Chapter Text
“How do you become a part of someone else’s family? You don’t, and you never do.” Y, Marjorie Celona
“To a rat in a maze, the end is where the start begins.” – Noah Sebastian
-----
Against the premonition that I was being once more led astray, against the very purpose of having set foot here, in this second-brightest of hells, I allowed so aggravating an occurrence the heavens themselves would have shaken asunder when faced with the full breadth of my rage. Within a breath of my arrival, no less. Only exhaustion kept me in check, exhaustion and the ward I’d been assigned; as if I were not some bloodstained and thrice-damned pallbearer slunk up from the deepest improbable pit from an indeterminate hell of my captor’s own designs, but a caretaker arrived at the opportune time, fit for child rearing.
Although this is no child, and I am stained as I’ve ever been.
Its tiny hand twitches over mine, as if in response. As if the tempest roiling beneath the surface of my skin shouts my thoughts, through our joined fingers, directly into its soul.
Such is impossible; the blue-feathered thing with its polished face full of youth, too much like a child’s, bears no soul at all. It is a fraud, as all else in the garden it leads me through. The eyes that glisten wet and wide up at mine were spun of falsehoods and contain no substance save for ideals. It was made cleverly, however. The whimper that slipped through its lips paws at my heart, but I persuaded my heart harden and allow no purchase after I tore my hand free as easily as breaking from a spider’s web. Untold dangers lay in that creature no taller than my waist, and I cannot allow it power over me.
Pitiful as it was, I barely felt the clenching of its pale fingers through the dreadful material of the gloves my tormentors had finally allowed me to possess – after they had stripped me naked of my personal armor. Never had I seen such bickering over so small an article, how giving me a pair would only aggravate the populace, broke social contracts, invoke ire from the gods and leave a pebble in everyone’s shoe. If only they had debated over the dimensions of the shoes they gave me, although I doubt a miqo’te’s proportions would have been at all considered in the first. Lover willing, the coming trial will see them ruined.
I judge the tree like a mammoth growth reaching for the empty, blue-black sky with unshaven arms, pulling the borrowed robes tighter around my body when the breeze kicks up, as if to further mock, and stings the scars adorning my face. The lifeless soil, chill winds, and lack of protection from the oppressive sun should have eaten what little nourishment this tree might have received, yet it stands in defiance of all botanical knowledge.
Paper-thin slivers chip off and fall to the earth with a rap of my fist. Several stick onto the fibers of my glove as it comes away. Far too fragile – no tree born from a seed splintered this easily – but nature is denied freedom in this place. Its overseers have instead chosen to swell their lands pregnant with imitations of the natural world below, isolating themselves and their precious creations from influences deemed beyond control. Even the scholars of Sharlayan sought to provide their beasts in underground Labyrinthos with flesh and blood prey to loose upon, and dark, rich soil upon which to chase. Wealth to nurture the flora.
Casting my eyes upward, I count clusters of blooming flowers on every branch. Golden petals bleed to red at the tips. Down below on the earth lays naught but grass. No orphan acorns. No pinecones. No discernable way for seeds to spread. It is just as well, since there are no clouds to provide rain so any would quicken. Keeping with their vision, the architects of this land have built their castle above the clouds, and so weather has become another variable to be safeguarded from.
The leaves smell sweet, like raspberry jam, and my stomach is teased into rumbling. I place one on my tongue. Discovering it tastes like any other broad leaf, I am reminded of the carved fanciful soaps a merchant once tried to sell me whilst I burned under the Ul’dah sun. He had presented one shaped like a clutch of grapes for me to try which I had promptly taken between my teeth before fleeing the market, tail between my legs, clouds of sputtered bubbles behind. My stomach turns now as it did then, brought about by this facsimile, gut now becoming the battlefield for a three-sided war: birth, duty, and logic. My gloves are halfway off before I realize what is happening and tug them back on. Too long has it been since bark ground against my fingers, stuck calluses full with familiar splinters.
But a tree is a tree is a tree, my soul has – annoyingly – decided, even if false and hollow artisan’s work. Hugging the trunk, gloved fingers dug into the grooves, eyes asquint against the uninhibited light of day, I begin my ascent. The young voice below begs me for an onze of care, as if I were born without the aptitude for climbing like its ungainly master, an imprint of whose face decorates a nearby branch. Force of impact cracked the bark.
A quick jerk proves it still stable enough for successful use in my endeavor.
Though the gloves occasionally make finding an ideal grip difficult, my ascension proceeds apace, but other causes for discomfort start to appear. No small life dots the tree; no spiders, insects, or worms lay or live in its skin unlaced by webbing, and their cocoons are nowhere in sight. A shiver creeps through my bones.
My quarry dangles from a green stem, one of several nestled in a wreath of flowers around a branch just beyond my reach. If the one below had been anxious before, what I now attempt will send its heart fluttering. The thought drives my own heart to beat louder: a real tree, a real branch, with thick, living wood, would support my weight without question, but this sculpture gives no hints as to how its branches will handle the body of a miqo’te, especially mine. The Lover granted me height. Time, trial, and necessity of duty wrought muscle. Entire yalms worth of distance would I plunge if it snapped. My tail wavers in the breeze, exposed through the ragged hole I had torn in the robe’s back to allow for freedom.
Lain low by a simple fall – what a way for this journey to end. But I have endured to create a home from this body. By the scars I wore, I had emerged the victor over nature. I refuse to give up this flesh to folly.
Once certain the branch was firmly in my grip, I left the safety of the tree trunk and began swinging hand over hand along the branch as if it were a tightrope, the wood surprising me with its sturdiness. Whereas natural wood would have bobbed up and down to my movements, the branch I hung from remained stiff even as my body swung in the open air, tickled by chill across every spot armor once encased.
Still clenching the branch above my head, I stretch out with fingers trembling when close enough, nervous over thoughts of the fruit turning to paste, or how it might combust in my grip. The apple responds in no such manner. No bruises, no signs of decay on the skin, a healthy red sheen, and solid feel in my palm. Perfect enough to have been pulled straight from a painting.
I pluck another, depositing my quarry into the pocket of the robes along with a fistful of those alluring flower petals. Surely they could provide some use. I stole a third apple. Time had left me wan, my last meal eaten more than an age ago. Who knew when my next would come? Another – just in case. I briefly consider filling my robe’s unused hood as well. Before I knew it my pocket was bulging with goods and I was no closer to returning to the ground, but neither was I content to remain among the branches for longer than it took to spit over the edge. When your entire life has been spent in the unbound wilds, quickly do you recognize man’s every attempt to imitate it. This one unnerves me more than any other. Every scrap of foliage has been curtailed, their means of spreading removed to keep another’s vision intact. A great royal garden floating in the sky, forever unchanging, until it does, all at once, and becomes necropolis.
The one I stand atop exists amidst an archipelago. A second island hangs overhead, a waterfall flowing from its side into empty air, dissipating into mist. Numerous others drift about above the clouds, structures of alien design for purposes yet unknown built into their backs from heaps of weathered marble. Across the field a lone beast prances about, its legs bent at the knee in a manner opposite mine, neck like a serpent’s but scaled with emeralds, and ending in a chicken’s head from which two horns curl outwards towards the sun. Layered with fur, four wide, feathered wings splay outward. The head makes sudden, jerking movements as bulbous violet eyes roll about in their sockets. It clucks once, twice, then dips down to eat a chunk of grass, new blades quickly sprouting to replace what was lost.
She had called the place Elpis; on my arrival she confirmed the name.
More uncouth titles I have chosen will remain unspoken for the time being. Too much hangs in the balance for me to be spending the anger keeping me conscious like a wastrel; my quivering limbs already warn of their betrayal on the horizon. I must keep my coin pocketed until the time is right, and pray my duty clinking alongside the rage has not sunk to unreachable depths.
Relinquishing my grip on the branch, I fall into the open air.
From my hands flicker emerald lights, fading clear as they ripple like summer heat into the winds, diverting them, aether taking hold of the elements to dull the descent’s sharpest edges. More floods the ground below. Reshaping at my command, the grass and flowers part to expose smooth, brown earth before curving a slice upwards. Knees bent in preparation for the ramp, momentum preserved by the incline, I hit the surface and slide along it surfing on borrowed soles, hair grey as storm clouds flying behind me, ears fluttering, tail countering the motions to maintain stability, the mixed expression of surprise and glee on the awaiting creature’s face when I come to rest strangely finer in my veins than any drink.
“That – That was –” it begins to sputter, before the apple I toss cuts it off. Slim hands catch the fruit mid-clap. Bluebird wings about its head pick up where the hands leave off, beating in an crude imitation of joy.
“Incredible.” I finish.
“Yes! Very much incredible, yes!”
“Thank you.” I have to cough up the words, and in doing so nearly forget the thing came paired with a name. “…Meteion. I try.”
Taking bits of the black robe between gloved fingers, I attempt to curtsy. The robe’s length render the gesture impossible to see and my attempt to gloat over its master foiled. Entire fistfuls would needs be lifted over my head for a proper display. Meteion’s childlike head cocks in confusion, like a beast’s.
It places the apple onto the ground before picking up the edges of its own blue dress from around what a painter starved into delirium might have described as knees, only leaning forward slightly on one foot. “Foot,” however, is the wrong word entirely. That is a word reserved for man: every visible ilm of skin extending past the hem of the dress is of a leather with blueish-green complexion, ending in a claw, like a bird’s appendage. Black talons wiggle in the soil.
“Close enough.” I say, only to be greeted with a smile. “Now, you mentioned these apples needing syrup? Where would we find some?”
Sapphire eyes sparkle up at me from a cherub face. “Euanthe! She lives in a b-building on the west row. Usually. I can t-take us to her!”
Meteion takes off at a brisk pace without waiting to see if I’ve agreed to follow. Twin feather tails flap behind as though the simulacrum were attempting to take flight.
As we return towards the plaza from which we had come, the grass underfoot becomes carved, white stone. The rivers and trees give way to architecture. Hills turn to stairways. Nature is shaven down, restricted, and molded to fit into strips. At the plaza’s center, a chunk of polished blue crystal suspended in air by magicks older than any Sharlayan tome turns ponderously slow, surrounded by a scattering of others clad in robes identical to mine either engaged in deep discussion or enroute to one. Few spare us a glance, although I can only notice when their heads turn, however, as many still wear their mask. Those who forgo them instead hang the mask around their neck, a white, sexless covering which leaves only the mouth exposed, though not one still dons their robe’s hood; wearing both makes distinguishing one from another a hopeless endeavor.
Here, in Elpis, the qualities of man are seemingly allowed greater liberty, rather than relegating the individual to be one amongst a faceless mob, as I’ve seen them. In another time. Another place.
Meteion guides me to one such person sitting on the retaining wall of a fountain built into the side of a railed stairway. The woman holds a pink reptilian creature, one tanned finger stroking the fronds of skin ringing its head while a cluster of alike others look on from the water’s edge. As we approach, Meteion is greeted with a warm smile, but the mask hiding the woman’s eyes makes it impossible to discern if Euanthe’s welcome is also extended to me.
As her mouth opens to speak, I strengthen my stance. What leaves are not words, but a cacophonous tidal wave of sound.
[“Meteion, always a pleasure to see you. Hermes has allowed you out on your own, I take it?”]
Even having prepared, I stagger. A symphony of cannon blasts with every syllable. Forge smiths by the legion hammering steel into shape on the anvil. My ears ring, and my eyes well up with tears as alien words write familiar shapes in my mind. Once my consciousness accepts the new knowledge this will pass but it never does so quick enough. Reconstituting from ooze into functional matter is not a simple process, I imagine.
“Yes, Euanthe, but I am not alone.” It points to me. “Lillian is accompanying-ing me. Please greet her kindly.”
[“Is that so? He’s allowed the company of another familiar?”] Euanthe bobs her head up and down in obvious examination of me from head to toe, and snorts as the scalekin toothlessly nibbles at the auburn hair falling past her shoulders. “And one with such a curious design.” She strokes her companion while she muses, mercifully quiet now, and quieter still when her mouth next opens. “What results does he mean to extrapolate from this, I wonder?”
I root around for the flower petals taken from the tree. Popping one into my mouth, I force myself to chew. Bitter and unpalatable with no purpose other than to look appealing. Again, nothing like the petals of home, but chewing stops me from spitting back any sour replies as my innards crawl under her gaze.
“Euanthe, might we borrow some of your aether?” Meteion asks.
“For what purpose?”
Meteion holds out the apple. “For syrup!”
Euanthe considers the request for a moment. “Oh, you want a candied apple. I suppose I do still remember the process, but…” She shakes her head, releasing the pet back down to the water and its family. “Meteion, if I remember correctly, you weren’t designed to eat.”
The fraud wilts at the words, arms retracting to its chest, the wings on its head falling limp. “That’s right, but I want to share in eating with Lillian.”
“Maybe next time when Hermes accompanies you. Or, perchance, he could manifest one for you. He himself is partial to candied apples.”
“I like them too.”
“While it may seem that way, do keep in mind your ability to feel the emotions of others. What pleasure Hermes derives from eating is felt by you also. Such was his wont when he made you, Meteion. You may be mistaking his feelings for your own.” She held out an open hand. “As a precaution, I must ask you relinquish the apple you have procured.”
Meteion drags one clawed appendage across the floor. The birdlike talons – four of them – scratch lines into the stone. My ears flutter irritably at the sound, as does my tail towards Euanthe.
“I’m sorry, Lillian,” it mumbles, forfeiting over the apple with the same pathetic reluctance of a child returning stolen sweets to their mother, watching it slip away in bitter silence.
My own heart endures a pang for this waist-tall carved soap of a child – and right in the underbelly where the flesh is unaccustomed. Some muscle in my scarred face softens. Fatigue razed my defenses while I wasn’t looking. I write it off as weariness that I think I see the frail shoulders slump even lower, shadow shrinking in the light. In a previous life I might have intervened and taken the apple back by force. Made a show of pernicious Euanthe, however useless thinking about such hypotheticals is. In a previous life I was not here; there is only the now; there is only the bone-tired me to raise her hands if and when she chooses to.
“What use is there for eating if you cannot enjoy it?” I ask, and too loudly. Meteion shudders, head to chest, and Euanthe, taker of fruit, now turns her gaze to me. She holds her hand out expectantly.
“Out of abundance of caution I must ask for yours as well. Knowing not of your design, and the compelling presence of Meteion, to allow a familiar bring harm upon itself –”
“There’s no harm in me eating. I have a working body, and I am no familiar.” The ancient’s arm droops at that. For a moment I believe she’ll leave me alone. Then, the arm comes up once more.
“Without your creator present, I would be remiss in my duties –” She begins to insist, lips flapping like a beached fish sucking air, syllables taking her smirk and pulling it wider across her teeth up until mine sink through the skin of the apple. I flash her the elongated fangs of a miqo’te.
“My creator,” I say around a mouthful of fruit, “did her duty. Properly.”
Taking another bite, I watch the woman falter as before. Beyond that, a small, pink head pops up over the lip of the retaining wall. Six more follow the initial two making a line like fingertips over the stone, black marble eyes blinking away the seconds Euanthe spends on calculation shoring up her resolve before she confronts me again. I consider the cruelty of my deterrent only after the aether is spent, my shoes soaked through, stepping aside from her pets’ path so the deluge through the shattered stone wall keeps sweeping a particularly unlucky one down way and outside reach. The apple is made more delicious by the sight of Euanthe on hands and knees as her companions squirm finned leg over frilled arm. Shock dominates her lips now. Woe is me, and so on.
Meteion’s cries break me from reverie. It grasps a pet in one fist while attempting to repair the fountain’s ruined retaining wall piece by piece against the spilling water. “That’s a useless endeavor,” I say, reaching down into the wet. Distracted, the apple Euanthe took floats unguarded, allowing me to take it. “Catch,” I warn, before tossing the fruit. As the apple arcs towards the feathered thing soaking up water better than a sponge, I watch the sapphire eyes dart between its hands and the projectile I’d tossed, gears turning as it processes the shard of stone, the pink creature without a name, and the aforementioned apple with leaf still attached to the stem waving gently in the frozen breeze between us, awareness growing with each stretched-out second that it cannot choose between the three which to drop and which to preserve before even considering how best to catch. What a truly pitiful creature Hermes has made.
A small release of aether momentarily strengthens the ebb from the broken fountain into a geyser. Force rips stone and creature both from Meteion’s hands, leaving them empty to receive the apple which falls directly into the proper place, and the rest of Meteion in a sorry, dripping state. As Euanthe’s pet bounces away across the floor, I point to it for the shaking woman to see.
“You missed one.”
I can almost see the fire of her hate alight in the cavernous eyes of her mask now. It does nothing to shoo away the dark spreading up her robes from the lake surrounding. The fingers of my empty hand clench out of reflex around the void between, waiting, waiting as the plaza falls into silence. Our standoff has drawn attention from onlookers. The oppressive atmosphere has dampened Meteion further, which now presses itself so intensely into the retaining wall that a second breach might be created by its efforts. Perhaps it is clear that I am not some mere familiar now.
One heartbeat passes. Two. Three. Euanthe looks away on the fourth, and stumbles past me to collect her wayward creature. Only then do I find my own way through the compunction to breathe.
With a quivering hand, the apple finds my mouth again. While combat would have been difficult, and I would strive to see it so, I do not doubt her ability to see me crushed in extended battle. I am without my staff, my focus, and bereft of it my strengths are cut down to a fraction. Victory would not be easily achieved even were I well rested and of clear mind, if victory were possible at all over these people who watch silently from the galleries. Against old need crawling up my throat, I keep any barks bitten down.
A wasted effort, as one such watcher speaks up above the din.
“By this performance, my champion, have you meant to display the means learned to solve your troubles? Perhaps I shall take umbrage against this teacher of yours, and set right the troubling ways she has instilled in you!”
As always, the first moments of her appearance are the worst. She sits on the rails above, forcing that I stare directly into the godsdamned light if I’m to behold her in all her ancient glory – and at midday, no less, as if my eyes accustomed to the night were conjecture to be tested. As they adjust, her own piercing ones come into focus, rings of crystal blue around the pupils. Her other features remain washed out. Flat. A ghastly mask in portrait until what remains, too, comes into visibility: high cheeks, an upturned nose, grooves beneath the eyes and the corners of the mouth from a few faint drops of age, and from smiles repeatedly held. From her hair to her robes to her skin to the mask hanging at her collar – pure, brilliant white. In the embrace of the sun’s abhorrent radiance, she is a star herself.
Even now, she looks comfortable in her position. She is too at peace here, in her people’s castle floating at the edge of heaven where blue and cloud meld, where, if I remain long enough, I would behold the moon from so short a distance that I might discern every crater on its surface with eye alone instead of through some strange Sharlayan glass contraption.
With so little effort it might have been mistaken for any at all, the white-clad woman pushes off the railing and into the air, her impact as she lands sending a quiver through stone and fluid. One hand even brushes away dirt from her shoulder as if any were there to begin with. To not clap as wildly as Meteion does at the woman’s flaunting takes monumental will, but I scrounge up some to spare. She wades through my work to my silence, flashing her teeth on arrival.
“Meteion, I believe you were fraught with desire for some syrup? And you, Lillian?”
“Yes! Yes, Venat! Please, will you spare some of your aether for us?” Meteion holds her apple aloft with cheer in her step, soggy clothing temporarily forgotten. I attempt offering my own quietly before Meteion fills the gap with a shriek, and dances on one clawed foot, a strip of pink scales raised around its ankle, black eyes of the scalekin taking in its new predicament. Quick as a lie, Venat plucks the creature latching on for dear life and cradles it in her hands. They are worn with calluses. The hands of one who knows combat.
“An axolotl. How lovely.”
She strokes its head with the tip of her finger, and the trusting animal chirps before melting into emerald and orange light whilst Meteion claps in excitement. The ancient spreads aether over our apples with a wave of her hand, exhaling so the light winks out, replaced with a viscous, brown syrup.
A small part of me loses its appetite.
A second, smaller, part of me argues profusely against how no such emotion was felt when I had previously witnessed this, when my clothing was spun from a creature not unlike a butterfly, wide as I am tall, at a finger snap. Every ancient wore garb from similar sources, like as not, Venat included. No different than the leathers worn by so many in my home, or the beasts I myself had taken a knife to for skinning time and again. Despite this, while syrup glistens over the sharp crevasses my teeth have left behind, tickling my nose with pungent odors of cloves and cinnamon, all the while my stomach clamors for more than the few bites I have taken, I find myself unable to do more than stare at the tainted fruit in hand.
“Is this not to your liking?” Venat asks.
“Perhaps I’m not as hungry as I thought,” I say with mouth traitorously watered. It’s a lie, and a weak one; I lack the mental fortitude to twist myself into belief. Thankfully, footsteps on approach behind me prevent Venat from probing further. Judging by the rapidity and the numerous distinct chirps, I can easily narrow down who they belong to.
“Greetings to you, Venat.” Euanthe’s tone is a serious one. An arm bent across her chest serves as a perch for numerous pink faces, frills drawn close so they appear oversized tadpoles. “Might I owe this pleasure to your coming to collect these concepts? Is this one of your design?” Euanthe heaps emphasis onto the new word meant, I presume, a promotion from “familiar.” To be put on equal terms with the fraud chewing beside me, however, is no less an annoyance.
“In a manner of speaking,” Venat replies, nodding. “More accurate to say she belongs to a dear friend, but spiriting her from here is, yes, my purpose. Meteion, as well, at the behest of our chief overseer.”
“Then the responsibility for this disturbance falls on you.”
Venat’s piercing eyes flicker over towards me. “Has some wrongdoing been committed?”
“Have a look around! See the chaos this one has wrought!” She gestures widely with a free arm to the water spilled out in every direction – the water that continues to spill from the damaged fountain. “You stand in water that should not be because of its destructive nature, and tendency towards aggression. Of all who’ve come to Elpis, Venat, you more than any should know what risks gather without the presence of a guiding hand, and I can only hope your colleague has not given this one to your care out of jest.”
“’Twas an unfortunate incident, I agree. One I had hoped not to incite, if not for the matter requiring my full attention: our playing host to the Convocation. A matter most urgent, I have been informed,” she answers, lips wobbling while she pauses, “and by assumption, by the presence of the eminent Emet-Selch.”
That piece of news takes Euanthe visibly by surprise. Given the increased frequency of chirps from her armful of pets, that arm did something to displease them.
“I can only pray you will forgive my mistake,” Venat adds.
“In light of this news, I suppose my own qualms are minor and may be overlooked. But accountability must be taken, Venat, as you know.”
“Of course.”
“Then will you help in repairing the damage done? Truth be told, the concepts related to architecture are yet unknown to me, and as hand in Elpis affairs your sentiments will be appreciated.”
My decision to shatter the retaining wall is paying back in spades. I find the most comfortable step possible on the stairway to sit watch the scene unfold. One ancient brought to hands and soaking knees was pleasure enough, but to see the same of another, of Venat, is divine. White hides none of the water’s stains; her robes scream out their sullied state unlike the black so common while I sit dry. Her back bends like a laborer’s. Hands run over the surface of the stone where it is whole and also where it is broken, gathering dirt and sediment, and I imagine her cutting a thumb on a jagged corner deep enough to smear blood and nearly burst with laughter. I fear I am enjoying the debasement too much.
But I do wish she would hurry her repairs. Syrup has begun to soak into my glove. I am too far removed from the mind of one still finding any morsel acceptable once it’s touched the earth, but neither will I waste it. And my body still quails; I am at an impasse. My mood darkens amidst the wavering. All the while Venat fondles the retaining wall like a drunk with her lover, and mutters now about a problem.
“How so?” asks Euanthe, leaning in.
“Look here, and here as well, where the water flows out.”
“What is it you want me to see?”
“There is a hole here, Euanthe.”
“Yes.”
“A gaping hole from which water flows through the broken wall. Disaster could come of this, great disaster, if not repaired promptly.”
“But you will repair it, yes?”
“In conjunction with the proper methodology. Methodology devised by those to whom a wider understanding has already been gained through academic pursuits. Naught a grander place exists than Elpis for this purpose. Even a cursory visitor may find small but not insignificant insight among the myriad researchers, and perhaps, in addition, the wisdom to apply it.”
“So, you will repair the damage? Correct?”
“My apologies, Euanthe, but this will need to be reported to those possessed of proper authority. I am only here as consult. Concepts of aetherically charged stone such as this are beyond my grasp.” Venat stands, wiping dirt onto her robe. “As one seeking to account for actions taken absconding from the scene would reflect poorly on my person, nor can I bring myself to foist the onus of Meteion’s care given me by the chief overseer onto one whose arms are so burdened to go about it myself. I would prefer not to burden you at all – but – the circumstances demand burden be given. This fetching must fall to you, I’m afraid.”
I imagine slinging the apple at her white head, hair turning into fat dark clumps from syrup. A splash of saliva for good measure. Rendered unsalvageable, I wish to be there peering from within the bushes, enjoying denial after denial, until Venat reaches the foregone conclusion that no soap can save her and despairs. Belted to the left sabaton taken from me is a knife, I will tell her, of Lominsan steel with a good, keen edge. It was my mother’s before it became my tool, but you may partake as well. Glee hooks into my mouth and threatens a smile so wide Meteion might notice from its perch on a step below. Something has already set it twitching. Odd. I do not believe myself to have made any noise.
Venat dashes over once Euanthe has left, grinning ear to ear, unaware a red, sticky, and fragrant pile six yalms thick and three deep surrounds her. There’s a mischievous spark in her eye.
“Come, come, friends. Come along! We must away at once before Euanthe realizes the truth.” Giggles break through her words. “No authority I bade her find exists, save for one currently preoccupied, and with Emet-Selch serving as adjudicator Hermes will remain so for several days at least!” She coaxes Meteion to stand, holding the thing’s half-eaten apple so it can use both hands for balance. Those blue wings grown from its head beat as if attempting to help but only succeed in casting equilibrium off like a cheap necklace. It is like watching a new-hatched windkin before it stumbles from the nest – the stairs, in this case – so Venat steadies it with a hand upon the frail shoulder. “I have found a spot well-suited for our undertaking. One far from curious ears.”
“Hermes’ meeting w-won’t end soon?”
“I daresay I must needs dash those hopes. Emet-Selch’s adherence to duty remains legendary, consideration for others’ time being the lowest of his priorities.” She attempts to offer a hand to me, but I can stand on my own without help.
“And what of waiting around?” I ask. “What about reflecting poorly on your image if you ran?”
“You would ask that I smother the interests you have piqued? Delay our conversation and possibly let an opportunity such as this pass me by as easily as day turns to night? And here I believed you knew me well.” Venat winks, as if there’s some secret joke held between us. The woman laughs with herself in the looking glass, speaking words the gift of tongues given me cannot parse. I feel the butt of one instead.
“Never crossed my mind, you skirting the law when it suited you.”
“Truly? Am I to become so stringent as our Emet-Selch and to let code of law become my guide, even to the unknown? What a horrid fate. To be so dull, and yet you are here. You must sate my curiosity at once.” She eyes the apple in my hand. “I have gathered other refreshments, as well, if such a thought encourages you.”
“Are there drinks?”
“I would not have you answer questions with a dry throat.”
“Lead on then,” I tell her, taking a generous bite of the apple. Despite most of the syrup already having rolled off into my glove, my mouth still fills with the taste of cinnamon and cloves. I chew with what hopefully passes for relish, pretending the sapphire eye peeking around the leg of Venat’s robe in hopes for another treat to fill cheeks that only look like flesh is not there, and pretending my stomach is not in full revolt, until it and Venat’s backs are turned. Gloved hand to mouth, watery mash and syrup spill out in rivulets to grind white into the rock under the heel of the borrowed hupodema, and a splash tells me the apple, flung over my shoulder, has landed in the fountain and a lap of responsibility not my own. Let her aether pollute another’s blood instead of mine.
Venat has already divined my origin. I cannot allow her more than that, so the fewer avenues I allow into my person, the better. I must embrace that quality that I have always found impossible to grasp and so left to others better suited – discretion. Coaxing leaden legs to follow the affront and the fraud before the distance is great enough to arouse coarse suspicion over, Venat’s first words damning words spoken to me in Elpis still beating a tattoo against my skull, I return to the path she’d set me on from the moment of birth and leave the bustling crypt-to-come behind.
I say...have you perchance come from the future?