They didn’t know anything.
Tuotsu’o had left for the day, and they were alone in the house- that crumbling place with its tired walls and its quietude. A place away from prying eyes, their little bit of sunlight under clear skies, rain-soaked skies and a chill breeze that blew from the north.
The quiet… Siqxhe paced back and forth, trying to think of anything that they could do to give them that crucial advantage in what they needed, that momentary little thing that they needed- a start. Somewhere for them to bounce off of, to start their search without all the possibilities-
It was hard… Iri had replicated the map as best as she could- her memory was near impeccable- but even so the areas they’d marked out were immense. Spread out over the entirety of Paqaboōf, in a layer of soil up to ten feet deep… it was a wonder they’d even be close to finding it at all.
Still, Iri believed and through that he believed. If he didn’t believe then… thoughts drifting, to dark places and orange eyes, thoughts of rain and what Tuotsu’o would think of what they’d done to her home when she got back. They’d cleaned most of it and helped around with a few chores, but mostly they’d scribbled in charcoal all along the central atrium. Searching…
So, Siqxhe paced, and Iri looked down at her charcoal drawing that had been made with almost mechanical precision, except where it wasn’t- little parts where it was blurred or just not done, fractures in the very deepest processes of her mind. These were the things he was most afraid of, because these were the things he had no idea how to solve.
When even the physical made no sense to him, he had little hopes of even comprehending what lay beyond. What bright thoughts… if only, he wished- then they’d be able to quickly figure out what was going on in truth. Then they’d be able to know…
“The vector is true. If the vector is true, then we have a clue…” Still, it was just that, a clue. They didn’t know much more, and even greater than that, there was always the slight but non-zero possibility that it’d landed somewhere that they hadn’t predicted. The territory they had to search was immense.
Siqxhe stopped his pacing, walking over to stand beside Iri. “Remember anything?” They’d been playing this game, this half realized but not quite spoken truth between them… they’d only get anywhere if they had something to analyze, some figment of memory that made it more obvious than before. They needed something- after all, the sibilant had been searching for Polarity light for the past forever and they hadn’t even gotten close to finding it.
Only Iri- and her mind was shattered, still on the mend. As fragmented as the facets on her skin and the sparkling lights they sent dancing around the courtyard, as fractured as all the peoples of the world and the Sakaxhy. As fractured as the dead….
He remembered, darkness- shadows of clouds over the courtyard, hiding their charcoal drawings from the sun. It wouldn’t be long until Tuotsu’o returned from her job, and then it would be the rain, the torrent of heaven that was their mask and their savior, a treasure over the islands of Paqaboōf that washed the dirt into the sea and gave them a chance at finding Polarity Light buried deep beneath the alluvial deposits in the streams and the rivers. Hopes, however empty they were-
“I remember…” It was a whisper, but in that whisper Iri’s eyes glowed as fiercely as they ever had, twin beacons, starlit points of light that echoed back the immensity of sky and all their power… memory lit beacons, and Siqxhe hoped for a clue- and when she spoke it was what they’d been waiting for. “It’s like a crystal. Fitting back my mind, shattered pieces looking every which way all non-sequitur. Only I would ever be able to understand it… I don’t understand it. I can never understand it and I… I remember. The dead-” There was something in the way Iri shuddered that terrified Siqxhe, the quiet shiver of metal and the sheer brightness, the faint glittering born from sea-mists as they rolled in and carried with them the hints of rain. “Polarity Light is with the dead… no more, though. There’s so many shattered pieces here. So many…”
Siqxhe couldn’t pretend to know how Iri’s mind work, but he set to quizzing her anyways, asking her questions and for details and all of everything she could remember. The answer was little- so very little, shattered into fragments and dispersed where she could barely access them, the briefest infinitesimals of speech mixed together into a bowl of sand where there had once been glass… and she rebuilt them. Slowly- healing, if that was the right word, from the terror of the Eternity Falling-
Polarity Light was buried with the dead. “What do you think it means? Not by memory… just… logic.”
Iri sighed, a rattling sort of quiet, sibilant whisper of exhaustion that worked across the very nature of her- “I… I don’t really know. There is something there, some sort of memory, something important that I just can’t remember…” She shook her head, letting the charcoal slip from her grasp, breaking on the floor. Blackness, shattering-
So it was for him. He was the one with the knowledge, apparently… that felt almost odd, given what he’d learnt about the sibilant. What little he’d come to know about their history, its long reach into the far depths of time before time. At the very least, he could make some educated guesses…
Buried with the dead. What could that mean… “Graveyards. Some sort of graveyard thing? Maybe somebody put Polarity Light in a graveyard… or perhaps, a slaughterhouse?” The second one didn’t make half as much sense as the first one, and even as he thought about it he remembered. Old practices, the native works of the Paqaboōfians and how they dressed their dead in metal- “The natives think that scrap would bring people closer to god. Through that, some of the farmers and lords…” He didn’t need to complete the sentence to begin getting excited. This was going somewhere. With Port Conquest’s position as one of the largest cities on the continent, they had their clue. They had a place to start…
This was a possibility… Iri looked up, eyes glowing with a fierce joy, a fulfillment of a promise long gone. “Well then… let's go.” Thunder broke over the city, and- gently, ever so gently- it began to rain.
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………
It was raining over Port Conquest, a dull, constant deluge that threatened to wash them out to sea if they weren't’ careful. Even though they’d come better prepared this time, securing even heavier clothes from Tuotsu’o, it still drenched them to their bones and threatened to make them so cold as to freeze there on the streets, as icy as the mountains of Xhyolok…
He thought of bad memories, and chose to instead focus on the rain and its mesmerizing patterns, the dull sweep of water as it fell from the heavens and impacted the ground with such immense force as to hinder their movement forward… still, it was important that they went out in the rain. As much as it annoyed them, it also hid them…
Eventually they reached a small market, a few stalls nestled up beneath overhanging buildings, away from the deluge. The shopkeepers would look up for a second from theri tasks or their wares, notice them, then look down again, never quite caring enough to focus on eyes that gleamed and the intensity of their walk. Their purpose, leading them- they found a small building with the gleaming of fire and a warm atmosphere, a barkeep wiping down the tables and picking up the cleverly wrought tea-cups, likely to be set out in the rain to clean.
Siqxhe carefully moved toward the barkeep, careful to keep the attention on him, and not Iri behind him. There would come a moment... “If I may ask a few questions…”
The barkeep looked over his shoulder with an almost timid air, then relaxed when he saw Siqxhe. “Thank goodness… you sounded like one of those Sakaxhy ruffians… please, sit.” Siqxhe and Iri followed his instructions, Siqxhe thumbing his banknotes and thinking sorrowfully about how soon they’d run out. If they kept using them this prodigally… “What do you want to drink?”
“Tea, and…” He glanced over to Iri-
“Nothing.” It was little more than a whisper, expressed in that almost sing-song voice, its quiet quality that slipped between serious and tenuous, tones…
The barkeep duly noted it down, returning from the kitchen with two cups- one for Siqxhe, one for himself as he sat down next to them with a cheery smile that spoke volumes of what he hadn’t seen. In the dark corners of the room, Siqxhe remembered a place… “So, you wanted to ask me some questions! Have at it.”
“We were looking for a location, a collection of metal. You might have seen some at some time.” A pause, laced with a deep breath and the definite awkwardness that would come with asking the question he was about to ask. “We want to know if there’s any graveyard in particular that had lots of scrap.”
“Scrap? I…” His words trailed off as he looked more thoroughly at Iri. More thoroughly at Iri’s eyes, those brightnesses… “I don’t know if there’s any graveyards that have a lot of scrap. There’s metal, this stuff the natives love and the Sakaxhy seem to love even more… you should try asking the baker. He has a hobby of knowing the native’s history…”
They thanked him, paying and moving on down to the baker. The baker told them to ask the cobbler, the cobbler told them to ask… it was a chain, never ending, and it wasn’t getting them anywhere but soaked in the warm evening rains, the darkening rains as the sky poured out its wrath across the entirety of Paqaboōf.
Eventually they came to a store that glowed with a warm, almost cheery light, open windows, recognisable. The cartography office they’d went to yesterday… Iri and Siqxhe glanced at each other, exasperated but with little other choice than to continue following the chain, looking for more than platitudes and the half-given possibilities they’d been told by the others.
As they entered the portly man greeted them warmly, directing them over to the same desk they’d used last time when they’d looked at the map. This time a few other papers were scattered over it, documents and declarations and the sorts of things that seemed more fit for a print shop than a cartography office… still, he didn’t doubt the clerk. He seemed professional enough. “So what brings you back- if I remember correctly.”
“Which graveyard contains the most of the Eternity Falling?” Iri’s voice was almost a hiss, soft and punctual and filled with not the smallest bit of impatience. They were on a timer, a short limit set on a hunt that would extent for far, far longer than they needed it too.
After Siqxhe explained that the Eternity Falling just meant scrap, the clerk quickly walked over to the cabinet, pulling out a single map. An old map- labeled clearly above it with Port Conquest in scarlet letters. Massive ships sailed in the ocean, an expanse of lightly shaded extending off into the bottom right corner. “I knew you were one of those people… at least you’ve done your research. The amount of people who go out into the fields looking for the stuff is ridiculous.”
“So where are the graveyards?” Even Siqxhe began to show a little bit of impatience, born from a desire to just know- they’d been searching all day long, and this was the closest they’d gotten. The clerk motioned, a twitch of the finger, and with extreme reluctance Siqxhe counted out some of his last remaining bills, giving them over to the clerk. If they were going to keep doing this, he needed to get a job… at the very least, there was no shortage of opportunity for a physician trained in the university in Abōeo.
“Here, here, and here… they’re the richest collections of scrap in the city, and perhaps all of Paqaboōf- back when this was a Sakaxhy city, they buried themselves with all the scrap found in their reigns to appease the natives. They thought the material was holy, and that being buried with it would bring you closer to god.” Siqxhe and Iri glanced at one another… remnants from an old time, and perhaps they’d found their quarry. “They’re mostly unguarded, too. Free for the picking.”
The clerk narrowed his eyes, looking more closely at Siqxhe… no, at Iri. “Who are you? You’re not Sakaxhy, and only Sakaxhy are ever interested in scrap…” Then his eyes widened as he saw, in truth for the first time, what he’d just brushed over. Beneath a scarf and sodden clothing-
Bright eyes.
Burning eyes. The clerk stumbled back, just managing not to fall against the floor. “What are you- what thing from beyond the skies?” He reached for something behind his back, some sort of knife or weapon and that Siqxhe couldn’t allow. He moved to intercept-
Iri, though, moved first, and she moved fast. In the breadth of a single moment she was beside the merchant, bright eyes staring down into his from above. Darkness, beneath her facets and the silver of her skin showing on her face, glittering bright while her scarf and hat lay on the floor. “You saw nothing. Remember this, and you remember death.”
They left a shaken man on the floor, quickly striding into the rain, Siqxhe almost… shaken. It reminded him too much of what Ididirchi had been like. “Why? You didn’t need to…”
“I…” Iri shook her head, light off raindrops and scattering motes of brilliance. Sadness. “It was how it was, between The Lord of Cold Places and myself. Arctic… I just remembered it.” She shivered, that terrifying, saddening motion…
They had their goal.
They had their moment, a glimmer beneath the downpour and the darkness of night, their single second spent remembering the dark places and the immensity, orange brightness and all the weight of Eternity Falling, in that darkness. That torrent of rain, hiding them until they disappeared from all but their goal and a willpower…
That darkness, and night on rainy Port Conquest streets.