Pvau lay on the hillside, looking up at the night sky. The breeze brought air heavy with the smells of wood smoke and maize stalks, cooking meat, and spring flowers. It was supper time down in Beystead, but Pvau's stomach was too unsettled for him to eat. Tonight was the night of his Inspiration.

Overhead, the starfield was broken by the orb of Dasleight, a dark moon that sparkled with the campfires, spirit lamps, and city lights of the alien civilization who lived there. Those lights seemed impossibly distant tonight, for all that they were only two thousand miles away.

The silence was broken by the rattle of the town gong. The evening bell.

"Five hours," Birra said.

Pvau sighed.

Five hours until midnight bell, and Pvau's seventeenth birthday. The moment that he'd gain power he couldn't imagine, and the moment that would separate his youth from the rest of his life.

He wasn't looking forward to it.

Birra was sitting on the grass at Pvau's left, her jet black hair blowing in the wind, her white skin almost glowing in the reflected light of the spirit-lamps of the town below.

She wore a shirt that bared her shoulders in defiance of the spring chill, the cut of the neckline revealing the coin-sized chitin plates that grew from her spine and collarbones; the most obvious outward sign of her sceran ancestry.

Pvau was sure that letting people see her plates was half the reason she wore it.

He looked away from the stars overhead, closing his eyes as the wind brushed over his skin, ruffling his clothes.

"Yeah," Pvau said. He felt almost mournful.

"Ready to be an adult?" she asked.

"No." Pvau let out a breath and opened his eyes. "I don't know if I even want to be an adult. It doesn't feel like me."

"My sisters were all desperate to turn seventeen," Birra said. "None of them could wait to get their Index. Neither could I, if I'm honest."

Pvau sat up, resting back on his arms, looking up at Birra.

Birra had turned seventeen the week before. He'd been with her during her Inspiration, and now it was her turn to keep him company during his.

"What's it like when it happens?" he asked.

Birra thought for a moment, then stretched out a pale arm and opened her hand. A second later, mist coalesced above her outstretched fingers, condensing into the form of a slim book about the size of a hand, bound in thin wood and pale red cloth. A bronze emblem shaped in the archaic symbol for hawk was inlaid on the front cover.

She snatched the book out of the air and flicked it open, scanning the first page.

"It's kind of like falling into cold water, but only for a second," she said. "I thought I'd feel different afterwards, but I don't. I can feel my Index, you're always aware of it, but I just feel like the same me I was yesterday."

Pvau forced his eyes away from Birra's Index.

Soon he'd have his own. A book tied unbreakably to his body and soul. A part of him, and a reflection of him. A spiritual object that would let him reflect on and even rewrite himself, in accordance with the strength of his spirit.

"What will you do with your first page?" Birra turned to look at him, frowning. "You're not going to try and scribe your own, are you? Don't be one of those people."

Pvau rolled over onto his stomach, resting his head in his hands. He'd been considering it.

A new Index came with one blank page, in addition to the charter page, that a person could scribe with any number of formations. Spells, summoned items, physical changes, physical enhancements. They were all deceptively simple, and after reading a half dozen it was easy to think you had the idea of them and could write your own from scratch. It was a common enough impulse that the school had explicitly warned against it.

Any attempt to scribe your own page that didn't copy an existing formation would end with a corrupted page that did nothing. Only experienced researchers had the knowledge to tease out the possible formations hidden in the inner workings of the Index.

The known formations were all useful in their own way, but so far as he knew none of them gave an absolute advantage. No matter what you wrote, you would be constrained by the overall strength of your spirit.

Of course, while there was no one best choice, there were plenty of poor ways to use a page. Choosing an attack spell when you were going to be a farmer for the rest of your life was a poor choice. Choosing to enhance your physical power when you were a records clerk left you with little to do with it except show off at the tavern.

"Might I recommend a physical enhancement page?" Birra said.

She hadn't even waited for morning to scribe her first page. She'd copied down a movement formation from the town library and fed it to her Index minutes after her inspiration.

Birra twisted to face Pvau, opening her book and positioning it to face him.

Pvau turned his eyes away from the book, deliberately forcing himself to take interest in the pink flower sticking out of the grass below his face.

"It's okay, you can look," Birra said. "You can hold it if you like."

Pvau felt his face getting warm. He forced himself to take a deep breath and sat up, folding his legs under him. He shuffled around to face Birra, looking first into her dark eyes, then down at the book.

"Hm," Pvau agreed, looking, without really looking.

Birra held it out towards him, pushing it into his hands. He felt the weight of it settle on his palms.

It wasn't normal to let people see the contents of your Index, and unthinkable to let someone touch it. Birra must just be more relaxed about those things than everyone else Pvau knew.

"See," Birra said, her voice light. She ran a finger down the first page. "This is my charter."

Finally Pvau forced himself to take his mind off Birra and actually look at the page.

[https://i.ibb.co/JB42kFs/20210404-191755-0001-1.png]

Pvau recognized it as a classic charter page. The basic essence of her self. Her class was something she must have chosen, accessible to her because of her choices, abilities, and ambitions. Having to wait until the eighth level for her next page must have pained her. It was a typical progression for warrior or laborer classes.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

He turned the page to see the one she'd scribed herself.

[https://i.ibb.co/3kJ8dQ3/20210404-191755-0003-1.png]

As Pvau read the description over, he realized he'd been staring at Birra's Index for a long time, and also that he shouldn't necessarily have turned the page without permission. His finger rested on the soft paper where he'd been tracing the lines. His face flushed hot, and he handed the book back to her.

"Quickness and Reaction?" Pvau said, recalling her charter, his breath tight.

He'd already heard how she planned to distribute the first points of her charter the previous week, but he felt like he had to say something.

"To help me become a competition runner," she said. "It's my best path to a scholarship."

Pvau settled back down onto his back, resting his head on his hands, hoping that his blush wasn't visible on his face, but knowing that it definitely was.

"I'm thinking of scribing a spell," Pvau said.

Birra hummed. "The library doesn't have a great selection. Would you choose a fighting spell?"

"I think I'd want something useful in my everyday life. A cargo-lifting spell?"

"Sure. That sounds useful. Of course if another war breaks out and you get drafted, you'll have to make do with lifting the other side to death."

Pvau shrugged one-shouldered. Lasea hadn't been at war since he was a kid, and he wasn't like Birra. He wasn't going to play gladiatorial games, or become an errant, or join the army. He didn't need enhanced abilities or any special skills. He had a job at the observatory. His first page would be dedicated to either his job, a craft he might want to take up in the future, or something simple for self defense. If he ever hit his second page, he might consider something else.

Birra closed her Index and let it dissolve, the book evaporating into mist that dispersed in the wind.

Pvau focused on the shadowed realm hanging in the sky far above him. He loved looking up at the sky, loved seeing far off places. Sometimes having a place as wild and mysterious as Dasleight always overhead was a torture. Always visible, but completely out of reach.

Maybe he should scribe some kind of levitation spell on his first page, something that might eventually let him fly to Dasleight and see how the devils there live. That would definitely earn him a better job at the observatory.

His thoughts were interrupted by a flash of sickly yellow light appearing on the horizon to the North.

He pushed himself up onto his hands, staring across at the distant spot. As he watched, he thought he could see a column of smoke rising into the sky, visible only as a shadow against the stars, if it was more than just his imagination.

Whatever it was, it was far enough away that the curve of the horizon was hiding whatever was happening on the ground.

Birra hadn't even been looking in that direction, but she'd caught the flash out of the corner of her vision. She turned to stare.

"What was that?" she said.

Pvau was silent for a few seconds, thinking. An unusually bright spirit-light? A celebration? An attack? There were towns in that direction, but no enemies, or even old enemies, that he knew about.

"I don't know," Pvau said. "An explosion maybe? An accident?"

Birra sounded more concerned than Pvau felt.

"Should we, you know, tell someone?"

Pvau leaned back, laying back down on the grass. He could feel a knot of anxiety, but tried to ignore it. He didn't want to work tonight. It was the night of his Inspiration.

"The watchers at the observatory will have caught it," Pvau said. "They'll probably have worked out what it was by morning."

"Sure. I'd be interested in finding out myself."

Pvau forced himself to take a deep breath. Whatever the light had been, and it'd probably been nothing serious, it couldn't possibly be his problem.

Beside him, Birra centered herself. She retrieved her Index and opened it to its first page, placing it in her lap.

Having the book out and open would help Birra monitor her accumulation. Reverie. Some places or situations would bring on a specific state of mind, something between detachment and revelation. Winning, or even just surviving a battle, saving a life, spending time with loved ones.

For those who lived quiet lives, meditation was often the easiest path to accumulate reverie, but needed long blocks of time and inspiring surroundings for it to become intense enough to fuel the Index.

Bathing in starlight, standing on a hill beneath a thunderstorm, and sitting at the center of a tranquil lake were all common examples taught in the final year of school.

Pvau didn't think Birra would accumulate much out here in the dark on a hill a stone's toss from the town, but if she felt comfortable enough around him to sit with her Index out, he wasn't going to question that.

They sat in silence for a while, exchanging occasional conversation.

As time passed the town gong sang for mid-evening bell, and then night bell. The hours were running out.

Pvau went quiet as midnight drew close. His stomach was still fluttering. He had an irrational fear that his personality would change at the moment of his Inspiration, that he'd suddenly look back at who he was now and regret ever being a child.

Suddenly, Birra broke him out of his thoughts with a delighted laugh.

Pvau sat up. At first he'd thought his Inspiration had come without him realizing, it could only be minutes away, but Birra was looking down at her Index.

She held it up to him.

[https://i.ibb.co/sWCRBq2/20210404-191755-0002-1.png]

Pvau blinked down at it. She'd accumulated enough to increase the power of her spirit already. They'd only been sitting here a couple of hours.

"How?" Pvau asked, looking around.

Birra hummed and looked down, uncharacteristically quiet. Her face flushed, her cheeks blushing blue rather than red.

"I like the stars," she said after a moment. "I guess starlight's more nourishing to my spirit than most people."

He only had a second to contemplate that. A moment later the town gong sang for the midnight bell.

Pvau jerked up into a sitting position. He turned and looked at Birra. In the low light he could make out the tiny facets of her dark pupils, the segmented dots glinting like cut onyx. They gazed into each others eyes.

Then his Inspiration was on him.

He felt a spike of deep cold at the core of his being, a needle being pushed through his soul, before it emerged pulling a thread of him behind it.

It was an uncomfortable, disturbing feeling, a tearing and an unraveling, but it only lasted a moment.

The feeling faded, and mist began to coalesce in front of him. The white cloud shrank down and became a book, bound in cloth of faint red, bearing a bronze symbol for the word rabbit on its cover.

Pvau reached out and took hold of it.