Lights watching, little golden rectangles behind glass as they approached a small town nestled between the watching limbs of trees and shadow, a place for warmth. Iri and Siqxhe slipped into the outskirts as darkness bled to dawn, watching through the verdancy of forest, weary… “Are you sure? It looks like any other-”
“Central.” Siqxhe held up a hand, motioning for Iri to be still. They would be more watchful here- “It’s a central town in the region. As close as we’ll get to a true city for a hundred miles or more…” The rising sunlight cast a gentle glow over the most imposing of the town’s structures, an impressive stone wall that would stand for so little time against cannonfire.
For nothing at all, against the fires of heaven and war. He’d started war… “You need food, and clothes.” Siqxhe pursed his lips into a frown, fully aware of the state he was in. There was no end of discomfort to it, but they could not be seen.
Laeo’s reach was further than he’d thought it was. Now that they’d escaped, they needed to be so silent… shadows, shortening as the sun rose slowly into the sky and the stars bled away, eyes blinking shut and a waking town. Amidst so much verdancy… it was an ancient place, so weary with all the years of its existence, from the Empire of Nolabo when it hadn’t even been named Nolabo-
Now, he remembered. “Iri- let’s get the necessities, then we can look around if we need to.” Perhaps this place would contain some clue as to what might have happened, some hint as to what might be hiding… where. Where was it?
It was the only question, still- they didn’t know, even if they knew more than anyone else ever had. The sun rose higher, glowing golden luminescence cast through the canopy above, cascading off vines and glittering leaves…
They slipped into the town, as quiet as shadows, as unnoticed- a wisp of fog, following the dark places and making sure to keep away from the busy streets, slipping back to where even if they were seen nobody would care. It wasn’t that big of a town, but it was large nonetheless, and through size there came the trappings of size. Poverty… he saw dying- those who couldn’t understand that they’d been put into darkness, whether they wanted to or not…
They all had, though- stuck on this planet when they could have been the stars, when they could have been forever across the cosmos, infinities incomprehensible. Iri stopped him gently but with all her sibiland-force, the power of metal preventing him from walking further. “Here… we’ll find what we want here. More-” It was a grand structure, hewn from stone and set with wooden embellishments, windows of glass and beauty… black stone. Gleaming, orange off the sunrise, a different dichotomy. Then, with the power of strength beyond the memory of history Iri made a single powerful leap, clasping onto the stone of the building and clawing in. Two deep gouges, the very stone giving way before the steel that was her as she reached down and offered a hand to Siqxhe. “Let’s go.”
Windows opened readily for those with such power, a silence as they slipped into a dusty room filled with books. An archive, then- they walked through the darkness, making their way forward with only their hushed whispers as company… Siqxhe glanced around. It was more ornate than he’d suspected, and the books… such a quantity, so much more than any town its size should have had. “...We’re near the center.” It was a spark of realization as he thought of exactly where they were. “The true center. Not the town’s current administrative center, but the old center.”
Iri nodded softly, ducking into another room and returning promptly with a pair of freshly washed clothes, the sort of thing that had clearly been made in Abōeo by professional artisans… maybe before he would have balked at taking it but now he just slipped gratefully into it and reveled in the warmth, the clean dryness that he hadn’t felt in a week or more… “The books-” A pause, her eyes focusing on something beyond. “Look here-”
A step, closer, Siqxhe staring so intensely at the possibility… it was a stone, propped up in the corner and half covered with a cloth, and scribbled onto the stone were… drawings. Not the old Nola drawings from the time of the original colonization, but something altogether more primitive. “It’s native artwork. From before the colonization.” Or from after, so long as it had come from the far hinterland… still, that didn’t matter.
What mattered was the inscription, tears of silver running down the stone and impossibly morphing into men, a bird aflame and the memories of something that should not have been remembered. By all rights, it made so little sense… Iri stepped forward, eyes brillant, glowing motes of star-luminescence that lit the room. “It’s… the origin. You know- we saw it, once.” In the temple, where the weight of earth had pressed in on the stonework for so long, but this was older. Truer to source… that momentous, singular fraction of a second when civilization was seeded and and eternity falling ended. “It feels… important.”
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“How? Like… does it have to do with Polarity Light.” Despite his exhaustion an almost exuberant excitement started to form within him, reaching out from the depth of his soul and spreading- “If… if they came down, then maybe that would tell us where Polarity Light fell as well.”
A shaking, gentle motions that send shadows and light cascading around the room. When Iri spoke, it was melancholy. “No… no, that couldn't’ work. The escape craft were all set on different trajectories than the Eternity Falling itself. That was half the reason we entered the system in the first place- nevermind. It wouldn’t work.”
Siqxhe opened his mouth to make an argument, remembered that in the end he knew nothing, then closed it and just… contemplated. In a room, of darkness, thoughts and the books as he looked across their titles. Historical works. One out, beautiful prints and the works of men, knowledge that Iri had once held and would hodl again.
The sibilant were greater than humanity. They were remnants, of something that had existed before- and might, beyond the furthest reaches of imagination exist again. If they found Polarity Light-
“Siqxhe. Come look at this…” He drifted over to where Iri was standing, her incandescence illuminating a massive book that couldn’t have been printed. Detailed illustrations filled its every corner, annotations and all sorts of depths, wonders… they were inscriptions.
The same thing, the same tears and the falling droplets of heaven as they cascaded, becoming men or beasts or something, the seeds of life. “It…” He scanned over the pages, flipping them with disbelief. He’d thought the mythology had been a primarily Ilyaochi thing, with a bit of native memory… but it was everywhere.
Every drawing came with a note, a description of where it’d been recorded. Siqxhe ran a finger over them, awed… “Paqaboōf. Nolabo. Nolabo Hinterland. Northern Ocean. North Royeleo. South Royeleo. Xholok. Central Xhyolok. East Xhyolok. Western Sea-” he stopped, shaking his head in wonder. “That’s the entire world. Every continent, all the seas… that’s everywhere.” He wondered if the only culture to not remember much about the Eternity Falling had been the Norothian, and through them the Nola and the Orroyel. As if their memory had been overridden by the physical presence of God… “Is it significant?”
“No. Maybe-” Iri shook her head in confusion, then froze. “We need to hide. Now.” And then they were hiding behind the bookshelves as someone opened the door, light cascading into the room beyond the almost completely dimmed light of Iri’s eyes. Sunlight, through a window beyond the hallway… a window.
An old woman’s voice, soft with the years. “Is someone in here?” Authoritative, fearless. They weren’t afraid that someone would actually be in here… nevertheless Siqxhe held his breath. “You know this place is strictly off limits to visitors…” A sigh, and the sound of approach as she went over to-
The book. Right beside them, only a few feet from where they hid behind the bookshelves. The sound of ruffling pages as they were flipped, a quietude. Suspicion, or something, he couldn’t tell- then the soft sound of her leaving.
The door closed behind them, and Siqxhe breathed a sigh of relief. That had been far too close… he stood, walking back over to the book which had been left open on a specific page. It showed silver, shards of metal and jagged shapes, bent and broken, but patterned. It showed patterns…
He flipped the page, and saw an image of a sibilant. Baseless theories surrounded it, speculation on things as mundane as height to impossible mechanics and biological untruths, mystery and folklore. What little of the sibilant that had managed to sneak their way into society despite their secrecy… it was here.
Siqxhe and Iri stared at the drawing, and thought of how far the sibilants would go…
………
They stood on the mountainside outside of the town, looking across all of everywhere. It was a beautiful place, nestled as far away from the shore as any Nola town of size ever was… white buildings, black stone, it all bled together. Possibilities…
Iri sat on a rook looking skyward with an unreadable expression. Something beyond the human part of her… “It’s here. It has to be. If it’s on land, then there’s no other place it can be.”
“What about Xhyolok? Or Paqaboōf?” The reasons that it couldn’t be there still stood, but that didn’t rule it out with certainty. It was only probability, numbers in the background that told them how likely they were to stumble across Polarity Light during their lives, and how low that likelihood truly was…
Iri shook her head, looking Siqxhe almost directly in the eyes. How they blazed- “No… I’m certain. This is memory, this is the shattered things made whole once again and a second eternity… soon. One day, I’ll find it, and then everything will be right… then everything will be right once again.” She wrapped her arms around her body, rocking gently atop that volcanic rock. “Everything will be right, Siqxhe…”
Siqxhe moved closer, laying an arm over her shoulder and watching as the sky bled orange, dreaming of a coming war to end war.