Blithely unaware that her future was being shaped on the shores of Vaska, beneath the surface of the Silver Lake, Kamalia Timandre drifted in arches as she floated over a flourishing bed of freshwater mussels. Sunlight filtered through the waters, turning the lake into a silvery dreamlike world. Her white hair floated about her like nimbus, and her arms laced with glittering, iridescent silver patterns seemed to waver with the movement of the water. Gills, small and shaped like thunderbolts, slashed the sides of her neck, and her garments were caught in the water, slowly echoing the motion.
Today, young konti women gathered corals and harvested pearls. As daughters of Laviku, the konti cultivated pearl farms, both in saltwater and the Silver Lake, looking after several beds of pearl-producing mollusks, some of which boasted exquisite specimens just waiting to be plucked. Pearl harvesting was among Kamalia’s favorite activities when she was just a little more than an infant, and memories of her childhood enfolded her in a tender embrace. From time to time, the girl would find small and simple treasures on the lake bed— hand mirrors, silver forks and shiny trinkets, which she collected with a childlike fascination. The colorful scenery of white sands, sedimentary rocks and different varieties of fish seemed to sing to her in a chorus of entrancing bubbles, beckoning her to play with them. There, in the gleaming paradise of White Isle’s fresh water beds, the konti swam in perfect harmony within the realms of Laviku, at peace with the creatures that inhabited his placid kingdoms.
Spotting a large, open mouthed specimen resting on the silver bedspread, her velvet eyes beheld a very large and exquisite silver ball, lying serenely on the mussel’s boughs. She gently drove her lithe body with fluctuating speed towards the shell, a gleaming knife ready to pry the pearlescent orb off its regal nacre.
Yet as the sparkling pearl gleamed into her deep violet eyes, the smile on her face dropped like a glint of rain from a bud, her heart suddenly grasping the flickering of the arcane chains that connected her to her sentient half. Her seer sensitivities were gripped by a terrifying conviction that something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Not knowing what it was that clenched her heart so tightly, she called out to the other pearl divers in a series of clicks and whistles, before whirling upwards and swimming towards the muted halo of the sun.
---
Mura, the Pearl of the White Isle, shimmered in the highsun, gleaming like an opal teardrop upon a quilt of silver. Here, the konti played, worked, dreamed, schemed, and occasionally, loved. Here, the daughters of Avalis and Laviku, seers and healers and dreamers, basked and lived in a bottled dream.
It was a dream that slowly slipped through their fingers like fine silver sands. Sand through an hourglass, steady flow of grit, forming a mountain shape, trickling away moments until the fall of the last grain. This was the passage of time through the eyes of a High Oracle of Avalis, one who could see the past, present and future.
Through the porthole of divination, time slowly trickled down, falling, drifting, streaming as the Konti teetered on a doorsill between dream and darkness, between starlight and shadows, between dawn and dusk. Whether or not the Isle was ready to be spat from the dream and plunge into an ocean of wakefulness, the High Oracle was not sure.
That hourglass, which there she saw, grain by grain, drop by drop, from the upper to the under-glass do sands of time trickle down, like goddess tears encrystalled. There was still time, before it stills, sand frozen on the bottom. She would turn the hourglass over, new moments to tick, streaming from top once again.
Yet there she stood, alone in this task, and the dream dimmed and dimmed at every tick. Even as the future gleamed bright as sunshine, the High Oracle saw an umbrage falling upon Mura, and there was no way stopping it. The hourglass and the dream shall soon be shattered.
Shahal Timandre stood at the heart of the Augury Halls, a vast gleaming single-room spire that resembled a wentletrap shell made of pearlescent material, the divination chamber of the Timandre family. The spiraling walls and floor looked as if they were carved from a giant pearl or nacre, and several pools and fountains of vision water sang in a melodic murmur. Dominating the room was a raised platform upon which sat a massive black pearl.
Shahal the Farseeer stood before the scrying pearl as she communed with her goddess. The seer stood fully six feet, a towering woman by the standards of the konti, with silvery radiance that lingered about her like captured starlight. Hair the color of spun silver, streaked with sun-gold strands, spilled from the corona of her head to her long and graceful legs. Thick pale lashes framed her eyes that seemed to have swallowed a violet twilight.
Time did not manifest its passing upon her impossibly beautiful visage, for she had the fresh pulchritude of a young maiden, yet all of Konti Isle knew that the High Priestess of Avalis was more than two centuries old. She was among the most powerful diviners in the Konti Isle, and in the full favor of her goddess.
Shahal was in deep contemplation and silent communication with her goddess, until a white-robed figure burst into the halls, shattering the High Oracle’s reverie.
“Kamalia, that little witch has gone, too far!”fumed Ordona Su’akadva, a priestess of Avalis and a sinspeaker, quivering with wrath as she stomped into the divination halls.
“What enterprises did my granddaughter design this time?” Grandmother Shahal asked with a placid smile, emphasizing the relationship. A single silver eyebrow rose to warn the lesser seer to tread carefully.
“Mischief, irreverence and sacrilege. Your granddaughter has been spuriously misbehaving like an insolent varmint, ” stormed Ordona, her ample bosom rose and fell indignantly beneath the white, silver-trimmed robes of a priestess. “Just the other day, at the Suvai Pavilion, when Matalla Shivkani took a break and decided to imbibe from her waterskin, Kamalia froze the liquid midway within her throat with foul magicks!”
Shahal sighed. Kamalia had spent only a few days at the Suvai Pavillion, yet she was a perpetrator of nearly a dozen pranks. She knew well that Kamalia disliked suvai fighting, but the High Priestess knew that she would need to learn the ways of the suvai if she were to survive in the near future.
“ Yesterday,” Ordona continued, “ at the morning service, your granddaughter had the marvelous idea to slap Matalla’s hindquarters with a wind-whip while she was kowtowing before the Altar of the Seer Mother.”
Shahal sighed again. Matalla Shivkani belonged to a prominent family that, although notorious for lacking patience and their ineptitude for fortune-telling, had contributed greatly to the city's trade and commerce. If Kamalia had truly gone too far, she might soon see clan rivalries in the Taviasa.
“And on that same day,” Ordona added, “during the bowl-scrying session, Matalla’s hair caught the flames from the nearby candlelight. My visions had shown me that the witch commanded the winds in the direction of Matalla Shivkani as the poor girl concentrated, bent over her bowl."
Another sigh escaped from the Grandmother's lips.
“Kamalia, of course, snuffed it out—with the appropriate element, if I might add,” Ordona said finally.
There was a short interval of silence, before the High Oracle smiled again. “Has my granddaughter been amply chastised for her crimes?”
“Amply chastised, yes,” Ordona replied dryly. “But she does not stop, and these crimes are not a trifling matter. We all know that magic fractured her mind. She is unhinged. We must send her away from the Konti Isle before her madness and foul sorceries spell harm to our people!”
Shahal’s smile died like spent candlelight, and her eyes glinted dangerously. “Should that time approach, Avalis will reveal to me and show me what to do. See that you do not presume to instruct me, Su’akadva.”
Ordona froze as it came to her how badly she had misbehaved. The priestess fervently genuflected. “May I implore your forgiveness, High Oracle, and the absolution of the Seer Goddess,” she said, before whispering a frenzied prayer to Avalis.
Shahal smiled again, wryly this time.“How is Satu‘s mastery with the suvai? And Kamalia?”
“Satu is doing admirably well,” Ordona said calmly now, and her choice of words more gentle. “With the suvai, she moves like a dancer of the tides, graceful as the waves of the ocean. She shows an astonishing aptitude for undersea fighting and predicting her opponent’s movements. I must say she is the most promising practitioners of the suvai blade, not unlike your granddaughter Marishka when she was young. Kamalia, on the other hand,” Ordona’s voice lowered,” is incredulously ignorant with the basic stances and parries of the suvai, and she wears out too easily. She disgracefully knows nothing about the intricate protocols and rules of underwater fighting, far below the tolerable standards of a suvai apprentice.”
“It is your responsibility, and Suvaimistress Valmara’s, to fill in these gaps,” Shahal reminded her gently yet coldly, eyeing Ordona with a wintry smile. “With strict disciplinary actions and faultless training regimen, Kamalia will not have time for capricious mischief.”
Ordona stiffened, yet there was no way she could parry that. “So be it. I shall notify the Suvaimistress to instruct Kamalia better in suvai.”
Grandmother Shahal nodded. “Keep me informed of Satu the Heartseer and my granddaughter’s activities.”
Ordona lifted an eyebrow, puzzled as to why the matriarch of the Timandre family concerned herself with the progress of the heartseer, but she knew better than to ask. Again she genuflected, and left the tower noiselessly.
Alone once again, Shahal faced the massive black pearl. On it she saw Satu the Heartseer, with strings attached to her every joint, as if she were a puppeteer’s marionette, seemingly lifeless. Beside her, Kamalia stared back at her grandmother, smiling, yet with a smile that had no compassion, no warmth. Her violet eyes vacuous, and the dark coils of magic spiraled around her slender form.
Today, young konti women gathered corals and harvested pearls. As daughters of Laviku, the konti cultivated pearl farms, both in saltwater and the Silver Lake, looking after several beds of pearl-producing mollusks, some of which boasted exquisite specimens just waiting to be plucked. Pearl harvesting was among Kamalia’s favorite activities when she was just a little more than an infant, and memories of her childhood enfolded her in a tender embrace. From time to time, the girl would find small and simple treasures on the lake bed— hand mirrors, silver forks and shiny trinkets, which she collected with a childlike fascination. The colorful scenery of white sands, sedimentary rocks and different varieties of fish seemed to sing to her in a chorus of entrancing bubbles, beckoning her to play with them. There, in the gleaming paradise of White Isle’s fresh water beds, the konti swam in perfect harmony within the realms of Laviku, at peace with the creatures that inhabited his placid kingdoms.
Spotting a large, open mouthed specimen resting on the silver bedspread, her velvet eyes beheld a very large and exquisite silver ball, lying serenely on the mussel’s boughs. She gently drove her lithe body with fluctuating speed towards the shell, a gleaming knife ready to pry the pearlescent orb off its regal nacre.
Yet as the sparkling pearl gleamed into her deep violet eyes, the smile on her face dropped like a glint of rain from a bud, her heart suddenly grasping the flickering of the arcane chains that connected her to her sentient half. Her seer sensitivities were gripped by a terrifying conviction that something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Not knowing what it was that clenched her heart so tightly, she called out to the other pearl divers in a series of clicks and whistles, before whirling upwards and swimming towards the muted halo of the sun.
---
Mura, the Pearl of the White Isle, shimmered in the highsun, gleaming like an opal teardrop upon a quilt of silver. Here, the konti played, worked, dreamed, schemed, and occasionally, loved. Here, the daughters of Avalis and Laviku, seers and healers and dreamers, basked and lived in a bottled dream.
It was a dream that slowly slipped through their fingers like fine silver sands. Sand through an hourglass, steady flow of grit, forming a mountain shape, trickling away moments until the fall of the last grain. This was the passage of time through the eyes of a High Oracle of Avalis, one who could see the past, present and future.
Through the porthole of divination, time slowly trickled down, falling, drifting, streaming as the Konti teetered on a doorsill between dream and darkness, between starlight and shadows, between dawn and dusk. Whether or not the Isle was ready to be spat from the dream and plunge into an ocean of wakefulness, the High Oracle was not sure.
That hourglass, which there she saw, grain by grain, drop by drop, from the upper to the under-glass do sands of time trickle down, like goddess tears encrystalled. There was still time, before it stills, sand frozen on the bottom. She would turn the hourglass over, new moments to tick, streaming from top once again.
Yet there she stood, alone in this task, and the dream dimmed and dimmed at every tick. Even as the future gleamed bright as sunshine, the High Oracle saw an umbrage falling upon Mura, and there was no way stopping it. The hourglass and the dream shall soon be shattered.
Shahal Timandre stood at the heart of the Augury Halls, a vast gleaming single-room spire that resembled a wentletrap shell made of pearlescent material, the divination chamber of the Timandre family. The spiraling walls and floor looked as if they were carved from a giant pearl or nacre, and several pools and fountains of vision water sang in a melodic murmur. Dominating the room was a raised platform upon which sat a massive black pearl.
Shahal the Farseeer stood before the scrying pearl as she communed with her goddess. The seer stood fully six feet, a towering woman by the standards of the konti, with silvery radiance that lingered about her like captured starlight. Hair the color of spun silver, streaked with sun-gold strands, spilled from the corona of her head to her long and graceful legs. Thick pale lashes framed her eyes that seemed to have swallowed a violet twilight.
Time did not manifest its passing upon her impossibly beautiful visage, for she had the fresh pulchritude of a young maiden, yet all of Konti Isle knew that the High Priestess of Avalis was more than two centuries old. She was among the most powerful diviners in the Konti Isle, and in the full favor of her goddess.
Shahal was in deep contemplation and silent communication with her goddess, until a white-robed figure burst into the halls, shattering the High Oracle’s reverie.
“Kamalia, that little witch has gone, too far!”fumed Ordona Su’akadva, a priestess of Avalis and a sinspeaker, quivering with wrath as she stomped into the divination halls.
“What enterprises did my granddaughter design this time?” Grandmother Shahal asked with a placid smile, emphasizing the relationship. A single silver eyebrow rose to warn the lesser seer to tread carefully.
“Mischief, irreverence and sacrilege. Your granddaughter has been spuriously misbehaving like an insolent varmint, ” stormed Ordona, her ample bosom rose and fell indignantly beneath the white, silver-trimmed robes of a priestess. “Just the other day, at the Suvai Pavilion, when Matalla Shivkani took a break and decided to imbibe from her waterskin, Kamalia froze the liquid midway within her throat with foul magicks!”
Shahal sighed. Kamalia had spent only a few days at the Suvai Pavillion, yet she was a perpetrator of nearly a dozen pranks. She knew well that Kamalia disliked suvai fighting, but the High Priestess knew that she would need to learn the ways of the suvai if she were to survive in the near future.
“ Yesterday,” Ordona continued, “ at the morning service, your granddaughter had the marvelous idea to slap Matalla’s hindquarters with a wind-whip while she was kowtowing before the Altar of the Seer Mother.”
Shahal sighed again. Matalla Shivkani belonged to a prominent family that, although notorious for lacking patience and their ineptitude for fortune-telling, had contributed greatly to the city's trade and commerce. If Kamalia had truly gone too far, she might soon see clan rivalries in the Taviasa.
“And on that same day,” Ordona added, “during the bowl-scrying session, Matalla’s hair caught the flames from the nearby candlelight. My visions had shown me that the witch commanded the winds in the direction of Matalla Shivkani as the poor girl concentrated, bent over her bowl."
Another sigh escaped from the Grandmother's lips.
“Kamalia, of course, snuffed it out—with the appropriate element, if I might add,” Ordona said finally.
There was a short interval of silence, before the High Oracle smiled again. “Has my granddaughter been amply chastised for her crimes?”
“Amply chastised, yes,” Ordona replied dryly. “But she does not stop, and these crimes are not a trifling matter. We all know that magic fractured her mind. She is unhinged. We must send her away from the Konti Isle before her madness and foul sorceries spell harm to our people!”
Shahal’s smile died like spent candlelight, and her eyes glinted dangerously. “Should that time approach, Avalis will reveal to me and show me what to do. See that you do not presume to instruct me, Su’akadva.”
Ordona froze as it came to her how badly she had misbehaved. The priestess fervently genuflected. “May I implore your forgiveness, High Oracle, and the absolution of the Seer Goddess,” she said, before whispering a frenzied prayer to Avalis.
Shahal smiled again, wryly this time.“How is Satu‘s mastery with the suvai? And Kamalia?”
“Satu is doing admirably well,” Ordona said calmly now, and her choice of words more gentle. “With the suvai, she moves like a dancer of the tides, graceful as the waves of the ocean. She shows an astonishing aptitude for undersea fighting and predicting her opponent’s movements. I must say she is the most promising practitioners of the suvai blade, not unlike your granddaughter Marishka when she was young. Kamalia, on the other hand,” Ordona’s voice lowered,” is incredulously ignorant with the basic stances and parries of the suvai, and she wears out too easily. She disgracefully knows nothing about the intricate protocols and rules of underwater fighting, far below the tolerable standards of a suvai apprentice.”
“It is your responsibility, and Suvaimistress Valmara’s, to fill in these gaps,” Shahal reminded her gently yet coldly, eyeing Ordona with a wintry smile. “With strict disciplinary actions and faultless training regimen, Kamalia will not have time for capricious mischief.”
Ordona stiffened, yet there was no way she could parry that. “So be it. I shall notify the Suvaimistress to instruct Kamalia better in suvai.”
Grandmother Shahal nodded. “Keep me informed of Satu the Heartseer and my granddaughter’s activities.”
Ordona lifted an eyebrow, puzzled as to why the matriarch of the Timandre family concerned herself with the progress of the heartseer, but she knew better than to ask. Again she genuflected, and left the tower noiselessly.
Alone once again, Shahal faced the massive black pearl. On it she saw Satu the Heartseer, with strings attached to her every joint, as if she were a puppeteer’s marionette, seemingly lifeless. Beside her, Kamalia stared back at her grandmother, smiling, yet with a smile that had no compassion, no warmth. Her violet eyes vacuous, and the dark coils of magic spiraled around her slender form.
I could just imagine how rare half-abino peacocks are.
