Open [SO-Abura] Longing is like the Seed

On the Way to Abura, Minnie encounters the Akvatari

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[SO-Abura] Longing is like the Seed

Postby Philomena on March 27th, 2015, 10:37 pm

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48th of Spring, 515
Aboard the trading fluyt Magpie
The Deep Sea, Beyond Abura, in the Outer Ocean
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There were seven knotholes in the three broad planks above Minnie’s berth. She was inimately familiar with each. She had spent hour after hour examining them, their peculiarities, the way a waver in one resembled a snub-nosed dog, and another looked something like a drunkard’s swollen lip. They were old, varnished naturally with the sweat, oil, and grime of 70 years of sailors sleeping in this berth - it had, before a refit, been a junior officer’s cabin, and it looked it. A case for a sextant still hung on one wall, even. All these things - even the knots - had interested her in the first days, in the way that a new adventure presents all of its accouterments as being pregnant to bursting with possibilities.

But over time, they the possibilities had slowly dwindled. Partly it was the sheer stillness of the sea. Partly it was that she found that while she was not seasick walking the decks, she grew nauseous if she tried to write for too long, and so her work had been somewhat curtailed. Partly it was that she had not curtailed the work enough, and so the attendant nausea had a way of making the world seem empty and sad.

PArtly, it was the sea itself. She’d grown up as a harbor rat, practically, of course, but she was no sailor, and had never, until now, been past the harbor, and even in the harbor, on very little bigger than a rowboat. But now the fluyt, with its chubby hull and snubbed bow rode the great waves of the sea proper, the outer sea, the sea that went nowhere.

“Not nowhere,” she had, in her general solitude, begun finding it easier to talk to herself, “To the stars. Like the ship that Wrenmae would have sailed on at the end of the book.”

And that, again, brought Lanie to mind.

The voice of the sea was a mourning voice, droning and low and whispery-moaning, it was a voice that spoke of ended things, of lost hopes, of faraway love. Lanie came to her mind more and more often here.

“She’s probably never been sailing, I guess. She’d kill the entire crew. I wonder if the wind in the mountains sound like this.”

She’d had no reason to think that Lanie was in the mountains particularly, but once, when she was young, she’d seen a painting of a woman walking alone and forlorn on a track high in the mountains, with no other living soul in sight, and the image had attached itself to her mind, probably in large part because the woman’s face was hidden by a large traveling hat, so Minnie had been able to project the face she knew so intimately into it.

She sighed, and came on deck, and was surprised to realize it was the middle of the night. The captain had respected her desire for quiet and anonymity, perhaps better than she’d wanted, and so meals came, more or less, when Minnie thought to pick something up from the cook, who had gathered enough of her habits to keep something aside each day for her. Cold porridge, pease congealed into a gelatin around a bone of salted mutton. IT did not matter to Minnie, food was food. But it meant that she had no real markers in her days in the sunless cabin.

In truth, she mostly appreciated it. She had, with a winter that lacked much interaction with others, still not quite returned to the diurnal habits of the outside world, with its sense of ‘morning’ and ‘mealtime’ and ‘bedtime’, and for all that her freedom was precious to her, now, more than ever, she still had not quite gotten used to the sheer… bigness of a world outside of walls, with a sun over her head staring at her. She was beginning to enjoy it, but still, sometimes, a tiny cabin where, if she liked, she could let the light out and shut the door and none would mind, was a gentle blessing.

But not now. The thought of Lanie had grown too heavy, and she needed air, now, needed to be in a sky big enough that it could, possibly, reach to whatever strange road Lanie found herself on today.

The dark sky was clear and the stars were heavy to bursting. The wind was rough with salt and the sails were so full of it that they looked like sculptured marble in the star shine. Minnie went to the boat’s gunwales and leaned on them, her feet bare on the rough planks, her hair tied inside a kerchief. Her eyes, in the wind, were terribly conscious of their lack of spectacles, and it gave her a kind of exhibistionist thrill. She slid a finger between the buttons of her shirt, and touched gently the flesh of her belly, tracing the dried ink there with a fingertip: M-A-R-A. It was an absent habit. She was not used to it, yet - Mara had always refused to write her own name. But she was gone now, gone like everyone else, another scar painted onto her skin….

She shook her head, and sighed. The sea went on, and on, and on before her, fading so seamlessly into the horizon that it was disorienting.

“Oh my lost ones….”

A song rose behind her and she closed her eyes listening to it: she thought at first she did not know it, but then she recognized it: a tenor solo from the Cantata on the Valerian:

In the day of of Fire, I woke to a cold clear water,
In the day of Fire , I drank deep.
I filled my belly with the sweetness of an earth,
And my heart pangs came,
Like regret for a world not lost,
Like mourning for the future unknown.

In the day of Fire, I looked out on the sea,
And the sun spread long red raysa cross the surf.

In the day of Fire, the burning began with glory in the sea,


Minnie rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. The fabric was rough linen, a sailor’s coat from an old age, cut to a child’s shape. It fit her imperfectly, for she had not gone to tailor, of course, lest Mrs Shears hear something and recognize her. It mad her bust swell the coat open and her hips flare its tails, so that she was not so different from the ship itself, jutting the nose of a bow forward, and the wide hips of a cargo hull.

In the day of Fire, the sea rose up,
I thought she would devour me,
I though Laviku had grown angry,
In the day of Fire, he pulled me down to the very silt,
To the very sand and stone,
And set the sea above me.


She sang with a creaking whispery voice, and her pitch was terribly imperfect, but she sang it anyway, and her voice wrapped into the rush of the waves. She felt like she sang wit the sea, a weak wave in a great chorus, or with the wind. And the wind, it sang to the whole world, even to the mountains to lonely paths.

And a voice came back to her from the water, then, it was like a rosined bow against her own heart’s string.

Oh, but the sea! The terror of her love!
Oh but the sea! The horror of her sweetness!
She swallowed me because she wished to hold me safe,
And closer, more intimate,
Than merely arms around me,
Like lovers, and like more than lovers.


And Minnie, in the midst of her dreaminess, finally thought to wonder who had been singing. Looking up and behind her in the ratlines, an old sailor rested, now silent and solemn, looking out to the sea, and she knew the first voice had been him. And she followed his eyes into the sea, and there, by the keel, as the ship raced on , she saw a long, silver seal’s-tale, slender pale arms, a thin, muscled body with a band of blue across the chest, and two eyes, deep, deep eyes. They were blue, and filled with the pathos of her song, practically pouring the lover-the-sea from them. IF the moment had been any stiller, Minnie thought, the eyes themselves would have sung.

The face looked back to her and smiled.

“And who art thou, child of the North?” The voice was soft, but it blended so harmoniously into the groan of timbers and the rush of the wake and the pale whisper of wind, that it carried to Minnie’s ears with a clarity that Minnie could not manage in a silent lecture hall.

She thought, of sudden, that she should have been frightened. But she could not manage to be so. Her voice came wild and unhindered by expectation.

“Philomena.” she said, and her voice curled int he wind like a baby’s fine hair, “You are a fair voice, Mussy o’ the Sea.”

She heard the stillness of the sailor behind her, and heard the ghost of smile on the lips of the Akvatari.

“Philomena, Philomena…” and the words themselves were indistinguishable from song. Minnie had, until that day, never really thought her name could be beautiful, but ever after, in her dreams, her name would come to her in sweet moments, with those light, musical trips of tongue. Phi-lo-may-na, “What brings thee to the sorrowing isle, Fair Philomena?”

“Your eyes… remind me of… of…” She started to form the word, the name: Qalaya. But the Akvatari stopped her taking her wings behind her and fluttering a spray of diamond droplets behind her as they wings threw her into the air, and she set a damp finger to Minnie’s lips. Minnie kissed it and the Akvatari smiled.

“Nemgeress, is my name, sister,” and the eyes were broad and still,l just in front of Minnie’s own. She reached a hand to Minnie’s gloved hand then, and very quietly slid the cloth backward, to look at the back of it - the ‘Q' shone on the metallic skin. The woman smiled, and raised an eyebrow, covering it again, “Thou wouldst come with me? I ask it of thee, Philomena.”

Minnie looked at the deep eyes, and her voice fell to a hoarse whisper, “I… I would, but… I ha' oaths for keeping, I have… a work, what She has given me…”

Nemgeress smiled, and her smile carried a sorrow that would have felled a saint. Minnie felt her eyes grow damp.

“Philomena, beloved of thy Mistress... one who weeps alone can take the hour of weeping together, at least? As a balm.”

Minnie said nothing at this, but her heart beat faster, at this. She nodded, mutely, and took the woman’s hand. She was small, and the woman, with some grace still, lowered her into the water of the sea. The saltwater sucked Minnie’s skirt to her legs, and her coat grow leaden and cold around her. The Akvatari wrapped an arm around her, and began, with languorous beats of her strong tail, to swim them out, out, into the endless sea. The undulations of the tail were like an urgent, wonderful stroke against Minnie’s legs. Minnie looked back, and the sailor wept openly in the ratlines. His voice called out with desperation.

“Lady Akvatari! When will ye come for me?”

Nemgeress’s smile was a movement of the entire body, an aching, sorrow-filled song, and Minnie felt it through the water, like a tattoo against her back. It was all the response she gave the sailor.

They swam, and Minnie watched, as the ink on her skin began to dissolve, leaving thin grey trails behind them.
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Last edited by Philomena on March 28th, 2015, 2:45 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Longing is like the Seed

Postby Philomena on March 28th, 2015, 1:56 am

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The sea was cold, and Nemgeress was long-bodied, and soon enough Minnie’s body curled into the woman, half-dozing - for the swim was long. The sky above stood still, and the land behind was faint in the dark, and the horizon ahead was ever, ever farther away. Nemgeress sang faintly as she swam,and the beating of her tail was like a counterpoint to the song, and both wound into her consciousness, so the sucking tug of wave against cloth began to feel familiar. Minnie said nothing, and she did not sing, now. She curled her toes into the silver fur, and closed her eyes, the sensation of moving without moving overpowering her, the warmth and the water and the way she was curled up feeling almost as if she rested in a womb, waiting to be born.

She awoke because the swimming stopped. Nemgeress bobbed, now, slowly up and down on the low waves of a calm sea. The night was at its deepest, now. Minnie realized that the kerchief around her hair was gone, the waves had pulled it off, and her hair floated around her like a living thing. She found herself wishing it was long again, already.

Nemgeress held her, still, and looked at her with a kindly sorrow.

“Thou needest not a warning, I think, but it is the way of things. Thou art the guest this year, the guest speaks not, yes? All will know that thou art come, without speech. Watch then, and stay silent.”

Minnie, still half in the dream world nodded with the solemnity of a child. Nemgeress nodded and swam on, and over the next rise in the wave, she saw another head bob above the waves. The hair on it was long and bound up in behind in a heavy, dark bun. The eyes, again, were sad, but different. Harder these eyes, an anger in their sorrow.

“Thou hast a guest for us, Nemgeress.”

Nemgeress nodded softly. Minnie stayed still. The eyes of the second Akvatari frightened her a little, in her state, and she curled up tighter. Nemgeress, her tail beating slow, absent strokes now, put an arm around Minnie’s waist, running a hand down her chilled back.

Another head appeared, and then another, at a distance hard to discern. And then in the distance, two heads bobbed up and down the waves, drawing buoys behind them. They stopped, and the buoys held between them a net of fine-work, the length of a stout sailor ’s height each way. It hung in the water, clearly loaded down with something that sank beneath the waves.

And then, in the distance, came the plash of oars. A long whaleboat lay in the water, with five figures in it. Two rowed, and one steered with an oar in the rear, a third rested. And in the front, sitting tall and with the legs of a human, a final figure, dressed in pale grey. It drew closer and closer, the Akvatari pulling the oars in long, well-managed strokes, until, in the starlight, Minnie recognized the face. She almost let the name burst from her lips: Raisa - Teresa Wright-Allwave. She did not wear the uniform of the guild, now, but had the dress of a formal singer, with give beneath the sleeves to let the chest expand, and the gently-belled skirt to allow grace in movement. Her hair was pulled high on her head, and had a grey stone in a silver setting in the midst. IT was a beautiful sight and Minnie looked on it with Surprise.

Raisa clearly recognized her too, and she smiled back - but she, too, was apparently under a banns. Perhaps, she too was a guest - but no! The singer’s dress! The whaleboat stopped, and gently Nemgeress lifted her over the gunwales. Minnie scrambled to her feet, and curtsied silently to Raisa, who smiled, and leaned over to kiss the doctor on the cheek with, Minnie felt, likely far more familiarity than really Minnie warranted. But still, they said nothing.

There were, perhaps, 25 heads bobbing in the waves now - only one Akvatari remained in the boat with her and Teresa. All was still and silent, until one, a tiny creature, probably little more than a girl flicked a pair of black and red wings, so brilliant that they seemed to make their own light, and lifted her above the water. She held, too, a small fiddle, which she silently drained of water and set to her chin, then took a bow to it. The air grew expectant, and Raisa breathed. Minnie was sitting just behind her.

The first strains of song rose up, then from the body of the viol, with a high, piercing sweetness that took the wind and pulled it into whirls around Minnie’s ears. Minnie leaned forward and clutched the gunwales, and stared with wonder at the young player, who flitted slowly across the waves before her.

A voice rose, and then, Minnie recognized it: it was Raisa, but the wind carried sound so strangely, that it seemed deeper than she rmembered - or, she reflected, Raisa had grown older and more richly voiced in the time since last Minnie had heard her sing. The words were half archaic, and in a queer dialect that Minnie did not know. She could ken the meaning, for she knew Middle Common, and could interpolate th rest, and she wrote the translation in her book the next morning. The tune was one that she had never heard, and for the rest of her life, would never hear again, although it remained in her mind until the day of her death:

Come to me, my beloved -
Thou who left so long ago,
Set thy bow
Against thy fiddle string,
Against thy fiddle string.

I wait here, in the waves for thee,
Beloved of mine.


The song and melody resonated in the air, and she sang it slowly, over and over as the fluttering child meandered slowly closer and closer. Somewhere in the waves, two more voices picked the tune up, and settled into a counterpoint of a strange quality, one that Minnie, if she were to translate the notes, would have called simply dissonant, but which somehow in the whispering wind-tone that they sang it pulled Raisa’s town into a darker, richer power.

And then, quite suddenly, a hand reached from the water and seized the ankle of the fiddler. IT took Minnie a breath to realize this was theatre, she nearly leapt from the prow towards the girl. Raisa’s song changed, grew quicker, more frantic:

And still, and still, the spirit that attends our love awaits,
And still, and still, the spirit that would part us keeps watch!
Oh, break free, break free!
I cast the sea-bell’s spell on thee:
Break free! Break free!


The other Akvatari now all sang - or hummed at any rate, a low, cello-like rumble in counterpoint to the frantic voice of the fiddle which scratched with a wild abandon, like a bird being torn from the sky.
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Longing is like the Seed

Postby Philomena on March 28th, 2015, 2:41 am

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The performance had the vibrancy of an opera, but the silence, and the singularity of her place as the only audience member, made it, for Minnie, far more intimate. She sat behind Raisa, whose role was throughout quite a major one, and watched the action of the piece unfold not from an orchestra pit, but from the midst of it.

She followed the story, more or less. Two figures, not named in the play, are star crossed lovers, their romance unfulfilled because of the intercession of an evil spirit of the water, who each year draws the younger of the two into the sea and drowns her. Then, the elder takes a ship and sails it to the Halls of Lhex, Where she meets the spirits of many of the great lovers of history, beginning with the sun nd the moon, and not always staying with romance. Minnie’s favorite part, in fact, was when Zintila came in a dress spangled in fiery white, and sang her own doom and she saved her mother from destruction.

For there were costumes, great and beautiful costumes some, silver swords and golden crowns, and all the pageantry of opera. These, ti seemed, were in part what weighed the netted buoy down. The performers had a way of slipping into the net when minnie was not looking and emerging from the sea when their time came in the glittering splendor of star shine and spray, to sing their pics before letting the boat float on.

The boat did, in fact, move throughout the ship, and the groan of the timbers was like another voice, almost. But above all of these voices was the laughing, cruel voice of Lhex, who was played by the angry eyed man she had met, and the clear, sorrowful song of the elder lover, played by Raisa.

And then, in the end, Raisa stood before Lhex and sang of fate and destiny, and as the song rose to its highest, the climax approached, for to the side, Nemgeress appeared, and she was draped in black with a high hood, and in her arms she bore the limp form of the younger lover.

And Nemgeress sang a song, and the words were nonsense, or in a language Minnie had never heard, but it was clear and delicate, and masterful, so that Minnie knew just what ti must say: it spoke of her sorrow and pity, and of her refusal, this once, to bring the soul to Lhex. And Lhex sang back a smirk, of how fate was, and the girl wouldcome to him eventually, just as she had the year before. And Minnie began to realize the pattern of it, for Raisa sang, now, how in a year she would come back, and call and call the sea-bell song, to call her lover up from the water, to play her fiddle and come to her, to be, at last united. And Dira sang a sad song of inevitability, and promised she would remember if the song came just as clear, and would save the child again. And they sang the dat itself, and it was that day, the day Minnie sat listening to the singing.

“And so it shall be,” then, spoke Nemgeress, looking out to the open sea, “In a year we will convene again, a troupe, here, in the place where the fiddler fell, and we shall sing her up again, and one day, one day… she will not die again, and Lhex’s hold will be broken over this one thing.”

And with that, the rowers lifted from the back of the ship, a bundle and carried it forward presentingit to Minnie. IT was a statue, carved in pure, white marble, and it was, Minnie thought, the most beautiful statue she had ever seen. The eyes were closed, the hands laid beneath the head with such delicacy of artistry that almost Minnie expected the bare stone skin to rise and fall and flush with breath.And under the crook of its arm, carved with great care, was the form of a fiddle.

“Now, guest, kiss the fiddler, and let us cast her into the sea.” said Nemgeress softly.

And Minnie’s eyes went wide, “Into the sea? You… it will be lost!”

And Nemgeress smiled, sadly, “Each year, it is the great honor of our people, that one sculptor shall make this figure, each year it is to be the most beautiful sculpture worked by our hands. Each year, before it is ever shown, before any see it but its creator and those assembled her, it must be cast into the sea. That is the way of it.”

And Minnie looked at the man who held the figure. His hands were nicked and scarred and strong and he wept openly and without abashment, and she knew - he had made this figure, and held it now to her, to bless it being thrown away. And slowly, with shaking lips, she kissed the statue;s lips, then turned away, hearing it plash into the sea. But she could not stay turned, and she turned back, and leaned far over the gunwales, until the last shadow of white marble was gone from her view. She knew she wa crying now, and not very quietly or probably prettily. But Raisa sat beside her now, and squeezed her small hand, and the boat, slowly, slowly, began to row back toward shore.

Raisa turned back to Nemgeress and said very softly, “Thank you, milady, for the opportunity to sing.”

Nemgeress bowed where she hung in the air, her face solemn, “You are a beautiful singer, Ms Wright-Allwave.”

Minnie, in her tears, managed weakly, “When will I see this again? Next year, you do it each year? May I… May I come, then?”

Nemgeress’s smile was a movement of the entire body, an aching, sorrow filled song of regret and denial, and it burned into Minnie’s mind like a tattoo. It was all the response she gave.
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[SO-Abura] Longing is like the Seed

Postby Liminal on April 14th, 2015, 9:14 pm

Grades!

For this, one of the loveliest threads I've ever read, I award:

Observation +3
Socialization +1
Lore: Friendship of Nemgeress
Lore: Friendship of Teresa Wright Allwave
Lore: Teresa Wright Allwave, friend of the Akvatari
Lore:
The Fiddler and the Halls of Lhex, opera and ceremony
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