Scene Archives

: “Yes, I did,” she tells you softly as she rides the elevator up. “I really, really did.”

: “I’m headed wherever she is. Which, of course, she didn’t reply to me. I don’t suppose you could give me some direction there?” She does agree with you though—it’s play, it’s theatre, it’s deeply, deeply familiar and resonant. If you’re going to stand before the Scorpion Queen you might as well really feel like you’re standing before The Scorpion Queen, you know? Make it count.

does walk through the castle like she belongs there. She’s only been here twice, but she also kind of does belong here, she thinks.

: “I suppose so,” she murmurs, and then pitches her voice louder just as she walks into the echoey, echoey throne room. “Jae Carver, where the hell are you?”

grins at her. “Light, I don’t actually know. When you aren’t posing dramatically on the the throne, what are you doing?” She walks up to the throne and with a little hop seats herself on the armest that Jae’s arm isn’t resting on. She grins wider when she sees where her hand rests. “Thanks for the tip about the glass land-sharks. Look at my souvenir.” And she points to the still-raw-looking bite mark low on her hip where the shark’s teeth dug in.

laughs. “I guess we had a bit of a … something-or-other, with V and her companions, but no party. Not yet.” She tilts her head. “You can touch it if you want. It’s mostly healed.”

considers. “It was … fun? I liked working with my companions—my clan. I like watching them in combat. They’re all amazing.” She reaches down to touch her sword hilt, remembering what it was like fighting with a sword made just for her, but she doesn’t draw it. “At any rate, I came here to drag you into the Library. That’s where I have everything set up. Do you have someplace private? Er—our bodies will turn into statues while we’re in there, and I’d hate to alarm anyone.”

flops on the couch, and pulls the tablet out of the satchel she carries and sets it on the table. “You just have to touch it with intent and then you’ll enter the library.” She looks at her, and gives her a wry smile. “You can strike a dramatic pose as you do, if you want, since you’ll be turned into an alabaster-and-gold statue.”

laughs at that, and then touches the tablet and enters the library after her.

: “Welcome to the Liminal Library,” she says as she walks into the room, spreading her arms out in welcome.

stares at her for a moment—more than just a moment—eyes caught on her. “Oh. I didn’t—know that would happen.” But she smiles at her. Her eyes are the same, right?

: “But you’re still you.” And she spends another moment, two, staring into her eyes, at how alive they are, memorizing them. “You’re lovely, Jae.” And then she holds out her hand in offering, to lead her, to show her.

: “Isn’t it? This was the first time I saw the stars.” She squeezes her hand and guides her to the center of the room, beneath the True Sun. “Aurelius and I made it, and then, later, I was able to create the folios—the receptacles of memory that make up the library.” She gestures as the shelves that line most of the walls, then peeks at the transparent wall. Can they see their statued forms from here?

: “I don’t know if you’d … want a tomestone, but if you ever,” her eyes keep getting caught on her curly hair. This really isn’t fair. “Er—yeah. I could ask. You can read the folios, but if you want to … see how they work.” She whistles for Jory, kind of showing off, though she knows exactly where the folio she wants is—she knows exactly where they all are.

: “So.” She says, holding out an arm for him to land on. “I … made him for Jorule. In case he wanted to pop in and make commentary. But Jorule can just manifest, and he became the librarian.” She reaches up and feeds him a pre-scribbled scrap of secret. “Would you get me the folio {The Shape of Our Cosmos}, please?”

watches Jae’s eyes, and files that away to ask later. She takes the folio from Jory, and then offers it to Jae. “You can read it, or if you close your eyes and focus you can experience it. I thought you might like this one.”

watches her the entire time, and when Jae opens her eyes she can probably see that Salme’s grinning, practically glowing. “You did like it,” she says, sure. “Anyway, that’s … what this is. Memories to share and … hopefully, persist.”

waits a beat, then adds. “I thought you’d like to see her. The Beast. She’s beautiful.”

takes the folio back, and then has Jory file it away. “This isn’t even the part I wanted to show you. This is just the prologue.” She grabs Jae’s hand again and goes over to the Key-and-Gate shelf and touches the azure book, revealing the secret door. “My atelier is through here.”

laughs along with her, and it’s—easy, surprisingly easy, like the distance between them has collapsed. “Right? It’s … when I made Jory, this appeared. Still not sure what happened.” She pushes open the door, and pulls her into the hallway—pulls, because like this, Jae isn’t impossibly stronger than her.

: “Archie has his kitchen there,” she says, tilting her head to the left, “but that’s top-secret until the Iron Chef and anyway, I have everything set up here—“ and she pulls her again to the right, not quite skipping but with a kind of joyous cant to her gait that she can’t quite keep control of. She opens the door to the atelier, and the Centrelight streams in. A riot of color—thread and fabric, the loom dominating most of the floor, a spinning wheel and one for winding silk, piled carpets, and in the center, a low, round table of dark wood with sturdy, overstuffed seat cushions arrayed around it and an small smorgasbord of snacks laid out around a stack of three intricately worked metal boxes.

: “Not quite. Not yet. But the beginnings of one.” She sits elegantly on one of the cushions near her. “So my plan to have you help me weave is perhaps not going to work, but … maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t always have to be doing and we can just be existing.” And her eyes spark. “Also, I have so many gifts for you.”

: “Yeah. First one.” The three boxes are all made of silvery metal, no doubt acquired somewhere in the Courtyard, and are stacked neatly on top of one another. The bottom one is wide and flat, the second slightly narrower and taller, and the third is about as tall as the second, but very narrow. She draws the box off the bottom and hands it to her.

knows that inside is a pennant of deep red cotton with a blue-black scorpion rampant embroidered in the center. The threadwork is dense and careful, and a pale yellow verging into deep orange aura radiates out from the sleek chitinous shell, giving it the impression of flames. The top and bottom of the pennant is completed with a border of vines with delicate blooms interspersed—the pleated white trumpets of datura flowers and the soft purple slippers of monkshod and the small spiral blooms of oleander—all pinned up by delicate spikes of foxglove in a muted rainbow of color.

: “I noticed you admiring my embroidery last time. I wanted to make you something of your own.”

smiles, a little breathless. She was—nervous, strangely nervous, but her shoulders relax a tick. “I’m glad. I wasn’t even fishing when I asked about the flowers, you know. I just—added them at the last minute.”

watches her, and something in her heart sings at her delight. “The second gift is. A poem. A long one. I was going to recite it for you, but I didn’t want you to be bored while I did.”

doesn’t think she’d be bored, not with the embroidery under her fingers and plenty of snacks.

: “Sure but … also feel free to walk around as I do. I brought you here so you could experience it. This is … one of my favorite places. Maybe because it’s mine.”

leans back on her palms and tilts her face towards the Centrelight. “It’s in five parts,” she says. Her heart is pounding in her chest and her arms are trembling—just slightly, but Jae’s sharp eyes can probably tell. “It’s called ‘The Sparrow and the Scorpion’.”

: “One,” she begins.

Dull-rooted girl, snare-stuck sparrow, she watched

their dance; not waltz, not reel, but Rite—the Scorpion Queen

stinger-to-throat against her heart-brother, steel shifting

swift and vicious then transcendent, the queen’s laugh a song, spiraling

endlessly up into the star-strewn sky.

She had learned the scorpion’s heart from words

woven, half-twinned to her own, over space and

through a surfeit of time, but her face was a stranger’s, then,

ice-chip eyes and smile like a war-wound, seed sprouting

into familiarity, sighting burnished hope in her bared blades,

hands grasping greedily—for blood or bonds—and sadness, too.

The lightning jolt of recognition jarred the sparrow

feathered-flustered, snared her well, eye-caught, watching

her scorpion find a match in him, world-singer, wolf-priest, and

the sparrow knew:

The blade of want had not gone dull or dust-gathered,

sitting, ignored and idle in her breast-coffer.

Her whetstone heart could only sharpen, only yearn, and

unused, any weapon craves a hand to wield it, and work—

purpose itself is no vulgar thing, no higher calling either;

it simply is—and want, a weapon always, fine-honed now,

cut itself clean-free, clamoring for a dance,

a duel, the scorpion’s witness and more—a place

care-carved for her sole self.

finds her footing then, in the rhythm of the words. She looks at Jae, meets her eyes. Her voice is smooth, low for a woman’s voice but still feminine, controlled—every breath taken in the right spot, every syllable articulated precisely. “Two,” she says.

As so she climbed the stair, sparrow-small, Rite-ready,

toward Stings-and-Kills, true hero, queen, loss close-kenned,

foreknown, and certain but settled still, walking

into the scorpion’s hall, stars and sparks spinning in her wake,

the skein of fate spun fast and found in every echoing step

upon the polished floor.

Steadfast she stood under watchful eye, the scorpion

herself seeming snare-struck, the sparrow yet unquaking,

bowing low to say, “Do you know why I have come?”

Upon her throne, sword-built, metal-melted-upon-metal,

a mountain of legacy and of lives long past, the scorpion smiled,

said, “tell me, word-weaver, though I might guess.”

Trifling as a brown-bird in the dim, the dull-rooted girl looked

up and up and up at her, whip-cord strong, lithe and built

for war and winning, and said, “a duel and dance, from you.“*

“As for the stakes,” spoke the sparrow, offering up her sword,

storied bronze borne long by the saga-sworn before her,

not sword-kin but sword-kind, weight and will to serve

a world-story, the sparrow’s chosen path. “Your win sets

my sword in your throne, made immortal, ever-wrested

moment, sheathed, stalwart, by your unending hand. A gift

of my ghost, of when you saw me and me alone

for this Rite-span.”

“And I will not win so let us not waste wit and time

setting stakes for such a thing,” the sparrow said, discarding

such impossibility without care.

The scorpion’s smile burned, battle-born, beautiful as

sun flame, as sea-foam smashing rocks to rubble,

inexorable. “I accept your stakes, word-weaver,” said she,

unfurling to step down from dais to dueling-circle,

reaching one hand into the palm of its other half,

the third hand into the fourth, mirrored motions, then pulling

palms apart to show dual blood red, fire-flecked blades.

The sparrow did not step but flitted, falling

into a tumble then rising, flying, feet but fleetingly

on the ground, freeing sword from sheath as she

rose to meet her scorpion’s mettle.

Rite-caught, both scorpion and sparrow girded

gracefully for the first flurry.

: “Three,” she says, and she can feel the story spun out between them, and she can hear the joke Jae doesn’t tell. She files that away for later as well and continues:

The duel was danced in flame encircling,

scorch-threat to the fallow-hearted, though that

was not the scorpion, could never be, nor even

the sparrow, not then; only: Rite-tones rilling, steel-song

sent pulsing through the blood, drumbeat-strong.

The first strike fell to the scorpion, as it must,

the hero herself, but found forfeit there; the sparrow

had sang out the scorpion’s story, a fable fallen

through many worlds and ways—a frog, stung and sinking,

after ferrying some scorpion; the frog’s refrain of “why”

met without pity: “thus is my clay so crafted.”

That story so stymied Stings-and-Kills that the sparrow

spun in close, took her unarmed hand and spoke,

soft and unsweet, an invocation which the scorpion

could not deny. “Tell me the truth,” she asked, as if

the answer was not assured.

The blood-proud and battle-born, hope-hoarder,

wound-winner, queen-with-no-equal—she flinched.

The wind wound around the sparrow, whispered

in that still-sparking circle a scorpion’s truth, and thus

the sparrow, vicious, built bitter victory, not

in the clash but a cruelty more cunning.

“Shall I give your taken-truth back?” the sparrow offered.

Still held hand-fast, the scorpion spelled forgiveness

in their grasp but declined, driving blades down deep

into the sparrow’s sides, and as the swords bit, the sparrow

knew better than to ask why.

matches her grin, and her heart is beating in her chest, and it is almost like she’s caught in battle again. “Four,” she says, and there’s a tiny catch there, a bit of breathlessness, but otherwise her voice remains steady. She’s told much, much longer epics on less sleep and while standing.

The sparrow laughed, letting fall their finger-grip, whirling

away, joyous and pain-proud, despite the blood that sluiced

slick onto the ground. She had come here to lose, to learn—

and now to hurt. A sword-strike for the steel-strong

queen, a bite repaid in kind. Flame sparked blue-hot along her blade,

spread to her skin, rendering her wild, wounded but will unweakened.

The sparrow flitted forward, leaping high to strike thrice—

a line drawn on her neck, a blade deep between her ribs,

another at the knee, a butcher’s parting of bone and tendon.

A scorpion bleeds as well as a sparrow. She chose to;

stood eye-locked as the sparrow ate near half her life.

“By my reckoning, at least, the win is mine,” the sparrow sang,

though she had all the time in which to lose, and would.

“Well played,” said the scorpion, breath-broken,

“But we both know you can’t pull that trick twice.”

The sparrow grinned, unbound herself from gravity’s grasp,

drove a kick into the scorpion’s chest which met immediate retort,

the scorpion’s sword-haft cracking across the sparrow’s collar bone

stuttering the sparrow’s next step.

Bone-bruised, still burning, tone-twinned, the sparrow dove down—

no scorpion can match a sparrow’s fearless fall—

took her flesh-toll then turned to find her footing because,

as the scorpion said, “I can keep fighting but we both know

you can’t.”

“Then make this count,” the sparrow said, sure in her strength.

The scorpion, blue-eyed as sword-flame, laughed, drew close,

kissed her throat with cold steel, and said, “I win.” Then spun—

stinger-seeking, wind-swift—and struck.

The sparrow’s breath betrayed her, overburdened by the prick

of pain, but not her eyes—she kept the scorpion well in her sight.

Knee-weak she buckled, Rite-broken but spirit strong,

and from her, dull roots stirring, singing: I am alive, I am alive.

matches her grin, and delivers this last looking straight into her eyes. She could not look anywhere else. “Five,” she says, voice growing softer, the driving beat of the poem not winding down but modulating carefully.

Unshaking, The sparrow offered her sword with both hands,,

eyes still locked to eyes. Even after the flames had fallen,

fire was a filament between them, banked-ember gazes

seeing each other wholly.

The Scorpion Queen, reverent, took—

what was offered,

what was hers,

what she wanted—the sword,

won by Rite and longing for its place. She traced

one finger down its length, touched guard then hilt

in careful study, returned her gaze to the sparrow then leapt

backward—soaring, sky-strong, impossible—rather than

turn away, rather than break the thread between them.

She grazed her fingertips along the blade again. It caught, white-hot.

She did not flinch, did not seem to notice.

Sitting, then, upon her throne, she drove the sword

into the armrest, hilt asking always to be a home

for her hand, for the fall of her fingers—hers, now

and forever, more than any Sword-Saint’s tally mark

could ever hope to be.

: “That sword,” spoke the sparrow, “has been handed down *

Sword-Saint to Sword-Saint. It was Sanna’s, once, who melted

it and made it new to fit her hand. And now it is remade again,

*to fit mine.”

Sparrow-saint, saga-sworn, the girl sloughed off titles

and epithets, and smiled, straightening her shoulders,

Rite-tried and tired, triumphant, and bold

as a small brown bird. Now just Salme, she saw

her friend, soul-match, fellow memory-keeper,

and said, simply, “Thank you, Jae.”

, with the last line, twists together the past triumph and the present moment, collapses time, not with gnosis but simply with words. She’s smiling, not grinning, a soft smile, easy and comfortable, like they’ve done this together—sat talking, reciting, listening, laughing—a million times. And they haven’t, but maybe, someday, that will be true.

: “You’re welcome,” she says, and she means it in every way. “Even if I did edit out the funny parts—there’s a version intercut with limericks somewhere out there, but I thought you’d appreciate the drama of the heightened register.” She draws the second-largest box from beneath the narrow box and hands it to her. “This is also part of it.”

knows that the second box contains a book—or something quite like a book. Like the folios in the library, it is two slabs of crystal bound by embroidery floss that gleams like the edge of a flame. The crystals, though, are thinner, milky white with sparks suspended within their depths—infused with radiant gnosis, to preserve, protect, to keep. There is also something bound within the slabs of crystal.

: “The crystal on top contains the memory of our duel from my perspective—accessioned like I would a memory in the library,” she tells her. “The one on the bottom a recording of my recitation of the poem. And if you open it …” Does she open it?

has scribed the poem in her own precise hand on pages of parchment inside. The ink is a deep blue-black, and each section begins with a large capital letter with intricate knotwork drawn around it in oxblood red and gleaming gold. The margins contain elegant blue-black vines dotted with the occasional bloom—angel’s trumpet and nasturtiums, monkshod and hellebore—which are elegantly drawn, and swooping sparrows and striking scorpions which—are not. There is something to be said, though, about the hand of the artist.

: “I almost asked Zaya to write it out, but I thought—I worked hard to learn to read and write. Why not give you that as well? And so.”

something about that gesture—how young she looks holding the folio to her chest, she thinks—something twists in her heart at that. It is a good kind of heart-knot. It is also a dangerous one. “Me too. Even if the scorpions are truly awful.”

grins. “Oh they absolutely are, but I thought why not let it be awful? I’m not a great artist. That, too, is a part of me.”

, more quietly, adds, “I also … don’t know if it will endure, but parchment can last over a thousand years, easily. And the ink and crystal are all infused with radiant gnosis with a dash of pellucid—so it won’t burn, so it will last. I don’t know, but I had to try.”

nods and lets the moment hang between them. Takes a dumpling she acquired from Spice Row earlier and pops it into her mouth and it is … slightly too large, so she’s stuck comically trying to chew with her mouth closed but having a bit too much food in there to truly pull it off.

finally swallows down the results of her dumpling hubris. “So the last box is special, and I really want to give the gifts time to breathe. What have you been up to while I was getting my ass chewed on by land-sharks?”

blinks. “Does that happen … often? The skin cracking open and miasma coming out? And what is miasma?”

laughs a little bit. “I didn’t expect the potentially alive plane to be gassy, but I guess it happens considering all the fiends she belches out.” She leans forward, grabs a grape from the table, pops it into her mouth, and says, “You can pass on this one, but is your appearance here what you looked like when you first—became, I guess, into this world?”

: “Yeah, me too,” she says, and then she blushes and swallows. “They’re both good looks, honestly. I feel lucky I got to see this one.”

then, maybe because she’s flustered, she says, “So. I don’t know. If you’d be willing. But I think … I mentioned once, that I can do this trick where you can … share selves and memories. It’s called methexis. And you asked me, that first time, what the coolest thing I’ve seen was, and I said the library, but the other contender was … on Samudra, I accidentally created an island and also. Sort of. Splintered myself. And I thought, maybe, I could show you.”

: “There are flowers,” she adds, quickly.

: “I can.” She offers her hand. “You just have to say yes when I reach out to you.”

unfurls flourishing gnosis and—does not invite her in because Jae is already there, pressed close to the center of the house that is her heart. Salme doesn’t even know how, or when, Jae built her room there, but she is there, unavoidable and loud and fully herself.

does not begin with Tulinsuojat, as she did with Tasna, but before that, when Melpomene coalesced from the six entities that could only burn, and burn, and burn with joy. She is clad in vines, with a wooden mask of tragedy and a question Salme almost fails to answer. She shows that moment, dwells on it, untangles the snarl of feelings that led to her existence in the first place—the desire to be less, the fact the she couldn’t help but be more. ⁂

then moves through the island, first with Ksenija, then with Wolf, then herself alone, and everywhere she steps there are flowers, there are flowers, and Jae can smell them, can feel the softness of their petals and the sturdiness of their vines from where Salme’s fingers touched them, can feel the dirt under her nails which Salme later picked clean with a crystal stylus that certainly wasn’t meant for that task. Jae can see them, riot of blooms, out of season and joyful, flourishing so freely and wildly, like all the rules of nature have ceased to apply. ⁂

drops her defenses lower still, and Jae can feel within her the parts of Salme that are vast, that corners the Mask has shaped, the knowledge of time and death and rebirth, but also the parts of Salme that are, too, just a girl. Sixteen, eighteen, twenty-five, still discovering herself, half-drunk on what life has offered her, scared and determined all at once, heart resonating in harmony with hers. Salme shares all this. 🙧

feels the contours of fear-certainty-hope-shame and she does not ask, lets Jae put it aside, but she accepts it, wholly and lovingly, and the whisper-soft thought of words she’s said to so many people, “but you need not bear it alone,” and then she deepens the memory, shows her the cookout on Tulinsuojat, Aurelius’ embarrassment, Luĉja’s talent at the grill—and nothing will convince her that Luĉja is not a talented cook—her friends, her lovers, together in this one moment and the flowers garlanded everywhere.

hopes so too, and offers up that hope, but does not grant certainty. She is not in the habit of granting certainty when she is not certain, but she offers up determination, and something caught between hope and certainty—she has reason to think she will live, or she will die and then live again, and when she does she will find Jae. She will. She reaches for the last box, the narrow one. “I’d like to give this last one to you with the link open, but you can break it at any time.”

blinks, almost blinded but bone-warmed by Jae’s hope, laughs at her frustration with the arm situation, and knows that inside is an artifact in the form of two serpents, one thread-of-irrica and one chiaroscuro black-and-white, with little purple french-knot eyes, tangled hopelessly together, one’s tail in the other’s jaws– an act of play more than violence, or perhaps of steadfast determination, in principle, to not let go. They are smooth and cool as silk to the touch, and there is a weight to them, but they will drape over the hands like fabric or thread. In the centre of the artifact, that which it surrounds, which is and can be felt even if it cannot be seen by the naked eye, is a small spark of an ever-burning fire, a reflection of herself which represents, but does not in any way diminish her.

⁂

also shares the memory of it, the spinning last night, the words—hers and yours, silmät, and others’—her thoughts and feelings that she poured into it, her intent. She knows she offers to Jae part of her own soul. She does not know quite what the artifact might do, but she knows it is an artifact, the part of her that belongs to Jae made manifest to be held, to be known, to be kept. 🙧

also lets out a soft, shaky breath—of relief, of belief. She knows that this will not burn. She knows this will last. She lets the link slide away from between them gently, because she wants just words for this next part, but she keeps holding Jae’s hand.

: “I wanted to make sure you’d know if I was dead or alive. I wanted to make sure you’d know that I was living—not just alive but living. It felt—important to me. Necessary, even. Making it was … good for me too. I’m not out of the messy bitch mines, but I think I hit a different layer.”

’s mouth twitches. “I don’t have words for what you are to me. Maybe there was a term in ancient. But. I wanted to try to show you in as many ways as possible.” And then she looks down, blushing a little.

nods as well. “Aurelius told me I need to externalize everything with words and I often do, but …” she shrugs helplessly, because how could she possibly articulate the strange symmetry between them? “Anyway, if you figure out all that the thing can do let me … know? Jorule said it was an ‘AF’ but I’m not really sure what that means. I think it has potential greater than what I intended. It might be a fun puzzle for when you’re bored.”

: “Good.” And then another tick of tension falls away, and she laughs. “So that’s it for gifts, really, but. Well. I can show you the rest of the rooms that aren’t Archie’s kitchen if you’d like?” Though she eats another dumpling, though in two bites this time. “Or. Well. Really anything you’d like. We have time, at least right now.”

grins at her and laughs. There are so many plates—Awa helped her set it up, and it’s a lovely spread, positively artisanal. And there’s no such things as snack crimes. “There’s nothing terribly exotic. I just picked up things that looked good from Spice Row. But I know you like snacks.”

: “Actually, do you have favorite foods?”

considers that, and then laughs. “Of course. Of course that’s what you’d say. You’re a wonder.” She piles up a plate of her own. “Anyway, I’m going to show you the rest of the place. There’s a game room. Do you know how to play pool?”

narrows her eyes but doesn’t ask about the Grand Soups. “I don’t,” she says, standing. “Wanna teach me?”