The halls of the skycraft flourished with a marvelous impression of colors as the first-years waltzed from the dressing rooms to the cabins, their fresh ceremonial praetexta upon them at last.

“How does my praetexta look?” asked Isaac, carefully opening the door so as not to get the folds of his emerald robe and cape caught in the corner. The rich deep green of the fabric caught the Sun and reflected on the glass a prismatic display of colors; Isaac’s cape, which was of a darker sheen, balanced his ruffled hair of dark peridot.

“It looks wonderful!” exclaimed Elwin, admiring the stately cuts and folds of his friend’s new uniform.

“It is – Ack!” said Isaac, tumbling into his seat after nearly tripping in his new shoes, “Oof, these take a while to get used to. It’s my first time wearing this sort of thing in my life – took me some time to figure out which clasp goes where.”

“Yeah, same here,” commiserated Elwin. “I practiced a little before I left. I don’t imagine we will be wearing our ceremonial set all the time, seeing it’s a little, hmm...” he continued, lifting his arm up to examine the grand silk folds of the Admiral’s Legacy, “exquisite.”

Elwin didn’t have the leisure to fully admire the masterful tailorwork of Angelo Giovanni back at home, mostly because the thoughts of leaving his mother and brother behind clamored for space in his head. But now that he’d taken a closer look at his uniform, he couldn’t help but think of all the work that would have been invested into every weave, a thousand making up a single cut of his sleeve. It felt stronger than steel yet smoother than silk – in fact, in terms of craft, his praetexta eclipsed the quality of anything else he’d worn by that point. The fact that there existed people who could create such things surprised and amazed him; Elwin wanted to thank Mr. Giovanni in person when he met him again.

“Oh, you guys are done already. Lucky you!” said Katherine, banging the door open. “You won’t imagine the line near our dressing rooms. Why couldn’t they have practiced beforehand?” She sighed, gracefully commanding every single fold of her wine-red uniform fabric and cape of dark crimson into her seat. It was obvious that she’d done this and practiced this many times before – the thought of which made Isaac and Elwin look at themselves and nod in mutual thought. Katherine was quite scary, and awesome, for their age.

“Speaking of which, you two look smashing, and OH! –” she yelled, “Isaac! You’ve got your tie wrong. C’mere.”

Isaac apprehensively offered his lapel; Katherine undid his tie swiftly and set it in a more agreeable starting position.

“Lumière knot or Utopia knot?”

“Um – what are those?”

“For your tie.” She looked at him expectantly.

“Oh – I... actually – have no idea.” Isaac sheepishly rubbed his head. “Sorry.”

Elwin too had no proper grasp over the customs of fashion, let alone the fact that different knots for ties even existed before this moment. He’d barely worn it a couple of times in childhood for special occasions, and his father was not there to teach him growing up; his mother was too busy with The Marlin of course, so she couldn’t spare time for the finer sensibilities in life.

Katherine mused Isaac’s comment, pausing for a moment.

“We’ll go with, hmm – the Utopia knot. Your Maht is Air, anyway, and it’ll look better on you.”

“Thanks,” said Isaac, looking away into the distance and trying not to blush. Katherine was a little bit too close; but it was only for a moment, because with deft motion and expertise she’d already completed the Utopia knot and set his lapel down, brushing it off.

“There. Looks a lot better. And as for you, Elwin –”

She focused her attention on Elwin, examining his tie and ceremonial uniform. He gulped; he tried his best in the dressing room with how his mother originally did it back at home.

“Hmm, acceptable, but – I will have to teach you both at Aeternitas. Can’t leave my friends not knowing how to do at least 2 different knots out of 17!” she admonished.

“Agreed,” said Isaac, giggling red-faced, a little too self-conscious. “I wonder how Mirai will fare.”

“Yeah,” remarked Elwin, thinking back to her cardigan that gave evidence of difficult times, but just as he imagined those things and worried for how she might have felt, the door to the cabin slid open, and there stood Mirai.

“Erm, wow... all of you look so good!” she remarked in her quiet demeanor. Her uniform was a carefully coordinated mix of plum purple with cuts of lavender, with a cape of cool light lemonade. Elwin thought it contrasted well with the deep coffee gold of her hair, but thought the overall color of her uniform was a bit unusual for a person whose Maht was Earth. Why not a shade of bronze, or of silver and gold?

“You look stunning,” praised Katherine, looking at the minute cuts and knot of her tie, which was shaped like a voluminous ribbon in a symbol akin to infinity; the sideways figure ‘8’. The knot was done very well, and exquisitely so – Katherine couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact style, since even she’d seldom seen it before, but deduced it must have found its origin in Heian.

“Mirai,” she continued, “can I ask where your tie style comes from?”

“Oh... ! This?” Mirai skittishly pointed to her lavender tie and held it up with her hands.

“It’s from Heian.”

“What’s the name of the style?”

“Um,” Mirai recounted, taken aback at the unexpected flurry of questions, “This knot style is called Musubi.”

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“‘Musubi’?” inquired Elwin.

“Musubi means to... how do I translate it... to create and tie together things. We use this term a lot when it comes to people.”

“That’s really sweet,” commented Katherine. “Where does the meaning come from?”

“The meaning? It originally came from the stuff that we used to tie the backs of our Orimono.”

“Orimono?” asked Isaac, quite inquisitively.

The question delighted Mirai. It was part of a beautiful memory of home – perhaps the only part, but she was glad to have friends who wanted to know more about her republic’s customs.

“It’s our ceremonial dress in Heian. I actually have my personal set in my luggage.”

“Really? May we see it?”

“Of course – let me bring that down –”

Just then, the brass speakers above them came to life again.

“Ahem, ahem, Captain Hugo to students. Ladies and gentlemen, we will be at Aienwater in 15 minutes. Cabin crew, please prepare for docking.”

He continued, as stately as ever, “Students are to remain inside their cabins until the docking procedure is complete.”

“We’re almost there. At last!” remarked Katherine, pumping her fist. Then, with no warning whatsoever, she raced outside the cabin with the speed of a hawk and left the others behind.

The remaining three looked to each other for a moment in puzzlement, then fright, and together broke into a sprint. Where was Katherine possibly going at this time, where they all had to be seated?

“Katherine, wait!” said the three of them, chasing after her towards the bow of the skycraft. “We’re not supposed to be outside the cabin when –”

The three of them stopped as suddenly as they had spoken, for the landscape that unfolded before them took their breaths away in a singular strike of majesty. Ahead, Katherine pointed toward the object of interest, her other hand on her hip.

“I wanted you to see this. You wouldn’t have been able to if you followed the rules, right?”

Through the alus-glass and towering above them all, there stood AIEN, the sacred mountain-volcano, stretching to touch the very heavens.

Elwin, Isaac, Katherine, and Mirai, the four kismets now entwined, stood side by side, their mouths agape, with wild wonderment upon their expressions. They understood at once why it was called the Sacred Mountain; for in the embrace of its beauty all of them became so small as children; those old and cynical returned to their youthful selves, full of hope and ideal; to lay one’s vision upon the snow-capped peak, to see that ferocious glint of the mighty Sun upon its immortal ice and the billowing cap of wind and clouds was to witness the divine, the edge of forever.

The views from the Lumière Express never did proper justice to AIEN; no, the only proper way to see it was to see it the way they were doing now. But in the grand scale of the mountain, the skycraft was no more than a mote of dust, suspended upon the cheek of time; how small they were, even with their dominion over the Earth.

A dreamlike memory surfaced to Elwin’s conscious reckoning; and in that moment, he realized that this mountain was the mountain which he saw in his dream, the dream where he fought against the destroyer of all the world; the dream from which he awoke in feverish sweat.

What could all of it mean? Elwin could not articulate as to why he felt that way, or whose tales, if they could be called tales, he was dreaming of.

But in the shadows of his unconscious, he had a hunch that the mountain was important, and would be key to deciphering the secrets of the past; the answers that his father pursued through years of research, as well.

His mind was clouded with so many thoughts that he didn’t notice the quaint township of Aienwater come into view from across the forested plains. Katherine’s voice brought him back to the present.

“There, look! Do you see it?” She made a triangular gesture with her fingers and looked out to the approaching township as if she was peering through a telescope.

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” commented Mirai, remarking upon numerous roofs of little houses painted red and orange, tiles warm with the late afternoon sun. The occasional spires here and there pinned the landscape as if out of some picturesque postcard, and to the west ran a small river, reflecting glints of sunlight with its swift course through the rocky banks. Bridges of brick and stone, crossing over, joined the smaller west bank of the town to the far bigger east. Elwin was surprised to find the town larger than he’d anticipated; it certainly wasn’t a tiny hamlet or village as its remote location would have prejudiced. It appeared far greater than those; in fact, it looked to be in the limbo between a large town and a small city.

As Elwin gazed upon the charming township, a relief came over him. He felt Mirai next to him relax her shoulders just as he did, the longing for her home back at Heian washing away pebble by pebble, however cautiously.

By now, the skycraft was beginning to descend. The four kismets saw more clearly the details of the roads and of the streets, and saw the great Aienwater Skydock waiting to take the hand of the skycraft for a waltz in the sky.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats,” Captain Hugo made a curt announcement over the brass speakers.

“The four extraordinaires at the front who have broken the skycraft rules, do not imagine I didn’t notice you there for the last ten minutes,” he continued in his wry tone. “We are about to dock. Please return to your cabin.”

Isaac wrinkled his nose sharply at being caught, adjusting his round glasses; Mirai tried to muffle her surprise, and Elwin pondered how Captain Hugo in the skycraft bridge knew they were there, but Katherine quickly dispelled their fears.

“Don’t worry, if he noticed us for the last ten minutes and didn’t do anything about it, it means he doesn’t have the power, or is not interested in getting us in trouble.”

“Which one of those things do you think is likely?” mused Isaac.

“The latter, I deduce. He’s not sent any of the crew to catch us, either.”

“How lenient of him,” Elwin added.

“Indeed.”

“But what if he tells the headmaster and the professors that, you know, we’ve –”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Isaac. Can’t say they will take any action against friends of Katherine Heriz,” she said. “I’m glad all of us got to see the mountain while in the sky.”

“Thanks, Katherine,” replied Isaac, as they all tiptoed their way back to their cabin, the other students amused at their hurry from inside their cabins.

Katherine was right for the time being, but her point about the headmaster and the Professors would be way off the mark later down the year, she’d find.

The skycraft banked ever so slightly sideways as it prepared for its union with the skydock platform. Out of their windows, Elwin saw the platform was considerably more plain compared to that of the capital city, lacking the architectural ornamentation that flaunted great wealth; but because of it, there was a homeliness to its aesthetic which brought him great comfort. After a heavy clunk and the sound of latching walkways, the brass speaker sounded again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Aienwater and to Aeternitas. Please leave your luggage on the skycraft; they shall be taken to your dorms separately.”

Elwin wondered briefly whether he should leave his luggage unattended, and thought about carrying it off the skycraft with him. But he saw that everyone was marching without them, totally carefree – perhaps the foolish choice here would be to attract unwanted attention by being the one person out of 160 to drag his luggage all the way to the campus. That’ll probably make others think that there was something important in it. Nobody knew that his father’s letters and research were in the luggage right now, so Elwin decided to leave it per the captain’s instructions, and followed his friends out of the cabin.

“As you exit the skydock, please head straight northward to the Aeternitas gates and to the Hall of Eternity as indicated in your first-year guidebook. The Ceremony of Initiation should begin at 6 o’clock.”

They were here.