image [https://i.imgur.com/orYDUM3.png]

I go into the chambers every day to tear the flowers apart. It’s not because I want to, but because I have to. They are not real flowers of our order. The flowers of the Kadokawa wilt and the flowers that line the edges of the forest bloom. They begin red and thin out in the mist-summer, turning a quiet silver-blue before freezing. I always go out in the morning to check on them. I like looking at them just as they begin the transformation. The priests say that the flower-color cannot change so dramatically; it has to find the state in between. But they do not understand as there is no in between, the petals and stem and even the leaves, as it all begins as red in earthspring and stays red over the spring of lightning. And as soon as the sun begins to steal some light from the moon and mist-summer casts off its frozen cloak, all of the miniature guardians that protect the forest, in a single moment, turn silver-blue. And that night they freeze. I pick up the petals that break off. And I return them to the chambers of the Kadokawa where I rinse and cast heat. The flowers of the Kadokawa though, always wilt. They do not have the glory of sudden change. Wilting takes courage.

The Kadokawa bud in front of me refuses to do so. I’ve been staring at it, waiting as I held the basket of silver-blue shards; now I’m sitting, waiting for this single Kadokawa to do its single responsibility. It is not one I share. I am only a single Kado. I have many responsibilities. I know the freshly cleaned beyhara is awaiting my glass touch in the next chamber. But I can only change my place once this single Kado bursts open, giving one last effort at beauty. Before dying. Or perhaps it was already dead.

I’ll think about that later. This bud is just like the others. It’s an indifferent pink. It’s nearly red at this point. Or ochre. Or mahogany. It’s not the color of my hair, which is red. Red is simple. Red is elegant, when looked at a certain way. When perused with simple eyes. But red meets the others just as equally, there are so many, and finally, the burst of petal, opening up and shriveling. The chamber is just dark enough for me to see this happening. Or maybe it is truly dark, and I can see it happening because I have witnessed Kado-petals dying so many times that all of my thoughts right now are ones I have made before. But what are thoughts if not repetitions of the body, as sounds our minds have no choice but to make, unless we lend them different instruments.

It is time to clean the beyhara. Or dour; it depends on whether I am cleaning first or second. I leave the petals on the pedestal as I stand and wipe off the dust. There is so much stone-dust in this chamber. In every chamber. It is up to the priests to discern a place for that in my responsibilities. I move into the dancing-chamber up ahead and deposit the shards upon the first empty cube I find. They sit there by themselves, dim but visible.

I step out again and go into the other chamber. The beyhara lies on the moonstone, its orange beak nearly iridescent in the light falling through the window above; it is likely entering the halls of its parents as I say a few minute words before moving to stand over it. I might have said the actual words of the Kadokawa, or even those of the other orders that make use of the forest. I place my hands over its still beak and think of when I joined this order or when the order gave me my responsibilities. Either way, it is a still memory. It’s still the priest climbing up the tree and taking me down from it, and I waved to the tree and the squirrels as I saw the other priests climb other trees in their cloaks of a deepest red, even back then. I think we were all abandoned by people who created us but I have said the words and seen this hazy recollection so many times.

By now enough heat has gathered within the body of the beyhara. Enough to separate its liver from the heart, intestines and lungs into divisible parts. I watch as the same orange as the beak appears as a reflection within the body, shimmering just beneath the stout black feathers. The beyhara gives one last croak as it joins its ancestors in the halls of winter, back in the time of the four seasons.

“Ramona, we do not imitate the movements of our brethren. It is unseemly, and goes against our tenets.”

I close my mouth, and the beyhara is dead. The priest is not smiling; he is not frowning, he is emotionless and stoic and uptight and not even demure but most typically laconic and demanding. As of this moment, he is most likely one of those.

I dip my head and wave my arm over the beyhara’s chest, showing the burning insides. It is doured.

“It is doured. It will now enter its Night Passage, and join the rest of its flock up the silver stairs.” The priest’s voice is as pure and unrefined as it was the first time I heard it, calling me to let go of the branch.

“Up the silver stairs.”

“Good, Ramona. Now, Eridis is expecting you, you must go.”

I nod twice and move out of the priest’s way, around the beyhara’s limp tail feathers and out of the moon-chamber.

“Ramona, are you listening?” Slap across my elbows; it doesn’t really hurt. But the wall of alabaster and stone I had been building crumbles to the ground, as I enter into a prostrate position with my arms laid out on the hard floor.

“Up the silver stairs.”

I think of the basilica being constructed by the Dwangō. It is distant from here, beyond the forest and past the silver guardians. But the pendentives of the Kadokawa already do not receive so much attention from my eyes. So I stay here, and follow our tenets.

My arms are now aisles. I dare not look up, at the domed ceiling.

Two raps on my forearms; one on each, just hard enough for me to recoil and return to a sitting position. It is not hard enough for me to feel pain. Pain is something small and temporary, a flickering fire, not something to feel in these chambers.

Eridis and Tien return their attention to the priest. The priest is drawing circles within the stone-dust, his lighthair nearly following his fingers’ clasp of the matsu stick. They are overlapping, intersecting… so they cannot quite be the drums to form a dome.

I am not looking up.

“Faraka feels more inclined to capture the rabbar,” the priest says. “As before, none of their kind has been seen below the High Mountains since the Moment itself. As such, we cannot capture any rabbar.”

“But what of rabbar taken? By Ab’maluk?” Faraka asks. “That would explain their heightened intelligence and avoidance of capture.”

“In the elepi grasses,” Eridis says. “They are already difficult enough to wade.”

“The Sacred Creatures Codex does not list the rabbar as extinct,” Faraka says, she is winding her brown hair into the thinnest of braids, far thinner than the wide and smooth stalks of elepi that stand between the forest and the High Mountains, between me and the Dwangō.

Tien draws a single line in the stone-dust in front of her. “We only know how to practice with beyhara and kitsune,” she says. “This temple requires only beyhara.”

Beyhara. I had just come from douring one, but the great bird itself comes before me in the dark, thin but strong, with black-tipped wings. Five sturdy legs. Pale silver eyes around a short, orange beak. And the tail, long and triple-forked in a resplendent display of pink, blue and white.

But the beyhara was simply paltry in comparison to the finished work, when the priests had given it the Night Passage, and I along with the other Kado of our order wash, bath, dour, and finally rent it over with the Ikenobō to give it that sweet, ebony luster that only a beyhara can achieve.

“Ab’maluk cannot stay in the host forever,” Faraka says. “At some point, they will have to leave, even if for a moment, to clean itself. There are waters between our temple and the High Mountains, and none beyond. By the most recent maps drawn.”

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I think that at this point, Eridis and Tien shake their heads, and say something about our order’s last foray up beyond the forest. It had not succeeded. Forays into the forest bring back beyhara, and sometimes kitsune, when they volunteer themselves and their companionship, only to be cleaned and doured like the rest.

While they speak, I begin to rebuild.

First, the arms. They are thin, but not quite flaky; as befits the Zarr, as befits all of us Zarr’a here in the Kadokawa; but they are still not rough enough. I rub my fingers across my forearms. Not rough enough. My skin tickles, perhaps needing some peeling, like we do sometimes the remains of molted feathers, but such an act reserves for the beyhara. So I lay my arms in my lap, across my stole; my left atop my right, two simple layers of alabaster or stone, like the quarries far beyond, and just below, the High Mountains. Light flakes and some particles of their stone-dust meander off as I sit straight. Retrieved in those wide baskets, held beneath the arms, as the Dwūn sprinkle in natron and water, as they mix it, with their arms and fingers, sunk deep in the baskets. They greet each other as the rest arrive, slowly, up the steep, tanned by the sun, trapezoidal ramp; they shade their eyes with their occasional free hand.

My eyes are bright. But something clouds them, and I feel the hard stone beneath me, not the soft smooth stone of the ramp beneath my sandals. It is not the scratching caress of the elepi grasses nor is it the petals of the hibana that cling to the younger trees in the forest. It is the stone, mired in dust, waiting for me to leave it.

And so I leave. Dusting off my sandals and palms, I make to stand.

A rap on the side of my head tilts me. I nearly keel over, but arms take mine and still me. Much harder than mine, but no less flaky. Draped in the same black-and-gold lines of her tunic sleeve, that do not conceal the strength of years having labored in those quarries.

Heleta, her long black braids resting across her stole, reminds me with words, that I am not contributing to these ideas as the beyhara are becoming aware of our frequent forays, and she is patient, or she is kind, or she is enacting her own responsibilities, and she nearly drags me down by the foot of my tunic, back down, hard, to the stone-dust floor as Eridis and Tien and Faraka, while the priest listening and drawing stone-dust spheres, or circles, or points, continue their spate. Heleta straightens her tunic sleeve as she returns to a position of listening, her chin in her hands. Her sleeves fall a bare finger’s length down.

Her lines are black and gold. I think it matches well with her hair, but it doesn’t quite have the same symmetry as it does the light streaming in through that crack in the ceiling, I’m not looking at it but it disintegrates as it lands across the tokami style of Adonii. She is Zarr with the rest of us but she does not restore her skin or her soles when walking across the shards, she does something to the light, she does something to the light when it touches her hair.

Adonii is listening. I think the priest is now saying something relating to concern, or pity, or apathy to something Faraka says, her voice raised. Faraka has raised concerns with touching and cleaning the beyhara. Faraka finds that they are indeed growing wary. They are not necessarily communicating with the kitsune, and Tien nods. She likes the kitsune. But I do not much rather like hearing their pitiful whines as they realize that their stories are right, that what their matrons tell their little ones in the dark is true, that the taller ones with the strange faces who grow and cut the flowers at the edges of the forest, are those who take our fathers and mothers.

But I don’t speak to the kitsune. Sometimes.

“Kitsune have families,” comes another, and it is Lilli, her faded-gold in braids but cut short; just so that they do not come to rest on her shoulders. “They have myth and storytelling. Drawings around the boughs that lack hibana.”

“The fur of a kit is fine douring,” says Eridis. “Has a special quality in the moonlight.”

“We, too, have myth and story,” the priest says. He ceases to make his outlines. “And yet, in the years and decades since the Moment, we have struggled to find foothold. The kitsune understand this. And the beyhara…”

Tien makes a clucking sound, and Faraka balks, looking up at the ceiling. I am not. But she is, thinking to the beyhara and our nightly rituals. We have a place to be in this order. We have responsibilities. We wear tunics, and complete our tenets to produce fine black luster for preservation, to take them up the silver stairs. We do not have families.

Scritch. It is Ituma, and she is finished with her crude drawing of one such bird, in the area of stone in front of her.

I see them through the falling arches. They are only arches. They do not themselves create the feeling of passing through, or opening to a certain place. I see two other Kado, Eridis and Faraka, they are moving what seems to be a beyhara, limp and lost, its colors off-skein and feathers dangling, separating through the air in front of them and between them as they pass through the arch.

Some water cascades over it, the white streams enfolding and the serpa grass clinging to it allowing the water to move up and over the fading black stone. But none of it falls upon Eridis and Faraka. They pass through it. Eridis has a look of golden expression, she is feeling the light of the sun when it lands upon a broken sky giving it inspiration. Faraka is dour; a rabbar, or two, their horned tails rasping, would be far lighter and she treads the juvenile elepi in serrated steps.

They are still a ways from Ramona, I am the lone Kado, thinking these thoughts away from the chambers.

They see me. Faraka lets go of the three-pronged tail, letting it fall to the grass-strands. Eridis is looking past me, still holding the head, her arms clutched around the thick black neck. I turn my head. Indeed we are just outside the chambers, at least this entrance arch, of grey-black stone and surrounded by Kanta, they are only imitations, only red pretense, just emulations that open out to the guardians of the forest. We are still far enough away from them. I do not feel the light touch on my shoulder that remarks of mist-summer; the flowers are our only indication.

But Eridis has different eyes. She is not directing her orange pupils below, to the Kanta around and on the stone steps, asking to be let in so that they can taint. They cling to the juvenile elepi. Eridis’ orange emblems are facing something above them. She looks at the low vault, of the same grey-black stone, that encases the chambers and stretches toward the sky. It is supported by Ionic columns. But those columns are so hidden by the streams of stone-dust that plague the interior. Is it still an Ionic column if it is so obscured? Perhaps then it is Doric, or Corinthian. We do not know. We do not know.

I do. But I am not certain as to whether Eridis and Faraka bear the same look towards these parts.

“Why do we have the dome?” she asks. “We don’t use the upper space in the chamber.” She is referring to the specific chambers beneath the dome. It is there the silver stairs begin.

For the beyhara. And not yet for the Kado.

Faraka reaches over, and attempts to wrest the dead feathers out of Eridis’ grip. She does not succeed. Eridis may not be as indomitable as Heleta but she takes pride in her capture, and while this beyhara, I think, is equal to the rest, perhaps there is something unique and rare in her prize today.

Or that is the echo of the mind of Eridis Dinami.

“Domes give it space, give it grandeur,” says the priest. “Sometimes, we feel the spaces within.”

He is trite. He is obscure. He is an unknown figure, and in looking at this priest, I do not recognize him. He is not wearing the hanging red and black sash that defines the priests of the order. He is not long and lighthaired, as marks the Ligaeryae that fill their ranks. He is not inside the chambers.

The priest, if priest he pretends to be, is staring above him. He, too is looking at the dome. But he is staring at it with something approaching the emotion known as admiration. It fills his oval eyes. He blinks.

“It is not time yet to dour,” says Faraka. “We are still bringing in the beyhara.” She gestures down to her capture, but this is not what the priest has said, he was speaking to the dome, and Eridis seems to perk her shoulders, placing a frown between those three orange emblems I call her eyes.

She is Zarr. Eridis is not Ligaeryae, like the priests. And she is also not Inmortalis, a rare kind that like the rabbar, have not been known to live below the High Mountains. But even below those named parts of the world consist of only the span of understanding given to those of us called the Kado. We are only one part of the world. A far greater world lies above those steep portions that chisel the sky.

His eyes are oval. I see in the shadows of my mind a span of eyes. They are all light and crescent, the eyes of the Ligaeryen priests that step between the chambers. They are not oval. They outshine the dark; the eyes of the priest standing here are deep, somewhat circular chambers that speak to openings, to passings, and large interiors. They suggest—

“They suggest the eyes of an Ab’maluk, one of the Hinia,” the priest indicates, and now his words recall to me those from a certain page, one from a certain book I had once discovered in a certain portion of the chambers, titled Light of the Seven.

The Ab’malukae read minds.

Eridis reacts, her eyes changing from bright orange to amber, back orange; Faraka wrests the beyhara’s neck out from her hands; and I know what the Ab’maluk Kikushi is going to say before he does, and I react, dropping the serrated strands of elepi I had been trying to resuscitate. They fall limp.

“The Dwangō need builders,” the acolyte says. “The Dwangō will appreciate the fire of Ramona.”

The acolyte looks at me. And I think of the stone to warm beneath my hands.

END OF ACT I