ꙮ Outside the Kinder, Gentler Path heading to the Cathedral buried in Beast-guts. The Liminal Express always feels ridiculously large, when you’re riding it alone, but time aboard it moves even more swiftly, you think, without any company.
No song playing
Up next: 0 songs
Scene Archives
← Active ScenesA Song She Once Sang
#saint
stands outside the gate. She doesn’t open it yet. Her hair is down, and she’s wearing a simple dress—undyed cotton, sleeveless, draping—really just a couple long lengths of fabric tied together. She takes off her shoes and sets them, along with her well-traveled cloak, her sword, her pistol, her pack, on the ground right outside the gate. Anything that might burn she leaves behind, save the Mask—that is kept tied tight around her waist, its pouch now reinforced with woven silk spun with radiant and pellucid gnosis.
pauses. Hesitates. It feels sacrificial. She did not mean to make it so. Iphigenia, Polyxena, Antigone—the names, the stories, the knowing of them that she perhaps shouldn’t have but does, deep in her bones—she thinks of them as she pushes the door open and steps through.
ꙮ Perhaps not the kindest of the Kinder, Gentler Paths, opening as it does into the cathedral of iron and flesh and sorrow. Or, perhaps, the kindest, and only time will tell? Her eye fixes on you, the moment you enter.
She does not fear sorrow. She perhaps loves it too much. “Hello,” she says, pausing to curtsy to the eye. It is hot inside, enough that it’s immediately uncomfortable. The ground underneath her bare feet threatens to scald. She closes her eyes and she draws the burning gnosis around her into herself. She is fire. She has been told that by the stars themselves. Fire does not fear more fire. She imagines flame not dancing over her skin, but under it. Sparks and starlight rendering her half-flame, perhaps more. The edges of her dress might singe; her hair might too. She isn’t paying attention to them. She is tired of limits. She is tired of human. Let her be something else, here, for a little while.
ꙮ If one were watching – as I am watching – one would see her body ripple like a paper lantern, like it’s lit from the inside with a bright but shifting fire. Her hair does not singe, it just brightens. Bright red vines or veins, winding through it, illuminating it like an oddly luminous ruby studded chain net.
laughs in delight, always delight. “Oh,” she tells you. “That’s beautiful. Thank you.” She lets the burning gnosis flow through her, lets the part of her that is fire—and here she is more fire than anything—spill out through the cathedral. Then she looks at the eye. ⁂
: “I have what I hope is a gift,” she tells Her. She takes a place in font of the eye, kneels, making sure her shins make contact with the ground-that-is-also-flesh. Then she places her palms on the ground before her, rests her forearms on the ground as well, as she presses her forehead against the ground too, brining herself into a low, almost prostrate, bow. The blood and meat of it does not give her pause. The heat does not give her pause. She is afraid often, almost always, but it is never when doing these things. She breathes a bit—counts to twelve, six inhales, six exhales—and then she opens every window and door within her, drops the walls of the house that is herself, and she invites Her in. 🙧
- Salme used their techné Methexis (Salme has recreated the Ancient technique by which they can link her mind and experiences with that of another person and can do so effortlessly with a willing participant)
ꙮ Louder than it’s possible to imagine, sung with the melody of the song the mouths sang: WHEN WILL MY HOUR COME ‘ROUND AT LAST? An echoing, booming sorrow, guilt, shame, frustration, a keening wail of anguish in every atom of your body and shrouding every whisper of your mind. A tide, a flood of fire, but you are also fire, and fire cannot be lost within fire, can it? And regret cannot be lost within another, greater regret. But still, you feel– impossibly small in the face of it. A tiny speck of dust looking up at the cosmos and being aware of the enormity. How does that feel, from the inside?
has felt tiny for so long, impossibly small, a speck, if even that—an atom, undifferentiated from any other atom, hopefully woven into a chain of something greater but only hopefully. She has known vastness—the Mask is vast, the Scorpion Queen is vast, the Dream-Whales are vast, the Omniclast is vast. She has known vast, impossible things and she has loved them all the more for her smallness. She is small, a grain of sand through the too-quick hourglass, the unthreaded eye of a needle of impossibility. Even this is beautiful; even this can be loved. And in turn, she offers up her own smallness—the precise articulation of her hands, her body wrapped in Aurelius’ warmth, the wind through her hair as the Awoken pulls her through fireworks, the sound of Wolf’s flute, sweet and true, the glory of a blackberry bursting on her tongue. Small things, maybe nothing against the wave of sorrow, guilt, shame, frustration, of anguish. But maybe not nothing.
ꙮ Small things, small joys, small creatures that take small breaths and sing– and the tide crashes, and overflows Salme’s mind, and with it, another pang of guilt, another life snuffed out, another name She can’t possibly know to mourn. The Cathedral is a raging inferno, then, everywhere but for the Kinder, Gentler Path; smoke rises from the borehole. ⁂
ꙮ …but, when the tide of burning gnosis passes, Salme still stands, because she is fire, and fire cannot be lost in fire. And the eye focuses on her, again. Intently. (You see yourself, so small, so fragile and yet– and yet not. Not either of those things. You feel the Beast’s skin binding you like an eggshell, Salme; you feel a desperate hunger beyond that for which you have the words, you feel all of your many, many eyes but for the one, blinded by light that yet shines, blunting your senses - but one eye fixes upon the woman made of fire, standing in the Cathedral, and You ask a question of Yourself: WHAT AM I? WHAT AM I BECOMING? And perhaps You have an answer.
: “You do not get to mourn me,” she says, flames licking at her skin, flames shining through her skin. When she speaks, sparks perhaps fall from her lips. “That task is given to another if it should come to pass. You do not get to mourn me, but if you wish to know me, my name is Salme tou Alsos.” ⁂
shifts the link then, and sends back her own vastness, because She must know, She must know, what it is like. There is a cave that is not a cave, that is a junction of roots and stone, with 216 tallymarks, where hers will be—might be—hopefully will not be—the 217th. She does not come bearing hope; she is not made for peace or for communication. She is not made for anything at all other than what she chooses, and what she chooses is to wrest Her sorrow, guilt, shame, frustration, into her own hands and to share hers in turn—and hers is vast, vaster than maybe a single entity, no matter how enormous, could hope to be. Vast because it is the summation of an entire chorus of Sword-Saints speaking, living, dying through her. “Desolation means destruction, but it also means to be left alone completely, it means isolation. I cannot offer to help you bear yours, but I can show you mine.” And so she does. And she does not fear the fire, because she is fire. And she is not fragile, because she has also chosen not to be.
🙧
ꙮ And for the first time, the Mother of Monsters meets the Mask which recollects, scale and scope squared and scored to her sorrow. ⁂
ꙮ Underneath all of that: an isolation which comprehends isolation. Underneath that: the simple fact of two minds, meeting. Terms cancel out, one by one, whirling overhead in the grander scope of things, and in the quiet that remains, in Salme’s sigil the Mother of Monsters discovers, for a brief moment, at least, an answer. ⁂
ꙮ You’re in a small park, nestled up against the side of an immense red mountain. It was volcanic, once; it bled earth-blood and sighed out holy fumes and then it was elevated by purpose, became more holy than it ever had been. It was home. Warrened with passageways, shimmering with gleaming metal and broad avenues, a city built into the mountain entire, boiling with gnosis and bright and mortal brilliance. In the distance, black stone towers rise, proud and new. But what matters, right now, is that there’s still room for a small park, burgeoning with trees, curled up in the sunward side of the mountain like a dog at a hearth. ⁂
ꙮ And as you stand in the small park, the world’s tiniest little wren flits through the air, to land on your shoulder. 🙧
does understand, and doesn’t quite understand. She knows this mountain because Wolf knows this mountain and he shared it with her. She does not know this park, or this wren, but she doesn’t need to. She only needs to let the soft animal of her body love what it loves in this moment, and she loves the feel of the sun, the bustle of the city, the fiends that spill from the mountain. She breathes in the air.
ꙮ The world’s tiniest little wren sings a song and the song she sings is a lovely, simple, incredibly small little wren song.
opens her mouth, and sparks don’t spill out, nor do words, but the little trills and chirps of a sparrow in reply.
ꙮ And so they sing, for a little while, like that, a song simple enough to only have room for a gentle, sunlit joy.
thinks that is part of it too, has always been part of it. That this matters, perhaps more than anything else—the birdsong of two little brown birds, singing in the sunlight.
knows it does not make the despair less—perhaps it makes it worse, in some ways. But it matters.
ꙮ Neither more, or less, I think - but just as Her sorrow is real, so is the joyful braided song of a sparrow and a wren.
: “You’re right, of course. Neither more nor less.” She lifts her hand to brush the head of the wren with a fingertip.
ꙮ It nuzzles into your fingertip, briefly, then beeps at you, then hops onto your hand. Hop!
laughs her brightest laugh, the kind that spirals up into the sky almost endlessly, and she keeps the image here, in this moment, but echoes it with her memories of Jae in the butterfly garden.
echoes that with the image of Jory landing on her shoulder in the library, and that with—with a sense of wonder, at Badri’s easy, warm delight at coaxing a sparrow on his fingertip, at the way his eyes softened and the Centrelight seemed to bend more gently around him.
ꙮ We always find comfort and beauty, don’t we? We make it, make spaces in which it can be, if we need to. This, perhaps, was a thing that You briefly, happily recall. (But which Salme had not forgotten.)
had not forgotten, but forgets from time to time. It’s hard to remember. It’s part of why she came here, You know. What she wants are answers, sure, but what she needed was to act, to do something. And she thought—You might be lonely. You might like to have a couple small moments of comfort, of beauty, of smallness, even, which is really not so small at all.
ꙮ One moment is not a small thing, no. Not in the face of Her anguish. Not ever, really.
ꙮ You can feel the moment fading, the memory flickering around the edges, crisping, consumed with regret. That this once was, and will not be again. But, for a moment, there was birdsong.
nods, because she understands this too. “I hope there will be again,” she tells Her. “I cannot promise—I will not promise. But I am choosing to hope that there will be again. And …”
⁂
thinks of the Beast from the lens of the observatory, magnificent, burning; of Almachadta, its irrica rings, the love of some great beast, spiraling outwards; of Samudra stretching below, a glittering, infinite carpet of water. She shares the unshakeable certainty that she is sitting with the devourer of her world, she shares the fear that Her hunger and flame will destroy the people she loves—Saranzaya, Caion, Badri, she shares the fear that roils under the tightrope of hope she has chosen to walk, and she says, “I am Almachadta. I am its memories and stories. I am its hope and its despair. I forgive you. And I love so many people who might not survive this. I forgive you. And I may die. I forgive you. Any part of it that you play in this—I forgive you.” She knows it will not assuage the guilt and shame. She thinks, still, that She needs to hear it.
also shares, below all that, the understanding of, the immense fact of Her love. 🙧
ꙮ Her love, and Her love, and Your love. It is the same. She would not mourn, if She did not love. If She had not been made for the purpose of love. And so, when the image of the park fades back into the Cathedral at the heart of the Beast… She meets your gaze; Her eye seems a little brighter.
meets Her gaze in turn, and she blinks. Once, twice, three times. Slowly. Then asks if there is anything else She would like to see—stars or the Centrelight or Luĉja, living and, yes, flourishing. Then asks if there’s anything She would like her to know, no matter how small. She would happily carry Her story, of course, but here, twined in methexis, trading sorrow for sorrow and joy for joy she does not think either of them would have the time or words for full stories.
ꙮ One last pulse, one last shared certainty: one day, She will have a mouth, and She will sing Her history. Whatever sorrow She has to endure, She has to cause, to make it to that day, She will, because She was made for love, not death.
hears that certainty, braids it into her own hope, shows Her the handiwork, and sends a memory—she is at the marketplace in Kesset, and there are two people with her she will one day fall in love with, and she is laughing her best laugh for the first time in years, fully herself and alive in that moment. Another small memory. Her dearest joy.
lets the link between them dissolve. Imagines it dissolving into small, singing brown birds that soar into the rafters of the cathedral. It, of course, does not work like that, but for one moment the image is strikingly possible.
ꙮ You can see it. (She can see it.)
ꙮ The eye lowers, very slightly. Restfully? Perhaps it is restfully. There has been precious little rest, for Her, you are certain.
hopes it is restfully. She gets to her feet. Her hair may be unsigned, but the dress, where it touched the ground, has burnt away. She blinks at Her again a couple times before she gives a small little wave and steps through the gate, back into the void. Left without the burning gnosis of the Beast to draw into her, her internal flame is more of a soft candleglow. She lets that, too, dissipate.
ꙮ The world is peaceful and still, beyond the Gate.
: “Thank you, silmät, for staying with me through that,” she says, tugging her boots back on, her cloak over the ruined dress. She hefts her pack with her sword and her pistol, and then hesitates. “Can I ask you a question?”
ꙮ I can’t guarantee I’ll have an answer, but– you can always, always ask.
swallows. “Sometimes I’m worried I’m not doing it right. I could have pushed for more answers. There were a couple moments where I saw where I could dig in, maybe ferret out some little truth. But I—couldn’t? Or rather, it felt wrong. Like She who felt such despair didn’t need to be ripped apart for what little gobbets of truth I could find.”
steps on to the liminal express, and curls up in the nearest seat on the left.
ꙮ If I may answer your question with another question: What small, meagre truth could you have unearthed that would have been more valuable, truly, than the soft song of a wren and a sparrow, or the fact of Her love? Than the gift which you gave Her?
Wings unfurl from the engine-egg, like a kaleidoscope, slowly, refracting rainbows over the traincar, before beating, once, twice, and the train begins to slide smoothly along moon-silver track.
blinks … well, not at you, because there’s not ‘you’ to blink at, but the intent is there. “Oh,” she says, tilting her head back against the seat. “You’re right.” And then, stronger, “you’re right.” And she watches out the impossible window of the liminal express as she heads back to the ziggurat in the void.