“Now!” They bark into the room, startling a sleeping starling into a stunned and stirred state as the pigeon stumbles stupidly backwards before stabilizing themself. They flit their gaze between us and the tired other. “If you two would like your tattered rags washed, I can get them into the wash before morning.” They turn back to us, “So, if you want to catch up on sleep, and maybe not wander the halls the rest of the night, I can have fresh clothes for the two of you by morning.”
They begin to turn, already hit in the legs by loose rags Raptor wasn't even wearing. “I know those won't fall apart in the wash,” Raptor croaks, “Don't try to pull some shit getting me to change into a clergy get-up this time."
Jaquel tosses one of the wrapped up cloths they are holding back at the starling, which unfolds into a modest gown in midair before Raptor bats it away. “If I could disguise you it would make this much easier, yes.” The grackle steps out of the rags, tossing another gown to Vasan before bundling up Raptor's in a bag, “But I'd rather not risk even that. You're dressing like a peasant here.”
Vasan holds the gown over their self as they strip down, feeling rushed, and reaches over to hand Jaquel their clothes, who upon grasping them, steps halfway out the door.
“See you in the morning.” They fire a burning glare straight to Raptor as as they pause their step, “If someone catches you in the cathedral naked, I will play dumb. So please, keep to yourselves here.”
They slide out, vines weaving tightly behind them. Raptor slinks back down into their nest to fall asleep. Vasan rather unceremoniously flops into the nest. I land above the two of them as they tangle into each other and the vines.
“Got caught by the grackle?” Raptor groans.
“Yeah.” Vasan sighs, letting their energy drain them as they flop back over. the vines and branches around the nest to make room for them.
Raptor nods, communicating past experience with the greenish-headed Drek's strict adherence to rules.
“I feel like they don't like it here.” Vasan observes.
“Jaquel doesn't have to like something to be dedicated to it,” Raptor stretches, “Their mind likes to turn morbid curiosities into full-blown obsessions.” They flop closer to the pigeon. “They like having rules to follow, even if they're dumb rules.”
Vasan chokes back a chuckle. A day with their new friend has thoroughly displayed their distaste in rules and order.
“You can see why things didn't work out.” Raptor replies to the thought they seemingly read from Vasan's mind.
Vasan nods, “I wasn't going to say it.”
Raptor flops an arm out to their side, closer to Vasan, rolling on their side to face them, “Some people like that rigidity. I've always been more…” They reach out further to Vasan's arm, softly grazing the back of a claw across their feathers, “freeflow, you know?”
Vasan feels their breath catch again. They were not one to stay in one place for a long enough time. Their life had been dominated by island hops and short, temporary and transactional relationships.
“You don't settle well, huh?” Vasan asks, rolling to better face their friend.
“Duh. I'm a hopper.” Raptor confirms. “Hopper” is a term I last heard Vasan use to refer to themself once. It seems to be a positive, definition of homelessness as a lifestyle on Aqnep. A drek who hops between the trees rather than nesting anywhere. “And on more than just islands.”
“I can see that.”
Raptor nods, the tired and sensual mood between them swirling, “Yeah. Dimensions, too. Universes.”
“That's some hopping.”
“Souls and Bodies, too, probably.”
“Hopping bodies?” Vasan intrigues.
“Kinda.” Raptor lazily waves a claw in a circle, “Part of me does, maybe. For my body, I mean like. Lifetimes. Bodies that aren't mine, though...” They let their hand fall, gliding over Vasan's side. “I tend to hop between those, too.”
“Maybe we have that in common, too.” Vasan's tired eyes smile to Raptor's, but they veer away from the subject, “I've never stayed on an island more than a few months at a time. I've never known any person for longer than that either.”
“Yeah.” Raptor notes, “I couldn't ever sit still. I learned all these techniques for climbing currents, reaching places I shouldn't be able to.”
“How'd you keep up with a job?” Vasan laughs, “How long were you on Kerkenos?”
Raptor rolls their eyes and sighs. They sit up, and reach over Vasan to a bag over the side of the nest. They pull the utility sack up to their lap. Vasan can tell this is going to be a story. “Back in that swamp, you got caught in the vines.” Vasan isn't sure how that answers their question, but lets Raptor continue. “I got stuck in some vines there, too.”
Vasan thinks back to the apothecary they eavesdropped on. There was talk of some pain-vine leaves, and an argument about how useful they were. They see Raptor digging into a few inner pockets to collect some gadgets and smaller, fragrant bags. They start connecting dots. “The ones the drug store was drying?”
Raptor nods. “I was on them until I found those truffles. Then from the outside, I saw what some of those vines did to people.”
“Like what?” Vasan asks.
As they hear Vasan, they pick through a smaller bag to retrieve a pile of a rather colorful dried flower. “Close to the tritone belt, you might meet some people chewing leaves. They tell you it's from the pain-vines. The people you're with tell you it’s no big deal. Everybody's got some habit, right? People chew stuff all the time.”
Vasan recalls how easy it was for Raptor to convince them to experiment with another substance. They let their friend continue preparing this other substance.
“Then soon enough, the only places you're hopping are places that have versions of these vines. The only people you're talking to are people that know where to get them."
Vasan nods.
Raptor pulls out a pipe, the same one they had used to vaporize the painkillers before hopping here, and scratches some residue out of the bowl with a claw. “You go to bright places with beautiful palaces and go straight to the swamps to search. You let thorns scar up your scales, tear out your feathers. You're numb to every prick your arm picked up reaching for a new high. The highest I felt was sitting against a branch in a swamp. You get convinced it's the highest you'll ever feel.”
They set the pipe in their lap to gesture with their story. “But people chew stuff all the time, right? So I chewed those vine leaves all the time.”
Vasan follows their motions, seemingly mesmerized.
“Just like a vine, it wraps around you and grows over you. Sucks out your energy. With the leaves of the vines hanging over your eyes, it narrows your vision. All you see are the vines.”
Vasan nods along to their new friend's poetic description of addiction. Vasan takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh in sympathy, the cold of their emotions coming through their breath. They can't help but keep asking, “Why'd you stop hopping at Kerekenos, though?"
“I met a dove.” Raptor says, “Reminded me a bit of you.” They pinch some of the wild flower and plop it loosely into their pipe. They press it down as they drone on, “They told me about another way to hop. We'd trip to lower islands with potent vines and herbs. We'd hit the top, visit childhood friends, like Jaquel. We'd end up places we shouldn't, brush we didn't think was managed and we'd smooth-talk our way out of getting caged by cartels by offering them something crazier to smoke. We'd- ” They notice their story loosening, and the flower in their pipe packed down too tightly. They stir it loose with a claw as they take a deep breath. “We did a lot. One day we truffle-tripped to two different places. Never saw them again.”
Raptor seems frozen. Vasan's touch is warm to them, but doesn't seem to be enough to thaw them. A few deep breaths exchanged, and Raptor re-animates and lights their pipe. Their eyes are fixed on the corner, even as they exhale. “I was caught on an island with truffles, but no vines. Not for long. But I realized with my head clearer, there was something more I could get out of those truffles. Something more vivid. And I didn't want to travel, I wanted to study. And I studied until I was able to truffle-hop. It was like the place I landed was a test."
They hand Vasan the pipe, who sits up to take it. They imitate as their mind runs the questioning, “A test?”
Raptor takes their pipe back and continues. “It was Kerkenos.” They inhale and exhale, “The vine-leaves there are strong enough to kill beginners.” They pass the pipe back with piercing eye contact. “The apothecaries there treat them to make them more potent. Drying and extracting all that sweet Srevoside. I felt like working at one was the top of the top for me, campaign complete, happily ever after. You know?” Raptor gestures to Vasan, who nods and follows Raptor's rasp. “Just to have an excuse to get lost in the brushy chewing leaves, smoking whatever dust fell on the floor when we dried them. ”
“You got stuck in the vines.” Vasan recurses. Some inhales and nods are exchanged as the pipe is passed back and forth a few times. Raptor takes a long drag and talks through the smoke.
“It held me down there for more years than I wanna count.” Raptor re-adjusts the flower and the ash in the bowl seemingly to give their hands something to do. “It kept me from learning the truffles again. I'd stop off it long enough to play sober for my boss. And every hour not on those vine leaves was like having my nerves fight me. Thirsty, hungry, nauseous, cold, hot, too dizzy, too tense.”
“I'm glad something turned you around.”
Raptor holds an inhale as they pass the pipe and gesture to it, “This stuff helps.”
“Yeah, this is different than the stuff you had before, what-”
“Jackalwood flower,” Raptor interrupts, “The same thing that one little game figure is made from, but the flower instead of the wood.”
Vasan nods, settling into the effects, “I can see why it works.”
Raptor grooves into a nod. “What works even more is having something else to that doesn't revolve around painkillers.” They bring their eyes back to Vasan's to make another rare, sincere burst of eye contact. “So thanks for pulling me away, again. I needed something else to think about.”
“Thanks for... ” Vasan gets lost for a moment, “For helping me find a place to stay at the top. And for not throwing yourself to my feet just for having a crazy idea. I didn't expect you to try to help me this much.”
“You're like that dove, you know.” Eye contact breaks, “It's why I trusted you right away.” Raptor croons, “You vibe different. Resonate different. It's familiar.”
Gradually, the smoke buildsup in the room and the minds of the two drek lazing in the nest. Conversations dither as they collapse into a pile of each other.
Jaquel doesn't take kindly to the smell of lingering smoke as they return in the morning.
“Being a bad influence this deep in the monastery, Aster?” The green bird screeches.
Raptor jolts awake, batting their eyes a few times before having their clothes thrown into their face. I take off of the wall and land on the ceiling.
“You have no grasp of the extent of your fucking disrespect, do you?” They continue lecturing. Raptor digs their way out of the cloth and into the storm of scolds as Vasan awakes to dart their gaze around the room. They're quickly also hit in the face with the rags they wore, brighter than when they showed up.
“Stickler.” Raptor spits.
“I don't mind these things as much as you think I do,” Jaquel belts from the corner of the room, with emphatic gestures, “But there's people other than me, and higher up than me who do, and you know that, and I know you know that, and-”
“There's a lot they let slide around here.” Raptor climbs out of the nest, crumpling their clothes as if to wad them up and throw them back.
“Yes, and an unsupervised visitor in the cathedral complex isn't the end of the world, but the smell of jackalwood could be.”
Raptor freezes, dropping their shoulders, but not dropping their position. “You don't want someone to find your figures.”
Jaquel's nod is as stern as it is snappy.
“You could have told me that.”
“Maybe if you could have followed any sense of courtesy you have, you'd realize how stupid it would be for me to expect you to have the gall to smoke in the church.” The grackle gets louder.
“Maybe nobody told me about that taboo.” Raptor shrugs.
“You can burn your flowers elsewhere, but not in here.” Jaquel finalizes.
“Ok, then we'll find somewhere else to stay.” Raptor starts slipping on their cloak.
“Uhhh—” is the first sound that leaves Vasan after waking up. Raptor gestures toward them to try to back them up, but Vasan's tired head is still processing the exchange.
“Aster.” The grackle chides as the starling scrambles their clothes and bag on.
“I thought we were going to be initiated today,” Vasan makes out.
“Initiated?” Raptor scoffs, looking back and forth.
“Yeah, Jaquel wanted to teach me about the bugs.” I punctuate Vasan by landing a probe on their head.
“All the church has to say about the bugs is that the bugs say to trust them,” Raptor speaks to Vasan, but glares at Jaquel. “Just makes me not want to trust the bugs' judgement.”
“You may not trust mine, then,” Jaquel butts in, “but I think this pigeon is special.”
Vasan's eyes widen. I buzz a few drones into the room to grab their clothes and nudge them out of the nest.
“They are.” Raptor agrees with Jaquel, before turning to us. “You don't want to know how these birds handle 'Special.'”
“Starling.” The grackle repeats to a pair of glaring eyes. I start hovering more probes around the room.
Raptor continues, their eyes beaming through to Vasan's with a firey intensity,“They will suck the life from you like they do every lower island they touch and leave you a hollow bitter shell like this grackle.”
The grackle hardly lets them finish before continuing.“There's more to what is going on here than anything the clergy can fathom. The pigeon needs to know what we know.”
Raptor shakily and loosely rerobes themself, grabs their utility bag, and storms out.
Jaquel follows with lecturing rasps as Vasan hastily dresses to follow as well.
The two are down the hallway, with Jaquel staying close enough behind to hiss their disapproval at the starling without making much fuss. We catch up to a mess of half-made personal complaints and code switching, until Raptor wanders to an opening, a lower balcony-like fray of roots looking out over a lower story of the island and the bare horizon beyond it. The glowing fractal tumbleweed that is the fifth moon hums at us from a comforting, humbling distance.
Raptor stops.
“Where did you think you were going? You can’t just wander this place like that.” Jaquel flails.
Raptor eyes a storm passing beneath the island. A water vein swings around it and is running straight into the atmospheric barrier of this island’s aura. It dithers into a horizontal shower that prickles the frayed brush and mists us.
Raptor points beyond the rain. “Vasan, you don’t need them to tell you how to get your way to the moon.” They turn. “It’s right there.”
I spin a few probes around This drek, fearing they might do something stupid or daring.
“Jaquel knows how to spin the bugs on their own.” Vasan raises their voice over the shower. “I want to know how. That’s all I want to know.”
Raptor pauses. I attach a bug to their head. They pick it off. I try again. They flick it. I move to a different spot, they shake me off. I end up hovering a few probes outside of Raptor’s reach in a staggered pattern.
I click to Vasan. trust:trust:trust:trust
“You can trust the beetles, Raptor.”
“Show them” I click.
Raptor shakes us both off. “You can learn what you want.” They turn. “Come find me when you’re done.”
“Find you?”
Raptor dons their mask. “We have a map.” They take a leap through the brush, thinning their body out until they’re out of the range of the fray and into the rain. They corkscrew off all the beetles I kept in their vicinity.
Vasan gets ready to jump after to save them, and I ready a swarm of my bugs to propel them, but Jaquel grabs Vasan's wrist. “Let them go.”
Vasan cools their intentions and watches as the starling turns to a speckle, gaining height fast and diving into a nearby storm, making some strange corkscrew maneuver to transfer their trajectory straight up. I follow with my probes, prepared to catch them if they fell below the top island. But they shoot up, higher, nearly above the canopy of this island.
Once out of sight, they found another patch of brush to land on and found shelter among vines and mushrooms.
The other two Drek were left to stare on. Vasan feels a few revelations click within their head. That corkscrew. The storm diving. That must be Raptor’s technique to let them hop so easily. With more intended help from my swarms, obviously one could utilize it make it to the moon temple.
“Raptor Asterestia” The bird hisses, “What a fleeting spectacle of a drek that one is.”Jaquel and Vasan both turn away from the outside to avoid the mist. “I don't think they can exist any other way.”
“They told me a lot,” Vasan contributes, “They have some reasons, I’m sure.”
“It’s that they can't be far from their substances for too long, I suppose.” Jaquel regains their composure and lowers their wet hood as they step back into the corridors, “It's a shame. I still think this place could help them the way it helped me find something else to get me off of the toxins.” They lead us back inside, down the corridor hallways and back to what must have been the guest quarters.
“They want to get to the fifth moon with me.” Vasan remarks.
Jaquel goes silent as they walk. The sentiment is lost. Vasan follows.
The twisted etchings on the wall advise,
ulapOntisrkistOmulaOm : menpOntisrkistOmmenOm : ueuqepOntisrkistomueuqOm
“Make perfect choices, hold perfect thoughts, speak perfect words.” It reminds Vasan that this situation may be easiest to handle the less they exacerbate things.
They arrive back into the dark lodging room. Jaquel had tightened the vines of the door extra securely until the vines inside absorbed the smell.
“There’s no reason to go to the fifth moon.” Jaquel resents. “The highest you can get is this temple. At the top of the sky there is Elionis and there is sacrifice. Nothing else.”
“Sacrifice?”
“A feral beast lives and groans in those tangled catacombs. It tears visitors limb from limb. No one’s returned.”
“You mean the fifth moon catacombs? If no one’s returned how do you know it’s there?”
Jaquel glares, searching their memory of the scripture unsucessfully for another quote, the lack of an answer not phasing them. They stay silent.
“What?”
“There’s things I shouldn’t tell you,” Jaquel starts, “Things I simply can't. Though, you already know the Astrocartographer, so you must know something more than I do.”
“I don’t know much.” Vasan sits on the edge of the nest as Jaquel lightly paces in a rounded triangle between the corners of the chamber.
“There was a handoff of power a few years ago, in the church. Because of the island approaching the fifth moon.” Jaquel hums and swirls a claw, queuing my probes to take a shape in front of them. A rough, voxeled shape of the island, the moon, and the storm forms between the two. “For countless circles it has been out of sight as Elionos was blown around the planet, and for all of that time, every written and oral account has been mythologized. About a circle ago, it was spotted over the horizon, and we were on a trajectory to pass it.”
“So this island is still approaching it after all those circles?”
“We have already passed it once, but the great storm has grown since that prior age, and it's winds whipped us back around the other way.” Jaquel swirls the air around my probes, I illustrate the island passing the storm and rounding it. Vasan watches the demonstration intently.
“But from outside, it looks like we're still approaching it.”
“We are. The higherarchs of the clergy chose to cut the roots of the island away from several lower islands in order to drop the weight, to correct our trajectory and pass the storm once again.”
I illustrate the island shrinking slightly, parts falling away as drones falling to the floor of the chamber, as the island catches into another stream and is sent back toward the storm.
“It took years to complete the turn. And for nothing. Now we are past the event horizon of the great storm. Which means it is only a matter of time until we spiral into it. I spin the drones of the island into the small model of the storm, and collapse all of them together, with the catacombed moon left hovering on its own. “Zihuti, the current Aan, wanted to move the entire church into the moon before our island is lost.”
Vasan's gaze returns to Jaquel, as the illustration dithers and my dren scatter to different twigs and vines in the room. “The moon doesn't look big enough to hold everyone though.”
“Most certainly not, but it's hard to tell for sure from our vantage point.” Jaquel takes a deep, chilling breath as they return to their pacing. “We wanted to send scouts, to see how viable it would be for life, and for how many drek. But the process was… corrupted.”
“Corrupted?” Vasan eggs on.
The grackle turns their eyes to my various drones, not expectantly, but just to avoid looking Vasan in the eyes.“When someone is killed, when someone dies, that person is gone. Their life energy isn’t there and accessible. Their family, friends, community will miss them, will be missing them, they will have to live and adjust. But time goes on. Because they all have their own lives.” They drone on, “When someone is scarred in a way that doesn’t kill them, when someone is used, violated, the effect is the same. Everyone feels it. The difference is that the one who was hurt is still there, still living through it.”
The room falls quiet again. Jaquel loses their place and backs up.
“Zihuti isn’t supposed to be the Aan for much longer. But the clergy did not like their choice for a successor.” They pause
“Why?”
“A few reasons.” They lift their head up, “One is that the scripture foretold for the age of a crow. The successor was a corvid, but too colorful for the clergy to support.”
“That’s petty.”
“Yeah, and it’s bullshit.” Their eyes turn back to Vasan, expression piercing as always, but hot. “I knew them, they were never-” they stop and regain composure, “They were perfect for it.”
“What happened? What about the moon?” Vasan checks their fruit bag, finding a leftover bag of Raptor’s herbs and pills and truffles inside of them.
“They, the Aan and the heir, wanted to send me and the catacomb keepers to fix the temple to prepare it for the clergy’s arrival. That’s not what the clergy voted for, though.
“Between backroom talks and fudging the canon, they cast my friend in a new mythological role for the church and sent them to the moon alone, with no provisions.”
Vasan freezes. “They sent them to die.” They posit.
Jaquel nods.
“The… next Aan? Like the next ruler of this whole island was sent to die?” Their voice dies down in contemplation as they whisper to their self, “Why...”
“Because the clergy were more concerned about the preservation of their power than preserving the church or the lives of anyone in it, that’s why.” Jaquel breaks, “Because that corvid knew too much about the clergy, they knew who to purge and for what, they played nice their entire life to get to a position of power to do something about all of this corruption and they-” Jaquel slams their claws on a nearby desk, “sent them to DIE.” Their voice creaks. “And they left me here, shuffling me off to deal with the depths and the dead, to remind me of the fate of those who speak out.”
Vasan checks the air, which is a sparkling emotional chill. They let the feeling pass. I click a few reminders. Vasan puts a picture together and offers assurance.
“That starling is sure there’s someone living there.”
Jaquel looks over, an angry eye unmoved.
“They’re a corvid, right? Are they a blue jay?”
Jaquel’s head snaps, their beak falling open. They breathe. “Yes.”
“I think I’ve seen them.”
“You haven’t been to the moon, already, have you?”
“I mean no,” in a stroke of too much confidence, Vasan pulls a truffle out of the bag, “but I might know the way to get there.”