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Azem frequently got ideas. They weren’t always good, and rarely was it that some sort of convoluted trouble did not follow, but they were always remarkable ideas. It was easy to see how she had risen so quickly to office, never mind came with the endorsement of not only the retiring Azem but nine of the other thirteen members of the Convocation. Many calamities had been averted by her hand, many lives improved, many wonders preserved. Yet many calamities had formed there too, and one brewed now, in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom, one-kitchen, one-parlour apartment in the very heart of Amaurot.
Hythlodaeus, for his part, had reassigned much of his work for the day, that the brewing catastrophe not entirely consume their quiet corner of the star, but the honourable Emet-Selch had refused point blank to even entertain the idea of being part of this farce. In fact, he had only agreed to move in with them in the first place because Azem, in his absence, had boxed up his possessions and notified his landlord of his imminent departure whilst he was notably distracted.
There were many questions the Chief of the Bureau of the Architect wished to pose, but he knew better after all these years. Better to just let her get on with whatever scheme had her so enthralled and be ready to step out of the way. He could not recall ever seeing a tree of this morph in the archives. Deciduous, with sharp-scented spines where there ought to be leaves. It even appeared to have formed a conical shape of its own volition, for the branches had been neither trimmed nor snapped.
“Wherever did you find it?” he asked, rubbing a few spines between his fingers and bringing them to his nose.
“Patience, love,” she said. She fidgeted with a length of sparkling fibres, wrapping it around the tree like a helter-skelter of twinkling stars. “And don’t stress the details.”
“It smells,” Hythlodaeus pointed out.
“It smells nice.”
“It smells. He’s going to notice that.”
“And when Starlight is over, he won’t complain so much about the plants on the balcony, because at least those are outside.”
Was that it? Was this entire ‘holiday’ (that he wasn’t entirely convinced she had not made up on the spot) a ploy to encourage their dear friend to relax a little? Hythlodaeus could not argue that it was sorely needed. Buried beneath mountains of paperwork, they had hardly seen their errant lover since the last of their boxes had been emptied.
With a chuckle, Hyth glanced towards the kitchen, where the cupboard doors refused to shut. Azem had bought enough food to feed an army and then some. There were more plants too, in makeshift containers along the back wall, yet to be re-potted. He often wondered where she had found them. Every journey she made, every new place she visited, she returned with cuttings. He had forgotten the names of half of them, and their origins, but she hadn’t. When she pruned the leaves, she would talk of the village it had grown in, of the people she had met there. Sometimes her stories could have been born of different stars, so vastly different were they from life in Amaurot.
But the tree’s story… She would wait until Hades was here before she told it.
“There!” she announced, standing back to admire her handiwork. She had conjured a star to sit atop the tree and it glowed with the intensity of a sun. The decorations below - both fine and gaudy - glistened beneath its rays.
Hyth stepped forward, let his hands fall to her hips and his chin to her shoulder.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Told you. He’s going to love it.”
“He’s going to grit his teeth and bear it.”
“Same thing.”
Their laughter mingled and he felt her lean back into him, her shoulders relaxing as breath left her in one slow exhale.
“It’s been so long since we spent time together,” she said. “He’s not said anything, but I know he’s feeling stretched thin. I want him to just be Hades for one night, not Emet-Selch.”
He wound his arms around her waist, pulled her closer still. It was a sentiment shared, but of course his desk had been equally cluttered, and it had never crossed his mind to step up and arrange something like this. Yet it had hers. It always did. For her ideas, calamitous as they always were, were never selfish or superfluous, never without altruism.
It was why he loved her. Why they both did.
The day was crawling to a close and Emet-Selch’s list of tasks seemed only to have grown in the time he had spent ticking off the most urgent ones. As always, he was the last soul remaining in the building, and the lights had begun to dim as if in warning. They would shut off eventually, leaving him in darkness, and today he knew not if he had the energy to conjure lights of his own and plough through what remained.
“Come home early tonight. Please?”
Azem’s voice echoed in his head, a reminder of that very morning, when he had barely said a word to her on his way out. He wasn’t angry at her betrayal, not anymore, but better not to let her know that. If she knew that he had forgiven her for this particular discretion, she would begin work on the next. At least she had been right about his moving - the bed of their new apartment was more comfortable, the window angled better for light to fall through as dawn broke, and it was closer to the Convocation headquarters, meaning that he could steal an extra half hour’s sleep and not have to sprint the few blocks to his desk. He wouldn’t tell her that either. That she was right. Nobody with a sane mind would utter those words to Azem.
The lights dimmed further and Emet-Selch swore at them. They dimmed again.
Better now than never, he supposed. So, he rose to his feet, ignoring the creaking of his spine, and uttered a curse to the darkness. At least a warm bed awaited, maybe a bath if he- No, he wouldn’t send word ahead. The less time she had to plan something (and Hythlodaeus to encourage her), the better.
The streets of Amaurot were quiet tonight, with a few scholars milling about and night owls lounging on the various benches dotted around the business district. The lights above were brighter than those that had shooed him out of his office, twinkling in the distance like stars. The city always was more beautiful at night, as though carved from the dusk itself.
The apartment he shared with his friends and lovers was situated on the very edge of the residential district, on the twenty-eighth floor of a towering apartment complex. Azem had selected it for the view, Hyth had told him, and once again she had been on the mark.
There was silence on the other side of the door as he approached, pulling down his hood and removing his mask. No longer was he Emet-Selch, and he would not be so again until morning. He reminded himself of that as he held his breath and willed the door before him to unlatch, hoping that whatever decorating they had busied themselves with was now done.
Light spilled out into the hallway. It flooded their small apartment, chasing away every shadow, softening harsh edges and warming the bone white of the walls. The source, he learned, was a tree in one corner of the parlour, perhaps half a fulm taller than he. Gaudy decorations hung from every spiked limb, glistening in the light of an artificial star at the very apex. It had Azem written all over it.
“What in the name of Creation?” he uttered.
“Surprise!” cried a voice from behind the door. Before he could turn to it, Azem had slipped an arm in his and pressed her cheek to his shoulder.
It certainly was surprising. Or was ‘confusing’ a more appropriate word? Because he still did not understand exactly what it was that he was looking at other than an oversized plant whose earthy scent had entirely filled their small apartment.
“What have you done?”
Hyth’s chuckle sounded across the room, but Hades’ eyes remained glued to the tree. Beneath its lowest branches he saw a box, neatly wrapped with a golden bow atop.
“It’s a Starlight tree!” said Azem.
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
Hyth emerged from the doorway he loitered in and made slow, steady steps towards them. He had, Hades noticed, already shunned his robes and wore an unfamiliar knitted cream sweater. Not created…actually knitted.
“I told you,” he said.
“Oh, hush,” soothed Azem before turning back to Hades. “There is a village in a continent on the other side of the star. In winter, it is all but buried beneath a flurry of snow. It’s beautiful, Hades. Imagine fields of white as far as the eye can see; a vista broken only by occasional pillars of green. These trees don’t just survive the harsh conditions - they thrive. The people of this village are driven indoors, where they huddle around fires until the snow passes. It is a blessed time for them. They cannot work, cannot travel, so they remain indoors, they spend time with family, and they count their blessings. They call this period Starlight. It is tradition to plant one of these trees indoors, in the hope that their spirit will endure as it does.”
Hades swallowed. She had a way of weaving words, of telling stories, that made one stop and listen. The notes of joy in her voice were unmistakeable, and whatever complaints teetered on the edge of his tongue dissolved beneath that light. Her light. To be with her was to stand on a knife’s edge, to crave the thrill of falling. What he wouldn’t have given to see the world through her eyes, to feel the wonder she did at the smallest thing.
She followed him, keeping in pace with each tentative step he took towards the tree. The shiny baubles that hung from its limbs were crude in design - like Hyth’s sweater, they were made, not created. From the shaky paintwork, he did not doubt by Azem’s own hand. There were three upon branches that sat at eye level, each a different colour, each bearing a familiar yet distorted face. Their faces. Hades’ own gazed back at him from a globe of deep purple, Hyth’s from a pale lilac, and Azem’s from a particularly unique shade of blue.
“The colours…”
“She had a little help there,” admitted Hythlodaeus. He appeared on Hades’ other side, as close now as Azem was. “Given that she is not blessed with our sight.”
He wanted to complain, to grumble about the smell, the green needles already scattered on the floor beneath the lowest boughs of the tree, and the horribly garish decorations that she had strung around the apartment. But when he scrounged deep for words to throw at her, at both of them, he came up empty.
“The box beneath the tree is yours,” Azem said. “But you can’t open it until tomorrow. Tonight…we drink, we eat, we make merry…and you forget all about whatever it is you brought home with you.”
Hyth had already plucked his mask from the front of his robes and begun to work loose the cords. Warm fingers danced along his collar bone, chasing away any sense of dismay.
“We all appreciate the work that you do,” said Hyth. “All of Amaurot does. But…you are not to so much as think about work until you are back in the office in two days’ time.”
“Two days?” The thought of it was absurd. Amaurot would fall apart without him, the Convocation would-
Soft fingers upon his cheek tilted his head and a warm mouth stole whatever words of protest he was about to unleash. When was the last time she had kissed him like this? Days? Weeks?
No. When was the last time he had allowed her to kiss him like that? He had been absent too much, hiding behind annoyance and frustration as though using those feigned emotions to justify the need for isolation made anything better.
“One day,” he offered.
“Two,” Azem insisted. “Three if you don’t accept it. Four if you complain further. They like me, they’ll buy any story I weave to explain your absence.”
They would. And she was devious enough to do it. He told himself that she left him with no choice, that he had been strong-armed into this, but neither she nor Hyth bought the grumble he emitted.
“Good,” said Hyth. “Now, how about we get you out of those robes and-“
“Show you the bed you’ve been so diligently avoiding since we moved in?”
Hades huffed, but something pleasant burned beneath his skin. Yes, he would gladly play this game.
And so, the star atop that tree burned on, the pine needles fell, and joy, for a while, found its way to a small, sacred corner of Amaurot.