Temple of the Fallen Skies
41 Searing 121
Kneeling on a zabuton before the stretched canvas, Kala meditated. The relic of Saedene hung from her wrist, and the loose sleeves of her robe were carefully tucked back so they did not get in the way of her practice. The glyph she inscribed was not hers, not a new one. In fact, it was quite ancient, something she had memorized in order to meditate in this manner. Her muscles held the memory and they danced, a trio between her, the brush, and the canvas.
Paths converged, fed into a continuum. An elegant vortex encased it all, which would prevent the energy from dispersing in any but the manner it ought to do. This was not the first prayer flag she had painted today, nor would it be her last. At a regular interval, an acolyte would arrive with a newly stretched canvas and her pattern would repeat. The glyph would be awoken with her own aether, the rest of the flag decorated with sutras. They would be strung up when appropriate for the prayers of monks or those who braved the rarefied airs of the Cloudhaven District to come here. The prayer flag would not carry a prayer to the Gods, but it would accept the aether of those chanting and praying, eventually to be whipped away by the wind, spreading their blessings of compassion, peace, strength, and wisdom throughout the lands.
Ransera would never cease to need such blessings, and so they would never cease to make them.
Hers was a small part of this process, but she was happy to have her skills put to good use. Occasionally, she would intone a mantra to Saedene, who had appeared to her and to her brother here at this very temple when they honored their father's spirit. Occasionally, she would imagine she was one of these prayer flags as she passed her aether through the ink and fabric, bringing it to life. She might never fly, but a part of her would. She might not be one of the world's airborne guardians, but her small blessings might ride the winds and offer some small service to the land and the people.
She brought her frustrations up here. It was easier to let them go and let them fly away to be dispersed in the mountain air and thin, bright sunlight. When she was down below, her one true anger could well up within her. It still seemed a divine injustice that her twin should have wings and not her. It would be one thing if the blessing were random down the bloodlines of the Avialae, but for a Goddess to deny this blessing to her daughters felt wrong in a way she could not fathom nor set aside. At times, she felt righteous indignation, others a wistful sadness. Sometimes, when she meditated upon it, she could almost remember the warm sea of the womb, imagining that she and her twin would one day fly together only to be born screaming at the wrong done to her.
Still other times, she was afraid there was something unworthy about her that kept her from the Goddess' graces. She would have forsaken her sex for wings. They seemed a more intrinsic part of how she saw herself than the rest of her body.
In this meditation, at least, she found peace. She would not begin the scrivening until she found that core of peace, lest her negativity seep into the work and corrupt the blessings it would contain. She finished. She observed her work from a place of non-attachment, her eyes tracing the lines to ensure the aether would flow as the ancient scrivener had intended. It was done. She made the appropriate mudras, genuflected, and praised the Crystal lady as she let her aether awaken her work.
"I prostrate to the Liberator, Mother of all the Victorious Ones." She spoke in a language no longer used except for such things, knowing that it meant far more than the many ways she had read it translated over the years. She made the next set of mudras, genuflected, and spoke the mantra. Again. Again. Again. She didn't seek to curry favor with Those Above, but to find that liminal space where she was more than what she seemed to the naked eye. Errant thoughts went through her mind, but she did not attach to them. She ought to beg for the rune of duru dwimor, to open the door within herself that would let her spirit fly faster than any of her brethren. It must have been lost for a reason.
Eventually, an acolyte returned, swapping out canvases, and Kala began again, dipping her brush precisely into the ink and then boldly drawing the first path.
"The horizontal is the line of reason, the vertical is the line of prayer," she murmured. It had not been a mantra when she had first heard it from a painter describing compositional elements, but it had apparently become one today. Perhaps her mind was trying to tell her something about scrivening that she didn't yet understand completely. Perhaps there was a glyph she could create that would send her prayer directly to the Aetherium. But would such a thing be considered hubris or the sort of energy that the Goddess would reward?
This convergence for one element, another for the next, and down the line. There was a geometric pattern underlying everything even though it looked entirely organic in its fullness. It was what many scriveners called a "perfect glyph." It was the simplest, most economical use of space and wasted virtually nothing of the aether that went into it. She had no idea whether it actually worked, whether the wind carried the communal energy of the blessings and caused any actual benefit to the energetic fabric of the world, but she had faith that it did. And if, someday, the Goddess came down from on high and told her in no uncertain terms that it did nothing, she would not count her time and effort a waste by anymeans.
Studying so perfect a glyph helped her better understand the art of scrivening, for it was as much art as science, and intuition was fed by more context. It helped her quiet her mind and center herself, as well as to step outside herself and think about other people, which was the true noblesse oblige, or so House Leukos taught.
She didn't know whether the seers of House Ahtivan had been correct when they called her and her brother a miracle. Certainly, the live and healthy birth of Avialae twins was rarer than in other species. That they were born already corebonded was seen as an omen, as well, though she hoped nobody had engaged in extispicy or the like to be sure.
Kala finished another prayer flag, meditated upon it. Genuflected.
"To you, I prostrate myself always—whether I am in happy or unhappy circumstances—with my body, speech, and mind."
The acolyte came and took the canvas away to be removed from its easel and allowed to dry until such auspicious time as it was fitting to hang new prayer flags. When Kala noticed there was no replacement, she also noticed that the light had gone golden with the afternoon. She was cold and she was hungry and she was thirsty and she could sense Kaus' presence, ready to accompany her home.
While still in her trance, she set her brush down. She kissed the relic hanging from her wrist. She said a mantra for the Ara, and a prayer for her father's soul, indigo words from an inkwell of tears.
Despite her youth and good shape, her body was sore from being in that position for so many hours. As she stood, Kaus' hand came out to help her up. She took it, of course. There was no shame in it. When she was steady, he scooped up her scrivening implements, but the acolyte returned and took them from him with promises to clean them properly.
"Sometimes," she said slowly, just loud enough to be heard over the wind that high up, "when I bring the glyph to life, the pattern of the aether looks like an eye to me and I wonder if She is looking back at me."
"The Crystal Lady?" he asked, just to be sure. She nodded. "Perhaps, though they say that She is so vast... so incomprehensibly powerful..."
"I know. It is unlikely that She spares a moment for any individual. Perhaps the Shinsei, but not for me."
"I didn't mean—"
"I know." She smiled. Even with as deep a bond as theirs, he was careful when it came to the things she was most sensitive about. They were things he couldn't protect her from. But when she said she knew, she also knew that he would do anything for her. There were blessings aplenty in her life, and often she felt as though she was ungrateful, but there was always that niggling wrongness that she couldn't seem to shake.
They both reached out to touch a hashira of the torii as they passed out of the sacred space.
"Let's go home," she said. "I'm starving."
"Me too!" he agreed, but Kaus could always eat.
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