a prelude for november

And so we bid a fond farewell to October, and welcome in November, ever the herald of winter and darkness--here in Seattle, it's a month of bleak rain, a month of storms, a month where all of autumn's bright colors begin to fade and we are left with the endless grey. It's hard to be fond of November, but winter has its place, I suppose.

I think I've mentioned that I've been more interested in reading history recently; this interest started with reading Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, which draws a lot of very deliberate inspiration from the Enlightenment, and my realization that I knew almost nothing about the Enlightenment, despite the fact that so many of America's foundational ideals come from there. And with everything that's happened over the past five or six years, I found myself drawn to that. We can learn a lot about who we are by studying where we came from.

Of course, if you study the Enlightenment, you quickly learn that they built on the works of authors like Locke and Hobbes who came before as well as on the works of the Renaissance and, of course, the classics; and then reading about the Renaissance is fascinating in its own right (starting with what is a revelation to many people who haven't studied it that it was actually kind of a shitty time to be alive, even slash especially in Italy, the place where it all happened), and . . . I have a lot I want to read.

I mention this because the story slash world I'm working on (and have been for years, yes) feels like it should take some notes from all of this history, all of these ideas that change society. Because what interests me most about history, apart from the wacky stories and things that sound straight up made up (Venice and Florence both have some really buck wild aspects about them that I really want to delve into), is how ideas shift and change.

Part of it is that I've been trying to build up this world's history, at least partly so I can have some wanderers from its future walk through its ruins and try to piece it together. I know those two characters well, even if I don't yet know what their story looks like. (That wasn't quite the original story; there was always a Princess who, in her hubris, drowns a city with a Spire, and the world falls apart with it. Exploring the ruins, though, has always fascinated me.)

There's still not much to be said about the ongoing pandemic, our boring apocalypse. There's a new vaccine mandate locally; and maybe the vaccine numbers will go up as a result; the daily cases have been very, very slowly trickling downwards. Downtown feels more or less back to normal now. I doubt that there will be anything interesting to report on this front for some time, though I suspect I'll get a cold at some point, which has transformed from an unfortunate occurrence to an exciting development.

So, time to pull our coats tight and march onward into winter. Winter seldom gives us much choice.

twilight

I always liked twilight; it's the time of night for storytellers and liars, that time when our eyes convince us we can see perfectly fine, that the encroaching night hasn't yet robbed us of our ability to perceive things as they really are. It's so much easier to lie as the little details fade into the grey light of dusk, as the shadows conceal just how strained our smiles are . . .

It was one of those late summer twilights where the nights are just starting to get cool, offering tantalizing hints of the autumn to come, that Nevena asked if I still trusted her. Of course I said yes, and of course I immediately wondered if she had somehow detected that we had, as it were, lost faith. But she seemed comforted by my answer--or maybe that, too, was a lie. "I'm glad to hear you say that," she said. "It's good to know you have my back."

The deepening shadows continued to gather as I stared at them, trying to divine their secrets. "We've been through so much together," I said, the lie falling conveniently onto my tongue. "I think by now you've earned some trust." 

In the half-light, she looked more severe, the shadows giving her strange contours. It cast an edge to her smile that made me uneasy. "If only everyone were as loyal as you," she said. Was it sincere praise? Was it a wry condemnation of the fact that even as we spoke I was wondering how long it would be until I betrayed her and how deep I would thrust the knife when I finally did? Either way, those words cut deep. I forced a smile and thanked the gloaming that she wouldn't be able to see how much effort it took not to cry.

Then she shuddered from the growing cold--she always did like it warm--and stood up and put a hand on my shoulder affectionately, like she always used to. "It's a shame summers always end," she said.

And so I was alone, if anyone can call herself alone when surrounded by a thousand shadows that stretch and transform. I welcomed those shadows as friends, safe in the conviction that, for now at least, they would conceal the quiet weeping and give me time to compose myself to maintain the lie through the lonely depths of night and into the harsh light of the day.

aurora

I'd been sent to the frozen south partly, I think, because my superiors in the Order didn't particularly like me. Too many opinions that, in their eyes, nearly crossed the line into heresy. (This was outright slander, of course; my opinions had all well since crossed that line, but they were not imaginative enough to see why.) But there were pre-Spire relics there, and given that the church's influence there was weak . . . well, someone had to go and make sure these pagan relics and blasphemous texts were properly sealed away.

In the days when the church was run by zealots, they would never have dreamed of sending someone like me on such missions. But now, even the Order's ecclesiastical hierarchy was filled, not with those who seemed the most pious or the most devoted, but to those who were most apt to doing the political bidding of those in the position to appoint them, and the most prestigious (and lucrative) positions were those where they could be the most useful politically. Censors in the major cities, scholars at the biggest libraries . . . of course they sent people to the south as punishment. Of course they didn't consider that sending their most heterodox and iconoclastic thinkers to a place where the church's influence was almost nonexistent would backfire.

I thought at first that they were simply not thinking clearly. But I realized, one night late in the fall--already those nights were bitter cold--when the whole southern sky seemed to dance with a strange red light, and my host, at my astonished cry, simply said, "That's the aurora; it happens sometimes"--that they were afraid. These chaotic, joyful lights, in their minds, could not have been the work of their creator, who tamed chaos and brought the wilds to order. Another wonder they'd suppress if they could, I suppose.

last quarter

The Princess was quite drunk when she found me--I didn't even know she was in the city. Last I'd heard her attempts to besiege the city had failed and her armies were in full retreat, and her generals . . . she shouldn't have been here. At first I wasn't even sure it was her, but she has a way of filling the room with her presence even when she's lost control of, well, everything.

I helped sneak her onto the roof of the theatre, and she passed me a bottle of wine and stared at the moon. "I used to like the half moon," she said. "It felt uncertain, like it could be waxing or waning. So much potential."

I took a long drink of her wine--even disguised in a city where she would be killed on sight, she drank far better wine than we mere performers were permitted to touch--and said nothing, but she seemed to accept that as a response. Or perhaps she was merely soliloquizing; I certainly was no stranger to that.

"Then I learned how to tell." She scowled at me, at the world. "There's no potential, just ignorance."

Then she turned and looked at me, suddenly urgent. "You have to leave the city tonight." I opened my mouth to respond but she put her finger against my lips. "No arguing. No questions. Promise. Pack up and leave tonight."

Did I even have a choice? "I promise," I said, because standing up to Nevena when she brought her entire presence to bear on you was impossible--or maybe I really did sense the urgency there. Maybe I didn't need to ask questions to understand that she would drown the city that night.

So I did. I fled the city, and I was only able to convince some of the others to join me, and we left by the light of that waning moon she hated so much. Word of the calamity wouldn't reach us for a few days, but still every night I'd look at the moon and think of her and wonder what terrible thing she was contemplating.

shooting star

 A shooting star landed in the village square, once. An impossibly bright streak tore through the sky, and I was already on my feet and running when I heard a resounding boom a few seconds later. And I didn't stop running until I reached the square, where several other villagers had gathered around a little crater, maybe a few feet across, that had formed in the cobblestones of the square. There was an almost reverential silence among them.

They looked up at me as I slowed to a halt--they never did quite see me as one of their own, but here, I think, they were glad to see me. They stepped aside as I walked up to the crater, still out of breath, and knelt down next to it. It seemed to glow faintly in response to my presence, and as I reached for it--"Careful, girl, it's hot"--it actually leapt into my hand. It was maybe the size of the closed fist of someone with larger hands than me, and it was indeed hot. It should have been too hot to touch, but somehow it didn't scald my hands.

I stood up, holding it in my cupped palms, and the villagers backed away as I turned to face them. "New life," I told them. "It won't forget, if you help it." Before they could respond, I said, "Give it some thought. I'm taking it back to my cabin." I prodded the edge of the crater with my food. "Not a bad place for a little shrine."

The old fears still lingered after the Spire fell, but they were slowly learning to trust the spirits again. I spent the rest of the night learning what I could about the new spirit, showing it the forest and the foothills. When I walked into town in the morning, a small stone shrine had been built at the site of the crater. I smiled and left the meteorite there, along with an offering of some of the coins I'd kept with me from my travels.

It felt good to be a part of something new.

cyclone

A cyclone hit the capital during one of our performances once. The opera house was in the new city, on one of the cliffs overlooking the old city, that impossible district that was reclaimed from the ocean at the city's foundation. The insistent howling of the wind had the audience on edge as I sang, and when someone ran in and shouted that the city was flooding, the panic drove most of them to run outside and see. We crept our way up to the rooftops to watch.

The rain was heavy enough that I was soaked immediately, despite putting on a cloak before going outside, and the wind made just staying upright difficult. But with some effort, and bracing ourselves on the railings, we could see the old city, if only just: the waves crashing over the floodbanks, the water accumulating in the marble streets. People were fleeing, of course, and later the theatre's director provided shelter for those of our patrons who were displaced by the storm--a whole building filled with aristocrats, cowering against the storm.

I went back to the roof rather than deal with them. It was autumn, right at the time when the trees were filled with golden leaves, and in this terrible gale the air was full of leaves, dancing and swirling to the tuneless rhythm of nature's wrath. It was such a beautiful reminder that we exist at the sufferance of the storm and the sea, that even the wealthiest and most powerful of us must sometimes submit to the wind and rain.

Eventually someone found me and dragged me inside and forced me to drink some hot cider and change into something that wasn't wet, and eventually the storm subsided and the city recovered, more or less. And the following morning, the streets around the theatre were covered in a carpet of golden leaves.

waning gibbous

I was quite drunk the first time I met Nevena. I wasn't expecting to be forced to entertain anyone important that night but, well, the heiress of the Spire can do what she pleases. I was on the rooftop, moongazing, partly because too much drink makes me even less social than usual, partly because I like the moon, partly because I was just in a bad mood.

It wasn't until much later that I'd realize who she was--she was just another aristocrat who heard me sing and wanted to meet me; some hoped they could take me to bed, some just wanted to be able to say they'd met the theatre's rising star, and some presumably genuinely thought I'd be interesting. And normally I was--it's a professional skill--but normally I had warning.

"Waning gibbous," she said, and I just made an affirmative noise. She sat down next to me. "It's lovely, isn't it?"

I said nothing. If she had something to say, she'd get around to it eventually. But I did hand her the mostly-empty bottle of wine I'd brought up here, and was rewarded with a laugh. "Drinking in silence it is."

And we did--or rather, she did. I'd already stopped for the night. But the moon was lovely, and despite everything having someone to simply sit with me and watch did make me feel a little better. "It is lovely," I said at last.

"It always feels like a shame, watching the moon shrink away to nothing," she said.

"I doubt there'd be many songs and poems about the moon if it was just full all the time," I said. "It'd be like a boring sun."

She laughed again. "You're right, of course."

The silence settled over us once again; already I felt more comfortable with her, despite myself. This time neither of us broke it until the cool night air set me to shivering. And I couldn't help but smile as she handed me back the empty bottle. "Sorry for drinking your wine. I'll find a way to make it up to you." Then she was gone, and I went back inside and made my apologies to the other members of our little troupe and made my way back to my sad little tenement.

I wondered who she was, what she'd wanted. She was a strange companion but, surprisingly, not an unwelcome one; and I wondered if, wherever she was, she, too, was still looking at the waning moon.

planet

I used to imagine, late at night, what it must have been like to be the first person to notice the planets--not in the sense that they are bright and pretty, but in the sense that they blaze their own paths through the night's sky. It must have been early indeed, before we had really mapped the skies, when we relied instead on memory to remember where the constellations lie, and someone finally noticed: that one bright star we noticed last night isn't moving with the others. Were they signs of ill omen, I wondered, or were they seen as trailblazers, guiding us into the unknown? 

We've mapped their courses now, of course. We understand so much more, even if much of that understanding is locked away in the mystics' observatories, unseen by lay eyes. And the planets, these brave wanderers, have taught us so much about the shape of the universe. The scientists know now that we do not lie at the center of the universe; the astrologers say that the workings of the heavens, of which the planets are key players, teach us a great deal about the workings of the earth. All of this because a long time ago some stargazer was curious about why that one star seemed different than the others.

In some ways it's strange that I've lived my whole life in a world where we've mapped the stars. Oh, there are new discoveries, of course, there is still so much mystery in the heavens, but I can point at that bright light in the evening and say "what's that one?" and receive a meaningful answer.

In a world where so many things have gone wrong, it's comforting to be able to look at my favorite planet and think of all the other people throughout history who have also looked at it, and been struck by its beauty, and were left with a lasting curiosity. We have failed in many ways, but at least we still have the stars.

rainbow

Sometimes, the sun breaks.

I watched the capital drown. I watched the floodgates shatter, and the ocean rush in, and from a clear blue sky a storm arose, blackening the sky and making a quiet morning into a tempest. I watched, in one terrible instant, the moment the old world fell. And I stood there, overlooking the city, watching, because what else could I do? What could anyone do? The wind and the rain and the thunder drowned out the sounds of everyone still in that city crying out in terror as the ocean at last reclaimed her own.

Then the storm began to diminish and retreat inland, and the ocean began to calm, and there, behind that bone-white spire that now jutted out of the ocean like a gravestone, was a rainbow. At the time I felt nothing: not the rain that had soaked through my clothes, not awe at the beauty of the rainbow, not horror at the calamity I'd just witnessed. I was too numb for any of that. But later, when I was more myself, when I was able to weep, I considered the rainbow.

It has always been a sign of hope, a beautiful thing that follows the rain; the more religious among us see it as a promise from whatever divine or spiritual entities they believe controls the weather; I am not so fortunate as to have such beliefs, but the narrative is compelling, isn't it? At the end of a disaster that I still have yet to fully fathom, there is a promise, that at least there is something bright in the future.

But my mind refuses to accept that comfort for long--did we buy this bright future at the cost of the present? Can such a purchase ever merit such a terrible cost? Or perhaps this really is the start of a brighter future, perhaps the world that springs up in the wake of this disaster will be a just world. Would that be worth it, if so? So many people are prepared to trade their lives just to make this world better for a few moments; would an entire city be prepared to burn so that a better world could grow from their ashes?

Is the rainbow, in short, ever worth it?

tornado

The first clear sign that the Spire was failing happened in the city of Idreinen. Oh, there had been rumors, but there were rumors even at its peak--any time the wind inconvenienced a merchantman, or any time the rains made a farmer's life more difficult--but this time, neither the Order's truest believers nor its wiliest propagandists could deny it.

I spent more time in Idreinen than I did in the capital at the time, because it was more interesting. The Prince was boring, the future Princess was a dilettante--Idreinen, that beautiful city, that hub of trade and culture and scholarship, was the place where history happened. So it was that, standing on the Duke's gilded balcony, drinking his wine, listening to him dismissing these new philosophers' vanity and their jealousy, I saw the sky turn green.

It's odd, seeing thy sky in the wrong color. You immediately sense that something is wrong, but instead of withdrawing inside, the mind is drawn to the aberration, fascinated by it--it's not until the impossibly loud clap of thunder and the sudden roar of the descending funnel cloud that you realize you really should find shelter.

A ducal palace full of wealthy merchants and freshly minted nobility can still descend into a panic when they see their Duke, normally so confident, running for the basement with a look of absolute terror on his face. Wine glasses were dropped, tables of refreshments overturned, servants shoved roughly aside--some were quite badly injured. The tornado missed the palace, of course, though it did damage some of the nearby mansions.

Somehow, the story of the tumultuous retreat spread throughout the city, despite my repeated insistence to my friends that they not repeat a word of it to anyone. It was certainly never my intention for the people of the city to sneer at the Duke and those elite enough to attend his parties, much less to expose their hypocrisy as people who claimed to care about the people and yet quickly descended into chaos the moment they were threatened.

At least the palace was spared.

full moon

When I still think of her, I think of the full moon: bright and beautiful and impossible to ignore. And I think of all the times she arranged to have her most important gatherings, from grand balls to informal salons, coincide with that moon, and how effortless she made being in perfect control seem on those days. Those were the days she cemented alliances, and those were the days she destroyed her enemies with a single carefully timed word. Those were the nights she seemed unstoppable.

It was an autumn evening, the last time she was able to make the city dance to her rhythm and no one else's. The gusty wind that day even had the leaves dancing for her, making the whole city alight with red and gold, carpeting the streets on the way to the palace. And then by nightfall, the clouds raced through the sky, adding even more drama to a fantastically golden moon. I thought that night--even me, who had long since resolved to leave as soon as I found the strength--that this was it. Here, tonight, she would win, and the last of her enemies would fail, and we could finally live in that utopia she always dreamed of.

I was on the balcony enjoying the breeze in my hair and the spectacle of that perfect moon when the illusion broke. I didn't know the woman who found me, but she wore the green sash that marked her as one of the enemy. "Where is she?" she asked. "Aren't you her . . ." she seemed to struggle for the right word to describe me, much as I often did. She waved her hand irritably. Whatever name I went by, I was unimportant. "I have a message."

There was something odd in her tone. "I don't know where she is," I said, carefully, "but if it's urgent--"

"It is."

"--then I can deliver a message to her."

She seemed to steel herself, and then she delivered the news. That there was a coup planned, and nearly complete--that the following day the rivals of the Princess would have her and her supporters arrested. Here, immediately following her display of such impossible majesty and power, she would be cut down.

What can you say to that? It felt almost impossible to believe, but I believed it regardless. I forgot, I suppose, that the full moon inevitably wanes.

galaxy

Those first nights on the road, we slept under the stars. It was still summer, if only just, and the nights were still warm, and for Elara and myself this was really the first time we'd ever left the city, had never, as Drysi put it, ever seen the night sky. (Perhaps it's hard for you to imagine, just as it was hard for us to imagine what a truly dark night was like. But there were always lights in the city: lanterns in the streets, candles and fires burning in the houses and palaces . . . life did not stop when the sun set in the city.)

At first I was amazed at how many more stars there were, how dark it really was once the fire had died. Then, as I lay there on the verge of sleep, Drysi shook me awake. I blinked away the lingering dreams, and looked into her face--here in the starlight it was a dark shadow against an impossibly bright sky--and she just whispered, "look."

And there it was, stretching across the sky, that strange glowing band of the galaxy--something I'd only ever heard described before. As I stared in awe, she kissed me in the cheek and leaned up against my shoulders. "Something you haven't seen before," she said.

I hadn't. I had nothing to say before this, the impossible majesty of the night's sky, but somewhere in my heart I resolved to see the world outside of the city--so many people had told me what a strange place it was, but it was my home. There was beauty there, of course--ah, if only you could have walked those streets--but it was familiar.

At the time, though, we lay there and watched the sky in silence. Words, as ever, came later, inadequate tools to paint a world that defies description.

snow

The road took me, eventually, to a little village in the foothills, where they maintained a pass through the mountains. They didn't ask where I'd come from, only that I help where I could, and I was happy for the chance to put my hands to use doing something constructive for once. Mostly I ended up helping them maintain the trails: I'd spent so much time wandering anyway, surviving on whatever the wild provided, and it was a long and lonely project much of the time.

Every winter the snows would come and render the mountains impassable; every autumn they--we--turned all our efforts towards building up our stockpiles and surviving the winter. They were hard winters, and despite our best preparations, we couldn't always make sure everyone survived. Sometimes the snows came sooner than we were prepared for; sometimes they lasted too far into the spring.

But it was so beautiful. The world covered in snow, silent and pristine; the light of the hearthfires casting a warm glow on the snowflakes as they danced in the wind; even after seeing people I'd come to care for lost to the winter, I never tired of the perfect serenity of a snowbound world. And more than that: until the thaw, there was nothing to do but wait. We were trapped, yes, but we were also free: the rest of the world couldn't hurt us here.

I will always be an outsider here, no matter how welcoming they are, but that would be true anywhere. At least here I can help. At least here I can keep them safe from the rest of this dying world when the snows can't.

thunder

When I was very little, I loved thunderstorms. My caretakers often had to drag me back inside when the storms broke, because I'd run out onto the balconies and stare at the sky and--well, of course they worried. Storms weren't even supposed to happen, not here at the beating heart of the world. That's why I existed.

No one told me this, of course, that the reason I was born was to quiet the storms. I wonder what my father used to think, watching his daughter laughing and staring at the storms, enthralled by their beauty, when no doubt he hoped that I would naturally sense that they are my enemy, that I was meant to crush them. With every bolt of lightning, every clap of thunder, did his hopes die? Did he worry that I would fail in my duty, my sole purpose on this earth, because I thought the thing I was born to destroy was beautiful?

He's gone now, and everyone has left me. There's another storm tonight, one of the worst I've ever seen--so much lightning illuminating my city, so much rain. I should be planning for what's to come, but now, as I sit here in my tent, listening to the rain and the thunder, all I can do is think of those storms when I was a child, the excitement, the joy . . . I can't feel it anymore. And I can't bring myself to do what I must if I can't, just one last time.

The storm feels like an opportunity, like it's lingering for no reason besides to give me a chance to enjoy what I had once loved, years ago, but instead I simply find myself afraid. Not just of the thunder, though with each bolt--so deafeningly close, and here I am so exposed on the cliffs above the city--my heart pounds. But soon the storm will end, the seas will calm, and one way or another, all of this must end.

sun

It got hot early that summer, far hotter than I'd ever experienced it. I always hated summer, and now, so soon after the spring had withdrawn, the sun burned bright and oppressive in the sky and it was all we could do to languor in the shade and hope that the nights would cool off enough to be tolerable. And for a while that's what we did: slept in the dark, emerged at night, when we could all at least pretend that this was some way to live.

That was the summer we left the capital to visit Drysi's homeland, the desert highlands east of the mountains--it was, depending on who you asked, a diplomatic visit to renew the friendship between the capital and the highlands, or a show of force to remind the highlanders what would happen if they ever proved to be inadequate friends. 

So we crept out one night from the place where we were not quite guests and not quite prisoners--Drysi most of all, the hostage who had been too long from home--and, guided by moonlight and desperation, we followed the stream to the lake and wetlands. There, rather than the endless stone and sage, low trees and shrubs and reeds huddled together, desperate for a taste of that precious water. And there we built a little shelter, and spent the day cooling ourselves in the lake and relaxing in the shade.

As the sun finally sank behind the mountains, so too did the thin wispy clouds that Drysi said marked a change in the weather first appear. A promise (and, perhaps, a warning) that even the most tyrannical reign must come to an end eventually.

cirrus clouds

The one thing that kept me from feeling like a prisoner was watching the sky. It leaves messages for those who know how to read them. So whenever I felt trapped, I'd find a roof and sit and see what the sky had to say. 

Little Seva and I didn't agree on much, but she liked watching the skies with me. Those times were . . . sacred, almost. We'd sit together in perfect silence, no arguing, no petty maneuvering, just reading the clouds. Even after, when we returned to our lives and went back to disagreeing on everything, we'd never say a word about it to anyone. This was ours in a way that was deeper and more powerful than words could express.

That anchor was enough. Even once we'd gone our separate ways, she to her dream of building an enlightened world, me to case the grounds of the city that was my prison, she would still find me sometimes, sitting on a high place, reading the sky.

It had been a clear, hot summer when a curtain of cirrus clouds spread across the sky, and she joined me at the garden that overlooked the old city. Without a word she sat next to me, just like old friends, and we watched the setting sun paint those clouds in astonishing shades of pink and red. After a while, she said, "There's a storm coming, isn't there?"

"Yeah."

"A bad one?"

"Looks like."

The brilliant shades of sunset faded, leaving only the deepening blues of twilight fading into night, and finally she stood. "They'll be wondering where I am. I'd best be getting back to the palace."

"Good luck, little Seva. I'll be seeing you."

I'd half expected her to ask me for help--even the oldest traditions have to give way sometime--but she didn't. Even faced with a storm we both knew would be a disaster, she respected that.

first quarter

The Princess once told me she liked the potential that half moons represented--it was halfway between full and new, and you couldn't tell just by looking at it which way it was going. Would it wane and become a crescent? Would it bulge and wax until it grew full?

And because I'm me, of course I corrected her--that of course you could tell which way it would go by which half of the moon was illuminated, or simply by paying attention; of course she told me I didn't get the point, and at the time I was willing to accept that. But now I realized that I understood the point all too well.

She saw the moon--it was in its first quarter at the time--as her empire, of course. And the metaphor, the point she was making, is that she had inherited a half moon, with no way to tell whether it was waxing or waning. But it was waning, of course it was. Anyone who studied such things--and I did, it was why I was even in the same room as her--could have told her that.

That night when I tried to tell her which quarter she was looking at, she pinned me to the bed and covered my mouth and ordered me not to tell her; when a gibbous moon appeared above the horizon the following night she seemed pleased, like this was a good omen. And at the time I thought it was just a harmless game, maybe a little superstition--we all have our little foibles--but looking back I wonder if she wasn't making a point, that the truth, knowing where we'd been, where we were going, didn't matter.

And perhaps it didn't. I don't know what we could have done to stem the tide. But we'd all fought so hard for the truth, and sometimes I wonder if perhaps there was something, something none of us saw.

storm

The storm developed faster than I expected, when I was too far from camp to make it back even to the mild shelter the tents and wagons offered. So I ran for the shelter the ruins offered, and hid there as the rain poured down and the wind howled and the thunder roared. Even when the sky was still clear and the sun was still shining the ruins seemed an ominous prospect, but now, each bolt of lightning seemed to make the shadows of this forgotten place deeper. So I sat as close to the entrance as I could, wrapped in my travelling coat, trying my best not to touch anything.

I wasn't sure the hunter was real when she first appeared in the entryway, spear in hand--I'd managed to keep the echoes of the past to a minimum, but every now and then a stray would make its way into my memory--but I recognized her from the caravan, and when she shook the rain from her hair and stepped into the ruins to join me I felt a sense of . . . relief isn't quite the word. That she had come looking for me was a comfort, of course, but also I was simply glad of her company.

"Did you come looking for me?" I asked, more for having something to say than anything. She beamed and nodded. Now that she was in the shelter she removed her cloak and shook the rain out of that, as well. "I thought we had another hour or so before the storm," I said.

She sat down opposite me and held out the less-damp cloak to me; I carefully accepted it and wrapped it around my shoulders. (A flash of an echo: a traveler, looking lost and alone. How beautiful she is. It takes a brief moment to realize that the traveler is me.) "Did someone ask you to check on me?" She shook her head. So she had come on her own. I patted the ground next to me and she obligingly scooted over to sit next to me.

We sat like that for a while, mostly in silence--hunters, if the stories are to be believed, never speak to anyone, and filling the silence felt daunting at first. But eventually, tentative at first, I told her stories--about my life at home, about my travels, about the echoes--she brightened at that. A lifetime of silence had evidently taught her to be expressive with her silence, which made me feel a lot more comfortable talking to her. But the silence felt comfortable, too, as we watched the storm, and each other.

It started to hail, and she ran to the entrance to collect some of the stones. She returned with one as big as my fist, and held it out to me. As I reached out to take it, she took my hand and gently tugged at the gloves I wore to keep the echoes at bay. Tentatively I removed the glove, and put my bare hand to the icy stone, and--(An echo: I am so glad to be sharing this with you. Such a beautiful storm. Such impressive hailstones. And maybe this hailstone will form an echo, and maybe you'll know how happy I'd be if you'd let me kiss you. Put it in your hands. Trust me.)--I gripped her hand firmly in mine and pulled her close, and let her kiss me. Then she smiled and sat down next to me again, and I rested my head on her shoulder as the pounding of the hail made an oddly soothing rhythm, punctuated by thunderclaps that by now felt almost comforting.

constellation

 There was a constellation that always used to be our favorite, back in the capital: it was, according to the stories, a legendary hero, the first dragonslayer--but the fun of it was less in the stories, though we liked those as well, as it was simply that picking out the pattern was satisfying. A simple pattern that lets you see a grander whole. Every time we'd go stargazing, which was often at first and then dwindled as time wore on, we'd point it out, and admire the shape in the stars, and sometimes one of us would tell the story again.

When I fled, I vowed I'd put that constellation behind me.

It was a slow escape, as I took it one leg at a time--at first I worried that I'd be followed, but then I liked this new ritual of sailing north until we made port, finding a room at the inn, and watching the stars, watching that constellation, so beloved and so hated, slowly sink below the horizon. It would take me a few days to find another suitable ship that was headed north, and then another few days for them to make port, and--well, you get the idea. It was a nice ritual.

It wasn't until we left the continent behind altogether that I was finally able to look up at the sky and the dragonslayer was nowhere to be seen. I was finally alone under a strange sky, where I knew none of the shapes and heroes that filled the skies. The nights were always warm and everyone was so friendly and so welcoming. When they learned how much I liked stargazing they even taught me the names of the stars here--so many different names and stories.

Sometimes I still find myself looking for that old familiar pattern, but it's only recently that I've stopped feeling awful every time I catch myself doing so. On some level, now that there's no possible way to go back, I really do miss those days. They were dreadful in so many ways, but despite all that, there were little quiet moments that will always stick with me. I even made up a constellation for her. A little pattern of stars that sort of reminds me of the one we'd look for, a few others--she would smile at that, I think.

fog

A thick fog had settled into the valley by the time I arrived, so thick the sentries didn't even challenge me as I approached. At least the gates were closed. They finally let me in after I spent a few minutes knocking as loudly as I could--"Got to keep the bandits away," they hissed as they shut the gates after me--and then I was just another poor soul out braving the freezing mists. All the windows and signs, I noticed as I wandered that desolate little town, had little tendrils of rime growing on them. 

Everything seemed so oddly quiet as I walked the streets--slow, careful steps, keeping close to the buildings so they were more than just indistinct shapes in the distance--and my footsteps, careful as they were, seemed far too loud in my ears, like they were intruding on this town's peace. Maybe I was. Maybe the fog was for me, warning me away. But if so, I ignored it. I had better things to worry about.

I found the inn by looking for a building with a fire burning, but even if the cheerful glow cut through the fog like a beacon, inside both the patrons and the serving staff seemed defeated already. They looked up as I entered, registered who I was--a sword and a red sash was enough, I think--and then fell into an expectant silence. Some of them wore faces of hope, some of trepidation.

"Didn't expect any travelers with this fog," said the innkeeper. 

"I like to defy expectations." I offered them a smile that was probably more predatory than friendly. A little fear never hurt anyone. "I hear you've had problems with bandits. I'm for hire."

The room softened. "Could be the fog's just the thing we needed," said the innkeeper, with a wry smile. "You rest a minute, get something to eat. I'll send for the man you need to talk to."

***

The man in question looked like a merchant, though he identified himself as the seneschal. There was ambition and cunning in his eyes; he gave me an evaluating look and nodded. "I assume you're offering to train up a militia? We do have a master-at-arms already, unfortunately. The problem--"

"I had something more direct in mind. You know where their camp is?"

Those ambitious eyes lit up. "I do. Or rather--"

"Your scouts do, yes. Guide me there, and I'll end the threat. The fog will be enough confusion that they can't organize a defense, and it'll make them more likely to scatter."

"Well, pull this off and you'll have quite the bounty waiting for you--and I think I could use someone of the skill you claim to possess for some . . . future endeavors. If you're interested.

He didn't trust me, but he did send his scouts to guide me to the bandits' camp. And from that shrouded vantage I walked deeper into the mists, into a future free from wandering.