She held her hand in front of her, and looked at the ceiling. It was January.
It was January. In October, she’d laid here on her bed, trying to push a V-book up a few centimeters. Maybe a meter. But now—she could hold a person up on the ceiling.
And when she’d first noticed her trait—back about ten years ago—moving her pencil up, up from where it lay on her palms, and ever then—ever since then—she couldn’t focus on school. Things got harder as their V-books updated per year but she could decide where to study, where to practice, and there were so many objects to practice on.
Alone. But—she had—did she really push Falara away? Why—because Falara had known about her trait ever since they’d met on the playground—because Falara was a Magy’cal herself, well, she still couldn’t get her head above that—but—aahh, Skylark knew that she could have done better. It had been three weeks since then. She opened up her Thought-feed, scanned quickly to Friends—and ordered by date of admission, she saw Cerise and Luke and she kept moving to the last name on the list—Falara.
A hazy, stinging warmth filled her Thought-feed.
She looked at the most recent Thought message, sent from two days ago. A blue sensation of déjà vu struck her. She had done all of this time and time again already. The TM read:
Skylark. I’ve talked to Jaceus and it’s amazing how far you’ve come.
And again, she wondered briefly what Jaceus thought about a full Magy’cal who couldn’t use her magic. She wondered again if Jaceus thought she was more impressive because she could.
I am the only one that can fly.
She read the message again, and couldn’t help feeling that red—like the red that had appeared around Falara the last time she saw her. Maybe—maybe some day—oh, but Jaceus wanted to go to Sector II and Skylark knew it was possible because Jaceus could really do anything. It was—
It wasn’t like she had a real reason to stay.
Well. If she was never going to see Falara again…
She readied her mind, and got up to a sitting position; she took a quick glance around her room again—she saw things that she got for herself, things Falara got for her, and one thing that Alauda gave her. Maybe it was time to open the box under her bed. She couldn’t bring it after all, and she felt like it wouldn’t help when people like Luke and Cerise would be there.
Thanks Falara. She came off the bed and then threw off the cover to reach down under it and her fingers found the surface of the container and without thinking she Thought Blue as the sky.
“Here, put this inside,” Ala said, handing her a feather.
It was dark grey and the barbs were separated. She put it in the box.
“Which bird is it from?” she asked. There weren’t any birds with grey feathers.
“It’s still from one of the seven, Sky,” he said. “I forget which but the color faded over time.”
“So it’s dead?”
“I don’t know,” he said, laughing. “But I want you to keep this, to remember me.”
“What are they going to do to you?” she asked again, trying to keep her voice steady.
Alauda stopped laughing and put on a smile. It wasn’t real.
“I won’t be hurt. But when I come back I might be different.”
He stood up then and Skylark reached up with her hands. But she could only reach up to his waist. She put her hands around him.
Alauda put a hand on her head. “I’ll see you again someday. Don’t tell Mom and Dad, okay?” He pointed to the box with his other hand. “And just tell them you found that on the ground.”
“But the ground doesn’t have dead things—”
“Skylark, when I come back I might have changed,” he said again. “There’s a reason the Government is searching for people like us.”
He was still pointing at the box. As Skylark watched, it moved upwards and the feather inside lay completely still. It moved up to Ala’s hands and he put one of them over it, and closed his eyes for a second. And then opened them. “The password is look at the sky.” He handed the box, which was now closed, to her and she took it; and, shaking, it almost fell out—
“It’s okay.” Her brother steadied her hands, and the box stopped moving.
“You can also use your power, as we have the same,” he said. He put his right hand beneath the box, and took her right hand out from under it with his left. He gently pointed her right hand at his hair. Her hair was still between brown and any part of blue.
“Use your trait, Lark,” he told her, smiling for real; she smiled back softly and thought, and her brother’s messy but bright, blue strands that were hanging over his eyes began to wave back and forth.
“No matter what they take from me, the magic I have is part of you.”
Skylark smiled at her brother and clasped his hand in hers as they held up the box.
Skylark closed the box.
Okay. It was time. She checked her TMs and there was a reply.
Can I come see you before you go? I have something important to say.
Her thoughts were clearer now. She could respond again.
I’ll come by your place. Skylark waited.
Okay. That works! See you tomorrow? After school?
School—Skylark laughed. I’ll see you then.
*
The receptor emerges from the serveport. It is not of the Horus brand that seemingly everyone is wearing nowadays but one called Hermes, and I put it on. “Thank you,” I find myself saying to the serveport, and it says nothing in response, of course. It is an unthinking machine.
Citizen Identified—Melea Voraëson. Use acknowledged. Enjoy your self.
The limitless world of the receptor’s Thought-pool I see in my mind—Thought-feed, Worldnet, Personal. Under Personal—Persona, Experiences. I know that if I enter the last, being a new receptor, it would be empty—but we don’t touch Experiences. Especially myself. No one wants to review their day, from their perspective. Although with what Mik’vael is telling me in my Thought-feed, a new line of receptors will be gracing us here in High, the Aesir line, and we will soon be able to record our lives in V-movie form. Change the way we lived our days. As if that were possible—my life is not a story. It is not because I left a group of characters to root for. It is because my trait is not what they have all believed it to be, and which I could never explain. Because I still do not fully understand it myself.
Thoughtnotes restored. I go to Trait Diary. Most recent entry—Age 17. After watching myself get better at raider, soon rivaling Vael, I realize that the trait I thought I had—enhanced physical characteristics—could not be my true trait. Watching myself get better at raider. I couldn’t explain it beyond that—as I check ages 18 through 22 in Normal Diary, I find that they are all the same. After joining the Furies, I just watched myself get better at fighting. Soon surpassed Valha’ya in physical combat, although her trait always surpassed mine—whatever it was. I never saw it in use, only glimpses, and they were far too fast for my Scion Emulus-granted eyes.
I sigh, and leave the store.
As I head towards—somewhere—I check the Thought-pool for Worldnet—Events—Raider.
BEACONS TAKE UPPER LEAGUE TOURNEY—FAZZID MI’ER TAKING HIATUS FOR UPCOMING V-MOVIE, SIARA EL’TO NEEDS NEW RAIDING PARTNER—UPPER LEAGUE HOLDING ALL TEAM TRYOUTS IN MARCH
UPPER LEAGUE HOLDING ALL TEAM TRYOUTS IN MARCH
I laugh. Events—Agency.
FURIES ARE STILL, YES, STILL, NO LONGER A THREAT—NEW AGENTS ENTER RANKING ORDER—THE RANKING ORDER IS BEING CLIMBED, Thoughtcode 4444 for current listings. Mmm. Now that is something new. The listings change all the time but I know from my sister that ‘being climbed,’ especially as they recently held their own tryouts, indicates a single new Agent joining their top ten. That is something. With my sister and Raegoth heading the place, I doubt she’d lose her rank, but—
I can ask her later. For now—
March is two months from now.
What am I thinking? I haven’t played raider since, practically preuni! Mik’vael would laugh. I wonder what Agate would think when I do Thought message her. I will. d’Voris, you will.
I enter the portal.
What would I even do to prepare myself for tryouts? You only joined the sport in preuni for your sister. Why would you exacerbate your trait even more? Whatever it is. You’re already close to fifteen percent. Valha’ya was—close to twenty, or over. She was wavering already. And Skylark—you’re not part of the Furies. They’re the Powers.
You can’t keep going.
But I need to understand.
I leave the portal and look down.
A group of players is already doing exercises, or training runs. From this height, their runs and practice plays pall in comparison to what I saw with my own eyes last week.
My feet feel… cold. The launchpad’s golden surface stirs.
“Governor?”
I catch the face of the one who shouted—it is Siara El'To.
They are all looking at me now. All except for one—he looks up, his mouth quirks, and he looks back down, tossing a raider ball between his fingers.
“Thank you for coming!” Siara El'To shouts. The other players—there is Fazzid Mi’er—are talking amongst themselves—eagerly, I think. He must not be leaving yet for his V-movie. “We’re only practicing for tryouts, Governor!” Siara continues to say, and then I realize, I have just used one of their golden launchpads, the one a Governor used as Golden Seat once the game passed into Governors’ Arena. I—how did I get here? I portaled—but these portals are game-only, not specified to citizens—
“That’s pretty funny, Siara. She might not be a Governor, but fulfills the same conditions as one,” the one playing with a raider ball says.
“So she is a Governor,” Fazzid says.
“That’s not what I said,” is the response.
“You and your deductions, Bodi,” Siara says. She looks back up. “Are you a Governor?” she asks again, more loudly—as if I couldn’t already hear her anyway.
“No, I am not,” and jump off the launchpad—and I land on the playing arena.
Siara El'To, Fazzid Mi’er, and the other players all take a few steps back.
Ah—it had been about ten meters. They weren’t Scions—
“Hello,” the one named Bodi says, walking up. “You’re not a Governor, right?”
They hadn’t heard me, but I had heard them. I was a Scion. I am a Scion.
“No,” I say. Fazzid appraises me with a look. Siara El'To is frowning.
“I am not a Governor,” I say. “I’m—”
“I know,” Bodi says. He tosses the ball away, and it lands on the floor and rolls. “You’re related to one, right? That would be the condition for accessing a Golden Seat, regardless of a game actually happening.”
“Why are you here?” another player asks, one whose face isn’t familiar. It’s not as if I have been perusing the Beacons’ rosters recently. “Which Governor sent you?”
“Just let Bodi ask the questions, Gulla,” Siara says. So Bodi holds some import on their team. Even though he hadn’t been playing in that game.
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My parents aren’t Governors. But this only means that I have a Governor somewhere in my family, beyond my parents and sister. I make a Thoughtnote to ask Mik’vael about Governor in family.
“My aunt,” I say. “I’m not going to reveal her name.”
“Hahaha,” laughs Bodi, and he walks over to pick up the raider ball. “Good. That doesn’t narrow it down, but well noted.” He begins tossing it between his fingers again. As I’m closer, I notice that he isn’t tossing it palm to palm—but truly between his fingers, one by one. “A Governor is interested in our pre-tryouts decision making, but, she’s not coming herself. It’s not a Government interest. Which means—”
He flicks the ball at me, and I catch it—unconsciously, between two of my fingers on my right hand. I almost drop it, but retain the smooth alter plastic between them.
“You’re here to try out early.”
Fazzid is now frowning, and the player named Gulla laughs. Siara, though, does not seem fazed anymore.
“You’re actually interested in her,” she says to Bodi, to which he smiles. “Here, the ball,” he says to me, gesturing with his hands, and I toss it back with my fingers. He catches it with one, and I let slip a slight gape before quashing it. “She came here herself, and she has the legs for it—I mean, look how high that launchpad is.” He looks briefly up at the Golden Seat.
He turns to Fazzid Mi’er. “What do you think, F. M.?” And he walks some steps away, to stand behind the other players who hadn’t spoken yet.
“She is related to a Governor, so it’s allowed,” Fazzid says. “She can tryout in March.”
“She has two months, then. You’re listening, right, newcomer?” Siara tells me, and I nod. I find myself nodding.
I may be trying out for the Beacons, best team in the Sector—well, raider is probably only played in Sector I. I nod again.
I’m still developing my techniques. As I would tell Mik’vael in high school.
Well, I guess I have more I can work on.
Scene 7
A silver light filled his doorway and Tr’aedis was shaken out of his reverie.
It was the person they had called Triomphe. The day before when he had first met Puræ, Ila ce, Triomphe and the one who did not speak. Triomphe’s flickers of grey shot through with their own brightness in a manner which struck him differently than the Myodor siblings’ manner of sun, that they each had in their bearing and smiles, alerted him. It truly was morning; it really was only the second day.
Tr’aedis rose wearily from the shape he had considered a bed. On a more wakeful look, it more resembled—and he knew not how his recently-woken mind formed such an idea—the physical embodiment of a dream. But when he reached down to touch it, his fingers swept through nothingness.
Startled, he looked back at the source of the light. Triomphe.
“Lvvo noræs?” Triomphe said, gesturing to the receptacle. Tr’aedis did not understand, but perhaps it was customary for those here to greet others upon waking.
“A fair morning to you,” he said. But then he remembered, and shook his head. “A morning fair,” he said instead.
Triomphe nodded, as if he understood; but Tr’aedis knew that neither was understanding the other. Only that he was the guest, and Triomphe the host; he would play his role.
Triomphe was now turning, and beckoning over his shoulder: and only then did Tr’aedis notice that the tall man was not wearing the cloak of wings as before: but rather, no cloak at all. Triomphe had on a crest, or a much more elaborate version of what Herceus had had naturally on his head; but not made of hair. It was separate. Tr’aedis remembered that in the past, based on what they had learned in school, people wore hair-coverings called hats. But before the hair had taken over society. Alterfaces allowing the citizens to modify their hair colors each year, body-maintenance prescriptions facilitating that immensely. He felt his own hair, and it was nothing like the sheet of magnificence that rested on Triomphe.
Below the hat, and Triomphe’s own silver strands, was an additional covering of silver over his torso and extending partway over his legs. His arms bore what looked to be similar material, but somewhat darker, approaching black; but not quite that of Puræ. It wasn’t brown either; but Tr’aedis couldn’t find himself able to think longer on it. But he discerned there was something clearly different between the clothing of Puræ’s arms, and that of Triomphe.
Tr’aedis took one more look at his bed receptacle, and followed.
They walked out of the room. They passed by hallways and rooms, each containing similar bed-receptacles—but none were occupied. He felt the sense that he and Triomphe were “late,” as it were—to a function, or custom of these people. A place where many slept, sharing the same physical locale; but separated. He knew that Agency headquarters up in High were situated thus, but never had such aspirations. Neither had his friend named Eleanor.
They soon left the series of bedchambers, and Triomphe led him down what appeared to be a diminishing incline—like steps, he knew Eleanor’s house had the same—but they connected fluidly, and Tr’aedis recalled from Modern History, the Arts section—Physical Instruments—something called the piano. It felt like that; strolling down its keys, but producing no music, let alone sound that he knew.
Which led him down to the sound of silence—but present, filled with the throng of many voices. Tr’aedis felt his heart lighten. It was his stage. Or rather—his many-voiced audience, stirring. Calling him up to bow on all sides.
He laughed.
Triomphe turned his head, but returned it to the many-voiced front, and they came upon a wide, wide room.
It was filled with people.
It was filled with people that looked to be his age; and Tr’aedis felt clapped in Blazon. One star out of many. One drawn to be his own constellation, to the one who’d take it in—one who was no longer with him. One to take his pomp and circumstance in.
Tr’aedis laughed again but he didn’t think it sweet.
Upon Triomphe’s entrance the sea of stars winked out; and Tr’aedis thought, as the sea of heads and faces turned towards the hair and hat of silverlight, that a brief, aspiring constellation did appear among the lights that disappeared; but the stars remained.
And he did not feel bright among them.
But he stood next to one, at least—“Triomphe-turen!” they cried, and Tr’aedis saw Triomphe take sudden strides and stood before the entire group; raising his hands, which glowed, created a burning of the air like one might see above fire; but real fire did not exist anymore in the world. But perhaps it did here, and he thought he saw light of silver—and the people in the crowd were now raising their own arms, but instead of creating this illusion, were crossing them, striking their right forearms with their left, and their left forearms with their right.
But now, they were looking at him. Triomphe was saying more words. They were the ones now who were laughing. Triomphe beckoned for him to move forward—he was extending an arm towards a place that was empty, towards the front. Tr’aedis saw that it was in between a girl with rather stringy hair, sitting next to a very tall individual with something instead of hair—and a girl whose face was entirely red, like an emblem of some kind, and as he approached, he saw that she had features within he could see as human’s—but that radiating outward from it, the rest of her skin was of a lighter shade of scarlet.
All three were dressed in similar material to Triomphe’s hat; it covered their bodies below the face in a strange fusion that seemed to Tr’aedis to blur the distinction between clothing and skin. At this point he realized that he’d seen a great variety of outward-facing apparel and, besides the distinct wing-marks on the Myodors, and the letter on the—beings which spoke to him in Neo English—he could discern no pattern in any of it. Clothing in Plent was dictated by many things, one of which was Agency uniform and its many imitation lines, but he never followed it. He just wore—like he did currently—regalia of the von Hiischklens. And otherwise brands of the extinct fauna.
But he noticed that what these three wore clearly differed from what, it seemed, everyone else in the crowd wore. If what Triomphe wore was the most defined in color, what these three wore was some less defined, while the rest’s sleeves and torsos were almost muted in comparison.
“Vont, noht t’raenim,” the one with stringy hair said to him.
The scarlet-featured girl laughed, her shoulders shaking.
But they kept their eyes turned towards the front, listening to Triomphe’s litany.
Tr’aedis tried to listen with them, and the crowd seemed rapt. But after a few sentences or two he could not tell the purposes behind it, and so looked around the room more closely—for he was of an age among them.
Like the one sitting to his left, a number of their faces and skin beneath their clothes were entirely of a single, bright color. It was quite like nothing he had ever seen in Sector I, even the times he visited High with his parents—even when meeting with the family’s connects among the Governing families. Some noticed his staring, and seemed to smile or ignore him; all of them seemed to shine.
But their group were not the only ones. He then detected a glittering—some sparkling and hidden lusters—that, in comparing them to the one standing up front, felt like dimmer lights. For some it was in their eyes. For others it was their hair, or even the uniform they donned which felt a little less monochrome with it.
He then made out others like the first he had met here with no name nor speech. How he made them out exactly, he did not know, but he could tell them out from the rest. None of them returned his gaze.
A fourth group was distinctly more defined in not just their facial features but the way they held themselves, the way their clothes unlike the others seemed less to equip the ones wearing it, but only complement, and while everyone here silently ridiculed he felt the capacity of body-maintenance prescriptions, these ones in particular rose to another level. Or sheen. The word came to his mind.
And some others were in blue. Not what they wore, or the colors of their hair or eyes, or even any apparent melancholy. No, it was simply being in blue, and Tr’aedis recalled one of the first feelings he had felt upon arriving in the sphere of the game yesterday—cobalt—a kind of blue. It was, he realized, a similar, very strong, feeling he had felt when in the presence of the Myodor family. Especially the one named Ila ce.
Then the litany came to a close, and a wave of exclamation arose around him—Tr’aedis opened his eyes to see the crowd rise, and as he hurriedly stood, a soft sibillation murmured as everyone, Triomphe included, made a gesture with their right or left hand over their chests, and from somewhere in the background or outside, someone entered the room.
It was Ila ce. Followed closely from behind by Puræ, she walked in to stand some ways in front of Triomphe. She raised her left hand and waved, keeping her fingers aligned together as she kept her forearm still, only her wrist moving her palm gently back and forth. The ones sitting by Tr’aedis’ side straightened in their seats abruptly.
It struck Tr’aedis then that the unique design only Ila ce had, one that her siblings had not. The way the Myodor siblings’ hair moved in the dimmed light, the collection of strange reading objects of Etr ce; everything had to do with birds. Even the motion that Ila ce now made, was like that of a small wing, swaying back and forth. He wondered if the clashing of forearms made by those in the crowd to Triomphe, but without a doubt the motion they had made in Ila ce’s presence—it was all birdlike. Birds, and strange creatures walking around their venues. Tr’aedis saw he was in a rather extraordinary place, and with his right hand put his hand over his chest.
“Ila ce!” came the cries then, from various places in the crowd; the one with that name smiled and seemed to greet those specific individuals who gave her greeting, with a golden flicker in her eyes. Puræ, as well as Triomphe, remained still but alert by her side.
Ila ce placed her hands by her sides. It seemed that the crowd was waiting for something; perhaps a demonstration as Triomphe had done, but Ila ce merely opened her mouth and began to speak.
“Horus Avianes,” she said, and Tr’aedis felt a tremor run through the room. The first word sounded somewhat familiar—and he remembered that it was one of a number of tech lines begun in High and slanted down to Might. Horus, Poseidon, and Maahes. After the Color Alter line with his Cobalt Sky and Eleanor’s Jade Steel. But the conventions behind those names, the names of technology, he felt, held nothing in comparison with the names of those here, or the things they used that had names.
Wait. Horus was a god of the superancient Egyptians. That meant, unless he had heard incorrectly, these people knew those myths?
“Avianes moerise,” Ila ce said, laying a hand over her heart. She was looking down a bit—and a murmur of quietness ran through the crowd. “Jaceus faet shi.” She then looked up—and gestured towards Tr’aedis where he sat. The girl of the red face gave him a look of complete, unabashed startlement. Ila ce kept speaking. “Torr felot Tr’aedis, Saec’mag-læt-hol li nex. Taenim Laev-stym t’raenim, el-dyen.”
And now the voice of reply from those around him issued into amazement, and the girl two to his left with the stringy hair gave him a wave, like the one he knew. The one who had laughed nodded to him once. And the silent, tall one extended a hand, which Tr’aedis took. And they all then with their right or left wrist with fingers connected waved their hands over their chests.
Jaceus walked through the halls of Taenim Laev. Besides the Sunbird, he could only keep himself from not meeting the calls and gazes of the entry-level students. Some even tried reaching out to touch her hair; surely, she being a third-year student, she didn’t have to act so distant. Even if she was Sunbird and crown daughter, second to Etr ce who chose to remain with the libraries after graduation.
“Jaceus, you can hold your head higher,” Ila ce told him, as they now passed under the Laev’s Tuba Arch. Its circling tribunes were of the country’s finest endowment game-made gold, but he’d rather watch Puræ run across them, his clear forehead tinting in the afternoon light. It was a pity that he couldn’t come today, even as a friend. Because he wasn’t friend of the court.
“I’m taller than you,” Jaceus responded. “So I can’t hold it higher.”
Ila ce just tossed her hair back, her pace unaffected. Such was his older sister.
“You know, our school really needs something,” she said. “Ever since I left, I feel something’s been lacking each time I visit.” Some students were there with them under the Arch, but she was speaking softly. “There’s a light to our education that I feel like I helped to foster. But it’s not there anymore.”
Because you were the source of it, Jaceus thought.
“Visiting helps to bring it back,” he said.
“Hmm… maybe,” his sister said. They now passed under the golden arch and meandered onto the central courtyard. Ila ce seemed to turn a bit, but then headed, as Jaceus expected, directly for the creation game area. He followed.
Some students were already on it, one with a vague and ill-defined smoky pillar rising by their feet, another’s surrounded by miniature clouds of dust, the third with nothing. Jaceus frowned. Ill taste, to taunt the younger novice with their greater abilities…
“Really, really nice creation. What’s your name,” Ila ce was telling the novice, and only when he peered closer Jaceus could see that the student was completely, well, nearly encased in a silver cylinder, starting at her feet and going up, nearing completion at the top.
“Thank you, Sunbird,” the student said, and Jaceus sighed inwardly—again. Again, he was overly quick to judge another’s use of their substance. Maybe it was the reverse, then.
He came closer. The other two students, clearly failing to conceal their exertion in the game from Ila ce, gave him tight smiles; by their yellow hairbands, they were Lye; the third had a red mark on her cheek. Only an Arc.
Gasping, the two older students ceased to emanate, and the ripples flowing from their feet abated. “Please give us a demonstration,” one of them said, and Jaceus stepped out of the material blue of the area marked for creation.
“I’ll let—” he started to say; “After she’s finished,” Ila ce said, dipping her head to the winner, who wasn’t even sweating. The unenclosed space over her flame-hair, kept close to her head and also a deep scarlet, was thinning; and soon as he watched became streamlined with the complete cylinder.
Ila ce clapped her hands, once, twice.
“What do you call it?” she asked, and the fire-mark on the student’s cheek pulsed. The student pressed a hand against her creation—it slowly filled outward, or rather as he looked Jaceus saw tinges of fire float up within it.
“My Inner Shell,” she said. Ila ce nodded and smiled.
“Who began the game?” Jaceus asked.
“I did,” the student answered.
“That’s good. Lyes, you can return to class; this is for the winner,” Ila ce told the older students, who showed very brief gazes of resistance before nodding to Ila ce, showing the Mark over their chests and retreating.
Jaceus took some steps back; the student did also, allowing Ila ce to tread the material blue surface by herself. She stepped onto the cobalt plane; ripples bloomed out from her feet. Jaceus could discern that other students, mostly Arcs and some Raf, flicks of orange flashing through the crowd, on arms, some hairbands, others with necklaces or bracelets.
Jaceus wondered how many of them could tell that Ila ce’s creation began not only with circles, but also shot out by quick lines dashing through their diameters. At this level only a few Crea, maybe Nam, could do that; but none such were here to observe.
Soon the ripples became other shapes, and the lines connected them; while nothing rose from the surface up, Jaceus could tell that Ila ce was just as active as the previous three had been. Then, a brief star, something wrapped in a golden canvas, became visible from beneath the plane; the onlookers came closer to peer down, collectively reacting in sighs and soft exclamations as the creation, appearing from some lengths down in the water but only a shape, shone dimly. A deep, heavy star hanging low in the water but all of it, the other flickers of light and the imitation galaxies that struck between them, being just shapes of the same plane.
A nice illusion, Jaceus thought.
Ila ce lowered her hands to the water, putting them in—the star seemed to rise, growing brighter—and she picked it up, water coruscating off of it in drops of shining gold and blue. It remained on her hand, pulsating, no larger than the bole of an erebiscuit but creating a glow so bright that Jaceus could see it reflected on her audience’s faces.
Jaceus put a broad smile on his face. He had seen Ila ce at her art before; it was nothing new. Sunbird at sixteen, surely Mageart before thirty; at only twenty-four having created on the arena, without preparation, without practice, a work that most of the Taenim’s instructors couldn’t even sport.
He was really proud of his older sister, and so he came over, gently laying a hand on the material, causing the shapes and suns to flicker away. “Well done. Sunbird,” he said, and made the Mark towards her, as he faced the crowd. He dipped his head; Ila smiled at them, raising her hand.
Below their feet, the material blue returned to its state of grace.