Koray’s absence at supper was felt as it made the task of eating more of a test of patience than anything else. Tynan had hardly been able to touch the plate in front of him with Elidi’s annoyed energy trying to consume him. She viciously cut into her third serving of whatever fowl the kitchen staff had prepared for the whole of The Sanctum, her pet snake, Dunia, ravenously consuming any scraps.
The feathers that ruffled above him pulled him from the painful image. Croooak, Erebus called down to him, his not so quiet demand for a morsel.
“You know, Krishna catches her own food. Where did I go wrong with you?” Despite his questioning, he tossed a grape into the air. Erebus was a flash of black through the dimly lit dining hall, the grape snatched from the air by a speeding abyss of feathers. A few scholars down the table from them began to clap at the display.
“Maybe it is…all the enabling…you do?” Elidi said between mouthfuls of bird.
Tynan pursed his lips, not wanting to waste his words in an argument. Instead, he tossed another grape into the air, only to frown as Erebus’ trick produced a spray that splashed down onto his head.
Elidi continued to look unimpressed. “Would you kindly not play with your food in my presence? I find it makes it hard to eat?”
“Much like your presence?” Tynan snapped back. The smoke of his magic puffed in his veins, his tongue smeared with the taste of ash, disappointment in himself the only barrier between him and Elidi now.
He expected some outburst, but Elidi surprised him when she only narrowed her eyes. “I get cranky,” she explained, her white knuckled grip on her fork betraying the patience she was trying to portray, “when your birds make me miss my morning revelations.”
“They were exceptionally loud,” a Sun priestess piped up from a few rows away.
Tynan leaned to glare at her around Elidi. “I don’t remember opening this up to the forum.”
The priestess shuddered under his gaze and turned her eyes back down to her plate.
“What about the time Dunia hid in my shoe and–”
“Vessels! Tynan or Elidi…preferably Tynan!”
Elidi’s brow rose. “That mess is all yours for the taking.”
Tynan didn’t need to turn around to know that Hans, a Moon Scholar, was shuffling towards them. What he did not expect to see was Koray draped across the fragile man’s back with a weighty book cracked open on the top of his head while she continued to read.
“Koray! What are you doing?” His swift descent down the aisle was made smooth by Erebus’ flying ahead of him to warn people to push in their chairs.
“I am looking…into the origins of…the central Elysian mountain range…it is believed that–” Tynan could hear the slight slur to her words, a sure sign that she was both exhausted and magically depleted.
“Did you go back to sleep after the morning meditation?” Elidi shouted down the aisle.
“No,” Hans confirmed for them. “She’s been in the Archives since mid-morning.”
Koray raised the book slightly and brought the thick spine down on the sensitive middle of Hans’ skull. “What a teller you are.”
Hans’ cheeks glowed red, though whether it was with embarrassment, effort or exasperation, Tynan could not tell.
“Did you tell Caligo?” Tynan asked as he hoisted Koray off of Hans’ back and balanced her against his side.
“No,” Hans groaned as he stretched his back and arms towards the ceiling in relief. “She kept moving around all day and I just found her hiding in one of the older stacks.”
“I know the one. Way in the back. Precariously close to the private collection.” Tynan said as helped her begin the long walk to where Elidi now sat rolling her eyes. “Maybe leave Caligo out of this? You know how Koray gets.”
“If you tell Caligo,” Koray hissed over her shoulder, nearly stumbling into the chairs of a few Darkness monks when she tried to point a finger at the scholar. Tynan gave them a sympathetic look, but the men merely nodded their heads in understanding. “I will tell the Head Archivist…that you were the one who left dirty notes in the margins…of her favorite parable.”
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“Now who’s the teller?” Tynan whispered to her as he waved Hans off.
The man quickly bowed to him in thanks before he raised the cowl of his robes and rushed from the dining hall, as a chorus of snickers and chuckles popped up from some Moon acolytes nearby.
Tynan turned his gaze back down to find Koray moping as she looked at the book in her hands. “I forgot to mark my page,” she sniffed. “How did you let me not mark the page?”
Tynan sighed as they reached Elidi. He eased Koray down into the chair next to his, bending at the hips to bring his face down to her level. “You should eat something, Kor. Anything sound good?”
“I had snacks…in the Archives,” she assured him with a pat on the head.
Elidi snorted. “You better hope no tellers run and let Lenora know that! She will suspend you from the Archives again.”
Tynan walked down the aisle to the feast table at the back of the dining hall. He grabbed a plate and began to grab foods that he had seen Koray eat at one point or another: a bread roll, a helping of broccoli, a heaping scoop of mountain berries, a breast and leg of a roasted fowl, and a steaming cup of lavender tea.
He was looking over the table for one last thing when one of the kitchen helpers tapped him on the shoulder. “For Koray?” she asked, pointing to the tea.
“Yes, I’m looking for–”
From her apron, the assistant pulled out a small bag of dried orange peels. She dropped a few into the tea. “We’ve all started carrying peels around,” she explained sweetly, “so she doesn’t have to track them down.”
“May the Moon smile on your kindness,” Tynan said with a nod of thanks. He was halfway back to his seat, when he caught sight of Erebus. His raven was seated on the cover of the text that Koray had set on the table. As she attempted to pull the book out from under him, he gave her hand a warning peck.
“Krishna is being a bully!” she announced to him as he slid the plate in front of her and reclaimed his seat.
He bit his lip to keep from chuckling, “That’s because that’s Erebus, Kor.”
“Oh,” she sulked, but quickly took a berry from the plate and offered it to the raven. “My apologies, Erebus. Now can I see my book–Ouch!”
“The bird would like you to eat, and then go to bed.” Elidi griped. “Before we have to sit through another lecture on the detriments of magic depletion.”
Koray turned what little attention she could maintain to her plate, stealing Tynan’s fork and knife to begin cutting into everything. With each bite, he could see the color returning to her cheeks and stars coming back to life in her eyes. As her hunger surfaced she began to scarf down the food with a ferocity that had even Elidi frowning. He nearly leapt out of his seat when she began to down the hot tea as if it were glacier water, but she remained unphased. They both cringed as she pulled down the sleeve of her perfectly clean white robe, and swiped it across her mouth and chin, only to return to the frey of cleaning her plate.
They kept quiet in an effort to not offer her any distractions, until she was picking at the mountain berries. She slipped every fourth or fifth berry to Erebus in a weak attempt to bribe him off her book.
Erebus, never one to turn down free berries, remained at his post.
“I would like to at least find the page I was on, please,” she pleaded, but Erebus only clacked his beak at her.
Elidi, her own meal finished, now sat back in her chair with a sleeping Dunia wrapped around her neck. “I don’t know how you can read so much. My mind gets foggy just walking into the Archives.”
Koray let out a long sigh as she gave up her attempts to move Erebus and placed her head down on the table and cradled it in her arms. “I will be the first legacy link, so I want to learn as much as possible. If I’m going to be reduced to a voice in someone’s head, then I’d at least like to be a helpful presence. Did you know that the last Moon Vessel…?”
Tynan nodded to himself as Koray began to gently snore. “I’ll get her up to bed. What trouble will you be up to?” He was careful not to jostle her too much as he nestled her against his chest with her legs slung over one arm, her back supported by the other.
“I don’t know. Probably some exercise before bed to really tire me out,” she offered him with a shrug. “Do you need help with anything?” He watched her eyes flick from him, to the book, then back to him, then back to the book–
With a slight tilt forward he was able to grab it with the hand that cradled Koray’s knees. With a flick of his wrist, Erebus reluctantly toppled off the book and took off out of the dining hall, presumably in search of Krishna. “Thank you for the offer,” he said matter-of-factly, “but I would like to rest as well. May the Sun rise to give you a great revelation.”
Elidi turned her stare to one of the windows as her golden eyes dimmed with each inch the Sun dipped below the horizon. “I’m sorry for being such a jerk about Erebus and Krishna.” Tynan held his tongue as her eyes searched for the next few words in the red twilight. “I just really…I feel most connected to my magic when I have those visions. And it has been a few days without one.”
He waited for her to turn her gaze back to him before he said, “Thank you for the apology. Do me the kindness of communicating that sooner. That way we can avoid a scene.”
She sucked in a breath and held it, waiting a handful of seconds before she slowly released it. “I’m not always good at that, but I’ll try to be better.”
“You need only be willing to try,” Tynan assured her, before he turned and began the long trek to the western end of The Sanctum where, he hoped, Koray would find some much needed rest.