Acquainted with the Night

[Seven Xu]

“I read that mages can hide messages in the stones that float about Swalden,” he gestured hesitantly, before his finger found the hazy yellow point in the sky, untwinkling. “There.

“I’m less interested in their stories than their movements, to be honest.” Seven’s arm dropped and snaked around his knees, joining the other to guard his warmth. He paused, teeth wrestled tongue, and he chose his words carefully. “I know people like to find meaning in them. The stars, that is. I knew some of their stories—I remember songs, I guess, from old festivals.” He laughed. “I never made an effort to, but they’re there.”

He hummed tunelessly, cocking his head from one side to the other in an attempt to imitate some long forgotten memory. Ultimately, he made a fool of himself; he swore he felt Zintila cringe from her perch across the Unforgiving. “Something like that,” he said, after clearing his throat and shrugging off mounting embarrassment. “I was better at it when I was small.”

[Ifran]

Ifran looked and listened, but listened more closely to the humming, which caught at his memories until he nodded and sang quietly, though the words were in Arumenic. It was pitch-perfect, so apparently all those years of strict training and memorization had paid off, if singing to a young man in the dark outside Alvadas was any recompense. "I apologize," he said quietly when he was done, "but I do not know the lyrics in Common." Two of his arms slipped around Seven. This far north, he got cold easily too.

[Seven Xu]

The corners of the halfblood’s pale mouth twitched as ten fingers wrapped themselves along the span of his shoulder and arm and warm flesh occupied the space between back and boulder. It took a great deal of resolve to pause and consider the embrace.

Seven swiveled to stare down the pale-eyed eypharian, face warped in an incredulous half-smile. “You put me to shame so effortlessly, and then you apologize.” He rocked to his knees, removing himself from Ifran’s grip with the pretense of once again searching his pack. White hands rummaged the innards of spent canvas, feeling their way past the tangle of a threadbare sheet to the assembly of rolled parchment beneath. “I don’t think you should apologize; I don’t think you should stop, either.

“I wish I had such control over my voice.” One cracked and yellow tube was lifted between elegant fingers and unraveled with stiff protest. Then he succumbed to the pull of the ground beneath his ass and found the rock or the arms that might have remained. Warmth outshone what petty uneasiness soured his stomach. “That, there—that was it,” he laughed, “that was the best I had, that little song. You’d think I was drunk for the attempt.”

[Ifran]

"It takes many years to master the voice, and even then, the years teach much. I was taken into apprenticeship at a young age and spent years hard at work, and then apprenticed to a company, and continued to work my way up, still practicing daily, protecting my voice, strengthening it." He shrugged eloquently at that. "I am sure you have other skills." There was a lilt in his voice that might have implied lasciviousness, but he continued speaking. "I should learn from you and from Laszlo and Victor about the running of your establishment. I have an idea to start a theater of my own when I return to Ahnatep; a theater, or a casino, or some combination of things. I may be too ambitious." He shivered faintly, the first sign of, well, weakness. It truly was a disastrous sort of winter for a desert creature.

[Legion]

even the stars, they burn some even fall to the earth we’ve got a lot to learn god knows we’re worth it - jason mraz – “Ambition does not often go unrewarded,” an unearthly voice intruded, relaxed and infinite. She spoke as though She had been a companion in their conversation for hours. “Though you will most certainly reap the likeness of the ladder you climb, be it virtue or vicious intent.” The tree stump, the leftovers of a sentinel oak rooted deep in the unforgiving skin of this world, may as well have been a throne. She perched upon it with hands folded over the rise of a knee, so moon pale the shadows of elegant bones could be seen beneath. The cut of Her dress left the sweep of Her shoulders bare, fresh face illuminate within a tumbled frame of dark hair. “You have come far into this night to find me,” She continued with their attention. A smile stretched slow as sorrow across Her face, Her eyes above it coin bright and uncontested by the reel and shimmer of stars above. Intent, as well, slipping between their faces. “Or someone like me. I enjoyed your songs.”

[Seven Xu]

Laughter died as Seven’s face smoothed and flooded with recognition. He’d forgotten the cold that gnawed at his fingers and toes as he gathered his feet, too stunned to speak and too brazen to balk.

His eyes were red-black honey on a ghost white face, pupils tiny despite the darkness and staring out as burning pinpoints. His pale lashes flared as his gaze darted between the sky and its Lady, all the radiance of the stars manifest on the grey rise of a decaying stump. Hands balled themselves into tiny white fists at his sides. His lips hung open, cracked and numb. A rolled chart scrunched like dead leaves beneath his step.

He stopped a few strides shy of Her, only to realize he’d barely moved at all.

There was no mistaking Her presence; for eighteen years he dwelled in the city of stars and he could count on his fingers the number of times he’d seen Her star-kissed face, and each left his stomach aflutter and his throat dry. For every look he thought they’d shared, this was the first he would recall with any certainty; when his blood-red stare settled on Her he was loath to look away, fearing that She would spirit into the night as quickly as She had appeared.

“Zintila,” he finally whispered, as if speaking too loudly would affront Her, “you’re here.”

Strange words on a stranger tongue resonated in the deepest reaches of Seven’s mind, as loud and clear as if they were spoken a chime ago: ‘But they’re like Justice, eh? He which is supposed to be blind, but you … you’re like I, aren’t you? You know that bastard’s got eyes and they’re in the back of his head. He sees everything. Don’t sit there and tell me the stars aren’t watching back.’

“Forgive me. I—” he blinked away the sting of a long stare and fumbled for words. In hindsight, he could have done better. “I beg you ask Ifran for an encore, if songs are why you have come; had I known you were listening, I would have kept to spoken word.”

[Ifran]

He heard the Lady when She wanted him to hear Her, and though his eyes cut to Her quickly, he did not react with violence. While Seven spluttered and named Her, Ifran rose with dignity, for he too had divine blood. The river god's blood, all diluted by the centuries, sang in his veins. All the same, he squared himself toward Her makeshift throne, sank to his knees as if in a solemn, liturgical dance, folded his various hands, and touched his forehead to the dirt. The Eypharians had their rituals for the gods, but few were heartfelt. However, Ifran knew the power of ritual. Every time he stepped upon the stage, he conversed with the gods. Perhaps they really were listening. "Holy, holy, holy," he sang, each word tapping his forehead against the earth, against Semele for Whom this One had sacrificed Herself. "Greetings, Burning One," he said in High Arumenic, the few scant words bedeviled with meaning so complicated that perhaps only She understood exactly what he was saying. Certainly he felt a thrill within him at Her numinous presence. But She was right. Ifran himself sought Ionu's favor, while Seven spoke of Akajia, though he was far from Her home in Riverfall. Burning One, he had named her, the old epithet long-unused. She burned still, he imagined, though Her fires were banked, crystallized and focused to a chill pinpoint that would disappear in the garish light of day. "Only speak the word and I shall sing Your songs until the Daystar come, until my voice is gone. Speak the word and I will sacrifice it at Your feet."

[Legion]

Laughter burst through the dark with comet tails of delight. Zintila turned up Her frail seeming hands, empty to the air and the sky cluttering up with eager lights above them. "Dra-Seven," she addressed the son of Her city, giving a bastard back his name. "I am always here, watching even when sweet Syna is singing to the wandering moon. You see me." Her head tilted, exacting. "Don't you?" One hand extended, fingers folding inward like petals, beckoning a break in the Eypharian's formality as she turned her smile toward him. "Ifran of the Northwinds," She baptized him too, sliding star light through the river bottoms and sand storms of his name. "You do honor to your tutors with this show of respect. The quick and the quicker, no? Does obeisance quicken the beat of your heart? I think not. Am I right?" It was questions then that She gave them, framed in casual tones; but though the Star Lady was not known for Her riddles, that might have Her greatest riddle of all. Epitome of dead lights, far flung and foreign. Compassionate daughter, earth bound and yearning. There was wisdom in Her, but she liked it best when men sussed it out.

[Seven Xu]

Belated laughter rumbled in Seven’s throat, small and unsure and self-deprecating. He reached for the folds of cotton flung around his neck and dug deep to relieve flushed skin, before stealing a glance at the jumble of arms and murmuring piety at his side.

“Of course I see you,” he said, night-drinking eyes dipping back to Her, and then the sky above Her. There he hesitated, lips caught open, as if something had faded in his throat. “And I see you,” hands as frail and white as lilies indicated the spread of sky above. “I know you. Not every name, no, but I’ve spent most of my life with you. I know the patterns. I close my eyes and I see them. I see you.”

Narrow shoulders sagged. His arms fell. Part of him wished Ifran would interrupt, rein back the trickle that had become an unabashed torrent of words, Seven’s clumsy sincerity. “I used to feel you. I used know you were watching, but then I left.”

His chin dipped. “I drew blood—my own blood—I’d become the monster they all told me I was, and I left. Then I didn’t feel you anymore. Not like before.” He shook his head, swallowed the rising lump in his throat. “I forgot home. I forgot a lot of things.”

Mirth turned to honesty and honesty to a bleary film he had to blink away before daring to look upon Her again.

“You’re here to remind us,” he breathed a choking laugh. “You’re here. Look at you. That’s why you have come.” By now, Seven’s slow approach had left him at Her feet. He did not gesture to reach out for Her, but his knees finally buckled and he sunk, eyes wide as saucers. “I’m sorry I let myself forget. But, surely you do not appear to every man who forsakes his home. Why us? Why a-a-a Widow, not fit to serve in your guard, and Ifran of the Northwinds?”

[Ifran]

"Speak for yourself, Widow," Ifran chimed in as soon as Seven was done with his rush of words. He easily shifted from the complexities of High Arumenic to the relatively crude Common, from utter respect to a lazy sort of fraternity that might charm the right deity, offend the next. "We are trained to be highly aware of our place in the hierarchy of creation, my Lady. Obeisance does not make my heart beat faster, but I must admit your presence weighs upon me. Not unpleasantly, but methinks the earth requires more strength to bear you up than it does us." He paused, thoughtfully, face registering sick surprise and chagrin. "Forgive my clumsy speech, my Lady. In Arumenic, there would have been no possible way to mistake what I said for an inference that you weigh too much. In fact, it would not be flattery to say that you are the most beautiful thing these eyes have seen." So perhaps Seven was not the only one to react to divinity manifest with verbal diarrhea.