[PM to Join] Can You Walk on the Water

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 35 Dentis 2719
Guest Quarters, Brunnhold Campus

There were times when one needed a path. There were times when Nkemi sketched out her plans like the shaping of a spell circle, traced guiding lines as if in chalk. She could always brush them away and begin again; any clairvoyant conversationalist knew to do so, for there was more shame in following a wrong line than in erasing one and beginning again. Sometimes the ground rippled where one had not expected it; sometimes there was a notch in the wood which had not been seen or felt, before the chalk slipped along it and caught and turned. Sometimes there were no such excuses; sometimes one’s hand went as it had not been intended to go, and one could do nothing but accept it.

There were other times when it was best to wander; when even the drawing of the circle would have been a constraint, unnecessary and binding. There were other times when Nkemi wished to flow, like water, and not to be fitted into the shapes of pipes, for all that Hulali could be found in both.

She flowed today; Nkemi found a fourth repetition of the three movements, and then a fifth. Every time, she came into it with the fullness of her strength, with small, subtle movements which drove her whole body into each strike-block, from the balls of her feet out to the tips of her fingers.

The more basic the exercise, Jubo had told her once, the more important it is to practice. The simplest motions were the foundations on which all else was built; if they cracked, if they shifted, all which rested atop them was lost.

“Four years,” Nkemi said, smiling at Orali. “I am not sure if this is a long time,” the prefect said, thoughtfully.

She remembered herself, four years ago, standing before Jubo with the baton, her arms aching and sore, dripping sweat beneath the hot sun of Thul Ka, her feet blistered from rubbing again and again on the ground – where they had, Nkemi thought ruefully, grown soft with too many days spent only sitting before books.

She stood now in the midst of Brunnhold – in a small, strange guest room, with the world brushed white outside, and a little cookie called a snowball half eaten on the desk; with tea, and a small girl with bright red hair watching her wide-eyed.

Where the baton had blistered her hands before, there were calluses now, grown tough. Her wrist knew the strap; her body knew the stances, remembered them. Nkemi shifted herself once more: up, forward and down, fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips and knees all moving together.

She was no less Nkemi pezre Nkese than she had been, but perhaps she was more.

“For me,” Nkemi said, cheerfully, finishing the thought, “I think it has been.” She grinned at Orali. “You are sure you do not wish to try?” Nkemi asked, gently; she came forward, and she slipped the strap from her wrist, and held the baton loose in her hand once more.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Four years, she said, and that she wasn't sure if that was a long time. Aurelie thought about it. She wasn't sure either. It was one-fifth of her life; she had been working in the kitchens at Brunnhold twice that. Nkemi had to be older than her, although looking at her bright, open face Aurelie was unsure of by how much. She would not have thought her to be much so, except that her position as subprefect (even a very junior one) didn't sound like the sort of thing one did immediately upon graduating school. Although that too was a mystery--perhaps that was how things were done in Mugroba, or one attended Thul'Amat for less time than the students of Brunnhold, or... What Aurelie didn't know could fill libraries. Did, in fact, fill libraries--she had to clean one every so often.

It wasn't the quantity of time, she decided at last, but the quality of the time spent. She had very nearly been practicing her needlework for that long. Those efforts were a fair sight more amateurish than Nkemi's handling of the baton, even to eyes untrained as Aurelie's. But that practice was scattered, somewhat secretive, and--this seemed a vital part of it--entirely self-directed. Self-instruction was not perhaps the greatest of Aurelie's skills. No, that wasn't the same at all. So perhaps it was long enough.

That was confirmed when Nkemi spoke again--long enough, she said, for her. Aurelie hummed in thoughtful agreement. The sound was pitched up just a little higher in surprise when Nkemi held the baton out to Aurelie once more. Her hand rose to take it, but paused halfway. Aurelie looked at that smiling face and hesitated. She knew she shouldn't take it, really. No matter that there was no rule specifically against such things; letting her wave around a baton wasn't anywhere on most lists of concerns regarding gated passives. There were no written rules about many things she knew to be forbidden to her.

Still.

There was no harm in it, really. Except perhaps to herself, or furniture. Or Nkemi, who may very well come to regret allowing her to swing something heavy around, even under supervision. And of all the things she had done of late that were not allowed, this, surely, was the smallest of them. So. It was harmless, and she had done worse, and most importantly of all, she wanted to. The littlest spark of defiance flickered on her face before it disappeared.

"You, ah, might have to show me, again, what to--to do," Aurelie said with a small apologetic smile. "I am, er, not too terribly athletic." Her hand came up fully, and Aurelie stepped away from her little space against the wall.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 35 Dentis 2719
Guest Quarters, Brunnhold Campus

Orali had hummed, a quiet, buzzing sound; the pitch of it rose, questioningly. Nkemi held still and patient, waiting; Orali’s hand rose, too, and hovered low in the air between them.

Orali looked at her, then. Nkemi looked back; she met the passive’s wide eyes, and held, still and patient. She did not hold her breath or tense in anticipation; she smiled, still, soft and friendly. At first Orali had pressed herself against the wall, back into the corner, as if she worried that Nkemi would strike her if she took up too much space; as if she wished Nkemi not to have to notice her. Slowly, she had eased out, further, and a bit further again.

Nkemi waited, a little longer. She thought of a child with her face hidden in her mother’s pant leg; she thought of a stray dog shying from an unfamiliar hand. She thought of downcast eyes and smiles which held, tentatively, around the lips, as if they did not know whether they could be trusted to last.

Orali’s hand came up all the way; she took a fuller step away from the wall. There was something bright in her smile, sparkling in her eyes, brief and flickering.

Nkemi grinned, and tried not to grin too wide. Unhesitatingly, she slipped the strap around Orali’s wrist.

“You may start it like this,” Nkemi said. Her hands were gentle and easy on Orali’s, but not hesitant; she had calluses on her fingers and palm from the baton and other rough work, and a light, careful touch. She turned Orali’s hand over; she settled the heel of the baton into place, and curled her fingers over it, adjusting her thumb.

“It is more important that it is comfortable and secure,” Nkemi said, cheerfully, “than that it is some special way. It is best to see how it moves as you move, and to hold it so it does not move any more than it needs to.”

“First, up,” Nkemi said, smiling at Orali. She turned out into the room, drawing the uniformed passive a little further out if she wished to stay with her. She held her arm out, fingers loosely curled, as if she still held the baton; she lifted her arm. She did the arm motion first, again and again, until Orali “For a person who is small,” Nkemi said with a bright grin, “it is especially important to use not only the arm, but the whole body.”

“So,” Nkemi explained, “it is not only the arm we lift; we turn, also, with the lifting, so the shoulders, the hips – even the legs – they are all there too.” She shifted her body this time, so it was all of her that lifted, up together, in a single fluid motion. This, too, she repeated, careful and deliberate, moving until Orali moved with her.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Stepping away from the wall was a small thing; even Aurelie knew that much. All of this was small, insignificant. Just a diversion for a visitor on a cold, snowy morning. A small, insignificant rebellion for a small, insignificant person--that fit, she supposed.

Nkemi slipped the strap around her wrist and guided her hands with the same careful, unhesitating patience she'd displayed the entire morning. The feel of calluses on the Subprefect's hands where they touched Aurelie's was oddly comforting. She was more used to academics and fine ladies of society, when dealing with galdori to even the rare degree that Aurelie managed to do so. Not so with Nkemi--there was a dazzling kind of foreign feeling, mixed in with familiarity. It put her ever so slightly at ease.

Aurelie nodded. She could at least hold the thing. Probably. Surely. Nkemi led her more into the open space of the room. Color returned to Aurelie's cheeks. Of course she shouldn't stand so close to the wall. Perhaps she would have moved out on her own. No--that wasn't true, she would just have stood where she was and knocked something over. Discovered the edge of Nkemi's patience, perhaps, though none of the furniture belonged to the Mugrobi woman.

"Up," she echoed quietly and mostly to herself, watching the motion of Nkemi's arm. Nkemi repeated it, then repeated it again--the fourth time, Aurelie did it with her. The whole body, she had said. Aurelie frowned, feeling as if the words made sense in her mind but not in her limbs enough to translate to action. The weight of the baton was strange, but it felt like her grip was firm enough.

That, too, Nkemi demonstrated. The whole of her body moved, a single easy motion. Aurelie tried to follow, feeling more than a little silly. It wasn't helped that she felt the tug of the shoulders of her uniform, the slight tightness at the openings of the sleeves. The uniform wasn't impossible to move in, and this gentle motion was certainly not outside of the expected activities it was meant to accommodate. She was just self-conscious, and it made the thing feel a size too small. Still, a few more repetitions and it felt better, if not wholly correct. Aurelie frowned, turning to look at Nkemi.

"I'm sorry. Is that, er, is that... Am I even close?" Aurelie fretted, embarrassed to have tried and certain she had already proven herself hopeless.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 35 Dentis 2719
Guest Quarters, Brunnhold Campus

Orali only watched, at first; Nkemi repeated the motion, and did not hurry her. In her own time, Orali moved, too, lifting the baton.

It was not a fluid motion, not like a wave; it was jerky and hesitant, her arm lifting before her hips had finished shifting, when her rising had already stopped. Nkemi said nothing; she repeated the motion again, and Orali with her, carefully, following along.

Orali stopped, then, of her own accord; she turned to look at Nkemi, straightening up from the tiniest bend of her knees.

Nkemi smiled at her. “You are doing well,” she said, simply. “It is your intent which matters more than any perfection of movement, especially when you begin.”

Nkemi took Orali through the upward block once more, then the forward motion, the shift of the baton out with both hands. Again, it was not only the hands and arms which moved, but the whole of Nkemi’s body, shifting smooth and seamless together. She showed Orali the hand motions first, and then put the turning of her body to them, to show her how it came together.

Last, down; Nkemi lowered her hand down, and sunk down with it, dropping just a little; again, carefully, using all that she had in the single, short, sharp motion. She straightened up, once Orali had done the motion a few times, and guided her through putting the pieces together.

“Listen to me. You are not separate,” Nkemi said, softly, her voice lilting through the words. Up, she went first, slow and easy. “All the pieces of you are as one.” Forward, next, slow enough for Orali to trail behind her. “When you move even the smallest part, all the rest comes with it.” Down, then, sinking steady. “You are your heart which beats through you.” Up, again, shifting and rising up. “You are your mind and all your thoughts.” Forward, then, a careful, deliberate push. “You are the pulse which flows through your veins.”

Nkemi shifted through the movements again, finding a slow, steady rhythm. She breathed with it, even her breath moving with the motions, in and out as she shifted and turned.

Speaking with the practice had not been a part of Nkemi’s learning of the baton; it had been, however, much of what they did at Ire’dzosat, what she had done as a small girl learning movement for the first time – learning, at the same time as she studied clairvoyant conversation and the pressing of the mind out of the body, to come back together connected, to find meaning in every bit of herself.

There was no tradition of exact words, no poem or stanzas memorized and recited. Nkemi had learned that, years later, when she taught girls and boys as she had once been to move. The speaker spoke that which they felt in the exercise, in the moment; it was as fluid and formless as the practice, and as much rooted in intent as all the rest.

“Feel yourself shift with each movement,” Nkemi said, still moving steadily: up, forward, and down. “Your hands lift, and your body rises too; you sink down, and all of you comes towards the earth. Let them flow through you. Again,” she said, smiling. “Up, forward, and down.”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Well? She was doing well? That couldn't possibly be true. She knew that Nkemi didn't think she was lying, and yet found it impossible to believe all the same. Her face colored; sometimes she thought it must be stained that way permanently.

Nkemi took her through the motions again, and this time she thought she had gotten a little more of it. It was difficult for her, and physical in a way she wasn't used to. For all the she spent her days on her feet, moving and carrying things about and very, very rarely truly still, this was something else entirely.

You are not separate, Nkemi had said in her lilting accent. Aurelie tried to follow along, and she tried to absorb what that meant. It was, perhaps, an embarrassing amount of concentration to put into something she would just try once and then never again. But she supposed it didn't matter--the only person who would ever know was Nkemi, and who would she tell? Nobody cared what Aurelie did or did not do; nobody cared what she did or did not put effort into. That thought was freeing to her now, instead of making her feel sad the way it so often did.

All pieces of her. Aurelie let her mind drift, trying to take stock of each part of her that added up to the creature that was Aurelie Steerpike, for better or worse. Heartbeat, pulse, every one of her bones and muscles. The breath that moved in and out of her lungs--because Nkemi kept her own steady and in time with the way she moved, Aurelie tried to do the same. It was comforting, almost meditative, to turn all her thoughts to the exercise. Taking inventory of each piece of her in relation to everything else. Blood, bones, breath. Even, she thought a little dreamily, leylines--somewhere, even though they didn't work properly at all, they were there all the same. And, she supposed, that not-nothing was there too, that she had never found.

What had Fionn said it was like, months and months ago? Aurelie had thought about it, off and on, since then. Quiet, and distinctly--distinctly herself. That made her flush a little too, but her mind had drifted enough that she paid it little attention. Not like a field. Like-- Like--

"Oh!" Aurelie paused, stopping the movement quite abruptly and nearly dropping the baton in the process. It was only that her own surprised had made her grip tighten on it so that kept the thing in her hands. She had thought--for just a second, for just a moment on the edge of her mind she had... she had found it, that not-nothing.

"Ah! I'm, uhm, sorry. I just, er. Oh bells and--the time!" The sort of calm that had come over her was shattered; her natural fretfulness reasserted itself. What was she doing? She needed to leave, she--she could stay here, talking to Nkemi just because she was--

...Just because she was lonely, and Nkemi was being kind. Well, wasn't that just terribly pathetic after all. Aurelie slipped the strap off her wrist, and offered the baton back to Nkemi to take. She bowed apologetically--she had forgotten her manners entirely. What was wrong with her?

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 35 Dentis 2719
Guest Quarters, Brunnhold Campus

At first, Orali’s face had been red, and her movements stiff and self-conscious. She had listened; Nkemi had seen the listening on her face, writ in the tiny wrinkle in her brow and the softening of the lines of her mouth. She had heard, too; that Nkemi saw in the slow smoothing out of her motions, in the sinking of her body into the downs, and the lifting up of her into the ups, in the gliding way her arms moved together.

Nkemi was not so sure it was the words which mattered. They were only words; they were true, and they were words which Nkemi felt deeply, but more than that they were something to listen to, to focus on, to take the mind away from its focus on the body.

Movement, Nkemi had been taught in her years at Thul’Amat, can, too, be a form of meditation. It is not only in stillness and silence that we find a way to let go of our thoughts, but, too, in movement, and sometimes in speaking. It is the act of letting go – of replacing, whether in stillness or sound, the busy buzzing of our mind – which clarifies.

It had not, always, been easy for Nkemi to sit still. She knew it now; she knew to sit through the shifting to find a comfortable position, the strange itching of the tip of her nose, the sudden crawling discomfort through muscles which surely could not be sore, the unexpected thoughts which had a way of creeping up just when she had found stillness. She understood that these things were not failure, but merely part of the journey; to grow frustrated and angry was what disrupted the meditation, not the thoughts themselves.

But to learn such things was the work of many years, and meditation by movement was not a stepping stone to true meditation, but a practice in and of itself, and a worthy one. Nkemi was glad to have learned it, just as she was grateful, now, to be able to search for stillness.

Nkemi had lapsed into the quiet repletion of the pieces of movement, shifting through them; Orali was following along with her, and if it was movement without intent, without the purposeful snap which would give each block its force, it was nonetheless movement of all of her, smoother and easier than before, and more together.

The girl gasped, suddenly, her hand jerking on the baton; Nkemi looked at her, wide-eyed, straightening up. Orali apologized, and then, flustered, exclaimed about the time.

Nkemi blinked at her. She took the baton; Orali bowed, and Nkemi bowed also, understand that the girl needed to go. She felt herself calmer than before, after a strange night and a day she knew would, too, be strange, and grateful. “Thank you for sharing your morning with me,” Nkemi said, straightening up, and she smiled.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

There was a reluctance to leave, still, even though Aurelie knew she had to. Even though what strange sort of peace she had found in repeating those movements and listening to Nkemi's lilting voice had been shattered by sudden realization.

It had been nice, to lose herself in the morning. To have someone to talk to who she didn't feel like thought any less of her or expected overmuch. Uncomfortable, but in a good way. The sort of discomfort one felt in muscles being moved after too much stillness. Coming back to herself had been a different sort of discomfort that sat much less well on the mind. It was much more familiar, a well-practiced movement.

I'm sorry, she wanted to say, because Nkemi seemed more surprised even than she was by her abrupt loss of focus. The Subprefect said nothing about it, just thanked her for the the time she had idled there--that was a funny feeling, to be thanked for any use of her time at all--and smiled at her. Aurelie bit back the apology; she simply didn't know how to make it without adding to the strangeness. It likely didn't matter to the other woman anyway--they would never cross paths again.

"N-no, thank you for--it was... n-nice." "Fun" didn't seem quite right, although it had been that. "Nice" was not the right sort of word, but she found she could think of no other. "Nice" would have to do. It certainly covered a multitude of options and wasn't untrue, besides. "I'm sorry I--er. Yes. Thank you, again, and uhm. Have a, ah, pleasant rest of your day."

Aurelie bowed once more, though when she straightened she did her best to smile and put some true gratitude in it. For the time, for showing her the baton even a little. For the conversation, and a brief respite for her strange twisting loneliness. She hesitated for just a breath--but no, she couldn't feel anything anymore. She had lost her grasp on it.

Still, it had been there at all. Not-nothing, and she had almost had it there in her grasp. The passive shuffled out as quietly as she had come; the smile remained on her face as she went back to her day.