Low to high precipitating clouds that do not give lightning
Eleanor smiled as she set the table; which for her, of course, meant placing the plates of nexus-filled readies over their tubes. She made sure to do so physically. It could all have been done by receptor. It could have been ordered the day before, or even the week before, per their house’s scheduled influx from the government. In fact, it didn’t matter what she ordered, the tubes would sprout their designated nourishing investitures, and she was just doing the motions.
The table was set. The walls betiding the sacrosanct pictures of her family stood in their multicoated flavor of green and orange behind it. She saw the water slowly absorb into the kitchen’s countertop from the pretense of cooking. Eleanor placed herself over her designated chair, right beside Father, in between the Fire Man and her mother.
Tupil was handling his fork and spoon perfectly fine. His back was straight, she knew his feet were well situated below the falling false plastic (alter hydrocarbon-flynder surrogate) tablecloth linens, and the airnanos had done excellent work on his hair, pulled back, a burnished but clean red-orange. His T-shirt, a light green, nearly aquamarine, but very light, with colorations of a seagull white tickled all over, was new and Eleanor hadn’t seen it before. She’d been trying not to look at him too closely each time they were in the same room. But it was a very nice shirt, and there were actual seagulls, and a spray of sea-foam over black rocks and even a long winding beach. It was a Lowers shirt, that much was immediately clear. But Eleanor greatly preferred it to the prior act.
Delano was talking to the Fire Man. It was rare for Tupil to eat dinner with them, especially on these high-backed chairs. Very straight. He must have finally gone to a proper restoration center; there was only one in each district, but so easy to get to by portal. Alter straight. Better posture than even his hologram. No, I’m just so busy, with the upcoming tuitions of the next year’s university admittees. It’s all over the Net. They’re vying for the best ratios. Oh, what’s that? Yes, some universities have clandestine ratios they choose for hair and eye color. It’s only for their orientation spaces and other gatherings of all the students. But sometimes when there’s enough of a certain shade, it’s noticeable.
Ulera Dorr, physically present as well, was asking her about orientation.
“It was good,” Eleanor said. “There were many alter students.” The memory was, even after so many tossing and turnings before sleep, trying to recapture those moments, hazy and bright.
She was sure though that the seven students brought up by that silver fountain were the most alter. But she couldn’t think on that for too much longer. Sector would be difficult, maybe, but she’d still try to do well, no, she’d do well of course.
“That’s good, Eleanor. Alter you.”
Alter alter alter. Didn’t mean much to her anymore. Eleanor stared at the binelan fork held in each of her parents’ hands. Six binelan ladles in all.
She’d done it again. While Tupil had technically emerged, fully in fire, from her father, that didn’t make him her second father. Or original father. She didn’t know. Tupil had explained as best as he could. “Transfused Being.” She still didn’t understand. Ever since she’d laid her hands on the silver gates. Black turning into orange. With the dusk and back again. There was only so much she knew, which was very little, about how it all even worked. She was born with immunity to it. She didn’t know how much, and recently it seemed she could create it.
Or, there was the other, more lingering possibility—
—back in the bakery, that day with—well, with the Furies, before the government had quashed them—their leader, after she’d shown them her trait. He’d said there were two possibilities, but what was the one besides immunity to it? She couldn’t remember.
But she also didn’t want to remember, necessarily.
“Tupil, what pure hands you have,” her mother told him, reaching out. Tupil extended in return. Ulera took his left arm by the wrist, and with her other hand, ran her fingers across his knuckles. Tupil, catching Eleanor’s eye, gave a brief, but clearly hoarse, chuckle and retracted his hand. Delano cleared his throat; he was seemingly not comfortable with two people who for so long had not been inside the threshold, both now sitting here, and only, of course, because Eleanor had invited the gardener to the house of the rose.
Tupil raised the binelan fork to his mouth. The flavon entered, and the smallest, miniature wisps of flame surged up from beneath his tongue. Like in the ancient stories Eleanor used to hear so much about. A dark cavern; no, a steel funnel, awaiting the soldiers; no, a dragon’s mouth. No, she was only imagining it. Tupil placed a tip of floret, and a dab of gravitas, onto the awaiting drawbridge.
She could ask Father to contact the theater troupe again. They had the answers, beckoned to them somehow, from their various Scion traits… but that reminded her of the Thought-session she had coming up in 8 minutes with Layra and Jule. University discussion. What was there to discuss? They wanted to know all about her Sector orientation. She did not want to hear about all the Restor sibling holos, and Jule, where was Jule going again? She’d already told them all how it went.
You will become a Governor. And again, she thought that she was missing something, something significant. It was like an urge in the back of her throat, one she couldn’t get rid of. But it wasn’t a twange.
Come to think of it—she hadn’t felt that, or anything like that, around him. Not now, not then, not ever. Which meant he wasn’t Scion; only transfused being. Which had to mean that her own father was not.
She glanced at Delano; he was, she saw, not quite looking at the Fire Man either. He was someone who, like her, had been Scion Element’r, had been born with the power of fire. But unlike her—but unlike her, he had somehow disgorged his own, and Tupil had walked out.
That was as far as she understood it.
A sharp, abrupt image, like the memory of a hologram, burst across her mind.
A shadowy, unclear image of orange, something like a version of herself, seamlessly, sifting out from, through, her body, and stumbling onto the grass. The girl of fire seemed to turn—
“Eleanor, your flavon.”
Eleanor looked down at the plate before her; what had previously been the flavon drip, thin and cylindrical, had spread outward, nearly grasping the edges of the plate. It’d melted. She was still holding her binelan fork; its prongs were touching the binelan, and, in the reflection off the silvery material, she caught a wisp of face, her own, and turning it she lifted it out. She looked up; Tupil had noticed, and Delano was murmuring appreciatively. “You might work at Laconica,” he said, jokingly, but she wondered what he saw.
Again she’d subconsciously used her trait. Just like the bars. Just like her hair; and the leaves from Tupil’s greenhouse. None of those times were truly conscious. Even back when that Fury had thrown fire over and around her—it was possible that she had controlled it. She felt, she thought, strangely indifferent to this.
Eleanor scooped up the rest of the flavon, wrapping it within the tines of the binelan fork. Her parents resumed their careless conversation. She put the rest of the flavon into her mouth and swallowed.
Well, it wasn’t really a part of her. And clearly, everyone who saw forgot.
She drank some water from the clear vase.
Thought-message from Layra: Accept. I don’t think these Restor holos are as amazing as they touted them to be, said Layra. They’re of people from a hundred years ago, Eleanor Thought back. It doesn’t really matter. She Thought for Sector University and slid the options aside until she found Next steps. Layra continued bantering. Eleanor reread what she had been rereading ever since the orientation:
All SECTOR incoming students to first choose COLOR LINE (focusing on it, she saw a short bar of seven colors) before being assigned summer assignments. Redundant, she thought, not for the first time. Your Color Guide, one of your representatives, will TM you with further steps between March 4-7, 2237.
Still over two weeks away. Orange, was the obvious color; and again, it didn’t really matter. All of the universities in Plent and High did this. The more pertinent question was which of the seven students she’d be getting, that they hadn’t announced, and while there were ways to find out, she didn’t feel like trying. Some would be guessing the two Governors’ colors; but, it was entirely possible that the seven themselves didn’t choose their colors. And even what they had been wearing from orientation, in terms of color, did very little to indicate.
Unless… no, that could only be true if they made sure to select seven students who’d all chosen a different color. And again, it didn’t really matter. Sector’s own Thoughtlab had already proven two years ago that students often intentionally chose their least favorite color, picked one at random, or asked a friend to pick. It also didn’t really affect housing or roommate assignments, and she knew that whoever she got, wherever she got—she’d be fine.
“Eleanor,” her mother was saying. Eleanor saw below that she had finished her plate. Clean; perfect.
“Yes?” she said in response.
“What are the next steps?” Ulera asked her.
Eleanor responded; after the color assignments, presumably over their summer assignments, they’d work on selecting a temporary what Sector called ‘Shape of You,’ where they’d go with their studies generally, into one of the designated fibers of society. But for she, of course, it was ostensibly that of a Governor; even though she didn’t want it. Only a prognostication.
My dads keep asking if they can join v-Art’s orientation, Jule said. But I keep telling them that parents aren’t allowed.
Was yours also in an orientation V-space? Eleanor asked. “V-space” was the word going around.
They sent a v-Art student to my house, Jule responded. Started changing the house settings and such.
Her parents would have taken great chagrin… Eleanor imagined the Dorr palace, its halls ringing with the slaps and bells of a rudimentary v-Artist giving it new colors and shapes. Ulera Dorr would tell them to leave, they had enough triangles already.
“Tupil, your shirt has some binelan paste on it.”
The Fire Man attempted to dab away at the soft yellow paste with—well, there were no napkins in their house. A Lowers item; but Tupil simply smiled, sheepishly, and touched it with his index finger. A slow circle spread out in black as he burnt the part of his shirt away. A part of a seagull, some sky behind it, faded. Eleanor caught his eye again; a fiery dab of orange appeared in it.
It suddenly reminded her of one day in the greenhouse. Tupil had just finished showing Eleanor his array of tea mugs, one for each color of the rainbow. Or at least his version: they were all shades of orange. This had been after she’d started at Blazon, and he had been asking her to pick one. Eleanor had found first the one for autumn, and later the one for her nudd trees. One for the color of sunset, which was sometimes tinged with gold. One for the flavon panela they’d started to serve in the cafeteria, which they didn’t have in mediary. Another for a certain kind of fruit, she forgot which, but that Tupil had plastic ones tied to his older nudd trees. One for the color of amber. The seventh was one she couldn’t put an object to, which Tupil had said, “You’ll know when you’re a bit older.”
He was right; Eleanor thought, in six months or so, I’ll be off to university; I won’t be able to attend his natural, life-giving greenhouse; to see, reflected in his eyes as he worked, brewing his tea; a color that she couldn’t really describe in any other way. It was the color of fire.
Eleanor finished eating, and stood, pushing her chair back in.
“Good flavon, Eleanor,” her father said.
Eleanor nodded to the Fire Man and walked out of the dining room, to the front yard, where the greenhouse was. Layra and Jule kept talking, about college and other things; meanwhile, she chose orange, and looked up at the hazy, burnished sky. A soft wind tickled her light Flamingo vest. There was still time. She had to wait for Sector to assign their representative for this color, but in the meantime, she’d wait.
Sighing, she let her eyes trace the glass corners of the greenhouse atrium… she couldn’t wait to leave.
two years ago
Triomphe clapped his shoulder, Puræ giving him a hard gaze; Jaceus also sighted Emeli and Avien, the rest of his siblings, and besides those in front—the Tribunal—he saw others that he did not recognize. They were not wearing the colors of Taenim Laev, nor the mark of the Route of Color. Who were they?
He took Puræ’s arm; ignoring some of their glances. “I thought only family and friends of the court were coming,” he whispered. Were allowed to come. This was the Bearing, after all, and one of the Myodor royal line.
Puræ smiled. “They’re of Mine Tiara Dirn,” he said.
Jaceus felt his mouth go slack; there was that exception. “Understanding What Makes Us Breathe,” the most esteemed, but controversially the least understood, enigmatic, clandestine group of individuals who all strove for Mageart. From what he himself knew, while he’d never talked with any of them, admission into their meetings was open to the Nötr, but they often traveled to neighboring kingdoms which made finding them even more difficult.
He saw that one of the members, a Zarr’a with striking velvet blue skin, had her eyes on him—but then, her gaze shifted, and Jaceus looked behind him—it was Ila ce.
Now, she had everyone’s gaze upon her, and she gave her usual smile.
He shook his head; no, they were both about to do this, and he still had a chance. In front of Triomphe, in front of Puræ, in front of Apolloceus and Etr ce and even Mine Tiara Dirn. He’d practiced for this. He’d gone to the Pillars every morning since leaving Taenim. He’d—
“Good luck,” Puræ told him, squeezing his arm, and Jaceus shivered.
Yes, he could do this. He had to.
He took a deep breath; forming the substance, ready to be shaped.
. . . Exhale. He opened his eyes; the Tribunal, their eyes peerless, silent, and still, saw straight through him, and Jaceus approached his sister.
“Do well,” he told her, and Ila ce gave him her real smile; the one she only gave to family and friends. “Same to you, Jaceus,” she said. “You’ve practiced hard.” And with that, she walked over to where their two eldest siblings stood, and it was time. Jaceus took another deep breath, and, his stomach tight, walked up onto the Platform.
He looked up at the ceiling; like the doors to the Tribunal, it was woven out of light, and what here appeared to be greenburn maple. As he expected, most of the design showed Ramona, Firebird, her arms and shoulders draped in flame, depicted wearing the traditional togaki of the Kadokawa order in the early years post-Moment, long before she founded their kingdom. He took a glance back; Ila ce also was gazing up at the depiction. Emeli as well, probably imagining it redrawn as skylight; Avien appeared to be meditating, his eyes closed.
Jaceus looked again. There was a panoply of other minor figures, he counted ten of them; each occupying their own, similarly beautiful space. Besides Ramona, who lived before the designation was made, these were the other Magearts across the nearly eight centuries of the Nötr.
There was one empty space: the twelfth Mageart. But Jaceus knew that some considered Even of the Nötr their current Mageart, even if he hadn’t recognized himself to be. That was the dereliction to the title; it had to be self-recognized. He had also heard, through Triomphe mostly, of l’Mae of the Màha who created their current-day chick dispensaries, who with her retinue would be visiting the Nötr for the next Riel eta. Then there was of course all of Palette, a country Ila ce spoke of often, and was often the subject of their stories as children: where the Magy’calae ruled themselves, and only themselves.
But those were stories… and he, Jaceus, was a prince of the Nötr, and he would take the Bearing and form his shape.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
He cast his eyes down past the Tribunal.
He looked down on the floor of the Platform. Made entirely of Mags’ape.
He closed his eyes, and looked into himself.
Substance.
the part of himself—the breathing whole—everything that really mattered—
He found it. Breathing in, he felt for the inner space, the untold chamber, that gateway within his heart.
It opened.
Like a raging flower
Or an evening river,
rushing past
twin suns.
Material.
He reached out, embracing the material sky of gold
and the Mags’ape beckoned, its golden surface
glowing, changing, reflecting
green.
Shape.
The form of the image in his mind
As he dipped his substance
into the waiting gold.
Allowing it to crest, hot
feeling like a rising surge
of magcreat, blue and crystalline
⧮
He opened his eyes, and looked down at the surface of the Mags’ape.
Underneath its golden pallor coming to cool, he saw it: the shape of his shape, what would be his Magpotis. His “possession of magic.” A sizeable, rectangular prism lying just beneath the wet surface, covered in gold still; with two handles emerging from it, one from the face of the top, one from the bottom. He knelt. Jaceus plunged his arms into the pond of gold and, taking his possession by the handles, one in each arm, he pulled it out.
None of the original Mags’ape material dripped or slaked off; he held his Bearing in his arms. It was of a born chartreuse, and he knew without thinking that the handles could extend, the box in its center the true hilt: it was warm. He looked along its edges and the smoothness of its handles’ cylinders. He imagined himself using it, striking the cylinders against the Magpotis of others, of Puræ—
But then he remembered. Puræ was only tæhel ri, friend of the court, and thus couldn’t do the Bearing. Jaceus looked at Puræ. Puræ was gazing right back at him. He was hugging himself, holding his arms tightly against his breast. His eyes of gold were hard, and his lips were curved in pride and approval. Jaceus felt his heart rise.
“You may go,” the Tribunal said, and Jaceus almost stumbled as he came off the podium. But he held on to his Magpotis tightly, and met the congratulations of Ila ce and Triomphe, Emeli and Avien, giving him their people’s expression of praise to one’s close group, the Avo, the wrist extended with the palm turned. Apolluceus and Etr ce were beaming; even Herceus, who normally had to make a joke, was telling him truth.
“Thank you, thank you,” he kept saying. But then he remembered, it was now Ila ce’s turn, his twin but only a few moments older. He looked: she was already walking up to the Mags’ape, its surface back to its original ambience, scaling its steps. Wait. There weren’t steps. There hadn’t been steps for him—she was creating them, and now she was ready on the Platform, now, like him, looking up at the Magearts in their wide depiction.
Jaceus then realized that the three members of Mine Tiara Dirn hadn’t approached him, their attention was riveted on Ila ce. Well, she deserved it as well. He settled his Magpotis in a more comfortable position in his grip, and watched.
Tristan looked ahead in front of him and he saw Director Vektor talking very loudly in muted tones. President Amenda seemed to be giving her approval of his proclamations by merely blinking with each iteration of ‘techist’. Tiers Director Lile Scint, running through the final holoscreens, closed it before turning to face the rest of them, sitting on their various cubes.
Some, like Tristan, were standing. Some didn’t want to be there.
“There, all techists from Restor calculated,” Lile said. She spoke precisely.
First was the same name. Two; one syllable per, six letters total. Tristan pronounced it to himself five times over before Lile had finished saying the last syllable.
Amenda nodded. “Next, Lile,” she said.
“As you all know, only four from Restor for Midyear,” Lile said. The large blue holoscreen, percolated through by a grid of four profiles, showed Cel on the top left, Tristan on—
Tristan on—not the top right. Not the bottom left. Not the bottom right.
His unaltered brown hair avatar was absent from the grid.
“… which makes our third student,” as Lile gestured to the bottom left, “Starboy,” and the named offender stood, his brown curls giving Tristan a spark of anger, which quickly simmered down as he saw that the student, a young techist he hadn’t noticed until that very moment, dressed in the brightest of conflating colors, all primary, all disorienting.
Starboy stood and sat back down.
“And our fourth,” before the name had enunciated, a girl whom Tristan recognized to be one of the few third years still pledged to RTA, her flimsy black hair nearly windblown, getting up to point distinctly to her avatar on the bottom right, before sitting back down. “Visi Trimat,” she said quietly.
“Thanks, Visi,” Lile said. “That’s our four for this year. Thanks,” and she returned to her cube alongside the others who coordinated the Exhibits here. But Tristan didn’t see Cel among them; “I’ll see you all at the Midyear Exhibit,” and he truly hadn’t come back to Restor since then. Cel could override. Cel could change the other names.
Tristan looked again at the four avatars hovering blue.
CEL RIN—Alter Boy for the 2nd consecutive year, Rin family’s patron of their ‘true robot’ sequence, already said to be in discussion for the GATE.
LILE OMEGA SCINT—Tiers Director of RTA, known for her ‘v-parodies’ of other works, made at Exhibits via regenerator.
STARBOY—1st year at Restor, insists on only using the primary colors.[1]
VISI TRIMAT—3rd year at Restor, former RTA president, has not appeared in an Exhibit since mediary as has ostensibly been working on the same project since.[2]
Tristan looked again but the four faces floated in space. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine over them. He wasn’t going to Midyear. Pops would be furious. The first Exhibit unqualified for. The first Exhibit he didn’t attend while in school ever since the early days handling cubes in mediary. The first Exhibit he wouldn’t have to suffer the thousand fluid dynamic shocks the One Body was heir to.
What a dream…
Murmurs; Tristan realized that Amenda, who might’ve stared at him concernedly, was now surprised, as his expression was not one of dismay, but of a tangibly feeble relief. He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten that it was not Meliodas who dictated his going to an Exhibit, but the Techist student-run organization of the school, and it was Cel, Cel Rin, whose arrival and defeat of Tristan had lowered the occasion.
Lowered the drawbridge, and the steel man galloping over it. “Come, Tristan!” the dark knight yelled, but for the first time, Tristan’s reins weren’t pulled forward just as quickly, as the intangible wraps of leather weren’t there. They weren’t there; and Tristan saw, as Starboy and Visi Trimat began talking with Vektor, that the drawbridge wasn’t lowering all the way, and the dark steed was attempting to clamber over it, but the tint of the steel hooves gleamed as it fell. Tristan wanted to laugh but he didn’t know what to do. So he sat on the nearest unoccupied cube and watched the RTA organizers continue to plan the Midyear Exhibit, and the other schools in the Sector that were arriving… Cel would be Alter Boy yet again…
And soon, the presentation was over, and the rest of RTA, those who had not been chosen, left the space to go over their own cubes and holoscreens. Tristan waited, but a few seemed to want to stay there, talking. Their receptors blinked and fuzzed. Tristan saw that he had multiple Thought-messages from Y’sazant, one from Restor itself, offering its condolences for his not representing at the Midyear. One from Meliodas.
He counted the number of cubes in the room. Eight, twelve, seventeen… there were twenty-three cubes.
“So you’re Tristan Mott,” he heard.
Tristan looked. One of his combatant rivals, his bright yellow jacket gleaming against the red collar and sleeve ends, it was Starboy. His slight brown curls. Starboy grinned and nodded. “I knew it, I can’t believe I took your place.”
I didn’t know you existed until today, Tristan thought.
“Alter name,” he said.
“I thought you should’ve won the latest Exhibit,” Starboy said instead.
Tristan a superancient name, Mott from the derelict state pre-Sector II of Germany, ‘Starboy’ a relic of science fiction films, but then he heard again, and Tristan shook his head.
“Cel Rin true origin of the body, the body is the image, the one Cel, his and only his body,” he said.
“Only black and white,” came again Starboy. “At least you chose green and white.”
“But for you, green is not a creative color,” Tristan responded.
“It’s blue and yellow.” Starboy was beckoning over for another techist; Tristan didn’t know their name, and he really alter didn’t care—
“Tiko Toko,” the dazon said, somewhat hastily. “I’m a first-year. I joined yesterday. Starboy told me you were one of our best.”
One of our best. Tristan found those words, large and resounding, standing monolithically in the crevasses of dark. One of our best. Next to Cel?
But before Cel. Before Cel, he had been alter.
“I just—I just like alter darts, their shapes.”
I also like portals and just standing in them without making a Thought to go anywhere. I like making coffee by hand and secretly hoping Father doesn’t drink it so I can. I like returning to my room without having had to talk to Father between his return from GAT and too late to talk before sleep. But, he didn’t say that.
“I don’t know what I want to make! But President Sheen said that if you’re not going to Exhibit, you have to show the new members your techistry.”
Starboy nodded. “Visi will help. She was president before Amenda.”
And suddenly there were two others, yet another student whose name Tristan had forgotten, and indeed Visi Trimat. Her eyes had that appearance of perpetual melancholy. But Tristan could tell by the way she held her shoulders, as he knew he did the same, that she was taut. She, too, had skill. From Thought to holoscreen to material to image. All the way there and back again.
“Hi, Tristan.” Visi Trimat’s hair, he saw, wasn’t entirely black; there were tight, thin lines of silver running through it—the product of one or two Alteryears. “It isn’t hard; techists only starting out just need three things.”
“Red, blue, and yellow?” Starboy offered.
“Substance, material, and image,” Tristan said. One of the founding principles of techistry as laid out by William Restor. OK, at least he wouldn’t have to respond to Father. He got off his cube and sat down on the floor, pulling the cube over to just in front of him.
Tiko Toko followed, doing the same with theirs. Starboy just watched, eager . Visi looking on fixedly, and the fourth who hadn’t given her name and Tristan didn’t ask, wasn’t saying anything.
Tristan realized that he hadn’t done this in a long time. Not since starting out…
“The cube is yellow,” Starboy said. It was—I thought you should’ve won the latest Exhibit. But Cel.
But Cel wasn’t here.
He pointed first to his head. “This is the substance. You first think of the techniques and methods you want to use.” He placed his hands on the cube. Its yellow surface stared back at him—like one of William Restor’s noted holopapers that he used to plan the first Exhibits. Its edges, which began to curve as he shaped them, reminded him of Anne Restor’s first portals, pure cylinders; not the thin and hard but beautiful rectangular prisms they were now. “For the One Body, all I used was a bit of differential equations, balanced out by some fluid dynamics, but not using Vel’atta’s Resistance,” he said. He noted that all three, not including Visi Trimat who only looked on, were paying him vaunted attention. The yellow cylinder, wide and oblique, beckoned him—like one of Elizabeth Restor’s first V-banks, carrying entire levgion’ economies within their silver, infinite depths—as he continued, “And the material of course, is the object you apply these methods to, so that it attains a shape,” and as Starboy gazed on in visible rapture, Tiko Toko nodding rapidly, Tristan tried not to smile. “I had to arrange the alter darts in three levels, all very close together, but not so touching—so that, all three would float, with the windstrings balanced out by the air flowing through the spaces and differences in weight (even if it’s very light), keeping it all above the grass, floor, or any kind of podium.” Except water, he thought. “And so, the image is last. What it finally looks like, as close as you want it to be, to the image you had in the beginning. Straight and true and alter.”
Taking a deep breath, he looked at the torqued prism—somehow, it had become far wider than its original breadth, like a span of mindo during preparation, or Mary Restor’s celebrated Seurat line; closer to a circle than a cylinder, but with just enough height to make it the latter.
“Wow,” Tiko Toko uttered, their fluttery orange hair seeming to shake.
“Tristan, you’re a star,” Starboy said. He made a strange symbol with his hands, interlocking the fingers: it was a three-pointed star. Or three v’s.
“Pretty good explanation,” Visi said. Coming to kneel, she placed her hands on the flat surface of the low cylinder; it spread even more, becoming a complete circle laid out on the floor. “The degree to which we select the image at first, or allow the techniques and methods to form it, varies per techist. And techist families tend to have themes they always use.”
“I know about that,” Starboy interjected. “The Rin family uses black and white.”
“Themes, not colors,” Visi said.
“But themes can be colors,” Tristan responded. In his mind, the Mott family’s was green. Or Tristan’s was. Not his father’s. Not Meliodas’.
He tore his eyes away from the rest—did he—did he just—
Y’sazant’s hair was also green. Jade. Tristan shook his head, silently, and waited for the reprimand. His chocolate bob unraveling. His brow darkening.
… None came. Opening his eyes again, he saw Visi Trimat continuing to explain, that colors were invariably a part of themes, but that put into shapes, they acquired their true form. Something that, in her opinion, Cel Rin understood greatly of course, especially in departing from Anima Rin’s original ideas about placing the body upon the image, as opposed to putting the image before the body. But at this point, the three first-years (not Tristan, who understood everything) were irrepressibly confused, and so the third-year had to start over.
Start over she did; and as she talked, Tristan found himself staring at the empty space just besides her, drawing an outline in air, like the upgrade to V-locker, V-port, that High had begun to use, an outline forming the shape of a tall, black-haired ponytail, rainbow cube stellar imagery, that of the immutable, immeasurable Cel Rin, an outline of art.
He knew what he had to do next.
Nothing is real.
Or as real as I want it to be.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to see a depiction of Ramona, but here she is now, dressed in fire and her arms outspread. She’s not holding anything; she doesn’t need to. But I have to do this, as my parents took the Route of Color, Apolluceus following, Etr ce desiring the library. All noble paths.
What is mine…
It’s all a picture of the thing. I spread out my arms, I let the material of the mags’ape seep and fill into me. Feel my soul’s music, the calm and unrushed waves of my mind’s ocean. Gathering in tufts and flakes. A mental roar, beseeching an entirety of my mind. Threatening to overflow. I breathe.
It’s just a dream.
A warm, crepuscular drop of gold. A thin but savory prunestick. An envelope of sun.
I feel these objects. They have weight; and as I open my eyes, I almost have to close them, it’s so bright, my eyes are sloshed in the gold, my feet are encased in it. I can somewhat see my magpotis imprinted in the air around me: the small circle, the cylinder as long as my arm, and a broad, heavy globe I have to feel my hands around to ascertain that it is a sphere. It’s still very bright; I put the circle into one of my clocca’s pockets, tug the prunestick in between my arm and side, and hear the clang as the larger sphere falls on its side.
It’s all yellow still. It’s all the same as the Mags’ape was originally, but as the gold begins to fall away from my eyelids, I detect a variance.
The stick is golden yellow; the small circle, peeking out from my pocket, is honey gold. The sphere—which couldn’t have fallen onto its side, it fell from the air—is the color of the sun. It’s actually shining, I turn away from it, but the surface below my feet is steady again. I can stand.
Beyond me, the sound is silent. I look: they are all looking upon these three things. Or maybe they only really see the prunestick and sunstone, not the mineral, but as it’s an embodiment of the sun. The Bearing; each to our own shapes. It’s said that we cannot dispel them; once manifested, the magpotis remains, unimpeachable as its maker. Most who pass the Bearing keep it in their home or some faraway hill, deep under the ground.
Clapping. Now they are applauding, Jaceus has dropped his own shape, to clap avidly; I even see that Mine Tiara Dirn has all made the Avo. But it’s not real; it was only a controlled, plenary setting, and not what I would have done had I been alone, without the Tribunal in their facet gazes, using all of the material, and creating the sun.
But, before I step off, I at least roll the sphere down the—quickly making them a slide—off the Platform, and meet my family and friends. They are all happy; happier, it seems, than they were for Jaceus. He’s more in shock, which was expected but is still kind of sad to see. He really did try.
A grating sound. We all turn to see the Tribunal, their plastered wings tied back to the rock, struggling to depart and take flight. They rarely move, it is said. But they are moving now, and with a voice as one, say:
“SUNBIRD.”
And then they go still.
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[1] Starboy’s theme: Desmond Dennis’s R&B Remix of “Wheels on the Bus," released on YouTube in 2018
[2] Visi’s theme: Toko Miura’s ANTI-ANTI GENERATION TOUR 2019 live performance of “Grand Escape” by RADWIMPS, from Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering With You