Fortunately for Waia, the Aztecs had grossly overestimated how many Greeks they needed to take in while they had expanded the quarters. The available ones were comparatively small and barebones, at least compared to Quet’s multi-tiered fortress of a bedroom, but they still had a bed and everything. It was better than a raft.
Waia had gone to bed early and woken up at 3 AM, a harsh inversion of how her days usually began and ended. She still had a few hours to kill before the day began for real, and creating audio feedback with her phone and the Aztecs’ landline was only fun for so long. Out of other options, she decided to raid a nearby supply closet for paper, pencils and a spare charging cable.
The only half-decent sketchpad she could find had evidently been used before, judging by the fact that a third of the yellowed sheets were covered in page-spanning drawings. Waia decided to look through the old drawings while her phone was charging back up. The room’s one window didn’t offer the best view, after all, and she had a bit of a backlog of photos that she wanted to work through.
The pad’s cover had ‘Cacict Art Journal’ written on the front. Each subsequent page had a date written in the top left-hand corner, starting out in April of 1924 and ending seven months later. It seemed like a new page had been used every day.
The drawings started off crude, like the artist was uncomfortable with their pencil. This feeling was exacerbated by the marks of erasure use on the page. Several parts of the scenes depicted had jarringly different artstyles, like the artist had copied someone else’s drawings. The drawn scenes themselves appeared to just be a snapshot of some event within the Aztec household, like a shoddy Vermeer painting. These were punctuated by an attempt at replicating various museum-grade paintings in the style of the original artist, these occurring two or three times a week.
Waia continued flipping through the images. Drawings became more detailed and anatomically accurate, and the copied parts were swapped out for less sophisticated but more cohesive art. The painting copies, however, remained crude and shaky.
Eventually, the art began to regress. The original drawings evidently became shoddier and more rushed, and many painting copies were left unfinished. The signs of eraser usage vanished altogether. The most recent drawing was abandoned before it could even reach a stage where Waia recognize what it depicted.
Waia checked her phone. It actually turned on when she pressed the power button. Good enough. She opened up her photo gallery and began looking for references… Right, that picture she had taken from the top of Mauna Kea. Great distance, and Honoka’a was still visible right by the ocean. She was surprised she had never gotten around to drawing it before then.
The best part of drawing like this was that it gave her hands something to do while her mind was able to attend to other things. As long as she had her reference in clear view, she could completely space out and snap back to find a half-finished sketch. It was like drawing in her sleep. She could just relax and let her hands do the drawing for her.
After some time of just letting herself soak in nothing in particular, she came back to reality and checked her progress. She appeared to be halfway done with a head-and-shoulders profile of Ivy.
A second and a half later, three holes had been punched into the sketchpad, the pencil was rammed through the most recent one, and the pad/pencil combo was flying into the wall opposite Waia.
The spiral binding bent into uselessness, the pencil snapped in two and the pages went flying all over the floor. Waia buried her face in her hands and curled up on the bed.
-
“And that’s how things are going right now. ‘Kay, later.” Omet left the meeting in the middle of the foyer, trudging up the stairs as though a weight had been lifted off of their shoulders, only to be replaced by an even bigger one. The Greeks were all exchanging worried whispers with one another. In lieu of a gavel, Horan sent a small gust of wind blowing through some wind chimes that he had taken from the back porch and now held in one hand. “Okay, you can discuss all that in what little free time you may end up getting. As of now, this calls to order the first emergency meeting of the Aztec Party Planning Committee.”
“I don’t think you need to specify ‘emergency’,” said Quet, seated between two of her siblings on the couches around the TV.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Horan. “What does matter is that we’re bringing the Indians on board to help us with… all this.”
The Aztecs groaned collectively, while many Greeks turned away from each other and raised their eyebrows.
Horan continued. “Despite my new role as founder of the APPC, I won’t be here for any of the preparations, as I will be helping Omet convince the Indians to come over. They’ll be busy rehearsing in their room, in case you were wondering. Due to my absence, I am temporarily ceding all authority to whichever half of Omet doesn’t leave with me. So now, they’re still in charge of making this place look nice, but I’m not giving the APPC over to them. Work fast.” He stepped out of the semicircle of sofas, stopped, sighed and walked back in front of everyone.
“Okay, maybe just a little addendum, to set you all on the right track.” He tossed the wind chimes aside, letting them float gently to the ground with a melodic rustle. “The Indians are gonna have high expectations, so we need to meet them. And this place as it is now isn’t gonna cut it.”
One Aztec raised her hand. “Or, alternately, we could just… not deal with the Indians? Seems like it would be worth a lot less hassle if we just asked someone more fun for help.”
The Aztecs murmured and nodded in assent. “Like the Navajo,” added one. This prompted much more enthusiastic agreement from the rest.
Horan suddenly wished Omet hadn’t left him out to dry. “Yeah, well, if you want to do that, be my guest. If you can somehow get in contact with the scattered, likely mortal remains of the Navajo, they might work as an alternative, I don’t really know anything about them. But in the meantime, we can prepare for the one Domain left on earth that is still in one piece!”
Horan’s response was remarkably efficient at shutting up his audience. He wiped his forehead. “Okay, things have seriously taken a turn for the worse today. But honestly? This had to happen at some point. We can’t just hang around and hope that everything turns out fine. Domains have been dropping like flies all over the world, which we didn’t even know about, and we’re next on the chopping block. I don’t care how little you all want to deal with the Indians, they’re our only option right now. So you know what? We’re all just gonna tough this out and show those people out there that they picked the wrong fight. And step one is getting those Indians over here and proving that we can all make it through this. Our backs were bound to end up against the wall at some point, but you’re not the kind of people to give up when you’re cornered, are you?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The audience was silent. Eventually, one Aztec shrugged. “Better than dying, I guess.”
Horan let out a breath. “I’ll work on it. I’m heading out with a half-Omet basically right now. But while I go, I want everyone to be taking stock of what we have, as well as what we can do between now and when the Indians arrive. Regroup here in twenty minutes, that’s when you form a real plan. Everyone’s counting on everyone.”
The Greeks and Aztecs began looking around the foyer.
“Now! Get moving!” Horan waved the two Domains to their feet.
Once the Aztecs were a good distance away, Saralai gestured for the Greeks to come in close. They entered a tight-knit huddle with each other, and when Horan tried to approach and listen, the glares he received showed that he wasn’t welcome.
-
Omet quietly opened the door to Hurat’s room, slipped inside, and turned the key on the inside. They leaned against the door, slid down to the floor and sighed. “Hey, uh, it’s me again. Sorry if today’s visit is shorter than normal, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on right now. Everyone does, actually.”
They got up, sat on the bed and reached for Hurat’s guitar on the wall, then decided to leave it be while they spoke. “So, to very quickly summarize, since I need to meet up with Horan: Waia showed up, like, ten minutes after I talked to you yesterday. You don’t know her, actually, we met during that whole Down Below fiasco.”
In lieu of doing what they normally did with their hands in Hurat’s room, Omet just fiddled with the edges of their cardigan. “And, uh, it turns out we’ve got a bunch of humans hunting Primoi down all over the world, and they’re basically on our front lawn. Waia’s probably the only reason we found out before they broke in and pointed guns at us…” They let out a sigh.
“Well, at least we got some warning. Now, we can do something about it.” Omet stood up from the bed. “I guess the last few months have just been boot camp. Now it’s time to see if I can really do what you could… But I’d say that’s all the time I’ve got in here. Fingers crossed, am I right?” They quickly unlocked the door and left.
Omet crossed to the other side of the balcony and watched the end of Horan’s speech to the Domains. Once he was done, they decided to head to their room and wait for Horan to wrap up and meet them there, like they had planned.
It came as quite the rude surprise, then, when they turned around and found out that Horan was floating right behind them in the doorway.
Omet yelped. “How’d you get up here so quick?!”
“One, you barely had a head start. Two, I– I can fly. I actually got here before you did, I just wanted to see what you would do.”
Omet pulled their arms to their chest. “...Okay? Guess we should start doing those rehearsals, right?”
Horan tucked his arms behind his head, drifting in mid-air as if in an invisible hammock. “I don’t know, should we?”
“...What are you doing?”
Horan shrugged. “Just getting you to take some initiative. You’re the one in charge, and you gotta make that clear to the Indians. Step one is deciding whether or not you’re going to do the thing you said you were going to do.”
“This seems superfluous.” Omet stepped past Horan.
Horan came back down to earth, making him less of an obstacle for Omet. “You might think that now, but the outward persona is a complex and fickle thing. You need to know all kinds of minutiae to properly put up something that the person you’re speaking to will be happy with.” He put his arm around Omet’s shoulder. “The art of the Breezy Slide is one that I’ve been developing since the Bronze Age, and I’m now trying to give you, a newcomer to the ways of the people-pleaser, a primer on the craft.”
“Mhm…” Omet looked down at their feet. “While I’m sure your weirdly-named strategy works fine for you, I’ve got a role model to look at and emulate.”
“Both my dad and my uncle were pharaoh before me. Also a different uncle, very briefly, but I’d rather not count him.”
“But were they good at it?”
Horan looked away. “I mean, you saw how well Thel ended up doing, so…”
“Exactly.” Omet ducked, freeing them from Horan’s embrace. “Hurat kept us together for seven centuries, and he only stopped when he got pulled into another dimension and murdered by an evil messiah. And you know what he always said about this kind of thing? ‘Stick to your guns’.”
“Uh-huh.” Horan sat on Omet’s bed. “And what exactly are your ‘guns’?”
“Uh…” Omet remained silent as they took a seat at their desk, turning the chair around to face Horan. “I will admit, I haven’t figured that out yet. Three months is a lot less than seven hundred years. I just figure I can act natural and work it out from there.”
“There’s a time and place to act natural,” said Horan, “and this won’t be one of them. We need to give the Indians what they want. You ever spoken to Kuravaan? Their leader?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever even seen them.”
“Well, if you did, you’d know that you-you isn’t gonna cut it. These folks respond to spectacle.”
Omet raised their eyebrows. “I’ve got my fair share of spectacle, you know. You haven’t really gotten the chance to see since nobody leaves the house much these days, but my family’s pretty fond of putting on our own independent stage play productions, and I’m generally the one who handles backstage logistics.”
Horan’s expression did not change. “You’ll be lucky if they don’t take one look at you and laugh you out of their home. If it helps, that applies to both of us right now.” He looked down at his immaculate denim jacket. “I’ve been getting a bit too comfortable with my… plebeian look.”
Omet pulled their cardigan close. “Don’t tell me I need to wear rich person clothes.”
“Well…” Horan’s movement seemed to grind to a halt. “I don’t want to call them ‘rich person clothes’, it’s just socially appropriate refinement, is all. Maybe just dress in a way that doesn’t make you look like a librarian.”
“You aren’t wrong, but ouch.”
“Still a problem that needs addressing, dude.”
Omet looked at the floor. “You know, I’m starting to see where my family was coming from.”
Horan threw his hands up. “I just gave this whole speech! I know you were listening! I– Do you want me to just ask the Indians alone? You don’t have to come, it’s just riskier.”
“No, no, sorry, I’m…” Omet took a deep breath. “Sorry. Saying that was stupid. I’m doing this. So what exactly is your plan for this?”
“Well, that depends on you,” said Horan. “What would you say you look good in? Maybe we should do this in my dressing room. I have yet to pick out my semi-formal outdoor daywear, after all.”
Omet hurriedly shrugged off their cardigan. “Hey, no, I’ve got stuff here! But, uh… Nothing you would accept.”
Horan decided to just check their closet. “We’ll see about that.” He reached out to take out what looked like a suit, then cringed and pulled his hand away when he realized that it was covered in discolored patches black-and-white stripes. “I see… You stayed around the Greeks’ party long enough for at least one conversation, you’ve gotta have something appropriate.”
“Actually, I went to that in paintball gear.”
“...Oh. Right.”