Beauty in the Detail

[Cassandra Southwind]

Alses's stories were beautiful enough, but not until then was Cassandra graced with the sight of her thoughts. She was no magician, of course. She could not truly know what it was that pulled the woman's eyes towards the indiscernable distance, only that the contemplative look gave her a novel elegeance that the rough, dirty Svefra could only admire from afar. She wandered patiently with Alses through her meandering musings, answers which explained old questions as much as they sowed new ones. Rarely did Cassandra have the opportunity to be so candid in her curiosity, for usually she was burdened by her own cultural distaste for all things unfamiliar. The aurist probably knew more than Cassandra did, about the reason for her unusual behavior. "In my language, it is an old way to say Strong Song, or Song of Strength," she replied, eager to satisfy Alses's curiosities before her own. "Strength is the wrong word. Strength means many things in Common. In Fratava, it is strength of..." she struggled with the translation, flexing her fingers above the water as she tried to find the words. "Strength of the hands, of the arms. Strength in labor, as in sailing." Cassandra's hands dropped back with a small plopping sound. "My mother says she needed Strength, when I... when she... had birth." It usually embarrassed her to struggle so much, but there was something comforting about Alses's presence, perhaps her patience. "She says I give it to her when she is weak. She has always been... poemic. Poetic? "She is the youngest of three sisters, and the oldest is Lia Regina. She is our captain." Cassandra had heard the word captain used by sailors in Zeltiva, but there was no word that described the maternal, communal leadership that was the responsibility of a Lia. "The palivar holds ten, but there are fourteen in the Southwind pod. Pod is like family, but a pod must be close, as you say, unless they will falter at sea. The rest sail in a casinor, a smaller ship with one mast, two sails. Echor has The Sunrose," she counted on her fingers, down from four. "Thomas has The Etain, named after our old Lia before she died, Connor has Laviku's Mercy, and mine is called The Lioness." She nodded when she said it, unable to mask the swell of pride that swarmed behind her blinking eyes. "I only got her last year," she explained, shrugging deliberately. "I named her that because a man in Yahebah said it is an animal of strength. Everyone calls me Cass, but that is the part that means Song, and Echor--my mother--believes I am more Strength. She says Cassandra, but I do not mind either. I do not think names are so important." She was rambling. She never rambled. When she realized it, she tried to change the subject so quickly that she stuttered. "B- but you say you chose your name. Did you change it, or did your mother never give you one?" That was a poor choice of words. Not everyone knew their mother, and Cass had already forced Alses to relive enough tragic memories. "I only mean--my family is close, but only because we must travel. Here in the city, I see families are much smaller. That--wait." The last word was said in Fratava, a familiar pair of syllables that comforted and slowed her churning thoughts. A pensive frown furrowed her brow for a moment, but it softened just before she opened her mouth again. "Did you say the stars were your home?"

[Alses]

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“Physical strength,” Alses supplied, seeing the girl struggle slightly. “As opposed to mental fortitude. And the word you’re after is indeed poetic – Common’s not your first language, is it? You speak it quite well, even so.”

“You have your own ship? How…freeing,” she commented, surprised and impressed in one. Cassandra couldn’t have been that old – even given Alses’ poor age-perception, a consequence of timelessness, she could still see that the girl bore not a crease or wrinkle from old age. To have command over a ship and crew – however small – and to be trusted to sail and navigate the treacherous waters of the open ocean at such a young age was still an impressive thing.

“They’re all such pretty names,” Alses observed. “Better than Gilded Miza or Princess of the Seas.” Both Zeltivan vessels she’d travelled on as part of the long trek from that port city to Lhavit, clear across the continent. “I visited Ahnatep for a while,” she mused, “And I’m sure I heard Yahebah mentioned there; would I be right in saying it’s in the Eyktolian deserts, or am I thinking of somewhere entirely different?”

“Has the master of Port Tranquil approached you – or your captain - yet?” she asked – perhaps this was what had allowed Cassandra, rougher and fiercer in aspect than most of the citizens, into the Rest; one had to have a job in the city to use it, after all. Even on festival days. “Our own shipbuilding industry is…” she cast around for an appropriate word “…in its infancy,” she settled on, as the kindest thing to say about it. “I think all they can make are the fishing boats that trawl the bay and the coast; have you ever seen a Lhavitian trade ship?” She was genuinely curious, not merely asking as a rhetorical device; perhaps there were trade ships from the starry city. Then again, surely she’d have known about them…No matter, the question was posed now, and was harmless enough.

Alses covered a small and secret smile at Cassandra’s slowly-thawing speech with one hand, then remembered it was Aviakittis, the day one did what was unusual, and let it drop.

“To say ‘the stars’ isn’t quite the whole story, but it’ll do for now,” she explained, keeping the steady cadence of the just-flowing conversation going, her voice purposefully light and free, dismissive almost. “Zintila came from the stars to Mizahar; something of the same order happened to me. My kind aren’t born, exactly; we arrive here perfect and full-formed. As a consequence… I have another name all right,” she said quietly.

“It is the word that means the slow, romantic dance of the sun and moon in the starry heavens, the bright glory of a sunbeam and the spectacular brilliance and fury of a solar prominence. It is perfect, the mirror of me, all that I am and all that I have been, but I cannot speak it.” A mirthless grin, pain bright and clear in green eyes.

“Believe me, I’ve tried until my throat was raw on many an occasion. The language in which I was named is the preserve of the divine, too pure and powerful for Mizahar. I hear it ring in the vaults of my mind; I think in it, still, but I cannot speak it.” A heavy, shuddering sigh. “’Alses’ has to serve me. It took quite a while for me to learn to respond to it. Don’t always manage it sometimes, still.”

Elegant fingers fished a delicate bottle of attar of roses – Alses’ own distillate, carefully made to her own tastes from the damask roses that bloomed sweeter than memory in late autumn - out of the box of miscellaneous bathware she’d brought along with her, carefully opening the top and letting a tiny measure of the stuff pour out into one hand. Diligent and careful application followed, in a little cocoon of silence, wrapping them both in the gentle smell of the flower. “I take it you and your pod have never been to Lhavit before?" she asked idly, quietly absorbed in applying a thin and even coat over her shimmering skin and regaining her equipoise both. It was a reasonable supposition, at least to Alses' way of thinking, given Cassandra's unfamiliarity with the city. "The skyglass is like a beacon, no?"
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[Cassandra Southwind]

Cassandra's blue eyes widened like a rolling tide, the whites flaring with startled understanding. "I have heard..." She began, but did not finish. Perhaps like the words of the unspoken celestial language, her epiphany could not be spoken in terms of tongues and measured syllables. The Svefra had heard stories of heavenly creatures with elaborate horns, falling into the sea in great flurries of light. Or was it stardust? Salas Southwind himself claimed to have once pulled a man from the middle of the ocean, naked and pale and thoughtful, but Salas could always be trusted to embellish. If the poor girl had been impressed before, now she was entirely dumbstruck. She looked up at the crown of the ethaefal's head, wondering whether it was a myth that such a creature had horns or if, perhaps, she could choose to magically disguise them. Were all of her kind so... attractive? She followed Alses's lead with the soap, retrieving her own from the side of the bath and, holding it carefully this time, washing herself idly. "Yes," she admitted, then clarified, "We Southwinds do not go as far north as Lhavit. Not usually. But I had heard it was a good place. A safe place, for Winter. I did not hear of the skyglass until we came, but I am glad to see it now." A brief smile attempted to show her appreciation, but it was difficult to hold the expression for long. She craved to apologize to Alses for reminding her of so many disappointments, both recent and distant, but the only consolation she could think to give was the distraction of her own boring life. It did not relieve the deeply ingrained agitation that she was somehow being selfish, by focusing on herself, but it filled the silence well enough. With a private sigh, she dismissed the petty hindrance and continued. "The seacraft of Lhavit are not for open water, no. And they are too shallow to hold good net." Though Cassandra did not regret an honest, if not judgmental observation, neither would she fail to give credit where it was due. "But Lhavitian fishermen have clever strategies, and many traps. And their boats are very pretty. Everything in Lhavit is." Cassandra made a daring point to meet Alses's eye then, but her bravery did not last longer than a moment. Her gaze strayed to the woman's equally pretty lips as she remembered her point. "But I do not know about ship carpentry," she admitted. "I did not build the ship I sail. Fishing is my trade, and sometimes transport when there is money for it." Done with the soap, she set it back and turned toward Alses. She seemed to have forgotten the burden of her own nudity. "What is it that you do, here? Are you a diplomat? Or a politician?" She had heard the words said before in various cities by various people in various taverns, though she was still not entirely sure what it meant. "Or perhaps an astronomer?" Her attention wandered to her nails, desperate for some other thing to look at so that she might not be caught staring at Alses. There was no more dirt under them; the soap and scented water had seen to that, but it was then that she noticed her fingers were wrinkling. With all of the talking, it seemed she had lost track of time. Cassandra didn't mind; the water felt nice on her skin and she enjoyed her company, but the thought of leaving gave her an idea. "Is Alses, the star, in the sky tonight?"

[Alses]

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“It mostly is a safe place,” Alses noted. “The most we usually have to contend with is the occasional flock of Zith, and thanks to the Twilights we tend to get advance warning of it. Hopefully Winter will be nice and quiet – it usually is.” She listened carefully to Cassandra’s short and baldly to-the-point appraisal of the fragile little fishing boats the city used to trap some of the silver bounty of the seas, adding the comments to her ever-growing store of miscellaneous knowledge – one never knew when it might come in handy, after all.

“You know, on reflection I’m not surprised they’re so shallow,” Alses replied with a laugh, eyes dancing with a sudden revelation, of sorts. Well, a potential revelation, anyway. “There’s a fleet rotting on the bottom of the bay, did you know? Syna knows how many wrecks there are down there, mouldering away. Perhaps that makes it a bit treacherous to have big ships sailing around the place?” She shrugged with a faint smile. “Just a thought. I know nothing about sailing, really.”

Alses flushed slightly at the inflection on Cassandra’s next comment. Was that a subtle, hesitant attempt at flirting, or was she simply being paranoid, drawing on the subconscious attraction she knew was present in her Svefra companion and reading too much into entirely innocent comments?

“I thank you for the compliment,” she returned, a wryly teasing twist to her mouth. If Cassandra thought her mortal chain pretty – although how she could remained a deep and abiding mystery to Alses – then what would she think of the celestial glory that would come with Syna’s kiss?

Putting that aside for a moment – she might leave before the dawn, after all, which was still some bells distant – bright green eyes observed Cassandra for a long moment, evaluating and assessing. “Were you the usual flavour of visitor we get, I’d warn you that the brightest of lights can hide the darkest of shadows; Lhavit’s not all light and fantasy brilliance. But you’re sharp and defensive, out of your element by your own admission and therefore doubly wary. I doubt you’ll have any problems.” A shrug.

“Besides, violent crime is practically unheard of here. Too many incorruptible Shinya ready and waiting with Projection in the wings, and whatever else I may think of them an efficient judiciary as well. No, we get…crimes of the mind; forgery, bribery, manipulation, that sort of thing. Bloodless – mostly - and secret and all the more insidious for it.”

Alses pursed her lips and cast her gaze heavenwards in thought at the question on her job, her occupation. Some fey imp led her to speak in generalities, rather than specifics, to keep just how important she’d become a little secret. Just for a little while.

“I think the expression is ‘jack of all trades,’” she answered, after some consideration. A brief smile flickered at the edges of her lips, and then died. “It’s not quite true; I’ve no idea how to shape and mould glass, for instance, but I do several things in Lhavit. Diplomat…well, on occasion, I suppose-” dealing with Elena Lariat – and anyone else so highly placed, for that matter - always needed diplomacy, Syna above knew that “-and politician when the vagaries of Lhex make me so. Mostly I poke around in things that the Seiza judiciary would perhaps rather I let well enough alone; I formulated it as a policy of sorts when it got me interest and appreciation from the diarchs – Aysel and Talora, the Day Lady and Night Lord. I am a loyal servant of my city,” she added, with a mischievous grin, her tone half-serious despite the physical levity, “And whatever she needs me to be, I am.”

“It’s turning into rather a list, isn’t it?” Alses gave a faintly embarrassed look towards Cassandra, as though assuring herself of the girl’s attention, before continuing. “I’m an aurist of some small skill, too-” generally held as the most powerful practitioner in Lhavit, she didn’t add “-and so I’m involved with a little teaching at the Dusk Tower.” A gentle smile. “Chiona – my old mentor – got her claws into me early on, and now she won’t let go. Not that I mind; I quite enjoy teaching every now and then, keeping my hand in as it were.”

She pursed her lips, considering. “That said, out of all the titles Lhavit’s heaped upon me, if I had to pick one I’d introduce myself as Lhavit’s lady magesmith. I daresay some of the others will become familiar, in time, but as it stands, I still think they’re after someone else half the time. Little bit embarrassing, actually.” She shrugged, slightly self-consciously, absently smoothing back the near-white locks of her hair, just to give her hands something to do.

“Astronomer is something I’m not, though; I just know the starfields a little. Alses the star will be out; it’s always visible, as one of the North Star’s companions, it’s just the position and brightness that changes.” She pursed her lips. “In truth, most of Lhavit’s not very good for stargazing; all the light from the skyglass obscures the fainter stars and planets. That said, the terraces around Iraltu’s Observatory are good for it.”

Alses rose in a cascading sheet of tumbling water, sudden and fluid. “Would you like me to show you, if you have an interest? It’s as good a way to spend what remains of Aviakittis as any, and better than some I could mention. Especially with nice company.”
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[Cassandra Southwind]

"Yes," Cassandra answered, her head swimming between all of the details of Alses's resume and all of the beauty in her exposed form. She hesitated a moment before standing as well, taking a moment to look down and chide herself for gawking. When she did rise, it was just as wholly; she became a stark and confident shadow of the ethaefal's lesser form, the stranger that was not a stranger and the konti was not a konti. She smiled proudly for but a moment, and in the next she was climbing out of the bath and unraveling her towel. She wrapped it around herself while she was still dripping, less concerned with its drying function than its covering one. She knew it was foolish, to be concerned about such a thing. She had willingly come to a bathhouse, where she knew that nudity was the norm, after all. Perhaps it was the spirit of the holiday. Perhaps she secretly liked the freedom of it. If anyone could expose such a foolish secret, it would be cityfolk. But it had not worked, not this time, at least not for long. Lhavit was a beautiful city, a safe city, but it had wreckage in its shallow underbelly. She could not let her hull tread too deeply. Alses had said as much. Cassandra entertained the idea that Alses could see into her wreckage, that she could see the Strength in her uncovered form. Alses had said that she could see things that other didn't. The honesty of it was just as attractive as her lithe, iridescent body. "Jack of all trades," she muttered the unfamiliar idiom as she retrieved her rented basket of toiletries, and went on as her feet slapped against the stone toward her locker. "There are many layers to the Lhavitian government. A person can wonder why. Why be more small, more simple, like a pod. But order is important to you, and to Lhavitians. That is one thing that is the same in all of your trades. "You make order from chaos." She met Alses's eye and a smile flitted across her face before she regarded the clothes that she had pulled from the cabinet. She busied herself with dressing as she explained, "You are brave when the city riots and you are the leader of a rescue team. You make sense of city politics. You choose a name from a cousin of the most predictable star." Maybe it was not an entirely accurate observation, but that was not as important as the fact that Cassandra wanted it to be. She was confused by her feelings for this citizen, this non-Svefra, and she needed a greater reason to be impressed by her. Cass's skirts fell into place, a dirty shell for her clean exterior. She left her basket on the shelf and looked toward the exit. "But first you are a magesmith. A magician," she added, trying to make the observation more casual than her stiff jaw would suggest. She still did not know what an aurist was, but the word continued to escape her when it was presented between so many other words. "My family heard tell of magic in Lhavit. They say that it is trouble. Most people do." But I don't, she dared not say aloud, as her eyes lifted to the ceiling. She pored through the skyglass and toward the heavens, in search of Alses's celestial doppelganger. When she looked down again, she spoke a sentence that might have been better phrased as a question. "But you don't."

[Alses]

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“I love magic,” Alses replied, voice full of a deep and abiding adoration of the flash and snap of djed. “It’s my life, almost all I know is magic in some form or other, and I couldn’t imagine existing without it. I breathe it and think of it and dream it: I feel alive, truly alive, when the song of djed – the fundamental energy of the world - roars through my veins and Mizahar dances to my tune. I know what wonders it can accomplish, used responsibly…but I am also aware of what happens when things get out of hand.” A sigh and an expansive gesture even as she slowly towelled herself dry, enjoying the softness and warmth of the cotton on her skin as it blotted the last few

“Magic is a wonderful and useful tool up to a point and then you die,” Alses continued soberly, her green eyes dark and serious. “Or wish you had, at least. Beautiful and glorious and alive like almost nothing else, it still has its dangers. The trick is not to be stupid with it – although that’s harder than you think. Djed’s a little bit alive, almost, and a little bit malicious; treat it with respect or perish. Usually gruesomely.”

A faint shudder, then a shift of mental thought. “Every Lhavitian knows how helpful magic can be – it levelled the peaks and built the city, after all, it helps defend us from the sea and the air and almost everyone here has at least some exposure to it – but we all also know how terrible uninformed use is.” Alses shrugged. “It’s why the Towers and our influential independents spend about as much of their time teaching control, restraint and ethics to their students as they do actual practical magic, which is in turn probably why we still have a city instead of a smoking crater.” She smiled, sweeping the last drops of water from her form with a now-soggy towel, her gills closing and shrinking into near-invisibility, two slightly darker lines on her neck the only sign of them now.

“There’s a register of wizards, too; all our particulars are noted down there by law, and if you’re a sorcerer or sorceress - of whatever shade - and not on it in short order of arriving in the city, the penalties are…harsh. It’s good for the citizen wanting to find a wizard of a particular type, of course – that’s its main use - but also for the Shinya in the sad event that they have to intervene. They have some idea what they’ll be facing from the records, and so they can request help from the Towers and anyone else who might be able to counter or mitigate whatever it is.” She shrugged, gathering up her bathing supplies and padding after Cassandra as she headed towards the antechamber where ranks of tall cedarwood lockers held bathers’ personal effect. A practiced motion slid in a key and turned it in one, allowing Alses to access and order her clothes to her liking.

“That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway, and for the most part it does. They’ve got quite good at it by now. It might not be the best of systems, but it’s worked – more or less - for five hundred years. Long may it continue to do so.”

There was something of a pause as Alses dressed, a sinuous and lithe sequence of motions helping her robes – creamy silk rippling and flashing with intricate gold embroidery – slip smoothly down her body. “Order from chaos?” she echoed with a brilliant smile, pleased at the apt description, doing up the final few hidden buttons and ties as she turned to face Cassandra. The heavy golden crest that was a symbol of her position, however, that remained deep in an innermost pocket rather than taking its customary position at her throat.

“That’s a very good way of putting it, indeed! I like order, the general status quo; I strive to maintain it in most cases. Some would say that is because I am well-served by the very system I want to perpetuate, and that’s undoubtedly true as far as it goes, but from all I’ve seen, order is the wellspring of civilisation. Take it away, take away the systems that maintain it, and you have anarchy and unenlightened self-interest, people scrabbling in the ruins for scraps. The whole is weakened, survival is threatened – and here in Kalea, we have quite enough to deal with from Mother Nature without collapsing from the inside out.”

Alses tilted her head gently towards the door, seeing that Cassandra, during her ramblings, had dressed also. “Shall we?” she asked, rhetorically, already taking the lead and breezing out into the lobby, leaving behind a faintly scented trail of roses hanging in the air.

She already had the route in mind; they would emerge from the Rest and course down the tiers to the Cloudward Pathway, the lowest road in the city that curved around the base of the peaks, often kissing the more-or-less permanent cloud layer that Lhavit often appeared to float on.

It was one of her favourite places in the city, the coruscating skyglass setting the cloud-tops all aglow with a subtle fire and the mists that washed over the pathway and its dramatic rock formations shimmering with reflected radiance. The Pathway – looking out to sea along its length – would take them on a leisurely stroll from the Zintia peak, round Tenten and finally up to Sartu, just a short distance from the dark bulk of the Observatory, its grounds and its terraces: the perfect spot in the starry city for a spot of stargazing.
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[Cassandra Southwind]

The cold Winter air was a welcome sensation on Cassandra's drowning pores, eating away at the last of her skin's moisture. She shrugged her coat on quickly, dreading the inevitable moment when the permeating chill would no longer be refreshing. She spent a moment looking down at their feet as she tied her wet hair up and off her neck, then quite a few more at the city itself as its nighttime splendor rose up around her. She was not completely stunned by the sight, no; she had seen the walls and rooftops glow before, from a distance at the shore and when she had woken from her long dusk rest. And should anyone ask, the Svefra girl would boast that she had been a great many other and more marvelous things. But as they descended the face of the main mountain, away from the saturating shine of civilization, she began to see the city from its best angle. The lights from Zintia peak threw color onto the pair before them and the clouds beneath them, like a bright shadow in a world where day and night were both reversed and the same. Cassandra was silent for a long time as she allowed herself to see what she had never seen before, forgetting even the beauty she had conjured in Alses's more humble form, if only for a moment. But it was when she finally thought to look west, out toward the water, that Cassandra's breath was truly taken from her. She gave a little gasp before she stopped herself. A tick later she attempted to cover her hanging mouth with her hand. The grace of the ocean was a thing she had known her entire life. She had been on it and deep within it; she had sailed to its eastern reaches and only recently to its western ones. She had seen it still as glass and writhing with stormy rage. She had lived on it, been born on it, and hoped to one day die in it. And yet she had never once witnessed it from so far above. The horizon stretched even further than she could have imagined and still she craved to chase it, to learn what lurked on the other side. And even without the sun or moon to color it, Zintila's radiance reflected endlessly in the ocean's depths. The mysterious arrangement of the stars were made even more perfect by the imperfect rippling of distant waters, from which she stood so far and for which she forever thirsted. Where the longing for it might eventually sicken her, for now it was merely a sweet tang on the full flavor of the ocean's beauty. A swell of tears shattered her vision into salty fragments as a shudder that was not a sob pulsed on her shoulders. The Svefra forced herself to look away, turning far enough inland that she would not be seen pressing her eyes of the evidence. She hated to imagine how long she might have delayed them, for time had truly escaped her. Desperate for a distraction, she stepped a few paces forward and addressed Alses. "Magic, magecrafting, artistics..." Now that last word was definitely wrong. "Is that what you meant, when you said you could see things that others cannot?" And what a thought it was, to consider that Alses knew Cassandra's childish reaction to the view, or her secret judgments of the world, or the irresistible urge she felt to stand near to her... Normally, this would be the moment that Cassandra fled the scene and chided herself to bed. She blushed visibly, or perhaps not so much so beneath the various lights that surrounded them, but she did not charge back up the peak. It was Aviakittis, after all. Cassandra told herself that she cared little about the holiday itself and more that she had never encountered a magician before, at least not one without the veil of her family's bias between them. If only to calm herself (ironically enough), she mused on, "You must come close to death to feel alive. I think that is true for most things, or most things that are worth doing. Must every magician face these dangers?" The sentence felt strange on her tongue, like she had gotten the order of the words wrong, but in her state she did not contemplate it for long. "Or do you just like them more than others?" Another knowing smile rose and fell quickly on her lips. "What I mean is... students must learn restraint, as you say, yes? But is it a mistake to near death--or is it the point?"

[Alses]

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OOCApologies for the delay! Exams took over my life .

Cassandra was evidently getting used to the starry city and all its splendours; what would have caused a complete newcomer to stop and stare gained merely an appreciative few glances and a gentle slowing of the pace. That was all right, though; Lhavit had so many beautiful surprises to make one stop and stare anew. Even Alses was still sometimes caught unawares by it, appreciating her city anew whenever it happened.

Cloudward was one of those places that very rarely failed to disappoint, and so it was no real surprise that they stopped on its skyglass expanse, gazing out across the burning cloud-tops to the great, sprawling sweep of the bay and the wide, open ocean beyond it. The burning contents of Zintila’s jewellery-box glimmered in the mirror of the sea, only slightly disturbed by the gentle, rolling waves, a million million points of colour and light that Alses knew were unimaginably huge balls of blazing gas, made tiny by the vast distances involved.

“It’s a beautiful night,” she remarked softly, buoyed by the remaining close joy of Aviakittis and by the lack of Leth’s baleful, accusative, colour-stealing light beaming down from heaven. That was all that needed to be said, really.

Alses was perfectly happy to give Cassandra time for her reactions to surge, climax and fade, to remain silent and close, enjoying the reflected wonder along with the deep and abiding love for the sea that echoed at the core of the girl. It was beautiful, like everything else in Cassandra’s sweetly pretty, refreshingly spiky aura and Alses paired its appreciation with the more mundane activity of drinking in the panoramic vista sprawled magnificently before them. She was enjoying the sheer sensation of physical company, too.

High overhead, the sounds of the city bells boomed out, muffled by distance, ringing down from the spires overhead until they were swallowed by the rich, cushioned silence of the cloud-bank and the endless heavens above.

“The word is auristics,” she laughed, presently, jolted from her semi-reverie when Cassandra’s misstep caught her ears. The chuckle was gentle, smooth and unforced, and her voice sounded the word out nice and clearly. “And yes, it’s part of what I meant when I said that. The other is that I am frankly observant; these days I don’t miss much. Comes as a consequence of being completely oblivious when I first arrived here. But. Auristics.” Alses cleared her throat, sliding smoothly into academia, responding to the inherent question she saw forming.

“Everything – from the rocks to the sea to the trees and other people, all of it gives off an energy that the magic reads and makes visible to me, which I can then interpret. It’s beautiful, truly; if only I had paper and ink I could give you an inkling of what I can see and hear and feel and taste right now, but.” Alses shrugged and let her arms fall to her sides from a grandly theatrical gesture that had taken in the whole bowl of the bay laid out before them, the sparkle becoming more veiled once more in her eyes. “Rather a shortage of paper and brushes in bathouses, as a rule.”

There was one party trick she could do without glyphic assistance, admittedly – charging her aura with extra djed from her reserves, making it blaze like a nova rather than glowing like a star until the sheer energy bursting off her soul was enough that even someone uninitiated to djed and indeed to auristics would feel the pressure and presence of the power boiling off her core. It was like standing next to a god, for the few chimes she could keep it up without suffering any consequence, anyway. But would it be worth doing something so dangerous, so wasteful and so risky?

Maybe. Maybe in a little while; she’d not normally have considered it, but there was something addictive about making Cassandra’s jaw drop, and the result would be all the sweeter for the wait. The conversation had turned towards Alses’ area of expertise, too, and that meant replies had to be forthcoming.

“Some magic doesn’t have the danger, or not in quite the same way,” Alses observed quietly in answer to Cassandra’s observations, after a time. “Magecraft, Glyphing, Animation – those are what we call world magics, the disciplines of craft and lore. Difficult to practise, fiddly, demanding and expensive to get wrong, they at least don’t carry the danger of going mad or destroying the body in quite the same way. With those, all I have to worry about is poor creations and the damage they can do, not the state of my own soul.”

“Personal magic, that’s the truly deadly stuff, when handled carelessly.” Alses sighed. “One of the biggest problems is that as you start to tip over into overgiving – when you’ve used up too much of yourself to cast the magic – it becomes harder and harder to stop. It’s like a…a drug, and it’s the best one in the world: there’s always a reason to carry on and enjoy it just a little bit longer, to use just a little bit more, and before you know it there’s a Shinya glaive in your heart and you’re knocking on Lhex’s door wondering where it all went wrong.”

Alses shrugged a shoulder and hunched deeper into her robes; the thought had sent a convulsive shiver racing up her spine, a prickling fandango of cold fingers dancing up her back in an unwelcome caress. “There’s a spectrum, of course. If you use just a little bit too much, all you’re likely to suffer from is a headache or some slight wierdery; warning signs, see? That goes away in a few chimes or bells or days and leaves you none the worse off for it – the danger is in going far too far. Personal magic is using bits of your own soul to change the world, after all, and burn too much of it and you can’t get it back. Serious overgiving is absolute and permanent; not even the priests and priestesses of Rak’keli can repair the damage, to mind or to body.” A pause, and a hollow, mirthless smile.

“So we’re careful, because a careless mage is a dead mage – or worse.” She shrugged. “Of course, novices are always going to overgive, at least a little. They don’t know their own limits and what they can and can’t do so very well at that stage. Worst of the lot are total novices, people who’ve never studied any personal magic at all. They don’t understand how horrible overgiving can be; I don’t think anyone who’s never skated close to the brink does, in truth. We’re very lucky in Lhavit, actually – we have masters of the various crafts to monitor the next generation as they learn, and when things go a little wrong we have a corps of Catholicon medics who are very used to treating the symptoms of overgiving. It’s not perfect, but it works. By and large.”
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[Cassandra Southwind]

Cassandra had tried to see the sights around her, to drink in the reflected glory of the peak's base, but she found too soon how it distracted her from the answers that poured from Alses. So she resigned herself to the sight of their feet, so that she could listen properly to another impromptu Lesson of Lhavit. The high altitude winds bit at her bare, eager ears as she watched the steep steps become smooth stone paths and taught wooden bridges. "The city is very lucky," she repeated, eyes peering between the planks and the certain death below. "I do not think other cities think so. Or they could not, if they know." She stuttered a little as she tried and failed to remember the proper subjunctive word. Could? Would? Will? Cill? No, that would sound like kill, which meant something else. Deciding she didn't care about other cities anyhow, Cassandra changed her approach. "But they do not have the support. They do not know that it is not a danger, when you are careful." She used the words Alses used, cautious not to reveal her disappointment as she realized that the latter of her questions had been answered true. From what she was told, it seemed that nearing death was only the mistake and never the point. The point was to have enough control to resist overgiving, to put enough order into chaotic djed to make it better than it was. While that was admirable in itself, Cassandra caught herself wondering if there were any wizards who were not as noble as Alses. Of course, those wizards probably knew the near-death alternative was madness. Cass was as guilty as the next sailor of feeling a special thrill in the midst of danger, of tipping a little too far from the rigging in a hard storm. But the result of such an act was either a mere physical injury or the best death a Svefra could die. The risk changed when your mind was on the line. "Lia Regina says magic is an abomination." She did not know the word in Common, so she tried to explain it. "She says that it changes your soul. Gnosis changes us for the better, for the will of the gods. But all others makes the gods frown. She thinks it does more harm than good, like the idiom says." It was a sad opinion, shared by the majority of the world. But it was precluded by the fact that, "We have never been to Lhavit before." She had originally supposed the city to be nothing but a good story, a pretty skyline or a change of pace. But even with little over two weeks behind her, Cass was starting to like the place. Like Alses, Lhavit had so much knowledge, a thing more valuable and intangible than a fishing weir could ever hold. Cassandra had no better insight, no Lesson of the Sea that could even compare. But she could listen and she could learn, only hoping she did not trouble her company in the asking. She was more than the Strength in her name. A long moment passed, to be filled by the ethaefal's bounty of answers or perhaps a lull of glowing silence. Cassandra's thoughts turned over each other like waves on sand until they exposed a new question, once buried by common courtesy. Alses had since made it clear that she did not mind the inquisition. "Does it hurt you, to read magic? To do auristics?" A beat passed before her face turned up and their eyes met. "What does my energy say?"

[Alses]

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“Lia Regina is wrong,” Alses replied bluntly, perhaps a little more stung than she liked to admit. “Take my own passion, magecraft, for instance: that was a gift from the gods to the humans of old. Alchemy, too: Harameus’ gift, and Animation, the benediction of Yshul. Why would They in Their wisdom hand down and spread something that would damn and corrupt; what would have been the point?” A breath of cool, calm night air, tasting faintly of salt and perfumed with the flowers of the mountains.

“There are several hundred people in this city, tonight, here, now, celebrating and laughing and drinking and bathing with friends and loved ones who’d otherwise be dead were it not for my magic, and the magic of my fellow mages. Crushed under tons of skyglass debris, totally hidden from any mundane sight, they’d have been ignored and unknown if we couldn’t see the bright flare of life and the beacons of distress every soul sends up like flares into the aether for those with the talent to see it. More would have died on the way to the Catholicon if we didn’t have Morphers who could fly them there so swiftly and smoothly they hardly noticed the move.” A faint and not very nice smile flickered on Alses’ pale lips for a few moments as she continued. “I daresay most of the people we rescued would tear your Lia Regina apart for saying the magic that saved them damns and corrupts.”

She walked on in silence for a few moments, ordering her thoughts to the steady beat of boots on wood and then back to reassuring, slightly-chiming skyglass, twisted and fused into the living rock of the mountain peak itself. “Magic – of the non-gnosis kind, anyway - is and always will be neutral. Any virtue or corruption comes from the practitioner, their intents and their goals.” A half-smile danced across her pale and distant face for an instant or two. “Rather like fire, now that I think of it. It warms us, fights back the dark and all the things that crawl and creep under the veil of night, but that doesn’t make it good, any more than does the burning building make that selfsame fire bad. Fire simply…is, if you follow, in all its glory and horror, and so is magic.”

A quiet sigh, a lessening of the fire in her eyes and the crackle in her voice. “That’s my view on it, anyway.” Alses heard the unspoken apology in Cassandra’s next words and quietly accepted it, pleased that her city of rainbow light and fantasy was able to induce wonder and, perhaps, change long-held views. New perspectives had a habit of doing that.

“Hurt me?” her head snapped sharply round to regard her companion in surprise and shock. “Syna above, no! I’m no masochist, Cassandra; I’d not practice my magic if it caused me pain - in the normal use of it, anyway. If magic hurts you, it's time - it's always time - to stop. Pain is not…an enjoyable thing. Something we try and avoid wherever possible, with quite some success.” She cast a sideways glance at the downcast girl, weighing up her words, her options. “Auristics…it’s a joy, not a burden or a duty.”

That seemed to work; Cassandra raised her eyes from contemplation of her feet and their gazes met – and locked. Direct and spiky, full of fire and defiance – no, not defiance, just a towering mental strength tempered and hammered on the unforgiving anvil of the merciless sea - Cassandra’s gaze was surprisingly hard to break.

So she didn’t.

“Well, that depends how deeply you want me to look,” Alses answered, coy and fey as only an Ethaefal could be. “From a glance…” she turned her attention slightly off-centre from the girl, examining the softly-glowing corona shimmering around her, curtains of sea-blue and white and turquoise and green, continually tumbling and turning like breakers along the shore and with a suggestion of even more patterned motion inside the gently-shifting charivari of impressions. “The sea’s important to you; even your aura looks like waves on the ocean.” A dancing filigree of ice-blue spume caught her attention and she smiled. “You’re a little chilly, too – not surprising, given where we are and where we’ve come from. A bit tired, too, and I’d lay good kina on you having hauled something heavy up from the shore.”

There were kinking burgundy-brown swirls and split-tick spires raying out from Cassandra’s shoulders and neck, a characteristic pattern Alses recognized from her own days fetching and carrying hither and yon around the city. A sympathetic smile touched her lips, but faded quickly as, at the speed of thought, thick ropes of golden djed rose from the solar glow of her core and spilt into her brain, painting the world in the fabulous chiaroscuro of impossible light and burning darknesses that were the preserve of the aurist and very few others.

Gems more spectacular than even the finest of Semele’s crop – blazing diamonds, shifting topazes, secretive aquamarines, scintillating padparadschas and much else besides burst into lambent curtains of shade and hue and eternally-moving complexity as Alses’ magic began to induce ever more perfect synchrony with the world at large and, most critically, with Cassandra’s aura. It was larger than might perhaps have been first expected, observing her spiky, iron-hard self-control from a distance, but it was Alses’ experience that the most outwardly-uptight were also often the most passionate and vibrant to her vision, their emotions and expectations dammed up tight inside and only visible through the furious radiation of their corseted and constrained soul.

“You’re a little afraid of what might happen, even though you’ve asked me to do this,” was the next thing Alses said, hot on the heels of the first batch of conclusions as her questing senses brought a prickling tremolo shiver to her attention, a spidering dance of chill fingers up her spine that she recognized as fear and integrated, as only a formally-trained aurist could, that feeling with more mundane observations. Her words churned Cassandra’s aura to scintillating froth – worry and concern – and brought a faint smile to her blank and distant face. “And now you’re worried and concerned that I’ve seen it. Don’t be.” Smoothly, with nary a ripple or a roar in the numinous plane her magic revealed, Alses began a long dive to the depths of Cassandra’s blazing soul, plunging through the froth of the breakers and into the deeper, darker mysteries, a burning light that stripped away shadow and brooked no dissimulation.

Curling waves and laceworked sea-foam shimmered and faded into twisting and jinking silver-gray, the sharp smell of salt and wood filling Alses’ sensitive nostrils as she began to explore the girl’s aura in earnest, weaving with infinite care and a master’s consummate elegance and speed a thousand thousand intertwining tendrils of her own golden djed, the better to receive and interpret impressions until every single scrap glowed with tiny lines, drinking in every facet of Cassandra.

Nothing would be hidden for long, not even the deepest and darkest things. The boxes where people stuffed their unwanted memories, things they tried to forget or happenings from so long ago they were no longer consciously remembered, those were still there for the determined aurist and they would open at the imperious caress of the magic – should Alses desire it.

And she did; Cassandra was intriguing, an unusual enigma, and puzzles were for keeping close and solving.

Alses continued to unfurl a litany of feelings and impressions from the present and the close past, reeling them off one after another as her gaze flickered and danced. Phantom feeling, spectral sound and the cloak of numinous colour were her servants, every scrap processed and brought as plunder to her mental throne. Time to take the plunge.

“You find me attractive, too,” she said with a soft little smile. “Quite why I can’t fathom, but it’s there all right. Your heartbeat quickens when you look at me, your skin flushes with heat and the sight of me confuses you because of it. Probably why you’re still here as a sorceress unravels your life in front of you and sees things even your family doesn’t know.” Watching the changes as she spoke, seeing when a truth hit home or a near-miss spangled brilliant lights of concern and awe, Alses charged further on, heedless of all but the unfurling magic. “Not that I mind! Oh, and you’ve killed.”

She didn’t judge; there was blood on her hands, too (or very nearly) and malice was absent from Cassandra’s turbulent aura. “A few seasons back, at least, but it’s drenched your aura in old blood and fury, and from the brilliance and way it twines right from the depths up to the shallows I’d say it haunts you still, whoever it was and for whatever reason.” Alses pursed her lips, the first expression on a blankly serene face for quite some time, rising from the obscured and perfect depths of her magic, swimming determinedly up to the shallow mundanity of Mizahar, of night-time Lhavit and the Cloudward Pathway and, most of all, pretty, fierce Cassandra Southwind.

“I could find out more, but that would need more magic than I like to use at night. Or me asking questions and reading the changes there; that would be the more elegant method.”
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