Scene Archives

has asked the stage to be dressed in airy fabric. Layers of diaphanous silks hang from the ceiling at the back, none of them pure white, but dyed in soft, diffuse colors. In front of them sits a warp-weighted loom, threaded with strands of pure gnosis. In front of that she stands. Her hair is down and her feet are bare, but otherwise she wears the clothes she’s worn in Mu—transparent rose, delicate ochre, deep blue and burgundy. She stands still. She meets the eyes of each person. She waits.

waits.

waits.

moves, drawing her hands, and only her hands up, almost as if she is pressing a mask to her face. But there is no mask, there is only her face. She begins.

: “Speak, memory, gathered from worlds far-flung
twisted to thread by my own hand and kept, of lives
whose roots have touched my own. My honor to carry
what they gave, my burden to speak
a truthful lie—each story both and neither.”

is there, in the front row. He wouldn’t miss this for anything.

: “Memory-host, story-spinner, I preserve and
I obliterate. Not everything can be counted, known,
but still I speak of worlds and souls and something given—
theirs, and mine, borne in my cupped hands—a stitch sewn,
rootstock new-grafted, a ward against forgetting.”

brings her hands down and cups them together as if carrying water, and as she says the last last line she curls her hands into fists.

: “Speak, memory, of those who gave me precious things
that I might give them, spun anew, to you.”

takes a breath and steps forward. Somewhere distant comes a drumbeat—or is it a heartbeat? It is unclear. Slowly, but certainly, she begins glow, drawing burning gnosis into her body until her body is the paper of a lantern, containing shifting fire, her hair strung with rubies or embers. The fabric behind her catches the light, and rippling flame is cast over the audience.

speaks, in time to the rising drumbeat:

“Battle-born, fire-forged · Beast-kin wage Rites
Duels danced for love & living · down under spangled skies
Tooth-law tethers them · teaches, tests, tempers”

: “Hope-Hoarder sting-sceptered · she sits tyrant-tall
Wound-winner scar-marked · weapons welded to her throne
Courage-crafted gut-fierce · steel sings seeking glory”

: “Fiend-feasted bone-bruised · brief-borne lives lost
Death-debt feeds fire · forge-pyre pushes on”

allows the opening poem to rest, for a moment, and the drumbeat falls quieter—not gone, but softer, more constant. between her hands she draws a thread of burning gnosis, pulled from the air instead of a distaff, spinning carefully on a drop spindle that hangs from her other hand. “But not all Beast-born die in such ways. His name was Annarr, and I never knew him. I never will.”

: “Born in the far Reach, he left when he was young and small for the city they call Queenstown. Wherever there was challenge, wherever there were advances, that’s where you could find him. He apprenticed himself to the Queen’s machinist before the machinist knew he needed an apprentice. But he needed an apprentice, and the apprentice he needed was Annarr.”

: “He became a young man, quiet. Golden-lion-watched, those who did not loo at him closely could not hope to see him. Once, he tricked a warlord who thought to get one up on the Scorpion Queen by pretending to be on his side. Stole tricks and confidence then sprung his trap and resolve the situation Riteless. Fox-clever, he was. He had no need to fear the Rite, for he was one of the greatest warriors on the Beast, but he had no need to seek it out either. Fiendcrafter, weaponsmith, mapmaker, hunter-and-warrior—that was Annarr.” Lets the thread spin, longer and longer.

: “And then, one day, he decided to challenge the Scorpion Queen, as most hunters eventually do.” She sets the spindle down mid-air, hooks the thread on something invisible, and steps back. “She is ancient and vast, and she has never been beaten.” She draws an impression of burning gnosis out of the air—a woman, or something like a woman, seven feet tall with four arms and a stinger that hangs over her head, a promise, a threat. No sooner does she draw the image than it lunges forward. Salme dodges backwards in a neat handspring, then lunges low. The image of the Scorpion Queen is fast and strong but straightforward—she attacks and does not stop. Salme dodges and twists against her, feints and tumbles forward, the lantern fire inside her brightening with each pass. The drumbeat pounds, and the Scorpion Queen backs up, and Salme presses a heavy sword against her throat. “She has never been beaten. Annarr came the closest.”

stills as the Scorpion Queen leans down and whispers something in her ear, and there is a moment, just a single moment, where the burning gnosis inside Salme flares, like the way heat warps the air when it grows strong enough. Both Salme and the Scorpion Queen’s body twist impossibly, and then the Scorpion Queen has dissolved into flame, and Salme again stands forward on the thrust stage, spinning. “He lost. I have seen his sword melted into her throne. He lost, and something changed for him. I don’t know what.”

: “He went into the desert on the Queen’s request. He never came back.” She lets the distaff end of the thread go, and neatly pinches off the thread, catching the drop spindle in her hand. “On the Beast, they burn their dead. They return to fire, they join the air everyone breathes, and so they are remembered. Annarr did not leave a body. He left work undone, people who loved him, vague dreams of his own Clan.” She runs her finger over the burning gnosis-thread coiled around the spindle. “But from his death grew a life that I have come to love with everything that I am.”

is a professional. She does not find Aurelius’ eyes in the crowd, but she is thinking of him. “From Annar, I was given one of the greatest loves of my life. It is a debt I cannot hope to repay. And so instead I remember.” Carefully, she lets the gnosis inflecting her body fade until she is again just herself, and then she steps backwards, backwards, until she can set the gnosis-thread of Annarr’s life, now wound around a shuttle, next to the loom.

is silent for a moment, just as the drumbeats have gone silent, and then she steps forward again. Slowly, slowly, she draws pellucid gnosis into her body. Instead of a lantern, her skin becomes almost translucent crystal, refracting gentle patterns of light. Her hair and clothes seem to almost float around her. Between her hands, she begins to weave and knot a complex pattern of pellucid gnosis. Somewhere, a stringed instrument begins to play slow, shifting notes in a lower register.

“RECKONING I. Definition: An ocean is an expanse of salt water, deeper and wider than measure. Proposition: The ocean on Samuda is boundless. Proof: No island, no tower touches the ocean floor. Its edges do not meet land—they fold back on themselves, against geometry.”

carefully winds gnosis between her fingers as something begins to take shape. The gnosis within her expands until all the light in the room refracts like they are underwater. “RECKONING II. Proposition: On Samudra, belief becomes reality. Proof: Fear, felt intensely enough—by one mind or many—becomes a thoughtstom.”

speaks coldly, clinically as she recites. “RECKONING III. Definition: A thoughtstorm is the break in consensus made manifest. The sky rains scouring light; the ocean rises into towers of water. Definition: A bubble is a ward woven against it. Proposition: On Samudra, error carries physical weight. Proof: Thoughtstorms have swallowed towers. They have sunk islands whole.” She completes the gnosis-working in her hands, and intricate circle of knots and loops, and then she releases it. It rises up, up, up, and then settles quietly over the room. A Bubble, made.

breathes as the soft strings in the background pick up texture, and then holds up her hands and begins, again, to spin. “When I first met Solei, I thought them a coward. The great Academician of the Samudran Academy, they were polite but almost placid, as if the Virtue of Curiosity itself had been cut out of them.” In her hands, hank of Pellucid gnosis grows into tight-wound thread.

: “RECKONING IV. Axiom: Error, unexamined, does not cease to exist. Definition: The Academy exists to examine it regardless.”

: “We all wear loss differently. Solei had lost their home to a thoughtstorm. Solei had seen the loss of another. Solei had lost both their mentors. Solei had grown cautious.” The thread in her hand grows longer.

: “RECKONING V. Axiom: Truth does not stop at the border of what is safe to know,” and when she says that, though her body shimmers with pellucid energy, she looks up and her eyes are fire.

: “We needed Solei’s permission for a time-sensitive matter. Solei needed time. Pressure, applied at precisely the correct points, can yield the desired result. I supplied the pressure. Solei yielded. I still thought them a coward.”

: “It was not until I spoke with them privately, without need or expectation, I could see the loss for what it was. I could see the shape of their grief mirrored in my own. They had once been full of piss and vinegar. They had grown to fear their own boldness. So it often is in Samudra.” The thread spins longer.

: “RECKONING VI. Proposition: The pursuit of truth and the fear of its cost will always conflict. Proof: Of the last three Academicians, two were undone by the pursuit. The third was hardened against it. Corollary: One who serves both, without relief, is eventually claimed by one.” The strings undergirding her speech slow, become slow, shifting cords, tension and resolution, tension and resolution. “Scholium: The third chose otherwise, in the end. The storm came anyway.”

: “We were not there when the storm came and struck the Academician and their Circle. We only saw the aftermath: each member of the Circle but one frozen in mid-movement, crystalized.” Salme drops her distaff hand, and the flickering water-light within her stills, hardens. “Solei stood in the center of them all, facing the wave that had threatened all the Academy.” Salme twists her body into a fluid, desperate arc, her hand outstretched toward some terror that the audience might only imagine. The light in her body grows ever more still, and the spindle hangs from her outstretched hand, unmoving. “They were crying, when it happened,” she says, and her mouth is the only thing that moves. She herself is crystal-still, frozen.

holds the position, her human body twisted into a precise, almost painful shape.

holds the position.

does not breathe, and then she brings up her distaff hand, and pinches off Solei’s pellucid thread. “I do not know if they are dead or not. I may not ever know. Solei remains caught in that moment, and in that moment they saved the Academy itself and the life of a dear friend.” Here, her eyes flick briefly, conspiratorially, to Archie. “I did not know Solei well, but I think we might have one day been friends. As for what they gave me?”

allows the pellucid gnosis to refract inside her once again as she draws the Bubble from around the room back into her hands. “A place within the Academy lineage. Their teacher taught them to weave a Bubble, and they taught my dear friend, and he, then, taught me when I first arrived. A ward against fear, and the freedom to think. A technique handed to me through many hands. I owe Solei very much indeed. I do not know if it is a debt I will ever be able to repay. And so instead I remember.”

lets the pellucid gnosis ease out of her body, and is merely herself once again. She gathers the spindle of Solei’s pellucid thread and steps backwards, backwards, setting it next to Annarr’s thread, now also wound around a shuttle. And then she moves the loom with its near-invisible strings of light forward. She runs her fingers along the warp-threads as if they were harp strings, and then flourishing gnosis suffuses her body. Like sunlight, but gentle, dappled, something golden and green flickers on the walls of the room, and roots seem to spill from her feet and the veins in her body look like light-limned branches. The strings have fallen away, and now the soft breath of a wooden flute takes up slow, rhythmic sound.

: “Almachadta’s first lesson is death.
The second is what death feeds.”

: “Kaleva planted a seed, once.
From that seed, a pomegranate tree.
From that tree, a woven-wall—
apple bound to fig to lemon
the first wall of the first house
of a village named Oaretsch.”

, as she speaks, bends and tests the loom weights. Draws another shuttle wrapped with already-spun gnosis-thread, this one sunlight-and-dappled-shade like the light the suffuses her body. She does not begin to weave. Not yet.

: “Kaleva loved; his love grew rooms;
rooms for lovers, sons, and daughters.
His children loved; the house grew more.
The house and its people woven
into the sapling village beginning to sprawl.”

walks around the loom as she talks, networks of root-light spreading from her feet as she does.

: “Oaretsch grew and grew large with
weavers, dyers, spinners, tailors.
Kaleva’s house grew and grew empty;
its weavers wandered and settled afar.
When Iikka was born, the house was quiet
Two sisters only. Parents who passed early.
Each sister moved on.”

: “Iikka moved on too.
Then Iikka came home.”

: “The had journeyed far. They had journeyed long. Weaver without equal, they had seen all the world. Weaver without equal, they had found fame, found love, found family. Family brought them home again—a child, a partner, the taste of pomegranates. In that house, grown empty, they raised their son.”

stops pacing around the loom and then seats herself in front of it. Anyone facing her on the stage much look at her through the translucent warp-threads. She begins to weave. Her fingers are steady as she slides the shuttle through the warp, as she pushes the new weft against the old with the batten. It is labor. She lets them see it. “He was not a weaver except perhaps of song. He dreamed of far places. He dreamed of fame. He left once day and he did not return. It broke Iikka’s partner’s heart. Heart-broken, they died. Kaleva’s house, once overflowing, left with only Iikka. It went like that for many years.”

: “Aarre, son of Iikka, did not return. He did not return until he did. He brought with him a wife, and with them a child. An infant, seedling-small. Her named was Salme, a poem, a song. Aarre and his wife could not raise her on the road. Or would not. Did not, is what matters. To Iikka she was given, and in Kaleva’s house she grew.” Continues to weave slowly, steadily, visible even through the warp and weft of the loom. She does not look at anyone. Her weave is tight, neat. Her hands are steady and clever.

: “Iikka’s body had grown brittle. Brittleness born from long life or travel, brittleness borne in the blood. No one could say, but they could not keep pace with Salme’s bright ember. Iikka kept Salme still, taught her the craft of the needle, the whorl of the spindle, the way to thread and weight the loom. Weaving would come later. And in that stillness, Salme spoke words—stories, lies, of what she saw in Oaretsch when Iikka could not help but let her run wild.”

slowly, the tapestry woven of flourishing gnosis takes shape. It is well-made, evenly woven, but it is not the work of a master weaver. Salme’s hands are confident, but they are not the confidence of someone who has been doing this all their life. It is obvious to anyone who saw her spin, which the whole room has. “Salme sat and assisted where she could. Eased Iikka’s pains and way through life. Loved them and learned everything she was taught. Sat at the loom and wondered when that craft would be handed down to her.” Salme’s weaving grows less even as she speaks. A frown breaks upon her face.

: “It never happened. Death is the first lesson, and Salme learned early. Knew, knew it was coming for Iikka had grown slow. Slow to move, slow to wake, and then one day did not wake at all.” The flourishing gnosis in her body does not flicker but dims. The root-lines radiating from her feet shrink back towards her body. “Salme did, in the bed by the hearth-fire they shared for warmth. Salme woke, and Iikka did not. She remembers still the hand thrown over her shoulder—stiff, too cold.” She doesn’t batten the next line well enough, and it leaves gaps. She seems not to notice.

: “She was young—younger than people who are born here ever get to be. She spoke to the village head, told her what had happened, asked to choose for Iikka’s death the songs and stories told. On Almachadta we return the dead to the soil, let it do its patient work unraveling the body. At the death-rite, Salme spoke, performed, remembered. Honors and burdens—this was the first. This is the one she has carried the longest.”

stops weaving to briefly run her hands over the textile on the loom, its tight, even journeyman workmanship turning uneven, gaping. The frown does show on her face now. “Iikka’s is the oldest story. Iikka’s is the foundation. Iikka gave to me—” and then an inhale of breath, the sharp sound of something breaking.

does not cry. Salme does not cry when she is performing.

: “Did you know that ‘textile’ contains the word for ‘text’?” she says. “When words were young, they were the same—the act of entangling words to build meaning, and the act of entangling threads to build fabric. Stories are a thing that are woven; textiles can define the self as much as a story can. Someone I love told me that.”

runs her fingers along the imperfect weft as the flourishing light within her dims. “Iikka did not give me either text or textile; I built my skill with both for myself. Iikka gave me a wound they did not mean to give. Iikka gave me a home that did not last.” She takes a slow, shuddering breath.

stands, “Iikka gave me rich soil and context. And it is not a debt, but it is still, it is still my honor.” The flourishing light inside her grows again, almost brighter this time, her roots running deeper. “And so I remember.” She lets the flourishing gnosis seep out of her body as she reaches out and moves the loom back to the wall, where the shuttles of Annarr and Solei’s gnosis-threads cast slants of light on the fabric that hangs from the ceiling, and now the loom itself—flourishing, burning, pellucid. But she is not done.

pauses before stepping forward again. She is in control of her body, and most people in the crowd do not know her well enough to see snatched moments she needs for self composure, but someone might.

steps forward again, and draws into herself radiant gnosis. Instead of going translucent, her skin seems somehow more opaque, soft, white-gold light coming from half-lidded eyes, spilling from her lips and the tips of her fingers. She begins.

: “How much of love might be contained
within a single leaf?
A labor of well-counted years
extending centuries.”

: “And what’s kept longer than a leaf?
Crystal and ruby souls
who sleep until the future day—
a hope I cannot hold.”

: “And yet I’ve heard the bells which rang
to wake them for a spell.
I did not know the song or sound
but a woman I beheld.”

draws her hands apart and between them glows a radiant thread, soft white-gold. She looks up, and the gold of her eyes is soft. “Her name is Wynn,” she says, and her inflection matches the inflection with which Wynn spoke. “And I met her on the Festival of Days. I knew two things about her before that moment: that she was herself a weaver of almost unequaled skill, and that she had been well and truly loved.”

: “I do not know if everyone on Mu loves and is loved so thoroughly. I remember in specifics, not generalities, but this is a thing which I knew. The Yazhn together gave form and will again to six people who had gone to their Rest. It was not an act without cost. I was there. I witnessed it.”

spins the thread, white-gold, impossibly soft-looking. Her hands are certain again. “The first words she spoke was the name of one she had loved while she was awake. The next words let her get her bearings. The third thing on her mind were textiles—our dress, our fashions. A master weaver indeed.”

: “She was not the shrinking kind of shy, but compliments made her blush.” And here she ducks her head and lets her cheeks color. “She was not the loud kind of bold, but still she made requests—for those of us who had met her to love and care for the one she had loved in life. She knew the length of time allotted to her, and she used it well. She held the hand of my friend until her time was through.”

: “It was only for a song that I knew Wynn, but the love and work that allowed for such a moment showed me another contour of your world.” She reaches out her distaff hand, but does not pinch off the thread, merely holds it. “I make no claims to complete comprehension—only this. A moment given, another part of the devotion each of you give. And also given: the honor of seeing, the burden of ever trying to understand more fully.”

: “I make no claim to where Wynn’s life begins or ends.” She pinches off the radiant thread. “But stories require an ending, and so I am ending it here with a promise to remember.” With a sigh, she releases the radiant gnosis, with her body becoming again just a body, her body language her own.

steps backwards, carefully, as she has before, and slides the loom to the front of the stage again. She gathers the gnosis-threads—Annarr’s, Solei’s, Wynn’s, and sets them before her, each gently glowing.

kneels again in front of the tapestry and runs her hands over its imperfections. She looks at the gnosis-threads, wound on shuttles, but when she picks up Annarr’s thread it is instead looped on a tapestry needle. “Memory-host, story-spinner, I preserve / and I obliterate,” she recites as she starts using the needle to fill the gaps in the tapestry. “Every act of memory and every act of storytelling is creative and destructive. The excision of details grants legibility. Annarr was more than I could possibly hope to say, and yet he was precisely what I said.”

ties off Annarr’s thread and picks up Solei’s. “The lives / whose roots have touched my own,” she recites, mending the worst gaps with the strong, tightly-spun thread of pellucid gnosis. “ It does not have to be for very long at all, I don’t think. Sometimes, if we are very lucky, we get a lifetime or near to, but knowing Solei did not matter less for the brevity of time.”

weaves the tail end of Solei’s thread into the tapestry, and then picks up Wynn’s thread. “Not everything can be counted, known, / but still I speak of worlds and souls and something given—“ The shortest thread, for the telling was the shortest, she sews it through the near center where the tapestry still gaps. It only runs a single length of the work, but it gleams with a steady, certain glow. “I think there are limits to what our minds can hold. I have found such limits in my journeys. But still we must speak, to make things intelligible where we can.”

stands, and the tapestry she’s made is not a master weaver’s work. It lacks even the journeyman’s competence she usually weaves with. But it is complete for what it is, and it glows and flickers and refracts and gleams with four kinds of gnosis-light. “I have spun and spoken thus and given, in turn what was given to me.” She cuts the gnosis-tapestry free from the loom, and without the sheet of gnosis-work between herself and the audience, she is again simply human. “Rest, now, memory, and let the living walk forward on paths unknown.”

hesitates, for a moment, and then walks forward and kneels before the Kin in the front row and offers him the tapestry.

says, just as softly back to him, “You’re welcome. This is who I am. This is what I do. It was my honor.” And then she stands again, and says to everyone present, “Thank you for your time and thank you for your witness,” before she gives a simple, straightforward bow.