The Triumphs. Shay clattered behind a more shadowy corner away from the sun, no longer able to ignore her shoulder. Into an alley she struggled, where summery weeds grew through the parched bricks. The laser-wound was burning deeper into her shoulder. Serib hugged her tightly, and this almost familial warmth Shay wanted to turn away from somehow helped.
“You don’t want me to help you?” Serib frowned.
Shay froze, unsure what to say. Woid was leaning on her mind. There was clarity in the pain, and exhaustion left her unable to lie, exposed in the moving sunlight:
“I’ve lost people that were dear to me; I don’t want to start and end again. It all leads to Grief - but not for you - still hope for you.”
She strained, brushing away a small spider trying to make webs on her shoulder. She felt sharp hairs or strings were wrapping tighter around her heart, cutting it bulging. As meat prepared.
“Your parents? I told you Lay’d Payn can help with that… can help with good things not lasting forever. That’s why I’m here.” Serib held Shay’s hand, and for a while this was all Shay could manage to do.
∞
She eventually began mapping out the path, distancing herself from the uncertain Grief of where Woid was, the larger scheme she felt herself caught in, and the intensifying pain of her shoulder. She wished she had been kinder to him, spoken more clearly, left less unsaid to her only friend:
“Let’s go over what we know so far. We have the seeds but still need to find Lady Payn… I wonder, whenever Now is in wherever we are, is she still imprisoned? Or hasn’t been imprisoned yet at all?”
Serib carried on Shay’s list, annoyed that she had been ignored:
“You need to get back to your shop, first!” a boom in the sky shook the closest weeds and nearby crowds gasped a cheer. Serib stared up and asked: “What is that?”
Shay joined Serib’s eyes up to the azure sky, for shadoworks were being fired up and exploding out their smoky all-colours. Serib knew well fireworks by night, but shadoworks by daylight were a new sight for her. The soundless smoke serenaded floating arches of Courtly oaken-stone - under which and through which - flew a fighting force incomprehensible, from myths and rhymes Shay had heard when she was little.
∞
Never did she believe these high tales until the armies of Courtdom came gallantly home when she was somewhat older: the Knights-a-Legion of General Arthur, whose Courtly name was War; Court Botanist and Court Painter it is said. There his Knights-a-Legion arrayed in formations light-year deep, high and wide, hammering down with their demoralising battle shouts from their General’s Mountainships. He among them first to ride out leading the charge in Once Ago, and last to return, seeing victorious survivors and the glorious dead before him. The mountainships whose names still are lost, destined to settle in what craters had long been left behind. The Mountains of Again and Andea.
∞
Their number so immeasurable, that Shay had only first opened her shop when came the first of The Triumphal Arches raised. She was some-many inches shorter, then. Ages of one’s own life brimming and by, and still those formations ever-there in every sky, battalions after others endless. Even in The Dam’e’s office not long ago from our (paged) view, still those forces were in formations returning, visible against more nightly stars.
“I remember this… I know where I was.” Shay tried to stand but without success. Her wound aflame. “There was a burglary at my shop when the knights first started arriving home.”
Serib placed her hand on the ground for a moment. The dry weeds around bent their crowns towards her, and she stood with a renewed strength. Somehow she pulled Shay up to her shaking feet and supported her new friend’s weight. Shay would have wondered how Serib was so strong, were she herself stronger in this moment, strong enough to even wonder. Now and then her shoulder had the feeling of being shot all over again. The pain or her tolerance a tide and season.
∞
Serib was sweating in the high sunlight as she helped Shay go on. Souls passing by wanted to offer their aid. Shay’s pain was clear to them, though none would have guessed she had been shot in the back. Pain a stranger thing to see in Greed's age as different Needs fell vanquished. Seeing Serib’s lightning eyes they assumed she knew what she was doing, as shamans are known for healing the sick and guiding the lost.
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∞
Walking and struggling eventually in the opposite direction the guarde had offered them, Serib recognised the deeply frying sounds and crispy smells of the market, within which a newly opened Yore Remedial’s sat. Shay's shop was a quiet thing to look at, more-so for the crimson and violet curtains drawn across the small and still strangely barred windows. Warped wooden boxes of deliveries were stacked outside in ignored states.
“Where were you?” Serib asked, as Shay pushed her into a better hiding spot behind a damp barrel, still wet from a recent rain.
“Watch. Should be…” she smirked.
Through the oily and busy market, the carved sign of Shay’s shop swung from shining chain-links; a tall soul had just bonked their forehead into it with a loud ‘Oops!’. The door beneath it shut with a stiff slam, and holding the handle dressed as in mourning was a younger girl. The look on that maskless and disguiseless girl's face was the same Shay now wore bare beside Serib. For age shall to skin what it cannot to eyes.
∞
“If you and I wait here long enough, I return from my parents’ funeral with their swords; they did not wish to be buried with them.” She contemplated, pressing her fingers against the damp wood, wincing against the smell.
Serib however imagined or remembered Shay again wielding both those swords, masked and fighting in the tunnels under all of this. She asked with every seriousness:
“What would you do if you could get your parents back?”
Shay thought little of it before answering:
“Anything.” Her shoulders lifted a moment, shaking her head despite her moveless eyes, propped by fake-coloured lenses. Perhaps she was imagining doing just that. Anything.
“No, really. What if you could get them back? Lay’d Payn can stop my master from dying; that’s why I’m here, I told you. We don’t need to be alone.”
Shay thought more seriously now, eventually dismissing it:
“That’s not possible, I told you - be wary of those that promise such things. ‘If you meet The Truth on the open lonesome road, pointing which way to go, cut off their finger.’ Or so go the myths I know. And anyway, we’re not alone - we have each other.”
It visibly hurt Shay to admit this, as to Serib opened a new world.
∞
“What hurts most?” The little shaman asked. “Your old wounds still, or the new one?”
Shay looked at her past self in mourning, still holding the door handle, unable to take that first step towards the funeral. If that girl had the swords they were well hidden. Serib became more insistent, talking about Lay’d Payn’s promises. The wrangling, not pain but Grief in Shay’s heart had joined now in her neck, pushing and pulling. Crawling eggs through her body. Grief was trying to curl her up into a wretched state as it had before, when Bed was a stranded fortress, home only to Numb. Her younger self was soon to return home and in that same fortress lock herself away where Grief was lord. She looked the little shaman darkly in the lightning eyes and said:
“It took me too long a while to come to terms with their passing, to accept reality as it is. With beginnings and endings.”
Serib pointed where recent needles had been in Shay’s arm: “Accepting?” There were many old scars and one fresher needle point.
“Your arrival made me hope again, and I admit it’s harder to hope. I know because once I had thoughts just like you…” Shay pulled her punctured arm away. “Until… I don’t remember when, I thought I did remember - what happened or didn’t exactly.” She shooed away another small spider crawling towards her. “I would have done anything, any truly awful thing to keep them close and happy. When they died and I was still trying, there was a fever I couldn’t shake off - I called her Grief, gripping me by throat and ankles, crushing all of me together.”
Serib was quiet, listening to Shay while watching the past of her, still standing by the shop’s door. The smell of hard-baked bread waved through from a nearby bakery, and Shay breathed easier:
“I had a family and I lost them; I don’t look to regain the one I had or find another one. It’s not possible, and that is my heart. My future is behind me, but let’s get through this together. There’s still hope for you! My woe isn’t for the world, for Greed's age.”
Serib had a stubborn or determined look:
“I know what I know and you know yours.” She said strangely, holding Shay’s hand, Grief waiting in the fingers. “The Heir told me I have to believe. Heir words are on the wind. You don’t hear them.”
∞
Past-Shay still hadn’t yet moved from the shop door. The sky shaking with colourful shadoworks seemed very interesting to her. Knights marched-home the skies they had won.
“You’re right - I don’t. Another riddle from Lay’d Payn?” Shay replied, eventually.
“No, Lay’d Payn told me other things.”
“Lay’d Payn’s promise… what is it going to cost you? What do you have to do for her? These are things you have to ask yourself.” Shay paused. “Look closely.”
Past-Shay left at last disappearing with thoughtful steps into the deeper market full of shoppers. Serib realised:
“She didn’t… you didn’t lock the door?”
Shay gave Serib a pat on her shoulder.
“Understandably, my mind was somewhere else, then. Ha! And now I understand the burglary.”