The last knot made, the wyverness held fast to the mast, which now stood between us, and settled on the spar to her side. Though she had struggled somewhat with the endeavor, she was not winded, if her pale skin was slightly flushed. And there was no fear in her even at such height. But of course, her people’s domain was the sky itself. Her hair was untied, unrestrained, falling in masses of dark lusty curls over a loose toga. Silver horns encased it, and from the flounced skirt I spied the jet black tail issued and coiling round the rigging’s cable. But what struck me, when my initial amazement of her racial traits had passed, was the impression of her being entire. Not her fine features, nay, nor the striking figure of a trained alaris. Not quite the grim face either – the pressed lips, the natural pallor, the sharp scrutiny issuing from eyes of amber gold. But something beneath them still: a distant coldness, as chilling as ice caps in the Under, as dark as mountain roots. Nor was it the dark of a cruel creature, a brutal butcher or a heartless sadist. Nay, the heart was there, and so was the warm blood, but it is the lurking thing in the dark that inspires fear, not the mere absence of light. More than a veil of pitch blackness over a moonless night, it is the perilous, colorless fog over a demonic sky. It numbs one’s senses, it terrifies one’s wits. It was as if I looked at her and saw naught but an elusive billow of smoke.
So it was that I was stricken. A speechless azure before a wyverness is no strange thing, to be sure, so vastly was the distance of our stations to each other. Then I recognized the icy look on her face, she was the one wyvern who had been in the audience aft at the flogging.
“You’re that one tasked with the hierogram, the azure named Star,” she said. Her measured voice, cool and solid like a frozen breeze, rang clearly over the strong wind battering the masthead.
“Aye, ma’am.” I swallowed.
“Have you it now, if I may ask?”
What strange, what respectful manner to address a mere azure, I thought, and became all the more intimidated for it.
It took me some moments to compose myself, then having swallowed and hemmed once, I said, “Nay, ma’am. I have not a stroke of it, and shall not have it, though you may allow me a thousand years more.”
At any rate, she didn’t seem very surprised. The strange girl turned thoughtful.
Someone wiser, to wit: Thea, would have kept peace in the presence of such a wyvern, and prayed that she grow bored and leave. Not I. Unsettled by the silence, I asked, “Ma’am, do you have some business to do with me?”
“I do, azure,” she said softly, almost too quiet, as though she feared the words, “I have a mind to give you aid. Will you have it?”
“I am grateful, ma’am. But you need not trouble yourself.”
Not that I had entirely made peace with my fate, but this wyverness unsettled me even more than the prospect of a flogging, and it is a rational fear, I was certain, for in her demeanor there was naught to inspire trust. I could not see kindness, sympathy, nor compassion. There was a withdrawn look, to be sure, a reservation, as though she spoke to someone on their deathbed. I shuddered at the thought.
This, at last, caught her surprised. “Need not? Do you not want to avoid the whip? My proposal is earnest. Do you mistrust me?”
“It is not so, ma’am,” I stammered, “but with my greatest respect, I do think my cause is hopeless. I am afraid, yes. We azures do not know feelings but fear. So fear I feel keenly. But also we find our best comfort in forgetting, so should you have it in you, allow me that dumb bliss at least."
Again she seemed thoughtful, “It is true then, that the orphans of the skies are emotionless, hopeless, and mindless, as they say?”
“There is not much point in helping such a creature, ma’am.”
And I was growing rather tired of the exchange and the tension of it all.
“Ah,” to my worst fear, she was vexed now, “Are your kind all so insufferable? I offered my help, not offense, yet your pride matches that of princes! Pray, azure, need you an order to consent my aid?”
As at this point there seemed no escaping it, and looming was the threat of an angered wyverness that it seemed inevitable I must needs humour her, even at my own expense, I suppressed a sigh. So much for being aid. “As you please, ma’am.”
“Dispense with the honorary, the Anemones call me Litzia.”
The Anemones indeed, the cohort of alares in the captain’s behest. To be sure, they are warriors, not crafters of runes. Admittedly I did not know much of wyverns, or if they possess a knowledge innate for rune crafting. Still, she was a fearsome creature, pretty, but fearsome also, that her perching at my side now as just another sailor, chatting, legs dangling, seemed past ridiculousness, that I had no mind to inquire her usefulness.
Whatever bewildered me did not trouble her, and right away she got to the point. “What know you of Lost Azure?”
“That we sail now under this star, at the year’s tail end, when ships are docked and granaries filled, travellers bound for homes and beasts in slumber. A cloudless and fruitless fortnight when no endeavor is made but a time of idleness. Lost Azure shines over a void and nothingness, ma’am, think you such a thing could be studied?”
“If you could put it to words, then it is something, azure. But there must be something more.” Litzia said vaguely. Then for a period of silence, mayhap unsure of her own words, she cast her look towards the bow, and further fore. There was a longingness in her gaze, as though of one far from home and happiness. I wonder if I had stirred something in her with my words, something like homesickness. I did not know what homesickness was like, for I was one who found my home on this ship and nowhere else. And yet to me, she seemed staring at nothing, and the distance to which she sent her mind was vacant of meanings, not to a home but homelessness.
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“How could there be aught here,” I said, “a void is a void, you can’t add meanings to mere emptiness."
At my words, she stirred, saying ruefully, “Is it not that in the absence of things that one may find respite from the labor of thoughts? Home and slumber you say, these must be the meanings of Lost Azure. One does not see nothingness in a crowded home and a kindled hearth. Nor does the beast scorn the rest of wings and the nest of babes. It is only those in the tireless trade, strangers to the cycle of things, that mark the empty sky and call it emptiness. We are such ones, and I grieve for it.”
And she did, as sudden heat rose to her face. The slanted light caught scant sparkles upon her long lashes. It took me off guard. Though her voice broke not, and her dignity held and her coldness persevered, these scarcely perceptible tears did lend meaning to her vacant stare, sorrowful and dark as could be. It was then that I thought she might have some other motives in coming here to aid me, for she seemed to be in possession of some trouble of her own.
“But you do not,” her voice changed and started me when a sudden rancor came to it, “nay, you do not grieve. An azure knows not grief. It is as you say, your kind know only fear, for fear alone drives your labors, and in labors is the only meaning of your existence. And so this ship’s unknown course bound us both, but we are not alike. How ever will you escape without grieving your bondage? Not even freedom or simple happiness is known to you, and so bereft of sympathy and dignity that you will not long for something else. Fetters and whips are home and family to you, even as a mother’s loving embrace, a rightful place at the table with her sisters and children are dear to a free woman. Ah, speaking to a thing empty heightens my despair so! Something indeed, to be with naught in Lost Azure!”
All that she had said stung me deeply, and at once heat rose to my face. Yet it was not shame or anger that stayed a retort, though clearly she had unsubtly meant to provoke me, but a recognition of truths, ugly truths. I could never grieve for the thing she spoke of, and found no discomfort in wanting. An Azure has no parents, no family, no will, no hope, no despair. There was naught to want. It is true, all this she said about azure emptiness, though I did not ask and could have done without being reminded about it. It is for this that we azures serve our better. We know ourselves to be inferior, for good reason. We do not protest the slave-branding or resent our disciples. We are those who sprang from empty human shells, never aging, never conscious until found, and then live on as sorry imitations of life.
Skyfarers call us azure orphans, but to the landed folk we are changelings, those who are come across upon a drifting ship or deserted island, bizarrely resembling humans who had been years ago lost to the skies. Yet it is only in appearance that we resemble humans, while within we are bereft of memories, feelings, and humanity. We could not cry, we could not pity, we could not hope. We are but errors of existence, lower perhaps than beasts who could look after themselves. So nothing the wyverness Litzia had said was untrue, if cruel. And even then, I could not weep for it. Sadness could not reach me beyond the mere understanding of facts. Those little tears Litzia had shed, I could never hope to imitate, for she was proper people and I was not.
When I came to my senses again, the wyverness had been staring at length.
I swallowed, “It is as you say, ma’am. I do not feel.”
“Is it? Do you not find such things as I said unfair? Have you no protest for your own worth’s sake, Star the azure?”
“Not a one ma’am. I’m an azure, and only that.”
And that was it. Something snapped behind her dark, dark eyes, that I could feel but not understand. And they drew up to their full measure of malice. It was as though the wyverness had waited for this very moment, for these very words, if unconsciously so. No matter what, she now discharged her restraint. She moved to seize my arm. Savagery in her voice, “Then have at it! If you could not feel, then you would not hate me for this!”
I cringed, shrinking in wait for a blow. But nothing violent came, and she was still, save for the clamping grip on my arm. Only a heat swelled in my chest. I clutched it, gasped, as it burned to my throat.
Some say at the hour of their death, humans see their life played out entire.
At the time, I saw only dreadful truths. Before my eyes flashed the things the wyvern had put to word, only far more vivid, deeper impressed. I looked to the sky, the vast empty sky, to the lands that dotted its immensity, to floating giants and strange peoples numerous as stars, yet in nowhere could I find a place for myself. There was not a place. For I serve, and do not live. I am less than the lightest breeze. My existence may not blow a stray lock of hair. In me there is no worth. No feelings. No wants. No thoughts. And there lies the truth of Lost Azure to an Azure, in contrast to a proper person: a stark nothing. For there is no rest in the void, no respite for mindless labors, no warmth in the company of my kind’s empty shells.
And if I failed here, and my life forfeited, none would ever notice the loss of me. My true death would be unseen. Even as rolling shavings brushed off the carpenter’s bench, I am to be swept into the fire, burned from living memory with all that is useless.
I felt it drained from my soul. The heat in my chest turned cold.
Darkness fell over my eyes.
Blinded, I could not see the wyverness, but surely there could only be pity in her look. What had I ever merited in life but pity?
There and then I met my demise.
But...
Before the end there must come the little things, seeming of little consequence, trifling like floating dust in the house of memory.
Thus I remembered a face – one alone that would weep for my death. And in recalling Thea, as the slave girl oft sat by the lamplight at night, sewing and singing softly, I wept. That such a beautiful thing should be diminished even for a day saddened me greatly. And if I did despair then, I despaired for her sake. And so I wanted, even if just a little, to live. To feel the human warmth I was not made for. To join in the happiness not reserved me. Even if just for a short while.
And so I found the last virtue of Lost Azure, that season of stillness. It is without happenings, only rest. A sleep that seems death. And yet in death there is a want of life. In idleness a wish for action. The home may not be closed forever. The ships must soon set sail. The beasts must again soar. The sky be thickly clouded. And as sure as we now live, that once, long ago, an eternal darkness must have ended. It likes to happen. And all things want life. Even the smallest of it, the most insignificant thing wretched in misery, the most empty, has a want.
But the wyverness was wrong, it needn’t be something as lofty as freedom, dignity, or even happiness.
Nay, these are but luxuries.
It is want enough perhaps to seek a little warmth, an existence worthy of grief when it is lost. Real life, not one of an azure.
Lost Azure is there to pass.
So I reached out, blindly searched on my person, not for the quill or the inkstone, but for the marlinspike. And without seeing, I touched the mast with one hand, the other, freed easily from grasp, I scratched on the wood. At each stroke light penetrated into the veil of darkness over my eyes. And when it was done, something extraordinary happened. I heard loud voices below and aloft, and glimpsed strange shapes in the air, not knowing what. I could not know anymore. All that I had were already spent in entirety.
I fell.
I fell then to my death.