Seven Prayers of Alanza-Mae

by **Philomena** on February 4th, 2013, 1:24 pm

Qalaya

"Dear Qalaya -
Lanie and I went to the University, yesterday. One of the teachers, there, he paid us a whole silver miza each, to stand up on a platform in just our bloomers and chimmies, while he pointed to our stomachs, our tits, our necks, and rambled about the structure of muskyalo-skeleton blah blah mammary development, blah blah blah. Then, we went and bought real fish, cooked, and Lanie ate one and a half of them. I made it threw the last half before I got fat-sick and threw up all over the stall, and the lady was so mad!"

"Hey, Minnie."

Minnie shut the book as quietly as she could and slipped it under her pillow, "What, Lanes?"

Lanie shifted, climbed out of bed sat cross-legged by Minnie's bed, "Why you do that all the time?"

"Do what?"

"Write in your book."

Minnie blushed, shrugged.

"I mean, you gotta be spending a miz' or two on that ink. What are you writing? Are you writing a story?"

"Lots of… little stories. A man gave it to me. He told me I should write in it."

Lanie snorted, "Well if he wants it done, why isn't he giving you the ink?"

"I looked for him, but I never found him again."

Lanie wrinkled a brow, "Where at, the uni?"

"Yeah."

"What's his name?"

"Dunno, I didn't ask. I didn't… think about it, I guess."

"Why's he want you to write? What's he going to do with it?"

"Oh! He doesn't want it, he… well, he said, it would be…"

"What?"

"Don't laugh at me, Lanie."

"K, promise."

"Well, he said it would be like praying. To Qalaya."

There was a moment's silence.

"You think its dumb, don't you?"

"No! No! No… I… no. I like Qalaya. She's one of my favorites."

Minnie sat up on her arm in bed, and patted the mattress. It was summer, but even so, the stone floor's cold, she knew, would be quickly outweighed by its roughness through the thin linen of their summer night-things. Lanie crawled in, but neither bothered with a sheet. It was sweltering.

Minnie said, "What do you mean?"

"I…" Lanie blushed, "You can't laugh either?"

"No. I wouldn't laugh."

"I pray sometimes, you know."

"Of course you do. I mean, I saw you, a long time ago, you remember? Before we were friends."

Lanie frowned, but nodded, "I know. I'm not like you, though, Minnie. I can't find no gods that want me. I try lots of different ones. I tried Qalaya for a while. But I didn't think she wanted me. Maybe its because I don't have no book to write in."

Minnie shook her head, "But, Lanes, you tell stories. Stories are like Qalaya too. I figure she'd like your stories better than mine."

Lanie frowned and flopped back on her back, looking discontented, "No, its nae like that, Minnie. You are… I dunno. You're different. ITs like, Qalaya would want somebody who IS a story, too. I'm not no story, Minnie. I don't even want to be a story."

Minnie shook her head, "Why you pray then? All the gods are about stories. Oh, I figure if you asked some big priest or something, they'd say that was dumb, I guess. But the way I figure it, all the gods are about stories. That's why I like Qalaya. The gods wouldn't pick nobody if they didn't have no story to tell with 'em."

Lanie sighed, "I dunno. I don't want to be no prophet or nothing. I just… I don't know. I want someone who wants me around, I guess. Someone who's glad I'm here."

Minnie punched the girl in the arm, gently, "Hey. I'm glad you're here, Lanes."

Lanie shrugged, "Yeah. You and me, we're sisters, right? I'm glad you're here, too. It's good having a sister. I guess its not just that. Somebody who wants to take care of me I guess."

Minnie sighed, "I wish I could. I wish… I wish I was like, a Uni trustee or something. Or a ship captain. Then we could live in a big house, with lots of servants, and have fish everyday. And you could have lotsa fish, every day, so many even you'd be full." She grinned at this last.

But Lanie wasn't smiling. She was staring at the ceiling, her brow pushed down almost to her eyelashes, "Yeah. But we wouldn't belong there. It wouldn't be, like, our place. I want a place. I want someone to make a place for me."

Minnie was silent at this, but nodded quietly.

Lanie went on, "I guess that's why I'm always trying different gods. I want one of them to want me. I can tell stories okay. Someobdoy must want that."

Minnie sat up, and pulled out her notebook, "Well, lets try then, come on. You tell me a story, and I'll write it in my book! We'll write it to Qalaya, and then you can sign your name at the bottom, and we'll write 'this is Alanza's prayer, please let her pray too.' I'll write a story every day, if you want, but you'll have to help me find ink, and stuff."

Lanie looked queerly at Minnie, "It doesn't just work like that. You have to have a ceremony and offerings, and dances and stuff. Gods like you to do stuff all particular."

Minnie shrugged, "No temple to Qalaya around, is there? No priestesses. Nothing. I figure, Qalaya wants you to make your own way. So, we'll make one. This'll be our way. Now, do it. You be the storyteller, I'll be the scribe - you tell better stories, I got smaller handwriting."

Lanie frowned a moment longer, but then closed her eyes. There was a drama to prayer, and in her heart, Lanie felt this drama, loved this drama. This sense of the immense was part of what kept her coming back.

"Great Qalaya, mother of the books… does that sound okay?"

"Come on Lanie. Just keep going. We'll figure it out as we go."

"Great Qalaya, once upon a time, there was… a little boy. He was… "

Minnie looked up and waited, her flesh-starved nose like a bird's bill, her eyes wide and dark in the twilight, the whites almost lost in the gloom.

Lanie took a deep breath, "He was named Wren."

"Wren? Like the bird? That's not a name. What if he has an adventure with birds? It will get confusing."

Lanie sighed, and collapsed a little, "I don't know. Its hard coming up with it like this. I didn't even have a name. You just looked biddy."

Minnie's eyes brightened, and she smiled, "Alright! But this story is both of our prayer, so we'll make a name that's me, like a bird, and that's you, too."

Lanie was sulky now, frustrated, "What are you going to name him? Wormywren? Wrenskinny?"

"I don't know… you look like… a maiden."

"That's stupid. Maiden just means girl. Everybody in here looks like a petching maiden."

Minnie shrugged. She was used to Lanie's sulks. "I dunno. I mean there's what a word means, and then there's what it looks like. Maidens are girls in old Sylira stories, they're all… tragic and slender, and gentle and strong and stuff. Like The Maiden of the Lake. Or Maid Dumailier. I don't look like a maiden. I look like a girl. Or like a bird, apparently. Look at… Hannah! Big old square hannah with her droopy chin. Does she look like a maiden?

Lanie laughed - the laugh was fresh and rare and sweet, but the echo was harsh and foreign in the room. They both hushed. "No, I can't. Okay, okay. But still, what are you going to name him then? Wrenmaiden? HE's a boy!"

"I dunno. Maybe Wrenmaid? No. Wrenmae?"

"Wrenmae? Wrenmae. Wrenmae, Wrenmae, Wrenmae. Sir Wrenmae?"

"I don't think he's a knight."

"Alright."

"I don't want to copy a story. I want you to make your own kind of story."

"Okay. Can we start again?"

Minnie smiled and took her pen up, balancing the ink pot carefully on her knee.

"Alright. Once upon a time, there was a boy, named Wrenmae, and he was a traveller who didn't have anywhere he was going," she stopped, and looked at Minnie, "Does that sound stupid?"

Minnie's eyes were wide, "No! No! That sounds… dramatic!"

Lanie smiled and threw her shoulders back, stately. Like a maiden in a tale, "he was a traveller who didn't have anywhere he was going. And this shall be the book of his travels."

by **Philomena** on February 4th, 2013, 1:25 pm

Yshul

"Come off, Mins, What got you so petching milked today?"

"I warned you, Lanie. The book, its full."

Lanie frowned, "So we get another one. We got ink, right? We can get a book."

Minnie shook her head, "The ink, we just took from the keeper stores. You know how easy that is. A book? They don't even keep books around."

Lanie said, "Well, it doesn't have to be a book…"

"Papers expensive too. Even parchment is. And we don't have anywhere to keep it. We'd lose it. I'm sorry, I wrote as small as I could."

"What about, like, The Book?"

"My Circumnavigation?" Minnie's eyes widened.

"Sure, I mean, didn't you tell me? The last owner had things scrabbled in the margins, right?"

"No! No! I can't do that! I'm not writing in The Book!"

"K. What if we get another book?"

"They're more expensive than blank books!"

"But…" a sly grin snuck onto Lanie's face, "You don't have to go to a proper shop to get them. Old books, you can find them in the Rag 'n Bone."

Minnie frowned, "But they're still… expensive there…"

"But," Lanie's eyes brightened with the gleam of adventure, "Its a lot easier to nick 'em in a Rag 'n Bone, Mins."

They were in a corner alley off East Street. This was a red-paper street - one of the streets where the red-paper badges of prostitutes hung in the windows. At this time of the morning it was largely empty. Minnie stopped in the middle, "Lanie, you know I'm no good at that. Neither or you."

Lanie giggled mischievously, "How you think we learn? Qalaya wants you to!" she said the words int eh tone of a playful taunt, and began dancing around Minnie giggling, "Qalaya says, steal it! Steal it! Qalaya says, steal it! Steal it! How, says Qalaya, shall I ever know the end of the journey of Wrenmae through the cannibal jungles, if you don't steal it?"

Minnie blushed and laughed at the same time, "Lanie you're making a scene!"

Lanie laughed and made a mock serious face, looking serious, "No, Minnie-min. No, my daughter, this is prayer. We must pray. Qalaya says pray to her cousin, Yshul, to bring to you luck. For you must steal a book."

Minnie, shook her head, with the false maturity of two years senior, "Lanie, that's silly. Don't fuss with the gods."

Lanie laughed harder now, and started skipping in circles, and raising up her arms in playful imitations of the imploring gestures of a priest, "Come on, Minnie, we'll pray! Let's pray!

Yshul, Yshul,
Wren and Rook,
Ask you help us
Steal a book!

Yshul Yshul!
Maid and Crone!
Help us rob
The Rag and Bone!"

Minnie was beet red now, but laughing, too, "Stop it! Stop it Lanes!"

"Try it Minnie, its easy!

Yshul, Yshul!
Minnie and Lanes!
Put on a sleep
On the shopkeepers brain!

Yshul, Yshul!
Lanie and Min!
If the Guard comes to race us,
We'd best both win!"

"Fine! FINE! Fine, Minnie! We'll try it. Come on, stand still! Come here, we have to think about this."

*

The plan, was remarkably simply, really, one step above the simplest of plans (i.e.: "Grab it and run really fast"). Lanie would go in first, look for something off a top shelf, and ask to see it. She would ask lots of pointless questions. Minnie would slip in behind her, grab some rag-books, and go out the front door and run. The shop was a simple choice too - a girl wants a book from a rag and bone, she goes to one as close to the Uni as possible. And that meant Old Man Greenapple. To the clumsy eyes of the amateur thieves, it seemed fortuitous - Mr. Greenapple was an exceptionally old fellow, and came from quality - and quality didn't breed street smarts, they figured. As they went to the alley across from the shop and peered across at it, Minnie felt a sinking pit in her stomach, and felt the excitement to the tips of her fingers. Her lips shook slightly despite the sweltering heat.

"Lanie, maybe we should--"

Lanie looked hard at her, and cocked a half-grin, "Want me to start singing' again then, Miss Philomena?" She winked then, and with a certain forced cockiness, strutted across the street and into the rag and bone shop. Minnie waited. There was no choice now. She couldn't leave Lanie in there on her own - she realized, now, that this, and not her 'ability to pick the best book for margins' was why she'd been given the second job - because Lanie knew she wouldn't have the nerve to do the first. Hell, Lanie with her fast little legs was an immensely better choice anyway. But now, it was too late. The die was cast, and Minnie rose and crossed the street.

The door had a bell hooked to it, it jangled loudly as Minnie entered. Minnie tried not to look to the side, where the old man, standing atop a kelp-carton, stretched to pull a battered old mortarboard hat down with an air of amused imbecility. Lanie looked cool as a cucumber, and chatted amiably, "Its for a play, you know. The matrons, they want us to do a play, and I'm supposed to look for costumes."

"Is that so, now, child? Well, you cannot do a play about Zeltiva, without a scholar-cap, you're quite right there…"

Minnie crept past to the back room. She suppressed a gasp - so many beautiful, beautiful books, at least 20! She fingered them with all the lust and hunger of a sixteen year old boy on East street, and murmured the titles under her breath. She skipped the picture-plate book, though she so desperately wanted to take it - prints of the wildlife of Sylira! There was one book more gilt than the rest that she gasped over, but a tickle of conscience pricked her - if this really was for Qalaya, after all, she would want her to take what she needed, not what she wanted. So, in the end, she took two, fat books, with broken leather bindings: "An Account of a Land Journey to the Inland Sea", and "A Study of the Common Weevil: Controls and Complications."

These two, she slipped under her arm, and turned. And there stood Mr. Greenapple, his old finger gripping the collar of Lanie's dress. Lanie stared wild-eyed at Minnie, then with all the strength of her tiny limb, she kicked hard at the man's shin, and screamed, "Run Minnie! Run! Run!"

Mr Greenapple fell to the side of the doorway, grabbing at his shin, "You petching thieves! You motherless, dog-perching thieves!"

An opening appeared, and Lanie looked at her stoically, intently, in that instant of a second. Minnie stared, and before she could decide, she ran forward - not through the hole, but straight into the belly of Mr. Greenapple, the books held before her like a battering ram, tight in her arms.

It was just enough. The old mans' grip slipped for just long enough that Lanie turned and ran, accompanied by the rip of fabric as he gripped again, tearing away the left shoulder strap of her jumper, leaving the bodice flapping about her little body like a flag. Minnie stumbled, clumsily to the side, and ran behind her.

Mr. Greenapple turned, the breath knocked from his chest, and shouted after them, "You stay out of my shop, do you hear me, you little bastards?! You stay out!"

Lanie snatched one of the two books from Minnie, and they ran down University Hill, like Dira herself was stalking behind them.

by **Philomena** on February 4th, 2013, 1:31 pm

Vayt

Like every child in the orphanage, Minnie had been dreading the Bird for months. When it arrived, she had spent so long fearing it, she'd reached enough of a pitch, that she couldn't be startled, hardly. The fear transformed, but it was so long coming that the snap felt almost like a relief. She didn't feel anything that could be called a positive emotion - the sick feeling of surety was no friend, but the Bird, itself, it couldn't burn fear into her. It was the clear drop in the solutions she had seen in the philterer's shops, the clear drop that strikes the surface and crawls through the poison changing it from black to jewel red.

And the Bird itself was beautiful in its way. It was laid on her pillow like all the others had been. Since the first one came, now that she was an older girl, she'd talked the other veterans into setting aside the Gods of Lost Causes in their hole beneath the planking of the store-room: in a sense, justice had died, and the mark of the damned was supplanted - it came down darker, and with no reason, that she could see. The bird was a tiny grey passerine. The pin that the Bird Lady had offed it with still protruded from just behind the skull-case, like a slender silver sword, sheathed in the creature's brain. The wings were stretched out, as well, pinned out with two more silver pins, the feathers flayed out in full spread, the tiny details of fletching glinting against the dull murk of dirty-window-light.

The first ones had come with notes, the last few had not. Lanie had muttered just the day before that the Bird Lady must be growing tired. It was not just the notes, the bodies were more spartan - not so much less meticulously decorated, as… perhaps the Bird Lady had learned some morbid decadent form of elegance, simplicity. The last one to die had been lain naked on the bed, her lids closed over the empty sockets, with the bird simply lain across her breast. If you had not known it, she hardly looked dead at all. In contrast, the first child to die, a boy on the edge of the boy's ward, had been almost ceremonial, taro tic, his eyes removed and replaced with carefully wound balls of bird-nesting, the fingernails pierced with tiny golden stickpins, that glittered like tiny stars as the watch came to roll the boys body onto a gurney to take away. His shirt was torn open, and his blood had been smeared into characters across his chest, almost letters, almost comprehensible, pattering nervously on the edge of a comprehensible pattern. He had had the first bird on his pillow. The children had laughed and made up stories about it, then, had snitched the pins and pawned them for mizas, had even put the bird up on a stick and swooped it back and forth around the ward like a stuffed wood-cock. The boy had thrown a hissy, shouting that the bird was his. Noone would speak ill of him, now, but the whisper was that he'd probably eaten the thing.

Noone did those things anymore. Noone touched the bird on someone else's pillow anymore. One hardly touched one's own if one arrived. And no matter how hungry one was, one would never think of snacking the pins to pawn off. IF one did, no merchant in Zeltiva would have taken a silver pin from an orphan anymore. Everyone knew. The orphans had always been nuisances; now they were the damned. The market stall owners had taken to leaving carts of fruit just outside the market, not for charity as much as to beg the orphans to snick these instead of bringing the air of death they all carried now into the market itself. No normal citizen touched the offering, afraid to contaminate their hands with the ill omen of it.

The Watch came regularly to the orphanage now, not only every few weeks when a new bird showed, or the few days later when a child's body would be taken away, but in between, to follow leads, to interrogate. To re-interrogate. To plead for details that the children's terrified little minds simply could not pull out for them. Lanie had been questioned after Tappi's death, because she had fixed the hem of the little girl's skirt the morning of the day the bird arrived for her. They had pleaded with her for hours about the tiniest of details. Lanie had dreamt for three weeks about what color thread she used, the shape of her stitches, the state of Tappi's stockings, how long the girl had had a cold.

Minnie was not the first in the room to find her own bird. When she had entered, a circle of girls had stood ringed around it, at a respectful distance. At the foot of the bed, some of the girls had left gifts for Minnie, pity gifts: a half of an ink pot, a string of dried kelp, a plug of smoker weed, a prayer medallion, tarnished through to the wooden core. There was an element of the show to it, as well, though. The omnipresence of death had changed them all, Minnie had felt it, too. There was an element of the show to the entirety of the business, now - would they weep when they found their bird? Would they firm their chin and pull up some false courage? Would they throw the bird out? Would they shout?

Minnie didn't do anything. There was no courage at all in this: her mind emptied, seeing the bird pinned over pillow, and it could not choose any reaction at all. She simply stood. Watched.

It was Lanie who reacted. She trotted in five minutes later. Noone was particularly chipper those days, but Lanie, growing as tall and stretched as Minnie was short and compressed, was perhaps as close as one could come in the circumstances. She was whistling even. Then she saw the ring, and stopped. Then she saw the bed it wound around, and ran forward across the ward, her fleet feet planting on beds, springing past batter-boxes, pushing past the numb-faced, muttering observers, with their terrified, pointless theories:

"Its as she were on West Street last week! Nicky Buckles, 'e was on West just a day afore he got the Bird!"

"Bummy that. Jen Jonquil, she weren't never on West in her life, and she got the Bird."

She stopped again, seeing Minnie. Minnie looked up at her, her face still blank and empty, more just an instinctual movement, reacting to the peculiar scent of her friend's brand of unbathedness.

"No," Lanie muttered the word, not like shock, but like an order. "No. No! Petch it, no!"

She leapt forward then, and snatched the pillow up, with a gasp from the crowd, half-horror, half excitement in their voices. The ring drew back. Lanie rushed the pillow across the aisle to her own bed, and plopped it down, grabbing her own pillow and thrusting it onto Minnie's.

"NO! I PETCHING SAID NO!" she shouted, staring up at the roof.

Duna Fowls spoke up first, from the ring, for Minnie only stared, "Lanie, you know it don't work. Harvle tried that. Its not like with the Twin Dolls."

It was Hannah, now the great Matriarch sage of the Kennel, kept so long only because a shattered thigh-bone had left her a cripple who could find no place in town, that spoke then, lurching forward on her stick. She murmured, now, "Naw. It is nae like the dolls at all. We played at Gods, all us older girls, but it was only like a game. Laws're always like 'at, in the end. Just a petching game. The Bird Lady, she's not a game. She's the real thing. You canny escape the real thing, Mins. You canny turn it aside, Lanie."

Minnie turned now, and listening to Hannah, a piece of her came back. She looked at Lanie, and Lanie started to cry, a five year old's cry on a thirteen year old's face. Minnie, though, didn't say anything, but went over to Lanie's bed and took up the bird, delicately. Almost reverently. She set it back on her own bed, and without looking at Lanie, she murmured soft, a soft so delicate none would likely have heard had the room not petrified into a silent expectation for it:

"Lanes, 'tsmy Bird. Best let me keep it."

Lanie, though was unwilling to accept this. She ran out the same way she had run in, barking her shins on the box she'd so agilely vaulted before, stumbling drunkenly over a bed. Minnie, she heard, rushed after, but Lanie was stronger and faster than her, she had been for years, and she did not turn back or waste her breath on noise. It was a time for running. The calls were soon beyond her hearing. The stitch in Lanie's side stabbed at her gut cruelly. She half crawled with the stoop to relieve it, into the narrow place behind a tavern on East, and collapsed onto an empty ale-cask. She let her breath catch for only an instant before leaning back head to the sky and screaming.

"Petch you! Petch you, you petching Bird-lady, petch you, petch you…."

She looked up at the sky, and wiped a hand over her burning eyes.

//Stop, Lanie, think. Stop. Think.//

She laid back over the barrel now, and took a deep breath.

//Think. Think. We need help. Pray. We need to pray.//

//Petch that, if the gods wanted to save us...//

// …then they would, as soon they were asked. They do not come without an invitation. Maybe that's your story, Lanie. Maybe you are not a clever Uni girl like Minnie will be. Maybe you're the priestess. Maybe you are the faithful one.//

Lanie shivered and knelt down in the mud beside the barrel. Her eyes stared dully at the rough oak planks of it, then closed, very slowly, and she murmured very soft under her breath:

"Tyveth! Tyveth, god of Justice… god of Justice, listen to me please. Please, bring justice here. Viratas, the blood, you can hear the blood of the dead? No… no… Lhex, Lhex… Lhex, take this fate away, take it away, please, please. Not on my friend… not on my friend…"

The street was silent. She looked around, looked up. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. She beat her fists against the barrel, "What do you want, all of you? What do you want from me? I have nothing! Nothing!"

She stared down at her hands frantically, and dug through the mud, finding a shard of torn copper sheeting, "Is this what you want?" She held the jagged thing against her hand and dug into it with a squeal, dug deep and long, let the blood pour onto the hogshead, "Is it? Is that what you want? Take it! TAke it! Take the whole petching lot of it! I'm tired of this! I'm tired of all of it, I'm…" she looked down angrily and started dragging the filthy improvised blade across the other hand. Her first hand was weaker now, clumsy around something torn in the palms.

"Silly child." and a rolling, dark, lovely laugh, "What sort of god are you calling for anyway?"

She turned. There at the entrance to the alleyway stood a man. He was dressed trim in a sable coat and a silk doublet over long, silken, immaculately clean white hose. He held an ebony stick in his hand and wore a broad sable-black velvet tam on his hair. He looked… wrong. Beautiful, sleek, seductive. And ineffably, somehow wrong.

"Who are you?"

The man ignored the question, spinning the stick absently around his pointer and middle finger. He smiled charmingly, "Think logically, Alanza, won't you? What God worth his salt would want his servants WEAKER for their worship of them? Your blood is your strength. You always, always, always keep your strength, child."

"Who are you?"

HE chuckled, a warm fruity chuckle, "You know. You know who I am. You played with the idea of me once, even, though perhaps not for so long. I am a misunderstood fellow, people always think so ill of me! But you see how kind I am? What a gentleman I am? I come even though you forgot to call me."

"You… you…"

"Yes. I am just that. Just what you're thinking. I'm here to grant your wish. And with style, my dear, with style!"

"You… you will stop the Bird Lady?"

"Will I? Will I! Of course not. Do you think, I want to get my hands messy? It would be a shame to ruin these gloves." he smirked, flashing the gleaming white calfskin, the stitching so fine it looked like the skin of his hands was simply white.

"I did not call you, because…"

"Because you thought I could not help, oh yes, I know it. And now you're a bit upset aren't you? You think I said no. But I am saying yes. I will not kill your little bugbear, no. That's hardly my style, though she's weak enough there's no point really in keeping her alive. No, child, none of that. You will kill her."

"I…"

"Yes, yes. Oh for the sake of the Ukalas, can we get through the stuttering glassy-eyed supplicant part? Sit down, now, sit down. Listen closely, and we shall work this out. I do not kill, not when I don't have to. But I arm others to do my work for me, now don't I?"

She frowned. Vayt. It was Vayt. She knew it, with the sick pallor of the fear in her belly. This was Vayt, she was talking to a god.

//Buck up, steel yourself, Lanie. Vayt does not like weakness. Don't wallow. Be strong.//

She cleared her throat, as bravely as she could, and dropped the copper shard. Her hands… were clear now. The flesh was not even marked. She said. "I would rather stand. What will you give me?"

Vayt laughed, "There we are! A girl with some spirit! Though you've much to learn about deal-making, dear. You see, the wise always ask the cost first. So I will pretend you did. The cost, is the Mark. You know the nature of my mark?"

"Blight."

"Good show. That's quite right. You will do jobs for me. You will… run errands for me, sometimes. It is a good life. You wished to have a role in the world, you see? Its hardly a cost at all. And one more thing, of course, a very small thing - you know how these stories always turn. You do not do things in ones. You do them in threes."

"What do you mean?"

"You wish me to kill your Bird Lady, non, my little one? But I can't imagine you want me to plague the whole city to do it, now do you?"

"No! No!"

"Of course not. Well, I am a god, aren't I? I can… target the sword I put in your hands, as it were. So we shall, for now, simply lay the blade down where I direct it. Three necks shall feel its blows. For these things, you know, they always come in threes."

"And what do you give me."

"Aside from power and protection?"

She frowned sourly, "What do you give me that I want."

He chuckled, "You will learn to want it, my little one. You are too sensible to wish for weakness. But for your wants now, then, I have not forgotten them. There shall be three necks I said, non? The second neck shall be your Bird Lady."

She spoke up fiercely, "Before she touches Minnie. I'm not to be tricked."

He chuckled, darkly and an elegant finger traced his eyelid, just above a narrow dark line that gave his pupils a depth and beauty like the Eypharian's painted faces, "Of course, child. Of course. I promise it. Gods do not break promises, for they do not let mortals break them either."

She shuddered darkly. Two other people would die. She would be a murderer, she would murder to save Minnie - it was no longer a question of possibilities, of the hypothetical, she knew that she would give in, because her heart was lusting for the sight of the Bird Lady quivering helpless, of Minnie safe. Of the world made whole. Two other people. Would she be any better than the Bird Lady? Yes. Yes, yes. She would kill two, but if she didn't how many more times would the Bird appear? How many more than two?

"What do I do?"

He smiled, a smile almost benevolent, "You say, yes, my little one."

"Very well. Yes. I'll be marked for you. You keep your promise, and I will keep mine."

She sighed as she said it, and felt a burning on her breast, not an unpleasant one, but a persistent one. She looked at Vayt, and her eyes grew wide, "I am the first. You are taking me first. I'm the first neck"

He chuckled, "Nonsense, Alanza. That is the mark, it is being made. Pull back your bodice and see. Oh gods above, don't be shy on my account! I've seen a thousand bubs more plump than yours, my scrawny one. There. You see?"

And she did. There above her left breast, there was a mark, black and shining, a diamond. She touched it gingerly. Shining and dark and smooth, like the eye of a bird.

by **Philomena** on February 4th, 2013, 1:32 pm

Krysus

Lanie had no reason to fear. Or every reason. The first neck was on the way home, a man she had never seen, a wheedle-faced young buck of the upperclass. //Touch him, touch him// she had heard. She had run into him as she passed, like a good pickpocket. A half block away, she heard the scream, turned, and saw the man squealing on the ground, his face a mass of sudden, apoplectic color. She turned and ran as fast as she could.

Every night, since, she had crawled into Minnie's bed, after the lights went out. The first night Minnie had protested, but Minnie was no stoic. She could not push back against comfort too long. Lanie slept fiercely by her friend's side every night, her sleep a rigid battle of muscles against mattress. She did not dream, and woke at the slightest of sounds. The othe girls - usually quick to mock anything that showed the weaknesses of too deep a human attachment - said nothing. They hardly spoke to Lanie and Minnie at all, casting their eyes down.

Minnie hid the bird before the matron arrived, and noone ratted her out. She simply - and Lanie understood this - did not want to deal with it all. The matron knew nothing about it. The workers began, even, to mutter hopefully, for it had been nearly four weeks now since the last death, and no bird! Miraculous! Perhaps the business was finally done.

The girls though - and the boys - they all knew, and they left Lanie and Minnie a wide berth. Gifts trickled in now and then: a scone one day, a tin of butter-tea, one day even from who knew where, a notebook. IT was the way of things. There was no coldness, no anger at the doomed. Only pity. And fear.

Lanie did not tell Minnie what had happened. She wanted to. She almost did, day after day, but somehow, she couldn't. Minnie even asked her why she wore her over robe to bed. The robe covered the little black diamond, which would show on the ill-fit linen nightie. She didn't say this to Minnie. She said she was cold. Minnie coughed, and shrugged, and mumbled, "Its that time, I guess, where all the foreign-coughs come in port."

And so, this night, she huddled close. Minnie was splayed out snoring. Lanie could smell the sweat of her armpits, her thigh. But nonetheless, she huddled close to her, her hand, her fateful hand like a sword inside her robe.

And then, the air felt strange and dark, and the room grew suddenly sleepy. Lanie fought against it, desperately, for suddenly she knew - this was it. This was the day. This sleep, this was not right, she was too taut for it… but it came, oh how it came, oh how powerfully it came.

And then, she was awake again, but with the paralysis of a dream on her, her limbs stuck stiff to their places. And there above her was the Bird Lady.

Lanie was a storyteller, and she told herself stories of the Bird Lady. None of them were right. She was small, and grey, and had deep, almost kindly eyes. Her voice, too, had a shuddering age to it, a sort of pity to it.

"Hello, children. How strange to have two. Shall I lie you together, my birds? We could make a tableaux. You are so pretty there, beside each other. You would like to stay together, non? Yes, yes, my darlings, my little birds. You would like that, yes.

Then Lanie, still frozen, heard a second voice - it was Minnie's, grating and very soft, but Minnie's, "This is all Lanie, isn't it? Who do we pray to now, sis?"

And somewhere, underneath the stone of her throat, Lanie found her own voice, "Pray to Krysus, Minnie. Pray for me, to Krysus."

And with that, she heard a chuckle in her mind, and she was free. The Bird Lady's face balled up into a frown, "What is this, little bird? No, no, please! Please lay down. Lay in your nest, my sweet."

Lanie did not lay on her nest, she leapt up, and put her hand on the woman's face. The Bird Lady shrieked wildly, and the room, with a suddenness that spoke of broken died, flew into an uproar. Lanie felt more than saw it, felt Minnie leaping up and screaming, and grabbing at the woman's flailing arms, felt the rush of the Watch-guard who slept outside the door, felt her heavy boots tromp over the floor, felt the reverberations of his shouts, felt girls shouting, rushing in a body toward the bed, then stopping, making a ring. But most of all, she felt the Bird Lady's tiny wizened face, felt, beneath her hand, the boils of a pox forming, felt the way she writhed, felt her own knees on the women's belly. Finally Minnie grabbed her wrist. The guard was here, now. She took the woman's shoulder, and struck a hard truncheon blow across her face.

by **Philomena** on February 4th, 2013, 1:35 pm

Rak'keli

The trial never came. Before it could, the Bird Lady was dead. The last bird was taken up and thrown away by the matrons - one of the older girls retrieved it, and they had it stuffed, then laid it beneath the floorboards with the Gods of Lost Causes.

They all treated Lanie like a hero. She hated it, terrified each time a girl slapped her on the shoulder, that the sword would fall on its third neck, and resentful besides of the attention. None of them understood. They thought simply that the Bird Lady had already been sick, that Lanie had bravely woken just in time, and caught her off guard. Minnie positively fled the attention on her - Minnie was the one who held the Bird Lady's hand down. The story had inflated to say that the Lady had held a knife in it, that it would be hilt deep in Lanie's back. The Two Sisters, they called them now. Minnie had taken, now, to waking in the night so as to be dressed and rush out into the city before the girls could grab her. She skipped breakfast. Sometimes she did not come home at all at night.

Lanie knew that part of it was her, that part of it was that Minnie knew. She did not understand, almost certainly, but she knew. Lanie would come to her at night, and lay down, and Minnie would stare at her, terrified and say nothing. And Lanie would fall asleep. And in the morning, Minnie would be gone.

There was more to it all too. Lanie found she was growing beautiful. This was horrible for an orphan girl, who already had begun to stand out. Her skin grew clear and milky, her breasts finally developed, her hips formed. Her hair grew richer. And Minnie, Lanie realized, grew worse at the same time. She was getting paler, her eyes were getting haggard. Lanie resented this, was almost angry about this: she had worked so hard, she had given up so much to save her friend, and what came of it? Why wouldn't she just get some sleep, for perch's sake?

But then, Lanie knew, she felt the real horror she had, the real worry there. She felt it, felt it bulging into her mind, this hint at what was happening to her friend. And she ignored it with all her might.

She woke one morning, so late that she could not see her own hand, and Minnie was sitting up in bed. She stripped her sweaty blankets off, pulled off her woolens, and sat shivering in the winter cold, her skin burning red. And Lanie knew then. The bulge in her brain became too great, and it burst.

"Minnie, you're sick."

"I'm fine." she chattered.

"You're not fine, you're sick, just--"

"I said I'm petching fine, Lanes. Just the regular catarrh."

"No its not --"

"I PETCHING SAID I'M FINE."

It was, Lanie thought, perhaps the first time Lanie had ever heard Minnie shout at someone. She crawled out from under her blankets and sat by Minnie. Minnie rubbed tenderly at a spot on her side, closing her eyes. Lanie followed the movement of her hand, and saw tiny dark pinpoints in the raw linen of her shift. It was too dark, to see color, but she knew what it was. Blood.

"Show it to me, Mins."

She looked at Minnie's face. Minnie was sobbing, her burning, shivering cheeks swollen with it. Minnie sniffed hard. Her nose always ran when she cried. Lanie had always made fun of her for it in their playful way, called her Snot-fountain. IT had made her laugh before, made her feel better. Lanie knew, this time it wouldn't work, she kept silent. Minnie, finally, without looking at Lanie, took a shivering hand and gripped the end of her shift, pulling up the skirt, past her hip, to show the side of her belly, smeared a boiling rash of swollen, blood pustules.

"Oh gods… Oh… Oh gods, they're like--"

"--her face. That night. They're like… what… what you did to her face."

Lanie felt cold, empty. Three necks. She had only sliced two so far, or so she thought.

"I… that's why you're so mad at me."

Minnie shuddered, half the shiver, half a spasm of more tears coming up. Lanie leaned over to wrap an arm around her, then stared, horrified, at her own arms, clean, clear, sweet-skinned, dappled with the glorious corners of a tan, in the middle of winter, she drew back.

Minnie spoke very soft, shivering harder now, her words almost lost in her teeth, "I'm not mad at you, Mins. I know you didn't mean this to happen. I don't know what you did. But I know why you did it. I would have done it for you, but I don't think no god would have listened. Not even Qalaya."

"Oh… oh Minnie…"

"No, Lanie, no. Please. Don't apologize. You're the bravest girl I know. You tried to save me. And you saved a bunch of other girls, didn't you?"

They sat in silence a moment. LAnie said nothing, numb, her stomach a knot of cold iron. IT was Minnie who broke the silence finally, "Who do I pray to know, sister mine?"

Lanie shook her head softly, "Qalaya Minnie. That's who you always pray to. You write it all down."

"I can't. Isn't that horrible? I can't now. My hands shake too much."

"Then you tell the story, I'll write. Even in my big sloppy letters."

Now Minnie laughed, it was a horrible racking sound through the shivers, but she laughed, "Me? I don't tell stories."

"Tell one now, Mins. I'll clean up the wording for you when I write it."

And softly, softly, Minnie chattered out a story, "Wrenmae sailed a long, long ways, across the sea. He did not sail north, he did not sail south. He took his ship, his magic swan-ship with a crew of birds, and he turned the tiller straight to the East, to the great empty sea."

Lanie cried, a little bit now, "To the great, empty, heart of the sea."

Minnie, weakly, smiled, "Yes, Lanie, that's beautiful. You're always beautiful when you tell stories. Write it like that."

*

The next morning, Minnie didn't leave. She couldn't crawl out of her bed. The matrons rushed in they gave her soup, and muttered implications against the Bird Lady again, spreading a disease to take one last girl, their whispers hushed in that peculiar way one hushes something one expects to be an open secret. Lanie didn't leave. Minnie fluttered in and out of consciousness.

Lanie leaned over the girl's bed, on her knees, in the cold. She relished the pain this caused, tiny bubbles of sacrifice that felt like the beginnings of an apology. She knelt, and with a shaking voice, no trace of her strength left in it, she prayed.

"Rak'keli, Lady of Healing. I guess… I guess we're like enemies now… but please…"

"That's not why she won't answer, little one."

It was the voice of Vayt. No form, no vision this time. Only voice.

"You tricked me."

He chuckled, "Of course I did. I will tell you a secret. I knew how strong you are. And I knew this girl would make you weaker."

"You're wrong," she was out of defiance, and she spoke with a pleading tone now, "If she dies, something in me will die. I will be weaker for it."

"Rak'keli, the old cow, she wouldn't know a betrayal if it smacked her in the face, that isn't what keeps her away from this pudgy little gamine of yours, darling. She's always ever so ready for a story of redemption. Its simply that, she knows the law. The law of the gods. The law of the gods is that what is fair is fair. You, my sweetling, made a deal with me. This is part of the deal."

"I don't want the deal anymore."

He laughed, "Nonsense. You just don't want to pay your part. Your still more than happy that I paid mine."

Her mind raced, and she muttered a moment. Then she said, "Not… yet."

"Not yet?"

"Not yet. No, not yet. You… I… I promised. I… I promised. But we didn't set a time?"

"But time, child, is my prerogative."

"Yes. And you want me… you want me to work for you, right? You want someone strong. I will be stronger, if we put this payment off. I want it for me, sure. But you want it to, for you, if you think on it. You want someone to spread this who is a whole person. Who isn't broken. You want your plague spread by a person, not a drudge, eh?"

There was a moment's silence.

"It will break you just as much to leave her, non? You aren't taking this whelp along with you."

"I… I know. But it won't break me. It will hurt. It won't break me."

"Alright. Very well. But I will not leave her forever. Her day will come too, my little sweet."

Dira

Minnie's eyes fluttered open a few minutes later. Her breathing was labored, her eyes wild, "Lanie? Lanie, I can't see you."

Lanie leaned in close. Minnie's eyes were blank and dull, "Minnie? Sister, I'm right here. I'm right here."

"Lanie? Take my hand Lanie."

"I can't. I can't. I'll make it worse. I'll make it hurt more."

"Lanie, don't go."

"I can't do anything."

"I know who to pray to now, Lanie. I know who to pray to. This is the last prayer isn't it. This is when I pray to Dira, isn't it? Everyone prays to someone, but in the end, everyone prays to Dira."

Lanie was crying now, her voice shook, "Minnie, I'm going--"

"NO! No, please. Lanie, please. Promise me. Promise me you'll stay. I can't… I'll be asleep soon."

"Minnie."

"Please! Please Lanie, promise me. Promise me."

"I… I promise…"

"Tell me a story, Lanie? Tell me a story. Tell the end to me, tell me the last story. We have him sailing, now, past the great sea worm, don't we? Tell me the end now, Lanie. I can't pray to Qalaya anymore, and she never came. You be Qalaya for me, now."

Lanie poured from her eyes, her lips shook. She wrapped her hands to her belly, as Minnie raced her eyes around desperately trying to see her, only seeing blurs, wrinkling her brows at splashes of color. Lanie leaned in close, so close that Minnie found her, and started moving a hand to her.

"Alright… but you must promise, not to touch me, Minnie. You gotta promise."

"I promise, just… just stay there. Where I can see you."

"Alright… the worm was gone, and the sea as deep and hollow as ever…"

*

30 minutes later, Wrenmae's ship was sailing over the edge of the sea, and into the night sky. There was only a few lines left, to lay it in the stars. And Minnie was sound asleep. The fever was heavier than ever, but Lanie saw, with a sad gladness, that it would break. The crisis was coming. Minnie would survive it. She took Minnie's book - they were in the margins of the last of four books they'd stolen over the years. And she wrote, in as clear a hand as she could, all she had told. And she stopped. in the same place. And then she wrote one last note:

"Philomena,

I'm sorry I broke my promise. I have to leave. Maybe someday I'll come back, and I'll tell you the last part. Its my favorite part. Minnie, I'm sorry.

Your sister, always,

Alanza

PS - Please, forgive me. And stick to Qalaya, Minnie. She's yours. I've seen another God, now, and it isn't what I always thought I wanted. Find stories to write down. And someday I'll come back, and write the end of ours. I promise."

by **Philomena** on February 4th, 2013, 1:35 pm

Qalaya

Dear Qalaya,

I learned a story today, in the Library. I stayed there for seven hours, and the librarian smiled at me, was kind even, when I ate my sandwich right there at the table. I was careful, do not worry. I kept it from the books. I learned where my copy of the Book came from. I'm looking farther, now, there are some mysteries around it. I wrote my notes before this. It is maybe a dull story, but its my story. Its the first story in a long time I have to tell without help.

It hardly matters, now she's gone.

I have not spent as much time reading and studying this last year as i should. The murders are over now, though, and I have nothing else to keep me occupied. And now, there are even people there who know me. Doctor Furthing at the Library even asked me what I was studying, and brought me a book on shipbuilding, because I told her I didn't understand how it went, and Captain WRight rushed through all those parts. She smiled, and laughed when I asked her about the Field Notes of Bethany Edgetower. She chuckled and said to me, "Child, I have no doubt, one day you'll be able to go to the upper floors without an escort, though I wish I knew who had snuck you up the first time! And one day, after that, I have no doubt, you will have a little key to that cabinet you saw." So, she was sure, sure I would be there one day.

I would have danced at this a month ago. It hardly matters, now she's gone.

I don't know where she went. I asked the ships, and I don't think she took one. I know she isn't in the city, I KNOW it. We know the city together her and I, and she could not keep from me in it. She's gone. She must have taken a seat on a drover-cart. Maybe she is in Sylira. God how I miss her, and hate her and love her all at once. I wonder if you ever feel that. I wonder if gods can hate and love someone all at once. It is something, maybe, a philosophy reading could answer? I could search for it, maybe, in the theologists.

I won't, the answer hardly matter now. She's gone.

She's gone. She's gone. She's gone. The other words are only echoes, and this is the bell that is echoing them: a heavy steel bell, that swings its clapper back and forth, singing low and solemn: She's gone, she's gone. It hardly matters now, she's gone.

by **Echelon** on April 1st, 2013, 6:53 pm

Adventurer's Loot

A Gift
Experience is its own reward.

Minnie's Loot :

(Beautiful read, as always, I especially loved the Vayt story, though I sense that is due to the fact you had most love for that story as well. Shame so much of it I couldn't hand out lores for, since it wasn't entirely about Philo.) - if you have ANY questions or concerns about this grading, please PM me.

Flashback Seven Prayers of Alanza-Mae