A Lunar Missive (Velania and An’Ahkrim)
Sept 10, 2022 23:45:58 GMT
Lykksie, Soph, and 3 more like this
Post by Velania Kalugina on Sept 10, 2022 23:45:58 GMT
Following on from the events of the Heralds of Blades and Ash story.
An’Ahkrim, the last of the Heralds, switched sides and helped save High Diviner Rholor Vuzehk, before being spirited away by the Archangel Je’Sathriel. He is now a wanted man in hiding, trying to reckon with his dark past, his new-found mortality, and the vain hope that he might someday earn a soul. At a secret campsite in Brilliant Disguise, Velania warily offered her support. She gave him a single way to contact her, should he ever need help…
Co-written with the incredible Lykksie
[Content Note: mentions of suicide, self-harm, discussions of a mental health crisis]
It’s early evening when a familiar paper bird lands gently on Velania’s shoulder. It’s not in a hand she recognizes; the message seems to be written by someone who was taught graceful, measured calligraphy but the whole thing has been taken down in blue crayon. The indignation is practically dripping off the page and if she didn’t already suspect who the sender was, that would have tipped her off, but she sees something else there as well – a slight tremor and an undercurrent of stress. As if An’Ahkrim had hurried to get his words down before he could change his mind.
Velania’s Sending spell reaches An’Ahkrim soon after. Her tone is elevated and she speaks quickly. “Yes, I can come but I’m several hours away. I remember the directions – I’ll be there much later tonight.” There’s a pause before she finishes. “… you are not alone in this.”
She gets a reply, immediately. His voice is familiar at this point but it’s speaking with an unfamiliar air of uncertainty and raw grief. He sounds rough, and tired, like he’s not sleeping well, and he sounds like he’s at the mercy of something he barely understands. An’Ahkrim sounds… human. And he sounds like he hates that he’s doing what he’s doing.
His first two words are wasted on abortive noises, bitten down on and hidden behind clenched teeth, but they’re followed by a simple “Thank you.”
She thinks she can hear him take a ragged breath, but she might have imagined it. Would the spell even send it?
“I’ll light the way for you,” he adds. And then another: “Thank you.”
Velania hurriedly excuses herself from the other acolytes she has been sitting with. The phenomenon of a magical letter arriving is not so unusual an event in Daring Heights, and saying “pastoral stuff” is explanation enough to dispel any curiosity. She slips into the storerooms to claim a few supplies, then goes to her room and packs a bag, readying herself to face the Angelbark alone. At night.
What are you doing, Velania? she mutters to herself. But she doesn’t slow her pace. She marches through Daring Heights before sunset, knowing that by the time she reaches the forest itself, night will have set in.
Once she has walked through Castle Gate, she chides herself. You should at least have left a note. Someone should know where you’re going. But by then, the dice are cast. She is already hurrying across the plains toward the Angelbark, hoping that Selûne will watch over her servant.
She makes quick work of the hike to the edge of the Angelbark. The moon has risen bright and clear over the horizon, illuminating her path. She barely has to consider her direction; a gentle breeze guides her, a gentle tug somewhere behind her breastbone is tugging her along. When she enters the forest proper, her footing is sure and her mind – if worried – is determined.
Hours pass.
She follows the same route as before – or at least, she thinks she does. A forest looks so different at night, and she has no experienced ranger friend beside her to check each waypoint. But whether it is memory or the moon guiding her, she feels a rhythm of certainty in her heartbeat.
The old oak with the broken arm, the game trail down to the pond, the black brambles at the bottom of the ridge, beyond the tallest elm on the hill. Every time she passes out of a thicker patch of canopy and into moonlight, she feels a thrum of energy.
Her preoccupation with the route is all-consuming for a time, but as the journey passes without incident, questions rise up. How can a man so full of pride accept his new self? What if he simply gives up? His old ways would surely be so easy to revert to. How can I, a mere acolyte, even be of help to a man like this?
… and then the final question he posed in their shared dream, the most devastating one of all: How can you be saved if you don’t even have a soul?
She frowns to herself. Even though this is his fight, these questions pain her too.
Eventually, the moon sinks out of even the shortest view and the sky is painted a pale grey. Around her, thousands of birds pick up their pre-dawn melodies, unbothered by the quiet trek of a single traveller through their midst.
She feels the occasional shiver wrack her – the chills of a body that should have laid down to sleep hours ago. She gets turned around in the misty twilight, tired and worried, and for a moment a surge of despair threatens to choke her – the sleep deprivation exacerbating every single emotion… but then she sees it. The first of many to come, a single firefly glides gracefully into view from out of the fog.
One by one they glimmer into view, stretching out before her like stars, leading her back onto the path.
She walks on.
It’s another hour swept in mist, birdsong and the low buzzing of slow fireflies before the sun has properly risen. It breaks through the canopy like shining spears and together with the fireflies, everything around her is a bright, glimmering gold. The buzzing grows louder and louder, the fireflies multiplying with each step she takes closer to her destination as if she’s getting closer to their source.
Suddenly, she’s back in the clearing. There’s no campfire though, and no surly archangel pretending to be bothered by the strays he’s gotten deeply emotionally attached to.
An’Ahkrim’s sitting alone on the ground, legs pulled up to his chest, next to a small pile of pebbles and sticks. She realises she’s never seen him in daylight before. He looks like shit.
Her relief at finding him there is tempered by concern. She stops dead, feeling a surge of awkwardness and pity, not knowing how to weigh the two. She steps wearily over to the wretched man and sinks to the ground in front of him. She exhales loudly with relief to be off her feet.
She wrestles out of her backpack and rummages around in it. Then leans over to him, proffering a bottle of monastery-brewed beer. It’s been night-chilled and is still cool to the touch. “It’s early for this, but I couldn’t carry much anyway.”
He blinks once, twice, and pulls back from the thousand yards he’d been staring at and looks at her – a little like the first time, like he hadn’t believed she was real. His hands are curled into loose fists and he opens one absentmindedly, letting a small rock fall to the ground with a soft thump. It cracks apart with a small spark and turns into a firefly, buzzing gently as it flies off.
He tries to say something but can’t manage anything beyond a dry croak. With a dull look, he pulls the bottle from her grasp and downs about half of it before letting up. He wipes at his mouth and unkept beard with the back of his other hand before finally, truly meeting her eyes.
“I figured it out,” he says.
She watches him acclimatising to her presence with a frown. She freezes under his gaze initially, instinctively on edge in the presence of one with such blood on his hands. But the more she observes him, the more he, too, becomes real to her. Not just the embodiment of a ghost story, nor part of an ancient prophecy, but a living, vulnerable, miserable man.
“Figured what out?” she asks, hoping her voice will not tremble.
“What it is.” He takes another, slightly slower drink from the bottle.
With his free hand, he claws weekly against his chest, right over his heart. His nails are jagged and torn, with dark lines of dirt underneath, like he’s been digging something with his bare hands. “What this thing is. This awful, horrendous fucking knife carving me up. The serrated steel shredding me from the inside.” He might be sounding passionate and frightening in his ire if he wasn’t sounding so damn pitiful. “What I’m – what I’m feeling.”
She tries to hide her discomfort. Studies him despondently. The grime, his unkempt, unwashed appearance. In a perverse way, it is alarming to see the opposite of the fiend he once was. “You have a name for it. That’s good. That’s actually good,” she says. “What do you feel?” She feels a sense of comfort suddenly, as this takes her into the familiar role of counsellor.
His face oscillates from one emotion to the next rapidly before he finally bites out a single: “Guilt.”
He takes another swig. “Je’Sathriel says it’s a good sign.” He actually manages a weak laugh at that. “I don’t know if I can do it, Velania. I don’t know how I’ll be able to… if this is what it feels like now, what could it possibly be like when I actually have a soul?”
She nods gently. “It is. A good sign. I think. And yes, it hurts; it really hurts. Perhaps you are just getting hit by it all at once. When children are developing emotions, they can swing to violent extremes. Perhaps that is similar to what you’re experiencing.”
She looks quietly at her feet. “But I haven’t seen someone find a soul before. I honestly don’t know how it works, this way…”
“Most children don’t have to live with the knowledge that they’ve killed so many people in so many horrible ways that they don’t even remember them all.” He says it brazenly, condescendingly, but it’s a thin veneer over his hurt and fear, and guilt. There’s so much of it.
She stalls momentarily. “… no. That’s true. But they live in the sincere belief that what they are going through in that moment is the most earth-shattering drama there has ever been.”
There is a moment of complete stillness. Even the birds seem to hold their breath.
He blinks at her a couple of times.
“You know, that’s possibly the kindest way anyone’s ever told me to go fuck myself.” He looks genuinely surprised and a little puzzled. It’s miles better than the pile of self-pity he had been a minute ago.
She laughs with a single huff. “Well, that’s more Je’Sathriel’s approach perhaps. Bad news, I’m afraid: adults experience emotional tidal waves too. Guilt, loss, shame… grief… Sometimes you’re left curled up in a ball, covered in snot. So cried out that you’re too exhausted to cry any more. The messy truth is that all of these are going to be a part of you. But they won’t end up being all that you experience.”
She pauses. “… maybe this isn’t the part you need to hear right now…”
He sets the bottle down and rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms for a moment before taking a deep breath. He holds it and stares into the morning sky before letting it out in a sigh. “No. No, it’s probably exactly what I need to hear. Both parts.”
“Well, the good news is that emotions are also pleasant. Joy, satisfaction, atonement, friendship, self-worth, love… they’re… they’re all part of being alive too.”
She picks up a twig and twists it into her palm. “It can be hard to keep sight of those. Especially when the pain gets bad. But they are always there for the taking. If you are willing to work for them…”
He’s quiet for a while, mulling her words over. When he gets the question out, his voice is quiet. Small. “Would it not be greedy? To reach for those things? To want them? How could I possibly deserve them?”
“Well” – she looks up at him with a gentle frown – “who is going to decide if you are being greedy? Or what you deserve?”
He gives her a look – eyebrow ever so arched, a shadow of his former self. “Historically, your side.”
Her eyes widen. “That’s… that’s not how it works. Yes, the Moonmaiden is capable of punishing a mortal if she sees fit… as much as the Mistress of the Night, I’m sure… but who is really passing those judgements and meting out punishments? Us. Mortals. It’s always been us…”
He quirks his mouth in something that generously could be called a smile. “I was joking. Mostly. But I did mean the mortals among you. But I was joking.”
“… mostly.”
“Oh.” She inclines her head and rubs her neck… a little relieved, a little embarrassed. “Hah. Well, maybe I’m banging the religion drum too strong for this hour in the morning…” She blinks in the rising sunlight, then turns to her luggage. She produces a waterskin and a portable coffeepot.
She points to the pile of twigs. “Could you sort that out?” It’s not a request. It’s not an order. It’s more like an instruction.
“I highly doubt there’d be a time of day when it would be strange for either of us to be banging the religion drum,” he mutters, mostly to himself, as he busies himself with the pile of twigs and rocks. Some of them are still turning into fireflies and he shoos them away absentmindedly. They fly lazily over to Velania to do a couple of slow laps around her head before drifting aimlessly out of the clearing.
She busies herself with filling the pot to make a brew, thinking for a moment, before finally finding the way to return to the subject of his guilt. “Has Je’Sathriel told you much about himself? About what he’s put himself through?”
At a more conversational volume, he says, “Je’Sathriel has told me… some. Despite us being mystically linked through fate and prophecy, I’m sure you can imagine we aren’t massive fans of one another.”
He produces a small, neat pile of twigs to start a fire with and sprinkles sparks of flame across them like salt over a meal. They catch fire immediately and he busies himself with building a proper fire for her coffeepot.
“We might be. One day,” he continues. “When enough time has passed and we aren’t both scrubbed raw with wounded pride and have crawled out of our own backsides somewhat.”
He pauses again, clearly trying to speak with a steady voice, clearing his throat several times. It still comes out rather wobbly. “I gather I’m the one who has to decide I deserve those things. The problem is, right now, Velania, I don’t think I do. I rather think I should suffer some fitting torment and then meet my end.”
She watches him using the small vestige of magic he has available to light the fire, her gaze chasing some of the fireflies absentmindedly, then listens to him and nods as the water slowly heats up. Her face darkens when he speaks of ending his suffering.
“Sometimes, I wish I were the kind of person who could just snap my fingers and stop people feeling that way. But there’s no logical argument that can counter that. Only feelings. Finding something that speaks to you.” She presses her fingers together and thrusts them into her breastbone.
“Nobody else can do that for you, much though I might wish it were so. Some find religion, others find an occupation, or love, or creating something. Those seem rather… obvious to me, and any of those could probably give rise to their own unhealthy fixations.”
“I’m really not very good at this…” She sighs and pokes at the fire unnecessarily. “You could do worse than just starting small. Naming one thing that you like. That you are grateful for. We only get one chance at this, so if you are facing self-annihilation, there has to be something you know you’d miss. Just for fun. Name something.”
As the water begins to boil, she turns to frown at him with a sudden ferocity. “And so help me goddess if you say Je’Sathriel.”
He arches the eyebrow again, in the midst of this utter crisis of existence and morality, and there’s the shadow again – an echo of the man he had been before. “I certainly wasn’t but now I’m almost tempted.” The barest hint of a twitch graces the corner of his mouth. “I would have thought a powerful devotee of the Moonmaiden would feel nothing but respect and awe for one of her mightiest angels and champions?”
She cannot help herself in returning the smallest of grins. She stares at the boiling water absently. “… I mean… I do respect him, actually. But not for any of that… and Lady knows, he really doesn’t make it any easier.”
A spit of water hits the logs and sizzles. She comes to and takes the pot off the stove. As she pours two mugs, the aroma of caramel and fruit, a dark brew, hits the senses. She hands him the larger of the mugs. “I didn’t bring anything to put in it,” she says almost sheepishly. “Listen, I didn’t intend to patronise you and suggest that ‘thinking happy thoughts’ is the magic cure you need. But it’s not like there’s a script for this. People I know come to the experience of having a soul, having a conscience, having negative emotions, one step at a time. They do it by trial and error, over many years, and it’s intermingled with good stuff too… if they’re fortunate. Either way, it takes a whole lot more time than this…” she gestures at him with an open palm.
She holds up her mug and breathes it in. Feeling slightly light-headed from walking all night and sleep deprivation, the effect of something as simple and profound as a mug of coffee pulls on her emotions. She observes An’Ahkrim, wondering if any such effect might happen for a man so overwhelmingly haunted.
“I guess what I’m saying is one big ‘I don’t know’ to most of this. But I do think one thing…” she looks at him with sincerity emanating from her moonstone-green eyes. “Does it help even slightly that you are talking about it with someone else right now?”
He wraps his worn hands around his own mug. They’re trembling ever so slightly. He tries to clear his throat again to steady his voice but fails miserably. When he meets her gaze, his eyes are welling with tears and he seems too tired to fight them anymore. “The first emotion I felt that I couldn’t contend with was fear. The second was loneliness. Velania, it helps more than I can put into words.”
She locks eyes with him, frozen with empathy, and her expression is the grey veil between sadness and recognition. One moment, she is watching the glimmer of his tears forming, and then unconsciously, her eyes drift off to the side and she is blinking hard. She nods absently. Tries to suppress a heavy sigh. Fails.
Eventually, she looks back at him. Her composure has been rattled. “Fear’s a powerful thing.” Despite the early morning light breaking through, warming the clearing, she folds her arms around herself. “Fear’s in everything. Lurking there. Even in loneliness.” She shakes her head sadly at him. “You aren’t alone, though.” Her voice seems thin and small to her. She says it again, with a little more firmness. “You aren’t alone.”
It’s strange. Velania is a perceptive and insightful person – always has been. The first time they spoke, she could hardly read a single emotion on his face. The more she speaks to him now, the more she begins to think that it was no subterfuge, nor a perfected poker face. An’Ahkrim the devil simply didn’t have many feelings to show.
If she wasn’t so tired she might have found it fascinating – for now, she watches calmly as An’Ahkrim the mortal experiences a number of feelings for the first time. She can read them easily as they bloom inside him like quiet flowers unfolding at twilight.
Gratitude.
Empathy.
Affection.
He doesn’t try to stop the tears, reassured that she won’t judge him for it, and for a long while, there is no sound apart from their breathing, the crackling of the fire and the birdsong around them.
Eventually the tears slow and then stop entirely. His entire being takes on the bone-tired quality of someone who hasn’t slept well and then had a solid cry.
“You walked the whole night.” He sets the mug down, a little awkwardly. “Thank you. But you must be even more tired than I am.”
He hesitates for a moment before speaking. “I finished it.” He says it a little like a question, or an offer.
His simple statement draws her back into her body, and she realises she has been trembling. Weariness, hunger, grief, fear, and now a new sadness for An’Ahkrim’s distress. They are all wrapped around her muscles like a heavy, heavy cloak. But for some reason unknown to her, her face mirrors his gratitude as she addresses him again. She speaks quietly, thickly, almost muttering. “Last time I rushed through a forest the whole night, I was trying to get away from you.” The side of her mouth curls ironically.
She takes his mug and pours him the last of the pot. It is lukewarm and grainy and only a couple of mouthfuls at best. She sets it down in front of him apologetically.
Then she frowns. “You haven’t been looking after yourself,” she observes, with a hint of a scolding tone. She turns to her backpack and produces a few supplies. Two more beers. Packets of tea and coffee. A string bag of fresh vegetables. A comb. A toothbrush. A bar of soap. “I would have brought a shaving kit, but I don’t have one, surprisingly enough.” She unpacks them and sets them on a flat slab of log. “There’s these, too,” she adds, and uses her fey necklace Autumn’s Warmth to produce a pile of small, fragrant apples. “And these.” She pulls out two small, leather-bound books, each wrapped in an old ribbon. “Not god-texts, I promise. This one’s poetry, and this one’s folk tales from Turmish, where I was born. I… didn’t have much and I wasn’t sure what you’d like, but you might enjoy these. In case you get… you know… bored…”
Eventually, she runs out of things to fuss over. Her mind and body suddenly jolt to a stop. It comes to her almost as a surprise. “Yes… I am tired…”
He watches her pull out item after item, looks at each of them with a stunned silence, but at her final statement, he gives her a small quiet smile. Gratitude. Empathy. Affection.
Then he takes off his flannel shirt, lays it on the ground and piles the things into a bundle, carefully but efficiently. He gets to his feet with a small groan as his tired body protests even the smallest exertion. “I finished it,” he says again. This time it’s not a question, but a statement with just a hint of conviction and pride. He offers her a hand up. “Come with me?”
“Oh. I see what you mean,” she says, with an embarrassed half-chuckle. She takes his hand to stand. Her legs quickly remember the ache of having walked all night. She pulls her things together, moving in something of a daze.
“I thought you meant the coffee…” she adds, redundantly – her brain is still catching up. She stretches her limbs and rubs her eyes to get the blood circulating again.
When she is ready, she looks up at the tall man waiting before her. A man who has been encased in the dark, found the first crack in his own shell, fought it, pushed a limb free, and drawn his first ragged, tentative breath.
“I want to see it.”
He looks at her for another moment like he wants to say something more but eventually sets it aside, clearly too tired to form another sentence about his emotional state. Instead, he nods to the north end of the clearing. “This way.”
They walk in silence for some 20 minutes. She hazards a guess that they could have done it in 10 if they weren’t walking slower than men headed to the gallows. It is mid-morning now, and the late summer mists have already burned away. The dawn chorus has subsided into an ambient daytime ripple of forest noises.
The little cottage is plain, small and humble but surprisingly well built. There’s a small fire and some space for preparing food, even two shutters that can serve as windows, but no furniture. “Je’Sathriel instructed me how to get started on the cottage. He has yet to explain how one makes a table.”
He sweeps his hand around the small, spartan space. “I’d give you a tour, except I just did and I don’t think either of us needs to be on our feet any longer. Do you have a bedroll?”
Before answering, she walks around the small space inside, studying the beams, the quality of the joins. She runs her fingertips over the surfaces. Tests the floor underfoot. For a cloistered acolyte, she spends a surprising amount of time looking closely at the details of his handiwork. She nods discerningly. “Before the monastery, I was a farmer’s girl at heart. Watched my neighbours doing this. So I appreciate this is a lot of work.”
She breathes in the smell of fresh-cut logs slowly, then smiles, her eyes flooded with nostalgia. “It’s good. It’s very good.”
Her expression sparks with the defiance of someone fighting a losing battle with fatigue, and tiredness soon rolls back over her like a cloud. For a moment, there is a question in her eyes, and then her face settles. A decision has been made. “I have a bedroll here.” She sets down her backpack and pulls it out. A simple padded roll with some of her own hand-stitched repair-work. “Do you… what do you…?” She looks around questioningly, unable to imagine where he sleeps.
He makes a carefully passive face, aided by his tiredness. “I make a bed of hot coals and shards of glass. I lie upon it without slumber, planning my evil deeds.”
Then the corner of his mouth twitches. “Sorry. I was never good at jokes, and I don’t think being mortal will change that. I have a bedroll as well.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be praying for your soul for at least an hour anyway. The angelic chorus can get a bit loud. Let me know if it bothers you.” Her grin is weary.
A pack hangs from a nail on the back of the door and he pulls out a bedroll and a blanket. He nods to the space closest to the small fireplace. “You have that one. Go on.” He arranges his bedding against the wall furthest from the door and her – not that there’s a lot of square feet to go around – but the gesture is clear; he’s giving her as much space as he can without blocking the door. He might not have the ability to trust yet, but he understands how it works, and that it’s a fragile, new thing between them.
She watches him choosing his space, giving a sense of acknowledgement to him rather than much of a gesture. She sets her bedding out, lies down, makes herself comfortable.
After a moment, she turns her head. “An’Ahkrim?” She turns slowly and awkwardly onto her side, with a blank, empty expression. Her gaze wanders slowly over the ceiling, down the far wall, and finally settles on him.
“I liked the fireflies.”
He turns his head in a similar fashion, clearly struggling to stay awake. His purple eyes glitter in the firelight as he looks at her. A strange look passes over his face, like he’s struggling to understand something again, like there’s yet another feeling creeping quietly through his veins, whispering words he can’t make out. She sees the moment he gives up on trying to puzzle it out, but he holds her gaze for a moment longer and raises a hand gently into the air.
Sparks fly from the fire in a rush, and a quiet hum fills the small cabin as a dozen fireflies do lazy circles in the ceiling.
“There’s your choir,” he says. Gratitude. Empathy. Affection.
Then he closes his eyes, and sleeps.
An’Ahkrim, the last of the Heralds, switched sides and helped save High Diviner Rholor Vuzehk, before being spirited away by the Archangel Je’Sathriel. He is now a wanted man in hiding, trying to reckon with his dark past, his new-found mortality, and the vain hope that he might someday earn a soul. At a secret campsite in Brilliant Disguise, Velania warily offered her support. She gave him a single way to contact her, should he ever need help…
Co-written with the incredible Lykksie
[Content Note: mentions of suicide, self-harm, discussions of a mental health crisis]
It’s early evening when a familiar paper bird lands gently on Velania’s shoulder. It’s not in a hand she recognizes; the message seems to be written by someone who was taught graceful, measured calligraphy but the whole thing has been taken down in blue crayon. The indignation is practically dripping off the page and if she didn’t already suspect who the sender was, that would have tipped her off, but she sees something else there as well – a slight tremor and an undercurrent of stress. As if An’Ahkrim had hurried to get his words down before he could change his mind.
Velania,
I’m at a loss, and in need of help. I don’t know what I’m feeling – I’ve never felt it before. All I know is that it’s excruciating. Do mortals feel this, constantly? I don’t want to be alone. Please come, if you can. Or even Sorrel. Same place.
An’Ahkrim
I’m at a loss, and in need of help. I don’t know what I’m feeling – I’ve never felt it before. All I know is that it’s excruciating. Do mortals feel this, constantly? I don’t want to be alone. Please come, if you can. Or even Sorrel. Same place.
An’Ahkrim
Velania’s Sending spell reaches An’Ahkrim soon after. Her tone is elevated and she speaks quickly. “Yes, I can come but I’m several hours away. I remember the directions – I’ll be there much later tonight.” There’s a pause before she finishes. “… you are not alone in this.”
She gets a reply, immediately. His voice is familiar at this point but it’s speaking with an unfamiliar air of uncertainty and raw grief. He sounds rough, and tired, like he’s not sleeping well, and he sounds like he’s at the mercy of something he barely understands. An’Ahkrim sounds… human. And he sounds like he hates that he’s doing what he’s doing.
His first two words are wasted on abortive noises, bitten down on and hidden behind clenched teeth, but they’re followed by a simple “Thank you.”
She thinks she can hear him take a ragged breath, but she might have imagined it. Would the spell even send it?
“I’ll light the way for you,” he adds. And then another: “Thank you.”
Velania hurriedly excuses herself from the other acolytes she has been sitting with. The phenomenon of a magical letter arriving is not so unusual an event in Daring Heights, and saying “pastoral stuff” is explanation enough to dispel any curiosity. She slips into the storerooms to claim a few supplies, then goes to her room and packs a bag, readying herself to face the Angelbark alone. At night.
What are you doing, Velania? she mutters to herself. But she doesn’t slow her pace. She marches through Daring Heights before sunset, knowing that by the time she reaches the forest itself, night will have set in.
Once she has walked through Castle Gate, she chides herself. You should at least have left a note. Someone should know where you’re going. But by then, the dice are cast. She is already hurrying across the plains toward the Angelbark, hoping that Selûne will watch over her servant.
She makes quick work of the hike to the edge of the Angelbark. The moon has risen bright and clear over the horizon, illuminating her path. She barely has to consider her direction; a gentle breeze guides her, a gentle tug somewhere behind her breastbone is tugging her along. When she enters the forest proper, her footing is sure and her mind – if worried – is determined.
Hours pass.
She follows the same route as before – or at least, she thinks she does. A forest looks so different at night, and she has no experienced ranger friend beside her to check each waypoint. But whether it is memory or the moon guiding her, she feels a rhythm of certainty in her heartbeat.
The old oak with the broken arm, the game trail down to the pond, the black brambles at the bottom of the ridge, beyond the tallest elm on the hill. Every time she passes out of a thicker patch of canopy and into moonlight, she feels a thrum of energy.
Her preoccupation with the route is all-consuming for a time, but as the journey passes without incident, questions rise up. How can a man so full of pride accept his new self? What if he simply gives up? His old ways would surely be so easy to revert to. How can I, a mere acolyte, even be of help to a man like this?
… and then the final question he posed in their shared dream, the most devastating one of all: How can you be saved if you don’t even have a soul?
She frowns to herself. Even though this is his fight, these questions pain her too.
Eventually, the moon sinks out of even the shortest view and the sky is painted a pale grey. Around her, thousands of birds pick up their pre-dawn melodies, unbothered by the quiet trek of a single traveller through their midst.
She feels the occasional shiver wrack her – the chills of a body that should have laid down to sleep hours ago. She gets turned around in the misty twilight, tired and worried, and for a moment a surge of despair threatens to choke her – the sleep deprivation exacerbating every single emotion… but then she sees it. The first of many to come, a single firefly glides gracefully into view from out of the fog.
One by one they glimmer into view, stretching out before her like stars, leading her back onto the path.
She walks on.
It’s another hour swept in mist, birdsong and the low buzzing of slow fireflies before the sun has properly risen. It breaks through the canopy like shining spears and together with the fireflies, everything around her is a bright, glimmering gold. The buzzing grows louder and louder, the fireflies multiplying with each step she takes closer to her destination as if she’s getting closer to their source.
Suddenly, she’s back in the clearing. There’s no campfire though, and no surly archangel pretending to be bothered by the strays he’s gotten deeply emotionally attached to.
An’Ahkrim’s sitting alone on the ground, legs pulled up to his chest, next to a small pile of pebbles and sticks. She realises she’s never seen him in daylight before. He looks like shit.
* * *
Her relief at finding him there is tempered by concern. She stops dead, feeling a surge of awkwardness and pity, not knowing how to weigh the two. She steps wearily over to the wretched man and sinks to the ground in front of him. She exhales loudly with relief to be off her feet.
She wrestles out of her backpack and rummages around in it. Then leans over to him, proffering a bottle of monastery-brewed beer. It’s been night-chilled and is still cool to the touch. “It’s early for this, but I couldn’t carry much anyway.”
He blinks once, twice, and pulls back from the thousand yards he’d been staring at and looks at her – a little like the first time, like he hadn’t believed she was real. His hands are curled into loose fists and he opens one absentmindedly, letting a small rock fall to the ground with a soft thump. It cracks apart with a small spark and turns into a firefly, buzzing gently as it flies off.
He tries to say something but can’t manage anything beyond a dry croak. With a dull look, he pulls the bottle from her grasp and downs about half of it before letting up. He wipes at his mouth and unkept beard with the back of his other hand before finally, truly meeting her eyes.
“I figured it out,” he says.
She watches him acclimatising to her presence with a frown. She freezes under his gaze initially, instinctively on edge in the presence of one with such blood on his hands. But the more she observes him, the more he, too, becomes real to her. Not just the embodiment of a ghost story, nor part of an ancient prophecy, but a living, vulnerable, miserable man.
“Figured what out?” she asks, hoping her voice will not tremble.
“What it is.” He takes another, slightly slower drink from the bottle.
With his free hand, he claws weekly against his chest, right over his heart. His nails are jagged and torn, with dark lines of dirt underneath, like he’s been digging something with his bare hands. “What this thing is. This awful, horrendous fucking knife carving me up. The serrated steel shredding me from the inside.” He might be sounding passionate and frightening in his ire if he wasn’t sounding so damn pitiful. “What I’m – what I’m feeling.”
She tries to hide her discomfort. Studies him despondently. The grime, his unkempt, unwashed appearance. In a perverse way, it is alarming to see the opposite of the fiend he once was. “You have a name for it. That’s good. That’s actually good,” she says. “What do you feel?” She feels a sense of comfort suddenly, as this takes her into the familiar role of counsellor.
His face oscillates from one emotion to the next rapidly before he finally bites out a single: “Guilt.”
He takes another swig. “Je’Sathriel says it’s a good sign.” He actually manages a weak laugh at that. “I don’t know if I can do it, Velania. I don’t know how I’ll be able to… if this is what it feels like now, what could it possibly be like when I actually have a soul?”
She nods gently. “It is. A good sign. I think. And yes, it hurts; it really hurts. Perhaps you are just getting hit by it all at once. When children are developing emotions, they can swing to violent extremes. Perhaps that is similar to what you’re experiencing.”
She looks quietly at her feet. “But I haven’t seen someone find a soul before. I honestly don’t know how it works, this way…”
“Most children don’t have to live with the knowledge that they’ve killed so many people in so many horrible ways that they don’t even remember them all.” He says it brazenly, condescendingly, but it’s a thin veneer over his hurt and fear, and guilt. There’s so much of it.
She stalls momentarily. “… no. That’s true. But they live in the sincere belief that what they are going through in that moment is the most earth-shattering drama there has ever been.”
There is a moment of complete stillness. Even the birds seem to hold their breath.
He blinks at her a couple of times.
“You know, that’s possibly the kindest way anyone’s ever told me to go fuck myself.” He looks genuinely surprised and a little puzzled. It’s miles better than the pile of self-pity he had been a minute ago.
She laughs with a single huff. “Well, that’s more Je’Sathriel’s approach perhaps. Bad news, I’m afraid: adults experience emotional tidal waves too. Guilt, loss, shame… grief… Sometimes you’re left curled up in a ball, covered in snot. So cried out that you’re too exhausted to cry any more. The messy truth is that all of these are going to be a part of you. But they won’t end up being all that you experience.”
She pauses. “… maybe this isn’t the part you need to hear right now…”
He sets the bottle down and rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms for a moment before taking a deep breath. He holds it and stares into the morning sky before letting it out in a sigh. “No. No, it’s probably exactly what I need to hear. Both parts.”
“Well, the good news is that emotions are also pleasant. Joy, satisfaction, atonement, friendship, self-worth, love… they’re… they’re all part of being alive too.”
She picks up a twig and twists it into her palm. “It can be hard to keep sight of those. Especially when the pain gets bad. But they are always there for the taking. If you are willing to work for them…”
He’s quiet for a while, mulling her words over. When he gets the question out, his voice is quiet. Small. “Would it not be greedy? To reach for those things? To want them? How could I possibly deserve them?”
“Well” – she looks up at him with a gentle frown – “who is going to decide if you are being greedy? Or what you deserve?”
He gives her a look – eyebrow ever so arched, a shadow of his former self. “Historically, your side.”
Her eyes widen. “That’s… that’s not how it works. Yes, the Moonmaiden is capable of punishing a mortal if she sees fit… as much as the Mistress of the Night, I’m sure… but who is really passing those judgements and meting out punishments? Us. Mortals. It’s always been us…”
He quirks his mouth in something that generously could be called a smile. “I was joking. Mostly. But I did mean the mortals among you. But I was joking.”
“… mostly.”
“Oh.” She inclines her head and rubs her neck… a little relieved, a little embarrassed. “Hah. Well, maybe I’m banging the religion drum too strong for this hour in the morning…” She blinks in the rising sunlight, then turns to her luggage. She produces a waterskin and a portable coffeepot.
She points to the pile of twigs. “Could you sort that out?” It’s not a request. It’s not an order. It’s more like an instruction.
“I highly doubt there’d be a time of day when it would be strange for either of us to be banging the religion drum,” he mutters, mostly to himself, as he busies himself with the pile of twigs and rocks. Some of them are still turning into fireflies and he shoos them away absentmindedly. They fly lazily over to Velania to do a couple of slow laps around her head before drifting aimlessly out of the clearing.
She busies herself with filling the pot to make a brew, thinking for a moment, before finally finding the way to return to the subject of his guilt. “Has Je’Sathriel told you much about himself? About what he’s put himself through?”
At a more conversational volume, he says, “Je’Sathriel has told me… some. Despite us being mystically linked through fate and prophecy, I’m sure you can imagine we aren’t massive fans of one another.”
He produces a small, neat pile of twigs to start a fire with and sprinkles sparks of flame across them like salt over a meal. They catch fire immediately and he busies himself with building a proper fire for her coffeepot.
“We might be. One day,” he continues. “When enough time has passed and we aren’t both scrubbed raw with wounded pride and have crawled out of our own backsides somewhat.”
He pauses again, clearly trying to speak with a steady voice, clearing his throat several times. It still comes out rather wobbly. “I gather I’m the one who has to decide I deserve those things. The problem is, right now, Velania, I don’t think I do. I rather think I should suffer some fitting torment and then meet my end.”
She watches him using the small vestige of magic he has available to light the fire, her gaze chasing some of the fireflies absentmindedly, then listens to him and nods as the water slowly heats up. Her face darkens when he speaks of ending his suffering.
“Sometimes, I wish I were the kind of person who could just snap my fingers and stop people feeling that way. But there’s no logical argument that can counter that. Only feelings. Finding something that speaks to you.” She presses her fingers together and thrusts them into her breastbone.
“Nobody else can do that for you, much though I might wish it were so. Some find religion, others find an occupation, or love, or creating something. Those seem rather… obvious to me, and any of those could probably give rise to their own unhealthy fixations.”
“I’m really not very good at this…” She sighs and pokes at the fire unnecessarily. “You could do worse than just starting small. Naming one thing that you like. That you are grateful for. We only get one chance at this, so if you are facing self-annihilation, there has to be something you know you’d miss. Just for fun. Name something.”
As the water begins to boil, she turns to frown at him with a sudden ferocity. “And so help me goddess if you say Je’Sathriel.”
He arches the eyebrow again, in the midst of this utter crisis of existence and morality, and there’s the shadow again – an echo of the man he had been before. “I certainly wasn’t but now I’m almost tempted.” The barest hint of a twitch graces the corner of his mouth. “I would have thought a powerful devotee of the Moonmaiden would feel nothing but respect and awe for one of her mightiest angels and champions?”
She cannot help herself in returning the smallest of grins. She stares at the boiling water absently. “… I mean… I do respect him, actually. But not for any of that… and Lady knows, he really doesn’t make it any easier.”
A spit of water hits the logs and sizzles. She comes to and takes the pot off the stove. As she pours two mugs, the aroma of caramel and fruit, a dark brew, hits the senses. She hands him the larger of the mugs. “I didn’t bring anything to put in it,” she says almost sheepishly. “Listen, I didn’t intend to patronise you and suggest that ‘thinking happy thoughts’ is the magic cure you need. But it’s not like there’s a script for this. People I know come to the experience of having a soul, having a conscience, having negative emotions, one step at a time. They do it by trial and error, over many years, and it’s intermingled with good stuff too… if they’re fortunate. Either way, it takes a whole lot more time than this…” she gestures at him with an open palm.
She holds up her mug and breathes it in. Feeling slightly light-headed from walking all night and sleep deprivation, the effect of something as simple and profound as a mug of coffee pulls on her emotions. She observes An’Ahkrim, wondering if any such effect might happen for a man so overwhelmingly haunted.
“I guess what I’m saying is one big ‘I don’t know’ to most of this. But I do think one thing…” she looks at him with sincerity emanating from her moonstone-green eyes. “Does it help even slightly that you are talking about it with someone else right now?”
He wraps his worn hands around his own mug. They’re trembling ever so slightly. He tries to clear his throat again to steady his voice but fails miserably. When he meets her gaze, his eyes are welling with tears and he seems too tired to fight them anymore. “The first emotion I felt that I couldn’t contend with was fear. The second was loneliness. Velania, it helps more than I can put into words.”
She locks eyes with him, frozen with empathy, and her expression is the grey veil between sadness and recognition. One moment, she is watching the glimmer of his tears forming, and then unconsciously, her eyes drift off to the side and she is blinking hard. She nods absently. Tries to suppress a heavy sigh. Fails.
Eventually, she looks back at him. Her composure has been rattled. “Fear’s a powerful thing.” Despite the early morning light breaking through, warming the clearing, she folds her arms around herself. “Fear’s in everything. Lurking there. Even in loneliness.” She shakes her head sadly at him. “You aren’t alone, though.” Her voice seems thin and small to her. She says it again, with a little more firmness. “You aren’t alone.”
It’s strange. Velania is a perceptive and insightful person – always has been. The first time they spoke, she could hardly read a single emotion on his face. The more she speaks to him now, the more she begins to think that it was no subterfuge, nor a perfected poker face. An’Ahkrim the devil simply didn’t have many feelings to show.
If she wasn’t so tired she might have found it fascinating – for now, she watches calmly as An’Ahkrim the mortal experiences a number of feelings for the first time. She can read them easily as they bloom inside him like quiet flowers unfolding at twilight.
Gratitude.
Empathy.
Affection.
He doesn’t try to stop the tears, reassured that she won’t judge him for it, and for a long while, there is no sound apart from their breathing, the crackling of the fire and the birdsong around them.
* * *
Eventually the tears slow and then stop entirely. His entire being takes on the bone-tired quality of someone who hasn’t slept well and then had a solid cry.
“You walked the whole night.” He sets the mug down, a little awkwardly. “Thank you. But you must be even more tired than I am.”
He hesitates for a moment before speaking. “I finished it.” He says it a little like a question, or an offer.
His simple statement draws her back into her body, and she realises she has been trembling. Weariness, hunger, grief, fear, and now a new sadness for An’Ahkrim’s distress. They are all wrapped around her muscles like a heavy, heavy cloak. But for some reason unknown to her, her face mirrors his gratitude as she addresses him again. She speaks quietly, thickly, almost muttering. “Last time I rushed through a forest the whole night, I was trying to get away from you.” The side of her mouth curls ironically.
She takes his mug and pours him the last of the pot. It is lukewarm and grainy and only a couple of mouthfuls at best. She sets it down in front of him apologetically.
Then she frowns. “You haven’t been looking after yourself,” she observes, with a hint of a scolding tone. She turns to her backpack and produces a few supplies. Two more beers. Packets of tea and coffee. A string bag of fresh vegetables. A comb. A toothbrush. A bar of soap. “I would have brought a shaving kit, but I don’t have one, surprisingly enough.” She unpacks them and sets them on a flat slab of log. “There’s these, too,” she adds, and uses her fey necklace Autumn’s Warmth to produce a pile of small, fragrant apples. “And these.” She pulls out two small, leather-bound books, each wrapped in an old ribbon. “Not god-texts, I promise. This one’s poetry, and this one’s folk tales from Turmish, where I was born. I… didn’t have much and I wasn’t sure what you’d like, but you might enjoy these. In case you get… you know… bored…”
Eventually, she runs out of things to fuss over. Her mind and body suddenly jolt to a stop. It comes to her almost as a surprise. “Yes… I am tired…”
He watches her pull out item after item, looks at each of them with a stunned silence, but at her final statement, he gives her a small quiet smile. Gratitude. Empathy. Affection.
Then he takes off his flannel shirt, lays it on the ground and piles the things into a bundle, carefully but efficiently. He gets to his feet with a small groan as his tired body protests even the smallest exertion. “I finished it,” he says again. This time it’s not a question, but a statement with just a hint of conviction and pride. He offers her a hand up. “Come with me?”
“Oh. I see what you mean,” she says, with an embarrassed half-chuckle. She takes his hand to stand. Her legs quickly remember the ache of having walked all night. She pulls her things together, moving in something of a daze.
“I thought you meant the coffee…” she adds, redundantly – her brain is still catching up. She stretches her limbs and rubs her eyes to get the blood circulating again.
When she is ready, she looks up at the tall man waiting before her. A man who has been encased in the dark, found the first crack in his own shell, fought it, pushed a limb free, and drawn his first ragged, tentative breath.
“I want to see it.”
He looks at her for another moment like he wants to say something more but eventually sets it aside, clearly too tired to form another sentence about his emotional state. Instead, he nods to the north end of the clearing. “This way.”
* * *
They walk in silence for some 20 minutes. She hazards a guess that they could have done it in 10 if they weren’t walking slower than men headed to the gallows. It is mid-morning now, and the late summer mists have already burned away. The dawn chorus has subsided into an ambient daytime ripple of forest noises.
The little cottage is plain, small and humble but surprisingly well built. There’s a small fire and some space for preparing food, even two shutters that can serve as windows, but no furniture. “Je’Sathriel instructed me how to get started on the cottage. He has yet to explain how one makes a table.”
He sweeps his hand around the small, spartan space. “I’d give you a tour, except I just did and I don’t think either of us needs to be on our feet any longer. Do you have a bedroll?”
Before answering, she walks around the small space inside, studying the beams, the quality of the joins. She runs her fingertips over the surfaces. Tests the floor underfoot. For a cloistered acolyte, she spends a surprising amount of time looking closely at the details of his handiwork. She nods discerningly. “Before the monastery, I was a farmer’s girl at heart. Watched my neighbours doing this. So I appreciate this is a lot of work.”
She breathes in the smell of fresh-cut logs slowly, then smiles, her eyes flooded with nostalgia. “It’s good. It’s very good.”
Her expression sparks with the defiance of someone fighting a losing battle with fatigue, and tiredness soon rolls back over her like a cloud. For a moment, there is a question in her eyes, and then her face settles. A decision has been made. “I have a bedroll here.” She sets down her backpack and pulls it out. A simple padded roll with some of her own hand-stitched repair-work. “Do you… what do you…?” She looks around questioningly, unable to imagine where he sleeps.
He makes a carefully passive face, aided by his tiredness. “I make a bed of hot coals and shards of glass. I lie upon it without slumber, planning my evil deeds.”
Then the corner of his mouth twitches. “Sorry. I was never good at jokes, and I don’t think being mortal will change that. I have a bedroll as well.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be praying for your soul for at least an hour anyway. The angelic chorus can get a bit loud. Let me know if it bothers you.” Her grin is weary.
A pack hangs from a nail on the back of the door and he pulls out a bedroll and a blanket. He nods to the space closest to the small fireplace. “You have that one. Go on.” He arranges his bedding against the wall furthest from the door and her – not that there’s a lot of square feet to go around – but the gesture is clear; he’s giving her as much space as he can without blocking the door. He might not have the ability to trust yet, but he understands how it works, and that it’s a fragile, new thing between them.
She watches him choosing his space, giving a sense of acknowledgement to him rather than much of a gesture. She sets her bedding out, lies down, makes herself comfortable.
After a moment, she turns her head. “An’Ahkrim?” She turns slowly and awkwardly onto her side, with a blank, empty expression. Her gaze wanders slowly over the ceiling, down the far wall, and finally settles on him.
“I liked the fireflies.”
He turns his head in a similar fashion, clearly struggling to stay awake. His purple eyes glitter in the firelight as he looks at her. A strange look passes over his face, like he’s struggling to understand something again, like there’s yet another feeling creeping quietly through his veins, whispering words he can’t make out. She sees the moment he gives up on trying to puzzle it out, but he holds her gaze for a moment longer and raises a hand gently into the air.
Sparks fly from the fire in a rush, and a quiet hum fills the small cabin as a dozen fireflies do lazy circles in the ceiling.
“There’s your choir,” he says. Gratitude. Empathy. Affection.
Then he closes his eyes, and sleeps.
