Chapter Text
Even in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo's cry—
I long for Kyoto.
-Bashō
The maples were burning. Aether stretched out on the tablecloth, the red leaves on the mountains contrasting against the green pines. Sunny leaves of yellow from the aspens, orange smear, brown bloom. The Hida alps, stark and grand before them. Aether’s supplies for cartography spread out, his map weighted down with stones, graphite reduced to a stub, his compass spinning slightly.
Aether thought it was a shame how Lumine and him didn’t travel this region more often. Whenever Aether used to ask about it, Lumine would shrug: ‘My knees aren’t what they used to be.’ Aether wasn’t so sure about that. She was twenty.
Lumine appeared at his shoulder. He had just called her with a whistle system they used—a tiny carven wooden bird they’ve had since childhood, simple but effective. And cute. She sat, already reaching for food.
Part of why they didn’t travel this region was because of the reputation it held. Whispers on the streets from merchants they sold their maps to. “I’d be wary—” A conspiratorial glance, “The lady’s son has a temper.” And, “He’s a spoiled recluse, your stay is short, right?” No one visits the estate. Isolated in the alps, its own conclave of wealth.
She started counting the coins, the chime of them falling out of her pouch. Their yellowness glinting in the sun like the trees struck in the light.
She was the more forward one in their duo. When Aether mentioned the rumors, she only shrugged, “You think that will stop me?”
The sunlight sloping on the hills, shifting, fluid. It was beautiful.
Of course Lumine had to ruin the moment and talk about logistics.
“And he paid in silver—” She turned over to him, dropping a pickled radish into her mouth, “Unexpected. Because those contacts usually pay in rice vouchers, but apparently his last cartographer ditched him. Ended up found floating in a river nearby. Sad. So he was feeling especially generous when I told him about you—”
“Wait.” Aether set down his rice ball—wrapped in magnolia leaves, fresh, green smell, “Is that a...typical cartographer experience?”
“Mm, I’m sure not.” Lumine shrugged, picked at a pickled plum, “I think it was gambling debts. Totally unrelated.”
“Not very reassuring.”
“Point is, he’s desperate for a cartographer now and paying up a lot. So eat your lunch,” She gestured vaguely to the winding path through the mountains behind them, “We gotta make it there before dark. The pass.”
She looked up to the shifting light on the treeline, becoming honeyed with time. “We have maybe, what, four hours of good light?” She stole a pickled daikon off of Aether’s cloth, “Tastes so much better when you steal.”
Aether shoved her shoulder, “Don’t know what came first—the espionage or the tormenting me.”
Lumine crunched down on the bite with a victorious grin, “Both.”
Aether sighed but then smiled. She was right. The daylight was slowly fading into dusk, beautiful but threatening.
They had clients orders to fulfill, debts to collect, people to meet.
And the fact that they had to avoid getting caught. That was a big deal too.
-
The walk there was as usual. Lumine confident and poised, knowing exactly where she was going: “Yeah, we take this turn.” “Yep, go that way.”
Aether obviously had a good sense of direction—his craft sort of required it, but he couldn’t help being distracted by the thoughts of his future projects. The depth of the river there, the height of the mountain over there. The moon coming out prematurely in the golden hour light, according to the axis it was—
“Aether,” Lumine nudged him. He looked up.
They were at the checkpoint now, a simply built wooden gate out of logs, nested in between the pass of the Hida mountains. Two armed guards were there in a corner, chatting and laughing to each other. Another one attending to a merchant trying to pass with his big bag on his back. The guards mouth moving, analyzing his travel permit under the fading light.
They both joined the line, Aether adjusting the straps of his wooden bag. He went over the script they always did in his head: Yeah, I make maps—just for art. Yep. Super creative. Yep, not suspicious at all.
The guards who were loitering noticed Aether and Lumine, and one pushed the other to attend to them.
He came up, looked curiously at the two of them, “Your hair—” He tilted his head, then remembered that he was still a professional, “Your travel permits, please.”
Lumine handed them to the guard, where she always kept them. In that one pocket in her bag. She’s done this so many times it was practically a piece of cake for her—the methodology all planned out.
And now time for the second phase: feigning innocence.
“Oh, yeah.” She said, shirking off her backpack, “My brother here likes to draw for fun. He’s a very good artist. Likes doing maps, landscapes, stuff like that.”
The guard took Aether’s pack, and started to unroll the map.
“Yeah, I personally don’t get any of his talent—” She laughed, “I wish, but—aren’t they good?”
He studied the map carefully, brows furrowed. The guard didn’t say anything. Aether looked over to the map—it was full of niche details, the depth of the water, where peoples boats come in, things that would be perfect to know for the opposing side. Crap. They gave the wrong one.
The guard looked up from the map, voice flat and official, “This is very detailed. You even have the secondary pass on here, the one we use for the military. How did you come by this information?”
“Oh!” Lumine started again, her smile strained, “Yeah, uh. Aether, my brother, also really likes military stuff. Weird, I know. But he’s been that way since he was a kid, we used to call him—”
The guard rolled up the map. He didn’t believe her. Aether squeezed Lumine’s hand in his. It would be fine, just fine.
The thought seemed futile after a few moments. The guard continuing to study the map, tracing the lines with his fingers. The silence stretched on. Lumine opened her mouth to talk again but the guard held out a hand for silence.
The guard rolled up the map with a thwap, called for help. Walking towards them.
It all happened in a flash.
Hands tied behind their backs. Hushed whispers: “Espionage, selling information, danger, the lord.”And the poke of a stick on Aether’s back, guiding him toward the path leading across the ridge of the mountains.
-
Aether tried to focus on the simple things during their walk across the ridge, with guards on either side, and his hands tied behind his back. But it was hard.
The raised lantern was their guiding light, small and flickering. Sometimes lighting up the black trees around them orange like a coal flaring to life. He thought about that, and Lumine by his side, and the slope the mountains, and the axis of the moon.
She leaned into talk, “Well. This is unfortunate.”
Aether looked ahead, sighing. The maps in the guards’ hands. HIs maps, his works.
“You think?”
The guards were silent. No yelling, no beating. Just resigning to leading Aether and Lumine to their doom. Sorry, just gotta finish my job, then I’m done for the night.
The path before them was fairly straight, but craggly with rocks and roots. Narrow, like one wrong step and you would teeter over the edge. The autumn night air—cold on his face. Aether tried not to think about the edge, he tried not to think about the fact that his hands were tied, no grasping desperately for roots if worse comes to worse.
The guard who was ahead stopped, looked like a clearing in the path. They came up, and Aether looked to the right, steep slope, leading to black, black.
And then a pop of warmth. Down, nestled in a valley, was a shin-zukuri style house that looked straight out of a screen painting. It looked practically palace-like, each time Aether thought his eye took it all in there was another addition—the bathhouse, the guest house, more parts to the main house. What looked like a garden. Filled with glowing lamps reflecting off of a lake, like smudged paint. The pines arranged as if by a painters hand.
But it made Aether…uneasy. No servants—that he could tell—out. Like an abandoned dollhouse. Every beam placed deliberately, no overgrowth or charm—nothing wild, everything placed where it should go. Curated, perfect.
He could hear Lumine shift beside him: “They built all that just for one guy?”
Aether tried to imagine him. Probably bearded and gray, authoritative and boring. Here is your ruler, respect him because he comes from this other important ruler.
Aether smiled, “Yeah—it’s ridiculous.”
The guard behind them prodded them with a stick again. A command to keep moving. They did, but with hushed laughter and teasing and smiles: he’s probably an old hunchback—no, definitely in his fifties.
And with Lumine by him, Aether felt fine. With Lumine with him, Aether felt at home.
-
The young lord was not what Aether imagined: not the dignified elder, the type who ponders and strokes a wispy grey beard while pronouncing judgement. Instead, a fresh faced, sharp boned beauty looked up at him.
Lumine nudged him, the two guards behind them: “He looks like a lady ready to be painted.”
Aether looked again. She was right. He was lounging by the koi pond, the orange fish skittering and swimming, sometimes frightened by a sudden movement or loud noise. Laying languidly by the water, a cushion or something supporting him—reading, in the light of the garden lamps. Kimono, purple and blue clouds twisting together—just the look of the fabric was easily more than Lumine and his yearly earnings. All of the young lord was bored, all of him was wealthy.
His eyes flickered off of his book to the guards and them—sharp, analyzing. Aether shifted uneasily—his own eyes gazing at the lake surrounding the estate—what interesting geography, the way the estate was set in the middle of—
“What’s this?” The young lord said, lightly pressing a hand to his cheek, eyes looking up and down the two of them, like they were gold he was figuring out how to spend.
A guard stepped in to speak, “Young lord, they were carrying cartography with sensitive information. We suspect that it goes deeper—maybe a conspiracy that stretches beyond these two.”
Lumine sent Aether a glance a tad bit amused, one that he read as: We’re not that smart.
The young lord sighed, snapping his book shut, tilting his head.
“You give me two stray dogs and expect to know exactly what to do with them?” He scoffed, “I’m no diplomat.”
The guard straightens, “He’s a mapmaker.”
Lumine whispers to Aether, “Like I’m any better—”
He sees the young lord’s gaze flash to Lumine. Cold. A warning.
Aether shuffled closer and pinched Lumine.
The young lord hummed, and put his hand to his chin, “A mapmaker? How novel. Those aren’t common, especially the ones stupid enough to get caught”
The uncommon. The foreign. It was said like a diagnosis.
Really, Aether just wanted to get back on the road and work.
The young lord got up—which startled Aether. It was like watching one of the koi suddenly flop onto the stones. You expected them to stay in the habitat you originally saw them in. Bored and watching, like you were an interesting play.
He took the map from the guards hand swiftly, and unrolled it onto the cobblestone. He sat down to study it, the kois scattering from his movement. The lamplight making the paper more orange-toned than usual, graphite smudged mountain scapes, rivers—different from the typical map you would see available in gift shops.
The young lord traced the forms with his fingers. His boredom cracking, just slightly.
“Hm.”
The guards gave each other a glance, are you seeing this? Aether felt unsettled, and did the same to Lumine.
His finger traced a mountain ridge, “This is Mt. Yari—why the notation for this elevation?”
Aether looked over to Lumine. He did have an answer—kind of complicated. Well, I chose it because of those old Dutch cartography books my parents left me. Yes, I am a nerd.
But he only shrugged, trying to not totally blow their cover. Though, in a way it was already broken.
“Not exactly sure, just something I got from another map I saw.”
The young lord looked up briefly, then down again, “You use celestial observation.”
“Mostly the pole star.”
“That’s it?”
“Sometimes the moon.”
He pointed to a river, “And this—the Hida river, how was it? Did you walk it to measure it, using an odometer?”
Aether shifted, “Well—yeah, it was really rocky. I like marshy ones better. I scraped my knee.”
He remembered that river. It was a clear, blue day on the cusp of autumn. He kept tripping and falling. He showed Lumine afterwards, grinning wildly, knee bleeding but happy: “I finally got it!”
Lumine sent him a look: why are you telling our enemy, the person detaining us, that you scraped your knee?
Aether didn’t exactly know himself. Maybe it was because the young lord seemed so precise, so vivid in his observations. Nobody really took interest in Aether’s craft, save for Lumine and she was more in it for the money. He was educated, clearly. And he was interested. What seemed more than an interest in the security concern, more so interested in the craft.
He tried not to glow under the questions, the interest, but it was hard. These guards bound your hands, Aether. He reminded himself. But man, it felt good for his work to be understood.
The young lord straightened up from his position, looking Aether dead in the eye. “You travel a lot.”
“Yeah—I really love it.”
His eyes looked down at the map again, he looked slightly angry—crap, did Aether do something wrong?
The young lord snapped out of his spell, standing up, waving his hand like an order. “You’ll stay. Your skills will be useful.”
Aether blinked. Lumine’s brows furrowed. Useful? Stay?
“Hey—” Aether defended, “We—we’ve always been traveling. We run our own show, sell our own stuff. Without me, it wouldn’t work, and without her, it wouldn’t work.”
“She can go. You cannot,” The young lord said, and he barely looked at Lumine.
“I’m not staying.” Aether said.
“People are not wise. Arguing with the young lord of the region.”
Aether clenched his hands in their bindings. He looked over at Lumine: the person who encouraged him to even start mapmaking in the first place.. And to look at her like that, like Aether was worth something and she wasn’t. She was the first one that saw Aether’s work was worth anything in the first place, and to Aether, that made her worth a lot.
The world around him froze. The fish in the pond seemed suspended, the entire estate breathing in and out in and out. She can go. You cannot. The guards looking to him, like expecting him to lash out, break his binds, shout, yell, scream. Lumine’s shoulder touching his.
She whispered to him, “Aether, nothing can really separate us, you know.”
Aether took more breaths, in and out, in and out. She was right. Even though it was horrible, she was right.
Nothing could really separate them.
-
Now Aether was at the gate, dark wood and looming. A sense of finality. The guards were standing there, in the courtyard. Yawning, watching. Like it was boring. Like the fact that he was losing his twin—his companion on the road, his partner, was boring.
They were unbound now, after some tedious agreements about: “I will not escape, and I realize if I try to, my punishment will be severe.”
She pivoted to him, practical, Lumine, always practical. A small smile, a hand on the shoulder. An owl shrieked outside, the orange glow of the lanterns outlining her features—which, were a perfect mirror of his.
“This is good, actually. Good connections.”
Aether looked down. They both knew it was a lie. It wasn’t good. It was a disservice. It was unnatural. You’re not a prisoner, you’re networking.
“I—” Aether started, “Lumine, I can’t just leave you.”
He wanted to elaborate. Extrapolate every moment he was thankful to her, every moment he laughed with her—but he couldn’t.
Lumine glanced over to the guards, pressing something into his palm. Aether’s hand gliding over the soft wood.
“Here,” She said, opening his palm for him—the whistle, “Take our whistle. I don’t need it, because I can hear you—anywhere over the mountains,” Her voice was hushed, fast, “On the ocean. In the city, wherever, I can hear you. Just whistle.”
She smiled, closing his palm again, “Twin-telepathy, or something.”
“They’d arrest you for communicating with a criminal.”
“I won’t tell, promise. They won’t hear a peep out of me.”
She looked over the guards, one looking at his nails, the other falling asleep. They could just run away, right now, run—
But then Aether felt stamped to the ground, remembered the threat.
Lumine turned to leave. Aether squeezed her hand: don’t go.
She squeezed back, and then, “Think of me. I know you will.”
“Obviously,” He said, wiping his cheeks, “You better, too.”
“Maybe.” Lumine smiled, shrugged and started to walk off down the dark path. Aether noticed her pick up her pace, like if she went too slow—looked back, she would run back into his arms. Aether looked away, from the curved path. He couldn’t bear it anymore.
He looked back. She was further down the path.
He looked away again.
Looked back, an empty path. Just the whistle of the wind through the trees, the owl again, and the cool air of the night.
A heavy sound of the gate starting to close.
“You can move out of the way now. Come on in.”
Aether stepped into the courtyard, the wood moving back into place. An ornate cage. She was gone, his mirror, his blood. It felt—wrong, like an amputation, phantom pain, still trying to use the limb.
The hiss of the gate shutting, Aether turning to wander aimlessly—somewhere, anywhere. It felt uncanny—the fact he would sleep without her by his side, that he would be meeting faces and names she would never know. And she would as well, the thread of them only knitted together now by the same stars overhead and the same blood in their bodies.
Turning to meet a stranger, after turning away from the one he’s known from birth. The stranger with cold eyes, and a poetry book in hand, and calculating questions.