ꙮ The Liminal Express! The conductor is, mysteriously, absent as the train is approached.
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- Aurelius
- The Awoken
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#saint
#awoken
: “So,” she says, looking at the train a little skeptically. “We can talk in there?”
: “We can talk anywhere, Salme.” He smiles. “But this is farther away from the Ziggurat, where everyone else currently is.”
: “Yeah.” She squeezes his hand and boards the train. It really is beautiful inside. She wishes she had been more … present … for it. She sits, and waits for him to sit.
allows himself to be guided, and sits as she does, opposite her.
: “I wanted to apologize,” she begins, meeting his eyes, intent. “When you said–when Aurelius wasn’t himself, and you called it a ‘distraction,’ I had thought you were saying what I feel is a distraction. And then Aurelius showed me the conversation you had–truly, you might consider establishing some boundaries there–and I realized that wasn’t what you meant at all. And.”
: “I realized I hadn’t made myself clear to you. My feelings, or my desires. This is me doing so.” And then she holds out her hand and unfurls her fingers, and in her palm there is a small charm.
ꙮ The charm is a bluejay, carved of a pale wood. It is delicate, each feather carefully detailed, though it is also strong. The same shimmering azure thread that decorates the sparrow on his mantle decorates this charm, though it is interwoven with a soft earthy green that gleams like silk. When he, and he alone, touches it, he will find it filled with memories.
: “I was going to hang it from my cloak in order to match yours, but. This use seemed better.”
🙧
is wide eyed, mouth slightly open, and altogether rigid- more still than Stillness. There’s a light behind his eyes that is frantically trying to catch up, completely off-guard, and (rotating) wildly.
has no sound, or breath, and in the markerless surroundings of the train, but far, far more of nothingness, ‘seconds’ loses the concept of itself.
: “I…” He reaches out, seeing only what’s in front of him, slowly, deliberately willing each muscle and tendon to reach forward, lean forward, and gently grasps the charm, and Salme’s hands in his own.
: “There are only a few in here, and they’re of–you. Of us. You can move on to the next one whenever you’re ready.” She curls her fingers around his, the charm grasped between them.
ꙮ The first memory is this: the marketplace at Kesset, where he stands before a booth while Iosi the tailor unfurls bolts of Ishcata in his direction and he says, “I love it. I’ll need some lengths, and a little assistance for fitting—I would like to add some cuffs to my garb, and to also augment this tattered mantle of mine. It—“ he falls into a pause, and she does not let it distract her but she does notice. “—worn as it is, I feel as though I should not part with it yet, but I would instead fill it with this treasure found in a faraway land.” And then come the words: “I would like to carry the memory of Kesset forward with me, as now part of myself.”
Somewhere, deep within her, a lyre-string vibrates, like calling to like. 🙧
blinks, in realization. He searches for the next memory.
ꙮ The second memory, that same day, in the marketplace: Salme is standing in front of the Irrica vendor’s stall, saying, “which one of my beloveds will buy me that bracelet I want so very much then? I am asking, after all.” She knows she’s being mocked, but when Awoken replies with an eager “Oh! Allow me!” Appearing a crystal from somewhere, and then, “here you are. Or is it…” collapsing his fingers that Salme now knows are dexterous and careful only to unfurl them and show two crystals, her heart twists with some emotion she’s never really felt before. ⁂
ꙮ When Aurelius waves his hand dismissively, flicking his thumb toward the stall owner, and then appearing a crystal on the display case, next to the bracelet, her heart twists tighter, wound up with thread, unable to beat. ⁂
ꙮ “Seems like the answer’s ‘both of em’,” the vendor says, ⁂
and Salme plays it off, she does, and it is funny but that’s when she knew that the answer was both of them, and that the Awoken is the one who showed her the truth. 🙧
: “This was… then.”
: “I’m. I’m glad that-“ He searches for the next one.
ꙮ And then, a third, again that day: “All things change. Nothing is forever. Who I am has already changed thanks to everyone, and I accept that wholly and lovingly. Even if I know not where it would lead and who I would become.” ⁂
ꙮ Her eyes catch on the elegance of his hands again as he touches his newly tailored cuff. He adds, “Even if I were to turn into a righteous god-beast, or a bizarre little gremlin, I’m sure anyone could recognize me. But for them, I feel… it’s hard to explain. Like I have to leave a stake in the past, as they remember. So that, maybe I too, could.” ⁂
ꙮ And then he looks up, his eyes—azure, bright, endless—meeting hers, then Aurelius’. “That’s everything I am,” he says, and she ⁂
hadn’t had words for the flickering want unfurling in her then, the certainty that she had been given a great gift and that she would move mountains to return it. She knows the word now, though, as she remembers. 🙧
: “I…hoped that-“ The next one, hurry, the next one.
ꙮ The next memory is at the Courtyard Inn, in Aurelius’ room: He is showing her a small, olive-wood carving of a house sparrow, bound with intricately woven azure thread, the kind she bought for him, the kind that the headwoman of her village used to dye—shimmery, impossible azure. And when she had expressed wonder he had said, “I’m glad you like it, I had hoped to do correctly by it locally. Such that I have been changed, such that I have been blessed, and such that I feel that I am protected, even should the void swallow us.” ⁂
ꙮ He had said, “I want to remember this, too.” ⁂
ꙮ And she had felt that same flickering feeling as before, but as a hearthfire now, hungry, wood-starved, but growing. “You’ll remember,” she had said. “You’d better, or I’ll find you and help you remember and—” but she had been a coward then, a coward still. She hadn’t thought he meant it in the way she had wanted. She hadn’t been able to admit she had wanted. Not then, but now she ⁂
thinks, if you forget I will find you and I will sit with you until you remember or until we can build new memories together and she knows it is the truth. 🙧
: “…you remembered.” The next. Now!!
ꙮ And the next memory is in the baths, or a series of memories, chained together by a thread of burning gnosis: Sinitöyhtönärhi, the name she had decided on when she decided he needed a name a candlemark earlier as she had soaked in the baths. His hands in her hair, careful, intent, practiced. His delight at the lightdrinkers, his wonder, his cleverness. His hands, unraveling the knots that had built up deep in her muscles, and then— ⁂
ꙮ He gathers her hair up behind her head, forcing her to look at him. “Walk bravely among the untold path,” he says. ⁂
ꙮ And in his hands she is something else—something strong, but small. A candleflame, a new shoot, the dim of the Centerlight falling. She relaxes into his touch and says, “But we must sing regardless, hmm, little bluejay?” and when she twists her head to brush her lips against the pulse-point of his wrist, she, for one moment, is unafraid of the tenebrous urge to ask for more. ⁂
ꙮ “We must sing,” he replies, and she shivers when he does, “we must joy, we must live.” And then he leans down to kiss the junction at her neck and shoulders and she ⁂
knows how their story will end tonight. 🙧
: “We remembered. We cared.”
: “Yes.”
draws breath. He remembers the next, but wants to feel the memory. Next.
ꙮ And the next: on the back of a swift as they ride for Tsemdrulukh, and he is saying this to Wolf, but for them both, “To those who flourish of Almachadta, who’s love is etched onto their very being, I believe. I believe you can break out of what has been. If you need that spark, I will help light it. But… I think you, should write it.” And she ⁂
colors this memory with certainty, with wild, giddy hope, with happiness, simple and secure. 🙧
perceptibly nods. “It’s… true. It always… always, has been.” Next, please, please. It’s too… it’s so warm.
ꙮ And the next, in the shrine of the Sword-Saints: she is saying, “we save what we can, but memory is a fickle, unkind thing,” and she means the Mask, she means the role of the Sword-Saint, but she also means him, with his memory of song and light, with his urge to move forward and his fear of the past. ⁂
ꙮ She means him, because she knows how memory has almost destroyed so many—has destroyed so many, she carries proof of that, but also even herself, the fear that’s dogged her since she forgot. Not of her time as the Sword-Saint, but the time before that’s threatened to bury her, to suffocate her with her own insignificance. ⁂
ꙮ She thinks he is beautiful and he is strong and she does not want to see the earth tumble over him in such a way, but she ⁂
also knows that he must remember regardless. That they have all been asked to bear more than they should, but he need not bear it alone. This was the secret that beat in her heart when she spoke in the shrine and now she grants it to him. 🙧
‘s eyes start to move, and he is no longer seeing the infinite. They focus forward, and start to see, the shimmer of budded, resonating green. “Change… it can only happen if-“ Next.
ꙮ And the next, back at the Courtyard Inn, in her room, in the dim of the Centrelight: it is the second time, and it is everything, and she hopes he never forgets, because she cannot write this memory to do it justice, but she shows when she looked down at him and tried to command, “You cannot consume me with your darkness. You will listen. You will live,” the love that was overflowing in her heart. ⁂
ꙮ And then she shows him the part of her that is also part of the Song, the heart-lyre, strung burning, burning, burning, with tenebrous and flourishing gnosis gleaming alongside, and the high, bright notes pellucid-radiant, and the way his hand reached through her and plucked from her the truest chord she knows, just as she teased low-high-high-low notes from the harpstrings of his heart and then— ⁂
ꙮ —the story, the game, the pleading, for him to not walk this path so coldly or so alone and then— ⁂
ꙮ —his question, in the morning. “Are you ready?” to which she can only answer, “Yes.”— ⁂
ꙮ —and finally the way he has made her laugh, and laugh, and laugh. ⁂
and
knows, and so he also knows, that there is room for one more memory, but the one she wished to inscribe onto the charm was shared with her, and thus is not hers, and so instead she left it blank, conspicuously, brilliantly so. A space for the next step forward, a promise that this story has only just begun. 🙧
: “We accept wholly, and truthfully, what is before us, what we are, and what we will be, will be forever changed.”
meets her eyes. “What we seek is more than defeating foes and fixing the broken.”
: “It is the transformation of everything, the hated and loved alike.”
: “And now… I know.”
: “I believe.”
: “That we are not afraid to strum the Song, to move the Stillness.”
: “To ignite from nothingness, unafraid of everything around.”
: “And that when we change… we would still know each other from the light we bring.” 🙧
: “I am still afraid,” she says, squeezing his hand. “But. That’s no reason not to move forward anyway. And I believe you, Awoken, and I believe in you.” ⁂
swallows, hard. It would have been easier, to simply show the memory, but she is a storyteller, and she wanted the memories to be about him only. “I asked Wolf for advice. I was afraid that you didn’t–that I was an … interchangeable part of your story. And he told me I should simply say what I wanted from you. I was afraid. And then Aurelius showed me I didn’t need to be afraid, that I did matter, but I am going to say it anyway, because you deserve to hear it. I don’t have to be the only love in your life, but I want to be loved by you. I want you to need me, fight for me, wait for me, stand beside me. I want to matter to you in a way no one else does, no one else can. You are so very much, Sininen, and I know many things will matter to you. I want to be one of them.”
🙧
: “You are, sweet sparrow. I do love you, as you were, as you are. As you will be. And I know… I believe, that you trust me as I am.”
: “And I believe that when I-“ something catches in his throat.
: “-when we, take a step onto unknown darkness, it will be brave, it will be scared.”
: “But it will not be alone.”
: “I do trust you. As you are, and as you were, and as you will become. And you will not be alone as long as I can help it.” There are tears in her eyes, but they are happy ones, and there is a thread of laughter in her voice. “And now you have several more memories to carry with you, to take out any time you like.” And she closes the distance between them, her hands still clasped with his, the charm held between them, to kiss him.
moves forward as well, to kiss her, for they will never be alone. Not anymore. And as they kiss, and his eyes are closed, so does she feel a gentle, warm, joyous drop upon her cheek.
breaks the kiss to rest her forehead against his. “So,” she says, though she doesn’t have very much to say.
: “Everything is said. Your memories told me everything that a cold existence could never steal.”
: “I have no solid way to express this next sentiment. But.”
: “The thought of taking the next step- unseen, unknown. It has never been a thing I had been aware of how much it demanded, until I believed I should share it with another.”
: “It simply was.”
: “And always would have been.”
: “Something I had never considered could change, or to change.”
: “But I hoped that it could, somehow.” 🙧
: “And it did. You changed it. Simply by–being, in the way you naturally are.” ⁂
: “I remembered something. A–not a story, precisely. A poem. My grandparent used to recite it to me. And it ends in this way: Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,/the world offers itself to your imagination,/calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–,” she takes a breath, careful, thoughtful, lets the moment hang. ⁂
finishes the verse. “over and over announcing your place/in the family of things. I have always been lonely. I don’t know if you have too, but you had marked out a very lonely strange path for yourself. And–well. I don’t know where I’m going with this, really.” ⁂
: “but I’m ready to walk it with you.” 🙧
claps his hands tighter around hers. “And I, with you.”
presses her lips to the crown of his head. “Thank you.” She takes a moment, another, and then says, “I have more to show you and more to tell you but. I was thinking you might like a moment to catch your breath.”
: “I… hahah, I would, yes.”
: “I can’t recall, nor did I ever envision, being seen, understood, and accepted so vividly.”
: “There would be heroic epics of me, of course, of course.”
grins. He’s back.
: “But that is nowhere the same feeling.”
: “True,” she says, carding her fingers through his hair. “The epic I’m working on will be rather different from the limericks I’m composing.”*
oops not done
: “but”
: “That’s for another time. For now, would you like to find a warm place in the Ziggurat and get some rest?”
: “I’d like that. And I also have.” He kisses her on the forehead and runs a hand along her braids. It’s caring and loving, not pulsed with desire.
smiles at him. “Well then,” she stands, finally unlinking their hands, leaving the bluejay charm nestled in his palm. “Shall we go to bed, then, beloved?” She offers him her arm.
allows her to help him up. He grasps the bluejay charm to his chest, unequivocally a part of himself, now.
: “And we didn’t even dirty Aury’s magnificent train.”
chuckles. “I think he’ll be alright, in the end.”
: “I do too,” she says. And then she leads him back to the Ziggurat, to their companions, and to the steady warmth of her body sleeping beside his.