ꙮ Ksenija’d mentioned, sometime yesterday, that she wanted to go Exploring the new island properly, now that the ‘beasties’ were not going to be an unpredictable and ongoing conflagration hazard; things like ‘timing’ seem to be somewhat of a suggestion around Cloudset, in comparison with the Academy and its classes, schedules, and various publicly-visible timepieces. Ksenija’s in the middle of an animated conversation with one of her partners about a hypothetical language he’s developing that would encode information about the provenance of information and one’s degree of belief in that information on a grammatical level, but it’s the kind of conversation that happens while everyone involved is waiting for other things to occur (and feels like part N of Very Many, probably); Ksenija’s got a backpack that’s full of– mostly, things on which a person or persons could lunch, and various accoutrements of specimen-collection.
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- The Dragon
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← Active ScenesThe New Island
slips into the area with her own backpack. She’s changed back into her clothes from Almachadta—or, same pants and boots, but her shirt is a loose, gnosis-worked blouse with shimmery cutouts along the back and sides in the silhouettes of three familiar flowers, and the cuffs of the voluminous sleeves are buttoned with neat mother-of-pearl buttons. Her hair has been braided back in two simple braids. “Not too late for me to join you?” she asks.
saw Salme ambling her way with a backpack, and gave her interlocutor a big hug - seems Salme was what the conversation was waiting for. “Haven’t wandered off yet, have I?” An easy smile. She’s wearing a simple, almost rough-looking shirt and trousers, easy to move around in, rather than something evocative of Academy garb (and has been more or less since shortly after you got back after yesterday’s events.) “Wanted you to be there when I started looking around. Didn’t feel right otherwise.”
laughs a bit. “I mean. I maybe have … been the cause of the island, but it is very much right in the middle of your home, so,” she waves her hand in the direction of the island, “please, feel free.”
was already heading off across the bridge! She runs a hand along the bit where it connects to Cloudset proper - wood that’s grown into and anchored itself in the coral, joins as seamless as if they’d been built that way - and then onto the flower-draped hollow log of the bridgeway itself. “Out of curiosity, do you -know- these flowers? Are they from your home?”
kneels down and examines them, before nodding. “Vines, mostly. Trumpet honeysuckle and clematis.” She plucks the center out of one of the deep red flowers and sucks the nectar out of it, then nods and stands, handing Ksenija another center bit. “Honeysuckle is sweet and edible, if you want to try. It tastes exactly the same as the kind from home.”
blinks in delight before bringing the flower to her lips, and then- well, the delight certainly doesn’t cease. “Oh! Oh, that’s. That’s absolutely lovely, Salme. Odd to think I’m one of the first people to get to taste this. Not that odd, I suppose, I remember spending time with flavour-workers when I was in the Academy, but that was different, you know?” She runs her fingertips along the wood of the bridge, takes a deep breath as they continue, and approach the other side.
grins at her. “I imagine it was pretty different.” As they reach the other side, she stops, and breathes in the air—the oaks and the pines the the understory trees blooming, now, a riotous fuschia, and then dense clusters of hydrangea beneath them with nodding, heavy heads of blue-purple flowers. Then, lower, daffodils and hyacinths and spiky tulips and the delicate folds of sweat peas ranging from deep purple to pale pink, and pure white trillium interspersed amongst the riot of color. She frowns. “These are … hm. All my favorites. Or, if not my favorites they’re flowers that are … significant to me, but they don’t all bloom at the same time.”
looks at Ksenija. “I’m not sure. What that actually means, if you want to use this island to grow things. Though. What do you think of … all this?” She reaches down to pluck a round, dense, butter-yellow peony.
takes a deep breath, and then another. She’s never -seen- this many flowers- and doesn’t seem surprised, when Salme says they don’t bloom at the same time. “We’re going to spend quite some time, I imagine, just- observing the island. I’m curious whether it’ll -continue- to bloom riotously like this, or if that’ll ease off over time. I know that there are ways to induce blooming with gnosis and light, I suppose it’s possible something like that but at a grand scale happened, here.” ⁂
: “That’s not really an answer to your -question-, though. What do I think of it? I think it’s incredible. Beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She hunkers down, herself- clips a few leaves and blossoms, here and there, for vials, presses one of them in a tiny pocket flower-press.
: “There’s … I can try to record some of the knowledge available to me, about working the soil. Light and water are important, but things like acidity and soil type matter too. I’m not—there are many memories, in the Mask, about the skills it takes.” She looks at Ksenija. “I thought you’d be more—upset? I don’t. I refuse to regret it, but I did create this and it caused some … strife.”
leans down and plucks two more orange-red bloom, this one more broadly flared with a wider mouth and offers one to Ksenija while she eats the other, enjoying the peppery taste of a nasturtium.
nods. “I was never a hydroponicist, but I know one of the things I’m after today is soil samples to send back to the Academy.” She listens- tilts her head to the side. “Why would I be upset? Certainly it’s going to make life at Cloudset more interesting, for a little while. But it’s… beautiful? It’s beautiful, and strange, and something… genuinely -new- in the world to discover and understand. That’s a gift, to me, a priceless gift.” ⁂
takes the flower, and noms it, making a note about what’s edible, what’s delicious- someone in Cloudset distills stakt, and is going to have a FIELD day with all of this. “I caught glimpses of the fire-dancer who spoke to you, inside the beacon-fire. More than anything else, I… wanted to reach out to her. Make sure she knew that she, too, could be welcome here, if she wanted to be. Couldn’t get too close, but I had a feeling that the six of you could. I’m glad I was right.”
takes a deep breath and releases it. “Her name is Melpomene and she is. Me. A part of me.” She walks deeper into the island, noticing the blooms—even the oaks seem heavy with acorns, even though they seem too young to fruit. Like everything is just—too excited to wait. She laughs a little. “A part of me I was embarrassed and ashamed of. And I guess I was concerned, because before we arrived Archie asked us to be careful and I … I didn’t do it on purpose, but. I don’t know. I don’t know what the Samudran perspective on all this would be.”
: “Melpomene,” carefully, syllable by syllable, the most important piece of information- although her face betrays surprise, and interest, as Salme continues, and as she follows, staring up at the trees, already tall enough to stare -up- at. “I appreciate that you wanted to be careful. I suppose, in comparison to what you know, this world is… terribly fragile, isn’t it?” She reaches out, presses her hand against a tree trunk. Very softly: “…Silvie’s dreamed of trees. She described them to me. Not… these trees, I don’t think. Different trees. But trees. And now I know what they look like. Now I’ve touched one, with my own hand.”
: “It isn’t as fragile as I feared,” she says, equally softly. “I think it’s stronger than anyone has given it credit for.”
: “That’s a sycamore. They love water. They grow by rivers, and their bark peels off in patches and the upper branches are bone-white. They’re haunting and lovely.”
: “Someone at the Academy’s got a -book- full of preposterous names they’re going to want to give things and I’m going to have to tell them they’ll have to wait and assign them to a slightly-more-purple kind of lettuce once someone’s done with their hydroponics project.” She laughs, resting the back of her hand against the bark. “We really have made it this far, haven’t we? To get to see -this-. Can’t be too fragile, I suppose.”
: “I’ve always tended to overestimate my own toughness and underestimate that of others, and. Maybe. Samudra isn’t done any favors by that approach either. I know I’ve certainly hurt people I care about doing that.”
looks up at the canopy of leaves. “You seem like you believe Samudra’s more durable than some of the others. Is that why you left the Academy?”
lets out a short, soft laugh. “One of the reasons, yes. I love the Academy, and everyone in it. But… hmmm. How to put it.”
: “I don’t think they would have a glimpse of Melpomene and seen ‘new friend’. I think – with the best of intentions and with the world’s safety in mind, they would have looked at her and seen… at best, something that needed to be picked apart to be understood; at worst, a threat to defend against.”
: “Yes. That seems true.”
: “I was wondering, actually, two things. Since. This island was … my doing, at least in part, do you think I’d be capable of changing it now? Would I have any special ability to do so? And the second…” ⁂
hesitates, as the hilltop comes into view. “Do you think I could call Melpomene forth to speak with her?”
: “Hm. I mean, I suppose there’s only one way to find out the answer to either of those questions, and that’s to run the experiment. There’s definitely a solidity to this island that I’m not used to, that feels like changing it from what-it-is might be harder than- well, than I’m used to, at any rate. Coral and crystal are easy to shape. I can’t touch this island, and that’s interesting to me in and of itself.”
: “I don’t know how much I’d want to change it, just to … understand if it could be changed. To make, say, something sprout there where nothing is growing at the moment.” She gestures to a bare spot nestled between the roots of a pine.
wanders over, and hunkers down, rests her back against the bark, presses her fingertips into the light moss. “Doesn’t sound like it could hurt to try.”
thinks of the kind of delicate, almost fern-like plants that like the grow nestled between tree roots, the kind with tiny, dangling flowers that look like fluffy cotton drawers turned upside down, thinks of the root-and-rhizome that lets them spread, that lends them sturdiness along with delicacy, and thinks of the first time she learned the story of a trickster raven who stole the mayor’s underwear to get his way, and how he ended up making this strange flower in the process, and how much she laughed hearing that, and she asks, and wants, and hopes for it to be thus.
ꙮ Your will meets a sense of solidity that you do not recall, even in the stone and soil and heartwood of Almachadta - a resistance to change, an emplacement, a physicality. Something there, in a way you’re not used to, when you reach out, like this. And yet: ⁂
ꙮ …perhaps. Perhaps some day. Perhaps when you return to Samudra, return to this island, you’ll see those flowers growing between the roots, here.
’Well, I’m more than happy to wait,’ she thinks, and then gives Ksenija a half-smile. “No. It’s even more … solid, more resistant to change than Almachadta. I wonder if it’s the mix of flourishing and burning?”
reaches out, herself, and nods. “And our own pellucid, woven as one. There’s never been -enough- at one time to do any serious workings with. I’m still not sure how Melpomene brought up so much.”
: “Neither am I. Would you … I was thinking the hilltop, where the pyre was, might be the best place to call her forth? Would you be willing to help me?”*
: “Anything I can do to help you, I will.” She stands, with some help from the pine tree. “Still didn’t get the chance to properly introduce myself, after all.”
: “Well,” she drawls. “She is me, so. You have been properly introduced, I think. Though … I’m not sure if she’s a person of her own too.”
, when she reaches the hilltop, looks around to see if anything has since changed.
ꙮ The hedge has already grown back from where it burnt away. Not overgrown, now that the fire’s not consuming it as fast as it grows - just an oddly-circular and slightly sprawling hedge, full of flowers but also thorns, with an obnoxiously narrow crevice through which you could access the hilltop proper. Might still be able to get flung over it, if Luĉja were here to help, but why go to all the trouble?
: “I didn’t even notice the crevice the first time,” she says, laughing. She slips through.
follows, laughing. “Glad I left my nice robes at home.” Takes a little cutting of the hedge, too, while she’s here.
ꙮ There’s a strange silence within the hedge. It’s a space set apart from the rest of the island; from the rest of Samudra itself.
looks at Ksenija. “Do you have … any thoughts on … how to do this?”
looks thoughtful. “I ought to have asked Silvie to come along, I think. Feels like she always knows the answers.” A wry smile, and then she looks around, at the circle of the hedge. “Well. Do you have anything that she might be interested in… seeing, touching, experiencing?”
: “I don’t … know.” She also looks around the hedge, and then she laughs. “Everything, really. If she is me.”
, then, mostly on instinct, closes her eyes and reaches out, fire and flourishing, thinking of deep roots, open doors, burning curiosity. She thinks: Fire-self, sister-self, let me know you. We are the same but we are also other. I seek understanding and you seek acknowledgment. Let me witness you. Let me love you.
adds, with a bit of a smile, “besides, there’s a new friend here with me just waiting to meet you.”
, for her part, steps forward alongside Salme, puts a little brass bowl out nestled into the ground, sits down on the ground in front of it, and fishes around in her robes for a flask that she uncorks, breathes in the scent of, and then pours into the brass bowl, scent sharp and spicy. “Last flask of Cloudset’s first-ever batch of stakt. Wound up saving it for the kind of special occasion I thought wasn’t ever going to happen, except now it has. Our next batch’s gonna be full of flowers that grew here, I know it will, so it felt right…”
sits next to Ksenija. “Thank you,” she says softly.
ꙮ The stakt in the brass bowl catches on fire, without being touched or reached out to with gnosis at all.
ꙮ There is a certain presence in the air. A weight. Nothing visible, nothing physical - but a presence.
ꙮ The flames rising from the bowl of stakt burn brighter - burn a riot of colors, all the colors of all the flowers blossoming on the island. 🙧
closes her eyes and feels it, coursing through her. She thinks—not of roots or rhizomes or open doors, but fire, the impossibility of it, the myriad of colors contained within—the deep blue-purples of clematis blooms, the soft lavender of squill, the red of camellia, nasturtium-orange and the riot of colors you can find in sweet peas, tulips, coral bells, geums. She thinks of her rage at those who’ve hurt her and her love for those she’s found and the slow feeling of waking in the morning, bracketed by warmth on either side—safety, hearth, home—and the knowledge that she can do impossible things like anyone else, and—
has no invitation to offer. Only certainty, only acceptance, only gratitude. She reaches out her hand into the flames dancing above the stakt, curious.
ꙮ Her hand clasps Melpomene’s, within the flame.
ꙮ Solid, warm, pulsing with gnosis.
is audible, but not visible - even her hand holding Salme’s just looks like fire and more fire. “Hello, again.”
: “Hello again. Ksenija and I wanted to speak with you.”
: “Or, at least, I wanted to speak with you, and Ksenija is helping. I … wanted to tell you that I love you. That I’m honored to carry you with me. And I wanted to ask if there is anything you needed from me, and to know how much of you lingers here, as opposed to inside of and as part of me.”
ꙮ And then Ksenija says, “And I wanted to welcome you to Cloudset, if I had the chance I didn’t have before. I saw you looking towards the towers, lumens ago. Wanted to get the chance to say hello.”
squeezes Melpomene’s hand in encouragement when Ksenija says that.
: “I’m proud of you, Salme. I don’t need any more than what you’ve given me. And when have you known fire to linger?” She sounds -amused-. “Did you know that there are a thousand thousand thousand tiny fires burning in your body while you breathe? I’m in every fire you want me to be in.”
absorbs that. “And what about here, on the island? It feels different, here.”
, playfully: “I’m allowed to have a favourite place, I think.”
laughs, “well, true enough.”
: “I guess … that really is all I wanted to know.” She looks at Ksenija. “What about you?”
’s hand squeezes around Salme’s, warm and brief, and somehow joyous.
: “Do something incredibly good with all the flowers.” Probably addressing Ksenija, there. Probably?
laughs, a little breathlessly. “I will. I’m glad that you’re here.”
ꙮ The stakt’s burning to water; the flames starting to gutter out, playfully flickering back and forth, transparent and fitful, but still dancing.
lets her hand linger, before pulls it back. “Well. I guess that answers that.” She looks at Ksenija. “Thank you. For welcoming her. For welcoming us.”
grins at her. “I was hopeful when I named myself. I’ve tried to live up to it.”
: “You named yourself?”
: “It’s not all that uncommon, here. Not quite to the level of being a rite of passage at the Academy, or anything, but it happens often enough. An idea, or a promise, of who you are or want to be. My name’s based on the Ancient word for the willingness to love a stranger. Or ‘hospitality’, if you’re not feeling poetic, but I was when I picked it.”
laughs. “Oh. I love that. ‘The willingness to love a stranger.’ Can you tell me what the ancient word is? And can you tell me why … this is so important to you?” Her gaze is bright and intense. There’s maybe a bit of fire in her eyes at this—intent, delighted, joyous.
: “It’s ‘xenia’, but Ksenija- it sounds more like a name. A lot of our names are like that, chosen or otherwise- if you look at them and squint, you can see a name over Ancient bones.” She leans back on her heels, a bit. “I just… I think you can’t really be -curious- unless you love what you don’t yet know. And I can’t, personally, imagine seeing something like Melpomene and not wanting to take a step closer.”
nods, excited. A bit of burning gnosis is sparking over her skin, in her eyes—not enough to catch fire, but enough, here, in this place, to be noticeable. “Yes. That’s it—yes that’s it exactly. That’s—“ she laughs, and the sound spirals up into the sky. “I want to know everything. I love so many strange and wondrous things. Oh Ksenija, that’s—I’ve never heard someone put it so well. So truly.”
beams, at her, and laughs with her, delightedly. “Then in addition to everything else, I’m happy to have met a kindred spirit.”
takes her hand and squeezes it. “Just promise me one thing?”
holds her hand. “Always listening, and I’ll try my best.”
: “When you name this island, please let it either be you or someone you trust to do so? I couldn’t bear it if it ended up called some ridiculous Samudran purple cabbage name?”
laughs! “I’d been meaning to ask if -you- had a name you’d like for it to have, actually. Although, if you don’t, I’ll make sure we at Cloudset give it a good name and not some absurd purple cabbage name, yes.”
: “Oh! I’d. I’d like to name it, if you don’t mind, though … I might need some time to come up with something?”
giggles. “Of course, take all the time you need. In the meantime, if anyone starts brandishing purple cabbages at us, I’ll chase them around with a broom.”
laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and as she does, tiny golden-orange sparks spiral up into the cloudy Samudran sky.