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Through him, she tries to divine the meaning of the human experience.
No matter how many nights he tells her, again and again, that he is only a representative of himself,
The god so beloved by wisdom chasers remains.
‘I am nothing more than myself,’ dismisses Alhaitham. In this dream, he feels the gathering and actualised kinetic force between his fingers as he turns the book’s next page. The book itself is blank, for this is only a dream. He is anchouring himself – learning, after much hardship, to keep the vibrant lights and deleterious sounds conjured by his own brain from becoming overwhelming.
Lesser Lord Kusanali nudges the stalk of a dandelion taller than herself, letting the seeds released cascade and float down upon her. The crown of her head wears the gathered seeds like a Mondstadtian wreath, a proof of her divinity supplied by simple imagination only. She asks of him: ‘Do you remember the Stone of el-Rashid?’
He catches her gaze over the blank pages. Her smile is like an awl ready to chisel him away. ‘Of course.’
‘Remind me?’
And he obliges, but not because she is God. He would answer any question put before him that his expertise might unravel. ‘It is the cornerstone for Haravatat’s understanding of King Deshret’s society. It immortalises the tongue he spoke in life, together with the dialect adopted at the genesis of Aaru Village – then, finally, an early form of our modern Sumerian script.’
She nods. Her eyelids fold over and disguise the flowers in her sockets, and she sits back, catching herself on a false swing of vines. Alhaitham has seen that swing in the waking world; it is indistinguishable across realms, terminating at an uncertain point in the false sky.
To Kusanali’s silence, he offers, ‘Shall I continue?’
‘Please do, Alhaitham.’
(He does not miss the way her lips twitch at the corners, the barely-hidden joy coasting her face. Even God can be lonely; even God can be delighted by earning the right to use a person’s name.
So, too, does he comprehend the reason she disguises it. His own happiness, since childhood, has come out in the shape of intense stares and rambling thoughts. Being the recipient of disgust and displeasure quickly curb whatever expression once broke through one’s flat affect.)
‘The monument of el-Rashid was discovered shortly after Madame Faruzan’s time. It offers a straightforward translation between each language written on its face. Its history is taught to all Haravatat students in their first classes.’
With the horizon at the corners of his eyes beginning to grow pink with clarity, Kusanali urges him on. ‘What does it say?’
Alhaitham continues apace. ‘It describes the six sins. Many speculate it was erected in the wake of King Deshret’s fall to madness as a warning.’ The sins of humanity have thusly shaped the floor from which their modern society has been built. Researchers from other Darshans are quick to dismiss its importance. ‘tis the folly of their own ignorance.
Once again, Lesser Lord Kusanali prompts him with a question: ‘And what is the seventh?’
No question can rattle Alhaitham. It is for the sake of his own survival that he has mastered the art of shallow emotions. He considers, feeling Kusanali’s eyes rake him again, feigning a kind of upset. (But his book in the dream are blank, and he turns the pages to keep his fingers busy. He is nothing more than himself.)
To the dawn that is spreading across the sky like a disease, Alhaitham says, ‘There are only six.’
With the grass-whistling wind that tousles her hair, Kusanali replies, ‘Do you believe that?’
To the flowers underfoot that are opening up like Nilou’s courageous dance, purples and violets and every overwhelming shade, Alhaitham closes his own eyes. ‘The greater public believe so. Is that not what you are asking, Lesser Lord Kusanali?’
Her chuckle is not unlike the chimes that precede her movements, the soft sounds one can only catch if they let silence take root before her. ‘I’m asking what you think. Just you.’
‘As the Acting Grand Sage? Or as the Grand Scribe?’ he again tries.
‘In whatever way you would like.’
The lack of exactness in God’s words stoke the briefest flame of annoyance in the bowels of his heart. Alhaitham can feel the flora surrounding him wilt in reply. He turns another page with his eyes sworn to the darkness of his lids, utterly a man of routine. ‘One might say,’ he begins, ‘Trying to secure the genesis of language is a sin.’
‘Wouldn’t that fall under the jurisdiction of the fourth?’ wonders Kusanali. She quotes aloud, the power in her voice making the padisarahs at their feet bow to her. ‘“You shall not investigate the origins of words”. Like that.’
And now Alhaitham can open his eyes. He can watch the sky being shaped into something like a morning, seven degrees removed from reality. He can fold the book shut, his thumb catching his place in the blank masterpiece. He can turn his head to regard his God, no longer a pillar of innocence but a spiderweb of a mind.
Alhaitham says, ‘Language precedes words. We were once a species that communicated by banging rocks together and drawing on the walls of caves. As far back as history will allow us to see, there is evidence of humanity speaking without words – in pictures, in the locution of hands, in the nonverbal language that passes between two like souls.’
Kusanali looks pleased with the direction of his thinking. It means little, for she is always pleased to watch logic and argument spool out like a long ribbon before her. Upon her swing, she leans into the side of one vine, clasping the verdant green of her seat. ‘So you would call “seeking out the beginning of language” a new kind of sin?’
‘The oldest sin,’ he corrects. God nods her head.
‘What do you think of having absolute sin? Do you think humans will ever evolve past the need for words, or decide as a collective to forget the honouring of gods?’ She is leaning ever further, threatening to tip the balance of her theorised swing in seeking him. ‘Is it going beyond the authority of human evolution to engineer a language? Wouldn’t you say that trying to preserve a lost tongue, as in the Stone of el-Rashid, violates the second sin – “thou shalt not tamper with life and death”?’
He is sucking on the taste of his own silence. Habitually, Alhaitham reaches for a wire that is not there. With a drone in his voice, he tells her, ‘You’re quite passionate about human affairs.’
Some might find the sudden red colouring Kusanali’s face to be shocking. She herself seems shocked out of her reverie, adopting shame as a defence mechanism. But she is God; when her wary eyes see that he has no plans of passing judgement, the flowers beneath her feet exhale in collective release. ‘... I suppose,’ she admits, another smile touching the corner of her mouth, ‘I’m very interested to know why the rules of the Akademiya are so important.’
‘You’re not planning to have me locked up?’ he answers, raising a brow.
In turn, Lesser Lord Kusanali raises one of her own. ‘Should I?’
Alhaitham laughs, a sound that makes the brilliant grasses beneath them hold their breath again. ‘I just admitted to the god of my nation that I am interested in the Great Sins.’
He expects her to deploy one of the pithy witticisms she so likes. Instead, Kusanali surprises him with a blunt honesty. ‘Would King Deshret’s descendants have left you the Stone if they wanted to suppress your curiosity?'
‘Hm.’ He mulls her proposition over, tasting the fragrance of it in the back of his throat. It is not unlike a smoky lick of wine. ‘Most would rather the tablet serves as a testament to all time, warning us from repeating the mistakes of the past.’
‘And what if they were giving you the tools to follow the past and explore the boundaries of language?’ Kusanali says. She is now sitting on her knees, clutching the one vine of her swing as she rocks back and forth, edging the centre of her own gravity. ‘They had no need to warn you in the old dialect. What if they were asking future generations to remember?’
Alhaitham bandies back, not missing a beat, ‘I would think God is allowed to decide whether that’s true.’
Yet Kusanali wrinkles her nose, her expression childhood frustration and ageless discontent in the same picture. ‘As an Archon, I don’t want to stifle those who would seek knowledge. I put my trust in the matra. The most I can do,’–here she pauses, a rare uncertainty passing over herelike a cloud–’Is. Watch over you all as you march forward.’
So many others would rush to comfort their God in her moment of doubt. Alhaitham thinks that if he were one of those people, Kusanali would not return to him night after night.
(In the morning, contained within the circle of Kaveh’s arms, he will describe his dream. Once again, Kaveh will dismiss his claims as the strung-up fabrications of an arrogant liar.
Cyno will kiss the side of his mouth, eyes trailing over his shoulder. They will be glassy with pondering.
Tighnari will crawl over the two of them to kiss Alhaitham on the forehead, handing him his headset.
They would all comfort God in her time of need. But Alhaitham is different.)
‘You’re welcome to join us,’ says Alhaitham, blandly. Kusanali’s head snaps up like a toy on a string. ‘If you won’t dictate the course of our studies, then help cultivate our minds.’
There is a brief silence. Alhaitham folds his book under his arm and thumbs the ring-middle-index fingers of his left hand, tracing the engraved metal of his wedding rings.
Kusanali catches his eye. She is the student come to sup at the master’s font of wisdom. A distant part of Alhaitham whispers out all the ways he could take advantage of this moment. He could shape the tides of study for centuries to come – become, in his own right, an underground earthquake rocking the foundations of the Akademiya.
(But in the morning, he will be glad he loves his routine life so much.)
Kusanali ventures, ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’
Alhaitham returns, ‘Do you want to?’
After another scuffle with herself, God admits, ‘I think… I would like to take classes. I don’t know what Darshan would suit me…’
‘Then take one of every course,’ he says.
Kusanali’s eyes are round, and they are less flowers in her eyesockets than they are seeds of dreams starting to bloom. ‘Would that be allowed?’
‘With the power vested in me, the Acting Grand Sage,’ deadpans Alhaitham, ‘By the authority of the Dendro Archon, I permit you to take any class you like.’
The tension upon God’s face breaks. The scene around them is stirred up by the breeze conjured upon her giggle, and all at once, the padisarahs surrender their passionate-purple petals to the wind. Their destination is unknown,
Just like the fate of mortals, and the Archon walking beside them.
Kusanali extends her small hand across the gap between them. Alhaitham kneels in the flutter and dance of all the flowers ever known and takes her fingers in his own.
He does not expect the second hand, Kusanali’s left, to come settle atop his head. She pats him there a couple of times, and when he lifts his face, he can see her warm grin.
‘I’ll hold you to your word, my Grand Sage.’
‘Acting Grand Sage,’ he reminds her. It makes her laugh again.
‘Thank you for your kindness,’ she continues honestly. And all of the things the public might say, were they to hear their God thank such an insignificant man,
Mean nothing.
‘It’s natural.’
The petals whisk the dream away.