"The little lights in the dark above are the eyes of our kind who have died. They gather in fixed clusters, much as we do. They patrol the emptiness beyond the Nest and alert our watchful Dam and our fiery Sire to any threats to us, their children. If we are brave enough and strong enough when we die, our souls will climb above the clouds to join them."
--Fable of the Starband.
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When Rae woke, it was dawn, and the light coming in from outside the woodshed was dimmer than usual. Rising, he looked out to see a morning heavily cloaked in mist. Scratching his head, Rae tried to capture the scraps of odd and uncomfortable dreams. Unable to do so, he succumbed to his restlessness and began to work on projects close to camp.
He built a stacked stone cradle for use in milling the wood into planks with his energy sword. The birchy type wood he was calling cloud-top was creamy-tan with a fine, dense grain. He slabbed some of the larger and straighter oak-like branches as well, discovering something interesting. The oak-type hardwood was all hues and shades of green, as each year's growth showed a slightly different color; the grain consisted of highly figured curls.
He used the green-grained wood to make the top of the workbench, fitting three thick slabs together in tongue and groove fashion. Sturdy cloud-top branches supported the top slab and fit into each other via mortise and tenon connections. The outer parts of the slabs were left with live edges, the mottled deep brown and green bark giving a rustic flair. He brought handfuls of the dark river grit over to sand the flat side down, using his teke to crush them into increasingly fine particles until it was practically a powder.
As soon as he finished the bench, Rae started on his other projects. He built a tensioned bow saw frame and used twists of wire to fasten the toothed blade to it. The gates were twice the current height of the shed's opening, as at some point, Rae intended on extending the outbuilding's height and depth. After installing the gates, he started building pallets for the cut stone piled around, gathering stones of similar size on each to make it easier to transport the rocks. He trimmed rough but solid rock for building material and divided them among the various pallets for the rest of the hazy morning.
When the sun reached its full height, it finally burned the remnants of the fog away. He stood in the sun for a time soaking in the light, then ducked into the dig to check the state of the stonework. The cuts inside looked like they strayed off the designs here and there, and honestly, he knew why. He wasn't always 'present' when he worked here, and it was easy to lose focus. He put on his goggles and corrected the chalk lines, rubbing some of them out and drawing in new ones. When satisfied with his marks, he started excavating again. Some unknown amount of time later, he staggered out of the dig to collapse on his bedroll, hoping he was too tired to dream, but hoping in vain...
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Rae became aware of herself leaning against a building on Shrine island of Qardos and hearing people laughing nearby. She held a half-full globe of molten metal in her left hand, and she heard a musical jingle when she lifted it to her lips to drink from it. Looking sharply at her wrist, she didn't find what she'd half expected to see but couldn't say what that was. Instead, the sound came from a series of crystal pendants dangling from a sleeve of intricately woven metal ribbons along her forearm that left tantalizing gaps, revealing her skin in between. Ribbons similarly adorned her right arm. Glancing down at herself, she could see the clothing style continued over her front, less-than-modestly. The gaps were wider and imperfectly covered with crisscrossed wires of precious metal. Tethered beads hung from the weavings that shifted at her slightest movements.
She held out her right palm and moved it counter-clockwise in two tight circles as if burnishing something that wasn't there. Summoned by the gesture, a plane of her silver aura materialized as a reflective surface that she used to study her garb. She flushed, realizing the wrap of ribbons and mesh were even more immodest than she feared, concealing nothing of her form from anyone who cared to look. She would never choose to wear anything like it but had to admit it made her feel tremendously sexy if the right person was there to see her in it. Speaking of which, she had come here to the celebration with a special someone, so where was her date?
A flare of blue-green light shot through with prismatic flashes caught her attention, and she turned to see a decorated platform near the Catacomb doors. There stood the Qard's Chief, the Gem of leadership gleaming on his brow. He appeared young and somehow familiar. He had dark hair like her own with a hint of silver in his bangs and a trimmed beard and mustache. Addressing his people, he formally introduced his male-phased child to adult society. Her eyes narrowed in thought, then widened when it came to her. The Chief was her grandfather, Thane, early during his rule, before the Devastation.
Many of the Qard around him were unfamiliar to her, like Berek, the young adult they were there to fete. He must be an uncle to her because that certainly wasn't her father. Near Thane stood Amerey, Thane's parent and the Chief before him. Beside her was Lay't Kal, Amerey's parent, and the first Chief. Lay't was among the handful of her people the Light created directly, taking hyper-compressed stardust and forming them in the ever molten seas of this world. All the rest of her kind descended from him and those made with him. Looking around from her semi-secluded vantage, she saw more unfamiliar Qard, and a smattering of aliens capable of withstanding the native environment.
Rae scanned the buildings around her, noting their beauty and elegant lines. Her eyes closed tightly as fragmented memories of ruins that snapped up to wholeness only to dissolve once more to a broken state sliced through her consciousness. She stumbled back against the wall, her hands spreading out on either side of her for balance. After a long moment, she shut the visions away into a far corner of her mind and gathered the wherewithal to stand again on her own. One of her feet was wet, and she found her drink had slipped from her grasp and splattered on her when the globe collapsed. Waving the mess away, Rae drew in deep breaths to calm herself.
She heard a warm chuckle approach her, and she turned her head to smile at her returning date… only for the expression to freeze on her face as she saw him. She didn't know who she expected to see, but this wasn't him. The male-phase person before her was a tad taller than she, which felt wrong, with coppery red eyes. His long braided hair was the palest of platinum-gilt, contrasting with his blue skin. His facial hair consisted of a narrowly trimmed fringe from ear to ear along the bottom of his chin, paired with a small patch above each corner of his mouth. His dress was even more scandalous than her own, consisting of a gaudily decorated pectoral over his bare chest and a kilt, worn traditionally, of the same loosely woven ribbon and wire style that she was wearing. He seemed not to notice the look of surprise on her face and nodded his chin at her mirror field. "Admiring yourself, my dear? I can't blame you; I’ve been admiring you all evening." His eyes raked up and down her body, seeming to linger over every revealed scrap of her.
Blood drained away from her face at his unrestrained leering, followed by an angry flush as she fought to keep her displeasure off her features. He held a drinking globe in each hand and offered her one. "Thank you…" she said, her face conveying her question, as she couldn't put a name to this person, who was now openly checking himself out in the mirror field.
He laughed, "Oh, that's cold!" then saw that she was serious, "How many of these drinks have you had? Maybe too many…." He started to withdraw the globe, but she pulled it from his grasp, and with her other hand, she brusquely cut through the mirror, dismissing it. He raised an eyebrow, "Someone's in a mood. Is your Change coming up?" She let her frown become visible. "Sorry," he said insincerely, "The name is Ethan, as you well know." He took a drink from his globe as another cheer came from the crowd clustered around the platform. "They're such pretentious gits, aren't they?" he said with a sneer.
She huffed noncommittally, taking a drink of the liquid metals blended with an intoxicant.
"Is this your revenge for taking so long to bring the drinks?" His lip curled teasingly, "Or maybe you feared I was talking to other lovelies…."
She looked away from him. "I wouldn't care if you did."
He moved closer, his voice dropping seductively, "I heard you were more possessive of your lovers than that."
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She turned to meet his gaze steadily, "You heard wrong. Do as you like."
It was his turn to frown. He pushed himself into Rae’s personal space, grabbing her free hand and pulling her towards him. "Listen, Rael, I have certain expectations for this evening, and I suggest that you…." She mashed her drink into his face, popping the globe and drenching his front with its contents. She yanked her wrist out of his grasp and glared at him warningly.
He threw his own drink down and stepped in to pin her against the wall, leaning close to force either a kiss or touch on her without her consent, but she didn't give him a chance to demonstrate which. A concussive blast of silver aura threw him backward, and she stepped forward aggressively to settle into a combat stance. As onlookers gathered to gawk at them, he got up, "Fucking cunt, how dare…."
She launched herself at him with a snarl as her vision turned dark…
...Fabric ripped, and the ground groaned under him. Rae found himself midair, hearing a scattershot of rocks behind him as he struck out with his fist, only to find himself literally eating dirt when he impacted with the ground. He sat up, spitting out the earth that wound up in his open mouth. It was the middle of the night, the crescent moon concealed behind thick clouds. His sense of perception showed he was in the bottom of a furrow his landing had driven into the thin soil.
Rae sighed and picked himself up. Returning to the woodshed, he surveyed the damage. 'Oh, bloody hell.' One of the gates was lying flat on the ground. There was a depression full of pulverized rock where he was sleeping, draped over with the shreds of his bedroll. The back and nearer side wall of stacked stones held numerous gaps where rocks had sprayed out from his kickoff. The wisps of his dream were already fading, but his dream opponent must have really angered him. The hole he could fill in, the gate rehung, and the wall stones restacked, but the bedroll… He went into the dig, pulled out his sewing kit, then got out his goggles, turning on the light. In the hours before dawn, he patched up holes and sewed rips closed, restoring his bedroll to some semblance of order.
Unlike the day before, the clouds burned off at morning light, and he bathed in the river to clean the dirt off of him. He brought a section of scree rock on his goggles and sorted through the rocks for a few hours. Yesterday’s work in the dig leveled out the granite floor, so he finally moved his bedraggled bedroll inside. Since he had to repair the shed anyway, he made it twice as tall and deep, so the gates now fit.
Rearranging the drying logs and planks, Rae saw there was plenty of room for more lumber, and now was as good a time as any to get it. Crossing the river, he gathered fallen color-oak branches and felled some cloud-top trees, and more of the bamboo, noting how gnarled their roots were. Trekking around to spread out his timber harvest, he found a source of greenish earthenware clay and elsewhere a salt deposit, gathering samples of each. He chopped down a mid-sized color-oak to top off his load, taking care to collect as much of it as possible. He trimmed the wood and tucked the logs in the shed.
Deciding to turn in early after the lack of sleep the night before, he was looking over his bedroll when the computer chimed, and he went over to check. The satellites detected three volcanoes in the most recent scan. There was a dormant peak to the north, overlooking a thick growth of evergreen forests. He removed that listing; too much life nearby to risk activating it. To the southeast, another rested in a tangle of tall mountains. The last one was on a high bluff overlooking the ocean to the south. He clicked on the volcano, viewing images of the semi-active caldera. Of the three, that one seemed the safest to trigger an eruption. If he prepared well enough, he could arrange a better than even chance the flow would find its way into the sea. He turned off the holoscreen and laid down for a thankfully dreamless sleep.
When Rae woke, he prepped for a trip south. He packed his geo scanner and a bevy of camera drones. Stepping onto his skyboard, he put on his cleaned helmet for the several hundred kilometer trip to the volcano. He could use his goggles, but this had the added benefit of keeping bugs off his face. He controlled the board directly for a while before getting bored. A skyboard wasn't for long-distance flights. It was more of a sporty, high maneuverability vehicle, although it also had enough weight capacity to serve as his pack-mule. He set the auto navigator to head to his destination and sat cross-legged to look through the landscape footage taken by the drones.
The surveying software back at camp went over the feeds as they were filmed and occasionally flagged uncatalogued animals for his review. One large specimen with hulking shoulders and massive horns appeared to be a herbivore, as the footage showed it eating grasses before it fell out of range. Sometime later, he pumped his fist as three drones documented a group of the big felines creeping down a hill in pursuit of something concealed by the foliage of trees downslope of them. Each of the leopard-sized cats had a distinctly different combination of colors and patterns. The viewpoint was too distant and blurry to make them out clearly, but Rae watched the snippets repeatedly until the board finally slowed. Looking up, he saw that he'd reached the foot of the volcano.
Hopping off the board, he picked up his geo scanner and walked along the landward slope. He detected layers of lava flow on this side of the peak, but nothing recent. The last one was probably a few centuries ago, judging by the plant growth over it. Stepping back on the board, he flew up to look down into the caldera, which was only semi-active, with lava slowly bubbling on the surface. He flew around to the south of the peak, where the edge dramatically dipped. The scanner showed him raw, unweathered lava from a relatively recent eruption, leading down this side and washed over by the waves. Rae used his energy sword to create a platform on the south crater wall. His meltdown was still coming, and he wanted the eruption he would trigger to flow to the ocean. Getting back on the board, he set a course northward. Checking on the unstable wobble inside had given him a strong pit of tension inside. Halting for a minute, he pulled out straps from a storage compartment and lashed himself to the board. Secured, he sank into a deep meditation to try and quiet the instability during the flight back to camp.
He came back to himself when an alarm in his helmet sounded. Blinking, he looked at his notifications, seeing that he'd arrived back in camp ten minutes ago. Fumbling with the straps, he felt aches all over. After a moment, while he folded and stowed the belts, he identified it as the beginnings of the Change. At least he had some warning this time. He put the scanner away then glanced at the angle of the sun. It was too late in the day to get anything else done, but seeing the cats hunting created an urge in him. Stretching his limbs felt good, and he changed into his jaguar totem. His fur was a deep, shiny blue-black, with rosettes of matte black. Silver claws popped from their sheaths as he stretched out in a downward dog pose, lashing his tail. Straightening, he yawned, revealing sharp silver fangs.
Something about his totem form made the discomfort of the Change more bearable. Since Rae wanted to experience this region at night, he went to see what he could find. On the river's edge, he saw a lavender glow that came from clusters of tiny, musty-smelling mushrooms growing on decaying vegetation. More glows in the forest's litter came from the spots of large fuzzy caterpillar-things that hissed at him from both ends when he got too close. He observed nighttime animals he'd never seen during the day. Under the moonlight, near the shale outcropping, he compared his paw to the felid print. He thought the cat would be about his size, but something about the mark almost made it look like it would be bowlegged. The dewclaw pad was closer to the front of the paw, and an extra lobe on the bottom of the main pad looked like the carpal pad had merged into it. Odd. An unusual specimen, or had the prints warped before drying? He'd have to find more prints to come to an informed conclusion.
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Predawn was staining the sky to the east by the time Rae returned to the camp. Energized with the Change complete, she got out her rock-cutting tools and went to the top of the plateau to reveal the upper parts of the gryphon, starting with the ear tips. Working down past the weathered surface rock, she reached the solid granite below. Having finalized the ear positions in her computer models, she started cutting away the stone that wasn't part of the ears. Relying on the projections in her goggles, she carved meter tall pyramids into what became hollows in the plateau's upper surface. Then she started lowering the stone surrounding the depressions, so the pyramids protruded above this end of the crag. Distantly she was aware that this sort of disassociation wasn't typical for her, but the work eased her pain as she submerged herself in it.
When the sun was further along its arc, she noticed a sliver of cut rock rattle and slide away. Paying attention, she saw storm clouds piling up to the east glinting flashes of lightning, while the distant thunder was only barely audible. She loved thunderstorms ordinarily, letting herself be a conduit for the strikes, but this one had strong winds, which bothered her for some reason. Moderate winds pushed the storm to the west towards her, with a leading edge of rain. Warmer air in the clouds contrasted with the rain-cooled air to the front, creating substantial wind pressures. The bottom of the rain curtain slanted ahead of the clouds, suggesting how strong the winds were. It soon wouldn't be a safe place to be up on the crag.
Rae packed her tools and ferried the loose rock down. She put several full pallets of stone in front of the woodshed gates in the hopes of keeping the lumber put. After a quick sweep for anything important, she carried it all into the dig. She lined up more pallets in front of the entrance as random wind gusts forced their way inside. For the last part of her preparations, her skin prickled with goosebumps, and she had to struggle to keep her breathing in check. It felt like fear, not of the storm but of the winds it brought. Since when was she afraid of…?
A stronger gust made the heavy pallets shake, and before she knew what she was doing, Rae had slammed on her helmet and crammed herself as deep into the dig as she could, as her vision tunneled to dark.