Scene Archives

sits on one of the larger lounge chairs of the common area, curled in on himself, focusing intently on the embroidery needle in his paw as it darts through a piece of fabric the size of a sheet, working detail into it painstakingly inch by inch.

entered not too long ago in a swirl of heat and angry light holding a very large, lemon-like fruit in one hand and some leaves in the other. She’s since chopped the etrog in half, left one half to sit on the table with a small note that says, “experiment: do not eat.” She painstakingly peeled away the very thick rind on the other half of it and has been working her way through the fruit of it. She’s spent the past few minutes drinking water to restore what she lost out in the orchard, but now she goes over to peek over Archie’s shoulder, making sure to step loudly so her presence isn’t a surprise. “What are you working on?”

inhales the scent of the rind as she carefully sets the discarded pieces of it on the plate next to her experiment. It’s a pleasant smell, and she’s curious how long it will last—or if it will even dissipate.

unfurls himself in the chair, coming to something resembling a more reasonable sitting posture. “A surprise gift for Ardith.” He unfurls the cloth to show his work: an image of Almachadta embroidered in beautiful and various shades of green, the blue rivers running through the landscape where Archie first swam in water with definable depth, the purples and reds of the flowers he saw there, the vibrant designs of the cloth banners marking the town, a joyful swarm of swifts depicted by the hands that had spent so long carefully studying them in their company. As you look over the image, you see that the stitches overlap themselves to create three-dimensional images that can be felt, not just seen, and if you were to run your hand over them, you would feel flourishing gnosis in the thread, bringing the scene to life.

: “It’s only about a third done so far. Samudra and Beast will be next, of course. But I wanted to give him a version of our travels he can perceive no matter how badly his Sun-sickness progresses.”

: “Oh,” she breathes. “That’s amazing. May I?” Her hand almost compulsively reaches to touch the thread. She only manages to stop herself at the last moment.

smiles up at her. “You needn’t ask, though I appreciate that you did, anyway.”

closes her eyes and carefully reaches out, running her finger over the raised, textured thread. She can feel the flourishing gnosis stitched throughout, can feel the careful stitching and care and thought that went into it. It feels like home, a little bit. She smiles. “I like that you included the swifts.”

beams. “You have no idea how close I was to abandoning the mission and letting them adopt me, as they so clearly intended to,” he says with a chuckle. “Glad I didn’t, though, of course. I miss them, though. I wonder how the version I made for Caion is doing.”

tilts her head. “You could ask him. I’m sure he’d be overjoyed to give you an update. Probably in Academy triplicate and all.”

can’t help but laugh at the thought. “I do owe him a check-in, it’s true. Still haven’t fully gotten in the habit of using my linkpearl. Though I suppose I could be worse? It’s not like I’m going incommunicado for years at a time like Tasna.”

considers, for a moment, what someone (several someones) might (have) said about her Linkpearl habits and shrugs. “Or you could be an addict. But I think he’d love to hear from you. I’m guessing you’ve not read our most recent DMs but. He talks about you constantly. It’s very cute.” She draws her hand away from the embroidery and looks up at him. “Actually, I am curious. Caion’s spoken a bit about how he felt when you decided to enter the Academy, but what about you? What made you go from Irós to Archivist?”

: “You guess correctly. That’s sweet to hear, though. I may not talk about him as much but I think about him all the time.” He pulls out the edge of the purple scarf from his pocket and shows it to her - the subtle discoloration from his skin oils and the way the fibers are starting to thin at the corner are telltale signs that he’s been rubbing it between his fingers a lot, these days. “As for that question… it’s kind of a long story. Do you want to make yourself comfortable while I tell it?”

: “I do love a good story.” She unties her sandals and curls up into the deep cushions, a glass of water cradled between her hands.

: “Ready.”

settles in. “My parents, as much as I can remember them, were researchers who were unsatisfied with the cultural taboo around studying the entities we now call the Dream-Whales. They found it unacceptable that we know so little about forces which play such a potentially large role in our world. But finding that they had no support in their research from both their Whisker-Clan relatives and the biologists of the Academy, they set out on their own to see what they could discover.”

: “They knew that this work might be dangerous, but they were willing to accept that risk for themselves. For their pup who had barely seen three summers, though, it was a different story. They could not accept exposing me to the same dangers they faced because I was too young to do so willingly and of my own accord. So I was given to Aunt Silver-Throat, and therefore indirectly also to Ksenija, for her to raise me while they were away performing their studies. It’s not uncommon among Kushtaka. We live as clans, and even though their efforts in studying the Dream-Whales made them few friends in the family, they trusted that Whisker-Clan would always take care of their own. And they did.”

nods and takes a sip of water. “I can imagine they were in a difficult situation,” she says.

: “They were. In theory, they could have abandoned their curiosity, their passion, their drive to learn and to know. But as I’m sure you’ve seen for yourself, that’s not an option that anyone in Samudra is liable to take, Kushtaka or no. I know they didn’t abandon me, that they loved me very much. Aunt Silver-Throat made sure I grew up always knowing that, as much as I think she wished things could have been different for us. But they set sail, and whatever may have happened to them, they never came back.”

nods. “So Silver-Throat and Ksenija were your parents more than your parents were?”

nods in reply. “Very much so. And so, as children are often wont to do, I started taking after them. I saw Aunt Silver-Throat leading the songs that carry the glass-ships across the seas and deicded that - an Irós - was what I wanted to be. I dreamed of leading a ship of my own someday out to the furthest reaches of Samudra. That maybe, someday, I would find my parents out there, and be able to bring them safely home. Aunt Silver-Throat never spoke ill of my parents to me, but not everyone was so kind. It was impossible not to hear the whispers of the adults around me growing up, blaming them, calling them careless and irresponsible. Studying to be an Irós turned those gossiping voices into ones of respect, admiration. I was the one who came up with the term Polite Visitors to refer to the Dream-Whales, and whenever we sang our warning song, my voice would be the loudest.”

’s mouth twists, a little, thinking of the way adults speak when they think the children around them can’t understand. “Makes a lot of sense. Sounds pretty hard, too, on a little kid.” Another sip of water.

: “It was. But it would have been even harder without Aunt Silver-Throat shielding me from the worst of it. I remember walking through the Ripple market with her once, hearing that chatter from the workers in the stalls who thought I couldn’t hear. One of them must have said something about my mother I didn’t catch because the next thing I knew, she was in a Rite. It didn’t last long, either.” He smiles a little, remembering how fierce she could be in her protection of him. “But as for how I went from that to the Academy… I grew up a little more, and as I got older, I thought more and more about my Kushtaka name, Arcs-Through-Depths. It’s the single and final gift my parents ever gave me. In Kushtaka culture, we name pups based on our hopes for them. Aunt Silver-Throat may as well have been born an Irós, with a name like that. But my name showed me that what my parents wanted for me was a different path. They hoped that one day I would have the courage to go to those depths that others could not, would not. That I would allow my curiosity to lead me to unfathomable depths. It was hard for me to accept that mantle when the pain of their loss was fresh, but given time - and some teenage rebelliousness - I found myself inexorably called towards it. Towards the destiny my parents laid out for me when they bequeathed me with this name.”

: “Don’t get me wrong, it still terrified me. That’s why I resolved to work within the Academy, not outside of it. I trusted its structure and Principles to lead me down the right path. And so I finally left Ripple for the Academy. I was a bit of a generalist, at first, and my interest in so many subjects caught the attention of the previous Archivist. We spent a lot of time together. And somewhere in that process I came to realize I could arc through the depths of an endless sea of tomes far more safely than the depths of the seas themselves. When he was ready to step down, I was the obvious choice, though I still had to prove myself in various ways. I was the closest thing he had to a protégé.”

takes a pause, reflecting on all the decisions he’s made since. Certainly, they involved a great deal more danger than he was willing to accept when he first became Archivist. “That’s basically it, I think. Lately I’ve been thinking about training as an Irós again. The deeper I got into the Academy, the less connected I felt to my Kushtaka upbringing, but I feel ready now to find a way to balance them both. Eventually the things I found in those tomes took me on expeditions I could only have dreamed of as a pup. As I got older, people stopped talking about my parents. I created a name for myself that stretched beyond the shadow of their controversial decisions. Aunt Silver-Throat and Ksenija are still my closest family, and Whisker-Clan my home. But as I grew up and started understanding the risks we take to satisfy the parts of ourselves that yearn to know, I’ve forgiven them. Part of me still hopes they’re somewhere out there, that maybe our paths will cross on another world. I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure what happened to them. But I know what those experiences made me become.” He takes a long sip of something pleasantly cool out of a mug. “I hope that answers your question?”

nods. “It does.” She carefully rotates the cup in her hands. “I’m not sure I really understand, not the part about legacy or destiny, but I don’t understand Aurelius or Awoken half the time, and that works out just fine.”

: “Thank you for telling me. I hope you find a way to balance those parts of yourself. I’ve been working on … a similar project. It’s hard, but I think, ultimately, worth it.”

nods. “What’s the project?” He takes another sip of his drink, feeling it soothe the scratchiness he hadn’t noticed creeping into his throat.

: “Ah. I. When I became the Sword-Saint, I took—or tried to take—all of the parts of me that didn’t seem to fit the role and I. Shoved them away. Partly because I was a messy bitch of a teenager, partly because I wanted to protect myself from … loving too much a world I knew would end.” She gives Archie a wry smile. “Since we started this, I’ve been thinking of myself as just ‘Salme,’ and the Sword-Saint as a role that I can pick up and discard as needed but,” she draws her knees up to her chest, “That isn’t true, not really. I’m both. And I’m trying to figure out how to be both. How to be the Sword-Saint without excising most of my personality.” She laughs a little. “That’s sort of … what the whole Melpomene … situation … was in Samudra. Aury’s been helping me with it a lot. More than he realizes, I think.”

nods. “I’m glad. Caion’s helped me too, in ways I’m not sure he fully realizes either. His role as Emissary is to be able to move fluently between the ideals and cultures of the Academy and of the Kushtaka clans who live beyond it. Seeing that he could do it made me feel like maybe I could, too.” He smiles, thinking of how he felt watching Caion work, switching effortlessly across cultures and contexts.

: “Though actually, there’s something I’ve been wanting to try, lately. When we used Libra on some of the others, we learned things about them that they didn’t know about themselves. That the Prince is a Prince, for one thing. Do you think it might know what happened to them? My parents?”

considers him for a moment. “I don’t know, but it’s certainly worth a try. And I’ve been curious about what title it would give you anyway. Would you like to try a very low-stakes Rite? I can cast and immediately forfeit.”

: “That works, I’ll pass each of my turns until you find it. What should the stakes be? A hug?”

laughs. “Yes. If you win, you get a hug.” And then she grins. “And don’t worry. I’ll get it on the first draw. I cheat.”

: “You’ll have to teach me how, sometime. Consider this a formal challenge, then!”

: “And if I win, you give me a salacious piece of gossip about the Academy.”

grins. “Deal. A little teaser: it involves SauceLab.”

groans theatrically as she stands up. She brandishes a scimitar of gleaming radiant gnosis, though she has no intention of using it.

sets aside his embroidery, his eyes beginning to glow, though his expression bears a playful smile rather than his normal concentrated blankness.

hops around slightly for the ritual of the thing, but otherwise declines to act.

drops the pretension of the gnosis-made scimitar and instead runs her fingers through the threads of possibility, almost like she’s playing a lyre. She grins when she finds it, hooking a finger around one of the threads the pulling it into her hand. “It’s my favorite too, Tuuli,” she whispers to the still air in the room, and then turns to Archie and extends an arm dramatically, palm up, almost like she’s inviting him to dance. “Tell me the truth.”

looks confused, waiting for something, anything. He’s not even hopping and wiggling anymore, just completely still in the stunned silence of expectations broken. “You win,” he says after a moment, the glow fading from his eyes. “I concede.”

shakes her head, and immediately steps in and hugs him, tight. “Arcs-Through-the-Depths-Towards-Truth’s-Light tou Synydron, Scholar-Archivist of that which remains of the River, bright scion of Whisker-Clan,” she whispers as she holds him. “Carries within his soul an unlit cinder - he chose, for the time, at least, a different path. Known to his friends and loved ones as ‘Archie’, long before he became the Scholar-Archivist, in a stunning act of nominative determinism. Held, and continues to hold, the kleis akadæmia; its resonance echoes still within his gnosis.”

: “Nothing about your parents, but there’s information there. A lot of it.”

hugs him tighter.

: “Indeed there is. But before we get too deep into discussing it, you won the Rite, and the stakes must be paid. So, time for you to learn the rumored secret of SauceLab.”

squeezes her back but then backs away, slightly, a mischievous grin starting to form.

watches him cautiously, warily. “Okay.”

looks like she might run at the slightest provocation. She learned her lesson after she got lost in the sauce for the better part of a day.

: “So this isn’t a known, confirmed fact, and it doesn’t exist in written record, which qualifies it as gossip. But the story goes that about 700 years ago, the Academician leading the Academy was a bit of a prude and refused to officially sanction a sexology department. So a few enterprising researchers started SauceLab, except the thing was that it was devoted almost completely to the development of edible lube. Eventually a new Academician took over, the sexology department was formed, and the SauceLab researchers transferred from the culinary department to the newly formed one. But SauceLab itself remained in the culinary department, so the researchers there took it over and made it what it is today.”

stares at Archie. Then stares at him a little longer. And then lets out a hysterical little giggle, while still staring at him. “Light. That. Sort of explains why they’re all Like That.”

: “That. Okay. I’ll be (rotating) that one for a long, long time.”

pushes out a breath. “Okay. Okay. So.” She sets three leaves on the table before him. “While we’re working out Mystical Secrets of The Planes, I wanted your help looking at these. I went out into the orchards—the first orchard, which has been maintained for,” she takes a deep, deep breath, “279,930 years. The trees aren’t that old, obviously. They’ve been replaced. But there’s root-matter in the ground that is … close to that old. It doesn’t decay.” ⁂

gestures to the leaves. “By all rights these should be scorched to hell by the sun, but they’re really complex gnosis woven into them. By all rights the soil here shouldn’t support life. It’s pure gnosis-work. There’s no organic matter. It doesn’t make any sense with how the lifecycle of … anything works. I was wondering if you could take a look?”

sounds a little shaken. She’s trying to maintain a nonjudgmental tone, but she’s shaken.

smiles a little at her reaction to the gossip, puts on his spectacles, and begins flicking through their lenses.

looks more closely, wracking his brain for the memories of how gnosis-weaving of different types can be visually identified and seem to interlock. What kinds of gnosis specifically were employed here, and is there room for additional augmentation?

: “The soil was also woven with gnosis. I didn’t think to get a sample—I can go back—but I wonder if we’d find the same thing.”

nods, remembering the irrica experiment. He imagines the gnosis of the leaves as amorphous clouds coalescing into gentle veils in his paw as his fingers close around one - flourishing, he decides - and gently pulls it off and away from the leaf.

knows flourishing gnosis if she knows anything. She is not sure how much of her is that which flourishes, but she was raised in flourishing soil, on a flourishing world. When she feels the wave of gnosis from Archie’s explosion, she reaches out, twining her gnosis with his—a gentle tendril of a vining plant, offering support, assisting him in this endeavor that requires careful excavation of leaf-veins and venules, her roots set deep in the soil that knows the shape of living things.

gently gasps in quiet awe. “It’s… beautiful.”

nods. She can’t see the net of gnosis like Archie can with his spectacles, but she can feel it. “They belong together. When I—I made something for, er, for Jae—there’s a bit about the results in the library—but when I was making it, I spun all six of them together, and the radiant and the tenebrous … they belong together.”

: “Could that be what makes the sun here so unbearable? Radiant gnosis unbalanced by the lack of its opposite?”

nods. “I think that’s at least part of it. I think … we were both thinking the same thing, right? About the Sun-sickness and healing it with radiant gnosis alone?” She shakes her head. “We don’t know enough, still, but if this weave is so pervasive that new growth is suffused with it …. I don’t know what that means. That plane is the skeleton that the others were built on that such things persist?”

: “That’s the closest I can get to a guess, too. It seems like radiant and tenebrous balance to give things form and the other three gnoses give them… texture, for lack of a better word? I wanted so badly to try a little tenebrous gnosis on Ardith but… it wasn’t our place.”

: “Yeah. The thought occurred to me as well. They might—people who are dying sometimes are open to trying different things, but I’ve never healed with anything other than flourishing before, and I’m not sure …” she shakes her head. “More questions than answers, as usual. I’ll post some of this to the Linkpearl, see if we can get Caion’s input? Any anyone else’s?”

: “Tsen might know something. Those are the two I would ask. We’ll figure something out. We will.”

nods. “All right.” She hesitates. “Are you okay with me accessioning the memory of your Libra text to the library? I figured you would be, but I like to ask.”

: “Please do. It can join the others. One day we’ll sit down and look at them all together, see what answers we can find.”

nods. “And someday one of us will corner Wolf and cast it on him. And maybe I could convince Qarina to Libra her … I don’t know if she’d find it boring or not.” She breathes out, feeling better with a plan in place. ⁂

: “Thank you for telling me about your journey to the Academy, Archie. I don’t—I think your parents would be absurdly proud of you, wherever they are. And I think … it will be really lovely one day to hear you sing as an Irós.”

🙧