[Closed] This Man in My Skin

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 29 Loshis, 2720
Ixúp’igúp Theater, Slowwater

Aremu grinned, and schooled himself back to a politer smile. “It has been an interesting endeavor to experiment, sir,” he said, unable to tame the light of interest sparking in his eyes. “I have not yet tried to make anything more like traditional Anaxi bread – only cookies and the like, which I think may be more forgiving.”

“Essentially,” Aremu went on, “the oven is a large place in which there is a good deal of concentrated heat. I have tried to replicate this by putting a closed, wide pot on the stove, and treating the inside of it as one would an oven,” He wiped his hand clean on a cloth, shaping an imaginary pot with the sweeps of his fingers. “This has worked surprisingly well – I have found a larger pot to be more effective, and that some space must be maintained between the baking surface and the bottom of the pot itself. Air circulation, sir, prevents the issue of too much moisture gathering and causing the baked good to steam rather than bake properly.”

“It sounds like an engineering problem, ada’xa,” Tom remarked, smiling.

Aremu grinned back, and tamed it once more. “Indeed, sir,” he said, smiling as well. “Once I understood it that way, I found I was able to make much better progress.”

They finished the meal that way, talking warmly over the strains of music and conversation. Aremu didn’t know whether he had smiled too wide or lingered too long; he did know the warmth that flooded though him, the careful trick of the balancing which he thought he was coming to know. There was nothing more personal to it, he thought, than there was to the fall on either side of a narrow ledge. As he came to know it too, he found that he could balance – that he could find the middle of it, and walk one foot after the other along the space between the gaps, and trust himself to stay upright.

They went back out through the leaves, through the tables and chairs, past the onjira playing another instrumental song, eyes closed and hair pulled back in a thick tail; they spilled back out onto the street, busy now with foot traffic and no more carriages pulling onto them. The last of the light was dropping from the edges of the sky above, and all the world was lit by colorful lanterns.

“It is a tradition, sir, for the doorways to be painted in bright colors in Slowwater,” Aremu explained as they made their way past vivid greens, blues, pinks, oranges, yellows and more, each made different depending what light spilled upon it and how. “It is said that there is a specific meaning to each color, but if so I don't know them.”

Here and there, drifts of qinnab and tobacco smoke swirled from doorways. There were a handful of bars, busy and bustling, more music and conversation. They wound down along Udúqaqer’egid. Not every one of the smaller streets had lantern strings of its own; this one did, lighting the stones underfoot and the storefronts.

Ixúp’igúp had no bright open window, but it did have two elaborately carved wooden doors, held open, with smoke all its own washing softly out, and conversation chasing on its heels. Aremu led Tom inside and to the counter; he handed over coin, and the onjira behind nodded, smiling, eyes lined in dark kohl and glittering purple powder, and gestured them towards a banister. The space was warm and plush, lined with dark velvets, and the carpet underfoot both thick and clean.

Aremu led Tom up the stairs, and along the edges of the balcony, into a quieter space. They had a sort of box in the row above, with two comfortable if worn seats tucked behind a drape of velvet curtain and beneath another one. The floor below was teeming with life and laughter, a mix of rows of chairs and small high tables; there was little light above them, making them hard to see above the balcony railing.

They have tsenid here, Aremu thought to say, and aqiti wine. In the darkness between the chairs, he took Tom’s hand in his, and he looked at the other man. Do you want a drink, Aremu thought to ask; it shouldn’t have been hard, and yet the words stuck in his throat, all the same, and he was silent, his thumb tracing soft, invisible patterns over the back of Tom’s hand.

[Tom Cooke]

Ixúp’igúp Theater • Slowwater

Late Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

V
ita was color: bright wrap dresses, doors with thick and glossy coats of paint, the strings of lamps themselves shedding light through colored glass. His stomach ached pleasant and painful with the fullness; his head was slurry with it. He smelled ganja and tobacco and rain, the breeze sticky with the dark clouds between the rooftops, rippling his amel’iwe and clinging to his skin.

He smiled at Aremu, smiled the same thin polite smile up at Aremu’s polite-smiling profile. It still ached, but he felt looser somehow. He’d never’ve presumed to call their careful back-and-forth a game; there was more pain in it than that, and more weight to the consequences. But nothing in sir – though he remembered the tsug grove still, dreamt of it sometimes, with a burning shame – dampened the spark in Aremu’s eyes, or kept him, in his idle Anaxi gentleman’s way, from asking about cookies.

And thinking on how to do it, how to share without sharing too much, how to speak between speaking, was worthwhile. He felt like they were cradling and nurturing between them every sliver they could wrest free through this acting qalqa, through their sweat and sap together.

The planes of his face were lit in orange and then blue, green and red, passing in and out of lanternlight. Laughter spilled out around them; there were colorful fields – perceptive, clairvoyant; physical now, now living – some stronger than others.

What if they’re like color shifts, he wanted to say to Aremu once. Drunk on all the caprision, he saw a door painted bright red and almost remarked that he thought it was angry.

Ixúp’igúp, read the sign in Estuan under a swirl of Mugrobi script. He followed Aremu into the velvet-dark, breathing in fragrant, sweet scents of smoke and perfume and something a little like mead; he caught a whiff of tsenid and something in him tightened.

His eyes adjusted to the soft phosphor lights. He stood looking over the bar as Aremu paid the onjira; he felt those dark eyes on him, keen, and he looked once and inclined his head. He realized he could hear the rhythm of his pulse, and there was leiraflesh underneath his sleeves and over his shoulders. There were glances in his direction, some idle and some lingering: not hostile, but curious and sometimes bemused.

Aremu led him weaving through the high tables, the occasional brush of a caprise. Carpeted steps went up to an empty dais on one side of the room, away from the bar; a soft pattern of lights cast itself over the thick velvet curtains behind.

They went up instead, and he held onto the banister, back straight against his aches. They brushed into the box, past the curtain. He sank gratefully into the seat, muscles twitching against the soft, worn velvet. He shut his eyes a moment; his hand was limp over the arm of the chair. Suddenly he found warm, familiar fingers knitted with his, and a thumb tracing feather-light over the back of his hand.

A smile twitched over his lips, and he squeezed Aremu’s hand. The hushed sounds of people drifted up from below. The smile warmed on his face. He breathed in deep, resisting a hot prickling behind his eyelids.

When he finally opened his eyes, Aremu was looking at him. He could make out the other man’s features, but in the shadows his eyes were darker than black; his face was edged from below by gold phosphor, and the set of his lips was soft.

His eyes wandered out over the banister to the bar, where the onjira was mixing drinks, a sweep of purple sleeves. “Aremu,” he said quietly, smiling back up. There was a burst of laughter from the bar, and it felt like the breaking of a spell.

He shifted up in his seat. You know, he thought; we both know. Strange to think he’d asked this only once, and in such strange circumstances. He thought he was ready to ask it of Aremu now, despite the slight warmth in his cheeks. “I can have a glass, maybe two,” he said, “with you,” his eyes crinkled at the edges, “something – not hard liquor, dove. I trust you.”

I trust me with you, he tried to say, squeezing his hand again. I don’t think I can go to the bar myself; I don’t think I can trust myself alone. But I trust me with you.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 29 Loshis, 2720
Ixúp’igúp Theater, Slowwater

Aremu turned his head towards the other man, careful, looking back at his face and at the curtains beyond. “Tom,” he said, smiling, very softly. There was a pinkness to the other man’s cheeks beneath the warm yellow and gold phosphor lights of the theater, just visible.

Aremu nodded, when Tom asked it of him. He squeezed the other man’s hand with his, not quite daring to lean down with a kiss, stroking his thumb over Tom’s hand once more. He didn’t acknowledge it aloud with words; he didn’t think there was a need to, and he thought that the wrong words would be worse – much worse – than a smile and a nod.

Aremu rose, his body between the floor and Tom; with the other man out of sight, he set his hand on Tom’s shoulder and squeezed, lightly, before he slid past the curtains and made his way back downstairs.

Aremu brushed lightly through the crowd, the tangle of fields and laughter. He was not the only imbala there; he caught the eye of a slender onjira in a vivid dark orange wrap, little more than straps of cloth over one shoulder and their upper body, a breastband just covering their chest, and a drape of fabric over the hips and down their legs. They smiled at him as he crossed close enough to feel what they both lacked, and what the others in their small party lacked as well; a delicate gold stud gleamed in the side of their nose.

Aremu smiled back, something lightening in the heavy planes of his face, taken aback. If he hadn’t been there with Tom, he thought – the other grinned, and turned back to their companions, joining them in a burst of laughter.

Aremu was smiling still as he made his way to the bar, just a little. “Aqiti wine, ada’tsa,” he said, inclining his head to the bartender. “Two glasses, please.”

The bartender poured one and then another in full sight of Aremu, setting them both on the gleaming metal table. “They are paid for,” they said, smiling.

Aremu’s eyebrows lifted; he glanced around, and then back at the bartender.

“Do not fear,” the bartender grinned, revealing gleaming white teeth beneath the light, “no more than any must fear his sisters.”

Aremu inclined his head. “Please pass along my grateful thanks.” He said, instead. He took the glasses between his arm and his body, balancing them carefully; he made his way back though the room, and up the stairs, walking slowly and evenly, no faster or slower than he had walked unencumbered. He felt the eyes of the orange-clad onjira on him again, but this time he didn’t glance over.

He set down one for Tom, holding the other himself, and sank back into his seat. “We call it aqiti wine here,” Aremu said, smiling at Tom. “It is always drank with a toast to Roa, for the sweetness of life,” he touched the edge of his glass lightly to Tom’s, and took a sip.

Only afterwards, shifting, did Aremu look back at the other man. “There is one other thing about Slowwater I have not mentioned,” Aremu said, easing the glass down and looking back out over the floor. “Do you remember on the Islands, what Niccolette us of the evening which she spent apart from us?” The Ehafsú, Niccolette had named them then, for Tom; she and Aremu knew them well enough by now to have been sure of it.

“It is said,” Aremu paused, and his lips twitched in a smile; he lifted his eyebrows, lightly, looking at Tom, “that they have their roots here in Slowwater. These drinks are their gift, tonight; I do not think they mean us harm, but we should be cautious all the same.” He reached down for the glass, taking another sip of the thick, sweet honey wine.

[Tom Cooke]

Ixúp’igúp Theater • Slowwater

Late Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
e smiled at the touch on his shoulder. He brushed Aremu’s hand warmly, and his fingers tingled with the ghost of it when the velvet shivered to behind him. The sound of his name in Aremu’s voice lingered in the warm dark.

He shifted to look over the banister, comfortable up in the shadows.

He didn’t see Aremu for a moment, and then he did, gold light sparking off his purple amel’iwe, the shadows deep in his face.

He saw him look up and across, lit with a smile – he saw him weave past a slim figure, a flash of deep orange on a willowy frame. Even from here, even in the low light, he could see a familiar spark in Aremu’s eyes, a familiar curl to his smile. He smiled wryly himself, leaning on the banister with his head in one hand, watching keenly.

He couldn’t see Aremu’s face as he went. His right arm was still at his side, lost in his scarf; but the set of his shoulders was easy, and he crossed to the bar with a graceful, fluid confidence. The onjiri were laughing now; one of the others – heavierset in brilliant green – was looking at the back of Aremu’s head, reaching out with a beringed hand to touch orange’s shoulder.

His eyes trailed away over the heads, away from the dais and the bar too – he did not look at the forest of glittering bottles, the polished dark wood; he did not look at the barkeep or the glasses. More laughter drifted up, and warm murmuring and the clinking of glasses.

He shut his eyes, still smiling.

There can be no blossoms without bees, he remembered the professor saying, looking down through his long lashes at his kofi cup. And does the wise gardener not honor the bees that wander over his fence? He certainly does not shame them or shoo them away from his flowers. Their needs align with his own. There are blossoms for each bee, as there are bees for each blossom.

He couldn’t remember what he had said back; it was tangled up with bitterness. He remembered curious dark eyes through a waft of steam studying his face, and soft-set lips. All men of honor are worthy of respect, Anatole, he had said, in time.

When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t find Aremu. He was still smiling down, crooked and warm.

He felt it then – at the edge of his field – and he turned when Aremu set a glass of something amber-colored and sweet-smelling on the table. With a whisper of cloth and a smile the imbala sat, and Tom shifted to raise his glass in the toast, his smile warming and broadening. There was still a little heat in his cheeks.

The sweetness of life. It wasn’t so hard to toast to Roa tonight; he felt it with all the tenuous strength of a truth.

It was thick and sweet like metheglin, a little hoppy, with flavors he couldn’t name. He lowered the glass after a sip. He glanced at Aremu, raising his brow; his brow rose higher. “Aqiti wine from the sisters,” he said very quietly, glancing down to watch the phosphor light glint through it. “Caution never hurts. I wonder why… I heard murmurs about them in parliament back home, come to think of it.”

Down below, the onjira in orange was crossing to the bar.

His eyes lingered, and he grinned himself, then glanced back up at Aremu. “What do you think they want?” he asked, as if all business and Ehafsu, as if there wasn’t more than a little of the coy in his expression.

It wasn’t that he didn’t remember, with a wave of leiraflesh, how Niccolette’d looked when she’d found them by the warehouse. But it seemed distant from the aqiti wine - the hush that was falling over the floor, the shading of the phosphor lamps, and the warm quiet between him and Aremu.

He saw the lights from below reflected like stars in Aremu’s eyes; he thought to tear his eyes away, to look toward the dais, but he smiled and kept looking.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 29 Loshis, 2720
Ixúp’igúp Theater, Slowwater

Aremu didn’t miss Tom’s glance down to the onjira in orange. He glanced down as well, although only for a moment; his gaze was on Tom, solidly and comfortably.

When the other man asked his question, Aremu grinned; he couldn’t hide it. It lingered on his lips and in the corner of his eyes, soft and warm and amused, and more than a little sheepish. He glanced down himself as the aqiti wine, tilting the stem of the glass between his fingers and watching it gleam.

“Their own amusement, I expect,” Aremu said with a little smile, thinking of the sway of the onjira’s hips for just a moment, the drapes of bright orange fabric. “And a reminder, I should think, of what they can achieve.”

Tom was looking at him; the theater was darkening around them, the non-phosphor lamps dimming and a handful of the phosphor shaded. All the light gleamed on the stage, and the conversation dimmed too, quieting.

“How does it seem to you?” Aremu asked with a little smile, still verging on sheepish. He took another sip of his aqiti wine, and he sat back, finding Tom’s fingers with his in the darkness between their seats.

Aremu didn’t look down at the floor below again; his purpose for the evening was beside him. He couldn’t imagine what Tom would make of the poetry. He remembers, suddenly, long ago, Tom’s disappointment at the eggs he’d made - brought to mind, Aremu supposed, by their discussion of cooking. He understood, suddenly, with a strange ache.

I want to be the sort of man who takes you planes you like, he wanted to say to Tom. I don’t know if it’s enough, us coming here together; I want you to like the poetry, or to find it interesting - whatever one does with poetry. It isn’t something I know much of; it isn’t something I claim to understand. I want, he wanted to say, to have done well in the choosing.

The onjira who took the stage was dressed all in white, crisp starched fabric wrapped and tucked and folded, edged with gold trim. It would have been a simple costume - it was - if not for the rich elegance of the cloth, and the elaborate, thin sheeted neck piece which gleamed from their collar to chin, pounded flat and etched in dizzying swirls. Their head was a wrap of gold fabric, and their eyes painted gold as well, long swaths of it across the lids and extending out wide.

“Welcome!” They cried, spreading both arms wide; gold bracelets jangled on their wrists, the sound lost beneath the road of applause and laughter.

“I am Gadza,” they said with a smile, “and I shall tonight be your guide along a river of riches. We swim, my friends, in deep waters this evening; prepare yourselves for the journey.”

Gadza went on, beginning their introduction of the first performer.

Aremu shifted, just a little, just barely moving his legs so that his knee brushed against Tom. He didn’t look over at the other man. He knew - he knew - it was a risk, perhaps a foolish one. Tom was trusting him to keep him safe here, to keep his secret secret; Tom was trusting him too, Aremu knew, to keep himself safe.

He didn’t linger in the contact, for all he wanted to, but he took it, all the same, seized the moment to let his leg rest against Tom’s, just briefly, before he shifted again and drew them apart. He glanced sideways in the warm light of the theater, looking once more at Tom’s sharp features, at the little smile on his face which had become so familiar - so tender and precious - and knew he was smiling himself, still, even as he looked back to the stage.

[Tom Cooke]

Ixúp’igúp Theater • Slowwater

Late Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

W
onderful,” he said, his grin softening.

Aremu’s leg eased away from his. Down below, there was a flash of gold as the onjira took the stage. He didn’t look away yet from Aremu’s smile, from the echoes of amusement in his eyes. He remembered the sheepish little smile he’d worn at the festival in Laus Oma, even buried under fear, fear he’d not then known the root of; he remembered even now the way he’d glanced over at him at Niccolette’s teasing.

Maybe it hadn’t been fear all the way down, even then. He’d wondered later – with a guilt that seared him hotter than the burner of a stove – even in Aremu’s arms – he’d come up with many things to wonder. Once, he’d even wondered if Aremu had been frightened for ada’na Tsadha that night. He’d wondered if Aremu had thought he meant all of them harm. Maybe he had, but maybe it hadn’t been fear all the way down.

It didn’t feel sore or tender under his probing. Strange, but a yielding sort of strangeness, soft and new and pleasant to touch.

And he thought Aremu might’ve looked sheepish, too, in the asking.

He couldn’t think how to say what he felt. Is this, he wanted to ask, the reflection you want me to see? You could’ve taken me to some other place, some other bar. You took me to a place for the man I am, not the man I was. Maybe he felt a little shame; maybe he wasn’t used to – wasn’t ready for – being seen like this. Maybe he could’ve never readied himself. He couldn’t banish the color from his cheeks, but he kept smiling.

“... then Iyú’oyu Dzomúl, who will be tonight walking us through ‘For the Water’, which has now been published in Thul’amat’s own Hulali’s Breath.” Gadza’s voice was warm with pride. There was a swell of applause.

I like it, he wanted to say, simply enough. The velvet of the chair was soft underneath his fingers; the light was low and pleasant. “I haven’t heard any of these names,” he murmured instead. Gadza went on to say something about a volume published by Ixúp’igúp, and he couldn’t help a ripple of bastly excitement through his field.

“As the night deepens, we shall find ourselves in the midst of verses on love,” the onjira spread one white-sleeved arm, “and loss,” they touched their heart and frowned, and a mock sigh went over the floor. “And all such lovers’ pains,” and there was more applause.

He squeezed Aremu’s hand and let go to take a sip of aqiti wine, but he leaned closer to the other man on the arm of the chair. He let his knee wander over – just brushing Aremu’s before it brushed away – and then he looked toward the dais, settling comfortably in.

Gadza stepped down and another onjira took the stage, also in flowing white.

They were tall and broad for an arata, with a long, solemn face bearded and strongly contoured. They had none of Gadza’s jangling gold; when a hush fell over the floor, they spoke in a very deep voice, one that carried almost effortlessly without adornment.

“Would that I could breathe in His river
Like a fish – would that I could come apart
In His currents, and be shaped again
As I go along the twisting paths
And fear breaking on the rocks …”

The first two poems were in lilting Mugrobi Estuan, with a word or phrase in Mugrobi here or there. He wondered if others would be entirely in Mugrobi – he was the only orozem here, he thought – and wondered if he knew Mugrobi well enough to follow; he didn’t think so.

But ada’tsa Iyú’oyu’s voice flowed out like a river, thick with metaphor, and he smiled wryly, thinking of what Aremu had said at the cafe. He wasn’t sure, he realized, how Aremu really felt about any of it. Except for the other man’s quiet when he spoke of it, and what’d been said in other, darker times.

Iyú’oyu finished, and there was a swell of applause; he set his aqiti wine aside – barely a third drunk, careful – down and joined in. When it died down and Gadza came back in glittering gold, he turned curiously to Aremu. “How does it seem to you?” he asked, very softly. “Poetry,” he added, shifting in his seat, tilting his head. “What do you think of it?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 29 Loshis, 2720
Ixúp’igúp Theater, Slowwater

Iyú’oyu’s voice was deep and steady, carrying out over the crowd.

“If I knew his path, I think,
I could let myself go and be carried dzoh’tsudos
If I could breathe beneath the water
I would speak words of dissolution…”

“River-flowing,” Aremu said, softly, leaning over to whisper the word in Tom’s ear. He didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the poetry; he wasn’t sure, still, how much Tom understand, and while he wondered that anyone could speak even a few words of Mugrobi and not know the word for river, flowing was a subtler, less common verb. He didn’t know – he found he couldn’t tell – if it mattered or not; in case it did, he wanted Tom to know it.

When Iyú’oyu stopped, Aremu clapped his hand against his thigh, his right wrist still tucked against the outside of his leg. Tom beside him was clapping enthusiastically; he thought of the bastly swell of the other man’s field at the mention of a volume, and he felt an ache in his heart, and a joy too.

Aremu glanced at Tom when he asked the question. He glanced down at his lap, and then back at the stage, a faint frown etched into the lines of his brow. Answers came to mind, crowding one after the other, and the fear of choosing between them kept him silent a moment, and then a moment longer.

I like Ixúp’igúp, he wanted to say, as if he’d misunderstood; I remember it fondly, and I wanted to take you here. It’s not painful for me, being here, I don’t think, no more than anywhere is.

“… clever verses,” Gadza was saying, smiling, “which invite the listener to question, and never answer. Please welcome Edhe’tson!”

There was another round of applause; the onjira who came onto the stage wore a tunic and pants, crisp white, with a vivid-patterned amel’iwe in a dizzying array of colors on one side, and a bright turquoise on the other. They were shorter even than Gadza, though not as slight as the gold-draped onjira. They grinned, waving both hands at the welcoming crowd, revealing a mouth of slightly crooked teeth.

A second onjira with a drum came and sat behind, tapping out a slow soft rhythm with the heel and fingers of their palm, steadily drawing the crowd into it.

“Roa, one day, soaring overhead,
devised a trick to play on the Circle
as one half of the mind on the other
Seeing and unseeing
Knowing and unknowing…”

Edhe’tson spoke along the beat, with warmth and depth, vibrant here and laughing there, the poem flowing steadily alongside the drum.

“I never had much of a knack for understanding poetry,” Aremu said, quietly, his hand finding Tom’s once more. He smiled at the other man. “It seems slippery to me; when I think I understand, it… turns out, and I’m left with nothing to hold.” Perhaps that’s the purpose of it, he wanted to say, and yet he couldn’t quite; for all it wasn’t trying to be truth, he felt it was trying to be something else – knowledgeable, wise – in a way that he wasn’t, and couldn’t bring himself to pretend to.

“Sometimes,” Aremu said, looking back down at the stage, “it feels to me like the currents in a storm, and I’m buffeted about, without knowing which way it is up or down, let alone how to go perpendicular to it. That’s the always the trick, isn’t it? In the water or the air – not to fight the current, or to surrender to it, but slip out sideways.”

Do you think it’s meant to be that way? He wanted to ask. Is it the lack in me – is it that everyone else understands? I know there have been imbali poets – I know you like Tsadi’s work, although I’ve always felt her more straightforward than some of the others. Maybe it’s that they’re better at surrendering, some of them, that they don’t try to cling to understanding, don’t try to right the ship, but just accept what comes. Maybe I’ve never been good at that either.

[Tom Cooke]

Ixúp’igúp Theater • Slowwater

Late Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

R
iver-flowing, he thought warmly, tucking the word away. Dzoh’tsudos, he mouthed after Aremu told him. He found the shape of it changed with its meaning, with the impression of Aremu’s breath feathery-soft against his ear like a current of water.

After the applause, after the question, Aremu was silent. He looked over the other man once. There was a brief glance in his direction; then he watched his dark eyes go down, the small familiar line writing itself between his brows.

He knew better than to regret asking. By then, he didn’t think there ought to be room for that between them. It made itself heard often enough, but he thought now that a man had to accept regret to feel it. There were a lot of things you couldn’t seem to help regretting, the spilling of sap among them, or other, deeper sorts of bloodshed; there were a hundred regrets between them, a hundred should’ve-beens. But now he knew better than to accept the regret of asking this man he loved what he thought of poetry.

He felt it still – an old ache of shame – and his heart tightened. If you don’t think a thing of it, he thought, don’t worry over telling me; I know why you brought me here, and if you think the whole thing’s like unto smoke and mirrors, I’ll just be happy as a kenser in Brayde you thought it benny that I liked it.

Or maybe, he wondered, it’s painful in other ways.

There was little time. Gadza took the stage bastly-bright, their lilt of a voice spilling out over the floor and fluttering up to the mezzanine and the rafters.

His palms stung from the clapping, but he joined in anyway; Edhe’tson’s amel’iwe caught the light like a ripple of the Turga on a sunny morning. As the hush fell and the drumbeat started up, thundering almost as loud as his heart – he could feel it too aching against his ribs – he listened, and let himself be wrapped up in the onjira’s voice.

Aremu’s hand found his, a warm tangle of fingers.

He smiled over, his brows drawn at first; he felt his smile crack into something else. He listened. He didn’t think to speak even through Aremu’s pauses, and he listened to this poetry, too.

I don’t know much about it, he thought to say, finding air currents – flying. Slipping out sideways, he thought he knew; he tried to imagine an aeroship slipping in and out of a current, and then a soul slipping in and out of the Cycle. He thought Aremu’s qalqa had been heat and pressure and precision, more than flying. Uzoji might’ve slipped in and out of currents like a bird; he thought Aremu put things together, or else made them work once they were put together.

“... and as Bash saw what he had done,
Mountains great piles of dust;
And as Hulali saw all the ships
Broken on the rocks of His rage
It was Naulas, great antlers raised,
Who spoke to the Circle splintered
Of His sister’s cunning caprice …”

He gave Aremu’s hand a small squeeze. “Maybe wiser men than me understand poetry.” He laughed softly; his voice was just a whisper, and it sounded to him less like Anatole’s and more like his own. “Sometimes I fight it and lose – but that’s like bringing just your fists to a knife fight – sometimes it carries me places I don’t want to go.”

“Why? the Circle asked almost as one;
Even Roa, who, soaring and wheeling,
Had been struck blind by her own devices
Seeing and unseeing
Knowing and unknowing...”

“You told me once you thought men’s eyes were like mirrors,” he said softly. “It’s more like – putting together the pieces of a mirror, to me. I don’t understand what I see, but I can look, and I can…”

The applause broke like a storm; it swallowed up all else as Edhe’tson and the other onjira took their bows and stepped down. “Our next poet is known only as Il’úka,” Gadza said, bangles glinting, and suddenly another roar of applause went up, as if everyone on the floor knew the name. “Our own Il’úka has come to speak to us of love – of its passions, of its pangs.”

“Is it possible to slip sideways out of a reflection? Or to understand it? Or even to hold it,” he murmured, tilting his head.

Il’úka’s long-fingered hands were thick with glittering rings. They began in Mugrobi, in a high, sonorous voice.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 29 Loshis, 2720
Ixúp’igúp Theater, Slowwater

Whispering, quiet, between the rest of the noise and the steady recitation of the poem on the stage below and the dream beats which thudded beneath it, Aremu could have mistaken the voice for another.

Just your fists to a knife fight, Tom said. Aremu grinned, unable to help it, his thumb stroking the other man’s hand. Some of the tension had gone out of it; even from the first, he thought, now nearly four years ago when they had stood next to one another and looked up at the Eqe Aqawe and spoken of dreams and homes -

Like looking in a broken mirror, Aremu thought, looking at the other man. “Every angle your own reflection, and yet every one glimpsed differently,” he said, his smile quirking at the edge of his lips.

“I think you can slip out of it,” Aremu said, his thumb stroking over Tom’s hand still. “The challenge is more in the holding,” he frowned, softly, thoughtful. “If you lose that angle, can you ever find it again?”

I lost your angle once, Aremu didn’t quite say, though he knew he came close to it. I don’t know if this is the same angle we had then, what we’ve found between us now. Perhaps it’s better; perhaps we’re both looking more directly into the mirror now than we were then, that we’ve found a larger piece - large enough for more than just an eye or a lip or a scrap of a nose. I feel seen, at least, Tom, when you look at me.

“What does it take to see it whole?” Aremu went on, softly, holding Tom’s gaze once more. When you see yourself in another man, he wanted to ask - when it was another man you looked into, searching for a reflection, was it ever your whole self you saw?

Is it now? That more than anything he wanted to ask, for all that he didn’t think he could, not here on the balcony with all the theater beneath them. What do you see when I reflect you, Tom?

Il’úka began to recite, hands waving through the air as they spoke. Aremu listened, looking down to the onjira on the stage, as their Mugroba echoed soft and sonorous through the air.

He shifted closer to Tom, adjusting himself on the edge of the seat and leaning over, so he was almost whispering in the other man’s ear.

”And I spoke to him of love,
With a voice to echo in his ears
Thinking that my words would sound after I had gone
Thinking that he should carry them alongside.”

Aremu translated as the poet went along, as best as he could. If he lost the rhythm of it, here or there, if he paused before a word as Il’úka went onwards, he found the thread of the poem again in time, finding the meaning of not every word.

”And I sang to him of love
And knew not what he heard
Whether it was the melody of my voice
Or the rhythm of my heart beneath.”

Aremu hadn’t let go of Tom’s hand, still stroking his thumb softly over his skin. As he spoke, he thought he could nearly glimpse it; he thought he could see the poem between all the fractured shards, that if he did not spoil himself by thinking, he could nearly understand it.

“And I wept to him of love,
And knew not what I said.
But thought he understood me then
As the river flowed down my cheeks.”

He found his way through the poem as best as he could, trying to make the Mugrobi into Estuan. Like a reflection, Aremu thought, all his own; he heard the words whispered in his voice, felt the warmth of Tom against him, saw the gleaming edge of the other man’s gaze as he went on, finding his way through the poetry as best as he knew how.

[Tom Cooke]

Ixúp’igúp Theater • Slowwater

Late Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

M
aybe it takes losing all the pieces,” he murmured, not sure why. “All the angles.” Aremu was looking at him again, dark eyes intent; the distant glitter of the stage sparked through them. One half of his face was in shadow. “Looking for other kinds of reflections,” he added, shifting and shutting his eyes for long enough that all of him was the soft stroke of Aremu’s thumb over his hand.

When he opened them, he smiled.

Maybe you’re always looking for the whole, he wanted to say, if he hadn’t felt thick-tongued mung. I said back then I didn’t know if I wanted to see the whole; I still don’t know I do, Aremu. Or maybe we’re not looking for reflections anymore, he thought, and squeezed Aremu’s hand.

It wasn’t the drink: his aqiti wine was only a third down from the brim, and honey and barley were a faint taste on his tongue. He could see the reflections of the two glasses on the table in Aremu’s eyes, like droplets of amber. And he didn’t feel drunk with Aremu looking at him so. With the applause shivering up to the mezzanine, with his hand slipping out of Aremu’s to join in, he kept looking at him – really looking – and he didn’t wonder what he saw.

Il’aku’s voice drifted through the air, lilting over the consonants like a bird. When Aremu leaned in it took him by surprise; his throat caught at the brush of his breath.

He smiled when Aremu paused. “Epúq’tsuzem,” rolled out Il’aku, or so Tom thought; and Aremu whispered, echo, and his smile widened.

Gone, and Il’aku and Aremu paused at once, and when the poet continued his voice was softer. He shifted closer comfortably, reaching to take another sip of his aqiti wine. He didn’t yet feel the buzz; it was like a call from somewhere far away. He held the glass a moment and set it down beside Aremu’s, and took the other man’s hand again.

He let his wrist rest against Aremu’s, feeling the warmth of it. He didn’t know whether it was Aremu’s pulse he felt flickering against his skin or his own. One fluttered faster, the other slower, but occasionally they aligned on a word.

The word for weeping he knew. He shut his eyes against it, smiling still. When he opened them Aremu’s face was a blurry, gold-limned slope in the corner of his eye, a warm amel’iwe that draped between them and brushed his shoulder, the clasp of a hand below the banister. Aremu led him deeper into the poem hand-in-hand, and he followed. Once or twice his eyes smeared and he blinked the moisture away, but mostly he listened, and when Aremu missed a word he guided him still with a firm hand over the crack in the mirror.

It wasn’t Il’aku’s words he ached for, anyway.

The applause went up this time bright and bastly, not a single voice in Ixúp’igúp lowered. He looked at Aremu when the other man came away from him; his lips were slightly parted, and he wanted –

A smile spilled onto them anyway, and he clapped as heartily as the rest. He didn’t watch, but he saw Aremu clapping against his thigh in the corner of his eye, and he wondered at the angle. When the tide of sound fell back, he took another drink, smiling and meeting Aremu’s eye.

“My love is like a sun that never sets,” Il’aku started after a pause, as abrupt as the rhythm.

Gadza laughed offstage; a few hands swept in to give Il’aku a drum, and they took it and started up the beat without a moment’s hesitation, sliding it right into the poem. “My love is like a garden tsú’pipúq…”

Ever-growing, came the whisper.

After a while, he settled in close, smiling up at Aremu across the table and the glasses. “May I ask about her?” he asked very softly. In the corner of his eye, on the floor, he saw a flicker of orange. “The woman on the isles,” he murmured.

Is all well with her? he couldn’t bring himself to ask; if what had happened during the festival… He smiled anyway, coy but soft.