Lilies and Butterflies

"Hunh !"

Kyle's lokken slashed empty air where Taemporo had stood four milliseconds before.

"I challenged you to hit me, Kyle-ai, not brush the dirt off my sleeves."

Kyle's face was ruddy and his expression serious. He was more than a little tickled with irritation now. Beads of sweat ran from his forehead and poised on his eyelashes, threatening to obscure his vision.

Taemporo had not even moved his feet, merely dipped his left shoulder backward to avoid the diagonal downward slash of the lokken. His torso, then, was bent at an angle to the plane of his legs.

No way can he move fast enough to right his body and move his feet if I reverse direction. As he thought it he was doing it, and the end of the lokken stopped, began to move horizontally right to left. He had closed the distance between them to an arm's length, there was no way he would miss this time.

Just when the staff should have been stopped in its progress by smacking into human flesh, there was a hissing "whiff" as it sliced again through empty air. Kyle's muscles automatically worked to stop the swinging staff; his eyes swung back to center, to Taemporo. Didn't he just hit him ? Why couldn't he hit him ?

Taemporo's arms were folded behind his back, adding insult to (Kyle's persistent non-infliction of) injury. His eyes danced with a private mirth. He had leaned further back to avoid the second blow. His torso was now bent at an incredible forty-five degree angle to the plane of his feet, supported only by the muscles of his stomach and back. His bare feet remained planted where they had been since the beginning of the practice session, a shoulder's width apart, toes inward.

By the hang of Taemporo's cloak Kyle realised after a moment that master was not supporting himself with his abdominal muscles, that he was actually still moving. Taemporo was falling to the floor with his arms extended downward and behind him. Those arms flexed as his hands hit the floor, his face all the while fixed on an astounded Kyle's.

Kyle's astonishment increased rapidly as one of those previously immobile feet lifted from the ground and drove itself with blinding force into the underside of his chin.

Shit that hurts ! Holy seed of demons that hurts..........shit shit shit how does he do that shit -

The sweat had filled Kyle's eyes and the force of the blow had blurred his vision. His brain felt to be swimming in a viscous bubble, neurons misfiring wildly as the jarring impact dislocated their liquid moorings. He lashed out wildly with the staff, blindly pounding the floor in the general last known location of his tormentor.

His wide arcs very soon gave way to shallow stabs at the air and finally, to a few half-hearted thrusts. His wearied hands could no longer support the staff - it felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. His vision began to return, with the added benefit that he could now see two of everything.

Kyle bent his head and heaved sweet gulps of air, supporting his weight with hands on his knees.
"Alright, enough. Why can't I hit you ? I should have been able to hit you just now."

"Why do you think you couldn't hit me ?"

"I know I can hit you !"

His note of defiance sounded out of place given his poor display, and he knew it. He closed his mouth.

"Temperance must shadow valor. Without temperance, valor will always be overpowered by an enemy's superior skill. Do you understand ?"

"I think so."

"Think on this. But first..." Taemporo motioned with his head toward the baths, "... eliminate that odor."

Kyle grinned, mouth covered with clasped hands as he bent at the waist to match Taemporo-anen's bow.

An abrupt turn on his heel and Taemporo was on his way out of the jyoro.

Wonder what kind of father he is. Does he beat up on his son too ?

Did he have a wife and child ? Did he even favor the opposite sex ? That last thought, for some reason, caused Kyle to erupt in outright laughter as he walked to the bath. His mirth resounded from the walls of the training hall, empty now save for him.

----------
Bare feet slapped the gymnasium floor as Kyle's peers, the -ai cohort, left their practical instruction to attend to the strict regimen of hygiene demanded of each warrior. The gymnasium was a large building, in external appearance akin to a hollowed obelisk. Thin blue veins grew tendrils within the white marble floor and around the two rows of columns that supported the vaulted roof thirty feet above.

Straight ahead, between the wide corridor limned by the rows of columns, a thin mist floated lazily, reducing the to-and-fro of the figures within to the meanderings of lost souls in a soft-focus rendition of some imagined underworld. Black and white, bond and free, all were indistinct shadows temporarily freed from the rigid strictures of the society which ended at the gymnasium's black basalt-bricked walls.

Kyle loosened his robe as the steam enveloped him, let it slide from his shoulders as the sound of lapping water grew louder. Presently he was fully nude, the robe discarded in a basin to be retrieved by the servant girls who would replace them every hour.

Several baths filled the western end of the gymnasium, segregated by rank. The blue-green of the tiles at the waterbottom lent the mist an otherworldly hue. Sound was curiously refracted and compressed here, but he knew this voice instantly.

"Aye, brother - how goes the battle ?"

Esmorai's grinning features floated above the gentle man-made waves of the bath. His eyes drank in the full length of Kyle's lean musculature as he slid into the water, as Kyle knew they would. Behind Esmorai a lean youth cradled him about the neck, another hand moving invisibly below the waterline.

"Aye, brother - I am well." Esmorai dismissed his companion with a not-unfriendly shove to the chest and half-floated, half-paddled closer to Kyle. His long lashes seemed, for a moment, discomfitingly feminine, though set in a face of strong jaw and pleasant ruddiness.

"Oil ?"

"Yes."

Esmorai floated to the edge of the bath, dipped his hands in the basin of olive oil treated with Scythian spices, and returned, hands cupped as if to capture falling treasure, with his bounty. Kyle turned and felt aching shoulder muscles relax as the astringent lotion delivered subcutaneous healing. Esmorai's massages were expert indeed, he reckoned.

"I must be short today. I promised Amasa I would meet her in the Garden if my class finished early. Want to come along ?"

"Only if you will teach me the neck strike today. You promised me four days ago and you still haven't."

Kyle grinned without turning. "I did teach you, but it apparently didn't take. I am not to be held accountable for your thickheadedness !" He steeled himself for a playful blow but it came from the left, not the right as he expected.

"Ay ! To the arena with you ! I'll give you a lesson indeed !" The mock outrage prompted a flurry of open-handed slaps from each, punctuated by hearty laughter from all in the pool. The lapping waves made themselves heard again as the laughter subsided.

-----------------------

Scurrying servant girls set about to gather discarded robes from the large metal basins along the edge of the baths. Eyes lowered, their brown skins beaded instantly on contact with the steamy air. Most of them were slaves from the newly conquered lands to the Near East; taught their new place in society by their elders (many of them also born slaves, save the odd noblewoman fallen into ruin through illicit affair). With luck, they might move later into the ranks of the primerannerae, the women whose sole purpose in life was attention to the pleasure of the warrior class.

Similar to the temple prostitutes in function, they were much more highly regarded as a matter of caste. If waging war was so noble a pursuit of the young citizen, should not some degree of honor accrue to his consort, she who sated his physical needs and bolstered his spiritual strength, keeping the fighting machine well-lubricated ?

Their motion spurred Kyle to wakefulness from Esmorai's lullaby minstrations, absently noticing for the first time the fine detail on the carved lion's heads looming from the columns above.

"I'll be late !" He motioned for Esmorai to follow and grasped a fresh robe from the hand of a startled servant girl. As Esmorai had earlier, she stole a look at his dripping, unclothed body. "Let's go !"

---------


[ed.: conversation with classmate goes here, centering on the upcoming trials to move from -ai to -rai. Classmate and Kyle decide to head to the contemplation pond, where Amasa said she would meet him if he finished practice early. He catches glimpse of her half-nude, bathing in the dying rays of the sun. His ardor is kindled, but no words pass between them. In fact, he returns to his dormitory without letting her know of his presence. Amasa knew he would be coming, so why did she choose that time to sun herself ? Was it done consciously ? Let the reader discern.]

In lockstep, they turned the final corner in the path. Beyond the gate, Kyle knew, lay the contemplation pond, and behind this hedgewall to his right it continued to reflect the dying rays of the evening sun. His gaze had followed his thought and he found himself looking over his right shoulder, through the dense shrubbery, yet somehow catching a glimpse of her. Had he known she was there, would be there ? Esmorai continued to walk ahead, but Kyle was transfixed by the billowing red beauty of her hair as it cascaded over her bare shoulders.

He sucked in air, involuntarily, as through the close-knit tapestry of vine and leaf his gaze continued to traverse her prone form. The reflecting pond lent her its halo, proferring her image as an earthbound angel might appear in mirage to an itinerant dying of thirst. Her red nipples pressed free of her red hair to stand erect, like twin warriors guarding the milky-white mounds they had conquered. Her breasts, a handful each, were perfect curves of unblemished symmetry. They rose and fell gently as she breathed, her eyes closed.

Dared he to look further ? That white skin, seemingly unkissed by the sun but not the white of those bound to serve indoors, narrowed at her hips. Kyle's loins birthed a sudden explosion of heat - he was sure that if he ran a hand along his thigh to test its source that he might scorch himself. His breath came in short gulps, and he did not notice that Esmorai had walked back to where he stood.

Possible reviewer

This guy seems to enjoy a good piece of fiction blending fantasy and realism - might make a good reviewer before the Big Pitch.

War in Heaven

Galaxies swirled
In Aeon's dark womb
Their giant wings o'erspread
Hu'un's own tomb

Ere daylight did break
Or the stars took their form,
Ere the firmament was made
Or the bright comet a-born

Did Ixcthu Himself
By the word of his voice,
Weave the fabric of Yrunn
Bequeath creation its choice.

- from the oral tradition of the ???, later written in the Book of ???

Anaphim, son of the morning, departs from Ixcthu's habitation by the Gate Which Shall Not Ever Remain Open. His heart is full of joy, as he has just led the angelic host in a worship chorus to Ixcthu, one that seemed more heartfelt than any in recent memory.

Anaphim's company of angels have great reason to rejoice, as they occupy an exalted office as administrators of the new world Ixcthu has created for them all - Yrunn. It is to Yrunn that he is now destined, travelling at the speed of (a god's) thought.

The ethereal body he inhabites would be impossible for human eyes to bear. He is brilliant as the morningstar (hence his name), and embedded with instruments with which to make musical worship to Ixcthu. He is unbound from the strictures of the physical universe - gravity, time, temperature; length, breadth and space, they have no hold on him.

He can as easily pass through the flaming path of the comet as materialise - immovable - to stop it in its path. His power was (and remains, let the reader understand) immense. Though not infinite.

His frame still echoing with the praise of the worship chorus, Anaphim enters Yrunn's orbit like a shooting star, decelerating through the heavens with wings spread abroad. As he dashes through the clouds - the night-black sky and starry background having given way to the red-violet of the upper atmosphere then the pink of early sunrise - his body begins to take a form visible to the human eye.

From this height the orbital perfection of blue-green Yrunn, uncorrupted (and unfrosted with cloud, as the waters of the earth are yet divided into a superatmospheric canopy and a body of seas much smaller than those of centuries future) is a marvel to look upon.

Mission Statement

I must write to light the way
As my feet are made meet
To tread this path,
I must write to right the way.

I must pray to stay the cost,
Ere the Reaper be keeper
of souls of men
I must pray to save the lost.

I must fight to write,
For the words are alight,
I must write to light the way.

Shluaxtl's Arrest

Shluaxtl paused in his flight away from the Gate Which Shall Not Ever Remain Open and toward the heavens of Yrunn. Ixcthu's glory (were human eyes able to discern it might have appeared as the most intense of purest white, yet somehow silver-tinged, light spilling from the miles-high opening to the third heaven which was Ixcthu's abode. But human words must always fail in describing the things of heaven) faded as he rapidly covered the innumerable light-years between There and here, but still a twinge of that silvery light could be discerned where he now stopped.

Around him the constellation (ed.: need name here) whirled in its marvelous beauty. Ahead, Yrunn's sun and moon, mere specks on a canvas filled with light and starry beauty.

Shluaxtl exercised every perceptive power at his disposal, but still could find no answer to the feeling of disquiet which enveloped him as a damp blanket on a chilly night. No sooner had he paused than his reflection was disturbed. An enemy approached ! He reached to draw his sword, but a lance of pain tore through his shoulder as a missile pierced him, to grievous effect. One after the other, the ice-cold arrows came.

Shluaxtl screamed. He could not unsheath his sword, so great was the pain. Those who had launched the missiles followed close after, daggers in their hands, their faces contorted with hate and mouths issuing foul hisses. Demons, emissaries of Anaphim ! They must have hidden in the orbit of the star nearest him, [ed.: ???], catching him unawares. But how had he not been able to sense their presence as he usually would ?

They were a shadow of their former glory. The longer they remained out of the presence of Ixcthu and his holy abode, the more deformed they became, it seemed. Their 'wings' were no longer feathered with white to reflect the universe's glory, but were darkened and dripped with detritus of unknown provenance. Their feet, once beautiful and unshod and the length of a human man, were curled into hardened hooflike appendages. Their blackish skin was scaled and repulsive to look upon, oozing dark phglem. They were foul not just in nature, but in being.

The leader of this pack - Shluaxtl could hardly count them as they swarmed over him - did not join the fray but gloated, hovered soundlessly in the light of [ed.: name of star].

He felt stab after stab rend his white robes, but the pain was all one giant pain. With a scream, Shluaxtl fled backward, slowed by the weight of the ravening pack that clawed him. They were biting him now ! Sheer hatred led them to discard impersonal instruments and tear at him with their own bodies.

Shluaxtl's screams echoed all the way back to the Gate, his expelled breath vaporizing the space debris left in his wake.

[ed.: this explains why during one session Kyle calls upon Shluaxtl and he is not there. Another spirit has been insinuating its way into his life - through one of the women assigned to 'service' the warrior class - and now presents itself as his rescue and hope on this, the eve of his test to move to -kai.]

Bathurst

A poem I wrote after a busride, here. I'm a poet and didn't even know it.

Norwegian Forest Cat

From:
Reply-to:
To: Jessye Quarles [jquarles@skyboxlabs.com]
Subject: Congrats !

Hey, bro ! Congrats on the Muellandher account. Told you it wouldn't be more than a week or two. Remember, I also accept payment in beer :-)

[ Quote fabulous poet here]

When do you want to get together ? I imagine you'll want to bring the boys out and celebrate for a bit. I've got a few - ahem - party favors I could bring to share :-) let me know beforehand how much I should travel with.

Gimme a ring later tonite !



Feb. 12th

Amazing day today ! Everything finally clicked with Henry over at Muellander, he confided in me today that we weren't going to get the job, they're giving it to someone else. As if I didn't already know ! (lol).

Jessye's going to be happy, and it's just in time - the new JBL should arrive tonite and I'll need some cash to pay off the plastic. A couple more gigs like this and I might be able to make that trip to Punta del Este with Jessye and the boys.

Wrote another piece today, too; gotta run it by Sid, Aaron, and if he has time, Jessye.

[maybe insert sample of his work of art here ?]

Hmmmm... regarding the moral dilemma thing, I think the tradeoff's worth it. Fuck being poor, unrecognized and scrupulous for the rest of my natural life. It's not like Y&R will miss the business, anyway.



Feb 14th

Weirdest thing ! When the delivery guy brought the JBL home theatre system on Wednesday, after I signed for the shit and brought the boxes inside, there was this huge mewling/howling outside my door for, like, half an hour. When I finally went out to see what it was, lo and behold there's a perfectly white, perfectly ownerless cat on my doorstep ! I know none of my neighbors has cats, neither does Wanda down the hall or the Schultzes, so I guess he'll spend the night with me while I figure out whose he is.

He's beautiful, kind of like a lion without the color - he's got this huge mane and amazing blue eyes. Seems friendly, too ! Real affectionate.

I'll get him some catfood on the way to practice tonite.



From:
Reply-to:
To: Jessye Quarles [jquarles@skyboxlabs.com]
Subject: re:: potential upcoming deals

Hey man, got another potential for you - we're pitching Bang & Olufsen tomorrow night. Look's like it would be perfect for you: limited-length campaign, East Coast media market, plus your type of demographic. I've already worked up a gem of a dummy pitch I know they'll reject. Trick now is to get Stander to fall for it.

[ed: insert later screed about how Jessye didn't use one of his ideas for one of the accounts. You see, nameless wants to think he' writing the winning scripts for Jessye, but doesn't realize Jessye is doing it all himself (just taking the leads he's given and the winning on the strength of his own firm's ideas)]



Feb. 15th

Still can't figure out where this cat came from ! Nobody on my floor has ever seen it before. It'd be a shame to give him away now, after we've taken such a liking to each other. The SPCA can't promise that they won't uput him down if they don't find a foster family, so I think I'll keep him. There ! Decision made. Maybe I'll name him Stander ! lol ! No, better yet: Punta del Este.

In other news, I caclulate that if I bag Bang & Olufsen I can do the trip with Jessye. Maybe three or four more (with a bigger cut, maybe 15%) and I'll be able to jump ship for good.

Marissa's coming over tonite, I'm putting on risotto con carne with tapas to start. Should blow her freakin' socks off ! Wait 'til I tell her about the trip - maybe I should hold off on that ? We'll see. After a couple of glasses of this wine I may not be able to - LOL !

Time go go feed Punta, he's scratching at my leg... must be hungry, poor guy.



Feb. 16th

Wow, is Punta ever gorgeous. His fur is softer than milliner's velvet, and his eyes - those eyes ! - are like the blue ice of an Arctic glacier. He's the most composed, affectionate animal I've ever seen, and I've owned not a few cats and dogs in my time.

He can't be more tha two or three years old, at his size, but he's like the feline equivalent of an old soul. Under all that hair he's pretty muscular - I wonder what breed he is. The pictures closest to looking like him that I could find on the Internet were of Norwegian forest cats. It says here that they used to guard Viking storehouses of grain from marauding mice. I guess as an outdoor cat he likes to run around and chase things, but since he's been here all he does is follow me from room to room and watch me do stuff on the iMac.

The Sheffield speakers are amazing - those connectors recommended by the salesguy really did the trick. We watched Independence Day on the DVD and during the battle scene it sounded like the freakin' roof was about to come off ! I still didn't tell her about the trip, pfah. I'll land the gig first, then tell her. I think she's a little pissed I was paying so much attention to Punta. She didn't even want to get all fucked up on E like I usually do - didn't even stay the night ! What, does she think my balls don't go blue just like the next guy's ? And I could so get it up, I only did a couple of lines. She'd understand if she'd just try it, once.

Pfah. Meeting at eight tomorrow. Couple more lines, some sangria, and I'm hitting the sack.

[to be cont'd]

Black / White

New story idea, here.

Jump

From the Black/White vignette.

Blacktop. Bridge. Falling...... falling...... water below. Tuck head to chest, pull knees up to chest, brace for .....

Impact. Turquoise blue water, soft, enveloping - cushioned my entry. Still falling, but slower now. Water unusually viscous. Ten... fifteen feet below surface, bright sun visible above. Have enough breath, can make it - wait ! what's that ? Shar-

"Unhhhh !"

He woke, sat bolt upright in the narrow bed, pulling the thin cotton coverlet with him. It was soaked through with sweat, a jagged transparent patch of cotton through against which his thick, short chest hairs bristled. It took two or three seconds for his eyes to change focus from the inner to the exterior mind, another second for them to adjust to the low light filtering from an aperture behind him.

A plastiformed chair was overturned at the foot of the bed, despite its heft. The blue jersey and jacket it had supported were strewn on the smooth concrete floor. His breath came in ragged gasps; the horror of a waking nightmare was receding though his body remained in flight mode.

"What the hell - ?" he thought, then, rephrasing, "Where the hell is this ?"

He felt the heavy anchor of panic he had cast off poised to return, like the opposite end of a child's playground seesaw.

Be rational. Get a grip. Hang on for a second. It'll come to you.

A quick glance behind him ascertained that the light was natural, not artificial. Its metalllic tint was due to the polarised double-thick panes and the low angle of the descending sun.

Evening.

For Sandra

When I think of you I
Lose my breath
for a moment
When I dream of raven-black hair
falling deep around
Shoulders beautiful as Cypriot mountains I
Lose my step
for an instant
When you draw close you
smile and (far away) roiling galaxies birth infant stars
Liquid contentment, like pregnant cumulus, drizzles
into fallow spaces of my unplowed heart
And when you drift away
like the bonfire's remains on a stiff evening breeze
You may draw the blinds
on the attic window of my soul
And deny entrance to these
brief rays of light
for a time

Copperthrow

Rsforin saw her almost immediately. He had been waiting all day with an urgent expectancy; now he discerned the reason for that nameless suspense. Something like a sigh was granted inner expression as he regarded the girl – she could not have been more than ten or eleven – on the arm of her father, all dressed in white. Her red hair cascaded over the shoulders of her simple toga. A blue wildflower was tucked into the hair above her ear, and freckles danced along the bridge of her nose.

Her father was a hulk of a brute with a simian slope to his shoulders but clear, perceptive eyes. His dress was as simple as his daughter's and gave no hint as to his trade: loose linen breeches and a roughly-formed tunic, both the color of summer earth. As the two drew closer Rsforin gauged the large, rough hands. They were not raw with fieldwork, not cracked and blistered with the firing of metal. A merchant, perhaps ?

Rsforin smiled his most pleasant smile, an action rendered almost automatic in the course of his duties as proctor of this [ed.: ward ?]. The machinations which had brought him from the tradesman's hut to the proctor's office had been powered by ambition, but ever lubricated by his subtle talents of ingratiation. The smile was returned, the hulk's clear eyes met his.

Introductions were made, brief pleasantries exchanged. He finally let his eyes move to the girl, lingering no longer than would be deemed appropriate. He hardly needed to see her; he could feel her. Her spirit exerted a powerful presence outside her tiny frame, but what was more, what was extraordinary, was that her spirit was largely in control of her conscious will. At this young age her spirit and physical being were in harmony to a degree sought fervently by many adept magi. What a treasure ! What a find !

Immediately forgotten was the sudden and implacable anticipation he had suffered all day, an anticipation that were he to be absolutely honest with himself, indicated she had been sent to him, not drawn to him. He'd had nothing to do with her unheralded appearance, but gods be damned if he would not now set in motion the gears of a machine that could take him to the very seat of Pryaen power.

These marsh-dwelling unregenerates who feared and ridiculed magic might merely tolerate his administration today, but they would see him differently when he returned bearing power forged in Pyrae itself. When they saw what magic – what magi – had wrought, they'd be lining up to send their boys and girls to the jyoro !

He rose now from behind the stone desk. Not too rapidly, as to denote haste, yet not slowly, as to imply indecision. His grey robes billowed briefly, ensuring that their first impression of him standing upright would be an inflated one. He repeated this ritual daily with every new supplicant, every villager who came to request a dam be built or a bridge repaired.

It was unusual for a magi to be appointed proctor; some whispered under ale-laden breath that sorcery had bought Rsforin favor in the capital. In fact, the reverse was true: he sought to curry favor in Pyrae through cunning administration of this minor fiefdom. His rise had been due more to natural political skill than to his magic arts (though of late it was becoming more difficult to determine the boundary between the two). He was adept at both, and made no effort to remove the mistaken notion from the heads of the villagers whose small lives he governed.

The father was entreating him now, in a deliberate and reasoned manner that spoke to his intelligence. But the father of such a girl would naturally not be a dullard, it was clear.

He represented their village's council, the easternmost under Rsforin's jurisdiction, and their requests were several. They were being taxed disproportionately in comparison to neighbouring villages, he said, and receiving too little grain from the storehouses in return. They were resourceful, he said, and not prone to frivolous complaint, and so would consider as fair recompense the construction of a new pier at the edge of the marshlands and the addition of an additional barge to the river fleet for their fish catches. His salesmanship was even and unemotional, the subtle language of government.

Rsforin replied in the same deliberate, measured tones and turned from his slow pacing every so often to hold his supplicant's gaze. They were equals, he seemed to say beneath the words. We are men of reason, and you can trust me, he seemed to say. What he did say was that the proposed solution was reasonable, but clearly impracticable under the ward's current financial constraints.

He also said that he agreed with the basic argument of overtaxation, but that to acquiesce to both those compensatory requests would not only endanger the proctor's budget, it would certainly cause him to expend valuable political capital. Why ? Well, he said, the other villages would certainly resent any such concessions given that they were all competitors in supplying fresh fish to the capital. He made sure to interject a soft smile and reflect a growing optimism. "I'm on your side !" he seemed to say.

Now, there was one personal circumstance which might lead him to risk such an expenditure of capital, he thought aloud. You see, in addition to holding the office of proctor, he was also magi, -anen. And, you see, he was currently without a pupil. A dark hood had dropped over his supplicant's face, but Rsforin's back was now turned, all the better not to see it.

Indeed, this young girl is magi, as you must know, and there is no greater master with whom to apprentice with for miles around. Were I to gain such a student, I could more easily countenance the damage to my budget and my political leverage. You see, don't you, how reasonable this would be ?

Rsforin was reluctant to probe the man's spirit as he normally could, surely the girl would sense it. He was not sure how she might react if he did, but he meant to discover her basic nature when she was his, and she was not yet. Turned to face them both again, he noticed that her green eyes were as clear as her father's.

No answer was immediately forthcoming. The father stood silent and so did she, her hand still in his. By the time the two had left twenty minutes later, an agreement in principle had been agreed and the fates of a young girl and a cunning mage had been intertwined like the threads at the edge of a lacquered tapestry.

-----

She was bent over the parchment when Rsforin entered the room, holding her sides and rocking backwards and forwards with her eyes closed. He'd felt the spiritual energy emanating from the room grow in intensity and it had drawn him like a whirlpool's vortex. The energy had grown in small spurts at first, interrupting his quiet contemplation in the way that the flares of sunspots disturbed Earth's magnetic field with distant radiation. Then the spurts had merged into a constant, surging stream and grown in intensity like labor that brings forth a new life.

She was whispering musically, in a language neither of them knew. A shiny patina of perspiration crowned her forehead. She was beautiful this way, he thought, beautiful and powerful. She was a hyssop sponge dipped into his well of knowledge, but she had somehow taught him – was teaching him – unexpected things, too.

He watched her with a queer mixture of satisfaction and disquiet. Satisfaction that she was progressing so rapidly – she was close to mastering the throwing of Fire. Disquiet because she relied so much on one guiding spirit instead of the pantheon available to her. Was this really all ? Perhaps he was more perplexed at her attraction to this Ixcthu, because he knew of Ixcthu only by reputation. A god of chance, his own master had said dismissively. Unreliable. Not easily manipulated to the ends of man through the usual means of ritual, sacrifice, and works commanded from on high.

He was inscrutable, with a peculiar code. None of his previous students nor any of his colleagues had to his knowledge depended on Ixcthu to any large degree.

Amasa was rocking faster and faster now. The expression on her face approached childlike rapture. The room began to feel damp and warm, as if an incipient rainstorm hovered above. Her whispers began to fade away, and without warning a tongue of blue flame exploded into being atop her head, audibly. As it burned it made a rolling sound like subdued thunder.

Amasa unclasped her hands from her sides and began to sit upright. The tongue of flame continued to grow, spreading into a transparent diadem and enveloping her upraised hands.

"Shape the fire !" Rsforin cried hoarsely. "Shape it and throw it !".

Her eyes still closed, that part of her mind which was still conscious of her surroundings must have heard him. She made her palms touch in front of her forehead, wreathed as they were with blue fire.

"Manna mae tollamae, chtoi illama sithcthim – durae !"

At that last word the crown of blue flame left her head, sucked into the instantly magnetic vicinity of her already-flaming palms. Without pause the fireball that was her hands erupted into a stream of flame painful to look upon directly. The stream lapped greedily against the wall facing her and blackened the massive timbers. As evidence of intelligent control of this primal element, the stream presently narrowed to a tightly focused beam and the ragged edges of the leaping fire were trimmed.

Amasa began to breathe heavily with psychic exertion. The beam retreated from the wall, flew back, retreated. She began to pant. The flames died to a flicker at her palms, and her eyes opened. She slumped backward from her cross-legged position to half-lie, half-slouch on an embroidered cushion. Rsforin stood over her with a benevolent smile, nodding.

"Very good, Amasa. Very good. We must work on your physical stamina, but your control was pure, not forced. Very good."

"I don't control it, anen. I let Him do it for me. I always do. You know that."

Rsforin frowned, and benevolence began to drain from his countenance. "Young woman, power without control is useless. You call forth the flame, you control it, you do. We sacrifice to give the gods their due, and this power is what we receive in return, but we never forget our responsibility to master it. Never allow it to master you."

Amasa shrugged slightly and smiled sweetly. There was magic in her smile too. Rsforin could summon forth no further ire.

"Very good. Tomorrow you will run with the men in training to build that stamina. And right now – dinner !"

Amasa followed him to the kitchen where she would roast the fish and boil the rice for the evening meal. During the week, this was her duty. On the weekend, when she returned home, she would do the same for her father. His love, however implicit, was far away, but she held it close to her heart.

-------

[ed.: and now write the scene wherein Kyle and Amasa are on the marsh, guarding the nets against marauders. This is the equivalent of a crane shot, starting with overhead view and proceeding to closeup (do we go all the way inside Amasa's head ? That would be good)]

Green water lapped at the gunwales with a hypnotic rhythm, in time with the gentle to-and-fro sway of the flat-bottomed craft. Shllllpt, shllllpt.

From the egret's vantage o'erhead the two bodies lying in the bottom of the reed boat, limbs intertwined, could have been those of familiars basking in the rays of an ascendant sun. They drank it in as they would libations to the god of wine. Their skins were browned to perfection, a contrast to the surrounding expanse of green water and head-high reeds. The call of the egret and the liquid splash of aquatic citizens mingled under the sky's blue canopy: a melody of the marsh.

A fly droned lazily as it detached itself from a black mass of its whirling brethren. As if exhausted in the travails of resisting gravity, it sought momentary rest on one of the veined brown arms slung over the rivercraft's gunwale.

Kyle absently slapped at his arm, briefly exaggerating the boat's natural sway. His eyelids were half-closed.

"We should check the nets on the south side," he murmured.

"Mmm. In five minutes. The sun is so warm and nice…" Amasa said.

She'd made a pillow of her luxurious tresses, and trailed her fingertips over the gunwale in the cooling marsh waters. Her facial freckles were darkened, deepened, along with her complexion, giving her the appearance of an exotic spotted feline at leisure. Tendrils of moss-like growth traced their tips in a subtle pattern below her fingers.

"There should be a big catch today. Thirty, forty dirak at market, if we're lucky," Kyle said.

"Father will be happy, then."

"What will you do with your money ?"

"Probably nothing. Save it until I get to the city, to buy a few new things ? What will you do with yours ?"

Kyle smiled, arching his neck to let his face more fully savor the sun's bounty.

"I'll probably leave some with father, and save the rest to have a sword made when I reach the city."

There was a brief pause, she fully opened her eyes.

"You're excited to go, I guess ?"

"Of course ! Who wouldn't be ! To train with the best, eat the food of gods… to rule, eventually. This – " he waved his hand to encompass the surrounding reeds, "cannot hold us."

"Not to mention the large numbers of primerannae who might make themselves available to a new warrior," Amasa said drily.

"Ah, none so beautiful as you, sister," Kyle laughed. His eyes too were open, as he added: "You will probably be one of the most beautiful in Pyrae. I may have to be a warrior sooner than I think, to keep the men off you."

"One of the most beautiful ?" Amasa cried in mock outrage, and flung her arms skyward.

"The most beautiful." It was truly not difficult for his voice to find the appropriate level of conviction.

"Don't worry about me, Kyle, I'm plenty capable of managing my own protection."

Kyle said nothing for many moments.

"What does it feel like ? When you call forth magic ?"

"I don't call it forth, as such. I ask, and as Ixcthu wills it, He allows me a measure of his power, and I shape it."

She closed her eyes again, and a sudden series of deepening ripples began to radiate from her half-submerged fingertips to the side of the boat and the reeds two armslengths beyond. Shllllpt, shllllpt, shllllpt. Boat and occupants swayed more pronouncedly.

Kyle's brow crinkled as he watched her bare forearm redden from the unseen exertion.

"But how do you know Ixcthu's will ? Do you talk to Him ? What if one day you are surrounded by a pack of angry wild buffalo and you can't work magic because it's not His will at that precise moment ?"

Amasa shrugged. "Then I die, if it's His will."

"I can't understand a god like that."

"Neither can Rsforin." Amasa chuckled, and the chuckles cascaded into a laugh, and the laugh became a mirth that shook her frame at some briefly-recalled look on Rsforin's face. "Yes, I know it's not the same as with the other gods. I'm not the one in control, He is. And yes, he does talk to me !"

"What does it sound like ? What does it feel like ?"

Amasa raised herself on one elbow then clambered from her end of the boat to his, draping herself across his bare chest. He cradled her head there.

"Like this," she whispered.

In this manner they fell asleep, and several hours passed before they awoke.

-------

[ed.: and now write the scene where Amasa's father knocks down her shrine]

She was the perfect image of her mother, and when he could no longer stand to look on her sublime beauty he would repair to the terrace, to mend the nets. Like the others dotting the edge of the marsh, their home was a bungalow perched on stilts driven deep into the marsh floor. The terrace stood guard above the life-giving green waters.

It was as though she carried with her, ghostlike, the ethereal essence of his former wife. It was there in the way she brushed her hair, stroked it absently when lost in thought; in the coy grace of her walk, in her smile of a hundred suns. But she was dead now, his wife, and he reminded himself of it with a never-fading bitterness every time he looked into Amasa's face. Whatever cruel irony there was in the death of one forever beloved to bring forth this tinier replica of herself slid off his shoulders and puddled around his feet, unexamined.

He was a man of action, given to prefer wordless expression over deep introspection (time-wasting, and of what lasting value ?). His actions, and the ghost of a dead woman, drove a space between the father and his very alive daughter. He might depart early in the morning to spread the nets with Kyle, the son of his second wife – spend all day with him, returning only in the evening after he had delivered the daily lesson on the martial art of the lokken. But he seldom could find more than a few scattered moments in the day for her, and these seemed to cluster around the evening meal and the mending of the nets.

To be sure, it was painful for him to be close to her, to be forever reminded; but what parent does not bear some measure of pain in rearing a child ?

Many times, as he worked the fine-pointed iron needle through the dried and twisted flax of the nets, she would sit soundlessly beside him to stare out into the torchlit night. They would listen together to the rush of river waters around the stilts of the this house. Of course, this was not the true river, only one distributary of many that snaked along the alluvial plain to terminate in damp marshland. Stilted houses on the banks of the true river could never survive the seasonal floods caused by melting snow in the highlands. In some similar way, Amasa was his kin, but, whether through his wilful distance or another irresistible reason, her stream and his were rapidly coursing to divergent ends.

While he knitted and wove, she would sit and drift into waking dreams woven through with the voices of neighbors carried on the water. It was a curious paradox that in this silence they grew a kind of closeness. She would bring the earthernware pot of water just when he was about to grow thirsty. She would leave a skin filled with his favorite palm wine in the same spot before she retired for the night. He would knit the tiny imperfections in the garments she left behind, leave bushels of morning-gathered herb and lyanyan bark shavings at the threshold of her room as she slept.

Despite this closeness, or maybe because of it, the destruction of her shrine threatened to irreparably fix a gulf between them. The violence of the act had surprised even him. He had left the net-mending to find her worshipping Ixcthu at the makeshift shrine below her window in her small room. Enraged beyond explanation, he'd flung the simple altar, with the herbs still burning their sweet incense, through the window and into the night. He hadn't raised his voice, or said anything at all, making his display all the more deeply affecting.

If he thought about it now, he was angry not at her, but at this god who was not content just to take his wife in childbirth, but who now wanted to steal the only thing he had left of her – his daughter. It had been too much, in that abrupt instance, to control. The rage had erupted before he could touch it or cajole it back into simmering submission.

[ed.: continue !]

[ed.: as a young girl, she encounters Archios, an angel who assumes human form. She does not realise he is not human, and he tests her with several questions. Later in life she meets him again (in a dream ?) and realises that he was assessing her allegiance (whether to the Kingdom of Heaven or that of the god of this world)]

"Ishmatharrin – durae !"

Nothing.

Amasa wrinkled her nose and prepared to try again, focusing more intently on the copper pail of water before her, undisturbed despite her best efforts. Her concentration wavered wildly and she could felt a psychic wall where there should have been warmth and welcome.

"Ishmatharrin – durae !"

Still nothing.

"Amasa."

She started at the sound of the voice behind her, turned to determine its source. Behind her stood a tall blond youth in a flowing white robe of impossibly white cotton. His face was impassive but he positively radiated goodwill.

"Y-yes ? Do I know you ?"

"My name is Archios. I can show you how to increase your focus, and thus, your range. Would you like me to ?"

Amasa paused to consider. Rsforin would frown upon instruction by another, but he was not here, and she had promised to master the heating of Water by his evening return.

"I don't know – my anen is Rsforin and he is not here… who are you ?"

Archios stretched a white-robed hand past her, toward the uncooperative copper pail.

"When you ask of Ixcthu, you must believe the request granted even as you ask," he said. Amasa's scalp burned with pinpricks of invisible electricity, her hair crackled and stiffened.

"You ask and await a result. Instead you must ask and know that what you have done is so."

From beyond his outstretched palm came the unmistakeable sizzle of water rising to a boil.

"Do you love Ixcthu ?"

Amasa's ten-year old brain raced to stay ahead of this curious set of events.

"I'm sorry ?"

"Do you love Ixcthu ?"

"Wellllllllll… of course I do, I guess – I mean, yes ! I sacrifice only to him."

"Many sacrifice to gods they do not love, but only fear. Do you love Ixcthu ?"

"Yes. He is my mother's god, my father's god. I've never needed another. Yes, I love Ixcthu !"

Archios seemed to smile, but didn't quite. At least, Amasa could not pinpoint on his face that particular upturning of the lips with which humans often denote good humor, or joy, or approval.

"Try again."

All thoughts of his identity momentarily cast aside, Amasa scrunched her tiny nose and furrowed her pretty forehead to focus on the pail. When she looked up again, Archios was no longer there.