Butterflies Leap Plashless as They Swim

[Philomena]

Spring 51, 514
The Piers of Abura Harbor
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It was not so much that the chair looked unsafe - had the spindly contraption of ropes been, for example, hanging from a ceiling, Minnie would perhaps have been quite enraptured by it. It made her think, in some sense, of the window-game she had played with her darlings, in her much younger days, hitching them to the shutters to swing out and back from her second story window. Had it been like this, she would have looked at it, perhaps, with the same mix of nervousness and excitement that Shearsy or Gypa would have imagined the window-shutters in spring-time.

This contraption, however, was to leave the ground, and that left her with a sick feeling. She had seen, in the Opera House for example, the flight of an Akvatari several times. But it had seemed a beautiful, glorious, and entirely foreign thing - had she even considered the possibility that she herself would fly, she would have presumed that if it was intended for her, then Lhex would have put her spirit in the body of a titmouse or a dragonfly. As things stood, she was a human, and humans did NOT fly.

It was, for all that, a beautiful object, this seat, a broad plank like a bower swing suspended from an ornately carved, and long dead cottonwood by two long, braided cords of silk-smooth fiber, the provenance of which she could not quite decide. The color wavered back and forth between pale gold, dull grey, and shades of heady auburn-russet. She reached out to touch them, delicately, quietly, with her gloved hand. They were smooth, but the individual strands varied from each other - some flicked tiny curls outward, some were coarser, some as fine as…

“Hair…” she said the word with a breath of surprise, her finger lacing through a slender strand of blue ribbon woven delicately into the stout braiding of a thousand sundry hairs.

At this a soft plashing came from the water beside the pier where she stood, and a boy of the Akvatari, perhaps… seventeen, if she judged from his face (which she realized she did not know whether or not aging was comparable with humans)… pulled himself with a languorous grace up a series of handholds on the side of the piling. He landed on the planks with the clever movements of practice, and and then unfolded a set of pale, melon-orange wings, laced with a delicacy that, in Zeltiva, she would have thought of as feminine, with thin whirling strands of sawdust-yellow, and a shot of dark crimson near where they met his back. He shook the water from his wings, an activity that involved tiny flexing of the muscles around his collarbones, and smiled, speaking with the softness she was beginning to grow used to in the people of Abura.

“The sun beats hard today, milady, I ask that thou wouldst forgive me for not observing thee earlier.”

She blushed, and curtsied, with a clumsy awkwardness that she grew more and more aware of each day she spent amogst the graceful inhabitants of the island. The man nodded, but a kind of sharpness entered his eyes - not a cruel sharpness, but the sharpness of one who suddenly notices something he wishes to observe.

She spoke in a voice made small, “I’m… I’m terribly sorry, I know… I… I need a… to… to have a ride, I need to… to visit…”

He smiled, with the kindliness of an early spring thaw, and put a finger to her lips. The peculiar physical intimacy of the people’s interactions continued to confuse her in retrospect, but each time it happened, in the midst of it she found it tremendously calming.

“The lady wishes to hire my services? I am honored.”

“May I ask the fare? Please forgive… forgive me, I don’t… really know the etiquette.”

He shrugged with a kind of diffidence, a sort of tiredness, at the mention of money, but said, “A few copper nilos, milady. Or… a lock of they hair, as I have not carried thee before.” At this, his smile was almost sly.

She blinked at this, but said softly, “My… hair? It is… not very pretty, I do not know if you will… will think the same if you see it…”

HE smiled more generously, then, and said, “May I?” and set a hand to where she had tied the hair inside a long, white kerchief. She nodded, and he leaned forward, so that she could feel the tickle of the damp down of his child-arms against her neck. She felt the vibrations of his fingers as he deftly unworked the knot, and unwrapped her hair with the gentle caution of a furrier touching uncured sables. Then, he breathed, three long, slow breaths that ran across her cheek, down her neck, and into the hollows of her shoulder and bust. As he breathed these three breaths, he ran his fingers through the strands, slowly, his eyes even sharper now, the eyes of an appraiser.

“Thou hast… been traveling, recently, by sea - in fact, thy hair hath bathed in the saltwater itself, not simply in the spray,” he said, in a dreamy, low voice, his fingers now in the roots of her hair. Then, they travelled outwards, “And yet… before this, thy head saw very little sun… no, not the simple dark of thy northern winters… no… thou wast hidden away? I do not think sick, thy purposes were otherwise. And before that…”

He frowned, and his eyes grew heavy, “Yes, before… that…”

He bowed low, then, while Minnie stood stricken and a bit pale, “Milady, somehow in your travels, thy hair has tangled into a dance. I would be honored to free the dance from it.”

Minnie tried to ask about this, but failed, instead simply nodding, red-cheeked. The man, with great care, cut a lock from the middle, where it would show least, and then carefully put the kerchief back around the remainder. Then he took the hank and went to the chair, and holding weight up with one hand, and with the help of a tiny metal hook, he wove the strands into the right braid. She looked, when he had finished, but she could not discern them from the rest of the braid. This felt comforting, for a reason she could not quite place.

“You have…. you… collected all of this?”

He shook his head as he turned again, ready to take the chair from where it hung, “Oh no, milady. My mother, and her father before that.”

Minnie smiled, “So, it is… a family artwork.”

He smiled now, with genuine warmth, “Yes, milady. I think of it thus. I have, now, my mother’s hands, working the same threads she worked.”

Minnie opened her mouth, but blushed, “I’m sorry, I do not mean to keep you from your work.”

“It is my honor milady. Thou hast another question?”

“I was… I was going to ask if you ever show it to her, now? If she hears your... your new stories?”

He said nothing, but his smile softened, and he took Minnie’s had gently in his own, guiding it to the left hand braid. She stepped forward to reach it, and he laced his fingers in her own. He closed his eyes, and his fingers guided hers, delving into the heart of one of the cables of the braid. He seemed to concentrate for a moment, and then Minnie felt his fingers hook a collection of hairs, as much almost as to make a strand of fine yarn.

“This… thou feelest these strands. What dost thou feel?”

“Hair... its… old… a little rough. It is curly, I guess? Has it… been in the sun i guess?”

She felt two lips against her forhead then and turned to see the boy smiling kindly, “That was my mother. She was my first customer. I carried her body to her bier.”

And with that he fluttered his wings outward so that he no longer stood at Minnie’s own level, and slid the hair-braids from their branch, while Minnie stood, rooted. He slid two long loops over his shoulders, and said very softly, “Milady, have a seat, thou hast paid me in full. Tell me where I shall take thee.”

x

[Philomena]

To say that the chill of flying was what struck Minnie first would be a lie: what struck Minnie first was the utter terror of the knowledge that if she let go of the two braids, or slid from the plank seat, she would have no power capable of keeping from the sands and stone below her. However, once the impression of this subsided enough to allow SOME other mode of thought then… well, then it was a mild sense of nausea that next struck her. Which made the chill actually a bit comforting, for it suppressed the nausea at least a little bit. She had not dressed for a chill: the cotton spring-dress she’d scavenged from Kenabelle’s wardrobe was far softer, but significantly less warm than the linsey-woolsey frock she would have worn at this time of year in Zeltiva, and the grey worsted-wool cloak she’d kept was so marvelously pretty that she had trouble thinking she ought to be wearing it under most circumstances. And it had NOT been chilly on the ground, in her defense - it had, in fact been already warm, considering it was merely Springtime.

The city, though, was beautiful, and in a way difficult to understand from the ground. From the ground, it reminded her of the a woman she had known in Zeltiva. She’d been a dreamer, with little chance of doing anything about it for she was a fisherwoman. So her dreaming gave her little, but for an eye for pretty things. In her house, she’d had a deep windowsill above her bed, and each day, on her way along the sea-strand, she would watch, carefully, for things that caught her eyes. Chunks of sea glass, beautiful, twisted knots of driftwood, patent medicine bottles, anchor-chain links, all would get tucked into the pouch of her apron, brought home and set up on the shelf. The shelf itself, she did not order, really, it was merely a place to store them - when she wanted to look at one piece, she would pull it down and hold it in her lap, run fingers around it, turn it over, over, over again. But to Minnie, the objects lived as a queer crazy-quilt collection of rust and glass and steel and birchwood, dark and low, tall and slender, sharp, soft, smooth or rust-cankered. A collection of prettinesses.

From the ground, the city looked like this, to her, some buildings built broad and deeply-gabled like the University, some like tall, thin watchtowers, some like eruptions of the earth itself, some bright and covered in windows, others dark and shadowed. All, like most of the things she saw in the city, very beautiful, tumbled together like bits of seaglass. But from the air… from the air, she could see a kind of interplay between them, conscious or no. One building made of hard angles of grey stone thrust upwards like a shaft, through the jade-green, milk-laced coils of a building that looked less like a mortal structure, than the decaying shell of a long-forgotten sea creature, in a way that from the ground looked merely convenient in terms of available real estate, but from the air made the fingers of green wind sinuously about it, the artificial and the organic playing at counterpoints with a conversation of form and color, even as the green winding building emerged from a bulbous swell of coral pink and broad sheets of shimmering translucent glass - a third, clearly independently built structure.

“Where are we going?” she called out.

The boy - for she realized she had never asked a name - beat his tail blithely at the air in time with his wings, as if it, too, somehow kept him afloat, above her, “I do not know, milady. That hadst not yet given me our destination.”

Minnie gasped at her own stupidity, and started a bit, and the start shook the seat, which made her yelp, and grip the braids tightly, “I’m… I’m sorry, I—“

“If I felt concern at a lack of destination, milady, thou wouldst have heard me ask for one earlier. Thou hast not seen the city. It hath been a pleasure to see thee see it,” his smile was on the edge of a grin now, and, with a kind of puckishness, he winked. Minnie blinked at this, for Akvatari were not known for being puckish or playful.

“I… the truth is I do not know where… where ’tis, sir.”

“A name?”

“The House of Lives Lived.”

He cocked his head, “It is not… a museum, per se, milady, thou must understand. If thou wishes to see a gallery, I could take thee elsewhere.”

“No, no, I… I am… am doing, some research.”

His brows went up at that, “Research? Milady is a scholar then?”

She nodded, and bowed at the neck, very, very timidly, lest the movement set the braids swinging again.

He nodded, “Very well then, milady.”

And he dipped, again. The flight of the Akvatari was not the swooping, darting work of birds, but had a dreamy quality, moth-like and wandering. The city, was not small, but it also was not crowded, and many of the buildings lay, apparently, empty. Navigation, to her, was incomprehensible, because it seemed to occur in three dimensions instead of two - sometimes she would flutter upwards several ‘blocks’ past doorways, some occupied, some hollow and unseeable, only to have them turn abruptly and travel forwards, or sideways instead. Her pilot seemed to be in no hurry, and often followed these routes with a languorousness almost like whimsy, taking long, swooping arcs along towers that left her, as near as she could tell, where she had started. Eventually, he took her to a high pinnacle of the city, and then fluttered upward a few beats into the open air until she found herself lifted to where she could see far outwards.

Here, the city stretched below her like a half battered pipe-organ built by madmen, and then, beyond it… nothing. A long, vast stretch of dead, white-grey sand stretched on and on and on along the pearly blue-white of the ocean’s edge. It rippled in her sight, with wavers that she realized were the sharp-cornered shadows of dunes. Far, far ahead, the island reached its far side, and if she peered, she could almost imagine the continent proper, beyond that, as a haze of green. But this, she knew, was perhaps just seeing what she wished to see.

Then, he began down, down, down, and into an older part of the city, a part that predated, perhaps, some of the harbor structures, for here the construction was, while equally beautiful, less lofty. Here the tall spires of the deep-city were traded in, and some of the buildings even reached the earth at their entrances. At the heart of this, the city grew lower, and lower until she saw a heavy pile of natural brown-grey stone, and from it, a long slender aqueduct.

“The Spring of Abura, milady. There, beside it, is the arsenal of the Spring Guard. And just beside it, that is the House of Lives Lived.”

It was an odd building, a long colonnade with a low roof of tile baked from red clay, around a peristyle with a pool of still blue water. At the end of the collonade, as they drew closer, there was a statue of a lone figure, an Akvatari woman in the nude, writhing with back arched, one hand buried in her thick hair, and the other digging nails into the flesh of her belly. Behind this, there was a spire, curved, like a scorpions tail, formed of a dun stone, blank but for the tip, which was formed entirely of glass.

Her pilot hovered delicately at the far end of the pool so that Minnie was able, with shaking legs to crawl off the seat and onto the promenade, which was closely flagged in natural field stone. Moss grew between them, luxurious in the arid air. She bent and set her hand against a vein of it, and when she turned already she could see the young Akvatari some distance from her, following the line of the spire-tops towards the city center. She put her hand to her hair, the kerchief was still in place. Then she turned, leaning on her stick for a moment with her eyes closed to regain her footing.

Opening them again, she began to walk, slowly towards the pool. The air near it was moist, but the day, now out of the high winds, was growing stuffy. The flags beside the pool were carefully swept but utterly unworn, still bearing the crisp lines of fresh river-shale, from somewhere afar off.

“But then…” she murmured, “I s’pose they wunny use the path with this long pool, ‘en.”

And she smiled, a timid smile that spoke of a normally obedient child dipping her toes in the mud when mummy isn’t looking. She wore shoes, today, but thin ones, slippers practically, for her boots were still seeking repair. So she slipped them off, held her thin skirts up to her knees, and went into the water.

By a trick of the light, it was deeper then it looked, and she squealed a bit as the cold of it climbed up to the middle of her shoulder blades. But it felt divine, clear and clean, and saltless. She waded forward in it with her eyes, again, closed, feeling the sheer pleasure of the dirt working out from the crevices of her elbows, from the hairs of her armpits, from the hollows of her bellybutton. She wished, of sudden that she knew how to swim, to really swim, with grace and power. She turned, and attempted it, clumsily, incompetently, kicking her feet out like a marching soldier, and feeling her wet kerchief slip, feeling the scarf around her neck begin to pull and slide.

Well, she thought, At least I haven’t painted my ink on.

She had a bit of natural buoyancy to her, and it helped, she began to wave her arms back and forth, making little headway, but liking the feel of it. She cupped her hands, feeling them pull as she moved them, even as she felt with a light giggle, how she pulled side to side more than longways along the pool.

She heard a soft plashing, and started, throwing her legs down. This sent her skirts, still buoyant despite the weight soaring in front of her, and she spent a horrified moment pulling them back down to lay against thigh and calf. The plashing, she turned to find, was an Akvatari woman of very nearly Minnie’s own age, at least in appearance, plump and with a sunburst of stretch marks about the belly. Her hair was tightly curled, and dark, and pulled artfully up over her head, and her eyes were deep green. Her mouth was generous, and her hands were, perhaps, less delicate than the hands of many of her race. Her wings were flat behind her, folded less like a butterfly than like a moth, and pale, pearly, undecorated grey.

“I am sorry,” she laughed, and her laugh was deep and pleasing and kind, “I beg thy forgiveness. You looked so pleased in the water, and I thought it should be fun to see thee startled. But I do not wear these skirts that thee and thine wear, and I do forget what a bother they can be.”

Minnie couldn’t speak for a moment, then said, “I’m… I hope… I was allowed—“

“Well,” the woman said with a half-smile, “I hope that thou has not come for poisoning the spring, for I should think it a shame to kill thee.”

Minnie went pale, and the woman laughed, a laugh that rang around the long peristyle like a magpie song.

“Come, then, I can’t imagine that is what bringest thou to the House of Lives Lived, is it? So, come, we shall have tea, instead. I will give thee a cake, and thou, perhaps, shall tell me about the scar thou nearest on they neck.”

Minnie blanched again, and grabbed her sopping scarf, wrapping it into place. But with slogging, bedraggled steps, suddenly aware that she probably looked a fool, she trudged along behind the woman, whose tail beat against the water in slow, sinuous strokes as she went. The strokes were beautiful, almost feline in their movement, and Minnie found herself watching them closely. She found herself, at once comfortable again at some level, in the familiar attitude of looking something of the fool, wondering what Mara would think of the way the woman moved. It stretched up through her belly, and around the muscles of her back beneath the soft flesh, a sort of dance in the water itself. She watched it, as she walked, watched the way the fabric across her breasts pulled and tugged and pushed and relaxed, the way her neck bent and unbent slightly in time with the strokes, the way her face—

And she met the woman’s eyes. The woman was staring back at her with a broad grin, “Do not let me keep thee, thou seemdst so much to enjoy what thou lookest at, Doctor Lefting.”

Minnie turned a shade deep red, “Oh, no, no… no, I… I was not… looking like that…”

The woman smiled impishly, and shrugged, “A shame.”

And she turned and swam faster towards the end, leaving Minnie half-jogging stupidly through the water.

“Wait… wiat! Wait! How dost thou — do you know my name?”

The Akvatari woman was several body lengths ahead now, pulling herself up from the pool with an earthy grace, “Dr. Lefting, there are but seven thousand souls in this, the city of my people. While the Daughters of the Sand Isle are not known for our gossiping tongues, thou comest here aboard a whaleboat with the finest human singer we have seen in a century on the isle, and proceed to seek out my halls. Dost thou think thy inexperienced trip here would outrun a whisper in such a state?”

“Wait… wait, you’re funny, how—“

And the woman laughed once more - laughing seemed to be as much a way of breathing as anything else for her. She reached a hand down to take Minnie’s, and with a great deal of strength pulled her up to stand dripping on the tile, before the statue of the writhing Akvatari, “It shocks you to see me laugh?”

“I… well, Akvatari… we… I always heard they were sad.”

And at this the woman’s teeth showed between her lips, “And I had always heard that the daughters of Zeltiva had speaking parrots and wore trousers, and drank beer like an Eypharian eats dates!” but her smile softened, and she looked into Minnie’s eyes with her own, still, deep green, “But yes, Doctor, we are a people who know the sorrow of the world, it is true. But then, it is possible, too, is it not, too weep unto laughter, is it not?”

And she leaned and kissed and unlaced the scarf from Minnie’s neck, keeping Minnie’s eyes locked in her own. Minnie stood frozen, still shocked, unable to move. The woman leaned, then, and her broad lips kissed a jagged corner of the ugly welted scar on Minnie’s neck.

The she stood and said, “I am Mother Semiyr,” and she turned rising on her pearl-grey wings, the color of a lady’s morning-suit, saying “And if you thou will, indeed come to work for this house, thou shalt learn to swim properly, hmm?”

“Work… work?”

And Minnie, shoes still in hand, with her cane in the other, stumbled along behind her.

x

[Philomena]

The stone spire had, in the bottom, a heavy door unlike any Minnie had seen. First, it was quite round, and second, it fit so tightly that it hissed slightly when Mother Semiyr pulled the latch to open it. It swung with an utter, gliding silence. The air inside was very, very dry, desiccate to a degree that made Minnie’s eyes thirsty. The earth inside was a fine, fine sand, which shifted loosely beneath their feet, and two lamps on a table near the door bore the clean fragrance of spermaceti, burning dimly on slender wicks. Mother Semiyr took up one, and handed the other to Minnie. The lamps were odd in form: broad-bowled silver lamps with a well-trimmed cotton wick. The silver lip of the bowl curled back, cincturing into a narrow opening to keep the oil from spilling, and this lip was delicately carved into a stylized miniature of an Akvatari woman, her hair following the silvers curve and then spilling in long finely wrought filigree across the rest of the silvers surface. It was polished, and the shine of it picked beams of oil light casting them around the chamber as Minnie walked in wavering fractals.

The door hissed shut and Semiyr turned, her face bearing discomfort.

"It is... Too dry here. Come, let's up to my office before we speak."

They walked past two long tables, and at the end of the galley, came to sheer, stepless shaft extending upwards and downwards into shadow. Semiyr flicked her moth wings and begun to rise slowly up the shaft, and Minnie stared helplessly behind her. Semiyr turned back and frowned thoughtfully.

"Thou art wing-shorn."

Minnie blushed, and would have offered to just speak here in the lobby and be out of the woman's way, but already Semiyr looked so uneasy in the dryness.

"Wait," Semiyr finally responded, "I have winch, just a moment."

And she fluttered off high into the shaft, Minnie staring after her until the pale form of her opened a door a few stories above her and entered it, shutting the latch behind her with a click.

For a moment, Minnie stood alone on the lip of the shaft and listened to the faint movement of the still, achingly dry air, waiting. And then, she heard the creaking of a rope, and looking up saw in the gloom that a wooden arm had swung out into the void, and from it, there hung a large, round basket. The basket began to descend, then, slowly, twirling slowly as it did. It stopped just before her, and she looked at the basket, with a frown. It was certainly LARGE enough for her to climb into it, but she was not entirely sure how she was to get into it, much less if it would really hold her weight. But the basket sat, whirling slowly, waiting. So, after a moment, with great trepidation, she stuck her walking stick out, and hooked the basket with the ferrule, pulling it towards her, until the edge of it rested on the ledge. It was, actually, tremendously light, which made the negotiation of it easier, but further tickled her nerves about its ability to bear her. She crawled over the side, and the structure flexed, creaked a little. It was about the size of a coracle, or a hammock if it was round instead of long - just broad enough that a moderately tall human could lay across it, and the surface was a tight world of tiny, knotted reeds that spiraled outward in a pattern of warp and weft. She sat in the center of the bowl, holding the stout handle of the basket with white knuckles, and then with a quick inhalation, she shifted her weight to pull the basket out… and into the void. It creaked beneath her as it took her full weight, and the bindings crackled softly, and she felt the floor bow slightly beneath her. She gripped the handle tighter, and waited.

The basket ascended slowly, and as it passed the opening toward the first door, the walls ceased to be smooth, instead yielding to row after row of shelves, running not in stacks, but rather in a slow, closely fit spiral round and round and round the spire’s interior walls. She held the lamp aloft, afraid lest it catch the dry reeds on fire, and the light of it glittered against these shelves, which were filled with close-set slender boxes of white-lacquered wood, each bearing black writing on the sides, which faced out towards Minnie. Each bore a name, and a single date: Omealbos, Spring 17, 503 : Alberckawrdd, Autumn 63, 454… On and on, box after box, thousands of them, all set neatly, so that she could see nothing but the side, and all the same white lacquer with the bold black lettering. There were two hands, the older dates bearing one and the newer another, and at intervals along the shelves, there were small hooks to which a lantern could be affixed. But the shelves, themselves, were unadorned, flat and straight and plain.

The basket reached the highest point of the chamber, and stopped, and Minnie could see the little alcove into which it folded, with a ledge beside it and the second metal door. The door opened now, again, and Semiyr smiled at her from inside, followed by a breath of blessedly moist air that struck Minnie’s face with palpable pleasure, her skin drinking it greedily. Semiyr pulled a rope in the alcove, and the arm swung inwards, and Minnie, for perhaps the first time since entering the basket, exhaled. From within the door, light poured out, real, rich sunlight, and Semiyr, with the precision of one unfold of waste, carefully snuffed Minnie’s lamp.

Minnie crawled over the side, so thrilled to be free of the basket that she no longer really worried about thefact that her way skirts rode up to her mid thighs as she did so.

“Dr. Lefting, wouldst thou be so kind to step in with me, then?"

x

[Philomena]

The light in the office dazzled. The sun had risen to the highest part of the day, and the glass, which stretched across every wall but the back from which Minnie had come, pulled it in with a generosity that would have made it stiflingly hot, had the windows not been louvered open at the bottoms, making a pleasant cross breeze.

But then, to call it an office, in Minnie’s estimation, was of itself a strange choice. Offices, in her definition were dominated by a desk. This office was dominated, rather, by a piece of furniture that resembled nothing so much as a bed.

It was a beautiful bed, to be sure, broad and flat with a cedar chest at it’s foot, carved in an intricate pattern of curving knots, and with more pillows at the back then Minnie had seen in one place in her life. Some of them sere simple, though even they were of fabric that shone with the fineness of their weave, others were tasseled, or bore embroidered images, or appliques, or were covered in furs of audacious colors. Beside the bed were two small desks on casters, shaped such that the desk could be pulled so that the casters went under the bed, and the surface sat just in one’s lap. Otherwise, the room bore a small table with a shut box in one corner, and in the window space, a heap of pillows in rich reds, saffrons and greys.

Semiyr pulled herself quite casually up onto the bed, and rolled over once with a twist of her tail, to land nestled in a sitting position up against the pillow. Beside the bed was a thin quilt worked in patches so small and intricately patterned that it took Minnie a moment to realize it was a quilt at all. This she beat into the air and let it settle over her tail and belly, with the soft sigh of someone putting their legs up after a pleasant walk.

“Now, Dr. Lefting, do sit.”

Semiyr pulled the desk in front of her, it bore two items on it. One was a well-bound copybook with an inkpot and pen beside it. The other was something rectangular, covered in a damask cloth, about the size of a quarto volume. She opened the book, and took the pen, dipping it, before looking back at Minnie.

Minnie, for her part still stood by the door confused. The cushion-heap was low to the ground, and some distance from Semiyr, but the bed… well! Certainly not that. Minnie, instead, stepped carefully around and sat on the cedar trunk. The trunk rested on a rich carpet in an abstract design of flowers and leaves, that her feet sunk into so deeply she lost track of her pinkie toe. She closed her eyes flexing the toes, enjoying the feel of the silky fibers, “Your home is… very… very luffly, Ma’am.”

Semiyr laughed, seeing Minnie sit on the trunk, but said nothing, “Thou art most kind. What knowest thou of the House of Lives Lived, Dr. Lefting?”

Minnie stared at the carpet, which was darkening as her skirts dripped onto, with some guilt in her heart, but responded, softly, “It is a registry of births and deaths, I know. I a-a-assume you are the record keeper?”

SEmiyr smiled, and set a finger to her neck at this, thoughtfully, at the same time extracting a pince-nez from a chain on her bust-line and setting it to her nostrils, “Well… that isn’t… wrong I suppose. I had never thought of it in quite that way. Such a small work just that would be!”

Minnie cocked her head, “Do you… keep.. marriages and things too, maybe? That… would.. would m-maybe be really useful, too.”

SEmiyr, laughed, the easy laugh. The more Minnie heard it, the more she liked it, it was not a barking inconsiderate laugh, it was a laugh brimful of long thought, “In a manner of speaking. Perhaps it would be easier to show thee.”

She lifted the cloth, then gently, delicately, with care that was instantly amiliar to Minnie - it was the care she would have given to a very precious book. Beneath the cloth was a box, one of the ones, she surmised, that she had seen on the shelves in the shaft outside, bearing a legend on the side: “Loresepta - Spring 55, 514”. But the top of the box, she could now see, was not wood, but rather a pane of glass. Inside, the box was empty, but for a single dry rose-bud, a deep buttery yellow, pinned to the wood with a silver stick-pin.

Minnie frowned tilting her head, “The name, I thought it was an Akvatari name? Its an anagram, I… I guess… Lore… pore… peat… peal… petal, petal, rose-petal, yes?”

Semiyr smiled, and nodded, “She was born this week. I met her yesterday actually, a sweet creature, with her wings already limber! This—“ and she pointed to the rose, “was her birthgeld. The father gave her mother this rose the night of her conception.”

Minnie blushed, “Oh.”

“Of course, she is just born, and so her box is still simple. As she grows, first her parents will, on occasion come to add new gelder to the box, and then, when she grows old enough, she will add them herself. Some of the boxes grow quite filled, actually, though it is a matter of style. One man I knew, one of the greatest weavers our people have ever known, and a great soul by any account, had, in his box only three gelders, when he died: his birthgeld, his gravegeld, and a small pouch of sand that he placed when he was twenty-seven.”

“What… did the bag mean?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know. He did not tell me. Sometimes it is obvious enough - a wedding, a gallery feature, a lover’s death, you know. But for him? Nothing I knew of.”

“Can I see one?” the words came faster and less casually than she intended.

Semiyr raised a brow, “Just… any old box? I can’t do that, doctor.”

“Can I see yours?” the words came out before Minnie could stop them, and she would have recanted them, and she not stunned herself out of speech.

Semiyr cocked her head, and smiled, but said nothing. She sat up in the bed, and flicked her wings with a casual languor, lifting herself from where she half reclined, then fluttered towards the door, opening it, then closing it behind her. The room was left silent but for the soft breath of the wind. Minnie stayed sitting on the trunk, staring at the hollow where the woman had lain, and the rumpled quilt: the experience, staring at a strange woman’s bed, alone, had a queer intimacy that was not entirely comfortable. The wind had a scent of faint brine, and the spiced aroma of a living city in the hot sun.

After five minutes, the door hissed slightly, reopening, and Semiyr entered again. In her hands she bore a box. Her face now, was serious - not upset, but very serious.

“I can speak with thee perched thusly on my trunk, but thou shalt not take one of the geldboxes without a proper desk.”

And she waited. Minnie looked up, and saw that Semiyr now wore gloves, white cotton with a fine embroidery of seabirds on the backs. Minnie swallowed, and her cheeks burned. She stared steadfastly at the floor as she stood, and leaning on her stick, walked to the left side of the large bed, climbing hauling herself awkwardly up to sit back against the pillows. Semiyr nodded and pushed the second caster-desk to rest in front of Minnie, then set the box atop it, with a sheet of samite over it still. She herself then settled to sit on the edge of the bed beside Minnie’s feet. She then laid a pair of small gloves across the top of the samite.

Minnie looked at the woman, and thought, for a moment, but finally nodded quietly, and slid her own still damp glove from her Qalaya’s-hand. The metal shimmered in the bright room, and the Q was bright and clear. Semiyr cocked her head but said nothing. Minnie pulled the new gloves on her hands. They were a little tight, but nothing that would not ease with a little bit of use, and they were the most beautiful gloves she’d ever felt. The seams had been furled by a master tailor, and felt almost imperceptible against her skin, and the backs of her hands had two matching, carefully embroidered eyes, deep green, but rounder, more childlike, and a little darker. Minnie looked in the eyes for a moment, flexing her fingers, and then lifted the cloth up, to reveal the box below.

The box had four eggs in it. The first was painted intricately with a glossy enamel pattern of interlacing fingertips, cradling the shell. The top corner of the shell was missing, cracked, with hairline fractures tracing through the rest of the pattern. A tiny pinprick in the side of the shell let out a slender length of blue silk thread, and the thread went through three other eggs, small, like a swallow’s eggs. The first three were painted each with a single closed eyelid - the third, had an eye, open, deep blue, a little darker. Minnie’s gloved hand touched the glass above this third egg - the eye on her hand matched it to the finest details of the iris’s shots of blue shading.

The thread still had a needle on its end, and it sat in the box at the far end, where there was an empty gap, waiting to be filled, and along the bottom were two blue glass brackets, waiting to have something set upon them, as well.

The box said… well, nothing in particular, it had no clear story to tell. But it burned with the echo of a story, like a half-whispered confession. Minnie’s eyes burned, and she didn’t trust her voice. She simply nodded and moved the cloth back over the box.

Mother Semiyr wept openly and unashamedly, but smiled the trademark ambiguous smile of the Akvatari. Her voice was soft, now, and very kind, “Now, Dr. Lefting, perhaps a bit of lunch before we discuss business-proper."

x

[Liminal]

Beautiful, as always ^_^

XP:
Swimming +1
Observation +3
Socialization +2

Lore: Chair-flights and their use
Lore: The House of Lives Lived
Lore: Geldboxes of the Akvatari
Lore: Semiyr, Keeper of the House of Lives Lived
Lore: Semiyr's Geldbox
Lore: Riding in a Basket of Questionable Safety

As a side note, most chair-flights are drawn by two or four Akvatari, since there's a limit to how much weight one can carry. Minnie is light enough, however, that she can probably use a single-drawn one.