The Moonlight Serenade (Trista)

[Kamalia Timandre]

Timestamp: Early Winter, 509 AV
Location: White Isle Seaside
Time of Day: Midnight

The night was as elusive as a dream.

Moonlight shone as beautiful as ever, its halos veiling the Konti Isle in gossamer of white, scribbling across the Silver Lake in garbled lines of light. Beneath this dreamy sheen of stars and shadows, the City of Mura slumped deep into slumber, guarded by the Sea and blanketed in a haze of soothing repose. Tonight, the daughters of Avalis and Laviku dreamed and skimmed the corona between the Ukalas and the mortal plane, content to play among the stars, to glide above castles on clouds and to swim amidst the ocean of memories that lay in eternal stasis within the Realms of Nysel.

And tonight, one konti did not sleep and dared to dream awake. This was Kamalia, a young songstress of Avalis and a daughter of the Timandre. When Kamalia was only a little more than an infant, Mother would always tell her that her beauty had enthralled the moon and enchanted the star-crossed skies, that Leth himself drifted down from the heavens to touch her locks, turning her hair shimmering white. As Kamalia grew in age and her visage blossomed into beauty, other konti maidens eventually began mocking her silver-white tresses, confabulating that the daughter of Nokomis was perhaps, in actuality, an Ethaefal who slipped past the celestial abodes and plumbed into the depths of the Silver Lake.

It was only a delicately-woven fable, but those were tales Kamalia loved and endeared the moon to her. And tonight, as Akajia embraced the world yet again in soothing darkness and Leth rose forlorn to chase her solar lover, the konti maiden sighed and smiled longingly at the moon. Here, in a small pavilion by the sea, the konti-girl watched the eternal drama unfold between the sun and the moon, marveling the time when the lovers in the sky would finally be together again. Was there a happily-ever-after that awaited their story, too, just like those bedtime tales?

“Moon, moon, thou art happier than I, for thou seest him and I do not; but last night I was happier than thou, for I kissed him and thou didst look on,” the konti-girl softly whispered, quoting a verse from the poets of the Starry Nights. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this shore, drenching the maiden in lunar glow, her soft shimmering locks cascading to her knees in ethereal splendor. She was clad only in moonlight and a silver gown, wrapped a silken shawl around her slender arms and waist.

The songstress seated herself upon the balustrade and in her hand she held a small harp, in-laid with rosewood and pearls. Supple and graceful fingers gently strummed the strings, painting silvery tones upon the canvas of silence, and in a voice as haunting as fairy song, the songstress sang her siren serenade. They were forlorn creatures—she and the moon.

The night was as elusive as a dream.


(Hear Kamalia sing!)

[Trista]

There was another who, this night, found dreams elusive.

Trista had laid on her stomach in her seaside cottage, listening to the rhythm of the waves. It was one of the first sounds she had heard after she was born, and it had followed her nearly everywhere that she had gone since. The Akvatari, after all, were creatures of the sea as much as they were denizens of the sky.

But tonight, it wasn't lulling her to sleep as it usually did. Maybe it was the stress of putting so much effort into her mural, but she was finding it almost impossible to rest. She shut her eyes, trying to relax her body, but it proved as useless as if it was mid-day in a crowded street.

Finally giving up, Trista tied her leather strap around her torso, and flitted out of the cottage. She contemplated going for a swim, but decided against it for now, electing instead to "walk" through the city.

Mura was quiet at night, much quieter than Abura, where the sound of people practicing their instruments or talking with each other was present around the clock. It was, in its own way, even quieter than Eloab had been. No swarms of invisible bees droned around her ears, and no unquiet dead called on her for favors.

The buildings were pale shadows, thrown across the streets seemingly at random in the moonlight. It was a picture, one she should remember to paint when she got back to Abura. If she got back to Abura. Something seemed to keep calling her away from her home -- though being Akvatari, it could be said that she had never had a home in the first place. They didn't belong to the world, so why should any one portion of it claim them?

She was lost in these thoughts when she heard the voice. It was quiet enough at first that she almost thought she had imagined it. However, as she fluttered down the street, it grew louder, and she could make out the faint sounds of a harp behind it.

Trista couldn't locate its exact source, but she was sure she was fairly close now. At first, she only listened; the voice was female, a strong alto, painted on the night. The structure of the song was unusual, but not so much that Trista's trained ear couldn't discern the pattern.

And so, on the next refrain, she added her own voice to the song in harmony. She didn't know the words -- indeed, she wasn't sure there were any words -- but she was able to follow the melody in thirds. If she had been carrying her dulcimer, she would have been able to add counterpoint as well, but she wasn't, and so she contented herself with vocalizing.

[Kamalia Timandre]

At the darkest hour of Akajia, two voices melded into one song, singing a wordless serenade underneath the moon and the star-studded canopy. There was no need for words— for music transcended the hurdles of language, and music expressed that which cannot be said and on which it was impossible to be silent. When words fail, music speaks. Joy, sadness, tears, weeping, laughter; to all these music gave voice. It was the vernacular of the soul, for song can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable. And as two completely dissimilar creatures chanted their song together beneath the stars, the White Isle sang along with them. There was music in the sighing of Vian trees, music in the gushing of a rill, music in the gentle tinkles of her harp. The wind sang poetries and the rustling of leaves formed a song. Tiny luminous insects chirped and stridulated in a harmonious chorus. The lilies and magnolias whispered in cadences and the waves of Vaska whooshed with the rhythm of the earth.

The world was suddenly filled with an unfamiliar honesty the konti and the akvatari could barely comprehend, for music expressed the ineffable—those which cannot be said even through sheer silence. It was the outburst of every soul, the literature of every heart and anything that felt too stupid to be spoken was often sung. It was as if everything had a voice and everything had music in them. Every note, every strum and pause was significant and part of the giant ensemble.

And that night, Mizahar was a single song, a rhapsody designed and orchestrated by Rhaus.

As the moon bathed the gazebo by the sea in lunar light, the song continued and their siren voices soared above the music of the world. Eyes closed, the songstress imagined she rode a swan boat sailing for the moon. A stunning realization struck Kamalia—an epiphany that although everything sang its own music, they all melded into a single song. After all, were we not formed as notes of music were—for one another, though dissimilar?

The song was beautiful and wistful, thrilling her to an ecstatic bliss and the crust of apprehensions around her melted away. She knew the song was about to end. She did not want it to end, wanted to continue on forever.

A child’s smile, a cherry blossom and a lover’s embrace—loveliest are the things that surely must end. Dawn is hope, but true beauty is found only in twilight, when all that is fades away.

And the song ended.

Kamalia opened her eyes once again, strumming the lap harp idly and watched the moon. Her plum lips curved into a knowing smile, as she waited patiently for her new friend to show up.

[Trista]

Trista too felt that, in the song, she had momentarily tapped into something larger than herself. It was an unfamiliar feeling to the lonely Akvatari, and took her rather by surprise.

Of course, it couldn't last, and the final strains of the song died away. She was once again merely herself, a stranger in a place that was not her own, a single person in an unspeakably large world. It was a space she occupied with a sad familiarity.

However, she wasn't entirely alone in the moonlit night. She was close enough now that she had a reasonable idea as to where her heretofore unseen duet partner was. She flipped her wings and ascended above the level of the street, looking for the other person.

It didn't take long, especially as the harp was still sounding. Trista reached a balustrade, and found a white-haired Konti woman waiting there. Trista hovered just above the railing, and gave a shy smile.

"Hello." She was speaking not in common, but in Kontinese; she had a definite accent, and an interesting choice of words and syntax, but she was clearly intelligible. "I apologize for intruding on your nocturnal melody. You are indeed a musician of excellent skill; I consider it to have been a great honor to have been able to have added my own voice to that which you possess." She tilted her head to one side. "But I am perhaps neglecting the usual social formalities. I'm Trista."

[Kamalia Timandre]

Leth’s light suddenly seemed to flicker as a delicate silhouette fluttered and shadowed the moon. The young seer gasped as a fey, beauteous creature came into sight, hovering above the marble balustrade.

Kamalia had glimpsed of an occasional akvatari in the docks. A few more melancholic akvatari shared their songs and poetry with the lyricists and the playwrights at the Starry Nights, but like most konti, Kamalia had little dealings with them. From a very young age, it was apparent that Kamalia had inherited her grandmother’s scholarly hunger. Back then, she would spend several chimes each day at the libraries of the Opal Temple, where she read, dreamed and marveled, seated like a white marble fixture among Mura’s treasure troves of knowledge. There, she studied histories, literatures and epics on foreign cultures. Of all the distant races she had read about, it was the akvatari and their fabled city of spires, Abura, that captivated her the most.

Their songs were hauntingly, achingly beautiful and heartrending, and tried as she might, the konti songstress found that she could never reproduce the melancholia of an akvatari song with her singing just like a true akvatari could. They fancied themselves the “Children of the Sea and Sky,” even though Laviku never claimed them as his own. Were they truly cousins of the konti?

She had never been this close to an akvatari before. Curious, she looked closer. This one had scarlet hair and light blue eyes, and her translucent wings shimmered glamorously azure in the moonlight! She breathed again and sighed, her fingers gingerly reaching for the akvatari’s wings and her eyes shone with both envy and curiosity.

But she stopped and blinked when the akvatari spoke in Kontinese. Her intriguing choice of words drew a smile from the silver-haired maiden. “My name is Kamalia,” she murmured smilingly. “Our voices melded into a serenade for the moon. Thank you for joining me in the song, fair sister. I am graced by your presence and your words do me far more honor than I deserve.”

[Trista]

It was naturally hard for any Akvatari to understand how exactly others thought of them, and Trista was certainly no exception. She regarded herself as a wanderer, a stranger in a world that was not her own, and it was only with effort that she was able to put herself in a frame of mind that helped her to realize that others didn't necessarily frame her in the same way.

She flitted over the railing, and set herself down on the balustrade beside Kamalia. Her tail curled in front of her; it was the closest thing an Akvatari could do to sitting.

"It is a matter of the utmost enjoyment to me to have met you, Kamalia," Trista said, still in Kontinese. However, her thoughts were racing ahead of her, and in order to accommodate them, she switched back into Common. "I couldn't help but notice your instrument; I don't think I've seen one quite like it before," she said. "How long have you played it?"

It was hard to say which of the arts interested Trista the most, but music was certainly among them, and she was genuinely curious about Kamalia's harp and her skill with it. Trista had never done more than strum a harp once or twice -- she couldn't play it at all, not in any real sense -- but there had been several master harpists in Abura, and she had had the good fortune to hear them perform on many occasions. None of them played an instrument quite like Kamalia's, however.

Trista folded her hands in her lap. The night breeze brushed her hair away from her face and back over her shoulders.

[Kamalia Timandre]

The ornate instrument within the clasp of Kamalia's fingers glimmered in moonlit whites and silvers, its polished vianwood shimmering ethereally against the stark opalescence of the konti songstress. The harp had been a gift from Grandmother Shahal on the maiden’s twentieth spring, one fashioned for Kamalia, and for Kamalia alone. It was masterfully-crafted— in-laid with pearls, silver and the horns of a white whale. It was rumoured to have been strung with the silver and white strands of hair from Timandre, one of the first daughters of Avalis herself. Mystic notes rippled through the midnight silence as she strummed the strings of the instrument.

A wave of nostalgia washed over her, enticing memories of earlier years to return and seize her thoughts for a moment. Music had always been in her blood and soul, and from the moment she and the harp collided fates, their symphony, their destinies entwined into a single song. The player and the instrument, when both gripped each other--one by the handle and the other by the heart—painted poignant melodies upon the fabric of silence, which became a vibrant masterwork of song and essence. She could remember the effervescence of Rhaus' melodies, and the euphoria that inveigled her senses, stemming from the thought of it all coming together through her.

How the myriad of human watchers in Zeltiva had both their eyes and ears on her as she played and sang, the wistful sighs, the dreamy smile she drew with each strum, each intonation. Such was her suit with the life of her precious harp, such was the furor by which her talents dictated her. After all, Avalis had warned Laviku of the Valterrian through her siren song. “This harp was given to me as a gift five springs ago. We had never parted since then.”

And yet this disconcerting melancholy heaved the air, a curious tragedy of many faces and colours wafting away from Trista's own lips. It was strong enough to cast a distinctive pall on the power of her own song, reducing it to the conforming, supplementary lines of a second-string parade member. Inwardly, with her seer sensitivities, the konti felt her new acquaintance's emotions, the feeling of wanting to belong—the feeling of heartrending sadness in Trista’s voice when she sang. Were all akvatari this distressed? Were they all so steeped in the folds of their storied mortality? The generalization did not quite look so lost upon the mysterious girl, truly the only representation of her race to ever appear before her perusing velvet eyes.

It was the konti’s turn to ask. “How does it feel like?” She pointed at the akvatari’s translucent sky blue wings, "Flying, I mean. Have you ever tried soaring towards the moon?”

[Trista]

It was indeed a beautiful instrument that Kamalia had, and Trista's gaze lingered over it for a long time before she raised her head again.

The sky above was dark, and Trista's face darkened a bit as well. "Flying is...it's natural to me, so it's hard to describe to someone else. But it's more free than swimming. There's no resistance. Anything is possible in the air, maybe that's the best way to put it."

Then she sighed. "Do you know how far away Leth is?" Although it was a rhetorical question, she let it hang in the air for a long time. "Farther away than anything you can think of, farther away than hopes or dreams or peace. I can fly as far as I want to, as long as I can, until the air is so thin and cold that it scarcely exists, until my wings grow weary and my heart weak, but the moon never comes any closer. It's distant and icy, and though I can see it, I could never touch it any more than one of the earthbound could."

She didn't usually speak for that long, but rare was the konti who was willing to ask her philosophical questions, although that might have been due to Trista's natural quietness as much as anything related to the inhabitants of Mura.

One more sigh, and then she rubbed her hands against her fur. "If I might be forgiven for asking...what is it like for you? To be able to see, I mean -- in whatever way your talents allow. I know Avalis' gifts are unique to each individual. And..."

She was a little embarrassed, but she couldn't help but ask. "Have you ever seen her? Avalis, your mother? I..." She bit her tongue, and refrained from finishing that last thought. The goddess of visions cared for her children -- what must that be like?

[Kamalia Timandre]

In some foreign land, far beyond the gulf of Vaska, were fragments of song that warbled the beginning of all life: that all beings—gods and mortals alike— were woven from the lint of fate, from stardust and moonlight, from the residues of Mizahar’s birth. The song held no grit of truth, of course, for the women of the White Isle; Its lyrics were only bewitching blasphemy to the daughters of the sea, yet had the song held truth, it would explain why Kamalia felt the subtle longing to slip into some velvet wings and try for the elusive boundaries of her origins. She was not an ethaefal, nor she was a daughter of the moon or sun or stars, yet she loved the midnight sky just the same—the vast and endless canopy, as brilliant as the onyxes of the darkest hue.

In the yellowed pages of her books, men believed that birds could fly for they bore no burdens. The konti maiden supposed that akvatari were dissimilar in that regard; they fly to escape the throes of their solitude. Some say they fly for they carried the sky on their back. The konti girl watched the akvatari sweep her gaze across the forlorn darkness, the midnight painting long shadows on her beautiful face. Again struck the splinter of envy as the enchanting creature portrayed in words the revelry known only in flight. Kamalia loved the freedom, the sanctuary and the calm bestowed by the vast expanse of Laviku’s seas, yet she had longed to swim amidst the stars, to plunge into clouds, to glide down the rainbow arcs, to dance with the moon.

Did she know how far away the moon was? Yes, she knew, but for a moment, in a span of a heartbeat, Kamalia fervently wished that the books were mistaken, and hear firsthand from someone who had sought to soar towards the moon that Leth could be touched. Alas, she heard the answer, and it was not the answer she longed to hear. The konti thought of the poet who toppled into sea, seeking to embrace the moon. Once it may have sounded foolish, but now she understood such longing.

Yet, Trista’s question, when she asked, was an epiphany for Kamalia. Earthbound though konti might be, they were true daughters of the sea. The akvatari called themselves the Children of the Sea and Sky, but Laviku had never claimed them, nor did they have a divine mother like Avalis. When Kamalia was only a little more than an infant, she had heard Avalis’ name all her life, but the Seer Mother had never been real to her. Receiving her first gnosis mark and the power of Sight had changed that instantly and dramatically. The moment she pleaded for a vision, she called upon Avalis and the goddess had answered!

“I see the truths of the past,” she said softly. “I cannot imagine life without Sight. I would be like a harpist without hearing or a painter without eyes.”

“I have never seen Mother, but I feel that she watches over me,” she said serenely, closing her eyes. A maternal peace embraced her. It was warm, gentle and soothing, just like a mother’s touch, yet those words were left unsaid, knowing in her heart how it could cause longing and envy.

Perhaps the akvatari would know through the tranquil smile on the konti maiden’s face. Perhaps not.

[Trista]

Trista could see the joy on Kamalia's face, even though it was not fully verbalized. The Akvatari found the experience rather like listening to someone converse in a foreign language; she could see that a meaningful experience was taking place, but she had no way to share it.

She felt a twinge of regret at this thought. After all, she followed Avalis too, at least as well as she could. But she had no marks, no visions, and no answers. Perhaps it was because she was not family, or perhaps it was because Akvatari simply were unable to see -- at least in this realm of existence.

Again, she remembered the story that she had told to the shade in Eloab. She had heard it many times as a child, though she didn't know whether it was true or not. Indeed, no one could vouch for certain as to its truth or falsity, at least as far as she knew. But even if it were true, the answers to any questions remained tantalizingly out of reach, held only by one person who had run so far ahead that she could no longer return and bring word back.

No one watched over the Akvatari. Or, if one didn't want to generalize too much, no one watched over Trista.

She had been lost in thought, and she shook her head quickly before looking back at Kamalia. "Perhaps your sight is to you as flying is to me."

She folded her hands in her approximation of a lap. "Tell me something of yourself, Kamalia." Though framed as a command, it was asked like a question. "You must think me terribly rude not to inquire earlier as to your life."