Sayanastia!
Cair has just walked blindly into a risible comedy routine. The Lunarian is going to keep meandering around in linguistic circles, constantly trying to pin the world down in terms of being and connections, sharp if impermanent definitions, while Cair casually switches between multiple meanings of “sick” to muddle everything up.
That is, if having its hand slapped doesn’t make it drop dead on the spot. Fussy little things, those moon-people. All convinced that contact with the world down here will infect them. They’re already infected in the most important way: they accept the world for what it is.
…once upon a time, that would have sent you into a seething, furious monologue. Come! Let’s! Turn the world over! That sort of thing.
Whatever happened to that fire, hun? Is there any of it left in the ashes of your heart and cosmetics palette? Generations ago, you’d be seizing Crevas as a beachhead for the reclaiming Outside, that swamp which washes out towards the far-distant void; now, you’re just—
“Pardon me, ma’am,” one of the Brothers says, after clearing his throat with more thoroughness than necessary. “In recognition of your exemplary behavior here today, refraining from uncivilized and unproductive behavior, the Goddess wishes to offer you a gift.” This, a palm-sized box wrapped in cheap and colorful paper, he offers you.
(Inside— not that you know this yet, not unless you open it, and of course he’ll just stand here awkwardly until you do— is a bar of Shining Shield Soap, for the Most Persistent & Undesirable Odors. And Civelia will make eye contact with you for just a moment, a moment in which it’s clear she hasn’t fully forgotten certain chariot incidents, and then return smoothly to her tiresome playacting with Rurik. If you open the box, of course, and do not enter into a stubborn-off with this nun, or run away, or start one of Cair’s ridiculous chains of deals, or anything of the sort.)
Yuki!
“All I need is you in my song,” Sulochana says, and squeezes your shoulder. Could you ask for a better bestie? “No matter the verse. And— ah, I think, here we are.”
But here we are doesn’t mean you’ve arrived to greet Civelia. She’s chosen, instead, to pull over to receive a gilt box through the curtains. “Ah, thank you, Sulmya,” she says grandly to the artisan standing on the steps. Her voice slips registers so smoothly, from a soft-spoken friend to this assertive Princess. “I am sure this shall be sufficient for my needs. I shall send my regards and orders for the solar festival.”
Sulmya does that funny little shimmy of her coils that you think counts as a curtsey, and Sulochana lets the curtains fall again as the palanquin-bearers pick up the pace. In her hands, it’s clearer that it’s gold and silver worked over a thick, dark Outside wood, so dark it’s a little dizzying.
“Go ahead. Open it,” she says, pressing the box into your hands.
(And of course you’ll open it, thumbing the lock, won’t you? Won’t you have a glimpse of the fashionable necklace inside? Outside of Crevas, where the Outside meets reality, there are crabs which eat the grains of the variegated sands and the insects hiding between them, and over time the inside of the shells become something like mother-of-pearl, all iridescent and glossy, different colors every time the light shifts. The panels of sand-nacre here are divided by absolutely perfect pearls from the Aestivali islands, their pure milky white contrasting with the mutable hues of the panels. And in the center is the official cartouche of Crevas, the coils working around each other, done in the palest and most delicate gold. If you open this, if you hold it against your skin, if you let her use her tablet as your mirror, you’ll see that she picked every part out deliberately to complement your ears and your complexion. Somehow, she’s managed to find something in Whitemarket that is as loud about how much she cares about you as it is about the money she spent on it.)
(But you’ll also— for just a moment— see a flashing, furious eye where the light hits the silver so perfectly that it’s almost… well. A mirror.)
Eclair!
“You ask me for a song, girl?” There is a dry bemusement in her voice. “I wonder what I should make of that.”
Fortunately, in the moment in which she is considering you and your status as regards the hunt, the song is echoed back from the retinue. “dum-te-dum, dum-TE-dum, dum-te… this one.”
The huntress is one of the younger members of the pack; her voice is a hoarse whisper. She wears weatherbeaten, mottled black and grey; her eyes and lips are also painted black. In the shadows, in the dark, she would be invisible. But here in the colorful city, in the Festival of Light, her gangly, hunched frame is superimposed on the world. In her hands, she fiddles with a tablet.
And from it, blessed relief, issues forth the song, now familiar. Even before she says it, Dollwaltz has clicked into place. If you’d been able to explain the tune properly, Madeline would have been able to help; she introduced the song to the Manor, after all.
A memory surfaces: a fellow maid, glimpsed from behind, humming along as she dusts in the Evening Wing of the Garnet Library. Her vibrant carrot-orange curls bounce with every completed tripartite collection of notes, and a glossy black heel lifts off the floor.
In this memory, Timtam does not turn to face you.
…but she was not the composer, and plenty of people have listened to it and saved it to their tablets, probably. This huntress, for one. Her smile is self-satisfied, even as she lifts her dark eyes just enough to meet yours. The Civil claps her hands together and looks up reverently at the huntress; she barely comes up to the huntress’s chin, even in that hunched posture. (The Civil is wearing a simple leather collar lined with fur, with a silver ring hanging at the front, almost hidden by her fur ruff. No member of the Order could miss it, or fail to guess at its implications. You are very attuned to such matters of positioning.)
“Ah,” the Khatun says. “So clever, Olesya.” If she was unsure if she approved of you for asking, there is no doubt that she approves of Olesya for answering; that she is proud by proxy. “There. You have your answer, little sluzhanka. So we are settled.”
Hazel!
“I still can’t believe you said that to her, yah?”
I’m very certain that the end of that conversation is still playing on loop inside your brain. For all that you’re trying to distract yourself with pretty flowers in the light of early dusk, marveling at statues of Nagi that don’t have any of the mesmeric prowess of the living, you can still remember her surprisingly husky laugh, her pat on your cheek, her suggestion that you shouldn’t miss the Queen of Light.
And now here you are, trying to distract yourself a little more with a view from the gardens, which are on this jutting outcropping from the rock. From here, from this railing, you can see the city stretch out above, but mostly below. You can see the plaza which is thronged already with people waiting for the goddess’s big reveal, and you should probably head over there soon, you and these two girls hoping to steal your wallet, and if you’re lucky you’ll meet Yuki there to defend you, and if you’re really lucky you’ll catch another one of Anat’s performances.
Turn your head to the right, and there’s rooftops glittering in the last rays of the sun’s dimming light. (The sun never sets in Thellamie; it just powers down for the night, like a giant lamp on a timer.) The streets that Keli and Seli have pulled you through, giddy and delighted, full of wonders you’d never see back home.
Turn your head to the left again, and there’s the Viperiat, the final dungeon, the castle where Yuki saved this world from an evil snake-star-lady in all of the mirrors. The place she didn’t drag you to.
“Oh, don’t kidnap me~”
“Ha! What, don’t you remember what we told you?”
“The Nagi don’t snatch people right off the street.”
“You need the Khatun and her pack for that.”
“Though people who don’t pay their debts sometimes find the homehubs perilous.”
“But you’d never do that, yah?”
Turn your head a little more to the left and there’s Keli, hand underneath her chin, tail resting against the back of your thighs. Turn your head all the way back to the right, and there’s Seli, running her fingernails across the stone.
“Really, it’s been a magical day, yah? Priceless, even?” And here it is. Oh, here it is. Earlier than you expected. Are you ready to stand up for yourself, Hazel?
Well, it doesn’t matter, because that’s when somebody screams at you from a private gazebo higher up the smooth ramps of the garden, and what she says is:
Purnima Karn-Pana!
“I need her weakness!” That’s what you said, slithering in circles around the family’s private gazebo, tugging at your hair like you were wringing Yuki Edogawa’s neck. “It’s her or me, isn’t it? That nasty little outlander, that assassin-for-hire, that… that… that awful little brat! How am I supposed to outplay her? We don’t have her context, she doesn’t have a home hub, and I need information! So Mevis, report!”
You’d turned on your family’s spymaster-general, then, this two-legged Nagi with the build of the Kel. She’s old, certainly, but that’s become a viciously-used asset in her line of work. She’s able to ferret secrets out of half the grandmothers in Crevas.
“Well,” she said, interlacing her fingers, “dearie, there’s one weakness this outlander has that she didn’t have last time. You see, she’s become a young woman now, and she’s so confident in her alliance with the Arju that she has brought her husband to Crevas this year. A young and handsome man, with horns like a venturer scout; that’s what I’ve heard.”
Your heart leapt. Mevis lapsed into silence then, smiling as she let you think through your thoughts. Quite considerate of her, but you didn’t stop to consider how she knew to do that. “Yes! If we can seize this husband of hers, we have her by the very heartstrings! What will you do then, Yuki Edogawa? Go running to Sulochana and the Arju, force them to overextend, start an open war between the families? Or will you come to me so that I may give you terms. What would you do for him? Would you betray Sulochana? You would, wouldn’t you, you conniving schemer! I won’t just be safe from you, you wretched assassin, I shall use you to be Sulochana’s very downfall! And all we need to do, Mevis, is scour this city— spare no expense— to find this antlered outlander, wherever he…”
You let your words trickle away as you stared down into the lower gardens, where a young man with antlers just so happened to be, flanked on either side by elite Aestivali bodyguards.
And now we’re caught up, aren’t we?
"Seize him!” You are, of course, flanked by your bodyguards, well-coiled and strong. But you’re not content with pointing him out; you heave yourself down the ramps, showing the vaunted speed of a furious Nagi. "He’s mine!!”
Oh, sure, the Aestivali can grab his arms and run with him, but you will have him. You shall have him, or your name isn’t Purnima Karn-Pana, next Princess of Crevas!
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