Solo Midwinter Observances

[Alses]

Timestamp: 14th Day of Winter Tanroa's river was carrying Mizahar closer and closer to the darkest day of the year, a steady and measured pace that could not be turned or avoided by any sort of mortal artifice or magic. It was the time of year Alses least looked forward to, the month or so where even the most marathon of sleeping schedules failed to compensate for the yawning hours of darkness, leaving her little recourse but to suffer the indignity of her mortal chain for however long it took for the light to return. There was, however, still a little time before those dark days, for which Alses was grateful, staying out to savour every last second of her celestial form. She knew in her head that the days when she could spend seventeen, eighteen hours a day delighting in her true body would roll around once more, but each winter as the nights grew longer and colder, her heart still ached with every shortened interval between the sacred and the profane. Her thoughts turned more and more towards divinity as winter's icy cloak drew close about the celestial city, perhaps because of the introspection that her Konti form brought, focusing her wandering and disparate thoughts, the tangled labyrinth of many lives, onto a single silver thread of consciousness. Dwelling on her state, and the state of the world in general as the nights drew in, was probably counterproductive at best, and outright damaging at worst, but it seemed inescapable in the unaccustomed silence of her mind. Needless to say, winter was the time when she got most of her theorising done, relatively free from the distractions of memory and experience of past lives across the centuries, and also the time when she was least pleasant to be around, snappish and irritable at the bells she was forced to spend as a washed-out ghost, drifting through the silent world and almost blending with the snowy surrounds, her natural Konti paleness only enhanced by the lack of sunlight that form, that chain, felt. As ever at this sort of time of year, shortly after the first snowfall turned Lhavit into a sparkling city of icy light and fantasy, Alses roused herself from her customary chair right beside (indeed, almost in) the Respite's main fireplace, tearing herself away from the delicious warmth and smell of woodsmoke from the fragrantly-crackling logs to venture out into the clear, crisp winter days, the air cold and sharp as knives in her throat. Indeed, venturing out into the mountain chill was not to be taken lightly – and certainly not for someone who adored the heat as much as Alses did; very much a product of her creator. Whatever else one said about winter – and there were many things Alses could think of, most of them uncomplimentary, it did afford a certain stark beauty to the Unforgiving mountain range all around the city. On the vertiginous slopes, both distant and near, the clinging ranks of pines and other hardy conifers were solemnly garbed in their wintry senator's robes, whilst lesser deciduous trees in the precipitous valleys had succumbed to the plummeting temperatures, leaving them with only bare branches to shake in defiance of the winter storms. Every mountain currently wore a jaunty cap of snow, as indeed did many of the roofs of Lhavit itself, the sturdy skyglass and cedar beams shouldering the extra weight with nary a groan of protest, the city's many buildings now becomingly framed with fringes of icicles that sparkled and shimmered in the abundant light. The immense bowl of the sky overhead, powder-blue, clear of any wisp of cloud and achingly cold, coupled with the crisp clarity of the air made it seem that, if one could get enough height – like the lone bird that was circling lazily over Lhavit, probably basking in the city's heat – it would be possible to see all the way to Zeltiva. Alses suddenly felt an irrational, irrepressible urge to take wing and somehow fly up into the heavens, to just flit away from Lhavit and her responsibilities, to pursue the summer back to the places where it gloriously never-ended, to the deserts of Eyktol and the glittering cities there. Leaning on the railings of one of the bridges, a soaring expanse of carved skyglass that would deposit her safe and sound right beside the Sun Temple, glowing lemon-yellow up ahead in the gathering morning light, that was a very persuasive thought. Alses smiled fondly, thinking about bathing in deliciously hot water, thick and lazy with scented oils and with flowers floating on the surface, a daydream of the pinnacle of absolute indulgent luxury. The comely masseuses and their many arms were a bonus, too. Alses shook her head somewhat regretfully, bringing herself back to the here-and-now. Lhavit had no pretty masseuses with shiny jewellery and naughty smiles – well, none that she'd seen, anyway. A pity, that. There were compensations, though – she felt so much closer to Syna in Lhavit than anywhere else on Mizahar that she'd travelled to (and on the course of her journey from Zeltiva to the celestial city, she'd had the opportunity to see quite a few places), the city was a safe and reliable haven where her kind were welcomed and respected, and Lhavitians could mix a mean cocktail to boot. Her footsteps, operating completely on automatic as she daydreamed her way through the journey, had not steered her wrong, taking her completely across the grand expanse of the Helios bridge and setting her comfortably at the threshold of the Temple of the Sun. Syna's light always seemed richer, fuller, more immediate here, every square centimetre of her skin delighting in the continual rain of radiance. The lake was a painfully-bright oval, a rippling mass of molten gold in the abundant sunlight, and the skyglass was almost as brilliant, reflecting all the warm colours of Syna, a bright and reassuring beacon even in the very hammer of winter. Alses drew strength every day in the autumn and winter seasons from the steady, blazing presence of the Temple on its promontory. She knew little enough of the other Ethaefal in the city, even the other Synaborn, to not be entirely sure of whether this was true for others, if they drew some measure of comfort from the sign that the good times of Spring and Summer were just around the corner or not, but she was fairly sure she'd seen the Day Lady, Talora, paying her respects more than once, in the very early dawn before most were even awake. They'd not spoken, of course – communion with a god whom one had known and then lost was an intensely private affair, and in any case Alses was slightly nervous about idly conversing with one of arguably the most powerful people in the city she'd come to call her adoptive home. For all its gilt and skyglass, its elaborately-capitalled columns, its friezes, frescoes, paintings and bas-reliefs on the outside, the focal point of worship was simple; distractions from communion were discouraged, for obvious reasons.. Gold was in evidence, of course, but the designs were straightforward, timeless, really, serving to focus sight on the great flame blazing eternally in its bowl and the circles of swaying, chanting, skirling Taiyang priestesses, immaculate in their robes and always dancing a paean of praise to Syna, high above. Their focus was absolute – they were the sisters of the sacred flame, their duty to pay homage to Syna and to keep the eternal pyre burning, a continual focus of worship. When performing their duties in the Temple, they were fanatically single-minded, their auras solid and straightforward, unwavering in thought or purpose. Outside of that, of course, on feast-days and at celebrations, they were just as vibrant and lively as any other living thing, but absolute conviction and purpose drove them whilst inside Syna's holy place. As it should be.

[Alses]

From her position near the outer threshold of the Temple, Alses pensively contemplated the circling ranks of Syna's priesthood. Most humans – most races, she corrected herself; Lhavit was a cosmopolitan place after all – moved around the place at the centre of an intangible cloud of thoughts, aspirations, feelings, desires (both suppressed and expressed) and duties, affording a weltering melange of different auristic impressions to interpret. That was very difficult, unsurprisingly – but the Taiyang, ah, the Taiyang, focused and directed as their endless worship was, they were easy. The steady, beating white-and-gold of spiritual devotion was a constant, a benchmark to work from, to analyse against. Any deviations were trivially easy to spot – usually in the novices, taking their places in the great dance for the first time, a thought which amused her inordinately. Anxiety, now that was an easy one to spot, a wavering shiver of mixing colour in an aura – she had a great deal of practice at recognizing that. Fear was another common one – a blackening and shrinking of the aura in her sight, the occasional crawling, creeping feeling washing over her arms. Pride and delight, a sense of responsibility and gravity, even awe, a few times, all these and more she'd felt from the Taiyang, standing out against the stately bulwark of their worship. Once she had wrung all she could from the flowing dance of the priesthood, she'd turned her attention to the devotaries, those citizens of the city who, for whatever reason, felt themselves drawn to worship at Syna's altar, and that always proved an enlightening, if sometimes difficult experience. In Spring and early Autumn, the farmers came in droves, praying for good weather and fortune, that their seed might germinate and that their harvests might go off without a hitch – for without Syna's warm and giving rays at the crucial times, everything would be ruined. Those days, the Temple rang to the sound of stout boots on skyglass, nearly drowning out the endless chant at the peak of business, no matter how respectful and quiet the farmers tried to be. Most of the year, though – festivals aside, of course – the Temple only had to deal with a trickle of devotees; never vast numbers, true, but it was a steady flow, never running out entirely and never surging over the Taiyang's ability to deal with the worshippers. This early in the morning, though, there was just the dawn shift of the Taiyang, just starting the dance that would build and build and grow to a frenzied, fluid climax at the precise moment of noon, the most important time of day for the priesthood, when the great fire in the centre of the Temple had to roar and flare up to graze the dome high overhead, glutted with offerings and – perhaps – bolstered by prayer. The gentle pitter-patter of bare feet padding through the sedate opening measures was almost impossible to hear – even the swish of silk and cotton robes was muted, swallowed up by the cathedral-hush of the Temple's vaulting expanse. By the time the dance reached its crescendo, the entire structure would ring to the sound of stamping feet, as more and more Taiyang dancers joined, but for now there was just a core of six, liquidly shifting from one ritual position to another as the gentle morning light peeked over the mountain peaks and gilded Lhavit. Alses kept her footsteps light as she made her way deeper into the all-but-deserted Temple, heading for the sanctum sanctorum, the blazing altar itself. Annoyingly, especially at this time of day, the inviolate line gleamed, smugly golden, two hundred feet from the sacred flame, describing a perfect circle and mimicking the curve of the dome overhead. It mocked her, that thin line of golden metal – but it was inviolate. The punishment, even for an Ethaefal, even a Synaborn, of crossing the pale was to be thrown – literally, that was the barbaric part – out of the city. Probably off the highest cliff that practicality and Projection both would allow. Whenever anyone went into raptures about how civilised and enlightened Lhavit was, Alses always found herself remembering just this sort of punishment, still on the city's books and apparently still practised. There was at least plenty of warning; quite aside from the line itself there were generally non-dancing lay priestesses around the place, along with discreet Shinya guards, to discourage accidental trespass. Her gentle walking had taken her to the edge of that line and started her in an arc that precisely matched that of the no-go area; she came here a lot, mostly to think and practise her skills with the warm glow of Syna at her back, to tell the truth. Religion wasn't something which featured particularly heavily in Alses' life; faith, on the other hand, was. She knew Syna existed, a knowledge set into her very bones and every pound of flesh to boot, she remembered her time in the Goldenlands, felt Syna's presence in every ray of light and Her touch upon every living thing on the surface of Mizahar. That was what had made the world even remotely bearable, at least in the early days after her Fall. She could pray to Syna, and be seen and heard anywhere the sun's light could illuminate – and possibly beyond, now that she came to think on it. Regardless of that knowledge, there was still some small, stubborn part of her that remained attached to the Sun Temple as a place for worship as and when she felt the need. Whether that was a holdover from her mortal lives or an appreciation for the quality of the light and the feeling of faith all around her, she didn't care to speculate. Calmed from her exertions by the gentle, measured pacing – the knife-sharp chill of the outside air still stole energy from her muscles and breath from her lungs – Alses slid gracefully to the floor, kneeling on the comfortingly warm skyglass. Even at this distance, the sacred fire threw out copious amounts of heat, warming and tightening the skin that faced it, sending a delicious shiver racing up her spine as heat and cold warred across two halves of her body. 'Radiant Lady,' the thought echoed in the stillness of her mind, even the opera chorus which usually accompanied her waking hours respectfully quiet. Alses knew she could have used Syna's name – as an Ethaefal, by definition she'd had a close relationship with the solar goddess, above and beyond the bounds of friendship as mortals understood it, but somehow just starting a prayer with 'Syna' seemed...disrespectful. Manners mattered, at least to Alses. Some might have called it stuffy or tiresome; to her, a healthy respect for someone's position and achievements was common courtesy. 'Radiant Lady, hear my prayer.” These days, that phrase, a ritual for her, almost, had a very different meaning, a very different intent behind it than the one it had carried in the earliest days of her experiences of Mizahar. Back then, she'd clasped hands until every scrap of colour bled away, pleading and shrieking inside her head to return to heaven, begging forgiveness for whatever wrong had caused her to crash to earth like a falling star, alternately appealing and ranting, out of her mind with the panic that the yawning dark of night brought, every twelve hours or so, regular as clockwork and just as inescapable. Trying to escape the memories was a bad idea, she'd found to her cost. Lhavit offered a devilishly tempting drug, sweet oblivion in a phial, easily distilled from the flowers of the kariino tree that grew everywhere in the city. So seductive, the idea that you could take a dose of kariino extract, fall into insensibility and then wake, twelve hours later, glorious once more without having to deal with the messy mortal form at all, without having to quiet the morass of shouting lives and memories in order to coax the shy beast of sleep out from the dark recesses of her mind – without having to deal with all the baggage that the encroaching night brought. She'd embraced this intoxicating new possibility with both hands, and as a consequence developed a truly spectacular addiction to the stuff. Even now, she still had to fight the old urge to guzzle bottles of it each night, to keep the lurking monsters at bay. Every Spring she made up great batches of sweet oblivion and kept the doses under lock and key, allowing herself only a strictly limited amount each season. A bad start to a season – Autumn and Winter especially, for some reason – could mean that she shot through her self-imposed allowance in less than thirty days, so there would be no relief for the next sixty or so. She could always have broken her personal rule, yes, but lurking inside her always was the fear that if she broke it for a good reason, she'd break it again for a bad one, sending her spiralling back into lassidaical days and nights completely at the mercy of kariino, barely managing to shamble through existence. A frightening prospect, and one which forced her to be a lot more selective about when she resorted to the little glass bottle and its purple liquid.

[Alses]

'Syna-' Only now, after the ritual requests and honorifics were done did Alses feel she could dispense with the sacred titles. 'We take heart from your light and your warmth as ever we have.' A gentle smile, a memory of how the world now seemed perpetually new and beautiful to her eyes. 'We feel You at our back every day and everywhere we look we see You immanent in all things on the surface of this world. We taste echoes of Your power in the food and water that mortals need to survive, in the clothes they wear to shield them from the elements, even in their very skin, and we delight in this revelation. However, the dark is drawing in, now, the domain of Your lover Leth and all his kin; we know this is the cycle, the natural order of things, and yet...I pray for the strength to continue through the Winter, for all the bells without Your warmth and reassurance beating at my back.' She paused, debating with herself – but Syna was her goddess, the one who had given Alses all that she was, and there could be nothing secret between them. Nothing could – or should – be hidden from Her sight. 'We have seen a bright echo of Your power, felt the phantom touch of Your glory, in the eternal night which so frightens us. It confuses me, and is a pale shadow of Your presence in the day, yet we take heart from it even so, and are thankful for it also. An involuntary smile curled her lips as poetry, all unbidden, came to her mind. 'My soul is full of Your whispered word, and my blindness now my sight; the dark shadows that I feared so long are all ablaze with light!' Poor doggerel, perhaps, but it went some way to describing the curious, fluttering elation she'd felt when first the echo had revealed itself to her, the fading pulse of Syna's power that never entirely went away. 'Your signature in the night makes our time as a mortal more comfortable, more bearable, it gives us something to remember at the nadir of the day. Something to hold onto until the next dawn breaks.' A deep, shuddering breath as Alses finished and cast about for a further prayer. They were Ethaefal and goddess, trying to rebuild the fragmented tatters of a relationship that had surely once been closer than friends, now reduced to bridging the gap between the sacred and the profane, mortal and immortal, divine and mundane through scraps of prayer, brief remembrances of joy unbounded and infinite, perfect energy in the Goldenlands, and through the whisper of Alses' celestial name in the middle of the night that caused her to start upright in bed, wondering and wondering. A long and hard road, praying to a goddess who was no longer within easy, immediate reach, no gnosis-mark link or real remembrance of what import she had been to Syna. Her prayers went into the yawning void, or so it seemed; faith told her all prayers were heard, and that Syna would in Her wisdom provide what was needed. Pessimism wondered how one prayer in hundreds of thousands could be discerned, and decided that Syna would help those who helped themselves. Alses sighed at her own blasphemous thoughts. 'Forgive me my imperfections and my failings-” of which she knew there were many '-the exalted state we lost. You are our confessor, my sword and shield against the cold world, and I find guidance and hope in Your light. I pray for our continued strength in Mizahar, the will to keep hope alive. I pray for our fallen brethren, scattered across Mizahar, wherever they may be and in whatever circumstance they find themselves. I pray that those still close at Your side escape our fate...and I pray that You will look kindly on all our endeavours. By Your grace and favour, and in the blaze of the noonday sun, so mote it be.' Waking from the state that fervent prayer put her in was always a trial; bunched and contorted muscles, ignored whilst every facet of her being was directed towards matters spiritual, queued up to present their complaints, having been kinked and held in position for Syna-knew-how-long. Longer than a bell, that was for sure. She let out a muffled squeak as some of her thigh muscles protested particularly vociferously, only just managing to avoid tipping sideways into an undignified heap. Moving slowly, uncertainly, bowed like an old woman and hobbling along, also like said crone, she staggered to her feet – completely ignored by the dancing Taiyang throng, which had swelled considerably whilst she'd been occupied with prayer – and managed to remain upright long enough to uncrick her back with a loud report that echoed around the entire Temple. The going was a little easier after that as she paced around the line once more, blood rushing back into muscles and restoring them to full functionality, again granting the proverbial Ethaefal grace. Quite a transformation from the hobbling crone who'd first shakily risen from the ground, her gait appearing as if she would need two sticks to get about anywhere in a hurry – but then, that was the nature of Ethaefal perfection. Mostly perfect. A She had several bells before her next visit – the one she was, in truth, feeling most nervous about. Irrationally so, most definitely; there was nothing there that could harm her, but still a niggling anxiety had settled in the pit of her stomach and refused to leave. Tanroa's Temple never looked frightening, but Alses simply found herself feeling...uneasy, slightly queasy, even, at the prospect of praying to someone other than Syna. In her head she knew that Tanroa had ordained the positions of Syna and Leth in the heavens and granted them their respective roles, and that some small part of Tanroa's power was responsible for her own gift of aging, thus it would only be proper to thank the goddess of Time, but in her heart...it somehow felt a little like a betrayal. A walk. Yes, a walk to clear her head, that would be a good idea, around the terraces which surrounded the Sun Temple. Her footsteps crunched across gravel and padded noiselessly across the grass – there was no frost or snow here, where Syna spilled her heat and light so generously – as she paced around the great dome, drinking in the glorious views. A few forlorn rosehips nodded disconsolately on bare stems, the only real remnant of the banks of mountain roses that ringed the Temple terraces in Summer. For the thousandth time, Alses blessed the fact that she seemed to have a good head for heights – without the obfuscating screen of rose leaves, the drops just beyond the flat terraces were vertiginous, to say the least. Absently, she sank down onto one of the many chairs and benches that were thoughtfully arrayed through the Sun Temple's manicured grounds, immeasurably thankful for the warming skyglass which kept them at a pleasant temperature – she wouldn't be leaving strips of skin behind. Unseeing, she gazed out at the dramatic panorama of dagger-edged peaks, the plethora of cliffs and bluffs, razor-sharp arêtes and tumbling scree slopes that punched through the rolling cloud deck all around the city. 'Pull yourself together, Alse,' the more rational parts of herself admonished, in the privacy of her own head. 'It's just a prayer of thanks, after all – Syna will know She still has our devotion and faith.' It didn't help very much, in truth.

[Alses]

Thus it was that a rather conflicted Synaborn Ethaefal made her way, somewhat uncertainly, in the purple crepuscular light of dusk, that wavering point between day and night, to the threshold of the Temple of Time. It was a tall structure, a domed hourglass-shape that glittered and shone with rainbowed fire in the sunlight. Studded with jewels, and skyglass of such vibrancy as to always appear new and pristine, it was in many ways the crowning glory of Sartu Peak, shimmering and shifting day and night and a visible symbol of Tanroa's importance to the celestial city. Alses averted her eyes from Tanroa's statue as she passed, not quite feeling up to meeting the slightly melancholic carved face. Completely irrational, of course, especially since she was coming as a supplicant, but she still did it, hurrying inside the shimmering structure, the doors swinging shut with a heavy and final thump behind her. The interior stopped her dead. All the sparkle and shimmer of the exterior façade was gone, the skyglass dulled and cracked as though decades, centuries, millennia, even, of neglectful time had passed. Even the windows seemed clouded with age, the light wavering, uncertain and dim. Slowed from her hurrying, scuttling walk to a wondering, stuttering pace, Alses made her way down the shallow flight of stairs, eyes wide with no small amount of shock. The shallow marble stairs were cracked and discoloured, covered in a fine patina of age that spotted the once-snowy stone. Beyond that, too, they were bowed and worn, as though millions of feet had passed across them time and again. Alses crouched to inspect it all, unsure of whether the decay was real or not, some trick of the Temple; the dust that covered it in a fine layer made her sneeze explosively, sending her tottering back and mopping her suddenly-streaming eyes. At the bottom of the stairs, weaving around the rubble which littered the worn flight and Temple floor, Alses turned around and around in a daze, drinking in the completely unexpected state of the interior. Moss crawled damply up the walls and around the tumbled capitals of the pillars that precariously supported the roof. Several had come crashing down somehow, at some point in the distant past, littering the floor with a buckshot spray of shattered stone and dust, the roof's arcing dome they had once supported now the realm of spiders and shadows. A many-tiered chandelier still hung up there, its chain invisible in the uneasy half-light, giving the appearance of being eerily suspended in space. When it was new, when the Temple had been clean and bright – if such a time had ever existed – it must have been a magnificent sight, a thousand, two thousand skyglass crystal prisms catching and amplifying and reflecting the light until a rainbowed panoply of colour danced and shone all around. Now, though, the chandelier was dark and cold, the prism chains sagging and loose, festooned with cobwebs. Light flashed and shone briefly amid the debris-strewn floor; crystals, cast loose from on high over the decades and still managing to shimmer for an instant amid the all-pervading dust. The Temple of Time was dark and old, timeworn was the phrase that sprung, unbidden, to her mind; it looked like a relic from an earlier time that no-one had cared enough about to preserve. An uneasy prospect. 'Or,' came the unsettling thought 'Perhaps this is an echo of the future?' A cold shiver washed over her, and not just from the dead chill inside the Temple. Imagining celestial Lhavit, its stones shattered and tumbled, trees cracking the skyglass flags where once citizens had strolled and played, all the stop-motion reclamation by Mother Nature, was an image she shied away from. Always providing violent death didn't find her, she might one day live to see it; that was the hard part. Alses breathed in deeply, tasting the musty, unchanging air as it caught in the back of her throat, the odd bouquet of dust and rot, mixing and mingling with the damp decay breathing from the moss. Time pressed heavily here, slow and thick like molasses, even the beams of sickly light from outside seeming to shift and change but gradually, reluctantly, almost. Tattered banners adorned the walls, moving not a jot in the still, dead air, their escutcheons smeared and obscured by fray and unknown stains, fine silk torn and unravelling. Similarly, frescoes and bas-reliefs running across the skyglass walls, even the statues ranged on elaborate pedestals throughout the central chamber had not borne the ravages of time well, the heroic figures having melted and run like wax, blurring the legends and tales they had once depicted into incoherency. A jolt, a sudden feeling of unreality as she filled her lungs with the stale air, a split-second disjunct between soul and body, coursed through her. Elusive magic, dancing away from her fumbling attempts at sight beyond sight, breathed from every rotting stone; a shifting corona of true-blue light rippled in and out of sight. Something in the sanctum struck a chord deep within her, the same that thrummed in Syna's light, but the humming tune she felt in her very bones was different, very different. Syna gave her energy unbounded, joy in all things and bright grace, but this...this was more measured, considered, somehow even stately. There was a journey – or rather, the sudden sense of a journey, stretching out before and behind. Someday, perhaps, there would be an ending – or maybe a new beginning, different from all else that had gone before, but it was the travelling that counted, the movement that was sacred. Every shift of muscle, every breath drawn into the lungs, every beat of the heart and pulsing rush of blood through the tracery of arteries, veins and capillaries, every coruscating electric spark of thought that made this instant different from any other, that was dear to the heart of Tanroa. All that in an instant, a single, searing flash. Someone who had loved Tanroa, loved Her and all that She was so fiercely and well they had taken something of Her fundamental nature into themselves, had been here. Alses was almost certain of it. They had walked the floor she trod on, boots crunching through glass and stone dust, trailed fingers over the skyglass and marble, every fibre of their being reverberating with the eternal mysteries of Time, bathing the place with their devotion and Tanroa's blessing both. Even for one not explicitly aligned with the grand Goddess, it was a heady rush, a prickling thrill that ran up and down her spine and arms, her skin studding suddenly with gemmed gooseflesh. She looked at the ruinous grandeur of the place with new eyes, mind racing. 'Tanroa giveth, and Tanroa taketh away,' came her thought – an old one, from the feel of it, a memory from a life many lives before her current one. 'She is the constant companion, walking through the endless spaces between the seconds. On Her river we sail; by Tanroa's command does the world move and the firmament also, that one instant is forever distinct from another.' Other voices, other memories suddenly clamoured in her head, a weltering onslaught of them: 'Treasure the moment-' vanished into '-the journey and not the destination-' faded under '-ordained our heavens and spoke the- gave beneath 'She who sees all of Time in a Grain of Sand' then '-temporal trinity-' '-time healeth-' '-riverdance in the blue-' '-walking through glassy stars and mist-' 'TanroaTANROATanroaTANROATANROA' a dizzying spiral of decreasing coherency and increasing urgency until the roaring tumult in her head forced her to her knees and threatened to split her skull in two with the incessant toccata. Alses was an old soul, and the multitude were strong within her – her dominant life was struggling in the tide of memory. Glassy shards bit into her palms, pulverized stone stippled her flesh; she clung fiercely to those sensations, real things, an anchor against the shrieking maelstrom inside. Rose-red and black flowered in her vision, a sharp spike that cut through the noise. She tasted heavy sweetness and metal; Alses had bitten her lip, and a thick dribble of bronze blood flowed sluggishly down her fire-opal face. Slowly, swimming against the abating tide, a climber grimly focused on the next knot in the rope, the next link in the chain and nothing else, she reasserted herself over the masses of past memories and lives, quelling one noisome recollection after another, consigning each and every one to the darker recesses of her mind until only the usual chorus of whispers remained to sing in the vaults of her mind, a phenomenon easily ignored.

[Alses]

Time, it appeared, was impossible to judge inside Tanroa's sacred place. The light was uncertain and dim, barely more than something that served to delineate the darkness, but it was there, still. Quite a mystery, since Alses had only intended this as a relatively fleeting visit, on the cusp of twilight, her prayer to coincide with the moment the Change came upon her. Some caprice of her thoughts had led her to suppose Tanroa would appreciate the gesture. Thick bronze blood, stinking of metal and a heavy, unpleasant sweetness, spattered the floor of Tanroa's Temple in shining globules as Alses shakily rose to her feet once more, head aching but clear – for the moment. An impatient swipe of her arm left a long smear of blood curving up her face, even as she made her way across what seemed like acres of floor towards the centrepiece of the Temple. Like everything else here, it was a ruin, but glorious in its decay; an elaborate fountain, its basin mostly full of water somehow, but – as with everything, cracked and chipped, its carvings worn nearly-smooth by the generations of falling drops and invaded by creeping greenery. A long train of moss curled over the lip of the fountain tier, dripping intensely blue water into the foliage-clogged bowl below, but the centrepiece of it, the centre of the entire Temple, really, was the heavy crystal orb that rested under the exact apex of the dome, supported by what were once presumably heraldic figures and had now melted and run together into an indistinct mass of stonework. It was the singular brilliant point of light in the otherwise dim sanctum, and what little water still remained in the fountain's workings seemed to tumble and dance inside its shimmering confines. Alses approached slowly, cautiously, on guard for any further sudden shocks. Nothing was forthcoming, not even when she stood on the marble lip of the fountain to bring her eyes level with the blazing orb and the roiling waters within. It was completely smooth, she realised with a jolt, not a facet or cut edge visible, just smoothly curving clear crystal that blazed with a steady, clear light and somehow bled strikingly blue water into the fountain beneath it. An aura of inviolability surrounded the crystal sphere – even had she not been an aurist, sensitive to the deeper mysteries that lurked just below the surface of the world, the sheer power and energy behind that would have warded off any probing fingers. Instead, she feasted her eyes on the infinite regressions of the perpetually-tumbling water inside it, animated by some artifice she had no hope of understanding. It was eerily hypnotic, calming, and incontrovertibly the focus of worship here. Absently, she rested her hands to frame the sphere – the position seemed right, for a reason she couldn't fathom – an ur-memory from a life so far in the distant past it didn't even consciously surface, perhaps; it was impossible to be certain. Her eyes slid half-closed on reflex, dulling the brilliant glow of the orb to a gentler, liquid shine, and her breathing slowed, the harsh rasp of her earlier panic and recovery just a fading memory, now. In, out. In...out. Cool air, somehow fresher, this close to the fountain, and tinted with the indefinable scent of water from it too, drawn from the world to expand the hidden darkness inside her, used in some vital process to keep her living, keeping her current unspooling through Tanroa's great river. Ah, but air was just the icing on the cake; the meat and drink of life from one second to the next was below that, the ceaselessly pounding heartbeat that thrummed the stuff of life through every inch of her flesh. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. The unceasing rhythm, her old master had called it – and much else besides. Every heartbeat defined the instants, the movement between then and now, the ever-shifting present. It was a reflex, now, almost an instinct, allowing the flowering of sight beyond sight at the slightest calm opportunity, whenever her turbulent mind calmed enough for her to strengthen the delicate traceries of djed that perfused every pound of her flesh, binding soul to body. Pulsing that djed, pushing more out from her own reserves near the solar nova that was her core - to her mind's eye, anyway - and growing the filigree lacework until it spilled from her body and painted the world in a million colours, that was at the core of auristics, and the only way to get better was to practice, and constantly at that. Her deeper Sight woke fluidly and it drenched the Temple in blue, Tanroa's favoured colour, a shifting and shimmering latticework that melted and merged into itself, a thousand shades and hues gently curling and twisting in on one another, advancing and receding, ebbing and flowing, the whole of the Temple in gentle, serene motion. The disjunct between what her enhanced eyes were telling her and the perceptions of her other senses caused some difficulty, yes - her stomach rolled and rebelled at the sight of motion without the sense of it, but she was an aurist, used to such things, and clamped down hard. She might have laughed, drunk with the heady sight of Tanroa's touch all around, but as blurred and changing as the auras she could perceive were, there was a deep and reverberating oddity that confused and bewildered her. There were flashes, in the blue, of other things, other auras, at the very edge of her current Sight, there for an instant and then subsumed, gone in the rolling azure currents. Desire, rich and seductively red, flashing up and out at the corner of her eye before dying back to nothingness. Confusion, stirring up whirlpool maelstroms before good order prevailed. Fear, awe, pride - they all bloomed for fractions of a second, too fast for her to gain anything more than the most rudimentary sense, before dying away under the steady and beating calm of blue. It was as though the entire Temple were full of worshippers, and more than full, as though thousands were packed like sardines all around her - although Alses knew she was the only one present. 'Right now, at least,' she thought. Tanroa held dominion over time; perhaps the sense of phantom people was simply an expression of that, an impression in the very stones of everyone who had ever paid homage to the Time Lady here - and perhaps, unsettlingly, everyone who ever would. Some of the split-second impressions had felt very alien indeed. Alses hauled herself up from the deeper levels of auristic sight with singleminded determination; spending too much time synchronised to the world like that was damaging, very damaging, and in any case she was here for prayer, not practice. Although the Temple might well prove an interesting conundrum to study as her skills improved... Alses wasn't sure if Tanroa would approve, though. 'Tanroa,' she called, in the cathedral-hush of her mind, the whispering susurrus cut back to the barest of murmurs and the blueness which had pervaded her sight just a faint glimmer at the edges of everything, now. 'Time Lady and Mother of the Heavens.' What to say next, what to say...perhaps once she'd had the gift and privilege and burden of speaking with the gods on easy, familiar terms; no more. Those memories were in tatters, fractured and lost. She wanted to honour Tanroa, to acknowledge Her gift to the Ethaefal in some way, that some at least had not spurned their gods and still remembered the old courtesies, but how? 'Hear our thankful paean.' Another good line, a ritual line. Nothing of her own thought there, though, nothing that would cause the goddess to pause and listen, even if no reply was forthcoming. Still, it gave her time – that thought, playing for time whilst praying to the Goddess of Time Herself, brought a wryly sardonic twist to her lips. Tanroa saw every point as one, the past, present and future merging into one continual now for Her. 'Tanroa, Your works are many and wondrous, and we are thankful – for the rise of the sun and the fall of the moon, for the lengthening of days and the turning of the seasons.' The glib words of thanks twisted and shifted in her mind, though, and the clear silver thread of prayerful thought that then sang out into the world was quite, quite different. 'But what place have the Ethaefal in your river?' she asked, in the silence of her own head. 'Mortals traverse it, their lights flicker and die, they have an ending to work towards and strive against, but we go on, unaging and unchanging whilst all around Your influence alters the world, second by second. We are frozen in time, forever caught in the flower of youth, hung above the currents that carry Mizahar from then to the ever-changing now.' A deep breath, a calming breath, filling her lungs with moisture-laden air – and then a very familiar sensation swept over her, a shivering prickle that ebbed and flowed at her feet, gathering strength and then surging upwards, washing over her legs, her knees, pooling at her hips before boiling upwards once more, over the flat wash of her stomach and the curve of her breasts, foaming at her neck and blotting out her vision in a wave of gold. Always a strain, the Change left her slumped against Tanroa's altar – she snatched her fingers away from the orb as though burned. Strange how ideas often sounded much better in her head than they turned out to be in practice. Pensive, now, rather than prayerful, she gazed absently into the crystal sphere even as its glow began to fade and dim. The shadows rose on every side even as thin streamers of azure water – and it really was like liquid blue rather than the more usual clearness – somehow reversed their flow in defiance of gravity and began to fill the emptied sphere, slow and stately. Perhaps that – and the Change – was Tanroa's way of reminding her that, Ethaefal or no, she still remained under her eye, still had her regard, that the Ethaefal were not completely timeless. They still changed in the uncertain twilights of the day, delineating their endless track through the river, punctuating the endless days and seasons and years. Alses sighed; her thoughts were scattering rather than flowing into sharp focus as they usually did after her Change, she was distracted by even the smallest of things; the dimmed light from the crystal orb playing on her iridescent scales, tinting her white skin a pale blue, somehow managed to draw almost all of her attention. 'We thank you, Time Lady, for your regard and your Blessing, though we struggle with our place in this world. I do not know what to do with the endless years that stretch in front of me, but...' a small smile 'I shall find something.Honour to you in all things, Tanroa.' She was never entirely sure what made her scoop up a crystal fragment from out of the debris all around; perhaps it was simply shiny, a rainbowed coruscation of reflected light that slowly bled away to true-blue. Regardless of the reason, it vanished inside her pockets as she turned and left Tanroa's Temple, the darkness drawing close around, almost seeming to chase her from the hallowed halls. In her wake, silence, and drifting peace, the eternal state of the Temple.

[Alses]

Outside, the cool night air did much to bring her down to earth. One's mind could fly amongst the stars and think thoughts on the same plane as the gods themselves, could sing paeans of praise and hymns of worship to them, but sooner or later, earthly concerns would always intrude. For Alses, right now, sheltering in the lee of Tanroa's Temple, it was tiredness, gray fatigue seeping up from her muscles and spinning out from every synaptic flash of thought in her head, and the cold of a mountain winter that brought her rudely back to the profane from her contemplation of the sacred. The seductive thought of her cosy room back at the Towers Respite, with its fire redly glowing and its bed freshly-made, planted itself firmly in the forefront of her mind, tempting her with the siren song of rest, of gentle oblivion and a release from the limiting shackles of her mortal chain. Perhaps she'd dream of stars and sunlight tonight. The Observances - in her head, the domestic pilgrimage around the Temples of Lhavit had acquired a capital letter – were always a trial. They left her drained and confused, and this particular Observance, taking in the temples of four gods for the first time, was testing her already, after only two. Drained and tired, a little grounding in mundanity was necessary; Alses' weary steps took her to flights of stairs cunningly cut into the rock of the peaks Lhavit was built on, leading her downwards in a series of switchbacks and hairpin landings to a thin ribbon of skyglass that wound its way about the peaks of Lhavit, just above the gently-rolling cloud layer. Moisture beaded the skyglass and the rocky overhangs down here, so close to the clouds; their puffy billows frequently mounded up and slopped through the railings to wash insubstantially over the pathway, only the gentle and diffuse glow of the skyglass and sturdy railings serving to keep Lhavitians on the Cloudward Pathway. It was very much the path less travelled, thanks to the many higher, wider bridges further up the tiers, but an excellent place for contemplation nonetheless – and, admittedly, for young couples who wanted to snatch a few bells away from the bustle of the city and the watchful eyes of their parents, friends and/or relations. Not that there would be many of those on a cold winter's night – one would have to be particularly driven to amorousness to derive any pleasure from Cloudward right now. Wisps of chilly cloud rolled over the ribbon of skyglass with monotonous regularity; Alses was quickly mantled in a fine cloak of shining droplets from the all-pervading mist. It was hard to dream of infinite energy and light whilst shivering under a cloak of cold diamonds, which was the whole point of the exercise. Besides, Cloudward had some of the best views in all of Lhavit, ones that made you slow down to drink them in as you passed. It wasn't the highest street in Lhavit; no, quite the reverse, dipping below most of the city, but it was because of its position only just above the cloud sea that the views were so spectacular. Every sunrise and sunset – depending on which portion of the Pathway one was on - the sunbeams lanced down through Lhavit and struck dramatic, intricate light and shadow from the towering mountain peaks and bluffs all around, highlighting the complex striations of varicoloured rock that were mute testament to the violence of the Valterrian and the layered geology of the area both. At night, though, the path had an entirely different feeling, especially deserted as it was. The skyglass glow was cooler, somehow, tending towards aqueous blues and greens, and the diffuse light set the clouds mistily aglow. Indeed, that ethereal shimmer was the only real sign of the path – aside from the occasional grotesque rearing up out of the mist – thanks to an unusually thick cloud layer tonight. The moonlight was strong, too – Alses glanced skywards, absently noting the positions of the moon and stars. Waxing gibbous, definitely. The silvery light stole colour wherever it could, turning the rocky plateaux and summits that pierced the rolling clouds to patchwork monoliths of obsidian and silver, striking and stark. The call of some wild beast out in the Unforgiving, a high and keening echo that reverberated through the gorges and canyons of Kalea, brought her back to the task at hand. Tugging her cloak tighter about her, for the meagre warmth it provided, she took a deep breath of moisture-laden air and quickened her step along the deserted path, boots ringing softly on the skyglass. A The Temple of the Moon looked rather busier than when she'd last seen it. Much of the exterior statuary and carving – Ethaefal and all the mortal races in various poses of worship and supplication - now bore wreaths and haloes of blue alcohol fire, snapping and racing in defiance of the wind. Chandra in midnight robes stood at every entryway, smiling and happy, of all things, under the moonlight. Bah. Under normal circumstances, she'd have avoided the central – and busiest – entrance like the plague, had she ever any cause to come to the Temple, since her gloriously radiant Ethaefal form attracted attention and incredulity both from Leth's faithful. Right now, though, she was a silvered ghost of a Konti, and therefore got little more than the occasional second look. Regardless of her outer form, and the quieting of the chorus which sang to her in the day, inside Alses was still the same creature and thus had no real desire to exchange pleasantries with the smiling Chandra on greeting duty. Using the middle of a crowd was the only really practical way to get past them without causing a scene, and in short order she found herself in the inner chamber of the Temple. The size of it shrank any group of people into insignificance, cast them into shadows via blue alcohol fire, reduced them to matchstick figures padding across marble and skyglass. The pool, now that was an arresting sight. High, high overhead, the oculus was wide open to the sky and the colour-stealing light from a gibbous moon poured gleefully in, striking pale fire from the rippling water. The whole of the vast central chamber, deceptively massive, glowed as though someone had put down a plate of quicksilver, the pool's reflected light casting intricate and ever-changing patterns over the carved walls, incorporating the heroic figures' light and shadow into their own matrix weave, a subtle and hypnotic play of light and dark. No-one touched it, she noticed, no-one trailed their hands in the liquid light or drank it. Chandra stood, robed and silent prayerful sentinels, at presumably-ritual points around its glimmering circumference, but worshippers seemed free to walk or kneel between them, the better to contemplate the pool and whatever sacred mysteries the moonlight brought it. Rather against her will, Alses felt a surge of respect for the Chandra and Leth both, that His worshippers were trusted enough not to profane the sacred altar of His temple. She was cautious, and acutely aware that she was not at all the right sort of material to have any business worshipping Leth. No, she was geared to sunlight and bright summer, and yet here she was, in the depths of winter. She eased her nerves by making circuits of the chamber; it was a point of pride as something of an academic that she could still interpret the carvings, recall the legends and tales they told in eternal praise of Leth, despite the flickering, shifting quicksilver-light of Leth's presence in the Temple.

[Alses]

She had at first thought to pray besides the quicksilver pool, bathing in its radiance and making do with it as an ersatz sun, but the pressure of eyes on her – and not just those of the Chandra and the other worshippers all around – made her shy away from the shimmering circle long before she could peer over the rim and behold its mercurial surface and, as some said, the face of Leth Himself. 'Discretion's the better part of valour, Alse,' she reassured herself even as she shrank back against the gentle flow of worshippers, curling out of the gentle whirlpool and back to the darker shallows of the Temple edges, an unusual turn of events when one considered her general aversion to the night. Taking these things one step at a time, that was the best way. After all, even after several years of living in celestial Lhavit, this year would be the first time she'd done a complete round of the domestic Temples – Syna, Leth, Tanroa and Zintila – and that had already proved to be a draining experience. Tanroa's Temple had been magnificent; it piqued curiosity and caution in equal measure, and that potent cocktail was one Alses was very familiar with. It would doubtless draw her back to the Temple of Time again and again, trying to understand every nuanced vibration and echo of the place, even though the dark and timeworn place was, to be blunt, intimidating and very, very alien. A little kernel of thought unfurled shyly in her mind; perhaps she'd bitten off more than she could chew, in resolving to visit them all on one day. Alses shook her head in vigorous denial; that was defeatist thinking and couldn't be tolerated, lest it take root and fester and turn her into a whining, mewling Forsaken. She'd made a promise to herself to make the Observances today, and by Syna's light she'd stick to it. Normal mortals managed it, so an Ethaefal should by rights have no problems with a simple pilgrimage of thanks. Alses sank into a cross-legged position at the very edge of the Temple, her back pressed into a gap in the carvings, her eyes closed against the gently-moving tides of people in front of her and the dancing quicksilver of the pool. She kept a tight stranglehold on her unreasoning fear; there was nothing, nothing that could hurt her here. 'Leth,' Her thought was weak and wavering, unsure. A few deeper, calming breaths – although it might well have been more than a few, she wasn't really keeping count – and her thought sang out sweeter and clearer, not so tremulous as before. 'Leth. We are not well-versed in Your worship, nor what You find pleasing. All we can offer is our confused prayer. We pray You take it in the spirit it is meant.' The listening dark, the sucking and expectant silence inside her own head, dragged the words out of her. 'We thank you for your inspiration. Whether by Your design, that of Your lover, or by mortal serendipity, we have found some pale echo of Syna's power and beauty in your night, and so for the first time I have found delight in the darkness and the silvering brought by You. It is calm and serene, it quiets the raucous chorus in our head and we can more easily see the hidden sights of the world.' Alses paused, until her breathing calmed once more. 'We are grateful. My soul and devotion belong to Syna as ever they have, but we recognize the beauty in You and take heart from it. Our thanks to you, from the bottom of our patchwork heart, for this delight.' She paused in prayer for a moment, casting a glance at the glowing pool some way away, crowded about with silhouetted figures. 'I pray for the strength and conviction to come and worship here again, lord. From my thoughts to Yours, under the silver moon.' A The prospect of the last Temple, bulking in shining splendour at the end of the grand chain of plazas and festival squares that Lhavit boasted on the Zintia, buoyed her steps. It was the final stop before she could ensconce herself in front of a warming fire, or immerse herself in gloriously hot water back at the Respite, and so she hurried through the deepening night towards the grand edifice, erected at the centre of Lhavit to the glory of Zintila, the Starry Queen – although she never professed to rule the city that had grown up around her. Koten Temple was, however, still the nerve centre of Lhavit, hosting the government chancelleries and staterooms for the most important members of the city governance, quite separate from the religious function of the building. The Registry of Wizards, for example, and its custodian, Hanei, they could be found in a wing of the grand Temple, for one, and petitions to the skyglass architects of Lhavit all went through the Temple. The Akka were the sustainers and builders of the fantasy city, and they were all devotees of Zintila; indeed, it was Her gnosis that made their craft possible in the first place, Her gift that had enabled the establishment of celestial Lhavit. Nowhere was the sheer grandeur, elegance and intricacy of their craft better displayed than in Koten Temple itself. The blue Wind Reach glass that formed an impressive part of the façade, for example, that wasn't held in place by putty or any form of adhesive, fairly reliable rumour had it. No, the skills of the Akka priest-architects had seen to it that the skyglass clasped the delicate sheets so carefully and so tightly that no seal was needed to keep them in place, even in the face of the vicious mountain storms that sometimes battered the city, howling up the grand procession of squares and plazas that covered Zintia peak to dash themselves against the immovable, monumental face of the Temple, skyglass glowing serenely in the face of Nature skewed to violence. The carvings, too – the sheer size of the Temple rendered the massy array of figures and scenes something of an afterthought in the eye of the beholder, but if one took the time to examine them closely, to peer at the intricate capitals and bases of the columns, the bas-reliefs of Lhavit's history, forever frozen in time, one got a sense of the sheer artistry and perfectionism of the Star Lady's priests, evident in the curve of parted lips, the arch of a reaching arm and the expressions forever preserved in shimmering stone. Walking between the massed tiers of Lhavitian worthies, of legends forged and monsters overcome in the violent aftermath of the Valterrian always made Alses feel very, very small indeed. That was probably the intention – but knowing that as she slipped under vast banners that waved lazily in the updraughts from a thousand braziers didn't make any difference to the butterflies hatching in her stomach. The main chamber of the Temple, though, that at least was familiar and not particularly intimidating. A vast, arching space supported at intervals by great colums that soared up to a fan-vaulted ceiling lost in shadows, with skeins and streamers of delicately-filigreed skyglass stretching between them in decorative swags. Water was everywhere, in ornamental pools and rills, running all through the place – Zintila apparently liked the sound of it, and so her Temple shimmered to the whispering susurrus of wavelets lapping against skyglass and marble. Alses exchanged bows with several priests as she made her way to her usual spot – 'usual' only in that it was where she usually headed when spiritual matters brought her to Koten Temple, which was almost never. Occasionally, the irreverent part of Alses wondered what Zintila Herself made of the grand Temple that had sprung up all around Her; the serene figure who occasionally wandered through Lhavit and spoke with the people on festival days didn't seem the type to go in for the monumental. Perhaps she'd simply sat back and let her priesthood have free rein over the Temple's design – but then again, that itself sounded highly suspect; who wouldn't want to supervise the construction and design of their own home? Alses shook her head as she neared a candle stand. Second-guessing divinity was a fruitless pastime at best, actively harmful at worst. Alses couldn't claim any special kinship with the Starry Queen to pass judgement; Zintila was Zintila, Her reasons were Her own, and that was all there was to it. Her breath misted into ephemeral dragonsbreath as she ran her fingers along the rack of devotary candles, sensitive fingers delighting in the yielding press of beeswax as they passed under her fingertips. The hall was so massive that even the natural warmth of the skyglass couldn't keep the temperature balmy, and the million pinpricks of light and heat from the candles and braziers all over the place didn't make a dent in the faint chill either. Practiced hands drew one of the candles from a rack of similar ones. This was a worship rite Alses felt she could get behind; simple, solitary, quick and beautiful. After dropping a few kina into the collection box discreetly placed near the candle-rack, Alses knelt by one of the many interconnected pools ranged across the floor and touched the dry wick to one of the flames there. Well-prepared and dry, it caught rapidly, flaring up before settling into a comforting, constant golden glow. Candle cupped in her hands, the bright glow of the flame shimmering on her closed eyelids and its heat tightening her skin and sending ripples of gooseflesh across the rest of her, Alses sent her prayer to Zintila. 'Starry Queen Zintila, we offer up our thanks for the blessings you have showered upon Lhavit. For the skyglass, which warms the coldest of winter days and turns aside all scathe and harm, for the stars which shine in the chill darkness of night, for your compassion and guidance to the citizens of this fairest of cities. We are thankful; we pray to you and for you, that fortune be visited on Lhavit once more in the year ahead.' Gently, Alses released the candle and its intricate holder into the water. Some artifice she had no hope of understanding kept it upright and floating, joining the thousands of similar candles which shimmered softly throughout the Temple hall, a gently shifting and changing night sky dotted with a myriad points of light. It was a beautiful sight to be sure, but the grey poisons of fatigue had surged through her body and were now hammering on the gates of her brain with the siren song of bath and bed, demanding she rest and recover – or else. Drained from the mental exercise of the day – and night, the strain of worship and her Konti form both, she made her way back through the gently-shining streets, collapsed atop her bed and was asleep before her head touched the mounded pillows. END

[Elysium]

Character: Alses
XP:
Auristics +3
Observation +3

Lores:
Lore of Taiyang Rituals
Punishment for “Crossing the Pale”
Kariino Extract and Addiction
Past Life: The Worship of Tanroa
How to Observe Syna
How to Observe Zintila

Other: This was a very lovely illustration of Ethaefal devotion and Lhavitian devotion at large. Another beautiful narrative. Good work!


and so, the journey continues...