Constantly Searching

Was it truly wise to claim the world could only be balanced with equivalent opposites?

* * * * * * * *

Ty placed his wet, lop-sided bowl—what he supposed was to be a bowl when he started the project—onto the drying shelf and went to the nearby fountain to wash the clay off his hands.

Ceramics was an interesting art, but not for him.

This could not have been Anya’s answer when I asked her if I was meant for something more than ambassadorship.

He shook his head as water ran through his hands, clear and crisp. When his subconscious was sure there was no more clay on his hands or under his fingernails, he cupped some water, drank some, and splashed the rest to wipe his face. All the while, his mind wandered on how the rest of this semester would go, what else he could be doing with his free time in Essensia, and that Szak wanted to meet up afterward to talk about this strange girl who may or may not have met him and his father, before.

And that sword… The thought made him scrunch his brows together. He splashed his face with more water.

When Ty looked up, he was the last scholar left. He wiped his hands dry on the sides of his pants and then lifted the front of his sleeveless grey robe to wipe the water off his face.

“You look like there’s a lot on your mind, Kyon.”

Ty turned to his ceramics professor organizing the varieties of clay kept in storage just a few stations beside him. He was an older man, obviously a Vizari, with sharp teal eyes despite his age.

“Everything and nothing, simultaneously.” Ty picked up his knapsack of all his ceramics supplies for the season and headed toward the propped-open door.

“Do not disregard the something as a nothing,” Professor Vizari suggested calmly. Clay thudded into place. He wiped his hands and looked up. “Those nothings that ‘sneak up’ on people. They’re not truly nothing, at all. You enjoy the class, yes?”

Ty shrugged. “Sure.”

Professor Vizari smiled, in a way that squinted his eyes but did not lift a piece of his droopy cheeks, and then turned around to gather paintbrushes into a jar, saying nothing more.

Is the conversation over? Ty took a step toward the door. Can I leave, then? Feels a bit rude…

“Good day, professor,” he offered. “I’ll see you next week.”

“It is a day Ayren has made. That is reason enough for it to be good.”

Ty nodded and left the stone room. Did the professor think something was wrong with him? That wasn’t the typical way people responded to a good day.

The exit opened up to the mountain range north of Essensia. It was only the beginnings of autumn, and yet, hints of winter were already upon them. And although these mountains didn’t look anything like his mountains back home, the sight of them standing below the clouds today reminded him of home, of the foster children in his family’s boarding school, of their daily training, of his daily training when he was their age—and he ran.

Knapsack jumping around loosely beside him, he ran down the trail winding across the Academy, some of it in dirt, some of it in cobblestone, some of it in a variety of gemstones, all of it firm and steady beneath his feet that did not feel steady at all.

But everything about this world—how beautiful, it was. Breath-taking. The mountains in soft shades of purple, green, and white, beside an endless field of neatly curated farmlands stretching to the ocean that covered the rest of the horizon—Ty had been told by Uncle Giles once that opposites must exist for one to appreciate and understand both.

That is the reason for happiness and grief. Of peace and pain. Of life and death.

Ty wanted to punch the air before him, just as he practiced in those memories. Instead, he ran even faster past the oak tree upon the hill where Iago, Eulylia, and Sephria loved to be, and he kept going.

Even in never stepping foot outside of Aideyll, Ty could be moved by the beauty of these trees, simply because Essensia looked different than the Mist. Perhaps things did not need to be opposites to be appreciated—just different. With different purpose.

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The sea past the ports glittered as they always did, and every building he ran past in the Academy was one unique culture after another, each with its own history and timeline with its own unique use and unique purpose. Here, even buildings, made by people, had purpose.

So what would it mean, then, if I did not?

His chest felt heavy, even though he was breathing just as he had to, just as he always had been. He exited the Academy grounds and continued down the cobble path all the way to where Szak and Iago stayed. When he reached the door, another scholar, a mermaiden with hair braided in tight rows, happened to be walking out. He took this chance to speed up and catch the opening, avoiding touching the door altogether.

“Thanks,” he huffed, and up the stairs he went, disregarding all of the common area on the ground level or whether that mermaiden truly heard him at all.

At the end of three flights, Ty stopped before Szak’s room and waited his heart return to rest. A deep inhale followed an exhale, and then a pause. His heartbeat drummed in his ears. With another slow, meditated inhale, he pushed his orange hair back, noticing the dampness of his forehead and the stickiness from the slight sweat in his hands. Iago could be heard from the other side of the door.

“—even omnigold?”

One more long exhale.

“I’m not going to argue with you about it. Just telling you what it is.”

“Szak, you really think the Ashenborn would allow such a thing come close to their Academy?”

Ty opened the door and invited himself in. Both Szak and Iago turned to him just as Szak was to answer that. He swiftly closed the door behind him and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what we think they would do. That sword is definitely not natural gold.”

Szak gestured a form of “I told you” toward Iago, who was now rather confused. He crossed his arms in front of him, contemplative as he leaned against his desk.

“How can you tell just by looking?”

“Natural gold’s soft,” Ty answered, inviting himself to sit on a wooden chair beside the window on Szak’s side of the room. “It’s easily dented, so it’s not usually any swordsmith’s first, second, or third choice. It can be, but rarely.”

“So you’re assuming Alea snuck this sword of hers across the border?” Iago asked. Neither answered immediately, so he chuckled and shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense for her to carry it around like that, showing it off to everyone.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Szak sighed. “Her entire existence makes no sense.”

“It makes a bit of sense,” Ty shrugged. Both looked at him with raised brows. “I mean—yeah, I also thought the gold was strange, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that it’d be omnigold. That simply doesn’t exist in Aideyll outside of military. Most civilians don’t even know of its existence.” He lifted a hand toward Iago when he looked at Szak. “You’ve been arguing with someone who does know about it and adamantly disagrees that it’s possible. So, maybe not that nonsensical.”

Szak looked up at the ceiling. The world is full of idiots. How is this possible with a school mandated in every living corner of Aideyll… He closed his eyes and consciously avoided shaking his head. Instead, he focused on the problem at hand—how it ended up here, in the Academy grounds of the Ashenborn—because if it were omnigold, then it would be the responsibility of the Aideyllian military to seize control of it.

“Maybe Alea doesn’t even know it’s omnigold,” Iago said with a chuckle. “She seems to not know much about… much.”

Szak opened his eyes to purposefully give Iago a stare that said he made no sense. “The only way that’d work is if only her mother was Oblivious.”

Iago shook his head. “She doesn’t have a mother.”

There was a pause. Ty spoke up first, leaning over to get a better look. “She told you that?”

“Yep, first day I met her, just before Mother’s Morning.”

“Well,” Szak shook his head. “It can’t be the father’s.”

“She did mention the sword was his,” Iago reminded him.

“She could also be a liar,” Szak retorted. “If she were an Oblivious snuck across the border, we can’t trust anything she tells us.”

“We’re at the Academy—you really believe the Ashenborn would let an Oblivious enroll? Wait—backtrack—you think they’d let an Oblivious just roam around in Essensia? Szak, you’ve lost your mind. It’s just the father, at most.”

“Do you hear what you’re saying? You think her old man just strolls around over the Edge on his own while she’s kept here, on our side? Without a mother?”

Iago shrugged. “Sure.”

A scoff. “Do you even know how maintaining a family works?”

Ty side-glanced at Szak, who did not notice. Iago only smiled.

“… Why don’t we just put a pause on this thought,” Ty eased. Both turned to him. “Let me write back home to my ba and search our records for an Alea—what’s her family name?”

Szak turned to Iago at this, so Ty did, too. Iago looked at both of them and leaned back.

“Yes, of course, I definitely would’ve tried asking Alea again when we were sparring.”

Szak turned to Ty, instead. “We don’t know.”

“Well…” Ty thought about it, eyes off to the corner of the room before coming back. “Without a family name, hundreds of Alea may come up. It’s a common sprite name.”

“Sprite?” Szak repeated curiously. “What kind?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sprites and faeries, I guess? Rea and Ria might have a distant cousin also named Alea? It’s of Vinoish origins, I think… Doesn’t Lyly know?”

Szak turned to Iago, who only shook his head and shrugged. Szak looked down at the wooden floorboards, pacing around the room slowly. Eulylia did study a variety of ancient languages under her history muse. If she had not mentioned anything to Iago, that would mean that the name itself meant little and was common, just as Ty said.

He looked up at Iago again. “Did Lyly mention anything strange happening when Alea hugged her? At the hospital.”

Iago paused. Hid his true thoughts behind a soft smirk. “Something happen with you and Alea, before?”

Szak stopped pacing and looked at Iago dead in the eye.

Both of them were withholding information. Szak didn’t want to answer, but one of them had to give in, first, else there would be no point in any more of this conversation. How badly did he need to know what Iago was hiding?

He pressed his lips together, deciding on what to say.