Chapter Text
SOMEONE’S CHILDISH GIGGLE CHASED AWAY the sparrows, and a small shadow fell across the stretch of Laviana’s chest. Even though her eyes were closed, she thought of rolling them. “What is it now?”
“Nothing.” He said it quickly. She could just imagine him fighting the smirk off his face. “Just that it’s getting dark. Momma said we should be home before sundown at the latest.”
“That doesn’t sound like nothing,” Laviana said even as the boy dropped to the ground beside her, laying his head against her stomach. She made a show of grunting at his weight even as she leveled her breathing so he might rest comfortably. “Do you think your momma can wait?”
“No,” he said after a serious consideration. “But a few more minutes.”
Laviana cracked open one eye and then both. Strands of white hair, long and choppy that he refused to let her cut, fell across her torso like unwoven thread. His chiton, white and accented with blue threading that she had tried so hard to learn, was dusted in a fine layer of dirt and grass from playing with the forest’s bunnies. That meant they’d all be back out here soon enough, washing the fabric at the nearby river which rushed and curled with rapids that the children liked to chase each other through.
It could be called community service—Laviana’ role. Aedes Elysiae’s petty thief, underhand tricks and sly smiles, had been offered a chance to make amends for her crimes. When she had gone around to families, asking how they could be reimbursed, some knew her as Pythias the teacher’s daughter, or Livia’s older sister. They had extended her kindness, and gradually her role became something of a babysitter.
“Laviana,” he began quietly, fighting some sort of war with himself in the silence. He turned on his side, and she unfolded the arms under her head to lean up on her elbows. “Do you think…” she felt him swallow against the contours of her chest. “...do you think you could ever have the strength to hold up the sky?”
“I think,” she said evenly, sighing out the words, “I would be crushed.”
“I think I’d survive,” he declared easily, a high-and-mighty lift to his voice. Determination was sewn into the corners of his eyes, half shut in pride. “I’d crush the sky if I had to!”
“Well, let me know when you plan on that.” Laviana sat up, the boy’s head rolling from her stomach to her legs, an easy target to kick away. “I’d like to be distinctly far away from any sky-crushing activities.”
“I make no promises!”
He giggled as he got to his feet, brushing back his matted hair and smoothing the dirt over his knees. He held out both his hands, palms up like an offering, and smiled with teeth made of pearls. It was the sort of smile that one outgrew with age—Laviana already had, and Livia and Cyrene were in the process of it—but not this silly, small, saccharine child. It was the sort of smile she’d kill to see him keep making.
“C’mon, kid.” Laviana said it even as he helped her to her feet, hoisting her up by their hands. “Let’s hurry up. Isn’t Cyrene staying over for dinner?”
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𖤓°⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
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Aedes Elysiae was a quaint coastal town. As they walked, he waved his free hand to the butcher and the old woman weaving clothes on her doorstep. All together, they made the vague shape of a star: shops and a park gathered in the center, houses scattered across the edges. The two of them were headed from north to south, cutting through the decorations being laid for the festival of light.
They did not get many visitors, and there were far fewer with the opportunity to leave. Ohkema and the Grove of Epiphany were more than distant—myths, at best, like their titans of blessings. Laviana told him about Kephale as they walked; a giant who hoisted the Dawn Device into the sky, saving a Holy City from eternal gloom.
“What happens if that gloom threatens us?” He didn’t sound particularly scared as he asked it, swinging their hands back and forth.
“Then I suppose,” Laviana said, considering the question not for the first time, “we’d need a new sun too. Preferably one that is not crushed with the sky.”
Exaggeratedly tilting up his nose, he sniffed at the air. “I’ll see what I can do.”
They turned off the road and stepped up to one of the doors that lined it—a small, white limestone house fitted with red curtains and a blue wool rug at the door. A wind chime hung from the wooden beams that supported their makeshift patio, cloth of blue covering them from the setting sun. Laviana could hear laughter drifting out from the window, coiling its way outside; Phainon tended to perch on the kline inside, eyes peering over the wall’s edge.
“Terrible timing of you to destroy the sun on the festival of light,” Laviana noted mildly as the door swung open, white-haired Audata on the other end. Her eyes went to her son first, a slightly reproachful tossing of his hair.
“Did you beg Miss Laviana for another three minutes again this time?” She asked knowingly, no real heat behind her voice, and he curled into her touch like a sunflower and the sun.
“No,” he said simply, blinking innocently up at his mother. “I asked her for a few minutes.”
Two separate scoffs. Audata shoved him past her, barreling into the house, and Laviana could make out the rise of Cyrene and Hieronymus’s laughter. The woman’s smile was grateful when she looked back at her. “How much do I owe you this time?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Laviana said, waving her hand as if to dust away the issue between them. “I’m sorry I wasn’t really keeping track of time.”
Above the woman’s shoulder, she could make out his eyes darting to them every now and again, half listening as Cyrene told him about the new language she’d come up with in Livia and Piso’s company.
“Oh, dear, don’t worry about that,” Audata laughed. “I was just teasing him; take him out of the house for as long as you wish! At least that way he can’t knock over any other amphoras of mine.”
“Don’t leave them on the floor then!” came the small, distant shout from the dinner table.
“Would you like to come to the festival with us?” The older woman asked, gathering hair behind her head. Her hands were dusted in powdery flour, and it slipped through the strands. “I know your mom likes to hang with us adults, and Livia is usually asleep by now, right?”
Peering around Audata, Laviana watched as the boy nodded vigorously, Cyrene laughing at him from behind cupped palms. The old warrior sitting beside them was Hieronymus, Audtata’s husband who refused to parade around in anything but his armor and broken sword of the glory days. He shook his head gently, smiling as he turned the empty cup across the table—Laviana got the sense that he’d ceased listening to his surroundings, overwhelmed by the presence of children.
“As long as I'm off the clock,” she decided, laughing the words out. “I am not chasing those two through the crowds.”
Audata sighed with experience, laying her snowy hand on Laviana’s arm. The look in her eyes was one only the mother of a troublesome son could have—as if she’d stared into the belly of a beast. “Tell me about it, my dear.”
She turned to enter, and Laviana closed the door behind them. Audata slid into her seat, gesturing at her son when she saw him chewing a mouthful of bread he’d stolen from Cyrene’s plate. “Take Miss Laviana to my room; she can look at my jewelry for something sunny.”
He tilted his head, a curious puppy that someone might have dragged in from the streets. “You’re not gonna make me change into something cleaner?”
Audata just shook her head, casting her fingers out in a haphazard gesture. “Titans know you're only going to fall and dirty up whatever else you put on—that, or you’ll come out wearing orange and purple again. This is fine enough, I suppose.”
Grinning, the boy pushed up from the table and gestured for Laviana to follow after him. The house was built like a box split almost evenly in four: the kitchen, the dining room, the parents’ bedroom, and the child’s. He led her to the curtain that hid the master bedroom from sight and pushed the fabric easily away. Each time she’d visited, Laviana had never been beyond it.
There was a dresser at the wall sitting across from the bed. Atop it lay beautiful chests of jewelry, easily propped open on hinges. He fished his fingers through an amphora laying on the floor and came away with a few sets of rings. The symbol of Aedes Elysiae, a sun disemboweled, lingered amongst the cache. Laviana had long since forgotten why, or what started the annual festival of light. If she’d known, she’d have told him. She always told him the myths she knew.
“Momma made it sound like you can pick out anything,” he said, stepping back as Laviana looked over the finery. “She likes that bracelet a lot! Oh, and those rings. She likes to wear them together.”
Sliding on the ones that fit, Laviana flashed her fingers and wrists in his direction. She was rewarded with a double thumbs up, glee stitched into the corners of his smile. She turned her attention back to the boxes, running her fingers across the jewelry for a final ornament. When she found a pearl surrounded by sun rays, she hooked a finger around it and found that it was a necklace.
“Your mom likes to wear this one a lot, doesn’t she?”
He giggled, shifting the weight of his feet just to feel the relief of movement. “Yeah, I think so! She told me once that it was going to be mine, since they thought I’d be a girl.”
Laughing a little, maybe because she wasn’t sure what to say to the story, Laviana clipped the pendant around her neck and let it fall. She turned, holding out her palm. “Ready to go?”
“Ready to go,” he echoed.
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𖤓°⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
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In a small town such as theirs, there was no concept of “strangers”. Laviana had known her neighbors since infancy, the tailor since her first birthday, and the butcher since she could talk. In this village, not a man was nameless. The park was coming apart at the seams with faces and chatter, school children running around with paper lanterns.
Laying on Laviana’s lap again, she herself sitting on the blanket they’d laid across the dew drop grass, he looked up with his curious blue eyes. “If it's the festival of light,” he began, “why do they hold it at night?”
“You ask people that every year,” Cyrene complained.
“And I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer,” he complained, gesturing with his arms. “I can literally see the stars!”
It was true; he at least had not adopted the tendency of lying from her. Glorious constellations spilled out across the universe, spelling out stories of souls that had drifted skyward. There was the immortal hunter at the horizon, his prey just east. The goat was south, and the man almost directly overhead.
“Well...” Laviana laughed as she tilted back her head, neck craned up at the firmament. “Are stars not the brightest lights of all?”
Taking a moment to think, he looked up and met her eyes, gaze sweeping across her chin until she looked down to meet him. The azure of it was a trait common in the village, but sometimes the light would twist—sometimes, Laviana thought she saw an image of the world as a wheel.
“Meh,” he said finally. “You used to say that my smile was the brightest.”
Their language was a vast well, but they used a specific word for bright. Phōteinós. Something glowing, alight. Often, the word was considered so beautiful it was used as the base for names. Laviana teased him sometimes, calling diminutives after his back.
Laviana hummed and hawed. “You know, I say a lot of things.”
His gasp came at the same time as the tolling bells and was washed away in the wake of them. Parents quieted their rambunctious, dancing children, and left only the whistle of wint and soft clanking of armoured steps on dirt. Plucking the lanterns from their hands, the adults drew the young back down to the softer crowd of blankets. Laviana spotted Audata and Hieronymus sitting together with her mother, whispering amongst themselves. Cyrene sat up a little straighter as the Archon entered the park’s heart, surrounding herself on all sides.
“Aedes Elysiae,” Constance began, feeling out the words in her mouth. She spread out the wingspan of her arms as if she intended to welcome them into a hug. “Welcome to the Festival of Light!”
She spoke with the magnetic, immovable cadence that was her’s by birthright; ever since the village’s founding, someone in Constance’s family had shouldered the title of magistrate. Of Archon. Cyrene did not watch her sister with envy in her eyes. It was something closer to pride.
Though she had not run the festival before, the responsibility befalling her father last year, the applause that echoed was natural, easily donated to her glowing countenance. Behind her, the two guards of gold beat their spears into the dirt—a teeth-rattling show of support.
“This is a festival of prosperity,” said the pink-haired woman, hands coming to clasp at her torso. “Of preservation and possibility. The lanterns are our hope, and the sky our realizations. In this spirit, I invite our benevolent prophet, Circe, to speak.”
Among the village elders, there had always been rumours. Of the twins born at dawn, Circe was the black swan and Aurelian the white. One cursed to see into the abyss of fate, and the other born to wield a spear of gold. They looked so different even now—Aurelian the guard, draped in his armory, leaving the stage of grass at Constance’s side. Circe entered in her chiton of blackened wool, dragging against the dew. She had yellow, hawkish eyes that seemed to fossilize the crowd in amber.
“Tell us, o oracle!” Constance spoke from the edge of the audience, raising her hand as if extending a toast. “What do you see of fate’s arrow?”
A maw of blood red lips, opening and closing with faint murmurs threaded apart by the wind. Her golden eyes stared at everything and nothing, far off in the distance. A distant beast’s howl was broken apart by the brisk breeze, tossing Laviana’s hair into her eyes.
When a hand wrapped itself tight around her wrist, nails leaving bloody crescents on her skin, Laviana nearly screamed in pain. Then, when she saw what he was pointing at, fear lodged itself in her throat and refused to leave. Murky, sparkling green mist seemed to seep up from the grass, slowly writhing its way through the tossing air.
“I see…” a twitch at Circe’s brow, the slight tilt of her head. Had Laviana ever heard her sound so unsure? She seemed to pay no need to the whispers and shouts of warning. Maybe she didn’t notice. “There will be much…”
When the wind picked up, it swallowed her and her scream, pulling at the hinges of her mouth. Like an amphora, emerald mist poured out from behind her teeth and once golden eyes. The wind turned into a cyclone, sweeping under her feet, and casting her up from the ground. She looked around for help, green tears frothing at her eyes, and then turned unmistakably towards the boy who was shaking like a dog in Laviana’s lap.
“Phōteinós.” The spirit spoke in the language of snakes. “You will bear the world on hollow shoulders, and you will carry a nameless boulder.”
Then, as they watched, the wind died, and a gale set Circe gently down on her feet. The green mist coiled back into her mouth, seeped into the grass, and unstained her eyes. She collapsed on the dirt, golden gaze staring at the sky, with her bloody mouth still ajar.