We lay together on the divan as the show exploded before us. I remember music and tumult. We drank of the shimmerwine, and the sporelight wavered into mage-patterns before me. Subtleties and complexities, within it I could see the start of a larger scene wrapped about the the Banshee Blade singing before us. A jungle, fruited funguses, a blur of wings flitting above it. When I turned Lhuna’s face was before me, and it too swam with minor detailing.

Golden lines of sporesong enwreathed her in subtle halos. Her hair, usually pale, swam with color from the sporelight projection, and her eyes danced like opals. She grinned.

“How are you feeling Klask?”

“I feel like I’ve never seen these colors before,” I answered, honestly.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue.”

After I said it she grinned again. Innocent but also mischievous. The sporesong grew around her, around us, shifting and changing, until we were enwreathed in a persistent blue light.

“You like?”

She came a little closer. I could smell the moonsuckle scent of her perfume. It reminded me of when I met her, when we danced. I nodded, and she smiled again, and then we were upon each other like magnets. The sporesong flashed and shifted with each of our acts upon one another.

Dimly later, I recall vomiting off a rail, high up in a tower or prominence above the bedlam in Glorana’s Grove as people dispersed. I wore my coat again. Lhuna, a bit away, shrouded in a later of heavy silks and a scarf, called to me.

“Klask! It’s here…”

I looked up, wiping my mouth with a handkerchief. Before me a huge floating aedra yawned. It was a huge, woody, fungal thing, openings and windows wrought into it. Throughout there were bulbous, pale sacs that bulged upward, and dangling hyphae.

I shook my head and followed Lhuna. She led me across a dragonmetal gangplank. Wind picked at my coat. The gangplank clunked with each of our steps. Lhuna a few paces in front of me. She did not seem concerned. I looked down into a chasm, below me streets beyond the Grove. People swarming out like tiny glintfish below me. I felt the chill of fear and grabbed the rail.

The nefra butler Soven perched sideways on the floating aedra. a huge, woody, fungal thing with bulbous pale sacs upon it that bulged upward. It skittered past Lhuna toward me, grabbing my hand and yanking it free of the rail with two of its limbs. Its appendages icy to the touch.

I looked down. The rail where I had touched it was blue with frost. Mist curling upward. Something pulled me, and I crawled along with it. It was Soven, the nefra butler, his silk cassocks ruffling in wind, and together he and I pushed onward, and passed through the threshold into the aedra. I collapsed upon long carpet.

In the dream I saw my eldest brother Dratho again, much as I had as a child. Though he had come home a few times, it had been many years. In my mind’s eye he remained a paragon of adventure, dressed as a seafarer. He wore a waterproofed trencher. He was in the dream held in a whorl, suspended in water, in endless raging blue motion. His eyes were vacant.

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He could be mine. Or he could return.

Dratho! I tried to shout, but I did not have a voice. It did not exist. It was just the blue light and the darkling sailor, my brother.

Much, much has suffused him.

Let him return, I tried to say. Whatever projection you are, let him return.

I am the dark side of the light. The—what would your folk say—the left side of the storm.

The dance of Tlavak. The Doomtrail.

If there is a doomtrail I ride beneath it. I am a passenger, a rider. I will be yours.

The blue swirling stopped all at once.

Someone stroked my hair. A calm washed over me. When I looked up I saw Lhuna above me. Out the windows, plentiful here in this chamber along one of the walls, the tallcap gills of Middle Blackbloom glistered.

“Where are we going?” I asked sluggishly.

“Home.”

“Silsern…?”

“Roz’s house. You know—the, uh, Anvil.”

“Blue Anvil.” I nodded. “Right. How long have I…been out?”

“Just a turn or two. When you’re ready to get up—there’s a place to sit…”

I grimaced, and clambered up. I felt much better. In the middle of this chamber a set of couches were arrayed about a pool of color. As I drew closer, I realized the pool of color was a glass window, set into the floor itself.

“Who made that?” I asked, sitting and gesturing vaguely.

“Now, now,” Lhuna chided. “Asking who made an aedra is like asking who made, well, you.”

“I meant that glasswork.”

“I haven’t the faintest glimmer. You really do love glasswork, don’t you, Klask?”

“I suppose,” I said, though I had never really considered it.

“Klask,” Lhuna said, stretching, “one of the luxuries of the Pact is that we can do what we choose, and with who we choose.”

“Within reason,” I pointed out, but she just shrugged.

“For those bounded by such,” she snapped suddenly.

My confusion was apparent upon my face.

“Sorry. I keep forgetting you’re—not from here. It’s just that in Blackbloom, the Upper Fate is less…limited. The castes…weren’t there castes in Silsern?”

I nodded. “Well the Paxes—my family—we’re guilded. There are a few guilds present—timekeepers, fishers, potters, masons—but the rest would be considered Lower Fate.”

Lhuna nodded. “So, I’m the first Upper Fate person you’ve met?”

“Well I met Glym first I suppose. Though I didn’t know he was—uh—Upper Fate. Honestly Lhuna, the only reason I know that about you is because Roz told me.”

“So, what else did she tell you?” Lhuna asked intently.

I thought back, and then flushed. Remembering how Roz told me to not get too attached.

“Well, out with it! What did she tell you?”

“Just that you’re—experienced,” I said lamely.

Lhuna frowned. “That’s rich, coming from an undine. Why—she’s going to end up with much more experience than all of us, I’ll tell you that much. Likely already has more, too.”

I shrugged. “It’s not bad.”

We kissed again, and the ruby canto began to loom close and lurid in the windows as the aedra descended.

“What about you?” Lhuna asked. “Who waits for you? Back in Silsern?”

“I don’t know. There was someone in Silsern, once.”

“Right now you’re someone.”

The aedra began to descend, and I felt it all through my body, though it did not dissuade Lhuna or I. She was soft and smooth and hungry. A few minutes later there was a bump, followed by the creaking of a door, and I disentangled myself.

Soven skittered out and bowed stiffly. “Honorable Klask, I would have you disembark here. You are atop the tallcap Acdulc, where the Blue Anvil Atelier resides.”

I bid good cycle to Lhuna.

I departed down the unfurled silken gangplank, and took to the spiral path winding through the tallcap’s wide flower and down its stalk. The first address I read took me by surprise. 42 Acdulc. It took me right back to Silsern, and to the stone tablet which even now burned a hole in my chest of drawers, right next to the curious tiny mask.

By custom, it was much too late, but another time, soon, perhaps even as early as tomorrow, I could pay a visit. I had until now forgotten the cryptic tablet. Instead I walked on downward, into the Blue Anvil. It was silent and dark except the ebbing glow of old glowcaps.