Long ago, when the moon was still new in the sky, the Moon God himself came down to the world below, curious what he would find.
On the first day, he came upon the Hive mothers and their great glass nests. He marveled at their beauty, and at the labor of their workers. For eight days, and eight nights, he watched them. On the ninth day, the mothers sent a messenger to him.
“For nine days you have watched us,” it said. “What do you seek?”
“I seek those in need of saving,” he said. “But I can find none here.”
With that, he thanked them and left.
On the second day, he came upon the Queen and her children in the jungle. He saw the biting clawing things of the forest, and how they struggled in their home.
He came to the queen. “Please, let me save your subjects,” he said. “They suffer in their bodies and this jungle.”
“I do not think they need saving,” she said. “But it is not my choice to make. Ask them, and you may save them if they so wish.”
So the moon god asked them, and some did ask to be saved. So he took them too the moon, and he freed them from their jungle and their bodies, and many were happy. Some, however, came to him.
“We regret being saved,” they said. “We miss our friends.”
The Moon God pondered this. He had asked their friends if they wished to be saved, but they had answered no. Finally he returned to the queen.
“Of those I have saved,” he said. “Some regret their choice. May I send them back to you?”
The queen was silent for a time. “They cannot undo the choice they have made,” the queen said. “But for the days of balance, they may come home, and be once more among my subjects until the sun sets.”
“Make it three days,” the Moon God said.
And the deal was struck.
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It quietly amazed Ves that it had taken Marigold several hours of river sailing to recount such a simple tale. Of course, the Church of the Founder had its own doctrine of how the Moon God had come down to the world, but it focused entirely on his conflict with the Goddess. Nothing was said of his journeys across the rest of the world.
Though at this rate, Ves wasn’t sure she’d live to hear the rest of them.
“Now, of course, that’s just the Irisian translation, and many scholars have raised serious points about her interpretation of metaphor when guiding her word choices,” Marigold explained, twisting her body to simultaneously hold up a black slab of slate and a piece of chalk, deftly writing on the board as she talked. “The problem is that ancient scariform texts were often crafted more as an aide to the shaman that carried them than as a comprehensive record, meaning that there was a great deal of inference that was required based on the life of the shaman in question. This means that it can be nearly impossible to differentiate between whether two scariform records differed due to the tale itself, or due to the differences in the storytellers. Now, while the ancients did to some extent understand this, and autobiographical records were held to a higher standard of cohesion than mythical ones, there are still notable shortcomings when it comes—”
“Is she always like this?” Ves whispered to Orchid, watching agog as Marigold proceeded to chart out a ‘short’ comparison between scariform autobiographical practices and modern literary conventions.
“All day,” Orchid said. “Every day.”
“How has she not lost her voice?” Ves said, shaking her head. She remembered academy lecturers who talked less, and that was their job.
“Honestly?” Orchid said. “I’m afraid to ask.”
Ves fought the urge to giggle, trying to drag her attention back to Marigold’s lecture. Sadly, she’d lost the thread by now, and honestly had no idea what ‘the relevance of divergent phonetics’ was. She ultimately let her gaze drift out over the trees of the river bank as they paddled along. Despite the thronging noises of the forest around them, there was very little motion to actually be seen on the river. Eventually it started to strike her as odd.
“Marigold,” she asked. “Why aren’t there any animals on the river?”
“Oh?” Marigold paused. “I’m not sure what that has to do with the emergence of the western lowlands dialect, but it’s an interesting topic regardless!” She hastily wiped away her board and started scribbling on it anew. “What do you know about magic?”
“I… used to practice magnetomancy myself, before…” She glanced down at her furred arms.
“Oh! You never mentioned you practiced human magic!” Marigold bounced up so hard the boat nearly capsized. “Sorry! Sorry, your question first, sorry!” She carefully settled herself, wilting a bit under Orchid’s flat stare. “Haha, spend all this time talking about translation, then I make such a silly mistake. Uhm, okay. Magic is a really broad term, but I don’t know if there’s a human word for what I mean. You know the types of human magic, right?”
“A few,” Ves granted. Though the academy hosted all major styles of magic, magnetomancy, phase magic, botanomancy and their derivatives, there were fringe schools that jealously guarded their own disciplines in order to protect their own relevance. There was even a school of chronomancy but they were largely considered a hoax. “There are other kinds of magic?”
“Yes!” Marigold rattled her tail in what had to be applause. “The hive mothers use some sort of thermodynamic manipulation as part of their natural biological processes to keep their inner magma warm (the same being true of the ashback exiles as well), and we Aureanians channel ours through song!”
“Song?” Ves asked. Sure, she’d heard a lot of birds singing, but nothing that really qualified as a ‘song.’ “Like, do ray mi?”
Both aureanians winced.
“Sort of?” Marigold said.
“Sorry, dearest.” Orchid cut in, offering an apologetic smile. “Human singing is just a bit… well, vulgar to us.”
Ves felt an embarrassed flush warm her cheeks, and she puffed out her chest. “I’ll have you know I was considered for the academy choir!”
“Oh, that’s um…” Marigold managed to fail at smiling. “Nice?”
“Dearest,” Orchid patted her on the head. “I meant no offense, but… You know, Marigold, I think a demonstration would clear this right up, don’t you?”
“A demonstration?” Marigold cocked her head, and then she started to bob her rattle. In seconds, her head was bobbing along with it. “Yes! Absolutely, a demonstration!”
Now Ves was just confused. “A demonstration of wh—”
Probably the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard started to come Orchid’s throat, immediately striking her dumb. As she stared in shock, Marigold’s rattling picked up, and the two began to harmonize, Orchid providing the melody and Marigold the rhythm. As they did, Ves felt an odd lurch in the boat, and a quick glance at the water showed they were starting to leave a wake.
They were moving faster.
She nearly jumped out of her skin as shapes exploded out of the forest. More Auaneans, somehow even more brightly colored than her companions, and with great feathered wings at their sides as they flapped through the air. They assumed formation around the boat, and chimed into the song with a chorus, the formation beginning to rock back and forth in a dancing motion just as the river began to do the same.
Holding on for dear life, but somehow too exhilarated to be afraid, Ves could only watch as they were carried along on a rising swell, the flow of the river suddenly reminding her more of sledding down a hillside than traveling over water. The surge behind them rose and rose, its motions dancing along with the beat and melody as they all moved faster. Suddenly, the river rose up ahead of them, and with a yelp Ves found them all tossed into the air even as an explosion of blindingly colorful birds swarmed up all around them. For an instant, the crescendo was held as they sailed clear over a bend in the river, glittering water droplets sparkling like stars as their flying choir spun around them. Then the river caught them and they were racing along again, carried as much by the beat as the water.
Ahead, the Sunlit City itself all but glowed upon its island.
The wind picked up around them, rushing to them from the island, catching petals from the flower studded houses of living wood, the wind swirling around dramatically. The water rushed them to the side of the island, and clear around it, the voices of the inhabitants joining in as the song built to its dramatic climax. Around and around they circled the water literally lifted up, carrying them up a glittering liquid spiral to a point just above the city itself. As the voices came to a head, and they were hurled from their path into the open sky, one powerful voice came to dominate all the others.
Ves gasped as they were swept from the open air, their boat caught smoothly on the back of an aureanian unlike any other. She was a brilliant, blinding white, every scale traced in gold, with wings the size of a ship’s sails and a rattle that rattled the bones. She carried them back down in a smooth spiral, mirroring their ascent as the melody wound down. As the final bars wound down, she dipped into the water with the easy grace of a fish, leaving the boat drifting upon the water on its own momentum. Slowly, it drifted up to the pier, and finished the song with a final, soft ‘plonk’ as its nose touched the wood.
Ves was utterly breathless.
She had come to the Sunlit City.
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“I do hope the ride wasn’t too stimulating,” Queen Solestice said, a hint of mischief under her soft maternal tone. “We try not to let ourselves get so carried away.”
“It was…” Somehow, despite having never actually left the boat except to stagger onto land, Ves felt absolutely winded. “Unbelievable.”
“Precisely why we try not to do it too often.” Solestice giggled. “Still, sometimes the music has a mind of its own.” She roused herself from the sand and gave her mighty wings a final shake. “Regardless, for all that the music sometimes has a mind of its own, government always does, so I must go mind it.” She reached out a wing and gave Ves a pat on the head. “Welcome to the Sunlit City, little moon-child. You’re a little early, but I suspect you’re not the usual visitor, are you?” Before Ves could answer, the Queen launched off, and Ves had the distinct impression she would have winked, if she could have.
“I see you met the Queen,” Orchid said, her voice dripping amusement. “She leaves everyone with that face the first time.”
“I…” Ves shook herself, blinking a few times before rubbing over her face. “Does she actually rule like that?”
“Yes,” Orchid said, her bearing taking on a note of teasing pride. “Did you expect her to sit perched on some balcony, issuing edicts before retiring to her audience chamber?”
“I…” Ves blinked a few more times. “Isn’t that what monarchs do?”
“Evidently not~” Orchid’s tail snaked around to boop Ves on the nose. “Come along, dearest. As charming as it is to swoop in on a nice musical number, there’s still bureaucracy to be tended to.”
The city itself was a riot of color. Where the jungle was a deep, verdant green, within the Sunlit City, color exploded from every wall. Flowers bloomed, feathered windchimes jangled, even the bark of the house-trees had been lacquered and stained all colors of the rainbow. The streets and even the skies thronged with aureanians just as colorful as their homes, a pleasant babble of hissing filling the air.
“This place is incredible,” Ves whispered, her eyes caught by a merchant’s stall as they passed by, bundles of feathers being hung up for sale. “It’s so…” she wasn’t even sure where to begin. Clean? Bright? Cheerful? For all that Uthed and the Academy had paraded their polished marble and gilded statues, there were still less savory places. Here, she almost expected she could step into the sewers and find freshly tended roses.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Orchid tittered lightly. “I admit, I’ve seen that reaction enough times that it makes me fear for the outside world.” Her voice dropped slightly. “Is it really that bad out there?”
“No…” Ves began, but she couldn’t put much conviction into it. She’d never been noble born, never seated deeply in the lap of luxury. She’d slept on wool and hay instead of silk, and on hard dormitory cots in the Academy. She’d known the bite of winter through a too-thin cloak, and the stench of cloth several weeks without a wash.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“I see,” Orchid said.
Ves struggled to pull up some further argument, but the thought was dashed out of her head by the sight of the building before them.
It was a squat, gray thing of solid stone, dull and rough edged, barely the size of a gardener’s toolshed. Inside it sat a lone aureanian flopped over the front counter with an impossibly bored expression totally at odds with the almost metallic gleam of its scales. As Ves drew closer, she realized with a shock that the scales actually were metallic.
“Welcome to the lunar embassy,” the aureanian drawled, staring at her with the first expression that was flat and lifeless enough to pass for serpentine. “Please state your name and business.”
“Uh, Ves Crissea. My business is, uh…” She wracked her brain, surprised to be asked such a question. What was her business? Saving the world? “Hero?”
“Gods, not another one,” the aureanian sighed, reaching up a tail that ended in a little grasping hook rather than a rattle or tip, and deftly arranged a few sheafs of paper before stamping one. “Please sign here below the dotted line.”
Ves took the paper, a frown on her face, and read through the document. Her father’s lessons on contracts leaped to mind, and after a moment she determined she was looking at some sort of legal waiver. In short, it was a certification that she was an independent actor and by no means represented the beliefs of aims of the moon or its formal governing body. She pursed her lips for a moment, then signed, passing the document back. “What do you mean, another one?”
“Every single one that comes back wants to be a hero,” the aureanian said, idly countersigning the document, then feeding it into a small device that proceeded to eat the paper with an excess of buzzing. “I’ve even seen folks come back to save the world from each other.” It pulled out a small card of the moon substance she’d learned was plastic, and passed it over to her. “My advice? Forget it. You’re just going to make more trouble than it’s worth.”
“Thanks,” Ves said, frowning as she took the card. Under her breath, she muttered, “What crawled up your mast and died?”
For an instant, fear flashed in the aureanian’s eyes, then without warning it snapped upright into a rigid, cheery posture. “Hello! My name is Shrinking Violet! I took the Moon God’s gift, then I got impatient and stole a shuttle to return from the moon early to see my beloved! This caused an amazing amount of problems for the Moon God, so when he caught me, he damned me to work off the hours of his productive time I’d wasted with my stunt! Now, I work as lunar ambassador, and will continue to do so for the next [38,047] years, helping the loyal citizens of the moon, and answering all versions of the question ‘what happened to you’ to better serve as an object lesson! Thank you, and have a nice day!”
The aureanian then promptly dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
“A-are you—” Ves began.
“Please,” Violet said. “Just go away.”
Ves did so.
“Don’t worry about Violet too much,” Orchid said, rejoining her. “My grandmother said she was a dour sort even before the… incident. Apparently she took the Moon God’s gift because all she was doing before then was moping around all day. It makes you think.”
“It does?” Ves said, tucking the card she’d been given into her robes.
“Well it makes me think at any rate,” Orchid glanced over her shoulder at the quickly vanishing embassy. “The stories say that he cares about freeing and rescuing people. I wonder if that means freeing them to be miserable?”
“Freeing them to be miserable?” Ves followed her gaze until they rounded a corner. “That doesn’t seem right. Who would choose to be miserable?”
“You’d think the answer would be ‘no one’ wouldn’t you?” Orchid said. “And yet, Violet’s been stuck there my entire life, and I’ve never seen her make a single friend. She’s right off the main thoroughfare, and others have tried reaching out, I’ve seen it.” Orchid shook her head. “She may be stuck there, but she doesn’t have to be stuck there... if that makes any sense?”
“I think so,” Ves said, her thoughts turning inward. She flexed her hands, pointed claws raking gently along her palms. She had chosen to live, to be happy, to seize life by the horns.
Hadn’t she?
Her thoughts were interrupted as she took a deep breath. “Eugh!” It must have been the almost constant excitement, but she had forgotten that she was covered in sweat, river, and sap-soaked robes. “Uh, do you know where I could find a change of clothes?”
Orchid stopped, and a disturbingly Marigold-esque glee entered her gaze. “What are you looking for?”
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It turned out Orchid was a professional seamstress. A professional, passionate seamstress. A professional, passionate, perfectionist seamstress. A professional, passionate, perfectionist, pain-in-the-ass seamstress.
“My arms hurt,” Ves whined, just barely resisting the urge to try and roll some feeling back into her shoulders.
“It hurts to be beautiful, dearest, now please stop squirming.” Orchid coiled around her again, doing what had to be the dozenth circuit around it before letting out a sigh. “Nothing for it I suppose. I’ll need a half dozen bolts minimum. The first biped I sew for, and she has to be nothing but curves.”
“Hey,”Ves muttered, too relieved at getting to drop her arms to be really mad.
“Well it’s hardly my fault most cuts would make you look like a tent,” Orchid said, slithering over to a small bookshelf tucked in her studio. Snagging a book by looping her tail through the ring bindings, she set it down and began to flip through images of human dresses, though none of them were styles Ves recognized from Uthed, though something still seemed familiar about them. “I’ll have to improvise. Adapt something with a corset perhaps, certainly a separate section in the middle.”
“Is that…” Ves watched as Orchid flipped through the pages, images of human styles giving way to draconic ones. “Is that Kinpatrian?”
“You know it?” The gears quickly spun inside of Orchid’s head. “Have you actually been there?”
“Well, no,” Ves floundered, taken aback. “I was too young for a proper overseas—”
“Ah, of course,” Orchid visibly wilted, turning back to her page. “They have the most wondrous stories from over there. Such a dramatic tradition. Why, there are whole books on the exploits of the seventh legion all alone!” Her gaze drifted over to her bookshelf. “Oh, to have seen it with my own eyes.”
“Why don’t you?” Ves asked. “I mean, not right now, with Uthed…” She swallowed. “But another time, after this is… all over. There’s no reason you couldn’t charter a ship and sail there. I mean, the isskin keep the sea lanes relatively safe as long as you can afford the tithe.”
“Were it so simple,” Orchid sighed, abruptly flipping the book cover closed and tucking it back into the bookshelf.
“Well, I mean…” Ves said. “Why isn’t it that simple?”
“Where do I begin,” Orchid groused, still staring at her bookshelf. “We are a people cursed by our bounty, you know that? The forest smothers our gold and our silver, so there’s no trading that. Our medicine is nonsense to the other races of the world. Whiteweep fouls axes if you try to cut it down, and the sap ruins the wood anyway. You know what I traded for these books?” Orchid said, carrying on immediately. “A dozen gold coins I found in a bonemite nest.” She heaved a heavy sigh. “You know there’s a story about this?”
“No?” Ves said, gently sitting herself down beside a worktable.
“When the first of the aureanians crawled forth from the sea. The land was barren and empty. The stony ground cut our feet, the insects bit our skin, and the cold gnawed our fingers.” She lapsed into a quiet, private cadance. “Do you hate our feet so? We asked the ground. Yes, the ground replied, we loath them. Then take them, we said, and gave our legs to the ground. Immediately the hard stones turned to soft loam and smooth roots and we suffered no more. Emboldened, we turned to the insects. Do you hate our skin so, we asked? Yes, they said, we do. So we gave up our skin, and the insects traded us their shining hides and wings. Last was the cold, and again, we asked if it hated our hands so. Again it did, and again the bargain was struck. At last, we were happy and comfortable, or so we thought. In time we grew discontent. There was so much more to the world than comfort. Mountains you could climb with feet. Gold you could dig with hands.” She paused there. “For the life of me I can’t remember what skin was good for, I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I think the point comes across though.”
“I suppose,” Ves gazed around at the building, at the clothes. “You seem to do fine without hands or feet either, for what it’s worth.”
“I suppose we do,” Orchid chuckled softly. “Maybe it’s just a jealous little story for jealous little girls.” She shook herself. “I’m sure Marigold would tell me I’m being silly, and that nobody would trade for arms and legs, they’re such a terrible liability.”
“She didn’t seem too impressed with mine, come to think of it,” Ves offered.
“You should ask her about legs sometime,” Orchid said, making her way over to the mannequins, particularly one shaped into a crude biped. “She has quite the set of theories on the subject.” She examined the hands a moment, then reached over for a bolt of blue cloth. “But that’s neither here nor there. Come, let’s at least get you presentable before your friends arrive.”
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She found herself sent away just as the sun was setting, the streets of Aureana filled with departing crowds of serpents, clusters filing into homes lit by softly glowing lamps of moss, others clustered at cafes and resturants, chatting and laughing as the stars came out. It reminded her of the city around the Academy, the rainbow colored serpents briefly becoming brightly robed students in her mind's eye.
She was so distracted she walked straight into Marigold.
"Oh, sorry!" Her coils moved swiftly, catching Ves and her armful of clothes. "Oh! Did Orchid make you something?!"
"Uh, yeah," She hadn't had a chance to look at the full outfit, mostly due to the fact that Orchid had done her level best to obfuscate the final look from her, fussing with measurements and adjustments behind a screen before finally packing the bundle into her arms with what she could only guess would have been a wink but for the absence of eyelids.
"Oh, she's the best. I'm sure you'll look amazing!" Marigold froze. "N-not that you don't look amazing normally!"
Ves merely sighed and rolled her eyes, fighting and losing to a smile. "Thank you, Marigold."
"Ah, you're welcome!" She glanced around. "Oh! Do you need to eat? I've already eaten this week, but most mammals have to eat multiple times a day." She gazed down sympathetically. "How do you manage?"
"I have no idea," Ves said, sighing dramatically. "Though I could go for something light. I'm honestly more tired than anything."
"Of course, of course. Oh! I found an inn for you to stay at! They're going to be hosting the Homecoming visitors anyway, so they agreed to make accomodations early."
"Aw, thank you Marigold!" She saw the snake squirm happily, and let out another sigh. "It's okay, you can hug me."
"Yay!" She coiled around, and squeezed Ves so tightly she groaned.
"Bones" Ves gurgled. "Bones, Marigold!" She was released so promptly she almost stumbled.
"Sorry!" Marigold said, looking far too happy to be actually sorry. In fact, the way she was squirming, chances were another hug was inbound.
Ves needed a distraction.
"So," she groped for something. "Orchid mentioned something about legs?"
The depth and intensity of the resulting gasp filled her with a deep and indescribable dread.
It began.
"So! After spending years out in the field, as is required by the royal entomology society's guidelines to apply for peerage, I noticed a fascinating pattern. The vast preponderance of life-ending injuries in mammalian cadavers, which I often had to study to catalogue indigeonous arthropod populations and their reaction to sudden influxes of protein rich foodstuffs, related to the legs. I decided to keep a side catalogue of injuries I had discovered, more as a hobby than as serious research, I'm years away from being properly accredited in mammalian studies after all, but I discovered that my observations were upheld by the data! Morover, I started to experiment with additional variables, such as habitat, leg length, primary food source, and I discovered more. Not only were legs directly related to likelihood of death, but leg length was directly correlated with leg death, and therefor absolute odds of death!"
Ves just stared blankly. "Really."
Marigold nodded vigorously. "But don't worry! While I know this may be distressing news right now, it's actually good. You see, with leg length directly relating to odds of death both by leg related injury and by exention in general, they are being selected against!" She hugged Ves as though congratulating her on her engagement. "While it doesn't provide much hope for yourself and present generations. In a few thousand generations, legs can be made vestigial!" She gazed into Ves' eyes, as though passing along the weight of the world to her. "Your descendants will someday live free of the tyrrany of legs."
"That's... comforting?" Ves said.
"I'm so glad! I know it can be tough to hear, but someday the long nightmare will be over." She abruptly hugged Ves again. "Oh, and it'll happen faster if you choose a mate with short legs. Breed responsibly!"
"I... uh..." She blinked a few times as Marigold released her. Spotting the inn, she took off at a brisk walk. "I think I should probably get to bed."
"Okay!" Marigold waved her rattle enthusiastically as Ves escaped. "And remember, don't worry, it'll all be okay!"