Chapter 4: Isolation's Anthem
At Last, A Dream of Peace
"So tell me," Eliana said as we lay down for sleep that night, "about the fire-haired, earth-skinned soul you were chatting with for hours this evening."
Of course she had noticed, especially after forcing me to endure the leering eyes of Ivory's finest bachelors, bachelorettes, and other single hearts. And of course she was drawing implications. To be fair to Eliana's meddling, Micah was an attractive person. But only socially.
"Their name is Micah," I said at last, "and they kept me company while a band of great fools showed off how deep their denial delves." Turning to Eliana, I smiled. "And they bought me enough drinks to drown Blue Stone's finest merchant marine. So I'm not complaining."
"They. Not he. Not she." Eliana smirked. "So maybe yes?"
"You know, I'm beginning to dislike you," I groaned and rolled to face the wall.
"No you're not, or else you would have made me sleep with Tareth," she paused. I could hear her hands moving about as her blanket accommodated what I could only assume was drawing connections in the air. "That is to say, share a room with him. We haven't. And we wouldn't. Not yet anyway."
"Trust, Miss Primrose," I snickered, "I know you haven't. But I'm not so certain you wouldn't, were you travelling alone." My pause didn't garner a defence from her, so I continued, adopting a tone similar to hers. "Yes. My name is Mrs. Eliana Primrose. And this brute is my dashing husband Tareth the Everpatient. You and he can barely stop touching each other. Don't think I haven't noticed his hand progressing up your thigh while we eat supper."
Her sputtering was its own kind of music, and it carried me gently into sleep.
Gormlaith shivered atop the Aerie, her only warmth coming from a slowly rising sun and a songbird that seemed desperate to wake her before first light. I recognised the bird's song, but couldn't quite place it.
Her campfire had long extinguished itself as she awaited her Lady's return. The Lady and her own sisters had gathered in the Grand Temple for some emergency that warranted leaving all the Mavi behind. And Gormlaith had always struggled in some measure when her Lady left.
As she rose from her resting place, Gormlaith took to inspecting her Lady's garden. Snowpetals all in rows. Clean lines, one plant in front of the next, forming a clean and tight grid. Perfection.
The shuffling footsteps should have been warning enough, but Gormlaith was still surprised when Afina stepped out of some shadow to greet her.
"Sister," her words were hushed, hiding from some unseen pursuer. "A darkness is falling over Lafleur."
"Not at this hour, it isn't," Gormlaith met her silver-eyed sister's gaze evenly. "But I suppose you're worried about the vision your Lady saw."
"There is more," Afina continued her barely intoned whisper. "But I cannot explain it. A woman outside time and space. She dreams our fates. What she dreams befalls us. Without fail."
"Until your Lady or mine can make sense of this woman," Gormlaith smiled gently, frost cracking on the corners of her lips, "we can do nothing, mighty Thorn."
"A time will come, Gormlaith, when I come to you, demanding a favour." Neither Gormlaith nor I could place Afina's desperation. "It will be grave indeed. What can I do to insure against your refusal?"
"Help me, sister Afina," Gormlaith's lips raised only on the right side, "help me to find the answers I seek about persistence. If I persist, then my Lady may never go wanting."
Despite the sun's light filtering in through the window, Eliana wasn't awake when I shot to vertical, but she'd left the journal beside her bed, ready to write whatever I dreamed next. She'd become indispensable in archiving the truth.
In my rushed and unpractised scrawl of Old Fleurian I wrote a few words.
"Persist. Darkness. Afina. Favour."
The dream was far less clear than the others. I couldn't parse its meaning, so I stuck with the basest of notes. Hopefully Eliana would make sense of it upon waking.
Aiming to not be a nuisance, I dressed myself quickly and returned to the bar, where Micah was already awaiting my active arrival. It wasn't some wishful nonsense on my part. They greeted me warmly as I approached, drawing a smile to my face. Frost cracked and fell from my cheeks at the motion.
I hadn't really noticed the night before, but Micah's own hair was a lot like mine. Fire. Wild. Untamed, save the pearl ribbon they wore to bundle it up. Between our hair, skin, and eyes, we could near be kin.
When I was in arm's reach, Micah reached up and took something from my hair. "I didn't take you for the kind of woman to wear flowers in your hair, Nyxara." They held out a white petal, a smirk spreading smugly across their features. "I'm not opposed if you are, but something a bit more vibrant would better match your hair and complexion."
"This happens from time to time," I tried to explain, "where they sort of just appear all over. One time I coughed up enough of them to fill ten pillows."
Why had I told them that?
"Fascinating. Is that ordinary for city women? If so, I think I'll resolve to stay as far from the Spire as possible." They narrowed their eyes and raised one brow, "Unless I'll find you there. Might make puffing out petals a bit more palatable. You are the best company I've had in ages, after all."
I blushed lightly at their compliment. "To be clear," setting boundaries early was important, "I don't really do romance."
Micah laughed from their core, not quite as intensely as the night before. "Good." They said after recovering, then left it at that. "So, you and the power couple will be in Ivory a few suns. Allow a smalltown pro to show you around. I need company. You need to stop thinking so hard about flowers. Win-win."
Laughter felt good. I couldn't sort why they felt the need to 'show me around', given how small the town was, but I felt obliged to acquiesce. "Please, good soul. Do give me the grand tour, and allow me the pleasure of proper pleasantries, perhaps."
Tested, Touring
There was far more to Ivory than at first I suspected. Micah showed me the fifteen houses, telling me about the various people who lived in them. Notably absent was any mention of their own dwelling. They showed me the various crops grown in Ivory's fields and their favourite 'tree for lounging under'.
"So that's Ivory," they said at last as we turned back toward the Ivory Hawk. Their graceful movement probably might have drawn me in, were I any other person.
I took their hand and forced them to look at me. "Do you take me for a country rube?" My brow knitted as my lips pulled tight. "You promised a tour. I've been shown homes, crops, and trees. Show me where people get into mischief, or I shall never forgive your kind soul."
Micah's laughter drew attention from the few people who were already up and about for the sun. Not so much they would run to investigate, but enough I noticed them craning their necks to see. Apparently Micah didn't normally make so much noise before I arrived.
"What mischief, pray," they wheezed between their slowly levelling breaths, "do you think we get up to here in the fifty-person settlement of Ivory?"
"It can't be that far removed from the playful games troublemakers find opportunity to play in the villages surrounding Greywatch," I reasoned. "Stealing carriage wheels, slapping unsuspecting horses, loosing nonvenomous snakes in crowded buildings. Ordinary things."
That renewed Micah's humour, bringing them once more to the ground. With no concern for the filth they were accumulating on their clothes, they continued rolling about until they fully caught their breath.
Dragging them to their feet, I began the task of dusting them off. "Oh stop. There's no way I'm that incredibly funny. Now. Show me the rest of the tour, or I shan't request your further company."
"Fine, fine," Micah chuckled at the threat. "It's less 'mischief' and more 'town culture', but given what I'm quickly learning is your style, I think you'll love it."
They led me back toward the tavern, a path I initially resisted, but they managed to quell my annoyance long enough to show me where we were headed. A small footpath ran along the side of the tavern and then into a nearby copse of trees. I marvelled that I hadn't noticed the path when we arrived the sun before.
It's important to note, for clarity's sake, that calling the copse of trees 'nearby' is somewhat of a misleading statement. The tallest of the trees wasn't visible from any part of Ivory. We walked at least a few miles along the footpath to get there. But given Ivory's isolation from everything around it, that still managed to be 'fairly close'.
As we approached the wooded area, I began hearing loud thuds echoing from within. It wasn't axework. Neither was it swordplay. But something much blunter and much heavier. My first indication that something was amiss came when the ground shook with one of the thuds.
I stopped in my tracks. "You didn't drag me all this way to kill me, did you?"
Micah's mischievous smirk was unsettling. "Eh. You had to find out some way, no?" When my jaw dropped, so did their ruse as they slapped me on the shoulder. "Silly woman. I don't want you dead. I want to show you off."
We took our first few steps between trees and I thought I saw the flash of a cold-flame deeper into the space. It had to be cold-flame, if I saw it at all, because it was quiet, cool, and bright. Orange, which was the ordinary colour for most people.
I hurried my steps, assuming Micah would follow along. More flashes came, accompanied by a rush of air that was sometimes common with rapid release of cold-flame. Just as I came into a clearing, Micah's hand gripped mine, pulling me against a tree as several things flew past me all at once.
Least interesting, by far, was an arrow that missed me by an inch and stuck deep into a tree. A bit more interesting was a log twice my height that followed the arrow, though a bit further from my face. And finally, most excitingly, was Kettle, who flipped about mid-air and managed to hit a tree feet first before repeating Micah's trick of using cold-flame to slow their descent.
"Oh!" Kettle immediately called out, pulling the eyes of three people I had yet to meet directly toward me. "You brought er!"
Everyone in the clearing came over and introduced themselves. A slender woman called Nickel was holding the bow that had almost killed me. A rugged man called Mill wore gloves that were likely used to protect him from the bark of the tree he'd just thrown almost as fast as the arrow. And a person who could easily be Kettle's elder sibling introduced themself as Pot.
It was rare to find so many people with servant names so far from a big city, and yet here were four of them all citizens of Ivory.
"Welcome to Ivory's defensive combat training grove," Micah smiled broadly. "If you can make it into the clearing without dying by accident, it's an excellent place to blow off steam."
"An we learn new ways ta use people fire," Kettle said brightly. I hadn't heard cold-flame called that, but I couldn't be too shocked. "Mill came up with a way ta pick stuff up." That explained the log.
I leaned in and whispered to Micah. "I assume that display just now explains Kettle's threat that I needed to remember their name?"
"Mostly. They're also the only little kid in town after ... well," Micah paused a bit too long before continuing, "after some things happened. So the town looks out for them."
"That's ... kind of a lot." I barely managed the weak smile I gave as I turned my attention back to Kettle. "But I'd be a lot more interested, Kettle, in that trick you did where you didn't fall and hurt yourself just now."
All five of them laughed at my comment. "I'm not certain, Nyxi," Micah said after a moment, "that you'll manage that in the few suns you plan to be in Ivory, but we can get you the basics."
I wasn't sure I liked the nickname, but I didn't fight Micah's use of it as a term of endearment. What concerned me more was how much I could learn if we planned to leave Ivory and return to our path as soon as possible.
Several hours of sweat and irreverent cursing later, I had impressed exactly one person in the group: Kettle. Apparently I was a much slower learner than they'd hoped. But Kettle was pleased that I kept trying, even though I fell on my face a dozen or more times.
Realising I'd foregone breakfast to enjoy Nyxara's 'tour', I invited the lot of them back to town to tell me more of their research and development. Kettle and Micah obliged. The other three hesitated, but I brushed it off. I couldn't blame them for wanting to avoid crowds.
"So, Micah," I said idly when Kettle ran ahead of us, "I couldn't help but notice that you didn't point out your home during the first part of the tour. And I wonder why that is."
Despite my attempt at discretion, Kettle's razor-sharp hearing was enough for them to turn about and stare, mouth agape for a second. "You didn show Nyxi your house, Micah?" Okay. Maybe I did like the nickname. "That's it! You're comin with me!"
Kettle grabbed one of my hands with an iron grip while Micah grabbed the other. They fought against each other for longer than I expected Kettle to be able to resist. But shockingly, the little one managed to beat Micah out.
"Fine. We'll go," Micah sounded exasperated, but they were giggling almost, "but I doubt she'll like it."
"Silly, of course she'll like it," Kettle smiled brightly at me. "Friends always love their friends' houses."
Kettle didn't let up on dragging me along even as we passed through Ivory. Micah didn't let go of my hand along the way. It was kind of sweaty and uncomfortable, especially for the last mile.
Micah's house was just another house. Plain. One level. Six rooms. A bed built for a couple and one for a child. Standard fare.
What stood out to me was a small altar set up in the room that likely served as family area. Three graphite drawings occupied the altar. One was Micah with two other people, one their age, and one a child. The other two drawings were the two individuals.
Noticing my fixation on it, Kettle came over and gently patted my back. "Micah had a family. They were real nice."
"You don't have to tell me," I looked at Micah with the gentlest look I could muster, "but I'd love to hear about them. Whatever happy memories you have."
"Mayhap in the future," Micah muttered, "but for now, since we're here, let me make us lunch."