A good poem, Wè-ùú'iwà knew, could not be found. No matter how hard you tried, no matter where you looked within and without, you could not find a good poem.

A good poem found you.

He squeezed the quill-reed a little more, and made the final stroke on the smooth page, holding his breath as he did. The flanged tip of the reed scratched in sharp waves of blue, leaving a gentle swirl of ink in the same color.

Pulling the reed away, he gently blew on the page until the ink dried, then set it down on the table. There it was, perhaps his finest work yet- six rings of script nestled within each other, each one telling a different sentence depending on the direction one read it in. Writing a single ring was hard, and writing two related ones was where most poets stopped.

Carefully rolling the sheet up, he placed it in a thickleaf tube and crimped the edge shut, then wrote the intended address on the side. Gently, he picked it up with his mouth, and hurried out the door and to the mailbox. Depositing the scroll inside, he looked up to see he was just in time for the mailmatron to come around.

The burly young female flapped her ears his way. "Good 'sixth to you, mister."

"Good 'sixth to you as well," he said, hoping she didn't notice how nervously his palps were wiggling. By the Allmother, her voice had the loveliest shade of blue. "I hope I'm not too late to hand over the mail."

"Well, considering I just got here, I think you're good." She lifted the lid with one hand, and grabbed the scroll with another. "You know, you don't have to be here when I come to pick up the mail."

"Oh, just making sure it's in good hands," he said. "I worked a lot on that... letter."

"Trust me," she said in a knowing tone. "These are good hands."

His ears opened in surprise, but he suddenly found he couldn't speak. The maiden watched him for a few moments.

"Right." The mailmatron flapped her ears again. "Well, enjoy the rest of the 'sixth."

"You too," he said, squeaking a little.

The mailmatron continued on her way down the road, and Wè-ùú watched her go, kneading the ground with his knuckles. He opened his mouth to call her way, then shut it again with a click.

Hooting laughter, warm and red, reached his ears, and he turned to see Father standing in the open doorway. The old male's breathing had gotten labored the past two seasons, yet apparently he still had it in him to laugh at his son.

"You too," Father repeated, his voice a hoarse wheeze. "You aren't going to get anywhere with that."

"Give him time, Ī-āwé," Mother called from inside the house, her voice even more of a growl. "You and I were even worse."

"Were we?" Father clicked in thought. "Well, I guess we were."

"Are you going out to see the launch today, Wèwè?" Mother asked.

"Yes," he replied, raising his voice so she could hear him. "There's a viewing party near Port Tāwùù."

"Be careful out there," Father said, his voice softening. "Trouble's been growing in the pool that is this place, and it might hatch at any moment."

"I'll be fine," Wè-ùú retorted. "Things are getting better, remember?"

Father's reply was to laugh again, and limp back inside.

Wè-ùú clacked his jaws, then began walking down the unpaved road. It was a beautiful thirty-sixth, with no clouds in the sky to obstruct the view of the stars. Yalam's Road had grown even brighter since the Great Discovery of its nature had been made, a straight line of blue that stretched across the entire sky.

He recalled a song he'd heard in a community amphitheatre, of how the Visitors had separated the constellations. Gods and heroes, beasts and palaces, all blocked away from each other by a wall, built by beings that may very well surpass them.

All things considered, that was one of the more restrained stories about the Visitors.

The beaten path gave way to paved street as he ventured closer to capital, the old stone and root buildings of pre-unification giving way to foreign ones of glass and metal that captured the stars and held them to the ground. Some of them were even six stories in height, and he took the time to admire the looming masses as he continued on.

He was in the city center, where some of the old buildings still stood, when he couldn't ignore the rumbling in his stomach any longer and stopped at a seafood stand. Judging by the amount of foreigners eating at the place, he decided to put on his best Grapala accent as he put in the order. He was sure that'd drive his mother into a fit, but after a point he cared more about eating in peace than "preservation".

As he chewed on fried surface-skimmer, he idly watched the passerby traveling through the city square. Few of them were actually Tánwàà-ā; most were merchants or scientists from other districts, based on how fancy their clothing and carved backplates were. Some of them even had piercings, song of the Allmother.

The sight wasn't that surprising. The news scrolls claimed that Wààlī had become the scientific capital of the world, thanks to the newly hatched space program.

Finishing his meal, he made his payment and hurried on his way. The street began to get more packed as he got closer to the port, to the point he worried he wouldn't get a view of the launch. Thankfully, the crowd thinned by the time he reached the beach- the area was big enough to hold plenty of spectators. A flat outcropping of rock about as high as his wrist caught his eye, and he carefully climbed atop it.

The view was lovely. The inky black sea frothed against sand of the same color, and faintly, ever so faintly, he could see the launch site. The actual test craft was too small to be seen, but the fleet of support craft and their spotlights were quite visible. Glancing at the watch on his wrist, he saw that he still had half an hour before the launch.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Resting on his haunches, he closed his eyes and listened to the sea. The roar of the surf swirled in his mind, dark red crashing against bright blue, each one trying to swallow the other, but never succeeding. Then from the right came the worrying pink of shouting, and he opened his eyes.

Looking over, he saw a commotion some distance down the beach. He could hardly see the figures, but the angry voice reaching his ears told him enough.

"This is what they decide to spend their money on!" a Tánwàà-ā matriarch bellowed, her Lag'wa thickly accented. "They'll build ships to find spacematrons that might not even be there, but they won't spare a coin to give us proper roads!"

Wè-ùú lowered his head, hoping that others on the beach wouldn't notice him. Why in the song of the Allmother did would-be revolutionaries have to kick up a stir? Who was that matriarch trying to convince? These foreigners certainly wouldn't take the message to heart- they'd just be upset that someone was disrupting the spectacle.

He heard more shouting, followed by what seemed to be a struggle, and he realized that the local constabulary was likely intervening. He crouched down even more, hoping that his remoteness from the commotion would keep them from associating him with the protestor. Eventually the ruckus quieted down, and his hearts stopped hammering against his chest.

It was just in time- he could feel a low rumble in the ground below, and he realized that the launch was about to be underway. Opening his eyes, he leaned back on his haunches to get a better view, and all around him he could hear excited spectators telling their friends and family to watch. In the distance, the support ships pulled away, but kept the spotlights on a single point.

The rumble intensified, until, finally, the ship rose.

It was unlike anything he'd seen before. This was not the gentle rising of an airship, gracefully bobbing in the wind. The ship burst from beneath the water as something bright flashed in the depths, the world's largest camera going off. It first rose on a pillar of water, a great plume that shot above the surface, then the flash went off once more, and suddenly the ship rose on flames.

As the ship rose, so did the excited yelling and hooting of the crowd, Wè-ùú included. The sound of the launch hit him in a roar of red, and he felt his hearts soar like the ship.

Then, the ship seemed to stall in midair, and fell back into the water with a tremendous splash. Sea plankton, agitated by the launch, shined in rippling blues. Just as blue was the disappointed whistles and bellows from the crowd.

"That's it?" a particularly brash-sounding No'vo'ko matron yelled behind him.

"They said it was just going to be a test," a maiden protested.

"And they failed it!"

Wè-ùú said nothing. He simply watched the waves slowly die down, and thought to himself, So this is what we got instead of paved roads.

Letting out a low whistle, he climbed down the outcropping, sand greeting his knuckles. Stretching his legs for a few moments, he began the walk back home.

-o-

He was passing through the city square when trouble did indeed hatch.

He didn't know what sparked the flame. All he knew was that by the time he made it back into the city, other Tànwàà-ā had begun to fill the streets, waving the old flag of Wààlī or improvised banners that told a thousand variations on the same song.

Why look for spacematrons when you can't even take care of your own?

We get put to the wayside for that?

Focus on the people here first!

He didn't know how the fighting started. That didn't really matter. If a Tánwàà-ā had struck first, there'd be a crackdown on them. If a foreigner had struck first, there'd be a crackdown on the Tánwàà-ā.

Soon there was the sharp crack of cannonfire in the distance, and he knew that he needed to get back home before they drew a net around the protestors. His hearts hammered as he crept through an alleyway too narrow for females, then scurried behind an overturned soup stand. Behind him, he could hear the screaming, the yelling, the shooting.

Then he started hearing it ahead of him, and he knew he'd have to find shelter elsewhere. Thank the Allmother he was in a familiar city parish- if he could make it in time, there was one place he knew he'd be safer.

He almost didn't make it to the temple. The front lines had crept dangerously close, and he could see injured Tánwàà-ā running down the street, some sporting gunshot wounds on their flanks. He kept to the side of the road, half to avoid any stray shots, half to avoid getting trampled.

Mother Ūlù was there on the steps of the temple, standing tall where others laid low, ushering injured into the temple. Two of her eyes caught his, and she beckoned for him to hurry over. As he scampered towards her, he saw she was standing over a bleeding female.

"Help me get her in," she said.

Despite his nerves, he did as she commanded, and stood on his hind legs to grab one arm of the female. Ūlù did the same, and together they helped the matron stagger into the temple.

A matriarch with half an ear missing looked their way as they stepped inside. "Why are you letting that one in?"

"All of us are a part of the Song, and we shall treat each other as such," Ūlù intoned, in a way that instantly made the other matriarch look down in shame. "There shall be no fair weather faith here."

They set the wounded matron down on a spongeroot cushion, and now Wè-ùú could see what the fuss had been about. The matron was a foreigner, likely Burko. It had been hard to tell- the elaborate and colorful clothes of the matron were torn and dirty, and it seemed that a piercing had been ripped from the ear.

Mother Ūlù ripped off a piece of her own robes and pressed it against said wound, then directed Wè-ùú's hand to hold it. The wounded matron flinched, but said nothing.

"Keep pressure on the wound," Ūlù ordered. "I need to attend to others. I'll be back with first aid."

The priestess marched off, and Wè-ùú looked back at the matron. Blood from a cut on her forehead was beginning to trickle into her eyes, and so he ripped a piece of his own clothing off to daub at the wound.

"Thank you," the matron murmured in Lag'wa.

"What happened?" Wè-ùú asked in the same tongue, less to know the answer and more to keep himself distracted from the blood on his hands.

"I don't know. I had taken a shortcut, wound up near here, and suddenly... chaos." The matron managed to raise herself a little. "I don't even know what started it."

"People in the city square were angry about the launch. All that money for a failure, but nothing for us, they were saying."

"Every child falls on the first step," the matron said, suddenly sounding defensive. "The investment is worth it."

Wè-ùú's ears perked up in recognition. "I've heard your voice before. You're Academician Mukuva, aren't you?"

The matron's palps retracted. "What of it?"

"Nothing." He continued to daub at the blood.

"You look like you have something to say. Say it."

"It's just... do you really think you'll find other beings out there, coming down Yalam's Road?"

"Yes," the matron said, resolute.

"What would you ask them, if you could?"

Mukuva paused. "Well... so many things. Where do they come from? Have they met other peoples out in the stars? What is their technology like? Do they have faiths?"

"Do you think they might have problems like ours?" Wè-ùú asked, suddenly.

"I don't know," Mukuva admitted, quietly.

Wè-ùú added a fresh strip of cloth to the wound. "I don't know if I'd be glad to find out they had our kind of problems."

"Glad?"

"It'd show that we have a common tune in both our songs. That they're not so different that we can't really talk to them. And, maybe, if they've solved those problems, that means we can solve ours."

"That's certainly a romantic take on the matter. You should be a poet."

"I am a poet."

Mukuva raised her good ear. "Well then. I'm afraid I don't read Tánwàà poetry. It never translates well."

"Oh, I can't actually write in it, either. But I take the ring poems of the old system and made it work for Lag'wa. Ever heard of-"

"You're Wadu?" she interrupted.

"You've heard of me?"

"Your poems are actually popular in some niche poetry clubs back in Burko. My husbands read them all the time."

Despite the fear in the air, he managed a happy hoot. "People actually read it?"

"Yes. I never knew Wa... you were, well..."

"I'd never get published if I put 'Wè-ùú'iwà' on the manuscripts."

"I hear." Her ear drooped.

Mother Ūlù finally came back with bandages, and set about cleaning out the wounds. Wè-ùú did what he could to help, which largely consisted of holding things for the priestess. In a short time, Mukuva was laying back on the pillow, looking far less pained.

"You've done what you could here," Ūlù said. "Go check on others."

Wè-ùú did as told. Yet, as he helped provide water or replaced bandages on the other wounded in the temple, he couldn't help but feel that the matron was watching him.

-o-

He made it home -and to the storm of worry that were his parents- early in the next 'sixth. Father was just happy he was alive and uninjured. Mother considered tying him to the door so he couldn't go off into the city and get caught into another protest.

It was a full three thirty-sixths before he was comfortable leaving the house, and that was just to get the mail. Walking to the post, he waited silently, kneading the ground with his knuckles. The sky was still clear, but now he could see faint wisps of smoke on the horizon, lingering after the chaos.

"Haven't seen you in a while," a voice called.

Looking back down, he saw the mailmatron approaching the post. The maiden had a healing cut on her shoulder, and he found his gaze drawn to it before he looked away.

"I've been..." he paused, thumping his tail on the ground.

"Hiding? Can't say I blame you. Only this 'sixth can we make the full mailing route."

"Are you alright?" he suddenly blurted out.

The maiden palps retracted halfway in surprise. "Oh, you saw the cut? That wasn't what you think. A vara tried to get at my lunch."

"That's good." He quickly added "That you weren't there. Not that a vara tried to eat your lunch. I... I was there, and it was..."

"You don't need to talk about it," she said, reassuring. Then, she reached into her sack and pulled out a tube of thickleaf. "But, I think you should talk about this."

His ears fanned out in confusion, until he saw that the tube had a familiar name on it.

"Mind telling me why one of the leaders of the space program is sending you mail?"

He felt a calm wash over him. "We can talk about it over a meal, if you'd like."

"A male asking a maiden out? How... transgressive," she rumbled in sultry reds, stepping closer.

"Well," he said, stepping closer as well, close enough for their palps to touch. "Things are changing around here, aren't they?"