The initiates funneled through tall stone doors into a grand cavern of rainbows. Despite its vastness, the space was lit well by sacred kalpasi in vibrant bloom. The bright flowers filled the space with all hues of colors, a vast spectrum of steady light. Midan stood dumbly against the torrent of white that bumped into him from behind as he tried to drink it all in.
“Move along, now,” a woman ushered those who gawked forward gently but firmly, and Midan let himself get lost in the current.
There were many places to sit, laid out for them by cushioned pillows set in rows towards the space’s center, away from the sacred walls. Midan was careful not to step on the kalpasi as he headed to the very back of the assembly, passing initiates who had already found their places.
“That’s him? He’s tall,” a girl’s voice whispered. “Might we be paired?”
A group of chuckles followed along with some light teasing. Midan tried to ignore them. Couldn’t they simply leave him alone? It had been weeks since they arrived, and there weren’t signs of stopping.
“Midan!” another voice whisper-shouted. “I’m telling you, I saw him come in, half dead. That’s Midan!”
Midan turned angrily to the seated boy.
“Keep your voice in check. You know where you are; act like it.”
The boy shrunk at Midan’s glare.
“Apologies. I’ll do better,” the boy finished with a too-deep bow, touching his forehead to the stone. It was the bow reserved for the Sanuwey.
Midan bristled and stormed off, grinding his teeth before stopping himself. His mother said the habit would have his teeth gone before his first child. But this situation wasn’t helping him curb the addiction.
He doubled his pace to the back of the chamber before settling cross-legged onto one of the cushions in the corner. He sighed long and rubbed his eyes hard enough to sprinkle his vision with bright spots.
As more initiates filed in, side by side, they left him alone on either side of his pillow. Those nearest him whispered, with some going so far as to gesture, casting indiscrete looks his way.
Midan ground his teeth.
He needed control—to bring shame here, of all places, would be unconscionable. But their treatment was unacceptable—blasphemous, even. Their misinterpretation of the meaning of One was a severe issue. Midan refused to believe himself above them now. Rosol had burned away that desire.
He forcibly turned his thoughts to the majesty of that space. The walls, carved in the ancient tongue, caught the shadows and outlined each shape and form. While illegible to him, they still held power. They were the culmination of the Guide’s teachings, written and preserved for centuries by those Chosen of Netsu. She had set those words in stone so the Whole might remember, learn of their past, live well in the present, and thrive in the future. It was the holy plan for all the Chosen — the Aalsham.
Such a place wouldn’t be without the sacred unseen.
“The unseen is more real than stone. To see what is not is to see the truth of being.”
Closing his eyes and tightening his focus caused Moment light to explode into his consciousness. Each singular kalpasi flower shined brighter in his mind than one hundred individual fifty-mark crystals combined. Despite their brightness, their lights did not blend like visible light and remained distinct to each flower. They looked as might a thousand thousand Rosols in the sky but remained as gentle as Lus to his eyes. He had never seen that much Moment in one place, and the brilliance dazzled him.
An aggressive bump startled him as someone plopped down on the adjacent pillow. Snapping a glare at the offender, he locked stares with Aelo’s unnaturally large pupils.
Her irises were thin slivers of emerald pushing back against pools of obsidian at the center. Midan sighed exaggeratedly before slumping forward, finding a somberly blue kalpasi to stare at. She leaned close into the blue light with a cheeky smile. Her skin was as white agate and glistened in the flower light.
“Midaaan,” she whispered into his ear, elongating that last vowel before backing away and scrunching her freckled nose with a sniff. “You washed up?”
Midan pulled away and bowed to his dàl. “I’ve been known to, on occasion.”
“No bowing. You’re going to make me the freak of freaks, especially now. I’m not your dàl. You don’t owe me anything. I did what I felt was right, nothing more.”
He sighed and dropped his head. Somehow, that had made him feel worse.
Aelo gently patted his head. Her long golden brown hair fell loosely to the side while she tilted his face to meet hers.
“Tell the arbiter I’ve accepted payment, and it’s done,” she shrugged. “Nobody would question it. You can return to being you, and I can be me.”
“It’s not that simple. We can’t just dismiss this with a wish. If you didn’t want it, you should’ve left me to rot.”
Aelo huffed and turned away. She looked as annoyed as she had when he offered her his promise. It didn’t make sense to Midan, but then again, little did these days.
A noticeable number of the surrounding initiates leaned toward them as they spoke, but Midan didn’t bother scolding them. He welcomed it. Maybe they would leave him be and see him for what he was.
Aelo noticed them, too, and turned to him with a grin that promised pain.
“Last chance,” she whispered.
“Not happening,” he finished with a blank smile.
“What if they are right?” she said too loudly. “Not once in the history of the Naming had an initiate made it to Netsu without touching their fruit, not once.”
Midan mouthed her to stop, taking her hands and pleading with his eyes. But that only seemed to goad her further.
“What if you are the ‘One’?” she said, louder this time, addressing everyone around them as much as Midan. “As your dàl, wouldn’t that make me the ‘Two’? At the very least, the ‘Three,’ no?”
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Midan groaned, clenching his jaw hard. “Please, stop.”
Aelo leaned in so close he caught the smell of her—floral-scented, heady.
“I’ll stop. You know what I want,” she said fiercely. “Let it go, Midan.”
“I can’t,” he pleaded. “I owe you a life debt.”
Aelo’s following words were loud enough to carry, drawing the attention of those nearby.
“You are the One spoken of. There’s no doubt!”
He had to stop her. She was practically shouting. He looked around frantically, but there was no solution in sight. What could he do to shut her up? A few more initiates twisted about to eye Aelo curiously, and she didn’t disappoint them.
“So said the Guide, ‘To be One is to be fearless, to have the strength of a nation, to have the strongest of wills.”
The Guide’s will, she was quoting scripture. It had to stop. Now.
“‘Only by that path can we be free.’ You are that—”
Midan grabbed Aelo by the head and pressed his lips onto hers. It wasn’t long or passionate. Yet, it had a quality to it like those days beneath the red sun, both timeless and horrifying. He pulled away to find her looking back with wide eyes and a slackening jaw. It had seemed a good idea before doing it, but he felt himself grow hot as she stared at him like he had lost his mind. Maybe he had, at that.
A thrum resonated off the granite and brought a hush to the initiates. The roof felt like it was shaking as those pure voices sang in balanced dissonance and harmony, their voices overlapping in complex weavings of sound. The ceremony had begun.
Midan breathed in to calm himself. It was the most important day of his life, so he should be present. But that had been his first-ever. Her lips were soft, like a rock smoothed by a thousand monsoons. He shook his head to banish the thought.
The crimson monks of Netsu filed onto the raised platform to sit around a stone table that jutted organically from the cavern floor. The last to enter was an elderly woman dressed plainly, with two monks on each arm.
“That is the Falahin?” Aelo whispered, startling him. “A woman who can’t even walk chooses who we will be with for the rest of our lives?”
Midan had nearly forgotten about her, but her closeness brought what had happened rushing back. He turned away to hide his blossoming redness before responding.
“Please, show the proper respect.”
Aelo had a point. Midan watched as the Falahin limped towards the table with a scowl that could sour fruit. She was totally unlike the Sanuwey back home in Shalli. Gently floated down by her attendants, the blessed one fell into a cross-legged seat at the center of the table—it seemed too informal for the occasion, but Midan shoved that thought down. Who was he to question?
The woman rasped out some words to one of her attendants, who stiffened up before audibly clearing their voice to address the crowd. The singers quieted to a hum.
“The Falahin requests time to catch her breath. Please, take these last moments to reflect on your youth and the new responsibilities laid before you,” the attendant finished with a bow.
Midan closed his eyes, endeavoring to do just that.
All his life, he had been gifted. In the spar, the syne, and with Moment, Midan was second to none. That fact had led him to build up his pride and ego. It had almost killed him. He peaked at Aelo from the corner of his eye.
Hunched over her legs, almost fetal, she seemed little more than a child as she gently fingered a beautiful green kalpasi petal. Hadn’t it been for that girl, barely half his size, he would be dead.
Before setting out, proctors had told each initiate not to eat a single fruit or risk failure. You were to help nobody and struggle through until the end. The journey was to break you. To force you into conceding—to show you that you are nothing without being One. So, to finish without breaking? It was unheard of. Impossible, even.
Yet, Aelo managed to do something equally baffling. She had managed to eat all her blips. She had also helped another initiate. Both were explicitly banned. While failure was by design, overt disobedience was not.
The news of what they each had done quickly traveled about Netsu, eliciting two divergent reactions — one of heretical admiration and another of overt disdain.
“Aelo?”
“Hmm?” she said, her voice muffled by her robes.
“I never asked,” he said shamefully. “But why did you do it? It's like you weren’t even trying.”
“Which one? The fruit or you?” She rested her head between folded arms and peered up at him with those deep pools of darkness. They looked tired.
“Either, both.”
She turned to hide her face again and hesitated to respond, long enough that Midan nearly let it drop until she spoke, her voice barely audible.
“I wanted to fail.”
Her reply weighed a ton in his mind, incomprehensible as it was. Before he could begin to form a response, she spoke again.
“If you give them a reason to hate you, at least it makes sense when they do, right?”
As he tried to piece together something, anything, to say to her, the Falahin labored to a stand, not calling for silence but expecting it. Midan bit his tongue along with the others as whispers tapered into silence. The Falahin's powerful voice contrasted starkly with her aged face and hunch.
“Are there any among you that wish to revise your chosen names? It is your last chance.”
The room was silent.
“Excellent! By my genuine and official authority, you are Chosen. So on and so forth. Check your names at the scrolled ledger directly outside on the wall for your pairings,” she said, gesturing her withered finger behind them towards the hallway that had led them here. “Should you have any questions or objections, you may address them directly with the walls.”
Seemingly finished, the Falahin hobbled out the way she had come before the rest of the monks followed. Hushed, confused voices permeated the air. Just like that, they were Chosen.
Midan was stunned. He had expected a speech or a sermon, some grand pronouncement. This curt and dispassionate announcement, one which would dictate the rest of their lives, felt misplaced. It felt wrong. It isn’t how it should happen. Just like that, he was Chosen? Now, Midan Talo? To be paired? He couldn’t help but feel entirely unchanged. What was supposed to be the most significant instance of his life so far had ended like a bad joke.
He shook off the confusion. Again, he was trying to impose his expectations on the world instead of accepting them as they were. He would have faith that this was simply the way of things. What did Aelo think of all this? Looking beside himself, Midan found an empty cushion.
He found himself grinning. He never could pin that one down.
Forcing contentedness, he stood up and entered the growing throng that funneled through the broad, high corridor. His stomach flipped in anticipation, growing more uneasy with each passing semi-mark.
Cries of excitement and sorrow both occasionally echoed to him. Despite his anxious feelings, he cringed at the outbursts. They should keep it inside and not disturb everyone else. They had to have faith. Each selection was certainly weighed carefully by the Falahin, in alignment with the Aalsham. Their reactions could only erode trust in the Sanuwey and the Guide’s divine plan, weakening the One.
Finally, after about a half-mark, he reached the front. There, unscrolled and affixed to the wall, splayed a large yellowing parchment with names scrolled in tight letters down its length in columns. Scanning, column by column, he found his name next to another.
Midan Talo. Janna Kol.
Janna Kol. She would be his pair. He committed the name to memory, repeating it beneath his breath until he was sure not to forget it. A tinge of disappointment scraped at the back of his mind, but he shoved that deep. He had faith he would see the wisdom of this choice in time.
He should have left then. Many others waited to see their pair, and Midan held the line. He couldn’t stop himself. And he didn’t need long, as her name stood out like a lone candle in the deep cavern.
Aelo Paters.
Her name was alone on the parchment.