Mera wasn’t inclined to discuss the details of whatever her exchange with Hephaestus and Hermes had been. She’d dodged or, when Kelly asked more bluntly, flat-out ignored questions about what she’d offered or what they’d done for her.
Mera did give a name that I should consider in the future—Rhapso, Goddess of stitching. Of all domains to involve in the amelioration of a person’s ills, I wouldn’t have thought of that, but apparently her domain included the miniscule detail-work of textiles. Looked at through that lens, maybe it made sense that for nanoscale work she’d be one to get involved.
Things being as they were, I didn’t figure I should tempt the Fates and Graces by suggesting that wasn’t useful information, nor by asking how she’d come across it—whether in terms of making the connection between stitching and medicine that I hadn’t or in naming an Olympian Goddess whom I’d never heard of. So I thanked her, instead, and she left for… wherever she was staying.
Rise, presumably, or a friend’s quint. The guest houses in Fall were host to itinerant herders, the storage full of supplies good to have near-to-hand, and the stables full of shoats and dogs.
On the way out, she said that she’d have a list of recommendations for me the morning after next, on the First. Kelly understood instantly what that meant, and I got it once she was off and my First Friend and I were alone. I pushed that matter aside—there wasn’t any urgency involved in Mera’s recommendations, obviously, or she wouldn’t be waiting to make them—and broached a more delicate subject, one that I should have discussed with Kelly earlier.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, please.” I tried to smirk, but as tired as I was, it didn’t have enough edge. “Would I have suggested it if I weren’t?”
“This is ridiculous. Sophie, you’ve been in Shem, in Yelem, less than a fortnight!” Kelly shook her head, unable to keep an obvious fondness out of her voice. “You’re allowed to take it slow, you know.”
“Look, I’m an adult, right? You keep talking about paperwork, and how you’re taking care of it. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate it, mind you.”
“But?”
“But what happens when you move on? If you get sick?” She gave me a skeptical face, and I shrugged uneasily. “The Gods play with loaded dice, Kelly. Bullshit can happen out of nowhere. Let me help.”
“The actuarial tables really aren’t that dire, Sophie. Even in a dungeon village, even an out-ring one. Are you really in that much of a rush to get rid of me?”
“Kelly. Come on.” I leaned my shoulders on the table, shaking my head. “You know better than that. And I know it’s late, but if you’re too tired to think straight, you’re too tired to work.”
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “I was… that wasn’t right. It came out wrong. I meant, I’m going to be around for another fifty weeks! You’re supposed to lean on me for this. Get your feet under you.”
“Why?” She looked baffled, and I shook my head at myself. “Sorry, I mean, why is it important to wait on this, specifically?”
“Paperwork isn’t always just formwork, and it’s never just a formality. It’s—especially for you, Sophie, because you keep doing things that nobody expects and that the Clerks haven’t considered, you need to know more than just to follow instructions. There’s context and, and, and—” Kelly yawned, squinching her face in frustration. “I don’t know how to put it into words.”
“Take your time.” I sat down next to her, a little more heavily than I was trying for. “I’m just gonna skim these while you work on it.”
She glowered perfunctorily at me, sliding the stack—short stack, but still a stack, maybe twenty pages—over to me. Medical Intervention [Untrained / Unqualified / Unprepared] was the first page, and I winced.
These terms possess some technical accuracy, but miss crucial context and lack precision. Is it training, to have been raised with an expectation of relationships with the divine? Are three circles and implements of significance numbering two counted as preparations?
“I don’t know, Spark,” I murmured out loud. “I also don’t know what the expected qualifications are for someone doing what I did. Who judges that, anyway? Is there a certification authority?”
“Is there a—Sophie. Sophie!” Kelly sighed, leaning back into her chair. “Clerks,” she said to the ceiling, “are the judges of qualification.”
“So I’m unqualified because James hasn’t said otherwise.”
“Pretty much!” She leaned forward and ran a finger down the page, point as she talked. “Untrained, technically, but see here, you would put applicable training not within the considered scope which is abbreviated A-T-U, they changed the name but not the abbreviation. Which, yeah, that’s a whole fight, and you should get James started on it sometime when you want a show.
“And then here you would say you were prepared, because you were, but you obviously didn’t do any of the standard prep categories. But! Everything you need to know is on this piece of paper. What do you think?”
“Well, if it’s just stuff on the page…” I frowned. “Clerical preparations, with modifications. But I don’t—this piece of paper, huh.” I snorted, turning the page over. “Okay, standard modifications. No qualified intercession, no, uh.”
“It’s okay! See, the point of the standard modifications is that there’s an understood set of reasons why it might be legitimate to not have them. No medical evaluation and no attestations, which, well, Mera was handling her own negotiations and you didn’t do anything that affected her. And those?”
“No medical evaluation is pre-existing diagnosis (chronic), and no attestations is no action taken requiring attestation, I’m guessing?”
“Right. And then for the qualifications, the context is that you have a recognized skillset that James is aware of—that’s Clerk possessing jurisdictional authority—and that he’s trained you on it.”
“Because,” I ventured, “that implies that he’s condoning it. But there’s some sort of formal qualification, and I don’t have it?”
“Technically you’re not even eligible!” I glanced over from the form I was studying to see a face-splitting grin on Kelly’s face. “Technically, technically, you need a Class, Path, or Professional Scope that hits one of… um! Medical, diagnostic, ritual, clerical, divinatory, scholarly, there’s a few others. But that’s just eligible, obviously eligible doesn’t mean qualified.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“But why?” I waved a hand vaguely towards the ramp downwards. “Why wouldn’t anyone be eligible, when you can just… call, and be heard?”
“Oh for—Thousands in their blessings, Sophie, do you think other people can do that?”
I blinked at her in momentary stupefaction. “Yes? I… I mean, why not?”
“I don’t know, Sophie! If I walk into the Hall of the Thousand itself, I’m probably going to be meditating and coming out of there a little more relaxed, not getting one-on-one time with two Gods. I’d never gotten even the least bit of attention from even one of ours before I met you!”
“That’s…” I closed my eyes, struggling not to start laughing. I had the feeling that if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop, and it would be a fit of hysterics—not helpful, very much not helpful. “I don’t understand,” I said instead, softer than I’d meant to. “I spent my whole life trying to reach out to a God who never showed the slightest sign of existing.
“And I’m trying every morning to find Him, and it’s still like He’s just… a story. But the Olympians are real? They’re full of contradictions, they’re absurd, they make absolutely no sense, most of them are so awful in so many ways, but they exist and the God of my people doesn’t?”
Kelly was unexpectedly quiet at that, just laying a hand on my shoulder and humming thoughtfully. I leaned into the touch, cracking my eyes open to look at her with the obvious question in my eyes.
It was Spark, though, who answered it.
To reach is to grow. To reach with all one’s might is to grow with all one’s might. They who strive, transcend; they who strive, become one with the divine. What, then, might be said of one who lives in that crisis which can only be resolved by striving, and lives it for decade upon decade?
“It’s not impossible.” Kelly’s face was calm, and I drew comfort from that and from the quiet steadiness of her words. “We can talk to Veil about it, and Iōanna. But does it really change anything? It sure as rise and fall doesn’t change that what you do isn’t normal.”
“It might be normal for Travelers? Or for Travelers who come here through a God?” I knew even as I said it that it was a weak reed, and I wasn’t sure why I was even protesting. “Anyway, paperwork. We’re getting distracted.”
“Getting distracted. Sophie Nadash is getting distracted. No way. Is there a form for that?”
That exists which cannot be comprehended; even that whose very conception is incomprehensible. For such a thing, how can there be a form?
I flushed harder than was justified at that—apparently Spark had learned how to utterly roast me at some point, which I was sure I’d be delighted about in the morning—and at the look on Kelly’s face. “Rude! Accurate, but rude.”
“James would shit stones and decertify me in a heartbeat if I let you fill out your own paperwork, Sophie. And he’d be right—it’s a full season’s study just to know enough for ordinary business.”
“A season for learning the basics of my trade in the mornings and integrating socially in the afternoons.” Kelly nodded fractionally, confirming my guess. “A season for learning enough for ordinary business. And then… a season for becoming profitable, I guess, with support from you and James for extraordinary business. So what am I doing this season?”
“Making your first few friends who aren’t me, supposedly.” She shifted her hand to my far shoulder, which was great because that meant I was getting a hug. “Studying alchemy. And I’m betting that by the time you’ve done that for a whole season, you’ll be inventing something nobody’s ever seen, and then we’ll have even more paperwork to do!”
“I already have some ideas.” I grinned as I leaned into her arm, feeling her stiffen in what was probably alarm. “But they’re for after Ease, right? The day before Ease is for cleanup and settling stuff. And for getting ten people to get worried and come over.”
“A record!” Kelly relaxed again, and I was treated to her giggling. “Shuli figuring out your notebook was only… Kartom and Shuli studying it, that was predictable.”
“Veil and Flame trying not to splutter. Which I guess makes more sense with what you said? About Gods, I mean.”
“James and Zqar seeming like a pair of delvers come home, as hungry as they looked. And Ketka! I don’t even know how to describe how Ketka looked.”
“Ketka looked,” I offered up as a guess, “like everything finally made sense.”
“Yeah!” Kelly smirked at me, waggling her ears in an approving, teasing gesture. “Anyway, you should sleep. I should… finish this.”
“Or,” I suggested, “we should both sleep, and tomo—and the day after tomorrow, you should walk me through the paperwork, so that I can start learning.”
“I still don’t get why you’re so… I mean, if I’m in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time, you know James will make sure you’re okay, right? You don’t need to worry, that’s what he’s for. I don’t get why you can’t slow down, especially on this.” She shook her head. “I know it’s not because you want me gone, but it feels that way, because I don’t understand!”
“Kelly,” I said, less than calmly, “even if you don’t count the constant physical contact we both initiate, which obviously I would? Every time you giggle, my brain stops while I enjoy it. You stop to pose when you think the light is good. You’ve been using your Skills to strike better poses so that you can catch my eye more strongly!
“Our mutual reactions are extremely unsubtle. How dense am I supposed to be? Am I supposed to think the way you adjust where you’re walking in the workshop is accidental, and not an intent to bump hips with me? You even make sure I never have anything in my hands when you’re doing it! No shit it’s not because I want you gone!”
“Thousands abounding, Sophie.” Kelly buried her face in her hands, red heat starting to surge up through her ears, muttering somewhat indistinctly. “I don’t—fine, you’re not wrong about that, but… relevance?”
I gave her a moment, feeling pretty warm myself. I’d always liked being chased over doing the chasing, but I wasn’t incapable of enjoying the act of shouldering my side of the burden at need. And it wasn’t like there was a whole lot of ambiguity; Kelly had made her interest in me crystal clear, whether she’d meant to or not, even before I’d seen the engine of her yearnings.
I knew our time was limited—the Flame of Novelty, entwined with her in an ever-changing and intimate dance, wasn’t the desire of someone who was going to settle down—and I didn’t particularly feel the need to see any of that time wasted. Which meant establishing my independence from her, and that meant handling my own paperwork.
“We’re too tied to each other,” I explained once she seemed less flustered. “If I can’t run my business without you, I’m too much in your power. If your professional standing and mystical progression is reliant on my good will and willingness to learn, you’re too much in my power. And it’s not like those cancel each other out.”
“Sophie, you know I almost never say this, but please get to the point.”
“I don’t want to be independent because I want to tell you to fuck off. I want to be independent so that we can figure out if we want to fuck, not just flirt. Without fucking over our careers if it goes bad.”
“That’s… huh.” She sat back, taking that in, eyes closed in thought. Slowly, the tenseness drained out of her muscles, and her face relaxed into a soft smile, and just when I was starting to wonder if she’d fallen asleep, she stood up, nodding. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, we’ll do the paperwork on the morning of the First,” she clarified, walking to the stairs to our rooms. She paused, turning to look over her shoulder, still smiling. “Together, I mean. And all the paperwork after it, together, and we’ll see how fast you can be ready.”
I was still digesting that when she finished walking up the stairs. All the paperwork, I thought to myself with a wry smile. And that’s on top of arrows, glass blowing, archery, and Yarovi bargaining. Well, afternoons won’t be boring, at least.
The thought got me up the stairs and onto my bed, falling asleep with the memory of the way her hips swayed as she walked.