Chapter Text
Everything begins with light.
The first light, so long ago, when it descended to the first people, did it know what it would cause? Did the light want this endless circle, this constant chase? Or was the light merely a force to be acted upon, and not an actor in the play?
How bright had it shone, that very first time?
Woven into fabric, tiled on a wall, painted onto stone, pixels on a screen. The same cycle, repeating, with no end. What would you do if you saw the scope of it?
We pause and we wonder. And then, we begin.
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It was a lovely day in the Valley before they showed up.
Riel had earned herself a slot in the Chibi-Slalom Semifinals, which meant she had been here on the practice hill racing the spirit daily. The semi finals would lead to the chance to be in the championship, and the winner of that, rumors said, would win a special way to get free access to the secret area of the Vault of Knowledge. They had all visited during those special days where the guiding spirit stands outside the barrier, but to gain unfettered access would be a boon to all of them, not just the candle-obsessed Riel.
Of course, secret victory trophy or no secret trophy, Marnie wasn’t exactly the best to practice with. She liked to race, except for the parts where she would slide out of control and fall down or fling right off the edge of a cliffside and fall down or just fall down for no reason at all. It was in a skykid’s nature to want to go fast, though Marnie preferred flying to sliding. The others fared no better: Mariposa would leap up and fly the whole way down, Bow took their own sweet time, Anja straight up refused to compete, and Hunter was…well. Hunter had speed down, but the slalom-slide also involved collecting light fragments, which Hunter would speed right past in her rush to get to the end as fast as possible.
It was such a common sight to see Marnie’s ocean cape tumbling around and landing in the snow that the others didn’t even stop; not out of malice, but knowing that if she was hurt, she would call for them. She wasn’t even surprised to get a maskfull of snow, honestly. She felt her legs kicking up where there was still air, but her upper half and most of her cape sat deep in a drift. She let out the customary two honk call of “please help,” only to then notice something in front of her. Buried there, under the snow, there was something-
“Wait!” She cried as she felt hands on her feet, pulling her free. She reached blindly before her, hoping to grab at the mystery item, and with a rip, she was free. She quickly checked her cape for any damage, but no, the ripping sound had been another thing entirely. A loose scrap of red fabric. One of the competition flags must have gotten buried under the last snowfall-no. This was something else. The fabric was responding to her light, illuminating much like a cape would, but with a type of rune she hadn’t seen before.
“What’s th-Is someone buried??” Mariposa cried, pushing past to dig at the hold where Marnie had been, only to come up a moment later shaking her head. “False alarm. I think you got one of those flags, there’s just a stick down there.”
“But look at it,” Marnie said, holding the fabric bit out. “It’s glowing.”
“Marnie, basically everything glows. We are beings made out of light, that’s how it works,” Bow cut in, sliding into the group from their very, very late position at the rear. Riel honked from her space at the end of the track, and Hunter, ever the contrarian, honked twice as loud for good measure.
“I don’t know, maybe they used to weave light into those things. I mean, that’s what you do,” Mari offered with a little half-shrug, already turning to slide down the hill, Bow on her heels. Marnie stood a moment, thinking. Sure, she was a tailor, a fixer of capes when they got torn by any of the things a skykid could get caught on, but she was well versed in the kinds of symbols that get put onto various fabrics. She knew the special wing signifiers, the emblems of the seasons, the marks of the elders, but this looked more like one of the faded symbols on a stone from the Graveyard in Golden Wasteland, not a traditional light marking. Was it someone’s practice piece? But why stitch light, such a valuable resource, into a formation from a grave?
She knew she wasn’t going to like it, but the answer to that question probably lay beyond the boneyard.