Noam sat for driev', meditating, in the sanctuary at the foot of what was once her student but was now a solid crystalline structure. Its edges at the top and bottom were somewhat jagged and raw. She saw, once she'd had a proper look, that the crystal hovered just ever so slightly above the floor. It didn't move or bob it just hovered, silent and firm, the mechanics of it unknown. Noam sat equally silent but not as unnaturally still as she breathed deeply and released a sigh. Despite her attempts, nothing at all had come to her regarding the girl, the crystal, or the name LoVelly.
The door to the sanctuary creaked open and she turned to see Reyra padding softly toward her holding a tray. As she approached she set the tray between them as she took a seat beside Noam, bending her long legs beneath her. On the tray was a steaming pot of nava root and hard, sweet, biscuits for dunking.
“I’ve sent a drak.” Reyra said in greeting as she reached over and lifted the pot. Noam held the strainer over each cup as Reyra poured the dark liquid.
“Which one?” Noam asked, blowing softly across the top of her cup before sipping the foam around the edges.
“...Tewey.” Reyra mumbled quietly. Noam’s face instantly dropped into a scowl, eyes narrowing.
“You know we don’t send Tewey anymore!” She scolded.
“You said, ‘get the message there as quickly as possible,” and Tewey is by far our fastest drak.” Reyra defended.
“She ate a royal drak last time we sent her! They almost shot her down!” She took a simmering sip of her drink and released a long suffering sigh. The drak in question had returned with a tattered wing they’d had to nurse for a luel before she could fly again.
“In any case,” Reyra waved her hand, dismissing the argument, Noam rolled her eyes but let her continue, “We can expect a reply by the end of next ven I'd bet.” She reached out and tapped the crystal with her index finger
“Before that, if you sent Tewey.” Noam grumbled and aggressively dunked a biscuit in her cup.
“You can be sour about it if you want, but this counts as an emergency to me. Look at her…” Both women looked up at what they could see of Onoara’s face, faceted and distorted.
“At least she looks peaceful…” Reyra could see the pain in Noam’s face when she looked up at the girl, in the way she sat by, driev after driev, scrying for any hints at all about the girl's condition.
Onoara had practically grown up in the temple, training as an oracle before she even learned to read. Her family brought her in when she was just a babe, barely talking yet and even then she’d shown such a strong connection to the One Who Whispers, words and phrases she couldn’t possibly know falling from her tiny mouth. Her parents had braved the Crystal Flats, riding for ven after ven with dwindling supplies across a barren land in search of a place foretold by a toddler.
When they’d arrived, run ragged, nearly frozen and covered in the strange glistening spores that drifted on the wind throughout the flats, they’d nearly fallen down in thanks. They’d run out of water the nente before and were running on the last of their fuel when the temple came into view, shimmering like an iridescent castle growing out of the crystal landscape and they’d never been so happy. Once inside the tiny girl had toddled right up to the Sleeping Deity stone before wrapping her short arms around what she could of it in a tiny hug, her journey finally complete.
The elders knew from the moment she arrived that she was destined for something tremendous. Afterall, her arrival was foretold. What exactly that would be though they had yet to decode and looking now at the frozen girl it was hard to say what it all meant. Even worse was the fact that it took several ven to get any intel back and forth due to the remoteness of their location. A drak had to be sent to the mainland to request a carefully coordinated call or a simple letter.
“I think you should go get some rest.” Reyra said finally. “Nothing has changed since it happened. I doubt anything is going to happen while you get some sleep.” She reached across the short distance between them, placing her hand down over Noam’s knee. Noam stared down into her cup, steam rising into her face, and released a deep, miserable sigh.
“You’re probably right.” She relented. “I just feel bad leaving her alone.” They hadn’t found any way to move the crystal, it seemed rooted to the spot despite not being anchored to anything. Noam pushed herself to her feet and stretched her limbs, stiff from sitting. She twisted and bent, popping the vertebrae in her back and neck.
“I’ll stay for a while.” Reyra looked up, meeting her eyes in assurance. “And I’ll get one of the oracles to come take over for me after.” She pulled her knees up toward her chest, resting her cheek atop her [willowy] legs and closing her eyes. She hummed a quiet tune, Onoara’s favorite, as Noam wandered out of the sanctuary and hopefully found her way to bed.
She ended up staying for a long while, long enough for Ahraan to bypass Dhelarly and sink toward the horizon. She was at her own wits end about the whole ordeal. Members of the order looked to her for guidance and wisdom and for this she had neither. Worse was that she had nothing to offer Noam who was taking things the hardest. She had been in charge of the girls’ training since she’d come to the temple.
Reyra had been able to foretell every major event they'd had for almost thirty soltzet but now all of a sudden she was blind sided. Even when she sat so close as to press her forehead to the cool surface of the crystal and meditate there was nothing, just a strange blankness she couldn’t see past.
She believed in what she'd told Noam, that whatever afflicted the girl likely wouldn't change anytime soon so she called for another oracle to sit by instead. She found herself climbing the stairs to the main tower and drifting down the hallway to the library.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Many solcen ago some small remodeling was done to add vents to let the heat from the lower levels rise up into the room but still it remained somewhat chilly. Reyra was thankful for her thick cloak and slippers. She tapped at the light orbs hung through the room as she went, each of them coming to life with a soft glow at first before brightening, lighting up the room gradually.
Reyra broke her own rules and used her fen to bring several books floating down from the tallest shelves at once to the large circular table in the center of the room. She told herself nobody else was there to see it therefore it didn’t really happen. Plus, the rule mainly existed for young oracles whom’s fen was unpredictable and prone to accidents. The books kept in their library were irreplaceable. Most of them were handwritten and hand-bound right there in the temple and dated back as far as the Sleeping God themselves. The room was heavy with the smell of old glue, leather bindings, and rich, dark inks- most of them derived dyes that could only be found in specific seaweeds and sea snail shells.
The books landed softly on the table, only creating a noise due to their heft. She rounded the table to a large tome in leather binding and with the flick of her finger the cover turned over and the pages whizzed by before landing on a page sandwiched in thin, protective sheets.
Reyra poured over the contents of the page. The trouble with prophecy and whispers was that they were, more often than not, vague and up to interpretation until given context. It was clear that the girl’s path involved the Sleeping Deity but as Onoara had grown older Reyra’s and the other oracles’ vision surrounding the girl had clouded. At first it was simply a decline in visions involving the girl but as time went on they stopped being able to scry for her at all.
The entry she chose was old, one of the oldest, and written in the ancient language of the Sleeping Deity, brought over with them from across the stars a lifetime ago. The writing had faded over the soltzets and she was careful to handle the page as little as possible. It was written in neat, tiny, script by the first Oracle who’d resided at the temple, Vraiste. It named Onoara specifically despite being written hundreds of Soltzet before her birth.
‘For as long as I shall live
The beast is kept at bay
But as the fen wanes,
So too do I
The Crystal will bloom
Before the arrival of lovely LoVelly
Then Onoara will walk again.
It happened a handful of times, throughout the Solcen, that shoots would suddenly break through the surrounding crystal landscape and the jagged, encrusted stalk would release a thin, gossamer cap that hardened over several lof. Once hardened it began to release the iridescent spores that floated throughout and coated everything in the Crystal Flats. They had assumed, at first, that the ‘blooming’ mentioned would be related to that phenomena but they had to assume now that it could mean Onoara’s encasing.
She flicked her finger and another heavy tome slid across the table to her. She pulled back the cover and began combing for the right section. This book was the most complete collection of ancient words and their interpreted meanings, or lack thereof, that anyone had. She analyzed and reanalyzed the words as they were, arranged them into every translation she could think of to make them make sense.
Onoara had given them a new key to consider: LoVelly, The original translation hadn’t made any sense with the foreign word, ‘lovely’, but Noam and Reyra had immediately recognized the name as Onoara spoke it. They had a new lead to follow, they just needed to figure out where to start.
Reyra had tried a dozen-dozen times now to scry into the meaning of the words, into the name LoVelly, to get an impression or a feeling- anything at all from the words on the page. She silently pleaded with the Sleeping Deity to reveal to her something that would help them understand but still nothing came.
She was met with the same strange disorienting blankness that she always was when it regarded the girl. Anything to do with her past or future was always just out of reach. It wasn’t gone, just unattainable to them, as if it existed on another plane somehow. Somewhere even Reyra had not learned how to get to in all her soltzets as an oracle. She slammed a small, frail fist onto the table, frustrated by the lack of answers. She read it again, willing the words to change, to somehow give way for a new meaning she hadn’t thought of yet.
She paced throughout the library, wandering back and forth to tap the lights back into life every once in a while. When the Nente crept on she called for one of the oracles in training to go down and stoke the stoves on the lower level to keep the cold from reaching in.
Finally, she sighed and dropped herself into the cozy armchair she’d brought over to the table at some point, she didn’t even remember doing it now. She felt the weariness of her soltzets catching up to her and she hated that despite it all, she was no closer to an answer now than she’d been to begin with. The armchair was plush and comfortable and she caught herself starting to doze off and thought it was probably time to take her own advice.
She slowly gathered up the papers that had somehow spread out all over the big circular table, tucking them back into books and places they’d come from. She used her fen to raise the many books she’d eventually amassed back into their places on high shelves. Finally, she gathered herself up at last, tucking her cloak tight around her shoulders and dragging herself along and out of the library, leaving the lights to dim out on their own.
She carried herself back down the tower, one sluggish step at a time, and finally to her chamber. She all but collapsed face first onto her bedspread with an oomph before rolling to her back and wriggling under the covers. She pulled a pillow over her face and pressed as she screamed into it, releasing some of her frustrations. She felt the fight drain out of her after and she took a deep breath, relaxing her shoulders on the exhale and uncovering her face.
LoVelly.
LoVelly.
Who was LoVelly?
She rolled onto her side, finding a comfortable position and aggressively stuffing a pillow between her knees. Tewey would return soon, if not with news, then with an alignment for a call. Hopefully she would return without incident this time.
Maybe it was the Sleeping Deity finally answering her requests or maybe it was just luck but as Reyra closed her eyes and as she fell into a fitful sleep she dreamt of a young man whose face she couldn’t quite see, obscured as it was by a wisp-like cloudiness and a woman whose name she would wake with on the tip of her tongue.