after a moment he walked back and sat beside Seph on the couch, sinking down with a happy groan before handing over a bowl. It was pinkish; Seph's fingers hooked into grooves that had been molded into the sides, and he looked inside. The broth was warm and emitted a salty, savory steam that felt nice on his chilled skin. Seph accepted a spoon and began to stir up the broth. It was filled with small dark particles -- spices? -- and chunks of meat.

Alban sipped anad chewed noisily for a while, and Seph followed suit, finding himself ravenous. Their conversation trickled out between gulps and sips from the bowl and tumbler on burnt tongues and numbing gums.

"So what made you want to come down, Seph?"

"Bills mostly," Seph told him, truthfully, and then went on, trying to remember what he had written to remind himself. "I couldn't pay rent, and the Prevail allows people who move to Low to continue to pay at length, at lower rates."

Alban grimaced. "Strange."

"I think it's because they'd rather have that, than have delinquents stooping on the corners. And infrastructure makes it easier than having to imprison people, or cover up that people were thrown off the cliffs." This was also true.

"But enough about me," Seph said. "What about you?"

Labels: seph

Seph dumped the letters on a small table and began to rifle through them, but ended up not focusing too much. He didn't really feel like answering mail, and also didn't want to miss out on free food besides. (He was sure it would be free...pretty sure that had been in chapter 8 of the booklet.) He glanced up constantly at the partim line coiled around the biggest rafter in his room, and when he thought that it dimmed somewhat he stood and began to make his way across the hallway.

He stood before the door and eyed the skull warily, then rapped his knuckles across the wood. There was yelling and a muffled crash of some sort from within; Seph grimaced, and waited until the door swung open. Alban was wearing a white-ish apron.

"You're a little early," he said, and Seph's grimace widened.

"Sorry, I thought that I saw...I'm not used to telling the time yet."

"Understandable, I guess," Alban said. He sounded partly irritated but stepped aside and said, with growing enthusiasm, "Well, come in, come in! Seph, right? You are welcome," he said, with particular emphasis and a glare at the short curtain hanging from the top of his door. The curtain flickered; a pattern of lights wriggled from where the curtain fell from the wooden doorframe, aching out in small, uneven polka dots that were a translucent mauve color. Both of them watched the dots fall past the curtain and through the air, fading out at around the height of Seph's knees.

Alban frowned. "Useless," he muttered. "What if there was something like a dog or a dentsa trying to get in? Or pretty much any old thing kneeling down could just slip through. Wouldn't stop rodents either."

Seph nodded and made some grunt of commiseration, and walked in, wincing and coughing predictably.

Alban looked at him curiously, then bade him sit and make himself comfortable, and apologized for the mess. If any of this was Standard Low Trade Etiquette and Dining Etiquette, he hadn't read about it yet, but it was all familiar enough.

Alban's space was a mirror of his, but was decidedly more cluttered. There was a huge, floofy looking couch which was covered in a sheet that had become untucked and sprawled across most of the room like a huge, fabric puddle. Columns of books pinned down the sweeps and folds, and everywhere there were feathers, most of which were soft, almost insubstantial curls of brown, gray, and white down. They floated every time he moved, darkened corners in dense dusty clumps. On the wall opposite the kitchen area were large poles nailed to the wall, thick as his calves. They looked rather like perches.

"Roommate of mine," Alban called out from the kitchen as he continued to chop things up. "Passerine. Can't sleep on normal beds. That is, cushions, springs, mattresses, comforters, the like."

"I see," Seph responded thoughtfully. Maybe that was what he had seen yesterday. Or whenever it was. Surely it hadn't been more than a High day since then.

Alban walked back to Seph and gave him a slightly stained tumblr filled with clear, pungent liquid before returning to the stove. Seph looked down and drank, wincing slightly but then licking his lips. Strong stuff, but tasty.

Labels: seph

The next time he ran into Alban, it was when he was coming back up from the negative first floor, and it was with a bundle of letters.

Alban saw him and they stared at each other a bit; then he smiled warmly and whistled. "Those envelopes are huge! Do you have a penpal who's a troll?"

"No," Seph replied with a grimace, and then, "Well, yes, if you could call the administrative branch of High a penpal." They certainly were trolls. In the High sense of what a troll was, anyway.

"I probably wouldn't." Alban eyed the papers, leaning against his crooked doorframe. He had a twig-looking thing in his hand, and idly he stuck it into his mouth; it glittered and twitched slightly and emitted smoke, and he gnawed and inhaled alternately as he watched Seph maneuver his door with the handful of envelopes. "What are they? Litigious assertions?"

"Just bills."

"Bills?"

"I moved, but I still need to pay for this and that," Seph explained, and Alban eyed him and then nodded, correctly interpreting Seph's ambiguity as an unwillingness to elaborate.

"Well, it's fair injust for you to have to continue coughing up sums after you've set up roots down here. You wouldn't care to take a load off the wallet and have a bite over here, would you?"

Seph thought.

"I'll stop by," he said, "after I set these envelopes down," and Alban nodded at him, a quick upward flick of his chin. He removed the twig from his mouth, pinching it between index and middle finger, spinning it about a couple times.

"Give me a bit longer, actually," he said. "I've still got to get things ready. Come knock at the next flicker."

Labels: seph

Seph waited, scuffling around some papers, taking a sentence from here, another from there, in a sporadic fasion that helped him focus on what he was doing.

At some point, there was crashing around in the hall; Seph looked up, and then stood up, pacing to the door. He waited a bit — thump, thump — and then there was a sound of the door opening, and a crash, and laughter.

Blinking, Seph opened his door. The hallway was empty, but the tassel was swaying back and forth heavily, knocking against the doorframe.

He waited, listening. Should he see if Alban still wanted to meet? There were no more sounds emitting from beyond the door. Bemused, Seph stepped back behind his curtain, coughing briefly before pressing the door into place and then turning to a mirror mounted to the right of the door. He tapped it with the tip of his index finger; it flickered, ghosting out rounded triangles that skittered and then reformed, changing color like cuttle in shades of desaturated brown.

It showed an image of an empty hallway, as seen from about the height of Seph's chest. Seph watched it; then his eyes narrowed, and he pressed his smallest finger against his mouth.

Unwind, he thought, concentrating, and he licked the pad of his finger and then smeared the saliva across the lower left curve of the mirror. At his contact the browns turned dark, almost black. Seph blew across the mirror, drying it, and to his surprise the colors grew a little more vibrant — richer browns, and even a tinge of green.

In the hallway in the mirror, the door opened and two figures stepped out, knees bending and heels meeting the ground before toes, shoving into the corridor backwards. The image was still fuzzy, but the unwinding was slow enough that Seph could tell that one of the figures leaving (or rather, previously about to enter) the room was Alban, and the other a passerine.

They were clutching each other and crashing into walls, once, twice, before finally launching themselves spine-first out of the mirror's view. In the mirror they grinned with huge, silent laughter.

Labels: seph

before Seph ran into his across-the-way skull neighbor. It was by coincidence; they had both merely opened their doors at roughly the same time, and then stared at each other over the narrow expanse of the corridor.

Seph was surprised to see that his neighbor's face was relatively familiar — that is, it had supple flesh with two eyes, a nose startlingly similar to his own, one mouth, and all the neighboring stuff too, fleshy ears and cheekbones and eyebrows whose arches softened from surprise to friendliness.

"You must be the new neighbor."

The only difference was that his skin was an odd color, a sort of off-white, with some tinge of pink and orange.

"I am," he replied, instead of raising his hand to compare his own complexion, and then he ventured further, saying, "My name is Seph."

"Greetings, Seph. I'm Alban." He bowed a little, and Seph bowed back, a little belatedly. Seeing his lateness, Alban smiled.

"You must be from the sky."

"Recently so," Seph agreed, knowing there was no way that he could avoid it. Not while he still remained unstained by the opalite wires.

"How recent?"

"Recent enough that I don't exactly know the best places to get food," Seph offered, and Alban grinned easily.

"Well, I can help you with that," he said, "though I need to get to class now. You going to be around later?"

"Likely for the rest of the day."

Alban blinked at him, eyes narrowing as if with confusion, and then laughed. "Right! I'll knock on your door later."

Labels: seph

Seph stayed the entire day, working mostly but also occasionally sleeping. One good thing about The Libra was that it was for the most part self-sufficient.

This time, when the lights flickered, he saw the ungu girl leave long before he even considered breaking out the jar; they exchanged glances, and she waved slightly before moving on. Back to dorms or something, he guessed. He couldn't think of any other type of person that would want to research whatever it was she said she'd wanted to research.

She visited with fair regularity and he came to recognize her and eventually exchange some most substantial pleasantries upon meeting.

"What are you working on now?" he asked once, and she sighed.

"Chiroptics and transunus communication," she said, and he gave her a respectful nod.

"Sounds interesting."

She grimaced. "It isn't. I always end up with the poor topics."

"Why?"

"I'm cursed with lateness," she said. "Well, I think, anyway. I haven't been officially diagnosed."

"I see." Seph nodded again, slowly, and they nodded at each other. He rubbed his neck and she eyed him, shifting her weight from hoof to hoof, making the ground creak before opening her mouth to speak.

Labels: seph

frequently with other inhabitants of Low. As far as he knew, all the passerine Seph had ever met in Low -- both in the Bazaar and at Quartzal and at Fallish -- were all of Avuckka.

Khuh'a, one of Avuckka's roosts, was located at the southern Down of the Feathered Trenches. Its size in relation to Low was very small -- it was a two-block neighborhood tucked into a niche of the Down, where things were only briefly green and more gray, and where stone rose in intimidating jagged heights, towers and looms of fragmented shadow and occasional sparkle. Opalite wires were braided thick and nailed in loops to the stone, some of them powering brilliant, strong lanterns that fought the shadows. There were signs, but the pathway was coarse and pinched between high stone walls, uncertain and unstable or else overgrown with brush. It was increasingly obvious that those who reached Khuh'a didn't usually do so by walking.

Still, Seph was having a harder time than Boula, who kicked and picked her way with unexpected grace and balance through thorny shrub and loose rock like she was born for it. He would have thought at least that she'd be slipping with those hooves of hers.

Several times she looked back at him.

"Are you doing alright?"

"Yes," Seph said, already out of breath. "I just can't believe you're so good at this."

"Ungu weren't just fieldspeople," Boula told him, pausing slightly to stomp on a couple rocks before selecting a stable path. "Nomadic blood in general inhabit the Feathered Trenches. Even now it's not just the passerine that live here."

"What else lives here?" Seph asked, out of breath and gripping a bush to keep himself from falling. He winced immediately afterward and released it, and looked at his hand. There were pinpricks of blood where thorns had stuck his palm.

Boula didn't notice. "Well, I know Gia owns some land here. That's another ungu clan, but we're not likely to run into them. In terms of flora, perchgrass and slatebrambles" -- she kicked one out of the way, and it snapped in half -- "is probably the extent of it, though there are decennial blossoms and some perillions probably deeper down.

"Mostly in this area of the Downs I imagine there'd be just creatures. Lemmings and ondatra and hamsters, cliff raptors, varieties of slateperches, feral dentsa, otters, aphids, maybe a wolfen...things like that."

None of those things sounded very safe. Interpreting his silence correctly as nervousness, Boula looked back and said, in encouragement, "We probably wouldn't run into any of those things this close to the outlying Downs."

He didn't answer, deciding to conserve his breath. They were heading further and further down, and the ground was starting to level out into step-like structures, which were easier to navigate but led them down at a faster rate. Every time he began to feel nervous about their location, they saw another sign, indicating them to go just a little farther.

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Seph let her go, and went back to his desk to continue translating. The Libra was often used like this, he noticed. Like a library, that is, or at the very least like some huge study center. He wondered if maybe he had his interpretation of The Libra as a "store" wrong in the first place.

Once he saw the reddish hue of the wires, Seph reached for the paneling behind the desk. All the wires in the building were sourced in a knot braceleted with levers and wheels, one of which he twisted uncertainly. It made the light in the entire store flicker a brief pattern that he recognized as the correct one to signal everyone to get out, and after a while of waiting people began to emerge from the bowels of the building, in a stream at first and then in trickles, some of them nodding at him before going off into Low's evening. After an interval of no one leaving, Seph reached down beneath the desk for a jar, which appeared empty but became full of buzzing when he shook it.

He unscrewed the lid. There was a fine gauze stretched over the mouth of the jar.

"Search for anyone still left here," he said, clearly, and the gauze distended outward as if something were pressing through it, then began to unravel, the strings floating up and dissipating into the building, carrying the buzzing with it. He watched the mouth of the jar and hoped for once it would reform completely.

It didn't. After a while the gauze began to rewind itself, but there were some looseness to it, and when he passed his hand over the air above the gauze, it caught on near-invisible strings still stretching out into the store's quarters. Sighing, he began to wind the string around his fingers, following the lengths to various students who had fallen asleep amidst the stacks. He prodded them awake, and they quickly gathered their things and left while the string rewound itself into the gauze, and finally there was only one string left, and this one led to the ungu girl, who was curled up in a chair. He poked her and she yelped instantly, and he jumped too.

"You're not asleep?" he said in surprise.

"What?" she demanded, and he started to rephrase his question, then explained, instead, "I'm closing The Libra. It's time to go home."

"Oh," she said, and looked confused for an instant longer, than embarrassed. "Sorry about that. I'll head out."

"You can come back tomorrow," Seph suggested, a little needlessly, and she nodded.

"Yes, I probably will," she said, also needlessly. They looked at each other and then nodded and smiled faintly in recognition of their awkward premise, and then stood there, Seph waiting for her to pack up before leaving and she waiting for him to leave before packing up. When they realized what was going on there was a sudden jerk of movement from both of them, which started in general for the books and then to withdraw from them, upon seeing the other move for them, and then everything was still again.

The ungu girl rubbed her head.

"In the interest of getting things done," she said, "I suggest you look for other stragglers while I arrange the books."

"You're the last one," he said, and she grimaced.

"Alright then," and so he watched as she gathered the books. It occurred to him that he should help her just when she was reaching for the last one, and when he leaned toward her she looked at him, and he withdrew with a shrug and decided to close up the jar, whose threads had finally rewound. Then he decided to head back, and ended up walking ahead of her a bit, and then thought that felt weird, especially since he found himself walking at exactly the same pace he was, which he knew because her hooves were clipping against the ground with every step he took.

He could not think of a non-awkward way to mend this, however, and in fact was not sure if the situation was really awkward at all or if he was just too tired to think logically.

"You probably are," the ungu girl said, and he stopped and looked back at her in confusion. He stopped so suddenly that she crashed into his back.

They apologized simultaneously and then he asked, "What did you say?"

"I said, 'You probably are,'" she repeated. "Too tired to think logically, that is."

"Oh," he said, "did I say that out loud?"

"Um," she said, "evidently," and they stared at each other a moment more before shaking their heads and finally, finally leaving.

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They sighed, in unison. Their arms were stained to the elbow in yellow ooze, which Seph noticed in some alarm was starting to burn.

"Passerine wouldn't leave their own squabs like this," Boula muttered with confusion.

"Maybe we should wash this stuff off before thinking about other stuff," Seph told her dryly, and began to walk back to the Vane. He stopped after a couple steps, noticing that Boula wasn't following, and then grabbed her sleeve and dragged her away from her thoughts.

His arms washed up faint red, and were itchy. He murmured beneath his breath and Boula looked at him in surprise.

"Ooh, what was that?"

"Nothing. I must be allergic to this ooze or something." He felt even his rami begin to curl in alarm against his collarbone.

"Oh," Boula said, and frowned, "you should probably wrap that up," and began to unravel the bandages at her belt; she tied them around, and he winced when her hooves patted just a little too firmly on his flesh, trying to make it stay.

"The squabs will be okay for a while," Boula said, her attention quickly turning away from him, "so let's see if we can reach the main roost."

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They looked around, seeking soft dirt, which they found inside a nearby cave. Boula removed her shoes, hung their U-shapes by the bowl on her right wrist, and then carefully tread the ground inside the cave, feeling for softness while Seph waited outside. The cave was too small and even Boula was bent almost double searching, wincing and muttering every time her horns brushed against the cave's rough ceiling.

Once she discovered a softer patch and felt it move and press back against her weight, Boula ground her teeth and then began kicking and scuffing, scooping away the dirt with her fingers and hooves; about two handsbreadths down she saw a glow, and carefully, yet firmly, began to pull worms from the earth. She tossed them outside the cave, where they wiggled haphazardly; Seph eyed them with a frown. They were thigh-thick and segmented, with small, wiggling protrusions he assumed were legs. They were bruised by her handling, bleeding slightly.

"Hurry and get them," Boula called out from the dimness, "or they'll start burrowing again," and with a grimace Seph grabbed the nearest one by the middle, cringing at the texture. It was incredibly squishy and when he grabbed it its innards were displaced into either end. His fingers met each other through the pale yellow flesh. More blood oozed.

It was also surprisingly heavy. He hauled it, bent-legged, to the niche in the wall; the worm struggled mildly and when he reached the squabs they began to shriek louder, as if sensing his presence, and that of food. He thought for a moment of cutting the worm up and giving a piece to each of them, but the idea of tarnishing his dagger with the worm blood already smeared onto his hands made him cringe further, and finally he just pitched the worm at them.

He hit some of the squabs dead on the skull, and they withdrew, stunned; but others acted quickly, and in morbid fascination Seph watched as the worm popped like a water balloon, was stabbed and sipped until all the birds were stained with mustard color and screeching louder.

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