[Closed] [Mature] Dancing After Death

[Tom Cooke]

The Fountain by the Ese Stop, Campus

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

H
e spent less than ten minutes at the Crocus. He’d told ada’na he was working late, and he’d asked to have kofi sent up; it had been a quiet request, underneath the burble of the Hesseans still drinking and doing business at the bar.

He burned his tongue on the first sip. He drank two cups anyway, feeling wakefulness tingle through him. His hip hurt, his muscles were sore, but it was a manageable sort of pain now, dull and thrumming and grounding. He had spirit in him yet.

He stole sips as he went through his drawers. It was with the taste of kofi clinging to his mouth too that he knelt down and took the case out from under the hotel mattress. He opened it with steady hands, flicking tired eyes over the hard-angled tension wrenches, the picks with their short, delicate hooks. His lip twitched.

It wasn’t necessary. None of it was, but this especially: he doubted he’d have need of them, and he wasn’t sure why he’d had them made in the first place. It had been a whim late summer of last year – on the pretense of teaching Silk, though they’d both known it wasn’t about that – a gentleman’s eccentric hobby, he supposed, now.

He folded it up and tucked it into his bag anyway, because he didn’t think this was about necessities, not for either of them.

The face in the mirror was gaunt and grey. He didn’t stop to look at the eyes, or ask himself what or who was in them; there wasn’t any point.

There was still a faint lingering taste on his lips, it seemed to him, a faint warmth in his skin still, a faint secret familiar scent in the folds of his clothes that he was loath to part with. But a word – a word he still didn’t know the meaning of – whispered in his ears still, stronger than any of it.

It was a simple dark tunic and trousers he’d found, one he’d had made shortly before he’d gotten back to Thul Ka. He wrapped himself in it before he went, throwing his deep orange amel’iwe around his shoulders to be tucked away when the time came. It might’ve stood out for an arata, not a whit of white on him, but he’d already seen Anaxi make worse fashion mistakes; if he stood out anywhere along the way, it would be as a clumsy foreigner.

The one thing they always had on their side, he thought wistfully: unlikelihood.

He tucked himself out the back way anyway. The way from Cinnamon Hill to to the platform was gold and then soft blue; it smelled of expensive tobacco, sounded like distant echoes of well-to-do parties, and then deep-fried batter and cablecar rattling.

He passed the way as if in a dream. If a couple of arati lasses on the platform snickered at him, they were gone by the time Ese reached campus, replaced by other faces; a tired-looking man was sleeping at the back of the car.

The platform was empty.

The quiet corner of campus they’d passed through earlier that day was unrecognizable to him now; instead of setting-sun gold, soft blue and red caught the rustling edges of the trees, the twisting branches. The night bugs were loud, loud as they’d been on the first night here. But they were familiar now, and so was the humid breeze tugging at his clothes.

He didn’t see him at first. He was conscious – as ever – of his field; cheerful noise clattered out under the burbling of the fountain as he rounded the bend, and he tucked himself into the shadow of a tree, listening to it get closer. It was the flash of white fabric that made him ease further away, careful not to caprise. The students were loose-limbed, laughing silhouettes, the lamplight catching on bright fabric.

They went, and he shifted back onto the path, coming out around the fountain.

He didn’t see Aremu at first; he didn’t see him at all. If he felt a twinge of anxiety, he tamped it down with trust.

But his eyes weren’t any good for seeing in the dark. Carefully, he took a step into the edge of the light; he wound his way round it, passing under the branches of the trees where the shadows met it. He didn’t speak, but he looked into the dark, and a faint smile tugged at his face, even though he could make nothing out.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Northern Edge of Campus, Thul'Amat

It was in the gleam of the light that Aremu saw him; blue caught on the white and gray in his hair, and sparked in the red, rippled across the orange of his amel’iwe. For a moment, Aremu almost thought it some strange trick of the light, that the blue didn’t reflect in the white clothing beneath.

He understood, not half a moment later. It shouldn’t, he thought, have come as a surprise; Tom had said as much as they’d walked back towards the hotel, and it was mostly that he had not thought about what it was Tom needed at his hotel, rather than that he’d thought it was something else. It wasn’t an intellectual sort of surprise, in any case; it was more visceral than that.

It was, he thought, uneasily, also absurd. He’d seen Tom dressed in something other than white many times; he’d seen Tom dressed in his own clothing in the island, before and after he’d known, and it had not bothered him then, not either way. He’d seen him in Vienda, since, and in Brunnhold, dressed in a dark Anaxi suit, and it had never bothered him.

But the isles and Vienda weren’t Thul Ka – weren’t Thul’Amat, Aremu thought, uncertain as to why it should seem to make a difference, but confident it did, at least in the visceral feeling of the surprise. It wasn’t, either, as if all arati wore only white; there were no such rules, and no such customs, either, though there were many who preferred it.

Tom was looking around; there was a faint, uncertain crease in his forehead. Aremu shifted in the shadows; he thought perhaps Tom heard him, for the other man turned and looked towards him. He came back towards the light – not all the way into the pool of it, but close enough that the blue caught the tan fabric of his clothing, that he had to blink his eyes against it.

Good evening, sir, Aremu thought to say. He didn’t look around, not at the vendor with a pot of kofi bubbling lazily on the coals, not at the man hurrying away from campus through the darkness, not at the two students whispering quietly to one another as they approached the fountain. Good evening, sir, he thought perhaps he should have said, smiling politely and evenly, as if there were nothing strange to see here.

He couldn’t; he knew he would have to in time, and he thought he could bring himself to it, when the moment came. But he didn’t think this was the moment, and he didn’t think he could, here and now, when there seemed to be no need – however well he knew that the best of such covers was never broken in public, even when there seemed to be no need. Maybe, he thought, absurdly, it was the sight of Tom in dark colors.

“This way,” Aremu said, softly, instead. His right wrist was in his pocket, the lump of his prosthetic beneath it; his left hand twitched at his side, fingers curling lightly, and he held back from the urge to reach out for Tom. His lips twitched at a smile, faint and strange and a little strained, not, he thought, the way it should have been either.

What is this place? He wanted to ask. Who are we, here? He had thought he knew; he had thought he had known, how it was to be in public and in private, and that he could draw the lines between them. Something in the night had shattered that clarity, and he didn’t know where to put himself, or what face to wear.

It was easier to turn and slip between the buildings, following the winding path to the gateway into campus. It – like all, Aremu could have said, tour guide steady, but those at Ire’dzosat and inside Idisufi – was ceremonial only, and unmanned even at this late, quiet hour; there had been few enough around at the fountain, and in campus there was only the quiet sound of their feet on the path, the occasional soft crunch of gravel or leaves beneath their sandals, pools of phosphor light that they went between, and were never out of sight of for long. Aremu didn’t break the silence; he wasn’t sure how to.

[Tom Cooke]

The Way to the Observatory, Campus

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu blinked when he stepped to the edge of the light.

Behind him he heard the soft whispering of students in Mugrobi; in the corner of his eye he could see them, bright-dressed lasses bent together, absorbed in a world of their own. He didn’t turn to look, nor at the stall, though he took a deep breath of the scent of kofi.

The light reflected blue in Aremu’s skin and eyes; it gave his face a strange cast, he thought, stretched the shadows strange. He’d a strange feeling himself, meeting his eye, though it did nothing to change the soft swell of his heart’s thrumming. This wasn’t ada’xa Aremu’s polite smile. He thought he’d seen this expression often enough to know what it was, but just when he thought he did, a different angle of the light – a different pattern of shadows, shifting leaves – even if it was a word he knew, he didn’t know it in this context.

He hadn’t thought he’d say sir; he hadn’t been sure what he’d say. This way, Aremu murmured, and a chill that had nothing to do with the night breeze trickled down his spine.

Aremu smiled, something tight in the lines of it. He smiled back. He saw his hand shift in the corner of his eye, and his own fingers curled at his side, then smoothed the fabric of his trousers. Then – he turned and went into the dark.

Tom followed, brushing sandstone walls on one side with his fingertips, watching the ripple of Aremu’s amel’iwe.

It wasn’t a long way, though he lost track of time. They brushed between buildings, skirted the edges of paths, crossed quiet courtyards; he wasn’t sure when they passed into campus proper, or when they began to wind into Away’qexo. He had the feeling of familiarity and strangeness all at once. He didn’t recognize any of these landmarks in the dark, with the shadows thick and cool phosphor the only light. He didn’t recognize Aremu’s quiet in this place, either.

He asked himself if he could feel it. The romantic in him might’ve said yes. There was too much to focus on: the singing bugs, the rustling of the leaves, the muffled sounds of not-so-distant parties, the ebb and flow of life. Their silence, too, seemed deafening by contrast; deafening or terribly soft, as if they’d cast spells of muffling and invisibility at once, as if they were the shadows the phosphor cast.

He slid his amel’iwe from round his neck and tucked it into his bag. Once, he got the urge to reach and take Aremu’s hand in the dark, but he caught a burst of laughter from a window just above the level of his head; he swallowed a lump and felt moths whirl and bat their wings in his belly.

All at once – as if from nowhere – they came out into the courtyard.

There was no sign of it before then, leastways not to him; up through the branches, it was all dark on dark. Even now, all he could see was the columns at the front disappearing into the shadows, the sharp lines of the fence casting long skinny shadows like fingers toward the fountain. The fountain itself burbled on, gleaming blue phosphor dancing in the water.

They were tucked off near a side entrance. For a moment, they were silent, utterly silent. He’d paced himself – Aremu had taken care – but his breath still came fast.

Are you ready? he thought to ask, looking finally over and up at Aremu’s profile; he still saw the same tight lines round his lips, or what he could see of them out of the light. He didn’t want to call him a liar; he worried, of a sudden, that turning away the second time would hurt much more than the first.

I would still, he wanted to say, follow you back, and no time spent with you is a waste. The name Aremu had used sat warm inside him.

“Eyo’ziq i’xupo,” he murmured, a little knit still in his brow. He brushed Aremu’s arm with his hand, then looked back at the courtyard. The shadows were thick on one side, all the way to the trees.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Night, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory, Thul'Amat

These gates, at least, were closed.

Some part of Aremu had not been sure that they would be, in the end. In the darkness he couldn’t be sure whether they seemed larger or smaller than they had earlier in the day; he tried to step back, metaphorically rather than physically, and to see them as only another cliff to climb, and he found his breath caught a little in his chest when he tried.

He had no excuses here, Aremu thought. They had walked through the quiet, almost-deserted campus, lit evenly by phosphor lights, rooms here or there shining lamplight or lanternlight out onto the ground below, and they had stayed in the dark as they did it. Without, Aremu thought, staring fixedly at the gates, anything white to reflect back the light.

Aremu took a deeper breath, consciously, exhaling it out, slowly. There were no Anaxi inside, he thought, and he didn’t have to carve a mask over his face as he watched the stars; he had told Tom he could not bear that, and Tom had found a way for him around it, and he stood here, now, afraid that it was not enough. That he, Aremu thought, looking at it, was not enough; he knew himself for a coward, but all the same he didn’t want Tom to see him so. That, too, he understood, was a lie, but he supposed adding vanity to his list of imperfections was hardly a surprise.

The wind is warm in my heart, Tom said, quietly.

Aremu shuddered a little. The wind was cold, actually, tugging at the edges of their clothing; he turned to look at Tom, squarely, and wondered when the other man had taken off his amel’iwe, and how it could be that he hadn’t noticed. Tom’s hand had brushed, gently, against his arm, a little cold through the thin fabric of his shirt. He followed the other man’s gaze towards the shadows at the side of the courtyard, where the trees were wrapped around the fence.

Aremu shifted closer, giving his eyes time to adjust; there was a phosphor glow inside the courtyard, and others down the walkway, and once he moved far enough from them he could begin to see in the gloom. Now, he saw a path – a foot here, he thought, and a hand there, and from there over the fence and down onto the other side. It would not be a hard climb, as such things went.

Aremu was aware of the heavy weight of the frown in his forehead. He ran his tongue over his lips, and looked back at Tom. Will you love me, still, he wanted to ask, if I’m a coward? He knew the answer; it was only, he supposed, that he wanted to hear it aloud.

And if it fails? If we don’t make it – if we’re caught – a thousand reasonable fears surged up from his chest and threatened to choke him, and Aremu cleared his throat of them, because Tom had already made clear his stance, had said yes again and again, not only tonight but at every juncture these last nights.

Whatever weight was on him didn’t disappear; it didn’t lighten or vanish or release its hold on the knots in his back. But Aremu shifted closer to the trees, running his fingertips over the bark, looking at the set of them once more. He came closer to the fence, examining the other side, and thought about where one could climb down, rather than jump.

Tom had followed him, a few steps into the darkness; he turned back to find the other man behind him, an outline of sharp features and a flicker of light in gray eyes, hands and feet and face catching the light more than the rest of him.

“Ifad afúr,” Aremu said, softly, and extended his hand out to Tom in the shade of the branches.

He meant it, just as he meant to always offer Tom truth; he didn’t want to leave Tom to find his own way along the trunk and amidst the branches, but rather to guide him, foot over hand, to pull himself up alongside Aremu, up the trees – up to the top of the fence, clinging tight, and over the smooth metal railing, down the other side, until they were low enough that Aremu could drop to the ground, could turn and take something of Tom’s weight on him, and think there was no burden he more preferred.

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory Courtyard, Campus

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

H
is eyes lingered on Aremu’s face this time, soft, the wrinkle still in his brow. He didn’t think to hide his expression; he didn’t think to hide anything of his heart, this time. Aremu looked over and down at him, the hints of blue light shifting across his face, the shadows on one side pooling deeper. He watched his tongue move over his lips.

Any time, he wanted to say, any time it’s too much. I’ll climb right back over the fence, creaking hip and all, and we’ll go right back to the hotel on the cable cars the whole way. Maybe I have the pick in the lock and you say no, and I forget what a tumbler is, forget all that pride – all there is to me here is you.

There was the familiar flicker of muscles at Aremu’s throat, the soft husk of it, and he turned back. He saw his glinting eyes flick over the tree; hesitantly, he followed them himself. They both crept closer, him a little behind.

Ifad afúr, came his soft voice.

They were in the shadow of the branches now, and he couldn’t make out much. Aremu offered his long-fingered hand, throwing long-fingered shadows.

The word ifad he didn’t know; he thought by the shape of it it must be a verb, and thought he could guess the tense and number. Afúr was what told him immediately, and he swallowed another lump in his throat, smiling.

He slid his hand into Aremu’s, then brought it up to his lips, kissing the back and then the palm.

There was no finding the footholds for him; he hadn’t even the shred of hope. Aremu guided his hand to a knot he couldn’t see, helped to work his fingers around it; careful with the other man at his back, not yet taking his weight, he found a foothold, though the pushing-up was ever harder than the pulling.

He felt his heart lurch. He almost couldn’t take his other foot off the ground, when the time came.

What if I can’t? he wanted to ask; he could just find the glint of Aremu’s eyes in the dark, but it was more that he felt him, felt his warmth and the brush of his sleeves, the occasional brush of skin. What if I’m too tired? What if I’m too – He thought of Aremu’s hand brushing over his hip with a swell of tenderness he almost had to swallow a lump through.

He couldn’t make out the trunk and limbs well as Aremu, he suspected, for his poor eyes or for his practice with climbing. He felt Aremu start to climb the tree beside him, a little ahead. Sometimes he wavered; sometimes a branch creaked or cracked and he froze. He felt Aremu take a little of his weight then – just a little – enough that he felt able to balance himself, to reassure himself with a firmer hold on the tree.

He was grateful it was too dark to look down, but it came as a surprise just how high they were, in the end. The first part was the hardest, he thought, before you got up in the branches; there were more handholds up here, such that he didn’t always need Aremu to guide his hands.

It was when he reached for a branch and felt the cold metal of the fence under his hand that he looked – over and down. His hip was aching and his heart was in his throat. “Down, now,” he murmured, struck for a moment by the dizzying-sharp shadows of the fence stretching like spears away from them in the phosphor light.

He looked over and up at Aremu, his face patterned with the tangling shadows of branches even further up. I don’t think I can jump, dove, he couldn’t bring himself to say. He smiled instead, warm against the chilly breeze.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Night, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory, Thul'Amat

Tom’s hand was clenched tight over the smooth metal railing; his skin was pulled taut over rounded knuckles, a spot of white gleaming in the moonlight. Aremu was crouched next to him, tangled in the branches; he glanced sideways to see Tom’s chin tilt, his gaze angling down, the branches above casting tangled shadows across his face.

He smiled, when he looked back, and Aremu smiled as well.

Don’t climb, he wanted to say, anything you can’t descend, and he knew then it was entirely too late for him – for the both of them – and there was something freeing in the accepting of it, and the letting go.

“Come up onto the top of it, first,” Aremu said, softly, his hand coming to find Tom’s thigh, wedged in with his feet, his right elbow hooked around another branch, solid enough to keep him in place. The wooden hand gleamed in the moonlight, too, more than the rest of him did.

Once Tom was straddling the fence, Aremu guided him around, his hand resting on the other man’s back; he climbed down a stretch himself, and ran his fingers over Tom’s ankle, gentle. “Down,” Aremu agreed, then, softly, looking up at the other man clinging to the fence above him. There were trees enough on this side; they would, Aremu thought, judging it, be able to climb back up here as well, if he couldn’t find a better place.

It wasn’t such a great height; on his own, he might have jumped down – here, perhaps, through the tangle of branches, or else a little further out along them, where there wasn’t anything to snag on his clothing. Climbing down was just as easy: step by step, his sandals finding one branch and then the next.

Down, Aremu wanted to say, is an act of trust; he didn’t think he could have voiced such a ridiculous thought, but he felt it all the same. Up means pulling and searching, but knowing where the path is; down, you have to trust that your feet can hold, and you can’t always look.

He didn’t go any faster than the other man could manage, and he thought Tom was shaking a little when they reached the ground, though he didn’t know if it was fear or relief. He wrapped the other man in his arms, anyway – both of them, as he had earlier, for all that he kept the prosthetic as far away as he had his wrist – and pressed his lips to Tom’s hair, standing there in the midst of the shadows, out of sight of all the world.

“Let’s find a way in,” Aremu said, quietly, when they came apart in time. He didn’t feel any more sure than he had on the other side of the branches, but he couldn’t – after that, after Tom dragging himself hand by hand up through the branches and down through them, too – he couldn’t succumb to his own fear. Tom would love him, but he didn’t know if he could love himself, if he let them both down so.

Aremu kept to the shadows; there was only one phosphor lamp in the courtyard, and avoiding even the edges of the blue light was easy enough. He went close to the wall, and slipped in along the edges of the columns, under the overhang which held the entrance.

“It's locked,” Aremu said, quietly, glancing down at the door. He’d expected it; he glanced up and around, searching for windows – thinking, perhaps, that if they found a dark corner, he could maneuver himself up to the roof, and search for a way in there. He glanced back at Tom, and, involuntarily, the edges of his lips tugged at a little smile. No one, he wanted to say, I’d rather be trying to break in with – but he knew, then, without needing to ask, that they both knew it.

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi • Thul’amat

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

H
e tried to remember climbing down from the Eqe Aqawe, a long time ago; funny enough, all he could seem to remember was up. Up was easier than down. Easier to climb with your eyes fixed on a gunwale, a branch, a man, a heart. Down was sober; down was waking up.

He’d woken up with Aremu before.

Aremu’s left hand was gentle but practical – utterly unlike a lover’s caress, and strangely more intimate all at once. He knew him in a way that would’ve frightened him once, and that still did, if he looked at it. When the other man steadied him, a hand on his thigh, he was careful of his hip.

He was on the way down, too. Whenever he felt his foot slip, whenever Aremu caught him, he felt it under his arm, at his back, at his rear – never catching him by something that might pull or hurt him overmuch – the same care he remembered in two sets of long fingers winding through his hair, not chary but mindful as they brushed out the tangles. He hadn’t known it for what it was then, that diligent attention. He knew it now in every inch of him, as Aremu took a little more of his weight and eased him to the ground, and he was shaking when Aremu took him in his arms.

He almost could’ve lain down with him in the greenery here. He felt the other man’s lips in his hair, but more he felt both arms across his back; he curled his fingers into the soft fabric of his shirt. He nodded, and it was hard to ease away.

He was more and more grateful he’d shucked off the white, and the amel’iwe too. It still didn’t feel like enough. Aremu’s clothes were a shade of brown lighter than his, and he could see the occasional gleam of smooth wood on one side, the occasional flash of the whites of eyes; his own hands seemed to him luminous ghosts. But he stuck behind Aremu to the deepest of the shadows, and something about this felt familiar.

He took off his sandals one at a time, tucking them into his bag with his amel’iwe; he curled his toes into the grass and let his breath even out. He walked toe to heel, soundless.

It’s locked, Aremu said, and he was already grinning. The other man was looking up at the glassy-dark windows, at the shadows up beyond the colonnade. He tried to stifle it when Aremu turned his head; he was half a face, eyes in the dark, but he could see the smile at the edges of his lips. He couldn’t quite manage to tamp down his own, not then.

There was a little furrow in his brow as he looked back at the doors. He reached into his satchel and took out his case; he knelt by the keyhole, glancing only once over his shoulder, shivering in another breeze.

He was too damned sober for this not to feel strange. To his relief, he was looking at two ornate, brightly-painted knobs; he didn’t know what he’d’ve done if it’d been a lever handle. The metal was cold in his hands as he took out the tension, and he had a moment of doubt, feeling the chill ache in his fingers, slipping on the pick. It didn’t feel nearly as romantic – or suggestive – as he’d imagined it would. He’d’ve liked to say he could pick a lock with anything, but he was suddenly glad it wasn’t a couple of hairpins.

He tried another pick after a moment, when he’d got a feel for the pins. It felt like slow-going, but it wasn’t too bad, in the end; the seconds itched at the back of his neck, and he was aware of Aremu behind him, but there were no dogs or brigk footsteps here.

The smile was twitching back at his face when he felt the deadbolt open. At last, something about it made him throw a coy glance over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. He tucked the tension and the pick away with a flourish of his long fingers.

He was careful not to creak the door when he eased it open.

It must’ve been late enough to be early, by now, though there wouldn’t be a hint of light in the sky for hours to come. He’d expected it to be dark inside, somehow, but the foyer was lit in phosphor. The lamps were set high enough up that the alcoves were full of shadows; he felt a faint prickling of unease, but there was no sound except for the shutting of the doors. They gleamed gold in the waxed floors, and he was grateful he’d taken off his shoes.

It was a long hall, and as his eyes adjusted, he noticed a flight of stairs leading up from one of the alcoves at the end; there was a desk, too, unmanned. Only after a moment did he look down.

The floor looked to him like a squiggle of lines, ‘til he saw Mugrobi crawling along the edge of one, tsefar dzariqa, and the shape of a familiar coast. One of his feet was on a thicker, bolder line that divided the room in two lengthways. With his brow furrowed, he stepped away from it, following it with his eyes back to Aremu.

He lifted his eyes, then, to the other man’s face. He lost all thought of the strange line. Are you all right? he wanted to ask. If the question was in his eyes, the set of his lips softened, studying him. “Dove,” he said softly, reaching now for his hand without hesitation.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Night, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory, Thul'Amat

They hadn’t gotten this far earlier, and Aremu did not have to think about it to know he hadn’t looked. In the fading afternoon light, if he had looked, he supposed he would have seen the space here, as he remembered it - the two doors open, and a small high desk with someone standing behind it, as lines wove through and visitors filed inside.

It was different, now; Aremu stood against the wall, and watched Tom crouching at the doorknobs, lock picks in occasionally trembling fingers, all of him bent intently towards his task. He did not speak, again, but looked around, and tried to reconcile what he saw now with what he remembered.

Only a place, he thought, and yet so much more. The fear had stung; so, too, had the loss of the coin he had scraped together for the visit. Worse than any of it had been the knowledge he was apart, that he did not belong, that he never could, and nothing he did could change it.

The observatory had not caused such feelings; nor was it so that he had never felt them before he was turned away here, or that he had not felt them again afterwards. All the same to him it had stood out, amidst years of tiny pinprick aches, as one of those which hurt the most. A door, he thought, looking at it, which he had let stay shut, because he had been too afraid to learn whether it might be opened.

A quiet click came from the door. Aremu looked down and saw Tom grin back over his shoulder, coy; Aremu grinned, too, more reflexively than anything, and it drained from his face as the door shut. He reached down, fingers easing through the back of one sandal and then the other, and he held the pair in his hand as he followed Tom through the door.

Tom held at the doors, and Aremu stepped past him, barefoot on the polished floors. He looked down at them, at his callused bare feet and the gleaming wood beneath, and listened to the door shut behind him.

Set in the wall were a series of displays; they were little more now than the glint of phosphor light against glass, but Aremu could imagine what might be inside them. His gaze searched them, briefly, and he found he did not know what to make of this last moment of inscrutability, for there was no one to stop him from looking now. No one, he thought uncertainly, except -

Dove, Tom said, and Aremu turned to look at him. The other man’s fingers brushed the back of his hand, though he couldn’t hold without setting down his sandals; he looked down at his hand, at Tom’s long cool fingers resting against it, at the sandals scuffed and dusty with their journeys.

Aremu’s breath caught then; Tom took the sandals from him, gently, and held him as he shook. He didn’t cry, not truly, but his lashes were damp with tears when he pulled away, and his throat tight and aching. He looked around, again, at the light gleaming on the display panels, and then at the door.

Tom’s hand found his again; their fingers curled together, and Aremu smiled, even though the motion pushed just a few tears from the corners of his eyes, and sent them sliding down his cheeks. He didn’t wipe away the silvery tracks of them; there was no need.

“Ifad afúr,” Aremu said again, and they turned to the stairs.

The flight turned around at the end; they went past the deck, and Aremu’s breath caught sharply in his chest. The wooden wall beyond was prickled out with a map of the sky - stars carved together in one of their many configurations, with the suggestion of lines stretching between them here to guide the eye, tiny swirls of letter to name what was seen, here and there.

Aremu stood, admiring it, and then turned, and let himself look at the gleaming brass telescope set at the center of the hall, pointed up through the open roof towards the sky above. His hand tightened against Tom’s, just a little, and he found he was smiling once again.

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi • Thul’amat

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

T
here were two pairs of sandals in the satchel now, tucked into the folds of his bright orange amel’iwe with its swirl of white flowers. They were nestled together beside the lockpick case and two of the books he’d bought in Dejai, and there was something strangely reassuring about their weight.

“Ifad afúr,” Aremu said, in the end.

He repeated, “Ifad afúr,” the words cracking a smile across his own face, breaking the furrow of his brow. He found them less clumsy in his mouth than he’d thought they might be.

He found he didn’t much want to let go. It wasn’t just that he was worried for Aremu, though he was. But something about the way he’d smiled, and the way the tear-tracks still glistened on his cheeks as they took the stairs – he hadn’t palmed them away, and he hadn’t apologized a single time, not even as he’d held him – told him it was a worry like wiping the tears away when they needed to run. It wasn’t for worry he didn’t want to let go; it was just that for once, he didn’t have to.

They followed one side of the line down, hand-in-hand. They passed displays he got glimpses of, strange brass things and lenses that sparked with vague phosphor light from above.

On the stairs he got the first breath, again, of night air. Nothing, he noticed – in this part of the observatory, anyway – was calypt; the wood around them gleamed dark, polished and stained a deep auburn. Barefoot, the steps were chilly under his feet.

He heard Aremu’s breath catch. He didn’t grip his hand any tighter, but every line of him went stiff. He found his other hand flying to his bag, as if to – reflexively – but even if he’d had a sharp, there was no use of it, if they were caught.

But they weren’t. He blinked, his eyes adjusted, and he followed Aremu’s gaze; he followed him, then, the last few steps to it, his lips coming apart.

This is not, he thought suddenly, how you put them together. He knew better than to say it; he wasn’t sure why he thought it, looking at the lines lightly-carved between the pinpricks. He drew in the cool night air, and nothing could come out.

Where is the hammer? he wondered. He studied them, but he couldn’t seem to take them apart from these lines; he wouldn’t’ve said which of these – arabúr, oruchy'úwab, úvúw, he made out – had its head, whether the handle might have been another man’s fish’s tail.

He looked at Aremu; he thought there was something admiring in his profile, tear tracks drying now. Aremu shifted.

Looking at this, he wondered, do you think yourself a liar? Because you have different stars, different constellations? If you’d come here then, if they’d let you in – would your stars have taken on different names? What would you have felt, looking at this? They might have let an imbala in, but there must not have been imbali astronomers, he realized suddenly, like a stone sinking through him. How could an imbala name a star?

He felt Aremu squeeze his hand. The wall had taken him such that he hadn’t seen the telescope; he didn’t until he turned, and his eyes widened.

(How could an imbala speak of distances and shapes? He thought of Aremu showing him Vita on the orange, scars of soft white pith –)

It was his own breath that caught this time, because his eyes went up to the swath of night sky overhead. Round, he thought, and turning, and stared up into the sky. The ground seemed unsteady underneath him; he thought the night sky could’ve pulled him up into it.

He almost lost his footing, but he held onto Aremu’s hand. A breathless laugh slipped out of him; his heart lurched. “Looking up’s like looking down sometimes,” he whispered, “from somewhere way up,” and grinned over at Aremu. “Vita’s turning,” he breathed.

As they drew closer to it, he wasn’t sure who took the first step.

He shivered. “I don’t – I’ve never, uh… I’ve seen spyglasses,” he said uncertainly, glancing over again, “but I’ve never used…” He blinked over and up, back into the sky, and caught a faint spark of color. He laughed again, feeling something prickle at the edges of his eyes. “That’s Phaeta, isn’t it?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Night, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory, Thul'Amat

Aremu shivered at Tom’s words, or perhaps at a trickle of wind in from the night sky above; he couldn’t have said. Looking up or looking down, he thought, and he wasn’t sure, any longer, which way it was, thinking of Vita turning underfoot, and gravity holding them down to the surface, wherever they went.

“It’s not so different,” Aremu said, smiling. His throat ached, a little, from disuse; he hadn’t realized, until now, how silent he’d been throughout. He’d never used a telescope like this – he’d never seen a telescope like this, long and broad and gleaming, set up on a platform of dark wood, with a stool at the base, and a lens covered by a cap – but it was a machine, Aremu thought, like any other, and he understood the principle well enough.

Aremu shifted, and glanced up, as if just by looking he could find what Tom had seen. But Phaeta was easy to spot; he grinned, suddenly, almost breathless, thinking of the deck of a ship, one man lying on the surface of it and the other climbing up above, thinking of how much he hadn’t known, then; it had stung, in the finding out, but he could look back on it fondly, now, without embarrassment or shame.

“Yes,” Aremu said. “It’s Phaeta.” He lifted their hands to his lips and brushed Tom’s with his, and then he went to the telescope. He ran his fingertips over the lenses, touching the neatly notched focuser, and then sliding his hand around to find the clutches, careful. He sat on the stool for a moment, pressing one eye to the eyepiece, the other closed.

For a moment it was overwhelming – a blur of light, he thought, at first, and his fingers found the focuser, turning gingerly. He saw them then, shaping into vision, distant glowing stars as if they were at his fingertips. The sight took his breath away, and he could have sat staring, never knowing what he looked at – but, Aremu thought, then, but.

Aremu shifted away from the eyepiece; he glanced up at the sky, and then into the eyepiece once more. He reached out to the clutches, and began to adjust the set of the telescope, slow and careful, checking the path every so often. Finally, he found it, reddish and strange; he adjusted the focus again, scarcely breathing, until he could make out the suggestion of dimples on Phaeta’s surface.

Aremu had to sit back, then, because there was moisture gleaming in his eyes, and he wanted to blink it away. He looked again, after a moment, and he couldn’t have said what he thought, or felt; it was a rush of a thousand Evers and yet nothing he could name, all at once, swirling together through him. The tides pulled at him, shifted him back and forth and dunked him beneath the surface of the waves, and when it was too much, he glanced back for the sight of the man behind him.

“Come,” Aremu said, softly, extending his hand for Tom. He rose as the other man took it, and guided him to the stool; he crouched beside him, his hand resting lightly on his thigh. “Look here,” Aremu said, softly. “Adjust this,” he took Tom’s fingers, and guided them to the focuser, “turn it until – you can see clearly.”

His breath was still faintly unsteady, and he was aware of the rasp of it in his throat, and a heat, still, behind his eyes. He shifted, and lay his head for a moment on Tom’s lap, eyes fluttering half shut, content to look up through the slit of them and watch the lower edge of the other man’s face as he looked; strange and awkward as it was, Aremu thought, he wouldn’t have traded it for anything.