Kzecka, Hox
the 24th of achtus, 2720 | breath of dawn
The sun had risen. The sun had set. The closed window of the northernmost Kingdom's darkness not growing wider and wider until the winter solstice of Ophus had passed. Even in the velvet black of what otherwise would have been dawn anywhere else, the sky was visible between the swift-moving clouds and it was currently a brilliant stage for writhing streams of green, yellow, and even blue light—ribbons of the gods, aurorae, or perhaps even mythical beasts in their own rights according to humanity—and it would have been beautiful (as it always was) had Ezre had a moment to stop and look up, to pause and appreciate the way charged particles danced in their electrified state of being.
Snow had fallen so thick in the last few months of this new year that new stairs had been hastily carved over the memory of stone ones, original cobbled shapes like bones buried somewhere beneath so much white. Hopefully, the thaw would both come soon and be a warm one, trickling down the black rock mountains and rushing with the force of great streams into the steppes below, eventually blessing the desert Kingdom's veins with Hulali's waters. The stairs went up and up, higher into the frigid, thin air above Kzecka proper, above the tuaxen of the Mhorven Bashiva, above the shrines to every god of the Circle and then some, above the conclaves of the Hexxos, above the libraries, above the bathhouses, the shops, the training halls, and the homes nestled between everything else. Curling around statues, dipping beneath purple-stained archways and gilded reliefs of the pantheon, the stairs led to one of the oldest tsvat in the religious heart of the Kingdom of Hox, and Ezre's umah had told her child when to meet her.
She had also told her child to come alone.
He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, somewhere in the miasma of emotions and thoughts that had filled him since he'd arrived with his foreign companions amid curious stares and too many questions, that Lreya Vks had things she wanted to say. He also knew that no matter what those things might have been, there was no way he could be ready for any of it and even as a Clairvoyant, no way to predict the words she'd held inside for this moment.
He had met her there at the first step, layered against the wind, bundled against a temperature that he finally could call cold.
The caress of the raen's strange but stalwart field was familiar even if the slant of bright color that met his senses was decidedly not what he'd expected from her greeting. In her typical fashion, she did not smile. She met his gaze, cheeks already red and eyelashes frosty as if she'd been standing at the base of their long climb for hours already—perhaps she had—and then she simply turned and began to lead the way. Her hair was braided far more formally than Ezre was sure should have been necessary, though he only could guess what shape it all took beneath the fur lining of her hood before her face was gone from his view. She carried something with her over her shoulder, a small, well-worn leather bag he'd seen so many times before in his childhood but whose contents he'd never seen.
Life away from the lofty altitudes of Kzecka had lessened the capacity of his lungs, though not by as much as he'd once feared. Raised in the breath-stealing cold and body formed by the thin air in the spine of the world, Lreya's only child was still capable of making the climb, but he knew his chest would ache and his head would swim by the summit.
The first half a house of climbing passed in expected silence, mother leaving her child to his own thoughts while sweat formed between their shoulder blades beneath all of the layers they wore against the well-below freezing temperatures. It was simply the lights of the sky illuminating the sparkling snow and smooth ice around them, interrupted every several stairs by a phosphor lantern. He used each step to clear his mind, to sift through all that had happened since he was last here almost a full year ago in Roalis, when he'd come alone even though he should not have. As if she'd begun to feel the lightness of his being as he shed each experience, as he relived each moment and then exhaled it into the chilled air, Lreya paused to finally turn and glance at the young Guide.
Ezre did his best not to make it obvious that he was panting, but his mother was hardly fooled:
"Has Anaxas made you weak, child? Are you so tired from your travels?"
It was a pointed question in the harsh tones of Deftung, sharp and weighted far heavier than he expected. There was no humor in it, no teasing of his younger self despite the word mho, but instead, it was meant to be the calling out of an adult.
"No, mother. I am not. The journey was far, but if anything, I have grown from it." The young Guide grunted, noting Lreya had stopped climbing. She waited, a few steps higher than himself, loose strands of long dark hair that had slipped during their trek from their careful place beneath her hood whipping in the wind.
He breathed, but no inhale felt like enough anymore, not this high. His legs, unused to a more regular journey up these steep steps, itched and ached, burned and tingled, all at the same time. Ezre attempted to catch his breath, searching the blank canvas of a face that was the raen who'd birthed him, but she gave nothing away—her rhakor as powerful as the strangely unfamiliar sensation of her field. Some slant of color, some brush of emotion he neither recognized nor understood, mingled in the darkness between them.
"I am blessed to hear such truth."
There was a gleam of warmth in the shiny dark pools of her eyes, but it could have been a trick of the dancing aurorae above. With an exhale of body-warmed breath, she turned and continued their ascent.
Somewhere along this second part of their slow, steady upward movement, Ezre felt his ears pop. He felt the numbness settle into his cheeks and fingers, his toes near the end. He felt the tightness building desperately in his lungs, longing for more oxygen because they'd atrophied at sea level, and he felt a little light-headed but that feeling was not unpleasant so early in this stage of altitude sickness. His heart fluttered like a caged bird in his chest, but he pressed forward, upward. He let the frigid high lead him to a place of non-thought, having left so much of his present self behind him on each of the snow-carved stairs to be picked back up again on his way back down.
Looming above them after another half a house of climbing, imposing in how it blocked out the clouds and the stars and the dancing lights, rose a narrow stone silhouette carved by Static magic and galdori hands centuries ago, possibly even before the War of the Book: Rhozrent Do Ushar, the Place of Gentle Repose. Texts copied from originals that had long crumbled to dust recorded how the very first Rho Tsvat’kyett of the Mhoren Basheva spent her final hours of meditation high above a much more humble Kzecka centuries ago and her mummified remains, still in the carefully folded (or, more specifically, gently reposed) position her body had been found in, was interred beneath the foundations.
Banners of many colors from so many decades, possibly centuries, some of the embroidered with prayers and others dyed by hand in specific patterns, flapped briskly in the wind. Ice clung to the intricately-carved reliefs, most of which were memories of shared history between the Mhoren and the Hexxos, detailing the separation of their duties, detailing the supposed times clear visions of the gods led the various religious communities of Hox in their spiritual directions.
The young Guide had many fond memories of this climb, of the tsvat, especially during the glorious holiday (and the day of his birth), Spar Rhavat. There was nowhere other than perhaps the observatories of Montack where celebrating the stars and the festival of lights that was at all superior in the mind of Ezre Vks, biased and now quite worn thin as it was.
Snow had fallen so thick in the last few months of this new year that new stairs had been hastily carved over the memory of stone ones, original cobbled shapes like bones buried somewhere beneath so much white. Hopefully, the thaw would both come soon and be a warm one, trickling down the black rock mountains and rushing with the force of great streams into the steppes below, eventually blessing the desert Kingdom's veins with Hulali's waters. The stairs went up and up, higher into the frigid, thin air above Kzecka proper, above the tuaxen of the Mhorven Bashiva, above the shrines to every god of the Circle and then some, above the conclaves of the Hexxos, above the libraries, above the bathhouses, the shops, the training halls, and the homes nestled between everything else. Curling around statues, dipping beneath purple-stained archways and gilded reliefs of the pantheon, the stairs led to one of the oldest tsvat in the religious heart of the Kingdom of Hox, and Ezre's umah had told her child when to meet her.
She had also told her child to come alone.
He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, somewhere in the miasma of emotions and thoughts that had filled him since he'd arrived with his foreign companions amid curious stares and too many questions, that Lreya Vks had things she wanted to say. He also knew that no matter what those things might have been, there was no way he could be ready for any of it and even as a Clairvoyant, no way to predict the words she'd held inside for this moment.
He had met her there at the first step, layered against the wind, bundled against a temperature that he finally could call cold.
The caress of the raen's strange but stalwart field was familiar even if the slant of bright color that met his senses was decidedly not what he'd expected from her greeting. In her typical fashion, she did not smile. She met his gaze, cheeks already red and eyelashes frosty as if she'd been standing at the base of their long climb for hours already—perhaps she had—and then she simply turned and began to lead the way. Her hair was braided far more formally than Ezre was sure should have been necessary, though he only could guess what shape it all took beneath the fur lining of her hood before her face was gone from his view. She carried something with her over her shoulder, a small, well-worn leather bag he'd seen so many times before in his childhood but whose contents he'd never seen.
Life away from the lofty altitudes of Kzecka had lessened the capacity of his lungs, though not by as much as he'd once feared. Raised in the breath-stealing cold and body formed by the thin air in the spine of the world, Lreya's only child was still capable of making the climb, but he knew his chest would ache and his head would swim by the summit.
The first half a house of climbing passed in expected silence, mother leaving her child to his own thoughts while sweat formed between their shoulder blades beneath all of the layers they wore against the well-below freezing temperatures. It was simply the lights of the sky illuminating the sparkling snow and smooth ice around them, interrupted every several stairs by a phosphor lantern. He used each step to clear his mind, to sift through all that had happened since he was last here almost a full year ago in Roalis, when he'd come alone even though he should not have. As if she'd begun to feel the lightness of his being as he shed each experience, as he relived each moment and then exhaled it into the chilled air, Lreya paused to finally turn and glance at the young Guide.
Ezre did his best not to make it obvious that he was panting, but his mother was hardly fooled:
"Has Anaxas made you weak, child? Are you so tired from your travels?"
It was a pointed question in the harsh tones of Deftung, sharp and weighted far heavier than he expected. There was no humor in it, no teasing of his younger self despite the word mho, but instead, it was meant to be the calling out of an adult.
"No, mother. I am not. The journey was far, but if anything, I have grown from it." The young Guide grunted, noting Lreya had stopped climbing. She waited, a few steps higher than himself, loose strands of long dark hair that had slipped during their trek from their careful place beneath her hood whipping in the wind.
He breathed, but no inhale felt like enough anymore, not this high. His legs, unused to a more regular journey up these steep steps, itched and ached, burned and tingled, all at the same time. Ezre attempted to catch his breath, searching the blank canvas of a face that was the raen who'd birthed him, but she gave nothing away—her rhakor as powerful as the strangely unfamiliar sensation of her field. Some slant of color, some brush of emotion he neither recognized nor understood, mingled in the darkness between them.
"I am blessed to hear such truth."
There was a gleam of warmth in the shiny dark pools of her eyes, but it could have been a trick of the dancing aurorae above. With an exhale of body-warmed breath, she turned and continued their ascent.
Somewhere along this second part of their slow, steady upward movement, Ezre felt his ears pop. He felt the numbness settle into his cheeks and fingers, his toes near the end. He felt the tightness building desperately in his lungs, longing for more oxygen because they'd atrophied at sea level, and he felt a little light-headed but that feeling was not unpleasant so early in this stage of altitude sickness. His heart fluttered like a caged bird in his chest, but he pressed forward, upward. He let the frigid high lead him to a place of non-thought, having left so much of his present self behind him on each of the snow-carved stairs to be picked back up again on his way back down.
Looming above them after another half a house of climbing, imposing in how it blocked out the clouds and the stars and the dancing lights, rose a narrow stone silhouette carved by Static magic and galdori hands centuries ago, possibly even before the War of the Book: Rhozrent Do Ushar, the Place of Gentle Repose. Texts copied from originals that had long crumbled to dust recorded how the very first Rho Tsvat’kyett of the Mhoren Basheva spent her final hours of meditation high above a much more humble Kzecka centuries ago and her mummified remains, still in the carefully folded (or, more specifically, gently reposed) position her body had been found in, was interred beneath the foundations.
Banners of many colors from so many decades, possibly centuries, some of the embroidered with prayers and others dyed by hand in specific patterns, flapped briskly in the wind. Ice clung to the intricately-carved reliefs, most of which were memories of shared history between the Mhoren and the Hexxos, detailing the separation of their duties, detailing the supposed times clear visions of the gods led the various religious communities of Hox in their spiritual directions.
The young Guide had many fond memories of this climb, of the tsvat, especially during the glorious holiday (and the day of his birth), Spar Rhavat. There was nowhere other than perhaps the observatories of Montack where celebrating the stars and the festival of lights that was at all superior in the mind of Ezre Vks, biased and now quite worn thin as it was.
