The Over
The Else
The fabric of the sky seems to shudder, clouds warping and screaming the presence of a barely audible, crackling turbulence. A shapeless warning felt in bones, in fleeting shivers as one’s gaze wanders among the skies in all directions, wondering what its cloudy masses are plotting.
In a small valley flanked by fir trees, a family of waterfowl have their snacking excursion interrupted, some raising their heads from seeing the clouds bent outwards. The pond’s surface trembles behind them as the flock flees skyward, sounding a warning to all.
Snow scatters from thin branches as the ground beings to stir. Hundreds of meters higher than the birds and the trees, the peak reflected in the pond cracks and booms. A family of rocks breaks from a plateau and pierces the cold air, beginning a descent.
Barely a dozen, building speed due west, racing down the flank of the mountain with ease. Though this family of rocks is small in size, its individual members really aren’t; the youngest boasts a good 7 meters in diameter. That one alone could easily flatten a block of three houses without slowing down. The rest are apparently worse, and all of them chase after one another. The race of gravity is fiercely competitive, a dead heat.
Further down, an adventurous sylvite couple, in the midst of a cheerful post-dinner hike and conversation, are interrupted by that sudden tremor, reverberating through their legs. The sound, like a distant explosion, reaches them a few seconds later.
Hm?
The younger one lowers her head, a growing sense of unease tangling itself inside her. Her wife, three years her senior, stops moving, hearing the cautious murmurs behind her.
What’s wrong? she asks, turning towards her other nervously.
It’s–
The younger one’s gaze turns towards the top of the snowy path. Her eyes widen before darting towards her companion.
Get down!!
A desperate tackle. The couple entwine together in an awkward, panicked, tumbling roll, gnarled arms in gnarled arms, both losing some of their most beautiful leaves in the process.
A pair of terrified screams emerge from the lovers, as the rocks pay them no mind, hurtling down the alpine slope, some passing less than a meter from them.
The sound fades down the valley. The couple raise their heads, feverishly untangling their limbs from one another as they cannot help but watch the massive stones continue their course of destruction. The younger gives a murmured prayer of thanks, the ability to breathe finding its way back to her. The older mutters a curse, instead, turning to her companion with fear replaced by barely-contained fury, her body’s vines tight with apprehension.
On the seeds of my mothers, and my mothers’ mothers, I promise you, Valine: if you ever push me to take part in another of your signature ‘wild hikes’, I swear I’ll kill you.
The “wild” aspect of her hikes was not in the nature of the landscape, but in Valine’s blatant disregard for blaring warning alarms. At that moment, in fact, one began to blare, the one that warned of debris falling… with a delay that could have cost Valine and her wife their lives, if not for quick-thinking.
Somebody must’ve messed up and taken a moment too long to finish their coffee before hitting that button. Or maybe the Techtological Branch made a mistake somewhere in their predictive reporting process; something like less than a percent of a percent in the precise time being off is known to happen. Their expertise and divine support consistently creates highly-accurate forecasts, and the safety procedures in place protected the citizenry effectively. But there’s always room for error: there’s always a reason to have a plan B.
The siren’s wail, its pitch oscillating between the highest highs and lowest lows, fills the air of the surrounding plateaus and valleys, heard just as loud in gardens as it in homes. Dogs the island over, worried for the post dozen minutes, initiate a chorus of howling noise.
The citizens of Fallais, however, remain largely unfazed by the phenomenon. Children, prepared for avalanche risks since primary school, return to their homes at a walking pace. Some adult volunteers, appointed by the community, check their designated streets to ensure nobody is lingering outdoors before they, too, take shelter. In the living rooms (where the Branch formally orders families to shelter, to keep an eye on both streets and slope, and ensure an easy route of escape if all else fails), young ones are told to do some quiet activity, like reading or drawing, while radietheric stations are turned on. A high-pitched presenter’s voice, especially trained for special bulletins, crackles over the airwaves.
—sidents of Fallais. Please remain calm and stay in the comfort of your homes. A few hours ago, the Authority of Presquile issued a debris fall alert for your area. A rock-slide, although of magnitude consistent with prior-issued forecasts, occurred several minutes earlier than anticipated, and was unable to be preemptively neutralized. The Disaster Corps has been dispatched to respond immediately. I repeat: please remain calm and stay in the comfort of your homes. And now, as our brave response forces get to work, a musical interlude. Silat D'Arjane's Violin Concerto No. 4, known as the Primrose Concerto, performed by—
After rolling for a last hundred or so meters, some of the smallest rocks have ceased movement or shattered to pieces, bruising a few conifers on their way out. The remaining competition, as though enraged at the loss of their kin, redouble their speed and ferocity, becoming more dangerous at a magnitude difficult to describe. They’re racing straight for the main avenue of Fallais, each more eager than the others to destroy a series of fountains carved of the same white stone as the rest of the town, mocking the incoming raiders with its carefree water jets.
Opposite the mountain, the western edge of Fallais’s main street meets a void, several hundred meters wide and tall, thick with clouds in a perpetual crosswind that divides Presquile’s main landmasses. Were they so bold, the rolling rampage of the stones could tear through Fallais’s heart, leap from the moorings of The-Younger, and fall to The-Elder below, inflicting on its facilities tremendous damage multiplied by a tremendous fall. A catastrophe of major proportions, and all the rocks need do to bring it about is continue as they are.
Fortunately, as announced by the news reporter, the rocks have to go through the Disaster Corps, first.
Several installations of theirs dot the countryside between Fallais and the threat, each of vital importance to the system as a whole. This threat, however, only sets two in motion.
The first to witness the activity is a metal pylon, only just taller than the firs that surround it, old but maintained with regular care. At the peak of this pylon is a small, square roof.
Beneath that roof are two small, winged metal figures; birds, flat in profile yet finely articulated, like weather vanes crafted by a passionate engineer. Their work require no legs, and thus their bodies are mounted on a mere pivot joint; a detail that would be impossible to see by someone on the ground anyway.
The arms supporting each bird protrude through well-oiled cut-outs from a glass shell, about half an arm in length. Within it, gears, rods and camshafts frantically move about between glass bulbs; some long and tubular, others small and round, flickering all the while. This box of delicate, complex machinery is where the largely indistinct thought processes of the two birds reside.
As filaments of convoluted shapes flash in lively conversation, the birds survey the mountain with crystal-clear vision (using their polished crystal eyes). A shape-identification program, focused for hours on the forecasted detachment point of the rocks, now runs a list of simple instructions.
> IS THE LANDSCAPE MOVING?
< YES.
>HOW FAR AWAY ARE THE MOVING PARTS?
<1.559896.
>WHAT ARE THE SIZES OF THE MOVING PARTS? SORT THEM IN DESCENDING ORDER. RETURN VALUES IN METERS.
<[29.8482, 23.5958, 22.8765, 20.9137, 15.1730, 15.9370, 14.4111, 10.7281, 8.4906, 7.7663, 2.1078, 0.2098].
>ARE THE MOVING PARTS PROMINENTLY MOVING DOWNWARD?
<YES.
>ARE THE CONDITIONS MET FOR A DEBRIS FALL ALERT?
<YES.
>ISSUE THE DEBRIS FALL ALERT.
Without further delay (a concept the mechanism knows nothing about), one bird chirps a series of tweets in a telegraphic code, its sound designed to be both animalistic and especially obnoxious: a panic cry not to be ignored by any travelers below.
In concert with this, the other bird swings its pivot to a precise position, tapping out the same code, at the same rhythm, on the surface of a copper ball screwed to the end of a rod, also protruding from the glass housing. Each time it touches its beak to the ball, a circuit closes, and two things happen.
The first: a large bulb (of “simpler” purpose, in that it merely produces light) illuminates, just below the pylon-tower’s roof. Through a series of lenses, the beacon casts brilliant orange rays outwards, such that even the occasional deaf traveler would have a hard time missing the warning.
The second: a radietheric signal jolts. It takes an instant to go from a transmitter, nestled somewhere in the tower with the birds and their bright brains, to its receiver, a hundred meters away, installed on the recently-repainted lapis-blue tiled roof of the west barracks (there is another to the east) of the Fallais Disaster Corps.
In a sober room with white walls and three windows in a row, a sapper on guard duty takes notice of the arrival of the signal. Adorned with a black label with silvery writing reading [TW·07], a lightbulb flickers intently, in the corner of an old console covered with thirty other siblings, each inactive.
Whoa-ho!
He rises from his ratty chair in a small burst of adrenaline. Leaving behind a cold coffee and an open newspaper, he approaches the periscope, conscientiously oriented towards the summit in advance. He sniffs, gathers himself. Damn allergies. After adjusting his glasses, the sapper presses them against the rubberized viewfinder.
The summit’s activity has already passed, so he twists a knob on the side of the device, his field of vision zooming out and widening, to get a more comprehensive view of the flanks. To his left, the emergency bulb of West Tower 07 casts glancing glares of light into his eyes. To his right, powder snow fills the air between the fir trees. He does not need to see the rocks directly to know that the alert is legitimate.
These gentlemen are ahead of schedule, he murmurs, trotting over to the console, checking his watch.
Stabbing two ports in the console with a connector bearing a handwritten note reading “DO NOT UNPLUG WITHOUT KEY / AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY”, he allows the incoming signal to reach the barracks’ broadcasting channels, whirring its klaxons to life.
A few seconds prior, Tobi has just finished a first sandwich, and the break room’s clock had just ticked over to 12:14 p.m. Their colleagues, Jayc and Solane, are sat around the table with them, waiting for the small stove in the break room to heat up their own lunches.
No, it’s still better with the butter sauce. You’re not gonna convince–
The alarm rings out, and Jayc stops talking.
Oh, damn, Solane blurted. Must be our noon-seventeen. You go first and we follow close, Tobi?
Tobi, under their heavy navy-blue hat, nods a silent guess I am. They wipe bacon grease from the corner of their mouth, before pulling up their collar and leaving only their eyes visible on their charcoal-black, rounded face. The pair of thick leather gloves hanging from their belt are pulled on, as Solane flicks the stove off, remiss at the thought of her meal getting cold again. She’s hungry, but not so much that she’d risk a fire in the middle of the barracks as duty calls. In her profession, that would be one for the history books.
Alright. I’ll take first dance, but don’t waste time, replied Tobi, retrieving their jacket off a coat rack. And you, Jayc! adds Tobi in a firmer tone, pointing a finger. Hands off. I know you like my sister’s cooking, but this ain’t no free buffet.
Jayc averts his eyes from Tobi’s second sandwich with a grumble, punctuated with a brief snicker from Solane. The hat rack is cleared of its inventory of two, as the third hat walks briskly down the hallway that led to the break room. The radietheric speaker system breathes three cricket-trills (as per regulation), followed by the voice of the sapper on guard-duty:
To West Barracks: The west-flank rockslide forecasted for 12:17 occurred early at 12:13 p.m.. Alert status raised; all sappers on standby muster to intercept.
On the way, Tobi quickly stops before a glass cabinet built into the wall, vertically split in half.
In the upper section lay eight birds, of far more elaborate design than the ones in the watchtower. Unlike the flat profile of the sentry birds, these are definitely a degree more lifelike, with their animating gears and filaments entirely contained within their bellies. Their articulated wings allow them to — well, not quite fly, but certainly glide, with accuracy. And of course, they have legs, with a copper ball designed to be mounted onto a sapper’s shoulder roost, where it can recharge if connected to a battery.
Eight such batteries, one per bird, lay in the lower half of the cabinet. The glass-encased cylinders of nathane, nestled in copper rings, each emit a faintly shimmering bluish glow as the light catches them. Each battery is ultimately attached to a lengthy braided cable, carefully wound around a hook and anchored into a rectangular brass frame.
Tobi, the actions routine, collects a bird from the left side of the cabinet, the one that had a label on the leg bearing their full name (Tobi’s, not the bird’s) alongside a serial number. The suddenly-awakened automaton gives a little chirp of delight, as Tobi situates them into the mount on their left shoulder with their right hand: their other hand grabbed a battery in turn, mounting it to the belt-loop where their gloves are usually found. Tobi begins to unroll the cable, plugging it into their uniform as they continue marching to their position.
The large double doors marked [NORTH EXIT] close behind Tobi, as they reach the snow-free (but weed-filled) clearing that, although often serving as a training ground for the sapper and their colleagues, will today serve as the finish line of the racing rocks, in the next few minutes. That is, of course, why the barracks were built here: to easily intercept any phenomenon that could sweep over Fallais from this face of the mountain.
Today, the phenomenon at hand is not particularly dangerous (this isn’t Tobi’s first pile of pebbles, by any means), but it’s still impressive enough for an audience of civilians. That’s why there are no fewer than fifty of them on the balcony of the barracks, packed like sardines behind the safety barrier that Solane had set up the day before.
When Tobi steps out into the yard, some of the spectators wave excitedly or whistle. The chaperones quickly bring these under control, but Tobi has the time to wave back and see the smiles on their faces before the commotion dies down. Beneath their scarf, Tobi breathes a sigh of gratitude. It’s always a pleasure to put on a show for young folk of kind heart.
The sapper plants their feet, just so. Glancing up the mountainside, Tobi digs in their jacket pocket and pulls on their waterproof watch. The rocks aren’t in sight yet, but the ground doesn’t lie. It won’t be long.
Up on the balcony, incessant whispers stir the crowd.
How’re they gonna stop the avalanche?
I dunno. Maybe a wall?
…Imagine needing to pee about now.
Shove it! If Jophe hears you, he’s gonna talk all over the best part!
What’s that thing on their shoulder? A bird…?
I think? I dunno, it’s so hard to see from this distance.
Hey! Move over! I don’t even have space for my notebook!
The courageous Professor Jophe strains his throat in a polite, low voice, imploring the students to please just shut up; this is a rare event to get to see in person, so take notes instead of chattering like damned geese, godsakes.
Among the crowd, only one person is as focused on her work as Tobi, or perhaps even more so. She readjusts her large, round glasses on her face for the eighth time in the last minute. For the fifth time in the same period, she tucks her braided black hair down the back of her shirt, hoping that it stays there when the time comes.
She has pressed herself against the barrier, charcoal in one hand and clipboard in the other, paper at the ready. When Solane had led them onto the balcony, she immediately moved this direction, correctly assuming that others would begin to surround it just as soon as the debris warning was heard, and that she would have no chance of seeing a sapper in action if she wasn’t in the front row.
For several minutes, she has struggled to find a good way to hold her arms, and to hold her things. She’s barely taken notice, her entire attention on Tobi and the mountain that rose up ahead of them, but some fellow students have pressed their notebooks against the fence, to bear down on and write more easily. She has already discarded that idea, knowing that once the rocks get here, that barrier will shake like a set of tubular bells.
She is ready. She has to be ready.
Under their collar, Tobi practices a simple breathing exercise they learned when they were young. With each cycle of breath, they take stock of a limb in turn, in and out, letting the flow bring feeling to all of their body in perfect clarity. Total control. Their mind, and now their form, are free of doubt.
In the distance, the rocks came into view with a ferocious roar, hurtling now at a speed of over 30 meters per second. The bird automaton suddenly stands straight, folding and unfolding its wings in precise semaphore.
> 410 METERS (The bird discards the decimals, knowing full well that a sapper doesn’t care). CONTACT IN 12 SECONDS.
Tobi glances ever-so-briefly to the automaton as it chirps thrice in a low tone, indicating imminent danger. Its head, on well-greased bearings, points in the very precise direction of each rock’s center-of-gravity, emitting an electronic click each time. With each click, a tiny bright spot overlays Tobi’s vision, each leaving peripheral marks across their vision, as though staring into the beam of seven small separate flashlights. The whole operation takes a little under a second.
Tobi is now perfectly cognizant of the speeds and positions of each of their opponents. They are prepared. Now, for casting a spell.
The fingers of their left hand clench tight, as they sweep the air in front of them with their right in a nonchalant curve. Some of the less magically-inclined students, standing further back on the balcony, wonder if the sapper is simply swatting an insect or something. Everyone else knows that this motion is deliberate.
As the motion ceases, Tobi’s hands hold still, almost at rest. The air around them has grown much, much colder, and is growing colder still. Some of the students feel the biting chill, even at the very safe distance they’re at behind the barrier. The sapper had seemed heavily dressed for late spring, but their attire now makes more sense. It’s not clear to the students, but Tobi’s eyebrows, and the brim of their hat, are beginning to freeze over.
The rocks are less than a hundred meters from Tobi. They can see them all, now.
Perrrrrrrfect.
An exhale. Tobi’s left hand suddenly curlsinto a fist. As the fingers meet one another, huge spikes of packed ice explode forth from the ground in unison, a crystalline shadow half-an-acre wide violently lancing into solid shape.
Immediately, the rocks crash into the improvised bed of frozen stalagmites. The cacophonous sound, like broken glass, will carry all the way to Fallais; thank goodness that Solane passed out earplugs to the students before her break.
Sharp shards of ice are thrown in all directions, none so far as to pose a risk to the students, but far enough to hit Tobi; three make a valiant attempt to maim their uniform, to no avail, softly smashing apart in the process.
When the frozen vapor is clearer, the results can be made out: the rocks have lost all momentum, partially stuck in the ground they flattened, while what spikes of ice survived are already beginning to bow out in the heat of the afternoon. On the roof of the barracks, some lights that were blaring when the alert came early are shut off. The danger has been neutralized.
What remains is what to do with all this stone; probably a task for tomorrow. The commandant will stamp the usual paperwork, these ruffians will be sent nice and neat into the correctional care of the local quarry, whipped up into sweet little bricks, and those bricks will probably be headed on the next cable car out. In the end, their dream of reaching Presquile-the-Elder would come true after all.
Tobi’s eyes itch unpleasantly, worn out by the cold bite of the spell. An itch they knew to suppress. To that end, they keep their hands busy by petting their mechanical companion, who curls into the attention, emitting a soothing, cleverly-programmed, electric coo.
Well done, little buddy, Tobi says with an exhausted smile.
A round of raucous applause. Though annoyed by the whistles and shouts, Professor Jophe suppresses an itch of his own and elects not to respond, just this once. This was indeed an excellent demonstration for future members of the Corps.
The young woman that had pressed herself against the barrier, for her part, hasn’t missed a beat. She too applauded, for a shorter time but far louder than the others, quickly returning to her clipboard and her illustration. Well, one of her drawings. In addition to three whole pages of notes.
Very good; now, let’s move to the cafeteria for now. The commander will answer your questions later this afternoon, so please, don’t forget to prepare them. And, watch your step on the stairs.
As her classmates and the teacher slowly evacuate the balcony, she indeed prepares four questions, appending them to a list she prepared this morning, and scribbles a finishing touch or two on her latest charcoal drawing.
She sniffs, then wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve. The smell of dense water vapor caused by the spell, like standing downwind in a rainy fog, still lingers in the air. And shall likely linger a dozen minutes more.
Her drawing depicts the xalaim sapper, their tough stance, their handiwork cast in the frozen wave. Their pose, with both arms thrust forth and one leg bravely extended, is quite a bit more dramatic than the real deal, but does it really matter? Thick, grainy black lines undulate from their hand towards crudely doodled cones of ice.
She is not the best artist in her class, but she was determined to represent the motion of ether. In another drawing, she’s sketched the cascade of chill, dangerously stagnant magic, that the sapper themselves ‘painted’ just before exciting it, concentrating it in specific targeted spaces.
As she admires her work with a large, genuine smile, her subject’s colleagues bring them a warming pad, which they place on their face. If she wasn’t so distracted, she might have overheard them grumbling gently about their ocular teratrauma, and the politeness with which they had been allowed to do the whole job on their own.
She has yet to notice that the class has entirely left around her. She thus jumps when she hears the teacher calling her in a sarcastic tone from the stairwell door.
Miss Ahlrik? Would you like to join the class, or do you prefer to enjoy the view?
That week-old comment has left a bitter taste in Etrika’s mouth. Her brain nags at her: she needs to finish her report, because her beautiful drawings won’t count towards her final grade. But now and for just a few moments, yes, she does prefer to enjoy the view.
Shuffling her notebooks back into her bag, she glances up at the swaying cable cars overhead, that network whose grip kept the two unequal halves of Presquile bound together. From where she’s standing, on The-Elder, the network of interconnected strands, never quite as tangled as it might seem, rolls on.
Each strand carries hanging vehicles along whirling continuous pulleys, moving their people and cargo from here to there and all over. The cabling renders the impression of a loom, colorful beads threaded back and forth with ensured patience, amid the flow of cloud.
The constant jangling motion reminds Etrika the weather report she heard on the radietheric this morning, over breakfast. A storm headed downstream, along the flow of water, towards the western nadir, if she remembers correctly.
This would lead it along the naturally-driven design of the city of Cascade, and of course, its namesake, the crash of her cascading waterfall.
From a mountain, colored by flowering trees, miles away, a spring feeds a reservoir lake, with crystal-clear, cerulean waters, whose flow spreads like capillaries into the surrounding countryside. From the movement of these waters, civilization has stretched outwards and flourished in all directions, to the furthest extents of Presquile, to every farm and every village on the main island.
Among these pockets of civilization, Cascade itself stands out remarkably, located on the very edge of Presquile-the-Elder, receiving the largest branch of this spring. Spreading like a kilometers-wide star from the cliffs where that water plunges into the schism, its streets chasing all tributary streams with precise urban planning, it fully harnesses the natural hydraulic force at its disposal to keep the blood of progress flowing; powering factories, public lights, commerce, the street-cars and funiculars both… And as the water plunges below into the schism, dying away as vapor below, it reappears high up again. From the nadir to the zenith, apogee to perigee, an endless cycle.
From the park she’s in, high on a rise behind the university’s main campus, Etrika can see a large section of the great blue curve of the river, winding placidly under hundreds of small bridges that connects buildings with red, gray, and gray-red roofs; rarely in other colors. The vegetation, at least, makes an effort to paint the city’s palette, as summer is at hand.
Lost in contemplation of her hometown, she loses the track of time, and must spend a great deal of her will to transmute her daydreaming back into productive focus. A second later, she retrieves her primary notebook with a sense of resignation.
By next monday, she has to propose a model interpreting the spell that she observed at the Disaster Corps barracks. Complete with three different variations of the spell, under slightly different conditions; where those rocks would have fallen in a wider fan, vertical hail, or if they were of greater size. She’s got to write up the answers to the questions she bombarded the barracks commander with, and draw some conclusions about them… And…
Agh. I won’t get anything done if I list my tasks. The model first. C’mon, girl, she says to herself, rubbing an eye. It’s just a model. One step at a time.
This affirmation is punctuated by the sounds of an air-ferry some kilometers away sounding a horn, an everyday Cascadian sound, its oars in the sky and setting off on its way to tour the cliffside. Etrika ignores the sound and resumes her writing, slowly covering a page with spidery writing. It’s a mite difficult to concentrate with the other students who, like her, have dared enjoy the park on a gray-but-not-rainy day with comfortable temperatures, but she makes do.
The gods’ priorities escape me, Etrika hears a student say in a slightly-too-loud voice to another, two benches and four flower beds away.
She doesn’t hear the reply.
No, it’s not that he didn’t deserve help. It’s just… not really what we expected…? We did our part, we prayed for him, and…
The student turns towards Etrika, just as she reflexively glances at their conversation. Oh, gods, she thinks. As she returns to her notes, the student stands up.
Wait, let’s… talk about this somewhere else.
He and his friend move further away. Etrika shakes off the embarrassment and tackles the third line of a formula.
On one hand, she is relieved to be allowed to concentrate fully, even if ‘fully’ was particularly relative for her. On the other hand, here’s yet another episode to add to her curriculum vitae as the class’s resident neurotic. She never heard someone say it, mind, but the looks she struggles to let fall into the background of her mind speak volumes.
Come on, you’re almost there. You’re gonna be a sapper one day. Calm.
She traces the last lines of the formula, suppressing her emotions as best she can. If she can’t handle the pressure of a school report, she might as well give up on putting out a forest fire or redirecting a–
Hey, Etrika!
There’s no way. Godsakes.
Two classmates have walked up to stand over her, in their long-sleeved black-and-blue striped uniforms. The way they wear those uniforms is aloof, compared to the pressure that their training entails, smiling as they approach Etrika. For her part, she gives off the impression that her clothes are actually wearing her. Or that she’s followed classes to honor them.
Oh. Trisha, and Jalamil, greets Etrika softly, unsure of their intentions.
Is it alright if we sit here? Trisha asks, tying her long blond hair back in the rising wind.
Of course, Etrika lies, trying to smile and sell it.
Jalamil (his branch name; he barely knows Etrika) and Trisha (her personal name; she pretends to know everyone) come to make themselves at home to the left of Miss Ahlrik, who is forced to move her bag to make room. Were she not afraid of further damaging her image, she would gladly scoot herself off the end of the bench to sit on the grass.
Thank you, Trisha replies, bubbly as always.
In her wisdom, she notices Etrika’s assembled notes, taking polite interest in them as conversational filler.
Are you doing okay on that assignment? That study club offer’s still open ‘til the semester’s out, y’know. Don’t think you need it, but juuuust offering! she adds with a shrug.
No, I’m fine, I promise. Almost done.
Jalamil, still silent, fidgets and struggles to find a good place to put his legs, while for Trisha, all spots were apparently good spots. Noticing his discomfort from the corner of her eye, Etrika feels sorry for Miss Popular’s new pet.
That’s good, I’m glad for you, Ahlrik, Trisha goes on. Hey, y’know, we – the study club and I – were thinking about putting on a party. It’s almost vacation time, and, hey, we’d like to see you somewhere other than at school… and you say you’ll be done with your report soon, sooooo…
She shrugs again, putting both hands on her legs, and her best smile spreads across her face.
…you want in?
Etrika stops writing, swallows hard. Really stepped in it now. Quickly. Think of something to say. Just buy time.
Uh, that depends. When would it be?
Oh, y’know, after we turn in the reports and the oral exams, don’t worry.
You’re a bad liar. Just say something true. Anything at all.
Ah!
Well played.
…Sorry, I have a family outing around then. Gonna spend a week camping and hiking in the forests up in northern Young.
Trisha’s expression changes to a disappointed-but-still-polite pout. She’s always so polite. Etrika knows that she loses points with her almost every time they talk lately, but that’s better than being memorably awful in front of the whole student body.
Ah. That’s a shame. You can’t even let yourself go for an evening?
I’m sorry, I really am, but we’ll have extended family over. And I haven’t seen them in a really long time.
Etrika can see from the corner of Trisha’s mouth that this is the expected, most boring response. More points docked.
…It’s not that big a deal. If you get the chance, let yourself go a little, okay? You’ve never been to any other Isles, and even here on Presquile, you haven’t seen that much. Hey, Etrika, if you end up being able to come after all, you’ll let me know, right?
Not on your life. They both know that.
Yeah, of course.
Trisha nods, and gets to her feet with a small huff. Jalamil stops fidgeting and rises with her, glad that there’s at last a reprieve from the industrial-strength pressure Trisha applies to everyone she talks to. He’s the one that waves to Etrika as they both leave; Trisha remains tightlipped.
Well, see ya, Ahlrik! he says.
Etrika returns the gesture, watching the both of them walk off, turning the corner past a large tree, covered in pinkish buds ready to bloom.
She reclaims her territory on the bench with some eagerness, spreading out all her papers again. A street-car rolls past the park, ting-ting-tinging all the while, the wires visibly churning the ether in the air, and Etrika curses it briefly. Alright. Variations, now.
The gray sky darkens briefly, but the wind dies down. That’s good. The gray is calming, moving. Might make the captain of a ship nervous, but it gives her the warm-and-fuzzies of staying at home, in safety, resting on the couch with the patter of rain in the background. Other students around her, more worried by the turn in weather, start heading home.
The ensuing silence is good, too. Just Etrika and the gentle wind at her back, the one she trusts in. The variations flow naturally from mind to pen to paper, little kero runes nestling in so easily between the mathematical operators. Finally, peace. She’s going to make it.
And just as she is about to put the finishing touches on a proof, settling a calculation after an equals sign, a new voice addresses her.
Excuse… Excuse me?
Etrika’s fingers cramp up around her pen. No. This is absolutely ridiculous. She refuses to raise her head, reacquaints herself with the pen’s rubbery grip, and continues.
The unfamiliar silhouette continues, as well, to cast a shadow over her. Just leave me alone, and please please please let me finish what I’m doing, she prays, temporarily forgetting that nothing good can be gained from the gods while a heart is full of rage.
Excuse me, repeats the slightly-boyish voice.
I am terribly sorry, she replies, externally, politely but curtly. I am quite absorbed in my work, and do not have time to chat. I’m afraid you’d best look elsewhere.
The decimals. She made a mistake in the decimals because of them. Gods. She sniffs, crosses out the number with a violently heavy stroke of her pen, and begins to rewrite it.
…Excuse me.
She looks up, half-expecting to see a Civil Protector or some other insistent authority figure, and registers the features of… a stranger?
A sinister, handmade poncho patched up all over. Stark-white hair. This isn’t someone from around here. Her exasperation turned to mildly-stunned confusion.
…And whom do I owe the unexpected honor? she asks cautiously.
They step forward, acknowledged at last, by placing their hand on their chest, fingers spread, as though about to swear some bizarre oath. In broken Ireul, with a very thick accent, they reply with equal caution:
Know me as… Emil.
The Else