“Nice, we made it.” Raptor notes, less surprised than the pigeon. They pull from their bag a gritty green tablet and rub a few things out, scratching things back in with their claws.
“Are-” Vasan stutters and trills, “Are we actually-”
“Above the shatter. Upwards of the Dominant Band.” Raptor bags the tablet and seals the drawstring of their bag in a smooth motion as they kneel a bit more upright, peeking out of the leaves.
Vasan notices their bag of fruit still with them, along with Raptor's truffle bag. “How? Why-”
“I've heard,” Raptor tries to stand taller. “when you start a story, it's best to do it as close to the end as possible.” Raptor tries to stand taller. “If you want to get to the moon, the fourth ain’t the place to start.”
Vasan's beak slacks open, they grasp their bag and stand up more slowly to look around. The horizon is different up here. Clearer, rounder. There are more water veins below them than above. The many island bits that scattered and overshadowed them not hours earlier were much thinner and more sparse. More light got through. Flitting back and forth, wandering closer to the end of the branch they stood on, their mouth stays agape. The sight evokes a whisper, “Wow”.
Raptor hears it, their eyes smile at the same sight, and at the wonder they have introduced to a total stranger.
“I've been under the third my whole life.” Vasan turns to them, “I've only hovered between three and four. I never thought about trying to get through the belt.”
“Congratulations, now you ain't gotta.” Raptor's eyes grin warmer than the chiller tone of their voice would imply.
Vasan stays amazed. I can relate to how they feel. I can make no sense of what had just gone on. Vasan's mind stops swirling as their gaze sticks to their new friend's face, made more vibrant by the sun and moonlight crossing their paths across their scales.“Wild” They whimper.
Raptor suggests they return to the city. Vasan breaks their transfixion and gathers their things. Raptor grabs their mask and hides their face again.
The city they approached was vibrant enough to make the golden mask raptor had look dull. They kept it on regardless.
Vasan makes remarks at the extravagance, which Raptor ignores.
Elionos happened to be one of the most prominent planetary nodes for swarming activity. An enormous amount of my bugs were there in a nearby temple. I sputter at Vasan.
“Is there a temple here?” Vasan asks for me.
“The” Raptor turns and pauses, “Temple.”
Vasan tilts their head. The two catch eyes and freeze for a moment.
“You don't know?” They point to Vasan, then me specifically, “The church of the golden scarab's got their capital here.”
“The chruch has a capital?” Vasan muses, poking me. I flip through a few different colors before returning to a default gold shimmer.
Raptor nods as if Vasan asked if the sky was blue. More allegorically, as if they were asked if anyone knew about that Jesus guy, “They’re a pretty big deal, didn’t you know?”
Vasan shakes their head. Raptor scoffs, “Anyone who picks up one of these usually knows where they’re going to be lead.”
Vasan answers, “I assumed being lead to the moon would end us up at the moon.”
Raptor returns a headshake, “You said you wanted to make your way to the moon. Usually the golds want to pull you up, but to here, not to the moon. Then everyone gets stuck here once they see it. They think it’s ok.” They arrange some things in their bag. “You’ve really never heard of this place?”
Vasan still feels my tugging toward the Fifth Moon on the horizon. “No.”
“This is the island of Elionos. The highest island.” Raptor gestures around, then more directly at a cluster of temples surrounding the base of a huge fruit tree, “And that there,” They turn to see Vasan's reaction, “is the tree of Vexti-Kexnos.”
Vasan Doesn't really have a reaction. They've seen wilder things. “You know the area?” Vasan asks.
“Been here once or twice.” Raptor brushes off, “But I got more reasons to avoid the place than to stay here.”
The two keep walking, making their way past the outlying fringe and toward a more bustling town plaza. Every tree around them twisted into intricate, decorative shapes. Most are functional architecture, but many are merely woven living branches intertwined into some actively tended living statues. Statues of drek. Statues of various fauna. Large icons of dren. A circle of these installations surround a large fountain in the center of the lively clearing. The steady stream of an upward spray gently mists the two as they wander closer. “Like what?”
Raptor glares through their mask. I click in the same way I’d tell Vasan to pull up. They get the message.
I tug Vasan along, as the masked starling falls behind to follow. The two approach a temple, and I nearly lose them in the overwhelming signal of my bugs swarming, but quickly realize that with this many reference points, I am able to see them much more clearly than before. The sunlight gives way to a band of earthlight that sweeps over them, and I see the colors Vasan and Raptor reflect shift as the heart of the temple tree bathes them in earthlight. The spacey shades of Vasan’s feather coat turn more modest, the lines and trim around Raptor's face vanish to a more unassuming scale coat. With the change, Vasan notices a cooling in Raptor's surrounding air, and turns to ask, “Something wrong?”
Raptor shrugs, their scales taking a few seconds to come back to full shimmer, “Things are fine.” They come up with a less assuring way to wave it off, “Whenever I come back I think of how much I've seen that these simple happy drek will never know. I always think how many actually want to know what I know, and who will never care to.” A Drek lands in the space next to where we walk, Raptor flinches as the stranger takes up more space than they need to, “And how you can never tell who’s who.”
“Maybe you think too much about what’s on other people’s minds.” Vasan suggests, “Everyone’s got secrets,” They round the fountain, exchanging glances with the multicolored, glowing amber eyes of the corvid-shaped drek statue they pass, “some secrets you wish you knew earlier and some you wish you didn’t.” They notice their traveling partner less enraptured by the statues, and more affixed on the pigeon's rare bout of wisdom. “You can never see all 3 shades of a Drek at once, you know? It’s like wasting effort to try.”
“In some circles you need to know what others around you are thinking.” Raptor comes back, “Some people at the top here never leave that mindset either.”
“How do you know that?” Vasan guffaws, waiting for a response from Raptor but not getting one. They continue. “You can’t really know that for sure.” Vasan flits their head at the direction of the masked silence with a concerned curiosity in their eyes. “Life’s just like that, I grew up like that, too. You get knocked around and you cracks. You get cracked so much that you can only see other people through the filter of those cracks.” Raptor sighs, as if disapointed in the lack of depth in the pigeon's outlook. Vasan continues, “Like, you took me here, and I have no way to read your mind to figure out why.”
“I told you why.” Raptor rears to repeat, “To get you closer to the moon.”
“You wouldn't go out of your way just to help me that much.”
“I didn't really have a way I was going before.” Raptor walks ahead of the two, leading us into the mouth of the largest, most ornate entrance of the Vexti-Kexnos cathedral. “You gave me one.”
Raptor steers the two of them around exiting crowds and various town-square item hockers as they near the tree's mouth, and the hum and waves of sparks swells through the thickening air around them.
Vasan catches up. “No, really. If you're trying to avoid this place, why are you leading us this deep into it?”
Raptor peeks over their shoulder, a light smile somehow beaming through their mask before their tone cools gravely, “Because they owe me.”
Vasan is not sure how to press that subject. Half of a “What?” leaves their beak before they're cut off.
“There’s someone I talk to here.” Raptor answers, brushing past any possible introspection, bringing them under an arch and into view of the main temple tree. “They're in the belly of the beast, now.”
They approach a chorus of droning birds and bugs. The temple is resonant, but it is very good at containing and recursing its resonance. It blasts through a corridor of the most neatly woven branches, their bark stripped clean and mantras etched along each strand. A group of monks is near the mouth, fixing a few frayed folds. They're lost in their chants and their work with styluses scratching straighter strokes than claws can, and cables to pull the younger branches through the tight weave. We continue down this corridor until we join a session of vibrant worship.
The bugs spiral out in these tight, but wavy fibonacci increments, twirling from funnels that emerge from dotted center-points. They circle, forming a twisted and erratic cage around the central core. The inside mass of bugs from which these swarms erupt is hidden by the endless flutter. Several Drek hold arms and sway, singing a solid perfect fifth to the swarm.
As they stand toward the back, a minister in darker robes watches. Vasan notices, but says nothing. When Raptor notices, they pull us aside to that minister. Vanishing behind a wall does enough to buffer the deafening hum and buzz and squeal of the church worship. The bird turns away, disappearing behind an ornate door. Raptor walks up to it and raps at the wood.
Part of the ornate design on the door slides away to reveal two leering eyes. The eyes scan the two of them and then slam the sliding door shut.
Raptor knocks again. They hear a call. “ qAmiO ueidiAsiĒĒĒ! "
Raptor spits, “ tuh. se asmi, hestresthe. tu ueid am. "
“ aiueidiAsĒ ueuqan inEpusElai? ”
“ is-ueuqiAmi izekqiel, zekqel. ” Raptor rattles off, then again more naturally and directly. “I want to see Ezekiel, Jaquel.”
The window slides out again, with another examination, and then slams back shut.
Vasan chokes back a laugh, Raptor hears enough of the attempt to side-eye them.
The door opens. This Drek has a hood, and their head under it glints a dull teal as their voice comes through like whining through gravel, “And you follow me here?”
Raptor nods.
With the intensity of yelling and all the tonal noise of a whisper, the bird chides, “You think I can put you up, anywhere, wherever, whenever you show up?”
“I didn’t think you’d be here,” Raptor responds, “I thought if anything you’d be on the moon.”
The teal headed bird glares through their hood. “Who is this Pigeon you brought with you? Are you expecting me to house the two of you?”
Vasan breathes in to speak. I click to tell them to let the two talk.
“I don’t really know what I was expecting.”
“Oh, isn’t that how it always is with you?” The Teal bird scolds.
“But you don’t want to leave two young travelers out in the open in Elionos, do you?” Raptor pushes, firmly planted, “You don’t have the heart to make us seek shelter in a stranger’s monastery, do you?”
The stranger freezes to a shiver under their cloak. After a moment their shoulders thaw and the ice escapes their throat, “Both of you, follow me.”
Caverns in Aqnepinne buildings are not normally linear, or purely horizontal. Climbing is expected, vertical shifting tunnels replace halls. But the monastery was strangely gridded on the inside, so much so that Vasan was disoriented.
As they weave deeper and deeper into the temple, they find a dark, torch and glow-bloom lit hall.
“Wait here.” The bird tells them, with a drift through a wall of vines that weaves itself shut behind them.
The silence between the two birds, who’ve been loosely tethered strangers for all of half a day, lasts a minute.
Vasan makes small talk. “You know, this will be the third monastery I've stayed at in three days. You know the boat-”
“Show ‘em a shiny beetle that chose you and they go nuts for that shit.” Raptor says, “Guess you’re the Patron Saint of Pigeons, now.” They turn, to examine the space, “Live it up.”
Vasan examines the space as well. I pick up on inscriptions that run along every seam where live vines meet hard wood and bark.
ulapontisrkistomulom
VLAPONTISRKISTOMVLOM. Make Perfect Choices. “Be careful you don’t get caught in the undertow here.” Raptor adds. Vasan perks up and turns.
“Undertow?”
The teal-headed bird emerges from their chamber, with a bag full of clanking things, and a hood lowered so that the teal of their headfeathers is visible.
“I hope you two don’t mind sharing a room?” The bird puts a thin coat of hospitality over their tired and grated words, directed at Raptor, with their peripheral side-eyes directed our way. Raptor looks over this way, searching for a prompt. Vasan, ever-willing to forfeit making a choice with as little effort possible, shrugs.
“Sure.” Raptor turns back to answer.
The bird doesn’t bother to introduce themself to us yet, and is rather curt.
Raptor waves us into the room first, a guest room made storage space, with shelves hastily cleaned, compartments open and empty, a few odd contraptions up against the walls.
“You moved your workshop into this old room?” Raptor notes from the disarray and blank space, knowing what was there. They eye the corners of the room as if observing changes in a forgotten, familiar space.
“Lives shift and change but woodworking is a grounding habit I cannot give up.” The greenish Drek admits, the off-harmonics in their gravelly voice tuning itself somewhat shameful.
“Good.” Raptor assures, “You’re good at it.”
“Pray the hierarchs don’t discover me,” They rasp, turning to Vasan, “And you pray harder, because now there’s more to discover.”
“I don’t plan on staying here long,” Raptor continues assurance, reclining back on a piled nest, turning to Vasan, who isn’t sure why they’re staying there at all. “I spent too long here before,”
“Good,” The bird turns to leave the room, seeming rushed.
“Wait,” Vasan calls.
The teal headed bird jerks their gaze over and freezes their eyes.
“Izekqiel?” Vasan tries to get their name.
“That is Inepusel to you, Pigeon.” They spit, “Minister of the mausoleum, Transitioner of Aqnepinne souls, Keeper of the Catacombs, which I have to return to.”
They take their leave, vines weaving behind them.
The room is silent. Vasan leaves it that way.
Raptor's sarcasm slices through it. “Still chipper as always.”
Vasan and I are both curious. “I take it you two got a history?”
“Yeah, they're zekqel —— Jaquel to me.” Raptor plops themself back onto the nest, much of their rigid and sharp tension vanishes with a sigh. “Last Drek I knew that was bent on getting to that moon.”
Vasan leans on the side of the nest, making sure not to take up Raptor's space. Raptor scans the scrawlings on the wavy trim of the tree walls.
“Jaquel knows a lot about that shit. Didn’t think they’d get stuck at the top plane.”
“Where did you see them before?”
“The lower Sevenths.” Raptor turns. “They weren’t always this religious, but that changed when they found out the church knew something they didn’t.”
“I’ve met a lot of people who suddenly snap into something or out of something and start going to these places.” Vasan relates.
“When you have your reservations, that shit can really put a wedge in your relationship.” Raptor sighs, “Especially how much time and focus it takes.”
“You just visit all these planes by like… ” Vasan makes some gestures looking for a way to describe what happened, “Mushroom magic?”
Raptor nods, “Only came anywhere near here for Jaquel before, but yeah.”
“Right,” Vasan's eyes smile, looking over their shoulder to the starling, “So you two are like that?”
“Yeah. Like once or twice.”
“Oh so it’s” Vasan changes their tone and emphasis, “like that.”
“I mean, yeah.” Raptor diminishes the subject.
Vasan lets a single guffaw leave their beak.
Raptor cocks their head. “What?”
“This is a whole lot of stuff you're letting a stranger get a view into.”
“Would you rather I stayed a stranger at a drug store?” Raptor shrugs. Vasan shrugs in a diffrent way in return. “It takes a lot out of you to only be in your” They shift their hue to a brighter one to show their point, “sales and service angle forever.”
I can tell Vasan gets the idea that Raptor hasn't had many people to spill their thoughts or feelings to. Given what they know, or at least what Vasan knows they know, It must be very hard to relate to others.
“If you trust me enough with that, it's whatever.” Vasan assures, “I don't get to be open with a lot of people either.”
“Yeah?” Raptor piques. “I'm here if you're looking to start.”
I feel that Vasan is rather caught off guard by this. The rags that the two of them wear are weathered, their paths seemingly shifting into each others merely given the opportunity, and all the while their expressions come in short lived bursts, before they revert back to a kind of unenthused stoicism. Vasan starts to understand that this stranger that tugged them along for this adventure may be the first one in a long time that has anything in common with them. Neither seem to be equipped with what they need to open up about all the things they share. Vasan dances around the offer. Besides, why trust someone like this, this flippant and this detached?
“I don't know where to start.” Vasan cops out. “I'm a wanderer. I've never known any one place for too long, I have too many stories to narrow down.”
Raptor nods, turning to make eye contact. “What got you into wandering?”
Vasan shrugs. “Family. Differences. I see life differently.”
Raptor nods even bigger, “Same here.” They continue, “My family came from upper echelons, but got stuck down below the third. Was the only place they could make way for themselves as the storms shifted things around. They still never grew out of that posh mindset.”
Vasan stands up and paces a bit, nodding along to Raptor's story. Raptor stops for a moment, thinking the pigeon is distracted, but settles back down into the nest and continues.
“I was kind of rebellious. They had a way of life up top they never let go of and I made sure that any chance that came my way to act how they saw savage, I did. They were cautious. In this arc of the planet even people down in the seconds don't take to kindly to faces like mine.”
“People down there look for any reason to make someone an enemy, you know?”
“Yeah but it's easiest when it's staring you in the face.” Raptor sneers.
“I get you.” Vasan says.
“So, rebellion turned to community, you know? I learned to game with kids I wasn't supposed to.”
Vasan turns back, still nodding, “I did the same.”
“Adults back then, geezers now, they still have this animosity for chance games. Even when it's harmless. They see it as gambling when they want the world to be ordered.”
“Really? No one ever tried to stop me when-”
Raptor scoffs. “Lucky you,” Their hands fold behind their head, their wings wrap differently as they fix their position. “The ultimate show of rebellion was breaking into a missionary camp and teaching the kids there to play shit.”
Vasan paces and turns, and stops as the claw of their foot kicks something under a desk. They're suddenly distracted as they reach under to try to grab it. Raptor stops their story and sits up as well. “What's up?”
Vasan grasps something and pulls it out into view, standing up with it. It's a small piece of wood in an intricate shape finished with matte indigo and amber. The pigeon holds it up and eyes the details.
“Oh shit.” Raptor sits up further. “They still kept that.”
Vasan keeps inspecting it. “This game piece?”
“The games with missionaries were how I met Jaquel.” Raptor beams a little brighter, “That's a character they used.” Vasan notices the fumes, still strong as ever emanating off a supposedly old piece. Raptor holds a claw out, “Can I see that?”
Vasan tosses it rather haphazardly at the nest, and Raptor effortlessly reaches further to grasp it.
“Nice catch.” Vasan muses.
“Nice pitch,” Raptor looks over the game piece before examining it. “I thought this might be a replica since Jaquel makes them now,” They twist and turn the piece, different shimmers of the amber trim catching lights from the cooly glowing blooms in the corners, “This is the same one. It's been years… More than a Circle.”
Jovian Circles are full rotations around their sun, a measure of 12 Earthen years. A Jovian 12th of a Circle is a Year, equivalent to our Earthen years — these are then divided into months like ours, because of the steady phases of the moon. Days and weeks are nebulous between these milestones.
Raptor seems lost in another world as they tilt and twist and stare at the glints on this figure. Vasan doesn't dare interrupt, but instead leans back on the nest.
“I've never seen anything last this long on this fucking planet.” Raptor's voice grinds through gravel.
“They must take real good care of things."
“Jaquel is the sentimental type,” Raptor breaks their gaze with the game piece, “It's the only reason we're able to stay here.”
“You know,” Vasan tilts their head, “It's the way we got here, but I'm still not sure why we're staying here.”
“You need to take some time between trips.” Raptor tells them, “And we're stuck in a place that has way too many ideas about people not in their club.”
“And you think the best place to trip from is-” “A place we can see that moon up close.” Raptor snaps their vision to Vasan's.
Vasan stays silent for a bit as the two stare into each other's faces. Vasan's blank. Raptor's determined, “How do you know any of this?”
“I have a map.” Raptor spits.
Vasan doesn't seem any more informed. “Of what?”
“Astral space.” Raptor hisses again to a silent Vasan.
“Wh-”
“Navigators on the top floors use the stars as reference. Below the tritone, you don't get to see those, but we have other means. And one day, you figure out that those means all follow the same patterns.”
Vasan tilts their head the other way.
“From the stars, to the dust, to the islands, to the bugs, to the mushrooms, to our nerves and our cells,” Raptor spreads their claws out, dividing the air in front of them to index the areas of space they see as they talk. “It's all the same pattern, the same rules. It runs through everything that has life.”
“And it lets you-”
“We go up and down, left and right, forward and backwards, we go in and out of islands, on and off of them, and we always find something new.”
“Sure.” Vasan has nothing to grasp in this train of thought yet, but they sit down on the edge of the nest, nodding and letting this stream of thoughts go by.
“That's because this planet is twisted.” Their eyes widen, “Literally. Everything is. We're all just zooming into whatever experience makes sense given what came before.”
Vasan's nodding slows as their eyes dart around in thought before coming back to the starling. “Whatever makes sense…”
“Nothing makes sense in that truffle-space.” Raptor sits up the tallest, leaning into the pigeon. “It's too root, it's too grounded. It's not in our spectrum. It's noise. Everything makes some sense, but the world doesn't put itself together the same way.”
Vasan starts to get it. “Right.”
“If you can make sense of the noise, you can make whatever you want make sense.”
Vasan nods. “So because the mushrooms came before us, it-”
“That doesn't even mean much, it's just a different angle of the same tangle of stuff.”
Raptor looks excited, the most passionate Vasan has seen them.
“People think the bugs are the only way to get around.” Raptor says, “Bugs pull you up. And you just get stuck here.”
Vasan looks up at me.
“The bugs are fake.” Raptor insists. A confused look from Vasan provokes a flurry of nods from Raptor. “On the 2nds they eat bugs. Not much sun, not much fruit down there. My family told me we are above eating bugs, and we didn't have to, but peer pressure you know? Freak the missionary kids out, right?” Raptor tilts back, rolling themself to leave an empty space next to each other.
Vasan slips into the nest at Raptor's feet, sitting up and facing Raptor. “Right.”
Raptor Points a claw out to me, on Vasan's forehead still. “The ones like you got.” I flutter off to hover around Vasan's head a few times. “They said you couldn't eat those. I tried. You can't. You'd break your fuckin teeth trying to.”
“They could just have really hard shells, you know?”
Raptor leans back and opens their jaw wide, showing a chipped fang. Raptor shuts their mouth and shakes their head, “There's no meat in those gold bugs.” Vasan eyes me rather nonjudgmentally amidst the Starling's tirade. “I think someone in this place made these things just to lure drek up here. There's all these layers of secrets once you get up here, and it's just to spin you up and get you stuck.”
Raptor sets the game piece on a shelf next to the nest and I take my perch on it.
“Well,” Vasan notes, “We're stuck here until your friend sneaks us out, at least, and the bug didn't do that.”
“True.” Raptor nods, sitts up and bunches their body up closer to their knees, closer to Vasan. “Which could be a while.” They hold a claw out again, the back curve stroking their shoulder through their patchy tunic. “They tend to keep busy.”
Vasan holds a claw up not to push Raptor's away, but to link their thumb under Raptor's, loosely gripping their hand as they lean further toward the Starling. “You're pretty open with strangers.” They coo.
“Not everyone,” Raptor teasingly twists and twiddles their talons with the Pigeon's, their tone quieting, simmering out, “But you've agreed to more than one wild idea so far.” Their claw moves through the Pigeon's grasp, up their inner arm, and back to their shoulder, their neck. “You seem like the adventurous type.”
“Adventurous, yeah. But, I don't know if we're talking about adventure anymore,” Vasan teases, leaning into Raptor's touch.
“You feel pretty close to home, pigeon.” The pinkish drek rasps.
“Yeah, I think we have a lot in common, already.” They stroke back at Raptor's arm. “You're not… too far out of my comfort zone.”
Raptor swirls a claw around their neck as Vasan lets their eyes shut. The sensation goes away briefly before it's replaced by Raptor's lips, leaving their claws to wander. Vasan gasps, but doesn't push them away. “Still comfortable?”
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