Opalite Wires

Agni smiled at him. "Why don't you tell me?"

"It's not my business to cater to you," Skaff told her. It was something Skaffwory often said. He clicked his beak together, then started to yawn -- not completely out of politeness, but because he was still tired from the grueling night before. "What are you talking about, with this Quartzal torch thing?"

"Pyreksoma has torches corresponding to the separate Districts of Fire. There are roughly thirteen of them, spread out across Anthem Low. The largest is Aubuston, which covers seventy percent of Anthem Low, including the entirety of Feldspar Grade."

Now Agni raised her hand, fisting it. The darkness of her skin made her entire forearm look like a pitch-covered torch, and fire began to rise from her flesh. "When the salamanders of a certain District are in good spirits, the torch burns brightly, and calmly, like this. If not, the torch's light either withers" -- the light dimmed down to smolder against her knuckles -- "or grows out of control." She spread her fingers and the fire burgeoned, roared.

He watched in amazement. There was...how could he put it? A...different quality to his fire, than to his own. When Skaff moved his salamanders, they spiked up in all directions, they moved too quickly, overshot the magnitudes he wanted them to obey and had to cool down to normal temperatures. Controlling them was like controlling a leaf floating on the top of oil, which he could move by no other way than flapping his wings on it -- to get it to a specific point he had to flap at it from all directions. In comparison, it was as if Agni was simply placing her finger on the leaf and moving it into place directly. Direct, perfect.

His salamanders saw it too. They spent most of them time crawling between his shoulder blades and wings, but now all huddled on his shoulders, still, their flames reduced as they too concentrated on Agni's expertise.

Agni smiled again, the two rows of bones in her mouth a firelight-shiny crescent. "Your mother never did want to have anything to do with Pyreksoma, but I wonder if you should like to make your own opinions?"

Labels: skaff

Having been acclimated to Skaffwory, Prince and the other two salamanders were as docile as lapdogs (though Skaff made sure to never, ever voice this thought aloud, or indeed, even to think of it too loudly, in case he accidentally bruised the salamanders' pride and ended up in ashes).

The problem was going through the activities of his everyday life with the salamanders in tow. In this respect, they were less lapdogs and more like cats. They didn't like to be left behind with his attention, but disliked moving; when he tried to fly off, they clutched at branches, making cinders of loftree boughs until Skaff gave them treats of sweet-scented feathersticks and cones of incense. Even then, if Skaff kept aflight or too far from their familiar areas for too long, the salamanders would begin to heat up again, drawing the attention of everyone nearby, making small children cough and rub teary, reddening eyes.

The worst was taking showers. Skaff was a passerine, and had visited the public passerine baths everyday; but the salamanders, once they began following Skaff around exclusively, would have none of it. They despised all forms of water, to the extent that Skaff had to resort to melons and hydrated gourds for the water that he himself needed, a trick that he had seen Skaffwory employ herself. The taste was awful, but it diluted the actual water enough that the salamanders grudgingly allowed him to consume it.

Some passerine took baths in dust and mud, and though Skaff had always thought of this practice as somewhat anti-intuitive, he tried it as well, visiting the dirt baths located in the lower regions of Quartzal. The dust was fine and white and scratchy, spelled to be abrasive to bacterium and curses of all sorts, but the salamanders would have none of this either, and in defiance turned the sand in Skaff's vicinity to a dark black glass which chipped into pieces sharp as daggers.

So, that was it. In resignation, Skaff purchased bath oils, and winced every day as he rubbed the slimy, slippery stuff into his feathers and skin. There were no bath oils that didn't smell, suffocatingly, of some type of flower, and he felt like he was basting himself every time he used it; but the oil captured the dirt on him pretty well, and thereafter the salamanders quite enjoyed burning it up, sending it up in floral-smelling steam and splatters. Skaffwory had herself always smelled like flowers, and now Skaff understood why.

Labels: skaff

"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

"What are you here for?" he asked, making his voice sharp. His crest flexed with irritation.

"Just to see how you are doing," Agni told him, with a smile. If she was perturbed by his aggressive behavior she didn't show it -- which, he imagined, was the mark of a good fire elementalist. "Quartzal's torch sputtered, but didn't go out, so it wasn't until we heard word of Skaffwory's death that we thought to check on the state of the fires here."

"Quartzal's torch?"

"Pyreksoma keeps a track of the districts of Anthem," Agni explained. "Well, not the districts as they're politically drawn. Not by Anthem politics, anyway. The point is, Quartzal's torch flickered, which meant there was trouble -- but when it revived itself, we assumed that Skaffwory had taken care of things."

"Skaffwory wasn't part of Pyreksoma," Skaff said warily. At least, he was pretty sure that she hadn't been.

"You're correct. But she regarded us still with respect, and we regarded her with respect as well. Which is why I came to investigate what happened to her. And to see," she added, "if you, the new lead fire elementalist in Quartzal, can match her ability."

Labels: skaff

perplexed, until he realized he had to do something with it -- something human -- what? His feathers ruffled even further and he unfolded his left hand, reaching out. Embers rose from his fingers -- he quickly drew his hand back before he could touch her, and the human woman's mouth twisted at the corners again, this time unevenly.

Was she angry? Skaff twisted his head, gazing at her with the other eye. That he rearranged his wings was all the apprehension that he dared to show the salamanders.

"A handshake is a human greeting," Agni explained, reading his confusion correctly. "Nothing to be afraid about -- especially between two elementalists as ourselves."

She reached out again, her digits glowing with flames, the corners of her mouth sharper. Skaff held out his hand again, mirroring her extended right hand by extending his left. What came next?

After a moment of staring at him she laughed and then she switched her hands, lifting her left hand and using it to grasp his. At contact, flesh and feathers and nail flared.

"Adorable."

Labels: skaff

when he descended to Quartzal. He wasn't sure if it was because she actually expected him, or had merely seen him approaching. As soon as he came within a certain proximity, he felt Prince begin to flare. He allowed it -- there was nothing else for it -- Leg and Pins merely hid at his shoulders. When he landed on the ground, it was with a slight jump which dislodged charred bits of stick and soot that he occasionally poked at the salamanders.

The elementalist's brows raised.

"Here has he come," the elementalist said. "The Phoenix of Quartzal."

The elementalist was a human. He eyed her. The human had black lines around its eyes, gold speckles, a large breast -- a female. She was uncommonly dark-skinned, which led him to assume that she was from Anthem High -- certainly not Low, skin couldn't be tanned like that in Low. Certainly not in Quartzal either, though Quartzal received the most light from the sun than anywhere else.

But when he came near her, he saw that the dark skin glimmered, and he realized. She wasn't a denizen of High at all -- just somehow tanned by salamanders. Come to think of it, he had never seen a human fire elementalist before, so perhaps this is what they all looked like. If his own skin weren't so dark, perhaps he would notice something unusual himself. Then again, hadn't his feathers been darkening? Was it something more than age?

In any case.

"I'm Skaff," he told her, feathers ruffling. She came here and called him by some dumb nickname?

"Skaff," she said after a moment, unfazed. Skaff clicked his beak in annoyance. So she didn't care, did she? Who was she to come here with her squishy human skin on his grounds, where the fire knew his name?

"I'm Agni," she said, holding out a hand. The corners of her mouth turned up at the edges -- a smile. "Of Pyreksoma."

Labels: skaff

because Prince told him -- its coils, which always rested in loose loops around his throat, abruptly tightened. Leg and Pins also skittered about nervously, and Skaff flapped up to his den, which had previously been Skaffwory's old warehouse for basket-materials and charcloth. In her old age -- and typical of passerine behaviors -- she had neglected the organization of these materials, and Skaff (at that time, Chimbeeriun) took it upon himself to clear the area up. It cleaned up nicely and he discovered that the warehouse den contained a small stove and a small furnace that had previously been hidden beneath piles of half-finished baskets.

He had also discovered that the entire back wall was a mirror, though it was hard to tell since the majority of it was scratched and sooty. With some work he had polished it up, and with some writings he had found and Prince's help, he learned that its primary purpose was for divination and communication, much like a pocket mirror.

He approached the mirror now, rubbing his hands around Prince's tail to warm them sufficiently before pressing his fingers against the glass. The mirror flickered, then began to heat, quickly becoming a glowing yellow slab on the dark wall. Skaff peered into the light, listening intently to Prince's sibilant translation, which Skaff was not yet experienced enough to understand himself.

"He is coming to ask you to be a part of the guild," Prince explained. Its eyes were dim, coal-colored slits.

Should I? Skaff wanted to ask, but held back. Skaffwory had told him that indecision was the worst trait to show to an elemental; it showed untrustworthiness and weakness, and was especially insulting to fire elementals, who loved ambition and security. Skaff licked his mouth, tightened Prince about his neck, and turned, propelling himself from the den and floating down to where Prince -- and his own senses -- told him the visitor was.

Labels: skaff

"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

The moment that Chimbeeriun realized this was the moment that Chimbeeriun realized, with some discomfort, that he really was learning something, and it made him guilty to think that his bad moods might have actually gotten in the way of something constructive.

Still, it was hard to say when exactly it had happened that he began to make a distinction between one salamander and the next — even when he realized it, it felt not that he had realized something new, but that he had realized something that he forgot, like coming across a toy of his youth. In any case, look, there they were — three salamanders, of denser, clearer outlines than the rest of the seething mass around Skaffwory. They had more solid shapes than the typical flame, which flickered out in licks and laps; they rather resembled very finely carved coal, laced with red and gold and sapphire. One was of the textbook, reptilian shape, though more snake-like than lizard-like. The others were slightly more missaphen, resembling crude golems, one with a single claw resting on Skaffwory's shoulder, the other bobbling up and down amidst the other flames (the other salamanders?) on wings as that glimmered with the fire.

They regarded him back as one, all of them with pupils of magenta and pale cyan. The feathers along Chimbeeriun's nape rose. Skaffwory's pleasure was immediate.

"So you can see them."

Which meant that she'd been starting to lose hope in him. Chimbeeriun frowned at her and opened his beak to complain, but before he could, Skaffwory gathered the three salamanders down onto the branch before him, with an enthusiasm and happiness across her features that he had never witnessed before. He could hardly remember a time before she had started being quite stern with him, and now here she was, pointing out her favorites in delight.

"You can see them?" Skaffwory clacked at him with suspicion as Chimbeeriun squinted at the branch, trying to distinguish the figures from simple flame.

"Yes," he said, and described them. "This one...the largest...is just like what I thought salamanders would always look like."

"That's Prince," Skaffwory said.

"And this one...with the leg."

"Foot," Skaffwory introduced.

"And...Wings?" Chimbeeriun guessed.

"Pins," Skaffwory corrected, "though you were close."

Despite himself he grimaced. "You couldn't think of better birth-names for your own salamanders?"

She whapped the feathers of his crest with her knuckles.

"Don't get to thinking that salamanders need to stoop to names," she told him fiercely. "The shapes they've taken represent precisely what and who these salamanders are. They know exactly who they are. The names I've given them are only a crude description of something I can't even begin to understand of another existing thing. As crude," she continued with a snort, gathering them up, "as the names we try to give ourselves."

Labels: chimbeeriun

Skaffwory Newer noticed the change immediately, and his long silence had been in part because he had become overwhelmed by the sudden mutterings in Quartzal, the hissing and smouldering of mourning salamanders. They missed her. Her favorites crawled toward him, twisting their bodies around the ironwood beneath his talons, languishing with him whose presence (and perhaps blood) they recognized from his training with her. Meanwhile he found that the salamanders in general, the weaker ones, had become confused, befuddled -- he noticed this because the ones near him would move about sluggishly, yet endlessly, rather than settling calm and burning in place. Yet when he descended finally from his perch, he noticed that it was affecting the whole district. The salamanders that Skaffwory Former had sold grew very dim, or went out completely; and throughout the caverns and cliffs rang warning bells for fire, as embers leaped from ovens and stoves and grew inexplicably, out of control.

The slyphs were alight with the voices of salamanders. "Skaffwory! Skaffwory...!" He followed the call of it wherever he went, to spitting hearths and violent candles, to embers that wouldn't go out. He answered them, introduced himself to them, tried to set them at ease, to the initial skepticism of the fires' watchers.

"Who are you?" they would ask; and at his terse reply, his new name, they would purse their lips and say nothing more. The Skaffwory they new was different. Some fires too, didn't obey him -- they screeched in denial, seeing straight through -- his feathers singed but never his body, thanks to the favorites, who clutched the flesh beneath his shoulderblades and arose against confrontation. The lesser fires would subdue; and Skaff went on with the favorites tugging at feathers, pressing their bellies and warming him to the bone and muscle.

He worked. But there was not a lot that one newly initiated fire elementalist could do, especially in the stead of a fire elementalist who had been the most powerful one in several districts (if not, he thought to himself, one of the best in the entirety of Anthem Low). Beyond Quartzal, kitchens were overheating, forges were going out of control. The odor of smoke grew denser. Soon, the guild sent one of their own.

Labels: skaff

and when it did, Chimbeeriun hadn't noticed. When she hadn't spotted him for a while, Kuhyo'ur left her business to go searching, though didn't have to look for long -- another sibling of their hatch had brought her news that Chimbeeriun was on one of the highest ironwood boughs and hadn't stirred.

Even if she hadn't been told, he would have been easy to see -- his body gave off a heated aura that made the air around him shimmer in waves as long as a wing-length all around. She came as close as she could, until the heat made her feel like her feathers were curling -- and even from the distance she was she saw that his feathers were glowing. His skin seethed with fires creeping in and out around his skin, peeking out in glimmers like embers twinkling on a charred log.

"Chim," she called uncertainly. She knew that Skaffwory had been teaching him how to master the salamanders, but she hadn't witnessed until now, nor really quite grasped, that this meant Chimbeeriun would be crawling with fire. In curiosity, branchers from nearby, who had already been watching the silent Chimbeeriun and occasionally throwing paper and wood balls at him for fun, neared closer than they had before. One experimentally tossed a wad of moist newspaper at him with her beak, and the branchers all crowed and raised their wings in surprise and delight as the wad disappeared in a flicker and hiss of steam.

"Stop that," Kuhyo'ur snapped, and then called again, more loudly -- "Chimbeeriun. Come on. Wake up. You haven't eaten. I know you haven't. I brought you your favorite even, look."

She unstrapped the basket from her back and pulled the blanket from its mouth, revealing rich dirt, a teasing glimpse of the glowing skin of a wyrm nestling within.

He glanced up at her, finally, and she swallowed as she saw his eyes -- bright blue. Just as Skaffwory's had been.

"Chimbeeriun?" she said nervously. What if his transition into an elementalist had gone wrong -- what if he had gone crazy? She pinched the basket between two boughs and stretched her wings, preparing to flee. The shimmery waves around him began to lengthen --

"No," he said, and there was something about it that made the air pucker closer to him. The waves shortened -- tightened down, so that now the air around him didn't shimmer anymore. The light began to fade too, become more contained against his body.

"Chimbeeriun," Kuhyo'ur said in amazement.

"No," he repeated again. "No."

He looked down at himself, and then at her again. "I am Skaffwory."

Labels: chimbeeriun, skaff

The sylph at Boula's ear trasmitted perfectly her sister's suspicion. "He disappears suddenly...and his room is dim? Doesn't he have a job to take care of?"

"Right, at The Libra."

"And didn't you say you didn't particularly know if he even had anyone else that he was close with, other than you?" The sylph even snorted in derision, rustling its body against the skin of her ear. She repeated, "And the room was dim?"

"Yes."

"Then...wouldn't it be likely that maybe...if maybe for an instant, the lights failed —"

"No," Boula said stiffly. "It wasn't that. There weren't signs of struggle, or signs that the room had been dark at all. He really just...disappeared. He doesn't even necessarily have that room anymore — I took all his stuff."

"You took all his stuff?"

"Well — most of it — letters and things, not the furniture." There wasn't any place to put it.

"Do the letters say anything?"

"I haven't opened them," Boula said with pursed lips. "Leu, come on, that's illegal."

"Who cares? He's not there to read it. I mean, according to you and your darkest fears, he might not even come back at all, right?"

"Leu. They're mostly bills and stuff anyway. From High."

"If it's just bills and stuff, that's all the more reason why there's no point in not reading them. Maybe that's where he went," she snorted, attempting some humor. "To pay bills. Anthem High."

They were quiet. Boula stared at the scratchy false gold frame of the compact mirror, letting Leucan's face look at her, frozen with furrowed brows and tongue partly sticking out from a mouth in mid word.

"Bou?" Leucan said finally, and Boula dragged the back of her hand across the mirror, wiping off the condensation into a new image of Leucan, looking dismayed.

"I'm alright," Boula told her, knowing that Leucan would see through it. "I just needed to talk to someone. But I'm hungry now, so I'm going to get something to eat. Let Mother and Father know I'm alright."

"Right," Leucan said, sounding relieved. "Ah...contact me later...if anything new comes up, alright?"

"Of course."

Boula clipped the compact shut and tossed it on her bed. That was Leucan — slow and awkward to comforting. In some ways Boula only felt worse than she did before.
She went to the window and looked outside, across the expanse of the city, lit in grids and webs of opalite wire. Somewhere out there — in the shadows, in a building — there was Seph. Safe, hopefully. No way to tell that he really hadn't just run off and was perfectly fine. No reason to feel that he wasn't fine except that her feeling that somehow, he definitely wasn't.

She glanced across the city, and then upward. Perhaps not in the shadows or buildings at all.

Labels: boula

He felt his anger boil between his eyebrows and his vision, already veiled with precipitation, became misty with steam emanating from his heating skin; rain bubbled and squirmed madly on his feathers, all down his nape and the back of his knuckles. His body began to hiss.

Remain calm, he heard, and realized with a start that it was not Skaffwory's voice telling him so — it was his own. He gripped the branch and did not move until some of the hissing subsided. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling some water but also some air which, though it battered his insides, cooled him down as well.

But not completely. He began to see the red of his eyelids, and when he opened his eyes he saw that his fingers were outlined in smouldering light which left deep black imprints in the branch which quickly turned into ashy black mud that was whipped by rain into the storm. The impressions were deep. He'd never seen Skaffwory leave such deeply-burned furrows, and he thought Don't panic before the emotion itself could take hold of him. It was alright. He would bring Skaffwory in from the rain. She could still teach him control.

He only just managed to relocate the orange light, and then made his way for it. The sylphs were still working at him, but the heat was spreading evenly around his whole body and they hissed as they were repelled. The heat also dried the branches that he used to walk on, and evaporated the weight from his wings, so he was able to make his way with fair quickness, with no other obstacle than Skaffwory herself, who he saw now was perched on her favorite branch like a statue, her body hissing violently, motionless despite the fierce shaking of the branch by the winds. When Chimbeeriun put his hand forth to approach, his fingers closed more tightly around the branch than he thought it would, and he realized with horror that the branch, once the breadth of his waist, now had the diameter of his wrist.

"Skaffwory!" he yelled in terror, "Skaffwory, this branch is going to break!"

She didn't hear him. He started to spread his wings, but as soon as he lifted them from his back the wind caught them, and he was forced to grab desperately as the wind whipped him and the branch he was on up and down and diagonally.

"Skaffwory!" he screeched once the branch had stilled, and still she didn't move -- she was so hard of hearing nowadays — and with the wind and the rain — and that hissing — "Skaffwory!"

The firelight, which had been dimly emitting from beneath her talons, began to grow stronger, and the steam grew thicker, until he entire body was shrouded in steam. And from the hissing came another sound, more sibilant, more velvet, a sound that he too heard, but not through his ears — rather, through his veins, through every drop of his blood.

"Skaffwory," it called, and then, yet another voice —

"I'm here." Skaffwory's, weak, cracking. And then, in her elementalist's voice, "I'm here."

The mist began to thin into dense, tapered strokes which spiraled about her — it revealed her standing now, and the fire grew stronger, lit up the entire branch so it was like a vein of red-orange lightning paused and shaking up and down in space. The branch was completely engulfed — by salamanders.

Chimbeeriun saw them there, for the first time, in awe, the creatures of flame that he had never been able to see before — and now he couldn't imagine how he had missed them. Their bodies were vibrant, beautiful, flickering, twisty and film-thin like feathers, or then again fat and dense like droplets of coal. They writhed and moved and didn't stop, weaving between and into each other, becoming one another, devouring, separating, reaching, singing.

"Skaffwory — Skaffwory —"

In a voice that was simultaneously a squeak and a roar.

The branch shook, harder, and Chimbeeriun saw that the salamanders' dancing was eating at the branch. With a shriek he reached out, but then drew back — it was too hot — not even the storm with all its wind and water could put it out — what was he supposed to do? The song was getting louder, the dance becoming faster.

"Skaffwory," he said — he must have yelled it — but he couldn't hear his own voice anymore. Steam was beginning to emit again, from his wings, from his whole body. A few of the salamanders had noticed him with hot sapphire eyes and had twisted away from their own and moved to his branch, where they coiled beneath his palms and soles.

Chimbeeriun watched, helpless and filled with impossible warmth, as the dance reached its climax and the entire branch burst into high flames, embracing and taking away his mother with bellowed song and then damp, silent ash.

Labels: chimbeeriun

The light — but not wirelight. Firelight. He knew that orange-red glimmer from anywhere.

Making it up to her favorite stump in this weather was less a matter of flying and more of swimming and crawling. He made it a fair distance before his wings began to burn with the heaviness of the water saturating every feather; by then he had made it to the dense cluster of loftrees and gripped the loftrees with fingers and talons, gripping as much as his weak hand muscles allowed and as tightly as his talons could without him having to struggle to unclutch them from the irony wood. One branch after the other, crawling roachlike on the seething tangle, water collecting and dripping off his brows — the firelight — the firelight —

He stopped moving, though was not motionless — the sylphs were seething and they felt him, and pressed against his body, squeezing it with antagonism, shaking his branch — it bobbed up and down pendulous lengths and it was all he had to keep his calm and grip. They were worse now — they were angrier than they ever had been. It wasn't just the seasonal aggression — well, that was part of it — but they were angry at him.

"Leave me be," he wailed, and then shouted — "Leave me be! Come on! What did I ever do to you?"

He could feel the hatred in the wind, the jealousy of it.

"I need to get to Skaffwory," he explained, as if they would care. "I need to get to her."

It howled — it raged — it sobbed and spat at his body, shearing feathers, scratching skin. Begging, demanding.

Be afraid!

Labels: chimbeeriun

as time flickered on they shifted and rubbed together until the sky was filled with echoing, undiscernable gossip, which rumbled and grayed and dimmed until the skies grew stormy with frustration and friction. When the sky grew this busy not many dared to stay out in it, and instead crowded into the combs and tunnels in the cliffs, or else into Lower Quartzal itself, crowding together in awkwardly close quarters, all cone-shaped in woven ponchoes that protected their feathers from the dense, elementally-charged moisture that tended to make the filaments glisten and stand on end.

It was the first day of the mass exile of the passerine to walkers' Quartzal and Chimbeeriun had just newly retrieved a poncho from Kuhyo'ur, a secondhand one from her mate which was slightly too small and a little too zappy but which did the trick, though everyone Chimbeeriun touched jumped slightly with static.

"I'm sorry -- excuse me --" he said briefly, and then, "have you seen the Elementalist Skaffwory?"

"No," came the reply, repeatedly, "No --"

"No, I have not --"

"No, not since last Market --"

"No --"

"Never," said one brancher, and who asked then, in confusion, "Who is that?"

Chimbeeriun stared at him, at first disgusted, then chilled. Who was Skaffwory, indeed.

Who was Skaffwory? It occurred to him abruptly that there would come ages who would not know Skaffwory, in fact, yes, here was one here now. Someone who did not know the only fire elementalist passerine in all of Anthem history!

Chimbeeriun moved on, asking and asking, until he had the answer he both was searching for, and dreaded: "I haven't seen her in the caves, but I did see a light on the higher branches. It looked like firelight."

Chimbeeriun rushed to one of the cave mouths -- it was raining harshly, the slyphs throwing fits and shrieking and weeping hysterically -- he couldn't see anything, and he pushed the poncho over his shoulders and threw himself against the wind, labored up to a higher cave, plastering himself against the stone within before brushing the water from his eyes and peering through the rabid precipitation for a sign of Skaffwory's orange-red light.

Labels: chimbeeriun

"Is Skaffwory not doing any better?"

He only huffed at her and began to rummage through his satchel. Kuhyo'ur whistled at him in dismay.

"She broke more?"

"I misjudged how much I needed earlier," Chimbeeriun lied absentmindedly, counting out bills. He handed them over, and when Kuhyo'ur just looked at him, his feathers ruffled with agitation.

"What's the matter? Will you just give them to me?"

"It's really strange, you know," Kuhyo'ur told him.

"What is?"

"That you're...that you're taking care of her." Kuhyo'ur turned back to the shelves and began selecting synthetic shafts and soft plumes that looked like long eyelashes. She wrapped them in parchment and placed them carefully in a woven bag, then handed them to him.

"She can take care of herself, you know."

"Yeah." He doubted it.

She could hear it. "She's an elementalist, after all," she continued. "The only passerine fire elementalist in all of Anthem Low. She doesn't need anyone to mend her feathers for her."

He snatched the bag away from her. "What's your point?" he demanded, already backing off the landing and spreading his wings.

"You still have your hatching name, Chimbeeriun," Kuhyo'ur reminded him, setting one hand on her hip and the other on the egg she had wrapped snugly against her belly. Her feathers had grown out to a huge, nesting fluff in front of her, nearly obscuring it. "You need to find your own."

"What's the rush? What's so important about it?" he snapped at her. "I like my name well enough. I don't think there's anything to having my own name anyway if it doesn't mean anything." He spread his wings.

"It isn't about having a name others think is meaningful," she called after him. "But about having one that proves you have meaning to yourself."

She sighed as she watched him buffet away, in wild yet precise kite angles. Attached to a string.

"Skaffwory is going to die soon," she said aloud, hoping a slyph would catch her words and bring them softly to his ear. "What are you going to do then, Chimbeeriun?"

Labels: chimbeeriun

as soon as possible, backing out as fast as she could without tripping over any of the wires.

Well? asked the lymantri who was waiting outside the door. He was stooped over a bit, and his hands fiddled with the tines of his arms, releasing a tinny, whining noise which Boula recognized as lymantri apprehension.

"I don't know," Boula said, just as uneasy. "I have no idea."

His rent is paid out until the end of this hue, the lymantri said, but after then, I will have to remove his things.

He must be nervous; she'd never met a lymantri so wordy. The words shuddered thin and shivery across his wings, outlined only briefly in the natural cracks of color on them; it was like trying to find words on the veins of a leaf.

"Are you going to have the light fixed?" she asked.

Of course, of course. But as I said, after the end of this hue...

Boula tried unsuccessfully to remember the current date, then pried her planner from her back and consulted it. There would be three flickers of day and night before the hue ended. She gave the room another glance and then came to decisions.

"I'll take his things for safe keeping," she told the landlord, "if that's all right." She didn't want him to lose anything important, in the event of his not returning, and she also didn't want his things to be tossed out and devoured if they could mean something later. The lymantri nodded.

It is approved of, he declared, and left. Trust it to lymantri to trust their adem over all else. That Boula had been previously granted invitation to this apartment, that she had been trusted by the security, meant to the lymantri that she was pretty much trusted to do anything else with Seph's things.

Though, Boula thought uneasily, if someone were the cause of Seph breaking away, surely there's a likelihood that Seph also trusted this person beyond his front door...

It occurred to her that, despite the fact that she thought of Seph as her best friend, she didn't really know that much about him, namely, the identities of his other close friends, or anything about the High Anthem culture that he had come from. She was gripped abruptly with a sorrow and fear so strong that her vision started to blur.

Stop it, she told herself, he's fine, I'm sure he's fine, he's from High Anthem, he's bunches older than you, he knows how to take care of himself, he definitely isn't dead somewhere, he's — perfectly fine —

Labels: boula

while really pressing at her tearducts and sniffing her nostrils clean. The last thing she wanted to do while she was still a brand-new student at Fallish was bring her sister's wrath to it. Even when they had been toddling around on their twos, Leucan hadn't spared anyone.

Boula reached for the mirror when she felt it was safe, and rubbed the misted surface across her sheets. Leucan's face looked back at her, her expression paused in narrow-eyed suspicion.

"Is that so," whispered the sylph at Boula's ear. "It doesn't seem that way to me."

"There's just so many people...and my classes are already talking about tests...it's stressful." This was true.

"Tests already! Have you even learned anything yet?"

"I don't think so. Well, they're not completely immediately..."

"Do you have classes and things already, then?"

"Yes. Just introductory ones. Anthem Low history, introductory biologic, and language —"

"Wait a minute, haven't you already studied biologic?"

"It's different in university, sister, they'll go more in-depth."

"In an introductory class?"

"Yes," Boula said, with more confidence than she actually had.

"Alright," Leucan said doubtfully. "And what's that last one, language?"

"Low language."

"Are you kidding? Don't you think you already know how to speak Low? Aren't we talking it now?"

"It's going to go more into dialects," Boula said, trying to remember from the syllabus. "And into etymologies. And morphology."

"Mor — what?"

"Morphology, that's how words transform, like in different mouths or in different airs. Like say through a sylph or something. There's also probably going to be stuff about the history of Anthem Low and High, how the languages of both work together...things like that...and probably how the words work between different bloods as well, I mean, our way of speaking is different than the passerines' way, right?"

"I suppose," Leucan said, but she still sounded a little doubtful, and in fact a little bored.

Labels: boula

pocked and multi-colored and curvy in some places where the parts of the building had withstood the Tragic Age. Wind rushed through the halls constantly, slyphs rushing back and forth with words tangled up in their tresses and toes, and as a result the whole place was kind of helplessly filled with noise, though not to a deafening extent.

There were so many voices around the Bell at any given time, however, and after they had made their way past a couple hallways Boula felt her ears start to strain; she flattened them against her skull and it was in that moment that a bell rang. It was unlike any bell she'd ever heard — it was unimaginably deep, and seemed to resonate in her chest and the bridge of her nose — it seemed to make the air shimmer for a moment, and immediately following it Boula thought that she had been deafened, until she realized that the sylphs had scattered.

"At lunch the voices always exalt, almost to lack of hearing," Frux Melior Prass explained, and Boula almost jumped — she had not expected him to speak to her. She noticed now too, that he had a sort of accent which only slightly edged his rich voice, but was more pronounced in his word choice.

"So the bell rings more often then?" Boula guessed.

"True."

"How do you know this already?" Wasn't he new like her?

"I crossed this campus much in my youth," he explained. "For my profession."

His profession? Was he a scholar so young? She glanced at his raddle. It was more of an impulse, because the text was too small for her to read, and he said for her, "I indeed am primarily Scholar, but natally and more fun a Tenor."

"Ah!" She was impressed. She was going to ask more but before she could, their party halted. Luserna, who had been leading at the front, gave a horrible gagging noise — "Uaagh!" — and stepped back without warning, palms pressed against her nostrils.

"Awful," she managed, wavering, and Nivus reached to steady her but before he could she had rushed to the window and was inhaling deeply. For a moment it seemed to Boula that she was trying to rid her nose of the smell, and then she realized that she was actually trying to take in more of it — her eyes were closed and her breast lifted with a heavy inhalation.

Melior glanced at her, bewildered as Boula was; Salt looked surprised; Nivus looked tense, and he glanced back and forth down the hallway, as if he expected something to appear at any moment.

"What is it?" Melior asked finally, and Luserna huffed at him. She looked back and glared.

"If you'd let me just concentrate, maybe we'd both know!"

"Luserna, this is the third counting of your behavior this flicker. Surely we deserve some explanation?"

"You don't need to even pay attention if you don't want to," she told him. "Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with you, I know that much."

"But with the rest of us?" Salt asked nervously. "Is it something bad?"

"I don't know. It's something powerful...but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad."

"Perhaps it's only a storm," Nivus suggested. "The passerines' seasons are changing at this time, after all. You could be smelling the foreign sylphs."

Luserna balked at arguing against Nivus. "I could," she admitted.

Labels: boula, fallish university

the air grew chiller and drier as brasher cousins of the normal slyphs made their pilgrimmage. It was not the first time Chimbeeriun had had to deal with this sort of weather but it might as well have been; the stuff sheared him ragged, as easily as if he had only just set his wings to the air the day before, so that when he finally made it to Skaffwory's favorite perch higher up he looked like a mess.

Skaffwory tilted her head and eyed him. She had grown stricter with him of recent, but to Chimbeeriun's frustration now she smiled at him, amused. "Did you crash into something, you silly thing?"

"No," he grumbled at her, and slung down his bag, holding out the gape for her to see. "Here."

The inside was filled with feathersticks and jars. Skaffwory craned up to look in.

"You have surpassed me in c-creating those, I think," she said, and her voice knocked about a little wrongly in Chimbeeriun's ear; he looked at her, blinking. Had her voice just cracked?

Surely not. Skaffwory tried hard to keep her voice crisp. He began to form some sort of jeer, "What was that, you old bird, even I don't click anymore when I speak," but Skaffwory had already settled back down onto her branch, her feathers fluffed and eyes half-open, crouched on the branch. She had always been a fat old thing but abruptly Chimbeeriun realized that her wings (presently unfolding, folding again) were rather small, as if shorn too by the wind.

But this couldn't be right, Chimbeeriun thought. Why would they be shorn by the wind? Lazy buzzard. He hadn't seen her in the sky since the brasher sylphs had arrived. She had sent him on errands to retrieve her food for her, even, and he'd been the one carrying on sales at walkers' Quartzal, gingerly handling jars and fire-proofed pouches bulging with her salamanders.

"I should hope I got better at making them," he told her instead, "since that's all I ever do."

She snorted at him. But didn't say anything back, only reached out to take a featherstick and stick it beneath her talons. It jutted out and fire began to curl the softened fibers.

She never let his comments about the uselessness of her training go.

This time there was a chill against the back of his neck, and he slapped it, trying to scare away the slyph that was niggling beneath his nape-feathers.

It had to be a slyph.

"I hope you're not going to make me get food for you again today," Chimbeeriun ventured, and Skaffwory didn't reply. He waited, for a while, and realized that she had fallen asleep, though her eyes were slightly open.

This too was a first. Chimbeeriun gripped and ungripped his branch. Had she just dozed off? She must have been exhausted. What did she even do anymore that would tire her? And she left the featherstick smouldering, the idiot.

She really was sleeping.

Chimbeeriun huffed, but waited a little longer; then looped the bag's straps on a nearby branch and spread his wings. As he did, however, he saw that the featherstick was burning -- not just smouldering, but burning, a candle-sized flame set right against Skaffwory's scaly ankle. Skaffwory had never been burned by her beloved salamanders that he had ever seen in his life, but as he stared, the fire began to creep and blacken the tips of her gray feathers.

"What --" He started in surprise, and then squawked in panic -- fire -- feathers burning! He launched himself from his branch and grasped the featherstick with his talons, but as his claws wrapped around it the fire abruptly grew, with a purr like an opening wing; he shrieked his surprise and fear and began to beat the stick against the loftree branch until it shattered and disintegrated, and then he threw it into the sky. The slyphs buffeted it back and forth with some curiosity before letting it go.

"Skaffwory!" he shouted furiously, and she started from her sleep in shock, all her feathers sticking out on their ends. "What are you doing?"

"What happened?"

"What happened? You were almost consumed by your own sky-forsaken salamanders, that's what happened!"

"C-consumed...?"

She looked at him with confusion. "Surely not, Chimbeeriun," she said, and then looked angry. "Did you do something to anger them?"

"Did -- I --"

So she blamed him? When he had saved her? His wings clapped open with anger and without further word he threw himself from her branch, not trusting himself to explain kindly to her, and frightened of the prospect of it.

Why was she acting his way? It was unlike her. She better get back to normal soon.

Labels: chimbeeriun, passerine, quartzal

If the horns of the fat, tilted administration towers were the brain of the university, then the union building was its heart and stomach. Students passed through consistently, following the artery lines of their schedules and hunger, clotting in the basement meeting areas, heaving away mass-made food. The building was called the Bell, due to its being graced by such an object which was not visible from the ground.

Outside the stairway leading down to the entrance, students were tabling; there were one or two ungu, both pale- and short-haired, seated at a table which Nivus appproached, and when they noticed he was coming they waved and called greetings.

"Welcome, freshmen," said one of them. "I'm Tonsor Yell Pritt." The five of the younger ungu replied back with their own names, even Boula; she watched him carefully for any reaction. It seemed to her that he made a point of meeting her eyes and smiling.

"And I am Gia Thinam Firmitas," said the other ungu. This one too accepted all their introductions with nods, but nodded especially deeply to Luserna and Nivus, and added, "I am humbled to meet you."

"We are pleased to meet you," Luserna replied, for both herself and Nivus, who only smiled kindly. Boula found this strange -- why the formality? Were these two famous somehow? Wouldn't Boula know if they were? -- and glanced at Salt and Melior, to see if they also felt the atmosphere change; but if they felt it, they made no move, and in fact Salt was rushing ahead already into the Bell.

Labels: boula, fallish university

and she was sure now that he was not, in fact, ignorant and a chick, but only humoring her by allowing her to "re-evaluate," as she had said; but soon enough he pursued her again, and this time he did not look frivolous and young and airbrained but determined and old and wise -- how could she have ever thought otherwise?

"I wish to see you," he told her, and this time it was her following his order, and there they were again, perched on the higher loftrees.

They sat in silence, the wind picking up and rustling their feathers. Some of Skaffwory's were sheared off and flew away, tumbling enthusiastically in the way of feathers that had finally escaped their use.

"No jibes or insults to me?" said Ckorassackea Cedrus, and Skaffwory shook her head. The perpetual fires at her feet were flickering erratically; her beloved salamanders were responding to her unease, and occasionally one of them would lash out, soothing its restlessness.

"No," Skaffwory said. She huddled, shivering on her branch despite the embers beneath her. She combed through the feathers on her right shoulder.

They were silent again.

"Are you done?" Skaffwory asked finally, and Ckorassackea Cedrus hung his head.

"You fear me," he said miserably. "This is why I didn't tell you before. I didn't want you to be scared of me."

"What other response would you have?" Skaffwory asked -- rather than demanded. His defeated posture touched her.

"Well," he said, "I'd rather that you love me as I love you."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Surely you must know," Skaffwory said, "that this power is not something that can be forced easily onto another being, much less a passerine."

"Yes," he said, "I know the c-curse, just as well as you. Despite whatever other misc-conceptions you harbor about those who bear my name."

He sighed, strongly. She had never seen such a sigh in any other creature. His breast expanded to at least a quarter greater his entire bodies' size.

"I feel," Ckorassackea Cedrus said, "that it is possible to defeat such a c-curse. Think about it. Love is a c-coagulant for the sorrows of other beings -- they speak of it and write songs of it -- I refuse to think that we're any different. We must all adhere to some sort of underc-consciousness."

"What evidence have you for this?"

"I've been think-king," he said, "of the stories that have been told throughout our ages. Love and war. Maturity and spawning descendants. It's all the same -- no matter whether you bear skinned flesh or feathered, whether your hands are hooved or prehensile. Even the dragons have songs that speak to these timeless themes."

"You forget what passerine songs have nothing to do with love."

"This is false," Ckorassackea Cedrus told her sharply. "Passerine do sing of love. It is only the word itself that falters, and it does not live long in us, the same way that a flame struggles on a short wick-kuh. But I am sure, with the right bond...with the right pair...timelessness could be achieved."

She was wrong. He was a chick after all.

Labels: skaffwory

heard also the words of her mother, echoing with warning; but it felt so nice to be invited. And anyway, they were all quite kind-looking. And anyway, who was her mother to speak of those she had never met before?

The others all walked together, though at different paces, the Tonsor male stepping double the others at the front of the group and turning back to catch "down" frequently, the Frux male walking aside without rush and without looking around. Though there were at the center of the group, the Gia siblings (she could only guess they were siblings — they were both named Luculo after all, though maybe it was different in Gia) were clearly leading their small herd, and when they turned right towards another building both Tonsor Salt and Frux Melior altered their courses accordingly.

It seemed they all knew each other well enough already and spoke with ease. Gia Luserna was talking about how she hadn't been able to make it into her course; Gia Nivus was sympathizing somewhat, and mentioned something about next quarter, at which point Luserna scoffed.

"They won't teach it next quarter," she grumbled.

Nivus looked confused. "I saw it on the offering, I'm sure —"

"It just won't," Luserna snapped, and Nivus opened his mouth to speak again and then closed it, saying, "Oh, I see."

"What?" Boula asked. She'd missed something.

Luserna turned toward her, just enough so that she could see Boula from the edge of her left eye.

"I can smell it," she explained, and Boula blinked, and understood. So Luserna could smell the future. There were certain ungu in Terrai as well that could scent beyond the fences of the present, but in general the winds of fate rendered this ability useless unless the time scented was very close, or the power itself very strong. Boula's mother had this power but its greatest expression caused her to furrow her nose horrendously on the days when Leucan got into fights.

"You're going to do it again," Boula's mother would warn, nostrils flared, and Leucan would glare and argue and leave and indeed Boula's parents would receieve a slyph later informing them of bruises on some poor ungu with bruises in the shape of Leucan's horns.

"It stinks," Luserna continued, shaking her head. Her hair swung back and forth like pale fluid. "I hate it when my plans go wrong."

"Is that what you usually smell?" Boula asked. "When something you've planned goes awry? My mother could smell whenever my sister got into fights, for example."

Luserna wrinkled her nose at Boula as if she emitted some greater stink. "I can smell a lot of things," she said. "One of my secondary licenses is prophet. I can smell my plans going wrong and I can smell bones breaking and illness. I can smell when soulmates meet. I can smell the endings of books I haven't read. And I can smell when I meet friends. And enemies."

This was obviously a pointed remark and the hairs on Boula's nape rose.

"And you're sure they're not just self-fulfilling prophecies?" she asked, aware that in doing so she was herself pressuring the future to bend the certain way that Luserna wanted.

Tonsor Salt, several lengths away, laughed; Luserna flushed angrily and opened her mouth to snap back, but before she could Nivus said, "Ah, here we are."

Labels: boula

crowned High Anthem just as those of Avuckka had their talons' grip on Low. It had been this way since before even the Tragic War, and -- unlike other inhabitants of High, who would on occasion drift down to Low, those of Ckorassackea feather remained above the dark.

Superficially, there were many similarities between those of Ckrossackea and Avucckakea passerine; most limbs and sensory organs were in symmetrical pairs, they bore beaks and bladed feet, fingered, thumbed hands, and so on -- but no passerine would ever call them the same as they. It was said and believed of them, with some wonder and some fear, that they were beings of a different sort, something part feather and part condensation, beings spun from bone and cloud, closer to skybeasts and precipitation than mere blood-and-flesh passerine. They were fairies. They spoke with eloquence, only the truth, and bore strange powers of foresight concerning the weather and the stars; they glistened with a color which could not be seen in Low.

Should any passerine come into contact with any Ckrossackea, that passerine would know (it was said) because those of Ckrossackea were generally of shorter stature than a passerine. Ckrossackea might not know manners or the accepted social behaviors of the time or place, they might not know the language. If they were in Low at all, it meant they wanted something which would fulfill their ambiguous pleasure, and they would likely pursue this thing until they possessed it to their liking.

Labels: beings, narrator, passerine

and his feathers fluffed more; in agitation he began to preen them down, alternating between speaking and combing. "I have to press and soak charcloth, and I have to carve feathersticks, on my own — I can't even buy them. She keeps telling me, they'll know if you buy it, they'll know if you don't make it with your own hands, but I don't see how they know anything, the..."

Stupid things, he'd started to say, but he heard Skaffwory's voice in his mind now as well — Don't insult them — they'll know if you insult them. Do you really want something so powerful to even have the inkling that you don't respect it?

Kuhyo'ur was nodding vigorously. "That's how it was with me too, I had to do all the grunt work — spinning out filaments, making these wires —" She pointed at the box she had earlier.

"Actually," she amended with a kind of grimace, "I guess I'm still doing that stuff now, but...but I mean...it works up to something more, doesn't it? It's all basics but it really is helpful, eventually."

Chimbeeriun snorted at her loudly. "Probably not as helpful as it could be. I guess with the charcloth at least I get something at the end, but sometimes she has me meditate — just — just sit there, and think. Just listen to the wind, she says. Just listen," he mocked, "to the sound of everyone else making money, earning a livelihood while you sit there like a worm, waiting to be picked off... Everyone else has jobs. Look at you!"

Kuhyo'ur laughed. "Isn't that a little unfair? You do have a trade, after all. Even if it's going more slowly than usual, I think it's awfully cool how you're going to be an elementalist."

"If all an elementalist does is sit around thinking about nothing and carve sticks, then I don't want to be an elementalist at all."

"Haven't you ever seen the salamanders?"

"No," he said. "She only ever just sits there on her fat, burning branch putting tinder on the bark. The branch just looks like burning coal. She says she doesn't call any powerful ones when I'm around because I'm too young. I'm not learning anything that's going to help me in life," he told her in a rough voice. "I still have to rely on her for everything. And —"

"Kuhyo'ur! There are clients!" called a voice from inside, and Kuhyo'ur looked back hastily.

"I'm coming! I have to go," she told Chimbeeriun. "I hope things get better with Skaffwory. Come back again — I think I'll be busy for the rest of this week — but maybe the next at the fifth flicker, okay?"

"Okay," Chimbeeriun said, feeling even more frustrated. So his sister — Kuhyo'ur — was busy. Busy working and earning a livelihood. While Chimbeeriun wasted away his short youth playing with sticks and oily cloth.

He launched himself into the air. The wind was good and buffered him up fast, but he flapped anyway, hard, rowing out his frustrations. I hate this. I hate this. How much longer am I going to have to do this?

Labels: chimbeeriun

bringing him treats, sparing him comfort in the cold or at least from sharp words; whenever he had a wish for anything she made him first exercise and demonstrate some verse with salamanders. Several times after that first, he was tempted to flee the whole business altogether, but it was hard for a passerine to get work in Quartzal that did not involve either solid muscle or trade, the former of which he lacked, frustratingly, because he could see for himself that other passerine were already earning their own wages as ferriers through the air of Quartzal, while he was forced to cling to the tailfeathers of his mother, and the abominable trade which was the only one she would teach him.

He occasionally spotted his siblings and they would nod at each other politely. He was not particularly close to any of them except for one sister, to whom he occasionally still paused to give longer conversation. She was an apprentice to a feathermender.

Chimbeeriun perched on a nearby branch and called out. "Chureiya, Chureiya," he chirped, and soon enough his sister emerged. Like him, she was rather short, but she made up in dexterity what she lost in general strength. The delicacy and attention with which she created the hair-thin needles and filaments for replacement feathers was something that Chimbeeriun could not imitate.

"Chimbeeriun," she chirped back to him in surprise, and then delight. She approached the open side of the mendary, setting down box filled with coils of bent wire. They exchanged several notes of playful greeting, and then her face firmed.

"You may not call me Chureiya anymore," she announced, and Chimbeeriun's nape fluffed widely.

"What! Who are you now, then?" he asked, amazed, and her head bent down several times, preening back her own fluffed nape, so she looked sleek and mature as she declared, "My name is Kuhyo'ur. I am a mender of passerine feathers and bone. Not an especially good one, yet," she said, "but not nearly as bad as I was when I started."

Chimbeeriun flushed with some magnitude of jealousy. He didn't know about his other siblings yet — but somehow he had felt that his sister would keep the name that their mother had given them for a while yet.

"My teacher acknowledged me," Kuhyo'ur said, drawing herself up, "and introduces me as such to all those who enter in."

"I am glad for you," Chimbeeriun said, as earnestly as possible, and tried it in his mouth, "Kuhyo'ur," and she beamed at him.

"How are your trade studies with Skaffwory?"

Labels: chimbeeriun

but fortunately unpopular with the smitten. The loftree branch was short and they huddled together, breath fluffing out in big plumes. Skaffwory alternated tightening and loosening her grip on the branch beneath her. The stony bark began to glow and heat beneath her touch.

"I knew you from last Adarngack-kea," he told her. "When you did the dance. Ever since then I have been in love with you."

Skaffwory huffed. "Is that so."

"Yes. You are beautiful and awesome."

"And what," Skaffwory said, "you want me to take care of you? Do you want me to chew your food for you while you —"

"I am not a chick!" he told her — not, she noted, with the usual whining, but firmly. "My name is Ckorassackea Cedrus."

Skaffwory straightened at that. "Are you really?"

"Yes."

"You have no accent."

He placed a hand into his mouth, hooked thumb and index finger until his knuckles shoved up against the interior of his beak. When he withdrew his hand again, there was a glimmering coil twisted around his talon.

He spoke something to her that she didn't understand. Then he set the slyph back on his tongue and swallowed, grimacing and coughing, throat flexing as the slyph twisted back against the cords of his voice.

His voice came out rough at first, and he rubbed his neck.

"That is how it is."

"It explains a lot," she admitted, and shifted away from him slightly, on the premise of stretching her wings. Cedrus eyed her.

"Do you fear me now?"

"No," Skaffwory said, "but I must re-evaluate."

"Re-evaluate what?" he said. "What is there to re-evaluate? You are amazing. You make the air glitter. I love you."

"I am old and I am going to rest," Skaffwory told him, and raised her head, sensing a gust; she opened her wings at the right moment, loosened the grip of her feet. The wind plucked her from the branch with a sparkle of dying flames, a thin trail of ash.

Labels: skaffwory

I have just finished breakfast with Windaline. It consisted of a pair of large eggs, both the size of fists and a pale gray color. She mixed them into a pan as large as a bowl and stirred in meat and flour until it became a flaky batter, which she served in crisps. She handed me the bowl with a spoon and at my hesitation reminded me it was my favorite.

She bade me eat and then left for an adjacent room, where I heard her quietly contact the hospital and argue with them briefly. She argued that I am not yet healed, for a while but the entire thing must have been fruitless because she returned with a reddened face and told me that today we would go shopping. I agreed.

I don't have anything else to do, that I know of.

She has gone upstairs, presumably to prepare for the outing.

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Labels: rael's journal

and they met several times after that, Skaffwory using each moment to scrutinize and gauge him ruthlessly, buffeting back his kindnesses as appropriate, trying to goad out his true character with all she could muster. He brought her other gifts, which she accepted flatly — they were simple things, jeweled anklets and polishers and expensively spiced food which she made great show of putting for sale in her rental space the next day. She kept the initial basket of antimony, but shoved his next offering of it out of his hands with her beak, scoffing: "What, this again? Old news!"

This took him aback and she could see a flicker of infuriation, which he hid with a huff and bulge of his throat. "Very well," he said, merely, and was rather quiet for a while, and she wondered if finally he would reveal his frustration and true intentions, and leave accordingly.

He did not. He continued to sit beside her on the loftree branch, looking down at the world below with great thought, the wind brushing the feathers of his long crest. Shadows fell across the two of them, of the other passerine crowding the air, and finally she felt a great annoyance with him and decided to end this ridiculousness.

"Be gone," Skaffwory told him, wearily. "You bore me. I am too old for your chickling games."

"I won't go," he said. "I love you, Sk-kaffwory."

She ground her beak with irritation and sighed. She opened her beak, her breast growing more prominent as she took breaths of the air, and she exhaled a low note, stirring yet slightly cracked and airy. Immediately the branch began to heat; the buzzard didn't notice at first, but soon did when fires began to manifest as if from the core of the branch, easing up in little tendrils between the slivers of bark, between the scales of their toes.

Now the buzzard noticed, and he started in alarm. Passerine feared fire like no other creature — what other creature was more akin to living tinder? — and so Skaffwory fully expected him now to flee with angry squawks, but instead he closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the branch.

Skaffwory was surprised. She let the fire grow, up so that it began to lick against her stomach and at his hunched, stooped shoulders, and he cried out but remained.

"Abate," she sang to the salamander now, and the fire quelled down to a smoulder beneath their heels. Trembling, the buzzard looked up at her, and then at himself in wonder. Skaffwory did too — he was not completely unhurt, but he wasn't close to dead. And his feathers were mostly intact as well, only crisp around edges, which actually served to complement his taupe-tawny plumage rather well.

The buzzard examined his wings, which were both also intact. These were singed as well, but still usable, with effort. He looked at her, and said, with the most sincerity she had ever heard from any passerine male still in his prime:

"You are amazing."

"I threaten you with death by flame and you c-call me amazing," Skaffwory cawed at him, but her feathers fluffed in embarrassment.

Labels: skaffwory

found herself in walkers' Quartzal far more than she liked, squatting in the stench of the dirt while walkers trudged back and forth, mushing their grubby heels or else creaking along in carriages crusted with Quartzal mud, which was famously iridescent and for that reason was not as thoroughly washed off as other hues of mud.

Still, it was a little bit better than being up in the skies at this time of the year. It was just the sort of day that was both bright and sprinkly with warm rain, the time when much younger passerine than she would launch themselves through the showers and clouds to veil themselves in beads of glistening moisture. The traffic in the skies about Quartzal was horrendous, but because passerine romance was not necessarily a holiday, administration did not see completely fit to oversee detours in advance, and so everyone was always scrambling off to somewhere else in lateness, covered in damp down feathers and decidedly less innocent than they had been hours prior.

Though Skaffwory usually recognized her offspring when she happened to run into them, and remembered the fathers and members of each of her clutches, she didn't necessarily keep up with anyone, and had grown a little tired of the whole affair, and hadn't done the whole water-droplet-veiling thing for at least two years. She had wondered at the waning of her own desire for mothering and had thought that maybe, finally, her age had quenched it. But, recently --

In fact, there he was now, the buzzard. Skaffwory's feathers fluffed as he approached. It was easy to avoid such folk in the sky -- her skills far outweighed any other there -- but here on the ground, and especially within the limits of her rental space, she couldn't do much from this frequent, annoying visitor but tilt her head to the side with scrutiny and say, gruffly, "And what is it that you want today?"

The passerine said nothing, only eyed her very seriously and held out a basket. Skaffwory blinked at him and for a moment did nothing, but her curiosity got the better of her, and she stretched out and took the handle of the basket with her beak, flipped it off and to the side. The basket was filled with clumps of silvery-white, crystalline material.

Skaffwory snorted.

"Little one," she said, for the passerine really was quite young, if a buzzard in his tenacity, "I have received gifts of gold and pliant wool beaded with power, tame dentsa and the eyes of dragons, and you seek to woo me with mere rocks?"

The passerine's feathers ruffled with offense that he -- she granted him this much -- was good enough not to verbalize, except to say, "Sk-kaffwory-lady, I am not little, I am an adult, and I love you."

"You are a child. Your feathers are hardly out of the first molt." She plucked one out of his head just to prove it and he winced, slightly. "You can hardly speak without your beak clacking between each word."

She exaggerated. He was young -- compared to her. She was suspicious of what his true intentions were. There were some who tried to bait her for her rapport with salamanders, and she did not want to risk either her life or the rest of Quartzal's by somehow angering the fickle things.

Indeed, his eyes flicked down to the salamanders, and Skaffwory hissed at him.

"Be off with you, you buzzard, do not anger me or you will burn to a crisp!"

"No Skaffwory, only look!" He set the basket down beside another one, and the salamanders immediately perked up with interest. The salamanders she soothed were usually very calm and jaded, and so Skaffwory herself became interested as well; unblinking, she watched as a couple salamanders slid over from their basket and amidst the silvery rocks, and immediately the basket began to emit sparks, a vibrant and loud glitter which made all the rest of the marketplace turn about in shock, which made her realize how soft and frantic the pounding of her own heart was, which made even the constant, protective illumination of the opalite wires seem dark.

The crackling and shining persisted, the salamanders writhing in a certain sort of cheer, and despite herself Skaffwory found herself quite impressed. It was the first time that someone had appealed to some aspect of hers specifically. Anyone would be pleased with gold or pliant wool of the highest grade, but there was only one passerine who dared nearing salamanders.

"The whole marketplace is looking," she said, and took the lid of the basket with her beak and set it back on, containing the glitter, though the basket continued to shine from the inside, and light dripped with sharpness from some cracks in the basket. She looked at it with pleasure and used her smile to comb out feathers whose filaments had become disengaged from the rest.

The passerine was looking on at her nervously. She nibbled at down and told him, "Meet me again when the market hours end."

His beak clipped and clacked with pleasure; he nodded at her, crest feathers all risen and ruffled, and flew off.

Labels: skaffwory

"I was hoping that you would choose some profession closer to the rest of us," she confessed to her daughter honestly, "but Vivane is right. Farness is a fact of life. And in fact you will not really be too far," she sighed, as if to convince herself. "Just beyond sight."

She failed to convince Boula, who had felt increasingly fidgety as the days wore on, closer to the start of term and the date of her departure. She had always been in Terrai — well, or in Sedimoreal — in any case she'd never been so far from everyone else. Unlike other years, when there were at least a handful or so of ungu going to universities, she was the only one from Terrai planning to attend Fallish.

"There are some other things that I need to tell you, my love," Ginnie said, and they sat down at a table. "Concerning things you may see out there."

She reached behind her, and removed a long tube from the shelving. From this she withdrew and unfurled a map across the table, flattening the big curl of it carefully with the knuckles of her hooves. It crinkled and did not tear; it appeared to be a sort of parchment, or perhaps clothpaper. On it was a map of Low Anthem, which contained simple information about the borders of the grades, and more detailed information pertinent especially to ungu. The quality of earth and the stretch of clan territories were shaded and patterned clearly, and were in more prominent colors than were the Standard Low Boundary Lines.

"Here is Terrai, of course. And I am sure you are aware of Sedimoreal, as well as other areas and clans were ungu are. You are my smart girl and I know you are aware of this, but something you know nothing of is the way that we ungu are treated in main Low.

"I'm sure you have read about even this. There are those who think that our ways are wrong, that we value our own blood too much, and for the wrong reasons. There will be some who will hate you upon sight. I advise you to ignore them, unless they strike out against you; in which case, you must strike back, my darling, not necessarily with your hooves or your horns but with your wits, and with knowing what things are right in your heart."

These were all very big ideas. Boula only felt more sick and nervous, but her mother was getting so into things that she didn't dare stop her.

"Out of everyone, however," her mother said, "the ones that you must watch against the most are other ungu. I don't know how the world has changed since I was last in it, but there are certain things that come through the borders, which are not often spoken of.

Her hoof scuffed the high mountains at the opposite edge of Low. "Tonsor — they inhabit the lands closest to darkness. I am sure that you are aware their wool is the most conductive of any kind. They can be a sharp folk, fast-witted and sometimes insulting — they are friends of Terrai — they love amusement and can be fickle. So be careful in trusting them.

"Frux is another clan that often send their own to universities. They come from the drier plains, where there are often dark storms. It is for this reason that their clan supply much of the rare, pliant wool, but their kind is very solemn, and they do not make much of their lives public.

"That aside, there is also —"

"Mother," Boula interrupted, "how do you know all this? These have to be only rumors. I don't see how everyone that I may meet at school would adhere to these cruel things."

Ginnie frowned. "It's true that they may not," she said, "but I only wish to arm you in preparation, so you are not confused, so you are not hurt. Wish the best of people, of course, but I'm telling you, they will also be aware of the rumors of the Terrai folk. Oh, did you not think that others believed things of us too? They regard us as a narcissistic bunch, beautiful but also capable of foul temper and easy physical aggression. This description does happen to suit someone we know very well, don't you think, my mountain goat?"

They grinned at each other.

"But alas, if you have no wish for all the gossip of the ungu lands, then I will spare you. I only wish to warn you of this last clan" — she pointed towards a shadow labeled Gia in the rocky portions of the Feathered Trenches — "who for certain are quite old in their ways of thinking. And to be frank, my love, they may not take to you well, specifically, because you are baa'er. They prize well-hanging hair as any ever did in the pastoral days. If you see hate from them, this is why."

She sighed and began to roll up the paper. "It is true that there have been bad and deadly things in our own past, but do not lose faith in your family and your clan, for we love you, and do not lose faith in this world, for it has more to offer than you may immediately see. Should you ever forget," she said finally, "only look at this."

It was a compact mirror — a small shell of a thing with a large compressible button to open it, easy for sometimes clumsy ungu digits. Boula opened it. Inside was a large mirror and a comb.

"This will make it easy for us to contact you while you are so far away."

"Thank you, mother!"

Labels: beings, boula, ungu

I now write this from Windaline's residence, which is an apartment in District Arborara. It is fairly large and nicely furnished, though still seems empty somehow. It does not seem too lived in, and when I commented upon this Windaline gave me a smile that I have come to recognize as an uncomfortable one.

She told reminded me that she likes to keep things very clean and even, to an obsessive extent. She began to make up a bed for me on a large divan in the living space, putting down dense, heavy blankets and bringing down several pillows from her room, one of which was in the shape of a stylized skybeast baby. She appeared exhausted and when she asked me if I needed anything else, I declined. She retreated.

Windaline's bed is on the next floor up, in a loft area, and there is a bathroom, a closet, and a kitchen on the landing that I am in, with sparse walls between them. These details came to mind and they're heartening to me. I have the feeling that I remember this place. Even these blankets seem somewhat familiar. They are heavy, almost ruglike, and they bring to mind dusky pale-brown colors and ink-colored rocks and weaponry. These must be memories. I still cannot attach them to anything more coherent.

Windaline left me a small light and from it I can survey the opposite wall. There are some paintings and photographs hanging on it, but the spacing between is slightly uneven. It seems to go against the "clean and even to an obsessive extent" statement that she gave me earlier.

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Labels: rael's journal

cutting across dim alleyways when the roads proved congested by the accident, her shield cracking a couple times against the walls of buildings that its perimeter scuffed against in her hurry. She hadn't charged or fed the cycle and it was dimming somewhat, and almost completely dark by the time she managed to make it to outside the hospital.

The area outside of it, which had a broad, curved road to aid in the dropping off of emergency patients, was completely full. She swallowed slightly at the sight of it, and turned away from someone who was being hauled from the back of a carriage, bleeding profusely and emitting driblets of sparks. This wasn't the worst chargestorm that had happened ever, but it did seem to be one of the worst that had happened in a while. It definitely had a magnitude greater than what Depart. 712 was hoping would ever happen again.

The area was well-lit here by tall lamps and by the lights being emitted from the ambulance carriages, but she still had to squint to try and spot Rael. The connection was tugging and she had the sense that he was definitely waiting outside for her, somewhere in this mess, and not inside.

"Rael," she tried calling, and then backed up a bit, locked her cycle in place, and then stood up on the seat of it. She scanned the area again and then cupped her hands over her mouth. "Rael!"

Her gaze swept back and forth over the huge entrance of Morning Main's, and she spotted a figure sitting on the steps. She stared at him more intensely, willed him to look up, and he did, his head moving slowly. He blinked up at her with the disconcerting numbness that he had ever since he had waken up, and then began to stand and walk toward her, slowly and fearlessly navigating the road. Ambulances were crashing back and forth, splashing sparks everywhere and crunching like monsters, and he made his way through all of it like he was just walking on a normal road, and not between things that could crush him into pieces of melting flesh.

She winced at the thought of it and nearly shouted at him to stop, but now he was pretty much all the way through, and then there he was in front of her, smiling calmly.

"Hello, Win. They've let me out early."

His voice so formal and detached. She covered her fear. She had wanted him to be completely fixed before he left that place. Now that he had been expelled, she knew that close to nothing would ever convince them to take him back again, short of exorbitant amounts of money that she didn't have.

"Great," she said, with as much luster as she could bear. "Come on and get on the cycle then and we can...get home. Oh...do you still remember how a cycle works?"

Labels: windy

I write this from outside the hospital. It is the thirteenth hour. It appears that there has been an accident, and many people were wounded and injured, so many that beds containing them have spilled out of the emergency rooms and into the recovery wards where I am. There was a lot of noise and things going on, and when finally one of the head doctors came to aid in overseeing the spillage of patients, he looked over the scripts for each of the patients recovering, including myself, and determined whether they were relatively well enough to leave or not.

I was one of those that he said was in well enough state to leave. I stood from the bed just as they were placing another patient in it, bleeding and unconscious. I tugged the children's book about Low from beneath him, and a couple other baubles that I understood belonged to me, including a vase, a thick ring with a signet I don't remember, and a scarf.

Right now I am waiting on the steps outside the hospital for Windaline. Doctor Claret informed me that she had called her to come take me back home. The light from inside the hospital is dim and flickering, and there are yet more patients being brought in. The road is congested with carriages whose motion is only partly monitored, and they crash and bump into each other like buoys in a river, emitting huffing noises and, occasionally, brief sparks from beneath the orbs of their wheels.

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Labels: rael's journal