Beauty in the Detail

[Cassandra Southwind]

Cassandra tensed, stepping quickly forward so that her face could not be seen by the aurist who could see her soul. She should have known what Alses would see, what she would learn with Cassandra's rapt permission. At first, it seemed like a neat trick, being told things about herself which she knew Alses could not otherwise know. The fear and concern she had next observed were obvious, if not uncomfortable truths. But then Cassandra heard the reality of her little crush spoken so blatantly, and somehow so eloquently, and it was as painful as it was freeing. Attractions like that were supposed to be subtle and secret, much like the naked bodies that hid behind their clothes. But Cassandra had not prepared herself for the freedom in such honesties, and she was embarrassed by them. "Stop..." It was the casual admission of her crime that made her heart run rampant in her chest. She could not control her shortness of breath the way that she had controlled Veradon, when she opened his throat in the depths of an anonymous forest. Laviku almighty, she should have known that Alses would see it, should have remembered how close to her heart she kept that terrible moment. She stopped suddenly, clutching her chest as if to claw out the organ that had betrayed her. Anxiety would waver in her aura then, if Alses still had the energy to look into it. "Nobody knows that," she mumbled. It was not entirely true; Maggie had been there, and together they had told the Southwind pod what had happened. But nobody knew how it haunted her: the guilt, the uncertainty of her own rightness, the question of her victim's deserving his fate. "How can you--Can other people know that?" She closed her eyes, tried to breathe through her nose. Her feet resumed beneath her, rounding the path on Tenten Peak and craving their destination. A moment later her eyes opened again, wrought with the low panic of a new realization. "Will I be arrested?" Alses was only trying to help, only playing the game that Cassandra herself had proposed. It was no good to make a scene about it. It was stupid and selfish and bad. And it was true that Cassandra liked her company more than she liked most people she had just met. She wanted to be near her, and she was only driving them apart by demonizing the aurist with a panic attack. "I- I am sorry if I offended you." She added quickly, trying to change the subject. "Lia Regina... S- she is very wise, but she knows not how the cities work. She knows not of- of Lhavit, or about the bad and good things you have said. She does not know a lot of things." Any member of her family would kill her for those words, but Cassandra was feeling desperate. "We Southwinds are not very familiar with fire," she explained warily, referring to the ethaefal's analogy about magic and its nuances. Her gaze found her finally, like an unspoken apology. "The ocean is good to us, and the earth is other, danger, bad. There is little nothing between."

[Alses]

e

Cassandra’s entreaty was a weak one, a tremulous flicker in a violently disturbed aura that was soon subsumed in the rising glory of the deeper secrets; flying on wings of pluripotent djed, Alses’ burning Sight disregarded something so mundane and physical as a word and plunged onwards, dredging up some of the deeper secrets of the Svefra, with such results as might be expected.

In hindsight, anyway.

Still, despite the bloodred roar of a racing heart and the consternated flutter of all her aura, arcane manifestations of the distress the exposure brought, Cassandra had not excused herself on a flimsy pretext and fled from all detection, and so Alses counted this development as a tentative plus. Cassandra Southwind, to her credit, was evidently made of sterner stuff than Johanne had been.

Brought back from the depths of sensation where everything was immediate and explicable, a world drenched in colour and running at ten, a hundred times the speed of the shallow mundane, Alses watched the consequences of Cassandra’s little game unfold, green eyes darkened with concern and a touch of apprehension. She’d taken a metaphysical sledgehammer to the girl’s iron-hard armour and the shards of it were falling, all invisible, all around them, lifting up in great jagged sheets to expose the weakness within.

“How?” she echoed, though the sound was quickly swallowed by the listening mists. “I’m an aurist. The arrogance of the body is to believe that it can contain the soul,” Alses quoted softly. “Treval Codex, preamble to Auristics, and as true now as it was then, all those millennia ago. I’m very much afraid to say that for those with the right skills, it’s very visible indeed.” A slight wince rippled across her features. “It’s screaming in my head right now, as it happens,” she added, and then sighed gently, and with the sigh letting go of most of the remaining glittering djed reins, letting the sphere of hungry tendrils ghosting across Cassandra’s skin fade and die away, secrets unfurling to the aether, unread and unremarked on.

“This is Lhavit,” Alses pointed out quietly, padding after the girl on the curve of the Pathway and espying, in the distance, the shimmering cascade of skyglass that was, on closer inspection, the rising stairway to the dark-shrouded terraces of the Observatory. “And lifeblood sticks like almost nothing else to an aura. The Dusk Tower’s aurists will most certainly be able to see it – if they look deep enough – and perhaps some of the merchants, too.”

Alses tilted her head to one side, the better to regard and listen to Cassandra as they walked.

“Arrested?” She paused to think, to make sure, even though the answer was turning gently in her head. “No. You came here for the first time, what, a few days ago? The impression is seasons old, any aurist worth their salt could see that, and so it’s not really a concern for the city. Lhavit is under the rule of law, Cassandra – evidence, hard evidence counts here, not just what someone wealthy or with the right friends might say.” She pursed her lips, considering, and then allowed: “It might become a bit more of a concern if the Shinya pick you up for something else; they might bring in an aurist to ask you a few questions, clarify events, that sort of thing. But in the normal course of your living, you should be fine; there are enough people walking around here with old blood in their auras that it’s not worth remarking on. Fresh blood, now that’s a whole different story; the Shinya and the city are very keen on stamping that sort of thing out. Generally successfully, I might add.” There was perhaps a soupcon of warning in her voice there, a subtle suggestion to restrain any murderous impulses wheresoever Lhavit’s writ ran, just in case.

Her respect for the sharp-edged Svefra rose another few notches as the girl recomposed herself and regained enough equipoise, sang-froid, however one wanted to put it, to bring the conversation back from a dangerous brink.

Alses shrugged lightly at the awkward offering. “Deep breaths,” she murmured with a smile, walking companionably close – or perhaps a little more – as they moved onto the final straight of Cloudward, the stairs glimmering in the near distance.

“Little enough to apologise for,” she replied calmly after some time, long used to such reactions. “An aurist is a strange and invasive creature to many; the inside of your head’s not your own when we’re around. Last time I did something vaguely like this, our companion fled and we’ve not seen her since.” A wryly sharp smile slashed up one side of Alses’ face at that admission and then quickly faded as rapidly as it had emerged.

“There’s little enough to worry about, anyway; constant Sight is the preserve of a few skilled aurists, and ethics and practicality dictates that we don’t go around peering into the private souls of others without cause.” She flushed slightly, aware that she herself – and probably most other aurists – played fast and loose with that last, on occasion, especially if there was a suspicion of something interesting flashing and flaring and flirting and teasing in the shallows.

“Just like everyone else, then,” Alses murmured, in response to Cassandra’s difficult excuse for her Lia, a slight smile dancing around her lips. “Welcome to Lhavit. One of the few places - in my experience - where we try and find out new things, as well as delving into the old ruins. If you and your pod find your horizons usefully opened, then all to the good; the Diamond of Kalea has served one of its many purposes.”

She set one foot on the lowest step, cut with commensurate skill out of the living rock of the peaks, and began the slow ascent to the terraces high overhead, her voice floating back to Cassandra. “I daresay Lia Regina knows much more than any of us about the ocean and what mysteries live in it. What she has to know to keep you safe on the high seas, no? And speaking of the ocean…” she half-turned on the steps, to flash a brief but brilliant smile back towards the Svefra before continuing on “…does it not have moods and fancies, just like fire? I’ve seen it clear and turquoise-blue and placid as anything, but I’ve also seen it rage against the coast and try its best to batter down the mountains. Neither good nor bad, just…there. Magic is all shades of grey, and the world all reflection. Life, too.”

The narrow passageway of the stairs opened out, suddenly, and deposited them atop the mountain peak, sheltered in the lee of the vast bulk of the Observatory. The panorama of Lhavit, sprawled out like the finest jewellery, was obscured, by shrubbery and walls and outbuildings and tall stands of waving trees; there was a glow on the horizon, but the darkness was close around them, only the glow of the pathway and the occasional calias-infused plant to guide the way around the stargazing terraces. Overhead, Zintila’s starfield glimmered gloriously, bright and clear and as perfect as anyone could wish for.

“But. You came with me for the stars, and the stars you shall have,” Alses proclaimed whimsically. “Find a spot on a terrace - any terrace; we can walk until you find one you’ll be comfortable on and we can enjoy the display together.”
e

[Cassandra Southwind]

Cassandra was raw, like pink knuckles on cold wet rope. Her throat burned on the dry air it had gasped in. She hiccupped sobs and disguised them as shivers. Her hands clung tight to her lapel if only for something to hold, something more solid than feelings or memories to anchor her to herself. And still she felt like she might float away in an ocean of Alses's djed, on a boat made of the alien comfort in unbridled honesty. The effort stretched Cassandra like the hairs on her head to the ribbon of the mage's power, as soft and charismatic as it was firm and forceful. She looked down at her feet again, and did not look again at Alses for a very long time.

She considered asking outright that Alses never pry again, so that they might be able to stand on even ground and not risk another show of weakness. But in truth, Cassandra had never considered herself equal to the exquisite creature that walked alongside her, and could not bring herself to hate what had been done. Alses's reassurances pulled on Cassandra's every instinct to close up and shut the evil aurist out, to flee like the other girl she had described.

"Laviku gives and takes as he pleases," she agreed, and yet she shook her head. "But after everything, He is kind. I am told from childhood how the ocean is good. The rest is bad. Corrupt. There is little enough between." The little phrase may not have seen its most correct usage on Cassandra's untrained tongue, but the peculiar combination of words had been impressed upon her by Alses's own force of habit.

In the same vein, she continued quietly, "It is interesting that you say a horizon can be opened. The Southwind Pod has pride in the words 'Chase The Horizon'. It is our mission, or so." She looked out at the thing itself, the distant and unattainable line between the ocean and the stars. Cassandra herself had often sailed impossibly toward it, only to eventually turn back to the loving arms of her family.

"But we do not mean a horizon of the mind or of the spirit. We chase the Actual horizon--it is not as useful, perhaps." She tried to laugh, but the effort emerged a sigh. She was done making light of her pod's strongest and most genuine beliefs. What little catharsis came of it had quickly lost its edge. "But we will stay here until Spring. There is a lot of time to learn. We will reach the horizon, though it may not be the one we think."

A moment of introspection passed as she pondered the terraces which fell into place around them. Instead of tying a hard, final knot on the cagey net of her existence, the meddling seemed to have unraveled Cassandra. Her spiritual innards were spilled out at their shuffling feet, the blood of her aura on the aurist's probing hands. And in the wake of the first incision, Cass was slowly beginning to realize that she did not mind. More than that, it made her admire Alses more. No one knew those things--no one except Alses, now. In the darkness that poured from the tall trees around them there was a new sort of intimacy, one that surpassed the beautiful mess of flesh and rose on easy trust.

Cassandra had fallen hard for this woman, her mystery and her wisdom and her forced familiarity. Head and heels and all tumbled wildly behind her scowling, stoic eyes as she settled on an arbitrary spot close by.

Then she looked up at the heavens, the length of her neck exposed in the way it rarely had been, since Veradon's had been cut. She was blind to the nuances of Zintila's artistry, the placement and the distance of the stars, but she appreciated the small contrast between each glowing pinprick and the darkness that surrounded it. When she looked closely, she could see the various greynesses in between white star and black sky.

"Thank you," she mumbled without looking down, searching idly for the one star which she could never find alone.

[Alses]

e

OOCLoving the new post box .

Rawness – of the soul and the spirit, not bruised flesh – snapped and sang its discordant, keep-away symphony between them. Alses was inadequate, unprepared – such visceral emotion was like a whip in her sight, poised and ready to strike even as it hurt its wielder. What was she to do? How to respond, if she should respond, reach out, offer some comfort – but then her touch, so fresh-cargoed with secrets, might burn…

Whilst Alses deliberated and watched, hand half-outstretched, paralysed by indecision and a creeping, unfamiliar anxiety that greyed the edges of her own aura and seeped inward with insidious tendrils, Cassandra wavered, caught between the painful, uncertain unfamiliar and the comfortable, certain familiarity of old. Alses’ words plucked mental strings like a novice violinist, unsure and frightened, almost, by the burst of half-there sound and light that resulted from every tentative attempt. The whole evening seemed to hang by a thread to Alses’ perception; time slowed as the crucial crux point approached with all the inevitability of Lhex, and curiously she found the time to appreciate the profound sparkle of a telltale wetness on Cassandra’s cheeks and the plump curve of her lips in the middle of the unfurling event.

She was about to offer to leave herself, to let Cassandra well alone, write it all off as another bad experience in the vein of Johanne after all and lose herself in the brighter lights of the festival, but gods and luck – perhaps one and the same – were on her side, on the side of logic and reason and enlightenment; a laid-bare Cassandra swung back onto a more-or-less even keel, drained from the tidal-wave of emotions that had rampaged through her frame, battered by shock and fear and creeping guilt but still proud and unbowed. Never – in the short time of their acquaintance - had she looked so attractive, Alses realised with an odd jolt, the defensive and standoffish armour lifted up to expose the rawness of the soul underneath, but still with that spiky fire and quick tongue to give that delicious edge.

Such a contrast to the cerebral mages she tended to spend her days with, but a welcome one nonetheless.

“Nonsense,” she replied roughly when at last Cassandra trusted herself to speak once more, Alses’ voice husky from her own internal battles. Deprecation of close-held things – and a family motto or mission could hardly be closer – wasn’t healthy. “Without chasing the actual horizon, we’d never find new lands and new wonders; our world would be a circle of mud huts or something. You and your pod would never have found remote Lhavit without following your…your mission, either,” she added with a brief smile, pleased to have a solid point to add to her instinctive rebuttal.

“Besides,” Alses added, regaining some of her equipoise, “It’s often the chasing that matters, whether you do it up here-” she tapped her temple “-or out there.” Her gesture was broad and expansive, towards the sweep of the bay and the wide blue ocean beyond. “Or both.”

The atmosphere had changed around them, subtle and secret and so slow Alses hadn’t noticed it, but there was a change, nonetheless, a quiet and calm and secretly intimate one, borne out of mutual secrets shared on the stolen day of Winter. Old blood on the one hand, a hated identity on the other, the melancholy and dislike only banished by the darkness of the moon and the celebratory ambience of the entire city.

Darkness breathed from all around, the copses of slender-trunked trees crowding close, but the jewel-like blaze of the city wasn’t far away, Zintila’s starfield was glorious overhead and the night was slipping towards the dawn with every passing tick and chime, the infallible internal clock of a Synaborn Ethaefal counting slowly down to glory.

Still some bells away, yes, but a welcome approaching phenomenon nonetheless, a reassurance that, soon, all would be well. And wouldn’t that be a sight to see, Cassandra Southwind’s face – if she stayed – when the Change restored her body and she exulted in the lemon-yellow light of a winter dawn?

It was enough, combined, to keep her there, through Aviakittis night and the Konti chain. Still trying to find a comfortable equilibrium, to chart a safe course through the turbulent events and their aftershocks, Alses went with the flow and with what felt right, sitting close to her resilient companion at the spot she’d chosen and gazing up at the magnificent collection Zintila had strewn across the velvet skies.

“No thanks,” she murmured throatily, not moving from her contemplation of the heavens. “I don’t deserve them. I live and breathe the discipline, I spend much of my time amongst fellow aurists and I forget how – intrusive – the magic can be. I get lost on the pleasure of it, and what little tact I have tends to be the first thing to go. Not a very good trait for an aurist, all told, but…We have to play the hand we’re dealt, I believe the saying goes.”

She let the last of the low half-whisper dissipate and vanish into the aether before speaking – and acting – again, leaning back until short-clipped grass blades tickled her face and cushioned her body in their yielding embrace. “Lie back, Cassandra,” she murmured. “No sense in hurting your neck craning to see.” A beat, two, three, four heartbeats, no more, and then: “Do you recognize any of the stars?”
e

[Cassandra Southwind]

oocThank you!

Cassandra hesitated before she accepted Alses's invitation, a reflex that would have protected her from supine vulnerability. But a moment later she was pressing into the grass alongside her, close enough to feel the warmth of another body while the cold vastness of the heavens stretched out above them. There was another horizon, Cassandra thought, one which could not be chased with any boat or physical vessel. They could only scour it from afar, probing for secret details and hoarding them in a thing called knowledge. Little did she know of the magics that could reach into such a dimension.

Her eyes darted like minnows in her skull, searching the endless sky for some familiar pattern. She caught herself glancing west, as if the stars had a different place on the ocean and she needed to adjust for reference, but when she realized how absurd it was she looked up again. There she identified the brightest star in the centermost part of her vision and lifted her arm to point at it, but then she doubted herself and dropped it again.

"I do not know any of them," she admitted, but it was okay because she admitted it to Alses. "My family points out the North Star so many times, but I always forget which it is." The honesty of it was no less peculiar and yet also no less comfortable. There was no point in pretending she knew something she didn't, at least not on this most special of nights. Was it still Aviakittis anymore? The moon was already reflecting morning in the western sky. Did it even matter what day it was?

A sinking feeling told her that it probably did. Alses had confessed to being typically so forward, so invasive, but Cassandra was more accustomed to reciprocating that outward push than pulling someone into herself. As confusing or enlightening as this night had become, she worried that she might not remember it fondly, or that the woman she had become so enamored with would be someone different the next time they met.

"That is better," she noted absently. Only after a few long ticks did she remember to clarify her train of thought. Or did she have to? "To get lost. To be tactless. It is more rude to act like other than yourself. It is dishonest."

As the soft ground caved around her settling body, Cassandra felt a wave of fatigue fall over her. A warm bath and a long walk will do that to a person, besides the exhaustion inherent in spreading her soul beneath the eyes of nosy benevolence. She sighed, shifted, and followed any pointing finger or referencing word that was given. "I hear by the campfire, sometimes... stories, about people and things written in the stars. Is the Alses star a part of any story?"

[Alses]

e

"You were right,” Alses murmured. “That very bright star, there near the centre of the sky here in the north – the one you pointed to, I think - is Polaris. It has many names; sailors sometimes call it the sea-star, although you’d know more of that than me, along with other titles like Lodestar and Cynosure. All related to guiding and illumination; it is the star that shows the way, the kingpin of sidereal navigation, the guiding light for people all across Mizahar.”

The ground was cool, the grass soft and cushioning beneath her back. Cassandra, though, next to her, was a positive furnace in contrast, radiating heat that sent faint shivers over Alses’ form. Not that it was a bad thing, exactly, just…

Gently shaking her head to clear it of clouding thoughts, Alses returned her attention to Zintila’s glory overhead and the contemplation of the unimaginably distant. “There’s a difference between tact and dishonesty,” she mused, voice pensive. “Just about. If I was better at it, I’d have found a way to mention the blood in your aura without making you uncomfortable. Or at least, not to the same extent. It’s like saying Chiona Dusk keeps close counsel with Lheili Dawn, rather than that the two of them are 'at it like rabbits.'” She sniffed, dropping the inverted commas neatly around the phrase. “Which is a rumour in any case and may well be utter rubbish. Even so, one is insensitive and tactless and the other…rather less so.”

A soft shake of her head, silken strands of her hair glissading over one another. “The stars. Alses…It’s not a member of a constellation – its motion is too odd for that – but there are stories about it, nonetheless, and about Polaris.”

Memory unfurled inside her head as she spoke, remembering being swaddled in blankets and bundled close to a grand fireplace in which a merry blaze roared and danced, throwing out such heat as to melt the varnish on the furniture close by. She’d just been fished out of the ocean, fresh-Fallen, dazed and confused by everything and everyone, not even able to speak, cocooned in absolute misery and awash on a sea of unfamiliar things and feelings that had had no place in the glimmering Goldenlands.

Her gaze had kept swinging skywards, an unconscious reaction, forever hunting for something that was lost, and in an effort to spark any sort of recognition – or even interaction – from the freezing, bedraggled Ethaefal, her host had started to speak of stars and stories.

Most of it had been utter gibberish to her ears, back then, but he’d repeated the stories – or some of them – back when she’d learned enough of Common to understand them, when she’d chosen her name.

“Once, in a time so long ago our years have no meaning, there was a couple. Mortals or the semi-divine children of the gods, the stories don’t record. He – Polaris, that is - was a king, a ruler of many cities,” she clarified; the term wasn’t much used these days, after all “-or something similar, and she a concubine in his dominion. She wasn’t especially beautiful, not when compared to the other ladies of his lavish court, but her mind was what had caught his attention, and won her his favour. All good things come with a catch, though – and the same was true here. The other concubines grew jealous and full of envy, the same sad story that’s been played out a thousand times before…”

Alses wove the tale, of love and loss and betrayal and murder in the dark, around them both. Her telling wasn’t the best, it had to be said – events jumbled in her head, as did characters of the old story, and there were several iterations of “Oh, I should have explained earlier-” interjected into the charivari. She was no storyteller; adept enough when it came to her own words, but less polished at recitation of others’.

“And they both burned,” she continued with a distant sigh, “In a fire set by jealous and malign others. She was the only one to rush back into the burning palace to try and save her lover, and in the way of such tales, perished whilst looking for him. For their devotion, they were set into the heavens as stars, to guide the lost and the wavering to better ways and to live out their time in bliss.”

A small smile. “There is a later addition to the tale, in which the Valterrian plays a part. They say that the turmoil in the realms of the gods ripped the heavens apart and tore Alses from the embrace of her lover. Polaris burns so bright in the sky because he is looking for her, searching, blinded by his own light to her presence nearby, and she can never get close because of the fire of it. Still devoted, always trying, the two of them locked together like that overhead.” She shook her head. “There are other stories, about sailors and explorers and the girls who waited, but that’s the one I can remember most.”

Alses let there be silence for a while, and then picked up the silver thread of stargazing once more. “See the bright lights, low down in the sky?” To Alses’ eyes, honed with the instinctive knowledge and skill of an Ethaefal, they were slightly redder, more burnished in their light than the far-glittering stars that dusted the upper reaches of the empyrean sky. Two were visible right now, one off far to the west, the larger and more intensely bright of the two, and one to the north and east, smaller but still impressive.

“Those aren’t stars; they’re planets. They glow like that because they’re so close to us and they reflect the light of Syna bouncing off them. See they’re ever so slightly redder than the other stars? Just at the edges? They don’t really twinkle, either.”

Her hand rose, pointing, tracing an arcing line from the glowing western planet to almost where the horizon met the sea behind and below them, terminating in a bright and low star that seemed to hug the ocean. “That one is a star, and it's easy to spot, big and bold and bright. It’s called the Lonely Star of Autumn, or the Star-Whale’s Mouth. Formalhaut is its less-poetic name; less of a mouthful, I suppose.” A slight smile curved up her lips for a moment and she half-turned on the grass to gaze at Cassandra, skin silvered by starlight. “You’ve travelled with your pod, much more than I; what stories have the people of distant lands painted in the sky? Come to that, what do your people see up there?”
e

[Cassandra Southwind]

Cassandra stared absently at Alses's namesake and its companion, Polaris. Between the sky's dotted canvas and her mind's eye, her companion's story painted imaginative strokes of society and amour and flame. She forgave any mistake in the telling with patient silence, even going so far as so chuckle when Alses acknowledged her own mistake. Granted, amid the distraction of their proximity, it was becoming more difficult to focus on discourse. Every time she glanced away from the stars to behold the grace of the ethaefal's 'lesser' form, she would lose that part of the story. She would not be able to retell it.

"Sad," Cassandra mumbled, commenting uncertainly on the periphery of the story instead of on the meat of its tragedy--the ironic twist, the lesson it imparted. She could not find the words to appreciate any nuance beyond a request fulfilled. Instead, she followed Alses's wandering thoughts from stars to planets, leaning pointedly close when required to follow her pointing hand toward the night's example. The difference was clear, once it was shown to her; instead of grey there was the slightest glow of color.

It was an entire planet, all wrapped up in a little speck of light. Cassandra had seen more of this world than most. It was difficult to fathom that there could be more than one, much less something so far away that Syna could only illuminate it into so many fractions of an inch. Questions about Syna's whereabouts, her power during the night and her thoughts on other worlds, crept up behind her teeth. But Alses had asked for something a little less abstract, a little more entertaining. Cassandra could do naught but oblige.

"There are many stories. I do not remember most of them. Only they from childhood, which are repeated many times on the sea. Told to help me remember the stars, but I am not good at listening." A self-deprecating laugh puffed onto the cold air before her lips, wafting and stalling as she tried to remember. "There is one, about a boy named Jakka who leaves his pod for adventure. His father gives him a gold-gilded casinor with silver-threaded sails. It is very beautiful, but the man who made it said to never open the hatch. Then his mother gives him a choice: a big cake with a curse, or a little cake with a blessing. Jakka chose the big cake and sailed away."

Cassandra's story was told with similar finesse, prefaced and punctuated by her limited knowledge of the language and her distaste for speeches. The Svefra story was less political and more disjointed, more like a few stories jumbled together than one whole thought. Jakka fell in love, but the girl wanted proof of his love, so he opened the hatch to try and find more treasure, but inside was a little man made of black stone who wanted to grant him a wish. Her people did not know how real magic worked, Cassandra insisted, for many of their stories included fantastic wishes with more circumstantial consequences than spiritual ones.

Jakka wished that the girl would love him, but the word for 'me' in Fratava sounded too much like the word for 'tuna', so she ate the fish for every meal and he would always fetch it for her, but her hunger became insatiable and so he had to befriend a shark and an otani to find a magical item that would grant her endless tuna, but by the time he got back a man named Ryne had cured her because he was her true love, so Jakka had to fight him for her love and died not-so-tragically by the Ryne's cutlass.

"This is why you must always choose the little cake with a blessing," she explained finally. "There is more detail, but I do not like so much detail. Anyway, there is a constellation for all of the people in the story, including the shark and the otani. But I do not know where."

She closed her eyes then, sighing softly. The story exhausted her more than she thought it would, but then again it had been a long time since she had talked so much. Licking her lips, she lifted a cold hand to her brow in an attempt to stir her thoughts. "I did not know the name of the star-goddess before we came to Lhavit," she mentioned, understanding well if Alses had little to say about her nonsensical tale. "We knew that there must be one, but Eddie says the sky is too predictable for worship. We use it as a map, we depend on it, but we never thought to thank it--her.

"And you?" She shifted, turning only a little toward Alses and away from the heavens. She would fall asleep on the cold hard ground before she would admit to feeling tired. "You do not look like other Lhavitians. Tell me about your people. What do they see?"

[Alses]

e

OOCMany apologies for the lateness of the reply; life decided to dump everything on me at once .

Alses did her best to be an attentive audience, but the great sucking vastness of Zintila’s jewellery-box universe danced and sang overhead, forever tugging, insistently, at her consciousness, demanding attention and introspection from her. Cassandra’s tale was as raw as her own had been, but no less interesting for all that. The mention of a golden ship with silver sails brought a smile to her lips as she imagined such a gaudy, splendid vessel and disregarded such physical questions as: ‘Would it even float?’

There was a time and a place for such engineering conundra, and it decidedly wasn’t on the moss-sprung terraces of the Observatory on Aviakittis night.

Even given the interruptions and her own occasional inattention, drifting skywards on a ribbon of starlight, Alses felt she’d caught the gist of the whole thing, carefully storing as much as she could remember away in the recesses of her mind for detailed perusal later.

No telling when such odd bits of knowledge as a Svefra star-story could come in handy, after all – some little titbits she’d thought incredibly useful, at the time of her learning, had proven to be irrelevant and now mouldered quietly on the singing shelves of her memory, whilst other hitherto-disregarded scraps of information had fought their way to the fore and gleamed brightly in her mind’s eye.

Fire-starting, for one; she’d never thought there’d be a great deal of use for it – that was what servants were for – but it was a bit of knowledge she’d applied time and again in her philtering, and during her stay at the Towers Respite.

“The Bharani Library will probably have something on your story,” she murmured. “Or if they don’t, then they and the Observatory would be keen to get their hands on a transcript.” An amused quirk of the lips and a slight shake of the head before Alses next spoke, pensive and distant. “Jam tomorrow seems to be its moral. Take the small things now and enjoy a glut down the line somewhere.”

She had to grin – slightly sadly – at Cassandra’s assurance that her people didn’t have much to do with ‘real’ magic. “There’s probably some lost discipline that could have that effect, just waiting to be rediscovered,” she replied. “So much was destroyed in the Valterrian, or else buried and forgotten in the rubble. We – mages and Seekers alike - are scratching the surface and scrabbling in the ruins of what was once possible when Suva and Alahea glittered under Syna’s influence, prizing even the merest scrap we pull from oblivion.”

Quiet spread its velvet cloak for a brief time, and the song in Alses’ head grew stronger. To drown it out, she turned to look at Cassandra, head pillowed comfortably on one arm. The spiky Svefra was so very there, warm and immediate and physical, the siren song of could-have-been and one-day-maybe fading under the barrage of her senses.

“There are legends that say She once rivalled Tanroa in power,” Alses remarked quietly, bringing herself mentally back to the topic in hand. “The whole of the starry firmament dances to Zintila’s tune – and we’d see it even from Mizahar if She was restored to Her full power again. That’s the purpose of the Constellation, and to a degree the entire city. Even in Her…reduced state…She helped shape it, after all, gave us the skyglass and much else besides.” Alses took a breath, gaze drawn magnetically skyward by the softly glittering universe sprawled out in front of them.

“You owe Her more than you know,” Alses murmured. “Without Zintila, there might not be a Mizahar today,” she clarified quickly. “If the carvings of Koten Temple are to be believed, anyway. Well worth a look, if you’ve not been there before.” Her gaze went blankly skyward for a little while, listening calmly as Cassandra’s voice wove about them both, concerns and observations spiced with a question.

“What do we see in the starscape? Home,” Alses replied, calm and quiet, although her voice throbbed with a far-repressed longing. “Though I can’t really speak for the others of my kind,” she admitted after a heartbeat or two. “We’re too scattered and too disparate to have any kind of coherent society, any sort of tradition. Sometimes, it’s painful to look at one another; how can we band together and make anything that lasts like that? We each of us make our own way in the world, alone and splendid.” A sigh.

“I’m getting better at it, slowly, but there are still some days I can’t look people in the eye, there are times I’ll cross the street or use a shortcut or linger too long at a stall to avoid falling into step with another like me. There are less than fifty of us in all of Lhavit; avoidance is easy enough.”

She shook her head, clearing it of useless thoughts. “All I know is that something in my soul resonates to the harmonies of the stars whenever I look at them, calling me back. I’ve not asked, so I can only assume that others feel that same resonant pull.” Her face clouded and darkened suddenly, like a thunderhead passing in front of a silvered moon.

“Unless they’re cursed Forsaken, of course. Those I hope are cast adrift, and much good may their ranting at the stars and gods do them.”

Her voice crackled with annoyance, but not one erg of it was directed against Cassandra, no, rather focused on the numinous target of the Forsaken, a group for whom Alses reserved a very special contempt. The subject was, after all, close to her heart, and whenever she shied away from some task or endeavour her own words about the Forsaken came back to haunt her, spurring her on.

To keep the flame alive.
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[Cassandra Southwind]

oocI am SO sorry for how long this took. My muse took a nose-dive these past new weeks, but I promise I have not disappeared. I'm a little rusty, but hopefully this is enough to reply to. It's fine if you think this is a good end, too.

"That sounds lonely," she replied, somewhat selfishly.

Cassandra's head turned to Alses finally, hoping to find only the sideward silhouette of her face and its longing stare toward the heavens. She did not know what else to say, what condolence to give, or if any was warranted. Perhaps she should have said nothing, or perhaps she could have gone as far as a touch on the hand--but the moment was gone, replaced by tired, open silence. Cassandra's raw was chafing in the cold Winter heights, so she folded her arms around herself and stirred up the layers she had shed.

Alses had her own brand of raw, one which was charred at the edges by duty to her city and to her mind. Occasionally Cass could cut into that talkative exterior and discover the greasy blood of the ethaefal's eternal soul, but the flame would burn it over again and she was forced to be contented by it.

That fire lit anew in the watery depths of Cassandra's innards, the hollows she had carved in the deepest part of herself. She liked Alses, certainly, but more than that she found herself wanted to be like her. She wanted to be studious, to be generous, and so to be beautiful.

She cleared her throat.

"The library... the temple. I have never thought to go to places like these. Definitely I have not thought to write for them. But when I have a day next, perhaps I will go." She paused to resist a yawn, but it broke through anyway. She covered her mouth with her hand and then laid her cool fingers on her warm brow. The thought passed her that she might admit exactly how little she knew of Lhavit, that she could barely read the letters that labelled every street sign and filled every book, but her armor was hooking and unfurling mightily around her. It covered the weakness with familiar insecurity. "I... I should go. It is too late. I have fish to sell tomorrow, if they let me."

Only after she said it did she sit up. Even that little motion was dizzying, like a part of her had been attached to Alses and was suddenly yanked from between them. Still, she did not stand until she was given permission to depart--or better, reason to stay. "I'm sorry I--" have already taken too large a cake. "I am not accustomed to Rests. I should not fall asleep in the cold mountain air."

[Alses]

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“Lonely?” Alses thought about it, pensive. “I wouldn’t know.” A half-shrug. “It’s how we are, and better than being driven mad by grief at the sight. Besides,” she continued, brightening determinedly, “I have friends-” ‘One or two, at best,’ the mischievous part of her brain cackled slyly, putting a shadow of discontent on her face for a fleeting tick or two, “-and acquaintances amongst all the rest of Lhavit to amuse and support me. It’s not so bad – and I am getting better at dealing with my own kind, however slowly. Tanroa’s river seems to help, as with most things.”

Cassandra’s gaze sent a jolt through her when the woman turned, burning sea-foam eyes that were bright in the dimness, and Alses lost some of the thread of what she’d been about to say. Thankfully, it didn’t matter; Cassandra herself spoke, and Alses was able to collect herself and marshal a response in the pause.

“You should,” she agreed readily, eyes alight with an academic’s delight at bringing a new someone into the fold of knowledge. “Write just one new thing for the Bharani Library, and have five hundred years of information at your fingertips, free for the browsing. And Koten Temple is-” ‘Hayani’s graveyard,’ snapped the evil gremlin that was her own brain, making her swallow the words and stumble “-magnificent,” she settled on, slightly lamely.

‘Is there a new Anchorite yet?’ Alses wondered, distracted for a moment. ‘Who’s leading Zintila’s priesthood now? What are they telling people about Hayani?’ She realised – with a jolt – that she’d no idea, no idea at all. And for the inaugural Councillor Radiant, that was…unsettling. And unacceptable. ‘Find out,’ she raged at herself – but only for internal consumption, quickly returning her attention back to Cassandra in time to catch sight of a truly monumental yawn, inadequately – although oddly demurely – stifled with one slightly grass-stained hand.

For herself, tiredness had come and gone a while ago, replaced with a nervous, fizzing, diffuse energy that she knew without a doubt she’d be paying for across the next few nights, but even so buried reflexes came to the fore at the sight and in short order Alses was smothering her own yawn. “Oh dear,” she murmured, slightly sadly. “Now I’ve caught it too.” A brief, self-deprecating chuckle – a flimsy mask, as it happened.

“Do you-” she began, and then stopped herself, contrite and angry at herself for her own selfishness, even before she’d got the words ‘have to go?’ out. A shake of her head, sharp and fierce. “Of course you do.”

Alses herself now rose into a comfortable sitting position, eyes cast seawards, towards the horizon. She nodded towards it, still swaddled in purple and black – although the lightening that heralded a false dawn couldn’t be far off.

“I had wanted to welcome in the dawn with you,” she confessed quietly, wrestling back the disappointment. “I enjoyed your company, you didn’t run from me, we shared a secret or two – although you had no real choice in the matter - and I had…fun.”

Her smile was soft, weak and wavering, unsure of whether it should still be there, stretching her lips tentatively upwards. “The best Aviakittis night I’ve had,” she added, very quietly. “But!” Alses continued, much louder, “You have your job, and people who depend on you. It’d be churlish of me to keep you here, make you useless for tomorrow.” A brief sigh, and then a brightening. “But there will, at least, always be a tomorrow.” She paused, struggling for a moment with unfamiliar words and modes of expression.

“I would be glad of your company again sometime,” Alses added, slightly awkwardly. It sounded…cumbersome, poorly put-together, but it was the best she could muster up. “I-if you’d like to, of course.” Inwardly, she cursed herself for the stutter; where had that come from?

“You can generally get hold of me at the Dusk Tower,” she continued hopefully, “Or Bharani and the Basilika – they’re right next door to one another, after all.” A pause, and an even more tentative:

“I’ll walk you back, if you like?”

END

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