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[Arahim]

---

The Wall


All counted, there were seventeen wooden posts neatly marked with clean, white chalk X's. Some on the outside perimeter of Ashencrosse, and some, while fewer -- only three actually, on the inside of the palisade. Besides the X's where wood had cracked, or warped, or shifted in the ground at slight angles denoting imminent replacement or maintenance, there were nine chalk arrows singling out frayed, and worn rope that bound the thick, fire hardened poles together.

Not large numbers considering the size of the wall, but certainly significant. Numbers that Arahim felt were accurate. That every flaw had been cataloged with a careful and unrushed eye.

To watch him at a distance at his work, a casual observer would think him a man at a morning stroll who periodically discovered some treasure the nascent Day had not yet shone Its golden light upon. A secret thing he kept quietly to himself, and drew his stealthy glyph only so he might find it easily again, and marvel at its uniqueness in the world during private moments when no one was looking.

In truth, Arahim kept a sketch of his deliberate stop-and-go walk, both inside the small town, and without, in his head with the express purpose of sharing his findings with Lady Bretane. Perhaps even as soon as directly after breakfast.

Smiling his first smile of the day, he took pleasure in knowing he had done as she asked promptly, and with exacting care.

[Aurelia Bretane]

---

The Watering Can


They’d slept since the spring. The first rains of March had brought forth a riot of deep green leaves that reached for the sky with such Icarian ambition, rich and heavy, that they bent upon themselves and folded, and touched the ground again. But they offered no bloom – no flower carried within the leaves to burst forth, and as all things in time, they withered in the sun and became earth again.

There were two riots of chaotic green in the spring, and Aurelia had marked them both in two years past, one in front of the Hall, and one beneath the overhang of the Bramble Rose. She, and the rest of the world, forgot them throughout the summer, when the night was ruled by the Ursus – the bear who ran close to the horizon. But when the Ravens first began their ascent in the night sky, she began to watch both places with hopeful anticipation. Watched for the miracle, when the rains softened the earth, and August died in the storm’s embrace.

But this year, as in the two years past, the rains brought a single miracle, and forgot the other. Before the Hall, buds pushed from beneath the rain-soaked soil – pushed it aside and grew inches per day until the naked stalks were knee-high, before exploding in a burst of soft pink bloom. The rain lilies opened to the sun and embraced the sky and cried out for remembrance of their riotous youth. They heralded the end of summer, with soft pink petals, and they brightened the hearts of those who had forgotten.

Aurelia knelt somberly beneath the windows of the Bramble Rose. The earth was still sun-scorched, with no hint of the beauty that lay beneath. Perhaps the rains weren’t enough. Perhaps the overhang, meant to protect, didn’t allow them to flourish. Perhaps they only needed a little help.

Reverently, she dipped her watering can again and again into the stable's trough, and showered water onto the ground where once verdant chaos thrived. And silently, she urged the dormant buds to wake and brush off their grave. If there was hope for anything in this world, there was hope here.

It was a testament to their magick that the world held its breath, and waited.

[Arahim]

---

Ritual


Arahim's toes were wet from the brush of dew soaked grass over the tops of his sandles by the time he had walked the short walk from his house to the Bramble Rose. He carried several sheets of paper, a stoppered inkwell, and a linen napkin folded over, and tied together at its four corners. Stuck in his hair, which was bound in a ponytail, a short, unadorned quill.

A turn of his key, an item that had been given to him a lifetime ago, and the theatre gave out an audible clack, welcoming him inside.

Hitting the very same floorboards he had for the last two weeks, perhaps a day or two less, he found his familiar place of choice, and set his writing implements and bundled breakfast down on the table.

With practiced routine bordering on ritual, Arahim walked around the common room, and opened the curtains to another day. The light spilled over the floor and walls as though from an upset pitcher of molten gold, sweeping the place free of shadow and silence. Brushing the old, clean and new again.

His lap, as always, ended at the hearth where he at once busied himself cleaning out yesterdays ashes, then building a crackling fire to chase away the malingering morning chills.

There was a bite of Autumn on the air these past days, most keenly felt just as the World began to wipe the slumber from Its eyes, and the wisps of Dream were caught on Night's last breaths to be carried away and forgotten.

Change could be felt in such fleet moments as color returned to all things familiar after sleep faded.

That hope for change, as strange as it may sound, is what stirred Arahim to his daily ceremony...done just so...everytime...

[Arahim]

---

At Breakfast


When all this was done, Arahim left, leaving the door ajar, and hurried back home. In his own kitchen, he filled himself a large pewter mug of good brown ale from a red glazed ceramic jug. As the jug had no handles, he used both hands to pour, keeping one arm around its thick middle, his other hand on its bottom for control, and the mug on the counter.

Balancing his tankard against sloshing its contents, he crossed the lawns back to the theatre, found his favored place, and sat down.

By this time the room had begun to cultivate an inviting warmth that matched its close, understated decor.

Arahim sat close to the fireplace with a good view of both the front doors and the staircase to the upper floors. For a long time he was very still. The cold he carried within himself was easily roused by both the acts of moving about after being at rest, and settling down after being active. His body acclimated as he went along, but it was sudden shifts that brought on the wracking shivers. At those times, awkward as they seemed, he did what he could to master his affliction. Sometimes clenching closed his eyes, or fists.

Sometimes becoming a statue.

It passed in time. It was a thing he had come to accept as a part of him.

(Though more accurately...)

There were two hard boiled eggs, a square of sharp cheddar cheese, a knife for its cutting, and two slices of crusty bread in the folded napkin. When unfolded, Arahim laid his breakfast items each apart from the other, and in their own space on the smoothed out linen. He first took a small sip of his ale before slicing the cheese into several neat, bite-sized cubes. He then stacked the slices of bread atop one another and cut both in half.

Another, heartier, sip of beer, and Arahim popped a whole egg into his mouth without further prelude, as the smell of food hit him and told him he was suddenly hungrier than he had first thought.

He breathed a private laugh through his nose as his face filled with chunks of egg that became near impossible to swallow...especially when the dry, dry yolk was exposed. The very act of chewing seemed to further his discomfort and only helped to shift his food under his tongue, or mushed up between his teeth and gums.

"Not one of my finer moments..."

Initial hardships aside, Arahim muscled the titan egg down with the help of his ale, for the more truculent pieces, and quietly ate the rest of his meal without incident. With no recordable pattern, the next half hour passed in fits of snatched bites, and the thoughtful making of two separate, but overlapping lists.

[Arahim]

---

Dusk and a Wooden Owl


Evening cookfires dotted the grassy slopes that rolled out before him. A rough green carpet woven with yellow corded starbursts, and multi-colored squares.

The Sun at his back still sat upon Its throne, and crested above the mountains, though just barely. Arahim could tell by the way the daylight slipped over the camp that Dusk was not far off.

So short a time when the Veil was at its most threadbare. When certain magicks sprung briefly alive from that silent interplay between light and dark. A time that so many saw as beautiful, perhaps because of its tragic brevity, and felt an almost tangible difference in their lives for the span of a breath as Day lay down to die, and Night claimed her due.

But so few could put words to that subtle change, the hows or whys...fewer still could touch its power.

The wooden fetish was not yet half done, and no larger than an adult man's hand if all five fingers were splayed. Likely it would be smaller before he finished, but time would tell.

As the Daystar dipped, trailing the hem of Its fiery robes across the snowy summits so far off, and above, Arahim continued his work.

He used a short, curved blade mounted on a long handle. Shaving chips of cedar away from the mostly unformed bulk wherever shadow fell, and crept across it, the makings of a crouched owl began to take shape. Its wings were tucked, and as yet, it was eyeless. One talon clutched at a slab of unworked wood, and was bent -- higher than the other leg, as if presenting its secret prize.

Tingly, his hands moved deftly, without the encumbrance of specific planning or forethought. Creation, he found, measured out best, and his case only, when he left the art to takes its form from simple need and intuition.

Full Night fell, and so Arahim put aside his tool and made busy smoothing out the last half hour's worth of carving with a coarse polishing blanket. Below, the great bonfire at the center of camp blazed to life, and the smells of a dozen different suppers drifted lazily on the invisible tides of August.

Each finding him in turn, and extending an invitation.

[Arahim]

---

With Nalseen


It was not long before Nalseen made the trip to visit the solitary shape that had become her cousin. The evening's long train of shadow clung like cobwebs over his frame. He did not even have sense enough to attempt to brush the unflattering shades away from himself. A matter of several dozen steps, and he could bathe himself in color, and actual human company.

"Contrite...stubborn...self-possessed...not in a good way...withdrawn...undisciplined..."

"I am not contrite," Arahim answered from the dark, "Tho' you sing quite the litany. I am sorry I interrupted."

The polished stones threaded through her long hair clicked against themselves in response as she settled down next to him on the hill overlooking her home. Handing him a covered tin plate, she placed her lantern between them. The thin light creating a perfect circle they both fit easily within.

"Not even a lantern," she muttered, "And with a steep walk downhill in the dark no less..."

"It was light when I came up." he stated simply as he uncovered his supper of spiced sausages and small red-skinned potatoes.

" 'It was light...when I came up.' Oh very good, cousin, very good. Next time wedge a stick between sun and mountain. You could hold up the Day indefinitely!"

Arahim smiled happily, hiding his face under the guise of eating close to his plate. Spearing a potato with a knife from his belt, he subdued his grin and thanked her for coming, and for bringing the lantern and food.

"You're welcome," she laughed in spite of herself.

Several years his junior, just over ten if she stopped to think about it, and still she doted on him.

His life was freer than her own.

His gift was raw, and still he refused to sit with Al'lyria to refine it.

His marks were the products of violence rather than at the hands of a teacher. Many whispered, none too quietly, they were more than a little self-inflicted.

All these things made him strange, but still she loved him. Loved him, and worried for him.

"So..." she began, lifting her chin towards the incomplete block of wood, "What does it do?"

Arahim chewed and swallowed before answering.

"It does not do anything."

Nalseen picked up the carving, slowing rolling it over in her hands.

"I could feel it does something on my way up to see you, Arahim. Quieter now, but it has a...voice."

"I need to see a place from a distance. Maybe several places, maybe at great distances," he replied before setting his empty plate aside, "Thank you again for dinner, Nal."

Impatiently, she waved him off. A practiced gesture.

"If it is an owl, should it not know things, not see things? And where do you need to see that you cannot simply go to?" she asked.

"I don't know just yet."

"And your little bird here can do that?"

"I don't know."

"Do you make it with you as the seer?"

"No."

Arahim remained placid, but could hear the mounting frustrations in his young cousin's tone, and the rhythm and rapidity of her questions.

"Then who?"

"I am not sure," he stated flatly, "Someone who is in sync with it, I suppose. Someone who has gifts that lean towards Seeing already."

Nalseen pinched her top lip between her thumb and forefinger before standing, smoothing her skirt, and subtly replacing her calm mask. In measured, even tones she made her goodbyes as if their talk over the last few minutes have never occurred.

"When I gave that box to the Abella girl...your eventuality, we'll call it, she told me a strange thing. Its why I came to sit with you tonight. We'll talk on it another time I think. When you are more like to be less contrite. Til then, the dark suits you."

Picking up her lantern, Nalseen picked her way carefully back to the camp. Her need to express herself, and share the fire, suddenly overwhelming.

[Arahim]

---

Dischord Duet


Cezanne returned the garish mask of dead tree, and chains when he asked for it. Its hues of conflicting, competing shades of blue alive within the fire-flickering tide of the theatre's hearth.

The paint like liquid.

The dark wood floor, a crimson sea.

Her promise was well, and truly kept, and she suffered for it knowing her part had been played.

"What do you want, Arahim?"

The talk that passed between them was stilted. All wrong.

The familiarity, the song of it, was gone.

The cadence not shared, but rather exchanged.

The unnatural sound refused to fill the room, and scudded through the candlelight like a ship lost in pooling evening shadows.

The things of greatest import they both had to say, proved always the most difficult. It was as if the paring down of what was felt over years into something as set, and defined as just words would somehow forever diminish the feelings. A kind of cruel magic that once given form, made smoke of some small piece of who you were -- never to be returned.

Cezanne only smiled sadly upon Arahim.

She was not him.

She had not lost herself as he was now lost, and so saw their exchange with perfect recognition.

"Find what it is you want, and be happy."

She did not run, or say goodbye. A swirl of Summer-colored skirt whispered around her legs, as she took her leave and climbed the stairs to her rooms above.

Arahim's quiet goodnight answered her previous question, and went unheard.

[Arahim]

---

Lists. Tasks. Places.


A finch rested briefly from flight,
and perched on a sill outside.
Trilling happily, she chased off the last chill of Night,
welcoming again the Day.


Two sheets of thick, cream colored paper kept the plate and utensils of breakfast company on an otherwise unoccupied table in the Bramble Rose Theatre. One was finished, placed face-up to the right of his fork, and knife, and rumpled cloth napkin. The other stared up at him slowly taking a life for itself as the quill moved over the empty bits, and filled them in where it would.

Arahim printed out every character in a clean, steady hand. Each line was made up of no more than five or six words evenly spaced down near three quarters the length of the page. He left room in between because one never knew when comment, reminder, or rejoinder would come to mind.

The grain of the new stone table he leaned over gave the black ink a pebbled look that was tactile in a pleasing, if faint, way.

The finished product before him was headed by the word, Places. Below, the names of sites that appeared on no map...at least, not as he had them named. This was not to say that no one had ever visited, or passed them by in their travels, only to say that each was a place given to a wild, unsullied beauty, and quiet, dreaming melancholy. Places where few enough tread, and fewer still regarded as remarkable.

Each lay at the end of fortunate accidents, and aimless paths. A resting place rather than a true destination.

And each he meant to revisit, one a day at noontime, in the hopes to see Cezanne. For these were shared places that at the very least, offered fond remembrances. A solace that needed no sounds or signs to make it real, or important.

Smiling vaguely at nothing, Arahim scanned down the list, and made a final accounting. It was as varied in tone and location as a child's list of wishes.

He thought it a hideous luck to awake at long last to a life whose promise had passed him over while he dreamed. Worse still to feel as if two lives lived at oblique angles burned each other out at the end of the course. A loss felt twofold which left him new in a hollow, unhappy way.

The list to his right, completed first, and quickly, linked him to Ashencrosse. It gave him works to do -- some small, and overlooked, some far reaching, maybe even esoteric. He did not care to be noticed, or thanked, only that he could be counted upon. He wanted those whom it mattered to, to know that he looked outside his windows and saw a home.

The second, this one before him, gave him hope. Even if it came to less than two hours out of a commonplace day, it gave him a time to look forward to. An opportunity to offer his overdue regard, and thanks to her for keeping stride with him when all was benighted. That simple, but rare humanity, and blessed affection that let a person know that they meant something. That what they did mattered.

In the years they had known each other, as if in passing phases of Moon and Sun, Arahim could not say if he had ever given her anymore than that. If they two were fated to forever thank the other for some small favor, or loyalty. Some kindness neither overthought, but offered freely.

He was sure he would never ask.

For the time before him, he was not sure he even had more than that.

A dancing pin-prick of flame he'd set thinly atop a tall, tapered wick. He'd let her then see what she would see, and he would hope.