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Waking Up:
The dawn light after the Festival of Grasses was cold and clear. The alpine meadows of the ceremony grounds met the sun with their own dewy shine. Distantly, birds began to sing their own exultations, carrying to the awakening revelers the echoing memory of story and song.
With the slowly rising awareness of those who have met their rest only after the fullness of celebration, Imiris opened faer eyes and woke to the world after the festival. Curled around their companion from the night before, he took a moment to feel the heat of their body and listen to their heartbeat. She sat up from the bedroll and yawned. They smiled and shook out xer hair in a rustling cascade of flowers and curls.
Faer companion was still sleeping as xe dressed for travel. E settled back beside them before they went on his way. Eir companion’s hand lay beside their face on the nest of pillows around them. With a soft and tender touch, Imiris lifted their hand and kissed their knuckles.
“Good morning, lovely one,” she said.
His companion rose onto one elbow with a groan, and looked up at Imiris with soft blue eyes. Imiris flushed dark green and ran a hand along their jaw.
“I’m going, but I didn’t want you to wake and wonder where I was,” fae said.
“So soon?”
“The festival is over lovely one, and I am bound elsewhere.”
“The festival will come again in three years’ time. Will I see you here again?”
“Perhaps,” said Imiris. They meant it. Fae always meant everything he said even when xe was lying.
Her companion smiled, their eyes full of the wonder and listless regret for the beautiful and fleeting.
“Then go with my blessing, and my thanks for your farewell,” they touched Imiris’ cheek and he leaned into their palm. Then xe stood and gathering faer cloak around them, ducked out of the tent and into the dawn.
In Sacred Darkness:
Dripping water, scuttling creatures, and his own terror-quickened breathing. That was all Gregor could hear in the cave. He could see nothing. He scrambled by hand across the sharp rocks, bloody cuts on his palms from all the pitch-dark caverns behind him, too frightened to pause for even a moment in case the horrible yipping creatures who had been keeping him prisoner were following. He wasn’t even sure if he was heading toward the surface.
There had been a little light in the cave where his cage was kept, and he had seen three people fighting the pack of monsters, but when the beasts had left his prison unguarded he’d fled. Gregor wouldn’t lie to himself. He wasn’t a fighter. He just wanted to see the sun again.
He froze as a new sound echoed off the unseen stones ahead. Someone was crying. Low and unself-conscious sobs as they walked through some tunnel ahead. The sound of their shuffling footsteps paused.
“Hello?” he heard a high and gentle voice call. They sniffled. “Who are you and why is it you’re crawling?”
Gregor started to speak, but his voice came out just a croak through his dry throat. He heard a rustling of cloth as someone moved beside him. Perhaps he’d started hallucinating, but he could smell fresh flowers as though he were already outside. He choked for a moment as a waterskin was pressed to his lips, but then took it in his hands and started to drink greedily.
After a moment, he handed back the skin. Rather, he held it out and felt it removed from his hand. Gregor settled his back to a stone behind him and sat down to rest his aching legs a moment, feeling safer now someone was with him.
“I was crawling to keep from falling over. The caverns turn and climb unexpectedly, I didn’t want to run into something. Why is it you’re crying?”
“I got separated from Lucient and Samael in the fighting. I’m worried about my friends, that’s all. Can you not see?” said the stranger.
Gregor snorted, “In these pitch-dark caves where the sun has never shone and never shall. Of course I can’t see”
“Would you like to?”
“Certainly, it’d save my palms getting slit open on every rock from here to the surface, but I can hardly will my eyes to take in light that isn’t there”
“May I kiss you?” the stranger asked.
“I - um, what?” said Gregor.
“May I kiss your eyes so that you can see?”
“I . . . I suppose so,” Gregor closed his eyes.
On first his left and then his right eyelids he felt the gentle brush of soft lips. He opened his eyes.
The caverns around him were now outlined in soft greys and deeper shadows, and just in front of him the smiling tear-stained face of his rescuer.
“Come on,” they said, “let’s find our way out together.”
A Misunderstanding of Nature:
Lucient and Samael where speaking in secret. Samael held in his gauntleted hand the intricately faceted ruby he had discovered in the crypt of Sylas the Impaler. Lucient regarded it cooly, his face betraying none of his panic.
“You say it’s been speaking to you?” Lucient asked.
“When I look into it, yes. It says it is a fragment of the soul of Kas.”
“And you asked me to come to this conversation alone, in the middle of the night, without Imiris because . . .”
Samael sighed. “I know this isn’t something to handle myself, but Imiris can be a little . . . childish. I don’t want to be impulsive with this. Kas was an evil man, but this isn’t him. With this fragment, perhaps we can reach an understanding.”
Lucient crossed his arms. He thought a while. “Fine, I see your point. Don’t make a habit of this, though. Imiris is our friend, and we shouldn’t go behind her back like this. What do you suggest we do with the fragment?”
“Mostly I’m just curious. It hasn’t spoken to anyone else so far, perhaps it’s interested in me specifically. Which I find concerning.” Samael rested a hand on the pommel of Kas’ sword at his hip.
“Have you asked it any questions?”
“I asked it who it was. I asked it how I could be sure. It told me what color the leather wrap of Kas’ sword was dyed. Then I stopped talking to it.”
“Well unless rubies have eyes it couldn’t have just looked.” Lucien chuckled, looked at Samael’s stony face and grew serious again. “I must admit, purple wouldn’t be my first guess, so that’s probably Kas. A bit of him at least.”
Samael huffed, the closest the man ever came to laughing. “I understand it’s not exactly unassailable morals to be keeping a fragment of an ancient scourge in my coin purse to be interviewed, but I think this could be important. Kas is from another era, who knows what he might be able to tell us. I don’t think Imiris would be able to make peace with that. I agree we shouldn’t keep secrets from xem, but perhaps this can be an exception?”
Lucient nodded, “As much as I-” he paused. He smelled fresh lavender and lilies.
“Y’know,” said Imiris’ shadow from the tree boughs above, “I only sleep four hours a night, and I usually spend the rest looking at the stars while I wait for you two to wake up.”
Lucient shuffled his feet. “Imiris, I’m -”
“No I’m sorry!” Imiris shouted. They rolled off the tree boughs, shaking free a hail of leaves as he landed beside Lucient. “Sorry I trusted people like you two! Childish? Is that what you think of me?”
Samael slid the ruby back into the velvet bag on his swordbelt. “I know you’re older than us, but what I meant was -”
“I know what you meant.” Imiris looked between the two men’s downcast faces with tears streaming silently down faer cheeks. “I’m not like you. Nobody ever taught me to be ashamed of how I feel and I don’t intend to learn. I know the only humans that are like that are children, but that doesn’t make me one.”
Samael took a step back. There was a moment with no sound but the distant crackling of the fire’s embers. A crow called on the other side of the clearing.
Samael cleared his throat. “Imiris I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to think of you that way. You’re a warrior and a poet and you’ve saved my life a few times.”
“And you’ve saved mine,” said Imiris, “Now can we start acting like it?”
After they’d talked over what was to be done with the fragment of Kas’ soul and begun walking back towards their camp, Lucient caught Imiris’ shoulder.
“For the record, I’m sorry too. We’ll be better, I promise”
Imiris smiled and hugged him. “I just want us to solve our problems together. What’s the point otherwise?”
Lucient nodded. “Do you mind if Samael and I finish sleeping?”
Imiris’ laugh was like a brook bubbling over stones. “Not at all, I’ll watch out for you.”
When I Find You Again:
It had been a year since Great Aten cracked the sky with the heavenblade and poured ruin down upon the holy city of Mesa Haran. The clouds wept tears of boiling blood, the sun was swallowed by darkness, and the firmament echoed with screams of torment from worlds beyond. In desperate struggle for the future of reality, three heroes stood against the would-be tyrant, and they were victorious.
Lucient Marin-Cetinesius, the Lightning-strike of Arcane Secrets and Pillar of the Empyrean Restoration, was walking along a dirt road next to a farm. The rich loamy smell of soil after spring rain suffused the air, and the lowing of cattle on the hills nearby accompanied the chirping of songbirds. He smiled, the countryside seemed so alive after seeing how near it all came to ruin. He would never look at it quite the same way again.
The vitality of this place seemed suspicious, though. Lucient would never profess to be much of a hunter, but if his quarry were the type to leave footprints this place would be covered in their dancing steps. He cast his eyes around the fields and caught sight of a distant form lying in a fallow field.
Imiris lay, humming softly through faer perpetual half-smile of rest, in a pool of tassled cloak and flower-choked hair. As Lucient drew closer he saw that pher hair was rooted into the farmland like a patch of wildflowers in a meadow. He walked to her quietly, but they heard all the same. Xe opened his eyes and beamed.
“Lucient!” fae reached out their arms toward him, “come here, come here, come here,”
Lucient laughed, his heart suddenly overflowing. He laced his hands into Imiris’ fingers like he knew fae liked and looked into eir violet-petal eyes. “For someone who leaves such a strong impression on everyone he meets, you are a hard person to find.”
Imiris laughed, “I didn’t mean to be, but I don’t like to sit still.” Without lifting her head they cast faer eyes about the field near Lucient. “Where’s your husband?”
“Samael is with Queen Macha, something about an urgent need for a ceremonial guard by one of the legendary heroes: Sir Samael Marin-Cetinesius, the Thunder of the Gods’ Justice and Blade of the New Dawn, had to answer the call”
The two old friends laughed together, Lucient’s deep chuckle mingling with Imiris’ bubbling giggles.
“But my friend what is it you’re doing here? I can’t say there was anywhere I especially expected to find you, but why this wheat farm?” asked Lucient.
Imiris smiled with a kindled excitement, “I’m enriching the fields magically. It takes a long time, but I’ve got to the point I can do three square miles in a day. When we finished fighting that one really mean crocodile-headed lady,”
“Great Aten, the Ruin of Elysium and Breaker of Wills” Lucient said.
“Oh, who remembers? But after that everyone was worried about a big famine because of all the crops that blood-rain destroyed. There’s only so much fertile land left near Mesa Haran, but I’ve been going around enriching all of it. Soon I don’t think we’ll have to worry about any famine at all,”
Lucient’s eyes glistened and he squeezed Imiris’ hands affectionately. “I’m glad to hear it. How long before you finish here?”
“Almost done, so about two more hours”
“Well, I’ll wait here then.” Lucient settled down beside his friend in the wet earth. “How have you found being a legendary hero treats you?”
Imiris frowned, “It’s nice that people are so kind to me, and I feel like now they know I’m there to help.”
Lucient knew to push further if he ever wanted Imiris to admit things weren’t perfect. “But something else is bothering you?”
Imiris blushed, “The title is a little much. I get impatient when people are just trying to say hello.”
Lucient laughed and tousled Imiris flowery hair despite their half-hearted attempt to slap his hand away. “Why, Imiris Duskpetal, the Rain of Nature’s Mercy and Constellation of the Mended Firmament, whatever do you mean?”
In a twisting swirl of flowers and leaves Imiris’ form shifted and a floral-wreathed elk tossed Lucient playfully over it’s antlers. He hit the dirt and rolled, thoroughly soiling his robes of office, and sat up still laughing as the phosphorescent green elk trotted over to lick his hair and ruin his ceremonial braids.
Lucient rubbed the elk’s velvety nose as xe huffed in his face and shifted back to his friend now kneeling in an embrace. Imiris kissed his cheek.
“Now stop distracting me with your petty annoyances, little mortal,” Imiris’ moonbeam smile thoroughly cast aside any chance of Lucient thinking fae was even slightly annoyed, “I need to finish my spell, then you can drag me off to whatever errand requires my prowess as a legendary hero”
Lucient smiled and returned faer kiss to his cheek. “It’s really nothing urgent. Samael and I have heard stories of a festival in a circle of meneer stones by the Kedarnath Mountains. It sounded like your kind of party, maybe you’d like to join us?”
Imiris laughed, and Lucient recognized the special pitch of giggle for when Imiris was sharing a joke with no one but faerself. “Absolutely, Lucient. I will gladly join you and Sir Samael for the Festival of Grasses.”
Lucient smiled and nodded. Then he paused “Wait, how did you know what it’s called?”