Closed I Cannot Go On (Aramenta, Kalesse)

[Aidus]

Sea of Grass 38th of Spring, 513 AV Late Afternoon Is this how it ends? The young Moondirge was exhausted. Sweat, well, it wouldn't come anymore. Waterskins, long since empty, hung at his side, it's contents consumed by Aidus and kissed away by Syna. A once powerful looking man, Aidus was a skeleton of his former self. Only the harshest of environment had he experienced the past several seasons. The deserts of Eyktol, burning, unforgiving, but equal in its judgement for all who walked her sands. There had he lost his Strider, Moyi. There had he lost himself. A journey to grow ended in disappointment, death, and a shameful return home. He felt no wiser. He felt no more ready to lead. He only felt failure. His sense of failure was only amplified by his companion being with him. Kalasse was more capable of travelling in these harsh conditions, but still, had he taken her to her death in the Sea of Grass? He couldn't speak to ask for anything of her. Forgiveness, rage, sorrow. Nothing. He just had to keep pushing on, one foot after another and pray they could make it somehow. Now it was the Sea of Grass. A place that was supposed to feel like home. Without a Strider to tie to, though, it all felt very foreign. A stranger in his place of birth. "And one who will die forgotten, too," he muttered, wincing as his voice cracked from the dehydration. Pray I return as someone more successful than I was... The cycle would continue, and at least he'd made it back to the web where his soul would return and be reborn as a proud Drykas or even a magnificent Strider. Then it hit him. I'm such an imbecile. Has it been that long that you forget? The web, of course. Like a fool, he'd failed to use the tool of his people, the life of his people. Sacred, pure, beautiful. The Web. What should have been his first option was now his last, as he didn't have many more steps in him. "Kalesse. I find us help. We will surviving." Their shared a common, but secondary language. It caused problems at times, but hopefully he could get them the aid they needed. Slinking to the ground, Aidus' fell to his knees and undid his pack, letting it crash to the ground freely. "Leth give me strength," he sent up in prayer. The God of Change, yes? Let someone change my fortune, then. Let me change it. A soft moan escaped his lips he began to unwind himself from his physical form. Soft, dancing strands of light began to flow freely from his hands, as he held them skyward whilst his essence slipped forth from his mortal frame. The web danced through the air as Aidus directed it forth to intertwine with an existing strand, tying it tight to anchor himself to the web. With that done, he could free himself of Aidus and be unrestricted in his pursuit of rescue. Slowly, methodically, he crawled out of his Drykas body into the ethereal form this sacred magic offered him. For the first time in what seemed an eternity the dark haired Drykas could move freely. No longer was he bound by the frailties of human frame. It was now more than ever that he wanted to stay here. It was safe here. It was free here. Aidus sighed as he watched his physical body finish slumping to the ground. There wouldn't be time to waste. If something came up on his body, he was done for. To a nearby stone he continued his manipulation of the web. Silky, luminescent strings streamed forth from his being, inserting into and joining the rough stone. The Drykas left a message there for anyone would would stumble upon him. 'Here lies Aidus Moondirge, first son of the Ankal'. At least they could mourn him properly. After tying the stone to the larger strand of web, He began his journey along the network of information. His range was limited, but there were bound to be skilled webbers observing for threats and intruders. Maybe they would see this string. Maybe they would hear him as he put forth a simple message. A clear cry for help. A pleading for rescue. "Help. Anyone. Please, help me. Help us."

[Aramenta]

Barely at the level of being a competent webber, now, Aramenta expected no better than she received on her first trip with a web-minders' party. And she got no better. The webbers she travelled with ranged in age and experience, but most were older than the girl just into the height of her adolescence, and all were more experienced - it was dangerous enough bringing one raw webber on a trip in which they were not so sure precisely what they might find. Even then, she was sent on one of the less dangerous parties - they were to trace the fine filigrees of webwork that curled along the Southern borders of the Sea, where Endrykas had passed just a season before, where much work had been done already, simply to secure the wandering city during the cold winter.

The others - there were only four others anyway - did not seem to resent her presence. But in the work, there was a certain precedence of hierarchy, which Ara understood well. In the morning, while they rested from the long nights of weaving and wandering, it was Ara who woke early, to seek the grasses for clutches of partridge eggs, to prepare thin breakfasts of dry meat and herbs, to take the Striders out to pasture. When they rode, she rode forward to test the paths - this she hardly minded, for the gallops on Canterfoot gave her at least a feeling of some competence and freedom. When they stopped, it was she who erected the tent. It was not hard work, if she were honest with herself - Drykas who wandered about mooning all day generally were poor Drykas, for in any pavilion there was duty enough to fill more hours than the Sun gave a girl.

It was partly simply that she was lonely. Livvy she had left at home. They would travel together normally, but then, the Ankals would never consent to a slave, an outsider living in such close proximity to an isolated camp of web-workers: they would be too vulnerable, and the girl too likely to learn things that were not meant for the ears of the unmarked. This, too, Ara understood. But the peculiarities of her voice meant that, sadly, the long periods of conversation as they rode through the grasses left her alone and isolated - it took practice, after all, to lean in and hear her whispering as you rode beside her, and Ara began to appreciate how good Livvy had grown at it. And it felt cold at night, and sad, alone in her bed. The first few nights when they had travelled far enough to make Ara unable to reach out web-wise and feel the presence of Livvy back in her tent at home, she'd actually spent her sleep lying near Canter, just to feel the warm bulk of her, the comforting presence of something living and full of affection for her. The other webbers had not laughed, had accepted the arrangement.

But the webbing itself! Oh, how it drew out the long hours when she could not be doing it! Each minute that she bent over a worn horse's hoof picking stones, she felt the hollow ache for the strands of webwork, each hour she spent awkwardly mending a tear in the canvas of their tent, was a minute of thirsting for the feel of web-speaking in her throat. She felt, with the concentration of the work here, with the way they stayed close to the thickest, most ancient lays of web, that she could feel the glow of the corded Djed, could taste the burn of it in her throat, continuously.

And so when she found herself at leisure to help in the real work of the party, she had to consciously remind herself to move slow, to thread herself into the great, strong bands of the ancient web with the grace and respect that they deserved, for had she not, she would have toppled to the ground and rolled into the web like a cat in a bed of primrose.

This evening was just such a chance. The elder in the group - a truly great webber, second son of a pavilion from the webbing clan itself - had left work for her to be done. She knew this was for her benefit more than for the benefit of her cohabitants. The work they left was simple, and had probably been carefully checked already. The elder had set it aside, because he knew she wished to learn, and that was all. And she accepted this, humbly, gratefully.

The world extending south of their camp, here, that was where she was to look, to see if the strands were clean, if the anchors were whole, if the weaving were taut. It was good work, simple work for one more experienced than her, just enough of a challenge for her to push her to grow. She went into the spray of a dry creek-bed, and found a stone, small and round and faintly blue, and took it up, and returned to the camp. There she took the stone and placed it in her mouth, sucking on it a moment, running her soft tongue against the pebbled smoothness of its surface, feeling the crevices of it, tasting the metallic dustiness of its innermost cracks. She breathed deep as she did it pouring her djed through her tongue, and lying a signature into the stone, a little signature that sang softly through the vibrating contours of the web she could almost feel now. She took the stone from her mouth, and tunneled a little hole into the earth with her fingertips, the rough earth rich with the encroaching sand of the Burning Lands not so far off, carried by the spent ends of sirrocos to drop over the rich Cyphriot soil. It drove itself under her fingernails, leaving her with a feeling of caressing warmth, as she set the pebbling in the heart, covered it, and lay down beside it, her hands extending slender girl-fingers into the stream of rich, thick, ancient djed.

And then, she was there. There was still a visceral shock to her to opening herself into the webs, a feeling sudden a sudden, sharp inhalation of cold, clean air. Her eyes were always hazy here, the web being a world, to her small mind of touch, of taste, most of all, of sound. Vibration, reverberation, the interplay of signal, all clarified and thickened and grew tangible to her, and for a moment she simply pulled hard at the outer threads of the world-within-the-world, gasping a deep breath of harmony into her ears. She could feel the great, old song that was forever changing and forever the same, that ran like an ancient symbol riven deep into the channels of the great central strand of the web beneath her, the Song of the Ancients, that sang words that comforted, enthralled, but that could not be understood. And over this, she heard the thousand-thousand songs, the great harmony of each hand that had plucked this great thread, had left its mark, its own little equivalents to her river-pebble, in it over the centuries that the Web had lay naked to her people's touch.

For just a moment, indulgently, she drove her hands into the great pulsing softness of the strand, doing nothing, learning nothing, only feeling the unimaginable complexity of the thousand-thousand strands of clattering horse-hooves, of laughter, of war cries, of hunter's spears, of the sun and the rain, and the winds of the desert, and the keening cries of mourners that wound so tight to whatever they touched. She heard her voice, the voice she only had here, thrill out into a whirring trill of soprano, harmonizing sweetly into the greater song, so that her voice was lost in the great, sweet harmony of it.

And then, she sighed, blushingly, for she felt, nearby, the gentle rolling laugh of the elder, a laugh that was indulgent, but that pricked her conscience. She was not here to play. She had work to do.

It took hours to do it. She rolled the ruby-silver heart of herself as thin and ephemeral as the vibrations of the web itself out across thin strands, the silken thread drawn taut and clean from the river stone of the camp. She found an anchor that was cracked, perhaps two shadow turnings south of the camp, and wound her thread into the just-discordant tune, drawing taught the sounding board, until she pulled it back into its wholeness. She plucked the ghosts of fingertips delicately against the threads, to check her work, adjusted one such thread, delicately, and travelled on.

She drifted along a long, old strand of the web, and felt an old patch there, that had begun to unweave, the threads of it loose and draining into the earth. She twisted fingers into them, to draw the braid up tight, and spliced them gently in. This was more delicate work, for the web here was older than her, was created by a more talented hand. She nipped a thread off with her teeth, and wound it into the shadow of her mother's braided hair that she kept about her waist, humble enough to know that she should check the work later with someone wiser than her.

And then, she heard something strange. It did not begin so terribly strange - the present shambling step of a Drykas man, coming north from the fringes of the desert. He was alone, his heart unwound about him with no Strider to make it whole - or no, not alone. He walked with a foreigner, windmarkless creature. She clothed her eyes and filled the shadow's shadow of her lungs, pulling the scent of the two across her nostrils. The Drykas had the scent of exhaustion, not uncommon in the Sea, alone. The other creature... it was female. Strange-smelling, almost like something she would recognize, but not quite. A scent she did not know, like bird-flesh and sweet-hot sand, and a cold, stone cistern hidden in the earth.

This was sad, and she listened to it, the song of the man, from a cautious, silent haunt, melting into the fabric of the web, the song of the woman silent and strange and foreign. It was a vague, tired, lonely song, the song of loss, with the hollow, tender-throated dirge of the self-ashamed, and that strange, queer counterpoint. Sad, and sweet, and haunting. Ara, if she were not working, would have stopped to simply listen. But she would have to return, to tell this thing, that a man of the Mark, exhausted, brought a foreign woman who smelled of the desert. She would mention it, for she was fairly sure the man was real, and living - the spirits of the ancients had their own tremolo to their stories, one the living could not share.

But then, just as she went to turn, she felt an anchor, write itself exhaustedly against the web. The anchor was not connected per se, simply rested against a stone which rested against the web, but this was strange enough to make her pause. She thought, almost to try to wrap a thread around it, to see if she could divine what had been webbed into it, and why. But she did not, really, even understand if that was strictly possible. But then, that pause was enough that she heard the passive song of the man awaken, enter into the web as a conscious soul, the soul of another webber, piercing into the faint capillaries of the web that wound about him. And the song clarified, enriched, grew sad and sharp and desperate.

//Help... Help...//

It called out low, and with a sweet horror that pierced the ears of Ara's spirit, and made her melt out of the threads of her strand, and reach a single, tentative finger forward to brush the man's face, cautious, entranced, almost, the story of the song still not clear to her, but the rich haunting sorrow of it seducing her heart out of its caution. Drawing her to wait, for just a moment. Just a moment.

"Brother... Brother..."

Her lips, she felt open and shut, and felt the sweet sorrowing pity of her voice extend out through the vibrations of the web itself the brush gentle fingers at the man's ear, to whirl through the hazy music of the half-dissolving man, and the faint-unknowing warp of his travelling companion.

"Brother of the Earth and Web, who are you? And who is this woman that you allow to see you bound in the sacred art? I cannot smell her, well, is she a danger?"

[Kalesse]

The distance was of no strain, at first, though the bells slowly took their toll as the proud Chaktawe’s shoulders began to droop. Curling forward and inwards, the force of the wind at her back began to make some headway in breaking the physical as well as the mental strength of this woman. The insistent nipping and biting was akin to pup playing with its mother; lighthearted and innocent, but wearing nonetheless. Zulrav’s cool fingers seemed to press constantly on the back of her neck, chilling her despite the warmth of Syna’s kiss, until Kalesse could no longer feign indifference, her head bowing in submission.

It was a mistake. All of it. From the Fall she spent in Ahatep to the moment of weakness and fear that lead to those first steps, hurried and desperate, taken towards Aidus’s retreating form. He would be dead, She had told Haizea in a whisper, the mare her silent confidant, as she justified her actions. As if speaking them aloud would make it all easier to swallow later when regret reared its leering face. Twelve times over if it weren’t for me. What a waste of effort only for him to lose his final battle against the sands.

Whether she regretted it or not, Kalesse couldn’t have let the Drykas man wander off into the Burning Lands alone. He had hardly survived the first time he had tried, and had been lucky that her tribe had found him. But what had found her Tribe shortly after…

The grasslands slammed into focus, rocking the young woman from her reverie as the voracious winds stole away the tears that threatened before they were able to spill from her lids. The red-tinged sands had long since melted away into an endless, dancing sea of green, and with it the shredded bits of being, the sense of self that she had managed to hold on to until now.

Haizea, sensing the melancholy that began to settle on her masters shoulders like a comfortable blanket, nickered and butted her head into Kalesse’s hip. The one-two-one-two trudge that had kept the woman moving forward was interrupted by the stumble that jilted her footfalls. “Hey!” The protest was a dry, crackling sound devoid of any emotion save surprise as Kalesse rounded on her mare, who tossed her beautiful gray head in an equine chuckle. The smile felt out of place as it tugged at the corners of her lips.

“Maybe we’ll be there soon.” Travel soiled fingers scratched lightly at the whorl on Haizea’s forehead, between her eyes before the pair slowly started forward again. Black, fathomless eyes shifted from her horse to the man who brought them here to all this green, the smile disappearing as her face resumed its mask of careful indifference. “Though I don’t much think he knows where he is going…” Unable to decide whether she felt sorry for Aidus, or if she wanted to bash his skull in when he least expected it, Kalesse kept herself and Haziea a few dozen paces behind the man, leaving him to find and lead the way through this strange land.

Silence resumed shortly after, the mare huffing softly the only sound to break the monotony of the wind rustling the grasses. Their supplies were running low, and while water still sloshed around the bottom of her flask, Kalesse realized she hadn’t seen Aidus drink from his own in far too long. It was as she fumbled for the canister at bottom of the pack she kept slung across her back that Aidus stopped and turned to speak.

“No. Stop.” Though the limited number of words they were able to share with one another left much to be desired, Kalesse could hear the desperate determination in the man’s voice, and it brought her heart into her throat. “Water first. I have!” Contents of her pack spilled out into the grass as Kalesse yanked the flask free, holding it at arms length so that Aidus could see, and would stop, wait, and drink before doing whatever it was he had planned.

But it was too late. The broken sentence had barely left her lips when Aidus fell boneless to the ground. “No!” Anger overrode the panic that chewed at the Chaktawe’s nerves, her shout nearly ripped away by a gust of wind as she lunged towards where Aidus collapsed. It was a single, sharp crack brought her up short. It was like a hoof striking stone, though it lingered in the air for longer than was natural. Kalesse knew the sound and was not startled by the shadowy black mass that materialized before her.

Stay where you are. Sunajiah was there, glittering in the sunlight. The massive stallion placed himself squarely between the fallen Drykas and his charge, his muzzle only inches from the young woman’s face. Through the smoky form of her Guardian, Kalesse could still see where Aidus lay. He had not stirred.

“But I need to help him.” The tawna slipped from her lips in a whisper, as though she didn’t trust her voice any louder than that. “I cannot be left here alone.”

You are no longer a child, Kalesse. The rebuke was sharp, Sunajiah tossing his head as he spoke into the Chaktawe woman’s mind. And you may not go to him. Not yet.

[Aidus]

Aidus felt more alive in this moment than in any other time in many seasons past. Pure, perfect, web. A holy form, more sacred to his people than life itself, and yet at all times the Webbing was life, it was their culture, their history documented, their future, their past, and their now. All pain and misery were, if only during this glorious separation of body and spirit, forgotten completely. If he just let go here, would it be so bad? The Drykas would find Kalesse and send her away where she could pick up whatever she could of her life. She held no debt to Aidus. There was nothing linking them together but loss. A powerful bond it could be, but it was not one either of them sought to nurture. Her following him back to Endrykas was a surprise enough. In truth, if anyone was owed a debt, it was here. He’d have died in the Burning Lands had she not happened upon his tent where she drew his blood and nearly left him for the sands to take. For some reason she came back. For some reason he lived. The guilt weighed on him… if he just let go… Then he felt her words, those of a sister in the grass. He was found. They were found. The beautiful, beautiful web was their savior. He focused himself, feeling the gentle caress that could only be experienced when completely free of the mortal frame. A unpolluted touch of innocence as he joined her in a dance of souls, ghostly feet kissing the luminescent strands beneath them. She was young, but she was Drykas through and through. Bonded, windmarked, and skilled with the web. It was what he needed. “Sister… She sees nothing … she knows nothing. She is not tied. She is unaware. But she is no danger. A companion. She is of the deserts. She is of the sands. We are weary, or at least I am. I fear I will return to the cycle within the day if I do not receive help. I beg of you, send help.” He couldn’t maintain it. He couldn’t keep communication. Strands unraveled around him as he began to free himself from the lay line. Glowing strings faded to nothing as he floated back to his physical body, gently easing himself into union, ethereal frame and human body once again becoming one. With a gasp, he opened his eyes, the agony wracking his body instantly making itself known. Oh to return to the web and seek respite from the tortures he experienced. “Kalesse..,” he whispered, forcing the common language from cracked lips. “Wait. We wait. Help to us comes. Safety for we.” He hoped his words were true. Hopefully the young woman had heard his plea. Otherwise they were dead.

[Aramenta]

The ghostly extension of herself, bound tighter, tried to lace fingers around the fading, broken spirit of the man, tried to grab at the tattered strands about the man's web-form, to draw him up, sustain him. But even as she scrabbled, tying the fraying knots about him, she knew it would not work. Finally, she simply let go, as the man fell backwards, into his body, away away.

And he was gone, once again, just the shadow of two bodies, now, pricked exhaustedly against the web, like the gasping song of a broken throat singing its final words.

//I must send help. I have to go help them.//

The voice bubbled up with the quick exuberance of the young, the irrepressible instinct of the idealist not yet acquainted with the extent and tenor of reality. She began folding her own song up, into a returning song, a song of coming back, but felt the voice of her training call her back.

//No, Aramenta. Stop. Stop. If you rush back half-cocked, you're not going to save them, this lost man, and this strange woman. You need to slow down, you need to think. Remember your lessons. Learned now, is warned later. Take your time, get your bearings.//

She stopped, gripped her fingers tight into the cording of the web, focusing her mind, slowing, meditating herself as calm as she could. She clumsily ran her mind across her fingers, one by one, like a parlor game, focusing, trying to identify what each was touching, what the strand came from. Right thumb, the cord of an inexperienced webber, not so long ago, leading... to an anchor in a stone nearby... Right index finger, horse-hair, a guideline followed by the striders, a route somewhere, perhaps... right middle finger, the work of a master webber, a cord once torn, perhaps, a league off, by a fight with a beast she didn't recognize, but woven and spliced with such mastery that she could still feel the echo of the song of the woman who did it...

Ara breathed, three times, feeling the faint echo of the rise of her body's breasts, in sync with faint pulsing of the song of herself on the web. She carefully checked her return, lines, checked the little cords of memory of the things she loved in the waking world, that would guide her back if she became webstruck. And then, carefully, drifted down closer to where the two sat.

The woman was truly incomprehensible to her, and if she had had time and leisure, she might have simply sat and listened to the echoes of her, the strange, monotonous song of her, exotic and with a hypnotic drone that echoed through the cords of the web with a peculiar, enticing dissonance. The sound of her was like... when she was a child, she had seen a drummer, who had a deep tall drum, that, if he drove his elbow hard into the drum head, he could change the tone of it, and play quick, hard melodies, like a strange, hollow sort of singing. It was like that, the sound of her on the web, the sound of an instrument built for one thing, transformed to communicate something entirely else, incomprehensible but beautiful. There was tension, there, but not the same flickering death-knell that her companion carried. Not yet. Whoever the being was, she must be strong, in her way, to outlast a Drykas on his own sea.

The man, she could examine more closely, the knotwork of him more familiar, the tones of his melody less foreign. And the quivering irregularity of his vibrations, half the song of the living, and half the song of the dead, poured that same sorrow into her, an echo of the keening cry of a death knell, an echo of the chants of a priestess over the body of the dead, but interlaced still with the desperation of his voice. She felt the song of him, and it pricked in the lines, the last resonant echoes of his plea to her:

"Send help! Send help! I beg of you, send help!"

She felt the harmony between their two songs, felt the way in which they two interlaced, already, as the wind-marked children of the grass-sea, felt two the hollow places where they could be intertwined, but were not.

He was honest. He was dying, and a Drykas. The woman did not echo anything sharp or dangerous, and she did not kill the brother who was so helpless beside her. But then, she was hard to hear, and he was weakened. They must be cautious. She did not want to mistrust, but this was a stranger, and strangers, one must be cautious with them. It was enough. She untied herself from where she had bound down her hands to the web just between them, and laced slender ghost-of-fingers into her return lines, listening to their song, now, letting the song pull her back.

"Father, father, lonely love of father..."

"Sisters, brothers, my duty to my family..."

"A warm bed, a warm heart, a horse between my thighs..."

"My people, who are more me than I am. My people, who I must serve..."

"The web itself, which I must have strong hands to serve..."

She followed the trace backwards to her heart, and watched and marked the path carefully - it would do no good to go hunting for them if she did not know where they were. And then, she felt the web-shielded edges of the camp, felt the tingling suddenness of others, of her party, nearby.

And then, she was awake, and leaping up quickly.

"A rescue party! Master, we..." she coughed, feeling the sudden force of being awake, of her body and its limitations, her voice coming out only as a hissing squeak, and throwing her throat awry. She stumbled forward, anyway, and the master webber, startled, stood from where he had been doing knotwork to calm himself, putting a hand to the girl's back.

"Slow down, child, slow down. What is this? We won't do any good by running about half-cocked."x