[Closed] I Never Dream of You

[Tom Cooke]

The Ibutatu Estate • Muluku Islands

Very Early on the 27th of Yaris, 2719

L
ight sharp as a blade’s edge, hazy like through dirty windows; it’s early, and I see the world in fits and starts. A gull, blurry-black shape streaking across wide robin’s egg blue, a dash of ink spattering across parchment. The sea is ink, the sky a spread of paper, endless-empty. The sun bright on the twisting path.

I know where to find the grove. The sun’s warm on my skin, warm and fine as velvet, and my lungs fill up freely with air, and I can see over the fields. Nothing aches; nothing groans like a ship in the wind. It’s as easy as one foot in front of the other, and the path’s warm against the soles of my feet, and the world is full of gold. I can find him by it; I can follow him. I have to ask him the question.

I can’t remember the name — the vine — it’s a hair’s breadth from my fingertips —

The orchard is a forest, the trunks closer-placed than I remember, and I wade through shivering kofi leaves stained with gold. The canopy is lower; the top of my head brushes some branches, and others I have to duck underneath, weaving them aside gentle-like with my hands. They’re strong hands, calloused hands, tanned skin traced with scars, with thick dark hair, knuckles scuffed up and swollen. They ache; it’s the only pain, and it’s a good pain. They’ve ached since I was a boch.

The wind sweeps through my hair, tangles it in front of my face, long and thick and wild. I wonder if he would still like to braid it; I imagine him holding a band in place, one at a time — like crocheting — weaving band over band, slowly, his left hand as beautiful as it ever was, long-fingered — I can see it, all the lovelier for the care he takes —

Does he know I died? Does he know how I died? Does he–?

I’m stained with it; everyone can see.

And I see him now with his back to me, the shape of him nestled in a sea of dappled glow. The breeze ruffles his loose linen; it’s patterned with little dark spots, like the stars inverse, and they ripple, and they make shapes. He turns and he looks up at me, his eyes luminous dark.

Aremu.

My voice is deep and strange.

I can’t remember the name of the vine; I need your help —

You could’ve held both, sir.

I look down. My hands are thin and pale and freckled.

Please believe me.

I could smell it on your breath. Sir.

I had to drink at dinner.

You stood there, silently, knowing what you are. To sacrifice your life is nothing.

It should have been you, sir.

I wanted to tell you. I’m a monster.

Tom.

It should have been me.

I’m drawing a ward, painting the floorboards with deep red Nassalan. I won’t let it happen again; I have to be stronger. I find the words, I draw them out and trace them with my fingertips, glossy, glowing: I know the words, except for one. It won’t happen again. But I don’t know that the ward will hold; my hands are shaking.

I look up, and I see — the mirror’s been uncovered — I have to find my coat, or else the spell will break, but it’s too late — I can see him, and he’s looking back at me, flat grey eyes and curl of a sneer —

[Aremu Ediwo]

Pre-Dawn, 27 Yaris, 2719
The Ibutatu Estate

For a moment, in the pre-dawn glow against the cliffs, Aremu was at peace. Even the Tincta Basta was cold on a morning like this, even in Yaris, even where it tucked up and swirled about against the islands. The shock of it, as he dove into the water, had knocked all the thoughts from his head. It was an instinctive, visceral rush, that cold, as powerful as an electric shock, and he had felt it in every inch of his body, as if it had slid beneath his skin and rushed to fill him whole.

There was no lingering beneath, not today; Aremu thrust himself up through the skin of the water, and treaded at it for a moment, breathing hard. His skin prickled with goosebumps, and he turned and swam towards the cliffs. The waves snatched at him, here and there, and he ducked beneath to avoid them, to keep from being caught up in the rush of them – at least, any more caught up than he wished to be.

And then he was at the cliffs, brushed gently against the rocks; he grabbed hold with wet fingers, and pressed his elbow firmly against another nook, and found toeholds in the wet smooth surface beneath the bottom of the water. There was no time; there was no time to do anything but choose a path and to go, because the swell of the waves had drawn back, and would rush forward again before long.

Once he had set the pattern, there was nothing to do but climb.

Aremu knew this cliff; he had not bothered to count the times he had climbed it. But it was a long one, and even starting twice from the same spot, his route was never the same. The one he found today pushed him, and that was as it should be. He turned himself over completely to the climb, arms and legs working together, fingers and toes gripping wet at the rock, water dripping from the short scruff of his hair to trail cool down his back. He climbed, higher and higher, and he let go over everything else, and simply was.

Close to the top, a bit of rock crumbled – gave way beneath his foot. Aremu scrabbled to hold on, and felt a sting of pain as something caught against the softest skin of it. Adrenaline rushed through him, and he heaved himself up over the edge, lying on his stomach for a moment against the grassy rocks.

Aremu groaned, softly, and his eyes fluttered shut. The adrenaline drained from him, slowly, and he rose – onto his hands and knees, first, before he pushed himself up to his feet. Aremu breathed steadily in and out, and settled his foot against a rock, glancing down to see seawater and faint cloudy red mingling on the hard black surface of it. He sighed, and rubbed his hand over his face, looking out at the horizon beyond.

The sun was still not quite rising, but light had long-since spilled over the horizon. If he turned – if he twisted – he could see the barest fading pinpricks of light above, the last moment when the stars made themselves known in the distant sky. He closed his eyes, and shifted, and wiped his foot against the edge of the rock, and sat again, slowly, easing back so his legs rested close to the edge.

Aremu’s eyes fluttered closed. There was still a sense of peace inside him – like an echo, he thought. His thoughts drifted, and wandered, but old familiar paths did not hurt, just now, not like they might have.

“No one’s your master,” he said, softly, to the Tincta Basta. Once – once, Aremu thought with a sigh, he had liked the western side better, on the far edge of the plantation. He had known better even as he had found the map, but he had traced out the direction to look towards the Rose – where, if one drew a line – sometimes he had seen distant lightning storms, flashing out over the horizons, and he had let himself wonder. Not since, of course.

Uzoji had been kind about it, Aremu thought, looking down at his hand and his wrist against his lap. The little pool of bloody water caught the first light of the day; other droplets were scattered around him, beginning slowly to dry. He had told Aremu himself. Aremu had never asked him for news, but it had come, nonetheless, occasionally, indirectly, by implication.

And then, a little over a year ago now, Uzoji had come off of the ship with a grim face. He hadn’t done it straight away. Aremu had not known; he had looked first to the crew, thinking – perhaps – but they had all been there, everyone who had left returned, as safe as ever. No, not right away, but Uzoji had not made him wait either. He had sat Aremu down after dinner, that night, with the summer crickets chirping outside, and the house still smelling faintly of warm spices.

“I’m sorry, Aremu,” Uzoji had said, softly. “It’s Tom Cooke. He’s gone.”

Like a shock of cold water, Aremu thought, now, looking over the edge of the cliff. He closed his eyes, and sighed, and rubbed his face with his hand. He had wept, of course. Uzoji had held his hand – and then him – and had said nothing of it, but there had been tears running down his friend’s face too, like permission.

Aremu looked back up at the horizon. Some pain, he thought, dulled over time. That had not been his experience with grief; it was not constant, but when it came back, it still cut knife-sharp. It marked you, he thought. Tom –

The horizon began to blur.

Aremu blinked at it, and shook his head faintly. His breath caught in his chest, and he groaned, and squeezed his eyes shut, and shook his head again. “No,” he whispered, breath coming faster and faster; it caught and choked and rippled in his throat. “No,” he twisted, and squeezed his eyes shut tighter, and gasped.

The horizon was still blurring, gray-blue – spreading, strange, as if it was rippling open. Aremu let his head tilt back, choking on his breath; he squeezed his eyes shut; his whole body tightened and spasmed with the force of fighting it. He bit the inside of his cheek, sharp and hard – tasted blood, coppery-bitter on his tongue – he fought, he fought with everything he had, brought it all to bear and pushed back with whatever strength he called his own.

And, inevitably, he lost.

Aremu jerked forward; he was bent half-over, and his eyes were drawn, as if he could not help it, to the rays of light gleaming in the little puddle of watery blood. He groaned, softly, and felt it begin; the world was gone, then. There was nothing, at first, nothing at all; only sight and sound and sensation, but indecipherable, all of it, rushing through him unyielding, as if he were a tool only, nothing more.

Slowly, slowly, images began to form before him, his blood shimmering and shining a thousand colors and then coalescing, slowly, into something he could see – a golden path, winding through trees – kofi and tsug trees growing with one another – strong, familiar hands, a voice that cut into him like a knife – and then another voice, and other hands.

Aremu was nothing, then, no man; only a dark emptiness where something moved, shifted and lived and breathed.

It washed over him, the sights and sounds, and he could not have looked away. He wanted to; he would have. If he could have seen anything else – if he could have unknown it – but he saw it all; he felt it all. His own voice, echoing inside him, sharp and painful – a bloody trace of shapes on the ground – a new, familiar face – made horrible –

It left him then.

He was only Aremu, once more, but no less empty than he had been. Aremu crumpled, slowly, lying sprawled against the edge of the cliff. He shuddered, and he could hear his own voice, then, faint and keening and whimpering. He longed to cry; he could not. If he let go – if he let go – if he let go he would fly apart, he thought, into a thousand pieces, into –

Aremu didn’t fight, this time, not the encroaching blackness. The last sound he heard was his own voice in a panting, pained groan, the bright squawks of seagulls above, and then, as if the gods knew mercy, the world crumbled to black around him.

[Tom Cooke]

The Ibutatu Estate • Muluku Islands

Morning on the 27th of Yaris, 2719

N
e, it couldn’t’ve lasted – it wouldn’t’ve.

He’d drifted, and then he’d woken up, and sometime in the night the wind’d struck him so chill he’d crept under the sheets and slept proper; and it’d been a pleasing sort of sleep, mindless, macha, the bed a balm to his aching muscles, all ada’na Ahura’s curry and benny rice-flour pancakes settling in his stomach. For maybe half an hour, he hadn’t known where or who he was. He wouldn’t’ve known, for all it felt like he was tucked into the bed at the Fords after a hard job and good yats, like any other man.

That half-sleep felt like a world away from the dark water closet, his head aching like somebody’d hit his skull with a hammer, slumped dizzy against the door. His heart was still leaping in his chest, and every breath hurt. His limbs were trembling twigs.

So much for yats, and so much for being any other man.

It was still the gloaming when he crept back to his room. Stars still scattered haphazard across the sky like seeds on a countertop.

At first, Tom crawled back into bed. He lay curled on top of the twisted sheets, too weak to draw them aside, too tired to get underneath them. The sharp pain in his head dulled to an empty throb, and though he shut his eyes, he couldn’t find any more peace. It was cold, colder than it should’ve been. He realized then in the silence his porven was fizzing mad.

“Hush, nanabo,” he slurred into a fistful of linen, burying his face into the bed. “Hush, hush.” Tears prickled at the edges of his eyes. His stomach ached with an empty throb of its own. He drew his knees up, hip aching, and lay there for some time.

But the dream – the strange, vivid center of it’d fallen through; it couldn’t be salvaged, and thank the Circle. But its edges were crisp to burning, and when he shut his eyes, he found their imprint clearer and clearer against the backs of his eyelids. He let go of the sheets and pressed his hands to his face, cold as ice and warm as fever. The sick gave way to crying. He remembered Aremu braiding his hair one-handed, and a ward, and the sight of Anatole’s face in the mirror, and a sinking feeling of guilt. He couldn’t bring himself to look more closely; he begged his memory not to show him more.

It wasn’t yet light when the dizziness abated enough for him to get out of bed. He lit an oil lamp, and the warm light was strangely comforting. More comforting was the dark shape of the coat over by the washstand. He found he could go to it and wash his face and hands, and then he found – slowly – he could strip off his shirt and trousers, unthinking, unseeing – find the folded linen at the edge of his bed, undisturbed from last night, and pull them on.

Feeling fresher, he settled back into the chair by the window and sat quiet-like, letting his head loll back. Letting himself feel hollow-eyed and drained. The linen was light and cool against his skin; he shivered, but it wasn’t so bad. More color swept into the sky, pale, then bright, and Tom watched the stars disappear one by one through lidded eyes.

When the sun had come up, he felt more like a man. He stood, and found himself less shaky than he’d thought. The clothes were a pina too big for him – mostly too long, and when he could bear it, he rolled up the legs of the trousers so his heel wasn’t treading on them. They looked a fair mant like what Aremu’d been wearing; he didn’t think who they’d belonged to, ’cause that was too much, for now.

Now he could think, he thought ruefully he’d missed the sunrise over the cliffs. He’d meant to go this morning, before anybody else was up. He’d missed that barest blush of red at the horizon, all the way in the distance, marking the dark seam where sky met sea; he reckoned the sun’d be well beyond that point, by now. But –

Looking at the covered mirror, he tested his weight again, tested his dizzy head. “Not so bad,” he grunted, and the sound of his voice wasn’t a shock; it was grim, but it was grounding. He knew it well enough, by now – better, leastways, than he did the face. Thinking how the clothes’d been too big, he was reluctant to try the sandals, but found – to his relief – that they were pleasantly snug.

The open, empty hallways, just casting off their shadows, were even more of a relief. It was still dawn, and it was quiet. He didn’t see a single soul on his way out the back, though the ghosts of spices lingered loud round the kitchen. He remembered the walk to the grove and fetched a broad-brimmed hat, though he didn’t put it on.

The winding walk to the cliffs was easier than yesterday’s, and he took it slow, trying to ease the strength back into his limbs. He ached all over, and not just from the sick; but it wasn’t all a bad ache. His left eye tickled and itched, and he reckoned he must’ve retched – or wept – it red. But there were no other eyes here, no mirrors, and with the cool ocean breeze raking gentle fingers through his linen shirt and too-big trousers, he almost felt a sort of peace.

He could see the cliffs, now, almost glowing in the morning light, and beyond them, the wide blue sea, and the pale blue sky with its feathery clouds. He could almost taste the salt, now. Then, he saw the limp shape on the sunlit rock.

He froze, at first, fingers knotting in his hat against his chest. It wasn’t the shape of a sleeping man. Unthinking, he quickened his pace, one sandal scuffling and nearly tripping him on a rock. He stumbled, caught himself, and pushed on more slowly. “Ada’xa!” he called, and found his voice rasping and thin. He cleared his throat, tried again: “Ada’xa!” Anatole’s voice was deep and resonant, and carried well over the wind, this time.

The shape didn’t move.

He came closer, ’til he could see the sprawled shape of Aremu better, fair close to the edge of the cliff. Closer than Tom was comfortable with. He grit his teeth. The imbala wasn’t wearing much; he must’ve been – climbing? Diving? There was something dark smeared on the rocks nearby – dried sap, looked like – and on one of his bare feet, some laoso scrapes. It didn’t look like there was any blood matting his hair.

But Aremu was out cold, and Tom thought, for a grim few moments, he might be dead. He paused a handful of feet away, just before he knew he’d be pushing his porven on him. “Ada’xa?” he tried, one last time, and when the imbala still didn’t move, he went to his side and knelt.

After another moment of hesitation, he reached to give his shoulder a gentle shake. “Hey, hey,” he grated. “You all right?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Early Morning, 27 Yaris, 2719
The Ibutatu Estate

He felt it first. It scraped against his skin and rubbed all his nerves raw, and Aremu knew it for what it was. In those few precious moments when all that there was of him had not yet returned, he still knew it. In those few terrible moments, he could not but know it.

He saw his eyes first - flat, gray eyes, watching him.

“No,” Aremu choked the word out; there was nothing but it in his head, an endless chorus, a repetition: no no no no no no no. He scrabbled back, or tried to; it felt as if he was moving through syrup, thick and heavy, clinging to his arms and legs. He could scarcely move them - he couldn’t get away -

He scraped himself back against the rocks, and it was harder than climbing a cliff. There was no path, no pattern, nothing to follow, only a desperate animal need to escape. There was a hand, thin and pale and freckled, reaching out to him through the air. “No,” Aremu groaned the word, and twisted his head away.

There was light, so much light - it was too bright, arcing over the cliff and stinging at his eyes. His head ached; it throbbed. He couldn’t help but see. He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to know.

His clothes, Aremu realized. He was wearing -

He was sick then, half-up off the rocks. He groaned, and coughed, and he retched again, gasping, clinging to the rocks of the cliffside with his hand, twisted away from - from -

No, Aremu thought, desperately, even though he knew there was no one to answer him. Please, no.

He was sick until there was nothing left in him, and then he was still retching. He wasn’t off the rocks anymore; he was curled half against them, too weak for anything else. If there was anything left in him, he would have spewed it on himself, but he couldn’t seem to stop. As if he could cough up it, cough it all up and get it out of himself. It stung in his throat, and his eyes pricked with tears from the sour acid taste of it.

No, Aremu thought, although he couldn’t force the words out through the ache in his throat. No, no. He squeezed his eyes shut against it. Against the back of them, in the darkness, he could see kofi leaves with veins of gold, trembling in the breeze.

His whole body was trembling, shaking. He could feel it all, the warmth of a nearby rock, something liquid against him. He could feel it all, an ache as if they were his hands, the drift of the breeze in hair that wasn’t his. His skin hurt, the salt and the rocks scraping at him, the wind rubbing them raw like a taunt, and all his nerves too, like the dark beneath his skin had been set on fire. Someone else’s fingertips traced shapes he didn’t understand against the floor in dark red, and he could feel the grain of the boards. He couldn’t open his eyes again; he couldn’t see anything else. There was a voice, whispering - whispering - he couldn’t drown it out -

“No,” Aremu whimpered, his throat dry and raw, the word only just made real. He shuddered, and he let go; it was the barest hold on consciousness, and he found that he could relinquish it, that he could sink back down into some dark place; that he could look away, just a little longer.

[Tom Cooke]

The Ibutatu Estate • Muluku Islands

Morning on the 27th of Yaris, 2719

N
o, Aremu said, and Tom didn’t understand. Not all right? But there was something else in his eyes, fixed on him wide and wild for a breathless second. And he did understand the way the imbala twisted out from under his outstretched hand, scrambling back against the rocks, sloppier than Tom had ever seen him. He wasn’t trying to hide his right wrist, not now, using it to brace him. He understood enough, leastways, to lower his shaking hand, to shift back on his haunches.

No, he repeated. Tom’s heart was in his ears, his pulse louder than the tides tossing foam up on the cliff. Aremu was damned close to the edge, but there was nothing he could do. If he got closer, he might force him off. Circle knew the porven must not’ve been a pleasant thing to wake up to, concussed or otherwise. He wanted to back away, to give the man space from the mess of it, but he felt like at any moment he’d have to lunge forward and grab him; he didn’t know if he’d have the strength to haul him back over, but he knew he’d be thrice damned if he didn’t try.

I’m not going to hurt you, he wanted to say, knowing it was ridiculous. There was no telling what he was thinking, if he was thinking at all. If –

“Ho, there,” he breathed, wincing. His hand hovered in the air, tentative. Aremu was hunched and vomiting half off the rocks, and the smell of saltwater and sun-warmed rock was joined by the sour tang of sick. Second time this morning, Tom felt his gorge rising; he set his jaw and looked down and away, forcing down a gag.

When he looked back, Aremu had crumpled, still retching. He was convulsing, spittle and – blood? – on his lips, and Tom worried he’d never stop; he was worried he’d got choked.

The hitching eased. No, he whispered, one last time, and gave himself to lie limp. Tom fumbled for his pulse.

It thrummed steadily at his left wrist.

He sagged, relieved. Then he saw his hands, holding – one stark pale against the limp, familiar hand, one with a thumb pressed against the wrist – he jolted his his hand away, shuddering and squeezing his eyes shut.

For what felt like it could’ve been hours, he crouched beside Aremu. The cries of gulls and the crash of the waves filled up the silence; Tom could barely hear himself think. Got to go get somebody. And leave him here? What if he seizes again?

The decision made something inside him sink, ashamed, but he made it regardless. He slipped Aremu’s left arm round his shoulder, shifted him up from the ground with a grunt of effort. “Epaemo,” he whispered to the unconscious imbala. “Won’t be for long.”

With a deep breath, he hauled himself and the other man halfway-up, staggering as his sore hip took the weight. The soles of his feet felt bruised. The imbala wasn’t heavy, not by far, but Tom reckoned he had a stone and a half or some on Anatole. He still felt wrung-empty, and the sharp smell lingering in the air wasn’t doing nothing good for his churning stomach. His sandal slid in the dirt and he stumbled back to his knees, Aremu’s head lolling over his shoulder.

Sweat prickled at the back of his neck. He tried again, straining, and bore them both upright. He pushed down another gag.

One step, then another. Away from the cliff. Away from the cliff. Away, away. He felt his lips moving and realized he was mouthing it.

The house was a bulky shape against the horizon, but it still wasn’t close enough. He squinted back up the path, then saw –

He shifted Aremu round his shoulder, adjusted his weight. One arm shot up, hand gripping the brim of his hat white-knuckled. He waved it in the air. “Ayah!” he called. He searched through his head for a word; to his surprise, he found it. “Ito pe’a pe’a!”

[moralhazard]

Early Morning, 27 Yaris, 2719
The Ibutatu Estate

It was a pale and pleasant morning. The coolness was already giving way to the heat of the day, and Ahura welcomed it. She had always liked the heat. Tsavo liked to tell them all stories of the cold, when he visited; how in parts of the year, the temperature in Thul Ka dropped, and one could scarcely go out uncovered. Wicked boy, Ahura thought, smiling. She hoped he would come again soon.

“I worry for her,” she said softly to Ulofo. “Like a ghost, and so thin. I am sure she does not eat, there in Anaxas.”

“She is not your child,” Ulofo said, gently, taking her hand in his, patting it lightly.

“Is my heart not big enough?” Ahura asked.

“Too big,” Ulofo said, but his voice was loving, and Ahura smiled.

“He was a good man,” Ahura said. “He was a light, and I fear she cannot find it without him to show her the way.”

“He was an arata,” Ulofo said, gently.

“And so?” Ahura asked. It was old familiar ground for both of them; there was no heat to anything, nothing but the comfortable familiarity of well-trodden paths. “We were their children once.”

“Until they cast us aside,” Ulofo replied, turning her words, as he always did. “And this new one? From Anaxas?”

“Strange,” Ahura said. “Older than even you, but I think him younger in heart than body.”

Birds chirped in the tsug trees, distant, voices trilling in the morning air. Their sandals left small prints on the edges of the dusty road, and the sea crashed against the cliffs to the side of them, roaring faintly. The house was drawing near, looming up large against the cliffside. Ahura curved around it, going wide, finding familiar ways through the sea grass.

“What is that?” Ulofo asked.

Both imbali looked up, then - a distant waving hat, a low voice that carried through the air. A dark shape slumped against a lighter one -

Ahura shrieked. She was running, then, and Ulofo not half a step behind.

Vauquelin had Aremu half over his shoulder, and was dragging him towards the house. Aremu was still - so still - not taking any of his own weight, like -

“What -“ Ahura searched for her Estuan and lost it in the rush, her eyes wide. She hovered, tentatively edging into the space around the arata.

“I take,” Ulofo said behind her, slowly and uncomfortably, forming the words in careful Estuan. He came closer, and froze at the boundary, his eyes wide on Vauquelin.

“It will not harm you,” Ahura snapped in Mugrobi, eyes narrowing at him.

Ulofo went, carefully, and Ahura went too, and between the two of them they eased Aremu from the Anaxi’s shoulder. “Lift his legs,” Ulofo told her in Mugrobi, his arms settling beneath Aremu’s shoulders, cradling him.

“His foot is bleeding,” Ahura said, worriedly, lifting Aremu’s legs.

“From his mouth too,” Ulofo said, solemn.

“We take,” Ahura promised Vauquelin in Estuan, her eyes wide.

They carried Aremu back to the house between them, and lay him gently on the couch. Ulofo knelt, his ear resting on the boy’s chest. “His heart beats well,” he said.

Ahura turned and ran down the hallway, knocking on Niccolette’s door. She had seen it - they all had - most recently a year ago, the accident with the machete, and the field hand they had all thought would die. Now he walked again, and limped only when he was tired.

“Ada‘na!” Ahura cries. “Ada’na - it is Aremu -“

The door flew open, and Niccolette was running past her, wearing only a thin pale shift, her hair a tangled mess about her head. Yes, Ahura thought worriedly, in some distant corner of her mind, too thin.

Niccolette cried out at the sight of Aremu on the couch. “What happened?” She asked in Mugrobi.

Ulofo stepped back to make space for her. Ahura did not think Niccolette noticed. She was kneeling next to Aremu, her eyes wide; she was shaking, her whole body trembling.

“We found ada’xa carrying him back from the cliff,” Ahura said.

Niccolette’s gaze snapped up to Vauquelin, then, standing a little ways away. She did not rise, her fingers tangled in Aremu’s, but something changed in the air around her - it grew sharper and brighter, and Ahura heard Ulofo’s breaths become tight. There were tears sliding down her cheeks, Ahura noticed.

“If you have hurt him,” Niccolette spoke in Estuan into the silence, looking at Vauquelin, “if you have done this -“ the air around them grew sharper and began to heat. The tears halfway down’s Niccolette’s face evaporated, Ahura noticed.

Ahura stepped back as well; she felt Ulofo’s hand on her arm, pulling her away.

[Tom Cooke]

The Ibutatu Estate • Muluku Islands

Morning on the 27th of Yaris, 2719

H
e recognized Ahura before long; she was running to reach them, a man tailing her Tom didn’t recognize. When she got close enough, he could see the whites of her wide eyes, and he heard a word he didn’t know slip breathless from her lips. I didn’t do it, he got the urge to say. It wasn’t – I know what it looks like, ada’na, but I’d never – he felt selfish and swallowed it, though he could feel heat in his cheeks, and he wasn’t sure if it was just the sun.

His feet were braced, but Aremu was slipping, and he didn’t think he’d manage another step without dragging the imbala.

They drew into his range, Ahura hovering for a moment, the man lingering just outside his caprise. The man was maybe a little older than Ahura, far as he could tell. Both imbali. Tom felt his porven around him, fussing and scraping him raw. I take, said the man, and Tom just nodded his head, nodded and nodded; when he saw his eyes go wide, his heart sank, and he couldn’t look either of them in the eye. He still couldn’t, not even when he heard Ahura’s voice, sharp Mugrobi. But then he felt the weight shift off him.

It was a relief and a terror all at once, limp Aremu leaving his grasp; he hovered himself while the man took his shoulders and Ahura took his legs, one foot still scraped and bleeding, speaking back and forth in hushed Mugrobi. Remembering himself, he moved back, ‘til the imbali were at the edge of his field. He still watched, face slack and ashen.

“Domea,” was all he could say, meeting Ahura’s eye, “domea,” and he followed them back to the house at the distance his porven allowed.

If his feet ached, he couldn’t feel it. Even inside, just starting to fill with soft sunlight through the long windows, he couldn’t look at anything but Aremu. I didn’t, he wanted to say, uselessly, selfishly. Ahura and the man laid him out on a couch, and he was just as still as he’d been when he found him that morning.

He stood fair still as Ahura went to fetch Niccolette. He only looked up when the galdor came in, a flutter of white linen, dark hair loose and wild, eyes wide. He thought of a hand-shape; he couldn’t look. Niccolette was crouching, then, at Aremu’s side, and the imbala with Ahura had moved aside, and they could all feel the mona hanging in the air among them. She said something in Mugrobi, and Ahura replied, ada’xa, and Tom felt a stab of hurt.

Niccolette turned, still gripping Aremu’s hand, still kneeling. Her cheeks glistened. Tom felt her field flex against his; the air grew hotter, hotter still, and the glisten vanished, and her red eyes fixed hard on him.

He knew what she could do. The two imbali had stepped back. He didn’t; he didn’t move an inch, his teeth grit. The awful, tight fear that had been growing since he’d found the imbala on the cliff’s edge broke and bubbled over into anger, into white-hot rage, and pain, and –

“I would not hurt him.” He was surprised to find his voice deep and wavering; he tried to speak softer, but he couldn’t. “He saved my life. Why would – have I not shown you –”

He darted a look around, to Ahura and then to the other imbala. His voice frayed and came apart. The man was watching Niccolette, the lines in his face tight. Tom looked back down at Aremu on the couch.

“I understand,” he said quietly, grappling his breath back under control. “I found him by the cliffside; I don't know how long he'd been there. I think he must’ve hit his head, but there’s no mark. He was sick when he woke up, and he lost consciousness again fast. I must’ve startled the hell out of him.” Swallowing tightly, he took another step back, away from the couch and the imbali and the galdor, until his field no longer touched any of them. “He’s lost a lot of fluid.”

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Early Morning, 27 Yaris, 2719
The Ibutatu Estate

Niccolette had been dreaming.

She had been dreaming, and it had become a nightmare; she was running, running outside, again and again, screaming all her breath out into the air, and she could feel the flames on her skin. Each time she woke up and plunged back into it, and she couldn’t tell what was real and what was a dream, if she was ever really awake, or if it was just a tangled mass of dreams, each one tucked inside the next, spiraling and endless. She could not escape; she remembered it, she remembered doing this before, again and again, but she could not seem to stop.

Every time, she woke to the sound outside, the low, muffled boom. Every time, she was scrambling up out of bed, she was running, as if the speed could make a difference. She tripped, every time, on the edge of the floorboard by the back door, and banged her knee on the frame of the open door, and then she was outside, and she saw it, high up in the air above the sea, burning, and she was screaming, and she couldn’t make a sound. And then she would wake and sleep and it would begin again.

The thud on the door jarred her awake, and Niccolette shuddered, and didn’t know if it was real. But there was no dull boom not this time, but Ahura’s voice, raised in panic, and the name Aremu.

Kneeling next to him, her fingers squeezing his limp ones as if she could force life back into them, Niccolette stared at Vauquelin through a haze of red hot fury. He spoke, and Niccolette could scarcely hear him over the rushing of her breath in her chest, tight, pained breaths on the verge of sobs. She hadn’t expected – Vauquelin was loud, and angry, and he pushed back against her. Not with his field, his useless, frayed, fizzing porven scraping at the edges of her ramscott, but with his voice, deep, with a note of pain in it.

Niccolette knew the sound all too well.

She caught her breath, or tried to; it kept slipping away. She closed her eyes, and the feeling of heat around her faded, slowly; Niccolette took a deep breath, and let go of the flex she hadn’t known she held. She sniffled, and wiped her eyes with her free hand, and nodded slowly. She opened her eyes again, and looked back at Vauquelin through a haze of tears.

“I am sorry,” Niccolette said, quietly, into the emptiness that his words left behind. “You are right.” She wiped at her eyes again, and she sniffled, and turned back to Aremu. She bent forward, letting go of his hand, and feeling his head with careful, delicate fingers, a smooth sweeping motion of them through his hair. She frowned, softly, and lifted his eyelids, gently and carefully, peering beneath.

A concussion, perhaps, Niccolette thought, but she did not think it too bad. She could not find any traces of the why of it. She rubbed her eyes again, sitting back slightly. She pushed her hair back off her forehead, combing her fingers through it, and took a deep breath. She took another, and another, closing her eyes. Carefully, she found the rhythm of her breath, settling into it, kneeling on the floor.

Niccolette began to cast, chanting softly. Her field fluttered in the air around her, the soft, strange quantitative mona etheric. She lapsed into silence, then, looking down at the imbala, and grimaced, and began again, finding the rhythm of her breath once more. Another spell, a different way of asking, and still nothing; no sign of anything wrong but what her eyes could see.

Niccolette rubbed her eyes with her hands, sitting back a little further. She took a deep breath, feeling strangely helpless. How could she fix him when she did not know what was wrong?

It was Vauquelin she looked at, though she didn’t know why, and her eyes were overflowing steadily now, again. Niccolette took Aremu’s hand in hers, her lips trembling. “I do not know what is wrong,” she whispered, softly. “I cannot – ” She took a deep breath. “Perhaps I am… perhaps there is nothing to know, but I – I do not…” Panic rose in her chest, and she shuddered, and buried her face against the cushions of the couch, and cried a little more, hers fingers tight in Aremu’s.

There was the shift of a presence moving through her field, and then Ahura’s hands on her back, gently brushing her hair out of the way, combing through it.

“We will wait,” Ahura said, softly, in sonorous Mugrobi. There was fear in her voice, and tension too, but her hands were light. “He will come back."

Niccolette took a deep breath, and nodded. She let go, slowly, and eased back, looking down at Aremu. He was lying still on the couch, utterly still. Breathing, she noticed, steadily. There was blood on his lips, and his foot. Niccolette closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, and let Ahura help her to her feet. She sniffled.

“A wet cloth, to clean him,” Niccolette said aloud, in Estuan. “Perhaps a pillow, for his head, and a blanket. He should not – ” she sniffled through the words, “catch cold.” She dissolved into tears again, standing there in the middle of the room, shaking, crying helplessly.

Rolls

Diagnostic spell 1: SidekickBOTToday at 10:29 AM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (1) = 1
Diagnostic spell 2: SidekickBOTToday at 10:29 AM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (1) = 1

[Tom Cooke]

The Ibutatu Estate • Muluku Islands

Morning on the 27th of Yaris, 2719

T
om didn’t hesitate. Maybe it was that, with his own ache, the thought didn’t seem so ridiculous, that Aremu’d catch cold on a bright-hot day in the Isles if he didn’t have a blanket and a pillow. He remembered how cold Aremu’s hand had felt, though. Maybe it was he needed something to do. Maybe it was the way Niccolette had told him sorry, through teary eyes, and he’d been first surprised and then deeply touched, and something in him had settled. He had felt the heat in her field subside. After she had finished casting, he’d let himself come a little closer; he’d let himself feel the worry and fear, all the way to his bones, unabashed, with no explanations owed or needed. When Niccolette looked back at him, he watched her evenly, his brow knit.

But then he nodded sharply and left down the hall, first for the kitchen. He was aware of the other imbala, the man, as he wove round him, though he said nothing. He was aware of Ahura holding Niccolette, behind.

Two quantitative casts, and nothing. He hadn’t been far enough away he hadn’t the spells fizzle out, but they were in the dark; you didn’t know, couldn’t know, if there was nothing to find, or if the mona wouldn’t tell you. He didn’t think it was easy for a sorceress like Niccolette, that distinction.

If not a concussion, then what? Maybe the spells had just gone awry; maybe there was something terribly wrong. And if there was nothing wrong?

Tom found his hands strangely steady as he went through the cabinets, found a good, deep saucepan, filled it up with water, started heating it on the stove. The kitchen still smelled like curry. As he moved round, he caught whiffs – one spice, then another, raising its voice above the rest, wisping up from a clean mortar and pestle or a briefly-opened cabinet. He found a bowl, then leaned on the counter while the water warmed. He could hear Niccolette sobbing from the other room, the soft hitching of breath, little noises. Ahura’s voice.

If there was nothing wrong?

Mechanically, after a minute or so, he took the warm water off, reassuringly heavy, and poured it in the bowl. He found a clean cloth and draped it over one side, folded.

He brought in the bowl and the cloth, careful with his stiff hands, the skin of the water rippling. Almost like a scrying bowl, he thought, and pushed it out of his head. Wordlessly, he knelt and set the bowl at Niccolette’s feet, at the side of the couch, and the cloth with it. Just as silent, without looking at Niccolette or Ahura, he got back to his feet and moved back down the hall. Quickly he moved past the door to the library, with its heavy curtains.

Out of sight, searching for fresh linens, his hands started to shake. The closet was near enough the lavatory that it was easy to find; his legs took him there, but he wasn’t sure how. He felt like he was floating. He had to catch himself on the door, squeezing the door-frame for a few moments. He chid himself for his weakness; he tried to force his hands still. He found a piece of al Jenwa floating in his head, and he mouthed it.

Reaching through the folded sheets, running his hands over the soft cloth, he could feel his chest tightening. He swallowed the tide, again and again. I am cast on the rocks, he told himself, I am brought back out into the wide water, I break, I am whole. He felt soft, sturdy wool, and his fingers dug into it, and he held it for a few seconds.

He no longer shook when he came back in, a light cool coverlet and a cushion requisitioned from one of the other chairs bundled in his arms. Still frowning, he brought them to the couch, too.

“Here,” he said softly. “Still breathing steady. Can I get you a cup of tea, madam?”

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Mid-Morning, 27 Yaris, 2719
The Ibutatu Estate

Vauquelin had drifted through the room without a word, settled a bowl of warm water and a cloth at her feet and gone. Niccolette wondered if she should have felt something like embarrassment, but she was well past it; it had left her long since, and she could not come close to summoning it. Ahura was crooning to her, softly, some sort of a melody without words.

By the time Vauquelin came back, Niccolette was washing the blood from Aremu’s foot, carefully and gently, a little frown on her face. It wasn’t so bad a cut; she had wondered if perhaps something had stung him, in the water, to cause such a reaction. She hadn’t checked in her casting for that; she hadn’t thought to. There were bits of rock and dirt and grass in the cut, and Niccolette did what she had to do to get them out, unflinching and unhesitating. She had thought –

It must have hurt, but Aremu did not wake.

“Thank you,” It was Ahura who moved to take the blanket and pillow from Vauquelin. She offered him something like a smile. Niccolette glanced up and back, seeing it – seeing Ulofo, too, his hands tight in the fabric of his pants, watching them with a frown on his face. Niccolette looked back down and away, and kept washing Aremu’s foot.

“Some tea would be good,” Niccolette said, softly. “And water for when he wakes.” Her voice did not tremble on the when, but she spoke very carefully and deliberately, as if it took effort to make it so.

There was something on his shoulder, as well, and Niccolette wiped that clean. Only then did she nod to Ahura, and hold back as she draped the blanket over Aremu, leaving his foot bare, and carefully propped his head on the pillow. Niccolette did what she could to wash his face, careful and gentle, using a clean part of the cloth, and deliberately not letting any water wash into his mouth.

Niccolette sat back then. There was tea, and she supposed Vauquelin must have made it; it was steaming hot, still, hot enough to burn, and she sipped it as if she did not notice. She clasped examined Aremu’s foot again. Nothing but a cut; nothing to indicate any sort of poisonous sting. All the same, Niccolette cast, carefully, a more targeted question this time, slow and deliberate. Her hands stayed clasped around the mug, the warmth of it rushing through her.

The mona flooded back to her with answers, and Niccolette sipped her tea again, and sighed. Answers, but no satisfaction; it was as superficial as it looked, and it explained nothing. She knew it for meaningless comfort, but she began to cast again regardless, soft and slow and even, the living mona in her field stirring and shifting etheric. When she finished the ragged wound on Aremu’s foot had closed, neatly, leaving nothing behind but a rough patch of skin, perhaps some tenderness. There were scrapes on the rest of him too, Niccolette had noticed; dried salt on his skin, patches of scrapes on his legs and arms, his hand and the scar of his wrist. She saw nothing – nothing – nothing that explained why he was still unconscious.

The Bastian rose off her knees, slowly, a little tea sloshing over the side of her cup onto the floor, ignored. She sat beside Aremu, on another chair, and looked down at him, then up at the three others in the room.

Ulofo looked at her through dark, even eyes. Uzoji had told her once that there would be nothing they could do to win him over; that the effort, even, would make him dislike them more. Niccolette had not been particularly tempted to try before that; she was not sure she understood, except – somehow, she thought, perhaps, she did. She had not, in any case, particularly tried.

Ahura looked worried, her face drawn and tight, her gaze fixed on Aremu. She sat too, and Ulofo drifted forward, very slowly, to set his hand on her shoulder.

Niccolette looked at Vauquelin last. She had not, she thought, thanked him for the tea. She supposed – she should – she did not know what to say to him. He looked worried, she thought. She couldn’t think about it anymore than that. Niccolette took another sip of tea, tasting it no more than she had before.

There was silence, then, for a long time. Niccolette could hear the soft, even shift of her own breath, and the deeper, steadier rhythm of Aremu’s beneath it. In time, Ahura rose and went into the kitchen, and Ulofo followed her; Niccolette heard the distant sounds of the stove being lit, of pots and pans being moved about. Eventually, smells drifted out, too - úqikedisiq, Niccolette thought. Ahura’s answer to anything difficult in the morning was always úqikedisiq, lifting, an odd sort of clumped together rice porridge, served with rounded tree nuts and black peppercorns and little slim green leaves.

Niccolette sighed. She did not meditate; she did not wish to be apart from the world, just now. Aremu was still breathing steadily; the light was climbing, brushing through the room, and she felt it drift over her, warming her.

There was a noise on the couch, and Niccolette jerked, lowering her gaze.

Aremu shifted; his eyes fluttered, and opened. He groaned, softly, turning his head against the pillow.

“Aremu,” Niccolette whispered. She set the mug aside, and knelt next to him, wide-eyed with worry.

Aremu shifted to look at her, frowning. He closed his eyes, and opened them again, blearily, and grimaced.

“How do you feel?” Niccolette asked, softly. She was of a height with him; she moved, very slightly, and his eyes tracked her.

“Awful,” Aremu said, eyes fluttering shut again. He groaned, a pained, dry sort of noise, and shifted beneath the blanket, and then before Niccolette could think to stop him, he was sitting, leaning back against the back of the couch.

Niccolette’s breath caught in her throat, and she sat back, torn between laughing and crying, relieved beyond words. “Can you take some water?” She asked. She found the cup, and came up next to him on the couch, perched carefully on the edge of the cushion.

Aremu reached for the cup; his hand was shaky, and Niccolette did not relinquish it, holding it carefully steady. He drank two sips, and grimaced, and eased it away. His eyes swept around the room – and jerked back to Niccolette, abruptly. She did not know when. He was frowning, looking at her, something she couldn’t name or even describe in his eyes.

“What happened?” Niccolette asked, looking at him.

Aremu swallowed, and took the water glass again. His hand was steadier, now, and Niccolette let it go, carefully. “I don’t remember,” he said, and took another long drink of water.

Niccolette glanced back over at Vauquelin, frowning, her face pinched tight. “Vauquelin found you on the cliff,” she said, looking back at Aremu.

Aremu glanced up at the Anaxi, and then back down at the water glass in his lap. When he spoke, it was careful and tight, and Niccolette could see his fingers straining against the glass. “I must have scared you. Sorry, sir.”

“You do not have – any idea…” Niccolette’s voice trailed off, and she frowned, looking at the imbala.

“No,” Aremu said, evenly, looking back at her without the faintest hesitation. He took another long drink of water, draining the last of it, and closed his eyes, sagging back against the cushions. "I remember diving from the cliff," he said, slowly. "And now... here I am."

Rolls

Check for poison: SidekickBOTToday at 12:26 PM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (5) = 5
Spell to heal foot: SidekickBOTToday at 12:26 PM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (5) = 5