[Closed] The Rite of Movement

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 27 Yaris 2719
The home of Yesufu pez Eden, Laus Oma, Mere Tauthua

The question hung heavy and silent in the air between them. Aremu waited, even though he couldn’t see seem to stop his hand from shaking. He couldn’t think - he couldn’t - he didn’t know what answer he had expected.

When it came it was raw and quiet and unsmiling. Aremu listened, and he couldn’t look away.

A year ago, Aremu thought. A year ago - a year - of course. You died a year ago, and a little more. It was a struggle to keep his breathing smooth. There was the tiniest hint of a grin as familiar as it was disturbing, there and then gone, wiped away.

It’s a reminder, he said. For a moment, Aremu could imagine it - the constant, burdensome buzzing of it - like the carriage ride, he thought, but forever. Forever? He couldn’t have said what he felt; there was too much, and it was all choking him from the inside out.

He was watching Aremu now, carefully. Why? Why? What did he want? Aremu felt a pulse of fear, sharp and sour; it steadied him, enough that he could hold still, with a careful deep breath for company.

It would have been easy to push it a little further. A reminder of what, sir? How did it happen, sir? Are you dangerous, sir? He knew enough of the answers to each. Perhaps he had found ways to say it, by now; perhaps there was enough truth that could be shared to fill those answers.

Aremu didn’t want to. He hadn’t wanted the hunching of his shoulders, the anxious flicker of his gaze up and down. He hadn’t wanted that hesitant, uncertain grin. He hadn’t wanted to know what it meant to him, not really. He had asked and he had been answered, and he had long since seen too much.

Anything else?

“No, sir,” Aremu said, quietly. Nothing else; there were no other answers he wanted. He didn’t want the truth and he didn’t want a lie. He felt tired; so tired. He knew what he had to do to keep himself safe. He didn’t know what it would cost him; he didn’t know if it would be enough.

“I know something about scars, sir,” Aremu said, and he lifted his gaze again to meet his gray eyes. He hadn’t rolled his sleeve down, Aremu realized with a jolt; he reached for it with careful fingers, and uncurled the cuff without taking his wrist from his pocket. One, two, three, and the pocket beneath lay almost flat against his thigh.

He smoothed the shirtsleeve, gently, and looked back at him. He looked tired, Aremu thought, leaning against the door. He looked as tired as Aremu felt. To feel it around you, constantly - to feel it looking at the stars, to feel it diving into the wave, to feel it when a lover - Aremu couldn’t face the thought.

Aremu stepped forward into it, carefully. One step, and he could feel it buzzing at it, scraping him away. No; there could be no forgetting. Not like this.

A second step, a third, and there was no escaping it, no relief. He stood at the door, close to the heart of it, close; he didn’t let the slightest fraction of himself brush him.

“We should both rest,” Aremu said, softly. He didn’t know what was in his voice; he didn’t know what was spilling over. He couldn’t count the thoughts in his head, couldn’t begin to try and separate the tangle of them into separate strings. “Good night, sir.” He settled his hand on the door handle, and waited.

When he was ready, Aremu opened the door and watched him go. He didn’t back away; he didn’t hurry out of range. He waited, still and patient, and held on. He let it sweep over him, let it rub and scrape and hurt. He forced himself to look at it; he pressed his fingers in the wound, and it hurt.

Aremu closed the door slowly behind him.

He had thought he might be sick again. He stood there a moment, utterly still, but he didn’t have anything left to give. Slowly, Aremu reached down; it was torture to undo his buttons with one shaking hand. No matter how many times his fingers slipped off he tried again, and again, and in time he was folding his shirt over the chest, and then his pants.

The cool wind whisked through the tsug trees and dried the cold sweat against his skin. His teeth were chattering. He could barely grasp the blankets, but somehow then he was sliding beneath then.

Aremu cried.

He hadn’t wanted to. He hadn’t thought he would. He had done all that he could not to, and it wasn’t enough, and he had nothing else to give. He wept, like he never had as a boy. He buried his shaking face in the pillow, and hot, silent tears spilled from him. He cried, and he dug his hand into the bed and squeezed tight.

In time his eyes closed. Kofi leaves, leaves with gold - but he was too tired to see. He drifted through it, drained, an empty shell, and in time he slept.

[Tom Cooke]

Yesufu pez Edun's Home • Laus Oma

Late Evening on the 28th of Yaris, 2719

T
om left feeling like he’d accomplished something.

Outside, the hall was dim, with its sparse-spaced phosphor. The smell of tsug wafted out with him on a strong, cool breeze, and Tom was breathing it even as he heard Aremu shut the door, even as he’d padded halfway back down. The hall was fragrant with other things Tom didn’t have names for, he noticed now – sweet-smelling wood mingled with herbs. But it wasn’t like the halls in the Ibutatu house: it was narrow and windowless, a long, thick carpet laid down its length, the low lights just picking out swirls of patterns in rich red and dark, dark blue.

That answer had been enough to set Aremu at ease, he supposed, though he couldn’t understand why. He hadn’t even asked if it was dangerous, if it caused shit to go wrong around it; he’d’ve had to answer that one honest, and he knew it wouldn’t have been a wholly soothing response. But – could he feel it? It did seem like something Aremu’d ask, but –

He didn’t know why. He’d tried to make the best of it, anyway. Say something that sounded like something a galdor’d say, about repairing your relationship with the mona. But something honest, felt, because Aremu deserved as much, and he’d had a feeling he wouldn’t fall for the usual rubbish.

Maybe the imbala’d just wanted to hear it from his lips, out in the air between them. Maybe whatever’d happened that morning, whatever he’d seen in his shock and fear, had made something strange and unsettling out of Vauquelin, in Aremu’s eye. Maybe hearing how he felt about it made a man of him again, plain and simple, or let him see the man underneath the porven. I know something of scars, sir, he’d said, as if in sympathy. He reckoned it made enough sense, and he was too tired to ask more of it.

He had stepped right up into it, getting the door for him. Tom knew it must’ve felt laoso. He wondered if he’d felt them, the calm, clairvoyant particles.

Had he wanted him to feel them, after all? Had he wanted him to ask something else, to say – Circle, no. The taste of alcohol clung to his mouth; surely on his breath, too. There could be no wanting, not for anything. He wasn’t the sort of man who wanted, not anymore; never, never, never. We shouldn’t talk out here, sir, he heard, then saw the imbala unrolling the cuff of his shirtsleeve, tugging it down uncomfortably. Was I staring? thought Tom.

“No,” he pleaded under his breath, stopping in his tracks. He slumped against one wall, cupping his face in his hands, breathing warm into the close dark. “I’m so tired. Please, not tonight.” His voice was muffled.

It wasn’t important, he told himself, and turned his mind to other things. His head buzzed.

This security agreement, Anatole, Yesufu had said, lightly. I could not make it to Vienda for the Vyrdag, this year. But the news of your proposal reached me like the scent of in'aha on the wind.

Indeed.

I was most surprised to hear your name associated with it. It is bold, he had said, peering at him over the rims of his glasses, smiling. Sometimes an unsettled sea favors a bold hand on the wheel, does it not?

Tom massaged his eyelids, watching the light dance across the backs of them. The thought slipped away from him too easily, though it left a dark snarl of anxiety in its wake; there was nothing he could do, but he couldn’t understand. When the tide of Yesufu’s voice went back, there was Aremu’s, underneath it, still etched deep in the sand. Deeper than he knew it should be. I know something of scars, sir.

I know what you know of scars, ada’xa; I know so many of yours, except for one. He saw Aremu pulling his sleeve down over his forearm, without taking his wrist out of his pocket.

The motion would’ve been cramped, but it had the elegance of experience – two years’ experience – to guide it. He thought, aching, guilty, he’d’ve liked to know that motion, to know that new shape, to know all of it, when he still could’ve. When he was still the kind of man Aremu wanted. He wasn’t fool enough to think Aremu’d felt anything, not anymore, but it was good to be wanted, and to want. It’d been nice, what they had. Maybe it could’ve kept on being nice. Tom didn’t know; he doubted Aremu ever thought of it.

The thought should’ve hit him harder, but it just drifted right through; it was easy to think, this tired, and not to hold onto. To his surprise, he felt a yawn building up, and knuckled tears out of his eyes.

The mask was hanging over the door to the terrace.

Tom wondered why he hadn’t seen it the first time. He supposed you wouldn’t, just on the way in; he wondered if Aremu’d turned round to see it. There was a fixture just underneath it, shedding pale light, Reedlyn-gold.

It was – he couldn’t tell what it was. He’d never seen one like it. The rest of them were faces; if this one had a mouth, or a nose, or eyes – he couldn’t make them out. There were two small holes where a man’s eyes could look through, but you wouldn’t be able to see them from afar. The dark wood had been left unstained, except for where overlapping circles had been painted on it in snow-white. The shape of the mask was amorphous, lopsided. Every time he thought he saw the hint of a lip or an eyebrow, he lost it among the painted patterns.

Tom blinked up at it, then found his eyes squeezed shut in another yawn. He scratched the back of his neck. There was so much to think about; he didn’t have room for more. As he wandered back eastward, back to his room – as he unpacked his things – as he stripped off all his finery and crawled into bed – his mind was a blur of images.

He’d been worried, earlier that day, he’d dream again. Now, he could barely remember what he was scared to dream about. As he drifted, the cool breeze tangled through his hair, and something in him eased with a memory he was too tired to look closely at.