Archive of Our Own ^beta

When I emerge from the temple of Rohona wearing my new mask, my clan has already left the ewer.

Glidings come in seasons, and for the Ibexii it coincides with the grazing season; it is part function, part symbol: a wanderer's soul is nourished by travel, just as goats must wander from one scrubland to the next. By our nomadic nature we are all already wanderers, even before our Gliding.

Driss has been busy organizing that; though he's so scattered sometimes I half-expected to find my clan members still flitting about when I came back, hurrying to hide because they were running behind. Still, I suppose Driss pulls through when it counts—and despite my frustration, the fact that he spaced on my bike meant I got the privilege of building her myself.

They say it eases the pain of parting when no one is there to see you off. I suppose in a way that's true. A clean cut—just in case you never come back. It isn't like that for every clan, but the insular seclusion of the Ibexii (and our relatively smaller group size and nomadic lifestyle) prizes a certain resilience to separation a little more highly than do other clans, I think.

When I return from my Gliding, my family may only recognize me by my mask, fashioned from the skull of our clan's namesake. 

The Machinist assigned to travel with my clan is named Sizo. I have many fond memories of sitting at her knee as she plied her trade, rumbling softly as she explained each part of the process, though I was still too young then to understand it.

Still, some of it must have gotten through to me—because today I built a bike of my very own, and I already knew her name.

Simoon. Si-moon. It was like she'd whispered it in my ear. Or maybe I'd known it all along, the knowledge innate—just like how I knew her name was old and vast as the desert, fierce and cutting as a violent wind. Her name rises out of my throat like heat rising off the sand, and when Sizo hears me say it first I can tell she's beaming behind the mask, proud.

I reverently touch the curved metal edge of the Machinist badge she gave me, and it seems to hum with the same thrilling potential as my Gliding Stone. The first badge of my Gliding.

Maybe I've always had leanings toward Machinism, given all that time spent with Sizo; Jadi certainly thought so, breaking tradition to nudge me toward Burnt Oak Station, where I'd meet the Machinist Utarii—another friend of Sizo's.

It's funny; if you didn't know better, you might think I named Simoon for Sizo.

Si-moon. Si-zo.

Simoon already had a name when I made her, of course. But it's a nice thought.

We did build her together, after all.