A Case of Fate

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Ekain Da Huane
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Sat Jul 20, 2019 5:55 pm

the library • brunnhold
morning on the 6th of loshis, year 2719
There seemed to be no one around. No one but the books, that was, and Ekain thought them an unlikely source of disturbance; books could not stare at one, and nor could they pester one with incessant questions and concerns. Nor were they an audience, perhaps most importantly: if books observed the activities of the living, then they could neither applause nor boo the performance, and however they felt about it, they were forced to hold those feelings inside them in polite silence. In this way, he thought in passing, they were very unlike Anaxi.

Some chatter fluttered up from the ground floor, but Ekain found the third floor blessedly silent. Both of his hands ached, one from the handle of his cane and the other from the railing of the stairs. Sitting on the tiny stepladder – squatting, really, at his stature – with his stiff leg stretched out before him, he drew the breath in and out of his lungs. Despite the pain that seared up through his left hip, the one he had favored on the climb, he forced himself to breathe steadily and maintain his erect posture.

It was not a Huane’s way to puff and blow like a sweaty gale-storm. He had promised himself four years ago that he could always go as slowly as he needed to, provided that he accomplished his business and did so as elegantly as befit him. He had never once failed.

Ekain massaged the muscles of his left leg underneath the thick fabric of his white robe, but it was of no use. Though they quivered and screamed with protest, they would not relax, neither from the gentle coaxing of his fingertips nor from his barely-audible cajoling: “Beah yalteeyarar,” he whispered, “beah…” Finally, his hands flickered away; his lip twitched only slightly, and a faint pulse of red shifted through his field. He shot a glance to one side at his cane, which leaned against the shelf behind him, but he knew that it would also be of no use. The leg was already so stiff that he would be dragging it behind him, and the rest of him would be aflame by the time he climbed back down.

And so he concentrated on the leg, and then, eyes fluttering shut – a string of Monite fell from his lips. In this case, the homing was more complex than the actual spell, but Ekain had performed this dance many times; he knew his target as well as he knew the muscles he had massaged with his hand. The stream thickened the air with fizzing energy. His face twitched in only the slightest of winces as his leg spasmed with the jolt.

“Tedaahthah,” he muttered, sounding for a moment – perhaps just half of a moment, even – as tired as he felt. Smoothing his robe, he took his cane from behind him, then shifted in his seat, preparing to stand. The spasm in his leg had not passed, and never would; but he found he could move it a little more now, just enough that his balance was sufficient to walk.

With a great effort, Ekain pushed himself to his feet, long fingers curled tight around the handle of his cane, and began down the aisle again. He was tucked away in the narrow space between two shelves, far enough from the terrace and the echoing hall beyond that the air around him felt as muffled and as private as a tomb. As thick with dust, he thought, too, and the smell of old parchment was all around him.

In his Brunnhold days, he had spent much time in the Library. It was perhaps not as familiar as the School of Confisalto, but it was a landmark in the map of his history all the same. Then, it had seemed a place of silence, a labyrinthine tomb in the best of ways. He had missed the deep caverns and broad canyons in which the Ba Bieth was performed, shaped from the earth by Eyhaye. The Library was a hulking, dark shape against the sky, and the galdori had built it so that its spires stretched like needles toward the clouds, so that its arches inside swept so far up that they disappeared into cobwebbed, moth-eaten darkness. It had been shelter from the hot Yaris sun of Anaxas, and from the Stacks, where the other students had drunk and caroused, unabashed of all the humans about them.

It had been difficult, too, to balance confisalto with the immaculate grades he had felt were required of him; he had spent many long nights laboring in the Library, with only this heady perfume of dust and old parchment for company. He had thought more and more of those nights, and that balance, since he had attended the showcase in late Bethas. Since then, his days had been packed with functions and paperwork, but it had left a mark in his mind that the winds of work could not erode to smoothness.

That was why he had decided to come here today, even though his exercises that morning had been difficult, even though he was more tired than he had been in days. He hoped his weariness did not show. He had only dusted his face with the lightest of cosmetics, the faint red around his eyes that he had favored since his days on stage, but he was clean and put-together, his robes with their glittering gold trim freshly-pressed and white as snow. Perhaps his only real concession to the earliness of the morning was the single, thick braid of white that hung down his straight back. He had not had the time or the energy to bind it up in the elaborate knotwork to which it was accustomed, but he had just come from his morning exercises, and he supposed that it would do.

It would have to do. He was bound for Vienda, for Batyhur and his physicians and his usual work, in only a week. He had only the next few days to finish his research at Brunnhold, and he worried that the end of the St. Grumbles’ festivities would fill whatever time he could not wrest for himself tooth and nail. Though it had been difficult, it had been imperative for him to reach the third floor: the twenty-second century Physical theorists were here, and he found he quite unexpectedly required the guidance of an old voice from his school days, then ignored in favor of dance.

He paused beside a shelf, raising a hand with a sweep of cloth. He ran the tips of his nails along the spines of the books. “Marchesi, Marchesi… de.” With a delicate motion, he slid the volume out of its place. A brief glance at the cover told him that he had selected the correct volume, and he tucked it under his arm.

He had turned to walk back, intending to take a seat in a nearby reading room, when he found something – or rather someone – in the midst of the aisle, blocking his way. Ekain peered down at the student through narrowed pink eyes, his long face utterly blank.

“Excuse me?” he murmured in his high, soft voice, his Gioran accent making the vowels long and warbling.
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Madeleine Gosselin
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Sat Jul 20, 2019 6:49 pm

Morning, 6th Loshis, 2719
The Library, Brunnhold
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Madeleine woke early. She had never stayed on campus for St. Grumbles before, and now, happily, she thought she would never do anything else ever again. The campus was so wonderful during the break! There were so few people around; nearly everyone had gone home – including all three of her siblings. She had thought Angelique was going to stay – Angelique had said she was going to stay – and then at the last minute Angelique and Sebastian and Vespasian had all gone, which meant Madeleine was absolutely the only Gosselin in the whole of Brunnhold.

It was an oddly wonderful feeling. Like dancing.

But that wasn’t even the reason that staying on campus for St. Grumbles was so lovely. It was lovely because the library was mostly empty, and because without classes and with a library Madeleine could study as much as she wanted. And dance, of course! There were extra workshops – she was helping with some and participating in others. It had all been arranged a bit last minute, and Madeleine wasn’t exactly sure why. She’d heard someone say that the school seemed very keen to keep them on campus, which Madeleine thought was strange.

Because why would anyone want to be anywhere else?

What Madeleine wanted to work on most of all was her end-of-term project for physical conversation. At first she had planned to do the essay they were assigned, which was meant to be a comparison between different spells within the realm of physical conversation that could achieve the same goal; her original topic had been how magnetic spells and force spells could both be used to push two things apart. And Madeleine had been happy when she’d chosen that, but then in Intas she had started reading treatises by Professor Conchobhair, a twenty second century physical conversation theorist who was really the father of modern theories on gravity spells. And it had just been so interesting.

She had talked to Professor Udinese about it, and he had agreed that she could trace out the history of thought on gravity spells, even though it was already mid-Intas then and they were supposed to have chosen their projects in Bethas. That meant Madeleine had to work extra hard on it, and she was; she had so many books in her room already. But her other classwork kept distracting her, and now it was already Loshis, and then soon it would be Hamis and the first term would be over, and so Madeleine knew – she knew – she really needed to use this break to work on her project.

When she had sat down and made a really comprehensive list of all the books she had – with arrows between them, tracing the theorists that Professor Udinese said she should start with, Madeleine had realized that she was missing one – a contemporary of Professor Conchobhair, Professor Laurentius, whose ideas had differed somewhat. Actually, she had found references to him in some of Conchobhair’s treatises, and they had been quite funny because it had read to Madeleine almost like they were having an argument in the book, like Professor Conchobhair was responding to something Madeleine hadn’t read.

Except, of course, she ought to have read it.

So, that was her very first task for this morning. She would pick up Professor Laurentius’s book – it ought to be in the eight hundreds stacks, which was where Professor Conchobhair’s works were, unless it was categorized as physical conversation instead of magical theory, and then it might be on the third floor instead. Madeleine had gotten quite good at tracking down books now, she rarely even needed scrying anymore.

And, so - Madeleine had thrown on a clean uniform, grabbed a piece of toast from the cafeteria, and walked to the library with it between her teeth as she tried to braid her hair. She succeeded – mostly, although a number of strands had escaped straight away, unbeknownst to the little galdor. At least it wasn’t raining today! Whenever it rained, Madeleine’s skirt always seemed to get soaked, always. Even though it didn’t go to the floor, even though she could have sworn she was careful about it – somehow, by the end of the day, her skirt would be soaked.

Madeleine hadn’t even finished her toast by the time she reached the library, so she’d had to dawdle outside while she ate the last of the dry toast, heedless of the crumbs it scattered down her shirt and tucked into the folds of her skirt. She brushed most of them off, when she noticed them, and raced into the library. She checked the eight hundreds stacks first, very thoroughly, until she was absolutely sure Professor Laurentius’s book wasn’t there – not that he had only one, of course, but there was one Professor Conchobhair had cited in his later work, and so Madeleine had thought she might want to start with that one – and then she made her way up to the third floor.

It was magical up there. Madeleine thought she was probably entirely alone – it was like there wasn’t anyone else on the whole floor. She didn’t even really look as she skipped into the aisle where she was sure Professor Laurentius’s book would be, and sure enough – it was right there. Madeleine grabbed the book, hugging it to her chest, and turned –

And froze.

Madeleine would have known that face anywhere. Anywhere! Turned to the side – in profile – like a hawk, she had said, the first time she had seen him dance. Her eyes widened; her face lit up. Her whole body unfolded, straightening, standing a little taller, head up, shoulders back, almost like she was dancing herself.

He turned and looked at her. And he spoke. He spoke to her!

Madeleine squeaked and dropped Professor Laurentius’s book. It thudded to the ground between them. She felt overwhelming panic and sheer delight and utter terror well up inside her, flooding the air around her, sending it into a quick and frantic kaleidoscope of colors.

“You’re – the Swan from the Mountains!” Madeleine’s voice started loud, too loud for the quiet corridors of the Brunnhold library, then abruptly descended into a whisper that wasn’t much better. “Ekain Da Huane!” Abruptly, Madeleine turned red, and pale red-shifted embarrassment streamed visibly out into her field – of course he knew his own name. She hadn’t seen him dance in years, not in more than four years, not since –

Madeleine’s eyes dropped obligingly to his legs, and she froze further at the sight of the cane, eyes locking onto it like she couldn’t see anything else. She looked back up. Now it was mostly panic in the air around her, the orange in her field winning out and filling the air around her. “I – I – “ Madeleine let out a faint anxious sound, something like a whimper, even the book by Professor Laurentius forgotten in the face of her sudden, uncontrollable emotions. What if he hated that nickname now? What if he’d hated that nickname then? Madeleine couldn’t think of anything to say, and she couldn’t seem to move anymore either – all she could manage was to stand there and stare at him.

At him! Ekain Da Huane! Excitement won out again, and Madeleine blurted out. “You’re a brilliant dancer. I – I – I mean – you were. I mean – ” Panic again. Madeleine’s shoulders hunched up around her ears, her careful posture lost, her body tucking in on itself, and she froze once more, feeling like the phonograph they had tried to use during some recent rehearsals – music, then skipping silence, music once more, and skipping silence again, dragging on endlessly. Madeleine wanted to, she wanted to very badly, but she couldn’t seem to say anything else. Her cheeks were so red she could feel them, and she knew she should look away, but she – she just couldn’t.

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Ekain Da Huane
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Sat Jul 20, 2019 7:46 pm

the library • brunnhold
morning on the 6th of loshis, year 2719
At what, precisely, was this little Anaxi playing?

Ekain held quite still, his copy of Marchesi’s treatise on the physical conversation and electromagnetic fields still tucked under his arm. If he was distressed by the sight of the creature’s own braid, with its many little flyaways so far from their home, he did not permit said distress to enter his face or his field. If he was startled by the loud thump of the book as it struck the – carpeted, thank Imaan – floor, he did not jump or exclaim. He stood, his back straight and his chin up, staring down at her for what seemed to him an eternity.

The spasm in his leg was beginning to worsen again, despite his great efforts to keep it loose, and despite himself, he longed to sit in one of the Library’s many plush, well-worn seats. Still, he seemed to have no choice but to stand here and allow her to embarrass herself. And how she had stared at his cane, stared and stared!

You’re a brilliant dancer, she stumbled out, her field seemingly gone absolutely mad. There was the slightest wrinkle at the edge of his lip, smoothed out almost before it could be detected. I mean, you were. No amount of composure was sufficient to prevent it: the tiniest sting of red crackled through his ramscott before he could even it out.

His eyes were half-lidded, the disapproving downward quirk of his mouth now marked enough to be clear. But the poor seedayar had gotten hung on her words, hamstrung in the middle of her bizarre dance. He felt mildly nauseated. Did he feel a tinge of pity? He did not know.

Ekain did know that the sight of the book, half-open on the floor where many rainy season shoes had trod, was troubling him beyond his powers of restraint.

As he moved slowly into her space, the maelstrom of her field lapped at him, brushing the edges of his own. As he caprised her, he kept his field indectal, heavy and solid like sheaves of iron, but allowed it to shiver and shift darkly with a few notes of disapproval. He did not care if she was Anaxi; she should not allow so much of herself to show in her field. It was simply bad form, and he did not wish to coddle it with forbearance. She was embarrassed? Good. He rather thought she should be.

He laid Marchesi on the ledge of a nearby shelf; then, he swept low, reaching for the dropped book. With his one leg unable to bend, it was lopsided and difficult, but he managed it, rising a little stiffly with the volume in hand. He did not hand it back to her immediately, instead sweeping it with his eyes. “Laurentius,” he said shortly. He was utterly expressionless.

His eyes flicked up from the book, skimming the young lady’s bright red face. That haphazard braid and stumbling tongue aside, there was something terribly familiar about her, though he could not place her. Ekain fought to remain ramrod, the tip of his cane trembling a little against the floor. Once again, his eyes narrowed, but then it came to him.

His field warmed by just a few degrees. It was hardly a full green-shift, welcoming and kind, but it was a pale sort of pleasant. It pulsed gently in greeting.

Ekain extended the book to her. “You have identified me correctly,” he replied. “Next, perhaps you will help me to identify you.”
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Madeleine Gosselin
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Sat Jul 20, 2019 9:39 pm

Morning, 6th Loshis, 2719
The Library, Brunnhold
The Swan – Ekain Da Huane – was staring at her, Madeleine. His face was a careful, perfect blank – almost. Slowly, slowly, his mouth quirked downwards; his eyes lowered, ever so slightly. There had been, briefly, the faintest tinge of red in the air around him.

Madeleine was shaking already; by the time Ekain stepped forward, by the time she felt the crushing, heavy weight of his field against hers, that note of disapproval flickering through it, Madeleine was hunched in on herself. He was tall, quite tall, and Madeleine did her best to make herself even smaller than she already was. She wished more than anything she could shrink down to nothing before him, could vanish and leave behind her clothing and just – dissolve. If she could have, she would probably have turned and run away; anything would have been better than the cold look of utter disapproval on his face.

Anything.

What he must think of her! She could see it on his face, between the hard sloping cheeks and the strong chin and that falcon’s nose – disapproval. Dismay. Maybe even anger? And he should be angry, Madeleine thought miserably. She was everything Angelique said she was – she was a disaster – but she didn’t know what to do about any of it. She didn’t know how to be any different. Why couldn’t it just go right? For once? Why, for once, couldn’t she have said the right thing?

Madeleine felt it like a blow, all of it, in the heat throbbing behind her eyes. Here he was – the man her grandmother had told her was the best confisalto dancer alive then – it had been a long time ago, really, seven whole years, since then, but he had been one of the best up until – well – four years ago. And when he danced! Madeleine couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful than him. Than he – had been.

Madeleine’s gaze dropped to his leg again, and stayed on it, abject horror on her face as he swooped downwards for the book she’d dropped. She spasmed, half-reaching for it – it would have been so easy for her to get it, if only he’d said something. Why hadn’t he said something? Why – Madeleine didn’t understand, but her gaze stayed utterly fixed on that taut, extended leg, the awkward lopsided way he lowered himself to the floor – and couldn’t help but conjure up the image of him on stage.

Madeleine took a shuddering breath, and crammed her field back under her skin. She pulled it in as tightly as she could manage, knotting up everything she was feeling and doing her best to swallow it all. The color-shift of her field flickered – faded – the faint note of horror died out of the air with it. Madeleine held it all inside herself, tense and taut, churning the toast around in her stomach until she thought she’d be sick.

Ekain extended the book to her, slowly. Madeleine stared at it, struck dumb for a long moment, and looked up at him. It took her a little while to figure out what he was asking. To identify her…? She was a student, wasn’t she? She thought she had sensed something in his field, something pleasant, but – it couldn’t be. He couldn’t – nobody could –

The heat behind her eyes was increasing, but Madeleine tried – she tried – as hard as she had ever tried anything in her life – to keep her field doetoed and inoffensive, to keep the abject misery in her chest out of the mona that hovered around her. His field felt like cold steel against her skin. She didn’t dare try to caprise it.

“Thank you,” Madeleine whispered, taking the book. She clutched it to her chest, squeezing it a little too hard, as if it could somehow protect her. She took a deep breath, and forced her back to straighten, forced her chin upright. It felt as hard as anything she had ever done; it felt as hard as going en pointe for the first time, but infinitely worse because there was no joy in it. Why would he possibly want her name? Would he go to the head office, tell them – this student, Madeleine Gosselin, is an embarrassment to Brunnhold. Madeleine couldn’t help imagining it; they would call her in, they would tell her she had done unbearable damage to the school’s reputation with her insults to an important Gioran (and there couldn’t possibly be a more important Gioran, Madeleine couldn’t imagine it). They would lecture her, they would assign her punishments, they would – send word to her parents.

Madeleine thought she might die of shame.

She straightened her back and squared her shoulders, and decided that if this was it, if this was the end of Vita, that she would do her best to meet it with dignity, and she wouldn’t cry, no matter how much she wanted to. Unaware of the faint wet sheen in her eyes, unaware of the trembling of her lip, desperately aware of the grasping hold she had on her field, Madeleine attempted to introduce herself.

“Madeleine Gosselin,” she said, somewhere between a whisper and normal volume, and if her voice trembled a little, she got all the way through her name – it had never felt so long before – and found herself on the other side. “I’m sorry,” she managed to stop herself there, at least, because she knew, with absolute certainty, that anything else she tried to say would be worse.

Madeleine rubbed her face on her sleeve, sniffled – she wasn’t crying, even if there was wetness on her sleeve – and looked down, unable to look at Ekain in the face again. All she wanted to do was look away entirely, but her eyes kept drifting to his cane. More than anything, she wanted to retreat, to step back, to turn and run, but she - she couldn't. One soft pulse of utter misery slipped out, her field shifting dark blue, and then Madeleine snatched at it and pulled it into the tight, aching ball in her chest. She held it there, and she held herself there too, and wished more than anything that she would disappear.

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Ekain Da Huane
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Sun Jul 21, 2019 8:16 pm

the library • brunnhold
morning on the 6th of loshis, year 2719
Where your relationship with the mona is concerned,” he said slowly, “field suppression is ill-advised. Your field and yourself move a la fois, my dear: if you do not trust it, you show the world that you do not trust yourself.”

Ekain let the words linger in the air between them, their edge, he rather thought, sharp as that of a knife. When he swept Marchesi from his place on the edge of the shelf, it was with one swift motion of his hand, like a crane plucking a fish from the water. He did not frown, there was no more disapproval in his field, and he had made the tone of his voice as even and inscrutable as ever. If it was advice, it had not been friendly, but if it was a reprimand, he had not meant it harshly.

At the name Madeleine Gosselin, he lifted his chin. There was recognition in his eyes, but not much else.

How could he explain what he was feeling in those moments? His heart was veiled even to him. There was anger, de, but it was not the fury it had been years ago. For a time, then, he had forgotten the composure he had been taught as a boy, along with all his desire to emulate his sisters; he would have lashed out at even the well-meant remarks of a child. The whole of Vita had been against him, without nuance or understanding, and Imaan’s light was no comfort. Now, he felt pain, but it was low and ponderous and would pass. It was already passing.

Mingling with it was a sort of grim satisfaction. Ekain had always loved eyes on him, and he had never been ashamed of it. He had deserved all of it. In the ba bieth, the focus was on unity, on the concerted effort of the group and of Gior; in confisalto, the focus was narrowed to the duo. If he could have danced solo, he would have. He enjoyed making others melt for him; he enjoyed the fear and fascination of fawning admirers, and he liked it when they hung on his words. As embarrassed as he was by the young galdor’s display, he thought about letting the pause stretch out a little further. Waiting to see if she would apologize again, or perhaps stammer a bit more. It seemed suitable, in a spiteful sort of way.

Then, he blinked. She was – what? Fourteen, at most. Ekain could scarcely imagine something more pathetic than indulging in the misery of a child.

His field shifted a deeper, warmer green, and he inclined his head and shoulders in a bow appropriate for a visiting diplomat to a Brunnhold student. “Aghala eate deuee. I knew you looked familiar,” he said, a faint smile touching his face. “You danced quite sufficiently at the spring showcase. I recall that you were significantly younger than your latter partner, but you did not fidget or improvise as some young dancers do. Similarly, her trust in you was not misplaced: when you led her, you never led her astray.”

The smile faded smoothly from his pale face. As he spoke, he had been leaning somewhat heavily to his left side. He rolled his left shoulder and tightened his grip on the handle of his cane, and while he did not wince, the motion carried another thin crackle of red through his field. He pulsed it as if in apology, then gestured with a long, white hand.

“You will permit me to sit, verahay? If you wish to speak further.” His hand disappearing again into the cloth of his robe, he edged past her, moving toward the mouth of the aisle. That swath of white did much to disguise his hobble, but he knew that his gait was still uneven.

There was a reading-room just outside, tiny, more a space between shelves than anything. A small window looked out over the cheery rooftops of Baiton Ward, and cast light over a small mahogany carrel with a rickety-looking chair. Another chair, padded, its old leather scuffed, stood nearby, its back against the end of a bookshelf.

Ekain laid his book on the desk, then sat heavily in the small chair, leaning his cane up against the wall beneath the window.
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Madeleine Gosselin
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Sun Jul 21, 2019 11:14 pm

Morning, 6th Loshis, 2719
The Library, Brunnhold
Madeleine’s face flushed, even redder than before, at Ekain Da Huane’s words. A la fois, she thought, miserable. She thought of professors telling her to keep her emotions out of her field – whether gently or harshly. She thought of Angelique, laughing, saying that being near her was like being forced to watch a hideously melodramatic play. Madeleine felt as if her sister had carved those words into her skin – not on her face, maybe, but somewhere private. Her back, because she couldn’t see them all the time but she could feel them and they were always there.

Madeleine and her terrible field, a la fois, in perfect harmony. Equally terrible, equally not to be trusted.

Madeleine knew – she knew – that to be a good galdor, she was meant to keep what she was feeling out of her field. It made other people uncomfortable, the nicest of her professors had told her, very gently. But how? How was it supposed to work? She felt things; she couldn’t help but feel things. Didn’t anyone else feel? Was she the only one in all of vita who felt?

Tears streaked down her cheeks now. Madeleine kept her head lowered, her gaze fixed on the floor. She tried to wipe her eyes unobtrusively again, but she was sure he knew. The silence stretched on, and on, and on, and Madeleine could feel her mouth straining to open. Words were creaking, straining in her throat. If she could just apologize – maybe if she tried again, if she tried harder, if she used more words, she would find the right ones. Like a spell; if only she could find the words that would get Ekain Da Huane not to despise her.

Madeleine caught the faint flicker of color this time, and looked up with her wet, red eyes, tears trailing down her cheeks. Green? And then he was – bowing? Madeleine bowed as well, respectfully, wiping her eyes as unobtrusively as she could manage on her sleeve, again, and then – very quickly – her nose too. She didn’t understand, but she bowed anyway, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

He was – smiling? It was so quick Madeleine thought she imagined it, and her breath was hitching in her throat a little bit with each breath. He said something she didn’t understand, and Madeleine wondered, dizzily, if he was like Angelique, if he enjoyed the thought of whatever terrible (true) thing he was about to say next and how badly it would hurt her. She flinched a little in anticipation without realizing it, and –

“Oh,” Madeleine whispered.

His words washed over her, and she tried desperately to hold onto each one. They were like shooting stars – like something wonderful and brilliant and distant, flashing through the air and already gone, no matter how desperately Madeleine wanted them to linger. The Swan from the Mountains had thought she – she, Madeleine Gosselin – was quite sufficient. Madeleine seized those words, firmly, and wrapped them around herself.

Her already tenuous grip on her field evaporated in an instant, and utter, limitless joy flooded out from her. Not this, the reddish orange of panic, but a bright, vivid orange, almost edging towards golden, filling the air around her. Her dancing – her dancing! – had been sufficient. Madeleine couldn’t imagine a better compliment, although ‘you never led her astray’ came close.

Except then he gave her one.

Ekain Da Huane moved past her, and – invited her to speak further with him. Madeleine stood shaking in the little aisle, gripping her book to her chest, trying to make sure she had understood correctly. He had said – if she wished to speak further. If she wished. Madeleine squeezed her eyes shut. If she wished to speak further. He wouldn’t have said that if she couldn’t speak further with him. He wouldn’t have said that if he wanted her to go away and never be in front of him again, with her wild, uncontrolled field and the horrible things she’d said. He wouldn’t have! He would have said something different – he would have said he’d had to go. Wouldn’t he?

Madeleine let out a long, shaky breath. She was afraid; she was very afraid. If she followed him, and she was wrong, he might – he might say – her imagination failed her, but just approaching the thought was enough to leave her shaking again. But… if she had understood correctly – if Ekain Da Huane was really willing to speak with her –

It was worth it, Madeleine decided. She clutched those words a little tighter to her heart, those three snatched fragments. She had danced quite sufficiently; she had never led her partner astray; if she wished to speak further.

Madeleine turned and hurried down the aisle after Ekain Da Huane. She had almost forgotten about the book in her arms, and when she sat in the second chair, it was with it still clutched to her chest. There was a little more than five feet between them, maybe six or seven, and when Madeleine sat she couldn’t feel the sharp iron control of his field – and realized, in a moment of happiness nearly as pure and unadulterated as from his compliment, that that meant he also couldn’t feel hers.

“Thank you,” Madeleine blurted out, half-remembered manners swimming around in her mind. She didn’t know what else to say, and she was afraid to talk about his dancing, but it was like her mouth hadn’t gotten that message and before she could help it she was talking again, all her words spilling out. “I saw you dance the first time in Vienda–” Madeleine counted back to double check; half a lifetime ago, for her, “seven years ago,” Madeleine continued, “in a show that Mr. Taglioni choreographed, when you were still dancing with Giovanna Markos,” her face was alive; she had almost forgotten about her nervousness.

“It was so beautiful – I’d never seen anything like it,” Madeleine confessed, shyly. She remembered herself abruptly, flushed red, and hastily lowered the book to her lap – except that was worse, because now Madeleine had to figure out what to do with her hands. What did she usually do with them? It was like she couldn’t remember. Should they be on the book? On the arms of the chair? Somewhere else entirely? After a(nother) terrible, spasming sort of moment, Madeleine gripped the sides of the book, as if her small hands were neeed to hold it in place.

Would he get angry again? Madeleine was shaking a little in her chair, sure she had already ruined everything, again. He would tell her to go; that was all right. She had the words he'd already spoken, those three phrases, slowly etching themselves into her heart.

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Ekain Da Huane
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Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:59 pm

the library • brunnhold
morning on the 6th of loshis, year 2719
Ekain had not known that she would follow him, and he had not particularly cared. As he sat down at the carrel and laid his book out in front of him, he was only watching from the corner of his eye. In the meantime, he opened the volume to its index. His eyelids fluttered, he sniffed, and faint disdain registered on his face. The cloud of dust that resulted, along with the heady incense of moldy parchment, set his sinuses aflame. He sat straight and still, but his hawk’s nose wrinkled in an unseemly fashion.

He sneezed rather explosively. It sounded like a rabbit’s squeak, but it shook his whole frame, and his seat rattled on its unsteady legs.

For the first time, he winced openly; all the muscles in his leg had tightened. He massaged it, sniffing deeply and, with as elegant a motion as he could, wiping a tear out of one of his eyes. Another sniff, and he glanced around to see if anybody had seen or heard him. To his surprise, the little Anaxi, Gosselin, was seated in the old leather chair little more than six or seven feet from him. Her field must have been wholly out of range, he thought wryly; he was sure he would have felt it.

He thought that he had sensed some movement behind him, but he had also thought to himself that the silly little seedayar would not follow him, not even if he offered to speak to her. She had been weeping in front of him, practically openly. A sort of weeping which involved snot. Even for an Anaxi, this was unusual behavior, and he imagined more than a little shameful. Worse, she had confessed her admiration for him, and then embarrassed herself further in front of him. Such an individual, he had thought, would sooner slink off in despair than take him up on the offer of conversation.

Ekain was somewhat embarrassed by his dust-induced outburst, but he supposed that there was nothing to do now but resume as if nothing had happened. He turned, smoothly – or as smoothly as he could, with his leg now utterly stiff – facing the Gosselin girl, and listened to her meandering babble with his chin high and a carefully blank expression on his face. In the meantime, he allowed himself to stretch out his stiff leg in front of him.

“Zeu vetheuberahe,” he offered in answer to her gratitude, lilting boredly over the syllables, and then – he had started to fold his hands neatly, but hesitated, fingers hovering in the air, utterly still. The faintest pale shadow of a crease appeared between his white eyebrows, and his eyes narrowed by the breadth of half a hair.

Giovanna Markos.

His long, pale fingers knit together in his lap. He studied Madeleine Gosselin’s face, and then a strange expression came into his own. It was as subtle as his others. It might have been a smile, and it might have been sad. “Yes,” he said, a few long moments after her words had tumbled to an awkward silence. He inclined his head slightly. “Yes, I was very good. Of course you had never seen anything like me – like us,” he amended even more softly, “because there has never been anything like us in the years since.”

Perhaps it was just as fortunate that Gosselin could not feel his field. At her praise, initially, despite the coldness of his glance, it had brimmed bastly gold, warm and wide. It had swollen on her praise as it always had on the updraft of applause. Then, at the mention of Giannina, it had gone soft like the darkening of a sunset.

Seven years ago. Vienda. He remembered that show, of course, as he had all shows with her. It was a mixed sort of remembrance, and a feeling tightened his chest which he could not identify. It was one he had not felt in years, and one he had never known how to process, not from the first time he had felt it until the very last. It sat at the bottom of his ribcage, heavy and warm, and did alien things to the rhythm of his heart. He felt he must distract himself from it.

With a fluid motion, he raised a pale hand, then gestured with one long fingernail at the book Gosselin had clutched to her chest. (If it had been a pet osta, he thought with faint disgust, she would have suffocated it by now.) “Laurentius,” he said suddenly. “Why?”
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Madeleine Gosselin
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Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:10 pm

Morning, 6th Loshis, 2719
The Library, Brunnhold
When Ekain sneezed and wiped his eyes, Madeleine felt a sudden and nearly unbearable sense of shame. How could they, she asked herself. She would need to tell the front desk - no, the librarians - she would need to tell everyone! How could they let the books get so dusty that it had made Ekain Da Huane sneeze like that? How could they be so - so - careless? Madeleine was filled with the fire of righteous indignation, and she promised herself that she would make her concerns heard and - carried away on the wings of outrage - she would write a very stern letter. Very stern!

For a moment, after her compliments had tumbled out, Ekain had looked at her a little less sternly and a little - something else. Madeleine wasn’t sure; she didn’t know. She was almost positive it wasn’t anger. Disappointment? Maybe; she certainly saw that a lot but it usually looked a little more - it usually hit in a different place in her chest than whatever was on Ekain’s face. It was gone so quickly that Madeleine told herself she had probably imagined it, and if anything it probably was disappointment. In her memory it swiftly became that, and Madeleine had nearly convinced herself that she ought to just get up and leave. Then he wouldn’t even have to tell her off - Madeleine didn’t know what she had done wrong, but - maybe it would be better if she waited, because then she would know and it wouldn’t be so confusing? Indecision kept her paralyzed.

But he replied, and Madeleine nodded in enthusiastic agreement, face brightening. It really was true; there had never been anyone else like Ekain Da Huane and Giovanna Markos. Not since, and, Madeleine remembered her grandmother telling her, not before.

She knew a lot more about confisalto now than she had at seven, of course. She had only been practically a baby then, but at least she’d appreciated what she was seeing. How awful if she had seen Ekain and Giovanna and not appreciated them! Madeleine had to hold back a shudder of horror at the thought and she only just succeeded. But a pairing like them - a dancer like Ekain - wouldn’t even have been possible just fifty years ago (an unbelievably, unfathomably long time), back when everyone was utterly obsessed with symmetry and thought that meant dancers all had to be the same. Well they hadn’t only thought that then, they had thought it up to then! Now - and back when Ekain has started dancing, which was also kind of a long time ago - of course, it was possible for there to be a pairing like Ekain Da Huane and Giovanna Markos, for a choreographer like Mr. Taglioni to play with the symmetry in the asymmetry. Of course, only the most skilled dancers could have made successful such an incredible dance. If only she had known then how ground-breaking it was! Madeleine wished she could watch the dance again, now - she just knew she would learn so much from it.

Her eyes dropped down to the stiff, straight, stretched leg, hung there for a few obvious moments, then pulled with an effort of will back up to Ekain Da Huane’s face. Madeleine opened her mouth to tell him how sad it was, how terribly sad, but his question cut the words off.

“Oh!” Wide-eyed, Madeleine looked down at the book clutched in her hands on her lap, then back up at Ekain Da Huane again. She felt as if all thoughts of her school project had utterly flown out of her head. For a moment even the name Laurentius was foreign; Madeleine had been somewhere else entirely.

“Oh,” Madeleine blushed, embarrassed. She was sure her project would seem stupid to him; she didn’t know why he had asked. She snuck a quick peek at his book. Marchesi! Practically a contemporary of Laurentius and Conchobhair.

“I’m - doing a project?” Madeleine’s voice rose at the end of her sentence, turning it faintly into a question. She didn’t seem to notice. “On the history of thought on gravity spells,” Madeleine’s eyes lit up, and she rushed forward, her words almost tripping over one another in her eagerness. “It’s all so terribly fascinating but of course one has to start somewhere, I mean, you have to choose a starting place, for a project anyway? Even if it’s all - well - so I started with Conchobhair and mostly worked forward from him to the present? But of course Laurentius had a much better understanding of how gravity worked, although naturally it wasn’t as well understood then as it is now. And, comparing Conchobhair’s later work to his earlier, where one sees the greatest evolution is in - his - understanding,” Madeleine wished deeply she could have found a synonym, or maybe even stopped herself but it felt like a torrential flood of words, a tsunami of words, utterly unstoppable.

“So, even in the end if the direction of modern work has been more along the lines of what Conchobhair theorized I felt - that - that it was important to identify what was foundational in Laurentius’s work too! I’m not sure he was any more speculative than Conchobhair and in some ways I think he understood things better but just extrapolated wrong - but I wanted to learn more about why and how. So I - I - that’s why...”

Madeleine’s sentence petered out. She dropped her gaze back to the book in her hands, then looked back up at Ekain Da Huane, then back down. She had a horrible sense of having said too much and that, at the same time, it had meant very little. Maybe he had only asked to be polite; probably he had only asked to be polite. She thought she should return the question - she was desperately curious about what he was looking for in Marchesi - but she didn’t have the courage. It was all she could do to keep from babbling further about gravity. She stared at the book in his hands but her mouth wouldn’t open.

At some point, Madeleine realized, she had picked Laurentius up once again and she was cradling him to her chest again, so tightly her arms hurt a little. She couldn’t seem to put the book back down, and it felt like years before she could drag her gaze away from Marchesi and fix it back on the floor where it belonged.

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Ekain Da Huane
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Sat Jul 27, 2019 11:38 pm

the library • brunnhold
morning on the 6th of loshis, year 2719
Ekain could not focus, not with this wretched ache in his leg. As if on cue, thence went Gosselin’s wide eyes, lingering rather impolitely. He did not have the time to focus on this breach of etiquette, either; now, she was speaking.

At first, he was interested. Terribly interested. He sat up slightly in his seat, leaned forward ever so slightly. She said the word project, and his eyes widened a little. Then, the words history of thought.

He was disappointed. His disappointment was not clear in his face, which was as blank as ever, the line of his lips just as straight and relaxed – with that faint downward tug, as ever, at their corners – his eyes faintly hooded, his ever present posture of looking down from above. The disappointment, however, bled blue into his field, and as the little Anaxi went on, he could not help the deepening of his frown.

What she seemed to Ekain to be saying was that she spent too much time among books and not enough among people, and that she was terribly excited, for some unfathomable reason, about something which had little bearing on reality.

Her words came so quickly that he could scarcely parse them. She was saying something about Conchobhair, which was a name he remembered from his days at Brunnhold and knew well, of course, from his studies in the physical conversation since. Nevertheless, in typical Anaxi fashion, she was weaving her words around their feet and permitting them to trip themselves. What connection had Laurentius, precisely, to any of this? Laurentius, whose approach to state conversation had been more misguided even than Cabello’s in the twentieth century. She was using the word “understand” far too much.

He had held one hand up, as if to say stop, when her voice guttered out by itself. That’s why, what? That lukewarm petering-out, almost worse than if she had slunk off after her previous display, seemed to pile itself on top of the way she had stared at his leg.

It was very fortunate now that each was out of range of the other’s field. The mona in Ekain’s shivered, shuddered red-shift, and then – the ramscott sigiled. If she could not feel the mona themselves, even at this range, she would feel the subtle heat of it.

As before, Ekain again took the reins of his anger, blinking. He felt that he was being rather sloppy, and there was no excuse for it. He touched two fingers to his left temple, breathing in deep, his eyelids fluttering shut for a space. When he opened them, a distant, vague sort of smile played out across his lips, a smile that did not touch his eyes.

He gestured apologetically, shaking his head. “I thought – forgive me, ey yalthady, yalthady, I thought that perhaps your project would be of a more – practical nature, my dear,” he said smoothly, softly, his high voice as gentle and cutting as ever. “I am not a theories man, myself. I have, perhaps, spent too much time on the stage and not enough in a dusty library like this one. Though I wish you luck with your – essay – and I wonder that you do not spend more time with the Gioran physical masters,” he went on, monotone, smoothing the white cloth over his lap, “some of whom have shared my family name. Yeinek Da Huane comes to mind, of the twentieth century.”

Her eyes seemed to be stuck on Marchesi. One eyebrow flickered up, and he took the book from the desk, laying it in his lap and clearing his throat. He folded his hands atop the cover.

“Marchesi is sufficient for my research into electromagnetism, for – therapeutic purposes. I have found the Gioran masters, perhaps, ah, lacking in this respect.”
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Madeleine Gosselin
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Sun Jul 28, 2019 10:47 am

Morning, 6th Loshis, 2719
The Library, Brunnhold
Madeleine was increasingly conscious that - yes, she had done something wrong. It was a familiar enough feeling and so she ought to know it. It was different every time but the same too. It felt like a stone, a stone that started in her throat and sank straight down through her body, making her heavy and nauseous all at once. She felt it in the familiar forward curl of her shoulders, as if the stone was too heavy for her to stay upright.

The air around Ekain flickered faintly red, the dust motes glittering in it through the sunlight streaming in from the window. The little study area grew hot, abruptly, and Madeleine flinched, feeling that heat reflected behind her eyes once more. More than she had ever wanted anything, she wanted to pull her feet up off the ground and hide them beneath the confines of her skirt. The need for it was like a physical ache, but - Madeleine couldn’t bear to disgrace herself further.

And she didn’t even know what she had done!

The dancer began to speak; he was smiling at her now, but something was off about it, something was wrong, because his eyes were still flat and angry. He began to speak, and Madeleine realized, abruptly, what the problem was.

She was an idiot.

And a boring one too.

“Yes sir,” Madeleine whispered. “Thank you,” Madeleine knew he didn’t mean the luck, but manners dictated that she should respond and so she choked the words out around her aching heart.

More than anything - so badly it hurt - she wanted to defend herself. Her project was of a practical nature and she knew perfectly well why she wasn’t following the Gioran philosophies instead of the Anaxi ones. Words swarmed up in her mouth and Madeleine swallowed them back, until her mouth was dry and aching. She managed to keep her gaze on the floor at least.

Yeinek Da Huane has been a brilliant physical conversationalist. Certainly the most brilliant of his time, and probably more brilliant than Conchobhair or Laurentius. And, like them, he had focused on gravity. Except -

Except Yeinek Da Huane, and many of the other Giorans, had focused on defying gravity at scale. They had moved mountains! It was amazing. But when one moved rock, one didn’t need to care if the rock liked it, or if little bits crumbled off the edge. One cared about sustaining the spell, and of course they had also thought about the best way to make it work, to make it easier.

But Madeleine didn’t know how to translate those thoughts to casting gravity spells on living tissue. Maybe it was there somewhere, tucked away in an absence. Maybe a better student - a smarter student - could find it. Madeleine had tried.

Conchobhair never discussed casting gravity spells on living tissue either, of course. Except for levitate spells; everyone talked about those. But lifting the whole mass was simpler, theoretically, than lifting part of it. But that wasn’t what interested Madeleine about his work; because Conchobhair had been fiddling with small things, not the sort of majestic works of the Giorans, it was easier for Madeleine to read what he had written and apply it to what she really wanted to do.

And she did.

She wanted to.

The other thing about the term break and things being quiet and all the dancing was that it had left Madeleine with a lot of time to think. She wanted to dance confisalto with the mona; she wanted it with an intensity that scared her. She knew she shouldn’t want it, and she hadn’t told anyone and sometimes when she started to think about it she scared herself and had to stop, she had to, because it wasn’t - it wasn’t something that could be done.

But -

Madeleine peeked up at Ekain Da Huane, peeked at the best confisalto dancer she had ever seen perform, then dropped her gaze to the floor again. She thought about how he had stopped dancing with Giovanna Markos; she thought about how he hadn’t had another regular partner, in the time before he had stopped. She didn’t defend herself; she didn’t try to argue. But her mouth opened all the same and a faint whispering question emerged, so soft and scared that he would nearly have to strain to hear it.

“Did -“ Madeleine swallowed; her mouth was dry and her tongue felt heavy and it was hard to speak. She looked up at the stoic Gioran sitting before her, flinched, and nearly lost her nerve. Madeleine wished she had lost her nerve.

“Did you ever -“ She was trembling, more than a little, a faint little kaleidoscope trickling through the air around her once more, as all that fear, all that nervousness, all that bright hot longing for something she had never spoken aloud, all of it bled into the air around her.

“Did you ever wish you could dance confisalto -” Madeleine’s hands tightened on the book again, and, shaking so hard the chair rattled against the ground, she finished her question, “with the mona?”

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