Over 45,000
So yeah, having a relaxing and productive day! I will do one for every 1000 I write today, but I'll space them a bit. next installment in an hour, imsh'Allah.
“Girls,” said Utaba, as he rolled his eyes, “come on, Oracle, it looks like we’re on dinner duty tonight. Warda’ll work out how to open this stubborn old door!”
So saying, he put his arm around Sammi and led her up the sandy slope. Warda gaped, but she was too fascinated to be angry. Besides, studying the door would be a nice change to having to watch Sammi dancing around in the sand with Utaba.
She began by stroking her fingers over the designs she could see, then down the well joined crack down the centre, as far under the sand as she could manage, and then, after a while she just sat and looked.
Someone brought her food down to her where she sat. Someone also brought her a camel-wool cloak to put around her shoulders when she got cold. No stories came from the fireside that night, not that she would have heard them if they had. But despite all her efforts, by the time Utaba stalked away from camp, she had worked out precisely nothing.
He’d brought a lantern with him, and he sat down next to her on the sand.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
“Hm?” she answered, not turning her attention his way at all.
“I thought you were doing it deliberately. I mean, I know I might be the only person who could actually identify it, but that sort of energy is quite damaging, you know? You’re going to have to be more careful. In a lot of ways you have yourself to blame for much of Sammi’s bad moods.”
Warda was finally intrigued enough to look away from the door. “What in the sands are you talking about?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” she suddenly noticed he’d taken his scarf off from around his mouth and was talking easily and openly, with no concern for his fangs. Warda swallowed. She wanted to ask what she didn’t know, but her mouth was dry and she found herself suddenly quite afraid. Utaba smiled and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the pupils were two slits, like a cat’s. He picked up his story where he had left it off so many nights before;
“And the legend goes that other sly, secretive creatures, followed their kind to her. And that other great and powerful creatures, went to the side of He Who Must Be Praised, but some stories would have us think differently...
For do we not see, every day, how the snakes and lizards love the sun? They lay beneath him and he warms their blood so they can hunt and run. So who should he call on when he needs his messages taking, and his dirty work done? Why, those who owe their livelihood to him, of course!
And as for lions; who in the pride hunts, and rears the children, and seeks out the best places to live for a time? Why, the females. And when the time came to choose, who could they choose but the Lady of the Night Skies? Their males resisted for a time, but as soon as they began to go hungry, those who still had a tongue proclaimed loudly their allegiance to The Great Orb, but came cowed and humble to their wives in the desert and gave sombre praise and were fed. And so all the cats belonged to Her.”
Utaba shook out his long mane of golden hair and looked up, his face beautiful, his expression one of rapture in the light of the full moon. As the two pale lionesses strode onto the roof of the temple, Warda felt the whole world pitch around her and she began to faint.
“Oh no, la, la, no, Sahari! You cannot faint, that just won’t do!” Utaba caught her before her head smacked the sand and sat her back up. The lionesses sat down in a very stately manner, draping a paw over the ridge and haughtily looking about themselves, flicking at pests with their ears and tails.
“Wha- what did you call me?” asked Warda, holding Utaba’s arm and sitting up. She looked back at the doors. She’d decided it was best not to look at the lionesses nor at the ethereally beautiful man beside her.
“Sahari. It’s a very old word for magic user. Female, of course. Although, if you want to be called something else, there’s no one to argue with you.”
Warda laughed a dry and bitter laugh. “I can’t use magic!” she said, “if I could I wouldn’t be in half the trouble I am.”
“Ah, but think,” said Utaba, squeezing her shoulder as he spoke, “think about the trouble you would be in, had you not got your foot out of the mud, all those cycles ago. Why, you and Sammi may never have left!”
“That wasn’t magic. My... my other foot was on something solid...”
“Was it, though?” he pressed, “and the other night, when you came up the mound in the Hazin Desert. Why did you wake up?”
Warda blushed, remembering the dream she’d been having before she’d woken that night. “I ... I don’t know. I’d just prayed to be safe because, because your story scared me...”
“Ah. And that’s why you pinched me, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t pinch you!” Warda cried, then continued more quietly, so as not to wake anyone, “and you can let go of me. I’m fine now.”
Utaba didn’t believe her, but he let he go. “You did pinch me, because you wanted me to stop talking. Just like I could feel you being cross that Sammi was always mean to you on the ride, and that night, I was stood on top on the mound, and I had just drawn my knife, and it was as though there were lots of tiny threads reaching around the whole camp. They were tiny, but my intent to use my knife on you snagged one, and you sat straight up.”
“Use your knife on me?” Warda nearly forgot to keep the noise down. Utaba put his hands up to shield his face. The lionesses growled, which distracted Warda, and he put his arms down, panting.
“Calm down! I wasn’t actually going to do anything, but I was testing you. You scared me.”
“I scared you? With your knife and your teeth!” she knew it sounded stupid, but Warda glared defiantly at Utaba anyway.
“Heh. Well, I know what I am. I didn’t know what you were. Still don’t not for sure, but I know that you can open those doors.”
Warda looked at the doors. “How?” she asked, “I’ve been thinking about it all evening. I can’t.”
“Have you tried?” Utaba asked. His eyes, she noticed, were amber, and seemed very close. He felt very close all of a sudden, and very warm.
“No. I suppose I haven’t, really.” She was trying very hard to keep her mind very blank.
“So,” he said softly, “try.”
He stood up quite suddenly and she shook herself, dusted herself off and followed him to the small space of visible door.
“If all is well,” Utaba said, “then there will be a big space behind the doors. Push them.”
Warda thought hard of the pulling that had been in her chest for three days. She still felt uncommonly light since it had gone. She didn’t feel like she had the strength to push anything, but she supposed it was worth a try. Like before, she began praying, which became having a sort of conversation in her head, “please, Vistara, Lady of the Night, I know your eye is open, so maybe you can see me. I have magic, apparently, and I would love to use it if it’s true. Samatra is here and we were told to come to this place where there are lions and now I know they are your lions and they are right behind me!”
The lionesses had come to lend what power they knew of to this ritual that they had been called to, and so one was gently pushing her head into Warda’s back, with a nuzzle fit to push her over. The other one lay her own shoulder against the door, rubbing against it as though it were hers, pushing what she could reach.
“Vistara,” continued Warda, “let me open this door. Let us, let us open this door. Utaba would be quite impressed if I opened this door ... and he’s helping he’s helping, whoever he is!”
Utaba was beside Warda in the sand. He placed his left hand on her right and his right flat on the door. He really was quite warm.
“Keep pushing, Warda,” he said, “you’re not alone.”
Warda almost sobbed. It was part embarrassment, (all the Ancestors, did he feel that to?) and part relief. She gave the doors and almighty shove. With a creak and the sound of bits breaking from somewhere above and to the left and right the doors moved inwards, slowly at first, and then the weight of sliding sand and people made a gap wide enough for Warda and Utaba to slide right through. With surprised growls the lionesses sprang away into the night. The lantern slid in with them and went out. Coughing in a strip of silver light from outside, Warda and Utaba stood up slowly, assessing the damage.
“Are you alright?” Utaba asked.
“I think so ... Utaba-tan, we did it! We did it!” Warda threw her arms around Utaba and hugged him.
When she let go and stepped back, she found she wasn’t the only one blushing. Utaba looked away and said quietly, “you don’t have to put that honourific on the end, you know. I mean, there are things we need to talk about before you go doing anything like that again...”
“It’s alright,” Warda said, “Deema-ten said she’d tell me all about it when I got back. Fetch a light, we ought to look around in here while we cane! Do you think it used to be lit by moonlight, before?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Utaba said, feeling around on the floor for the lantern. Warda was scittering around on the edge of the moonlight, as though the dark would burn her toes. Utaba could see her desperation, and he sighed. Rummaging in the pouches at his belt he found the alchemical sticks that made lighting oil lamps less dangerous and filled the temple of the moon with the yellow light of the candle.
They both gasped. This had been, and still was, a beautiful temple. It was in a cave under the rock. In front of them was an altar, white marble carved with sigils that even Warda knew were signs for protection, sight and life. Next to the altar were two statues of very fine, slender cats with collars around their necks. The collars had moons on and curved over their proud chests. Their faces were very wise, but they were not going to share any secrets. Behind the altar was a very old, very striking statue of the Lady of the Night herself. She had a headdress carved into owls wings patterned with stars. Her face was serene and healthy, quite distant from the representations of her drawn and mourning, the kinds of faces the Daughters tried to emulate. The hand that was down by her side held one of the sigils of protection, and most surprising, and something which showed the statue’s age, was the presence of three children clustered around her feet. They were stood proudly and proportioned like adults, and clothed like adults, but they each had two fingers of their right hand at their mouths; an ancient symbol that they were children. One of her arms was bent up and she was holding something in her hand, although even when they had walked the length of the shrine they could not see what it was, because of the strangely beautiful but unfortunate thing that had happened in the cave over the years. From the ceiling of the cave hung points of white rock. They glinted in the lamplight and made the shapes of bats wings and crooked fingers. Underneath them were piles of the same substance, which had obviously dripped from above. In some places they had formed columns that you had to step around to get anywhere. One column was attached to Vistara’s right shoulder. Other teeth from the jaws of the cave had splattered new rock onto the faces of the demi-gods and into Vistara’s outstretched hand. Yet more rock was distorting what was clearly a very small Depths of Forever set into the altar. Perhaps it’s more like the depths of next cycle, thought Warda to herself, but she daren’t say such thing out loud. Her newfound power was making her bold, but not that bold.
The rest of the shrine had a smooth floor, aside from where the rock-like substance had piled up or the sand had just blown in. It was made up of white and grey and black tiles cut to fit into each other in intricate patterns leading up to the altar. Warda traced carvings with her fingers and tiles with he toes. She pulled experimentally at some of the stone on the bowl. The thin top of the spikes came away easily enough but the base had been there for years. It would take a skilled stonemason to remove the worst of it without doing too much damage.
It was a long while before Utaba gently took hold of her wrist and said, “We ought to head out of here, get some sleep. She’ll still be here in the morning.”
Warda looked up into the gently smiling face of the Goddess once more.
“I know,” she said, “but we should have prayed the moment we got here.”
“She ... she can’t hear you right now, you know?”
“I know,” she looked up to find Utaba looking at her with some doubt, “I do know! I think I’ve always known. But I’ve prayed all the way along here, haven’t I? And all it’s done is good so far, so I really think I ought to now.”
“What do you want to tell her?”
“That we’re here, and that I really wish I knew what we’re supposed to do now. To help, I mean, you know. Bigger ... the big ... thing...” Warda trailed off as she looked into Utaba’s eyes again, and realised she’d not actually asked the most obvious question.
“What are -“
“Too late!” he cut her off with a grin, “bedtime!”
By the time they reached the top of the sandy slope, Warda really was too tired to argue.
“Girls,” said Utaba, as he rolled his eyes, “come on, Oracle, it looks like we’re on dinner duty tonight. Warda’ll work out how to open this stubborn old door!”
So saying, he put his arm around Sammi and led her up the sandy slope. Warda gaped, but she was too fascinated to be angry. Besides, studying the door would be a nice change to having to watch Sammi dancing around in the sand with Utaba.
She began by stroking her fingers over the designs she could see, then down the well joined crack down the centre, as far under the sand as she could manage, and then, after a while she just sat and looked.
Someone brought her food down to her where she sat. Someone also brought her a camel-wool cloak to put around her shoulders when she got cold. No stories came from the fireside that night, not that she would have heard them if they had. But despite all her efforts, by the time Utaba stalked away from camp, she had worked out precisely nothing.
He’d brought a lantern with him, and he sat down next to her on the sand.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
“Hm?” she answered, not turning her attention his way at all.
“I thought you were doing it deliberately. I mean, I know I might be the only person who could actually identify it, but that sort of energy is quite damaging, you know? You’re going to have to be more careful. In a lot of ways you have yourself to blame for much of Sammi’s bad moods.”
Warda was finally intrigued enough to look away from the door. “What in the sands are you talking about?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” she suddenly noticed he’d taken his scarf off from around his mouth and was talking easily and openly, with no concern for his fangs. Warda swallowed. She wanted to ask what she didn’t know, but her mouth was dry and she found herself suddenly quite afraid. Utaba smiled and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the pupils were two slits, like a cat’s. He picked up his story where he had left it off so many nights before;
“And the legend goes that other sly, secretive creatures, followed their kind to her. And that other great and powerful creatures, went to the side of He Who Must Be Praised, but some stories would have us think differently...
For do we not see, every day, how the snakes and lizards love the sun? They lay beneath him and he warms their blood so they can hunt and run. So who should he call on when he needs his messages taking, and his dirty work done? Why, those who owe their livelihood to him, of course!
And as for lions; who in the pride hunts, and rears the children, and seeks out the best places to live for a time? Why, the females. And when the time came to choose, who could they choose but the Lady of the Night Skies? Their males resisted for a time, but as soon as they began to go hungry, those who still had a tongue proclaimed loudly their allegiance to The Great Orb, but came cowed and humble to their wives in the desert and gave sombre praise and were fed. And so all the cats belonged to Her.”
Utaba shook out his long mane of golden hair and looked up, his face beautiful, his expression one of rapture in the light of the full moon. As the two pale lionesses strode onto the roof of the temple, Warda felt the whole world pitch around her and she began to faint.
“Oh no, la, la, no, Sahari! You cannot faint, that just won’t do!” Utaba caught her before her head smacked the sand and sat her back up. The lionesses sat down in a very stately manner, draping a paw over the ridge and haughtily looking about themselves, flicking at pests with their ears and tails.
“Wha- what did you call me?” asked Warda, holding Utaba’s arm and sitting up. She looked back at the doors. She’d decided it was best not to look at the lionesses nor at the ethereally beautiful man beside her.
“Sahari. It’s a very old word for magic user. Female, of course. Although, if you want to be called something else, there’s no one to argue with you.”
Warda laughed a dry and bitter laugh. “I can’t use magic!” she said, “if I could I wouldn’t be in half the trouble I am.”
“Ah, but think,” said Utaba, squeezing her shoulder as he spoke, “think about the trouble you would be in, had you not got your foot out of the mud, all those cycles ago. Why, you and Sammi may never have left!”
“That wasn’t magic. My... my other foot was on something solid...”
“Was it, though?” he pressed, “and the other night, when you came up the mound in the Hazin Desert. Why did you wake up?”
Warda blushed, remembering the dream she’d been having before she’d woken that night. “I ... I don’t know. I’d just prayed to be safe because, because your story scared me...”
“Ah. And that’s why you pinched me, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t pinch you!” Warda cried, then continued more quietly, so as not to wake anyone, “and you can let go of me. I’m fine now.”
Utaba didn’t believe her, but he let he go. “You did pinch me, because you wanted me to stop talking. Just like I could feel you being cross that Sammi was always mean to you on the ride, and that night, I was stood on top on the mound, and I had just drawn my knife, and it was as though there were lots of tiny threads reaching around the whole camp. They were tiny, but my intent to use my knife on you snagged one, and you sat straight up.”
“Use your knife on me?” Warda nearly forgot to keep the noise down. Utaba put his hands up to shield his face. The lionesses growled, which distracted Warda, and he put his arms down, panting.
“Calm down! I wasn’t actually going to do anything, but I was testing you. You scared me.”
“I scared you? With your knife and your teeth!” she knew it sounded stupid, but Warda glared defiantly at Utaba anyway.
“Heh. Well, I know what I am. I didn’t know what you were. Still don’t not for sure, but I know that you can open those doors.”
Warda looked at the doors. “How?” she asked, “I’ve been thinking about it all evening. I can’t.”
“Have you tried?” Utaba asked. His eyes, she noticed, were amber, and seemed very close. He felt very close all of a sudden, and very warm.
“No. I suppose I haven’t, really.” She was trying very hard to keep her mind very blank.
“So,” he said softly, “try.”
He stood up quite suddenly and she shook herself, dusted herself off and followed him to the small space of visible door.
“If all is well,” Utaba said, “then there will be a big space behind the doors. Push them.”
Warda thought hard of the pulling that had been in her chest for three days. She still felt uncommonly light since it had gone. She didn’t feel like she had the strength to push anything, but she supposed it was worth a try. Like before, she began praying, which became having a sort of conversation in her head, “please, Vistara, Lady of the Night, I know your eye is open, so maybe you can see me. I have magic, apparently, and I would love to use it if it’s true. Samatra is here and we were told to come to this place where there are lions and now I know they are your lions and they are right behind me!”
The lionesses had come to lend what power they knew of to this ritual that they had been called to, and so one was gently pushing her head into Warda’s back, with a nuzzle fit to push her over. The other one lay her own shoulder against the door, rubbing against it as though it were hers, pushing what she could reach.
“Vistara,” continued Warda, “let me open this door. Let us, let us open this door. Utaba would be quite impressed if I opened this door ... and he’s helping he’s helping, whoever he is!”
Utaba was beside Warda in the sand. He placed his left hand on her right and his right flat on the door. He really was quite warm.
“Keep pushing, Warda,” he said, “you’re not alone.”
Warda almost sobbed. It was part embarrassment, (all the Ancestors, did he feel that to?) and part relief. She gave the doors and almighty shove. With a creak and the sound of bits breaking from somewhere above and to the left and right the doors moved inwards, slowly at first, and then the weight of sliding sand and people made a gap wide enough for Warda and Utaba to slide right through. With surprised growls the lionesses sprang away into the night. The lantern slid in with them and went out. Coughing in a strip of silver light from outside, Warda and Utaba stood up slowly, assessing the damage.
“Are you alright?” Utaba asked.
“I think so ... Utaba-tan, we did it! We did it!” Warda threw her arms around Utaba and hugged him.
When she let go and stepped back, she found she wasn’t the only one blushing. Utaba looked away and said quietly, “you don’t have to put that honourific on the end, you know. I mean, there are things we need to talk about before you go doing anything like that again...”
“It’s alright,” Warda said, “Deema-ten said she’d tell me all about it when I got back. Fetch a light, we ought to look around in here while we cane! Do you think it used to be lit by moonlight, before?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Utaba said, feeling around on the floor for the lantern. Warda was scittering around on the edge of the moonlight, as though the dark would burn her toes. Utaba could see her desperation, and he sighed. Rummaging in the pouches at his belt he found the alchemical sticks that made lighting oil lamps less dangerous and filled the temple of the moon with the yellow light of the candle.
They both gasped. This had been, and still was, a beautiful temple. It was in a cave under the rock. In front of them was an altar, white marble carved with sigils that even Warda knew were signs for protection, sight and life. Next to the altar were two statues of very fine, slender cats with collars around their necks. The collars had moons on and curved over their proud chests. Their faces were very wise, but they were not going to share any secrets. Behind the altar was a very old, very striking statue of the Lady of the Night herself. She had a headdress carved into owls wings patterned with stars. Her face was serene and healthy, quite distant from the representations of her drawn and mourning, the kinds of faces the Daughters tried to emulate. The hand that was down by her side held one of the sigils of protection, and most surprising, and something which showed the statue’s age, was the presence of three children clustered around her feet. They were stood proudly and proportioned like adults, and clothed like adults, but they each had two fingers of their right hand at their mouths; an ancient symbol that they were children. One of her arms was bent up and she was holding something in her hand, although even when they had walked the length of the shrine they could not see what it was, because of the strangely beautiful but unfortunate thing that had happened in the cave over the years. From the ceiling of the cave hung points of white rock. They glinted in the lamplight and made the shapes of bats wings and crooked fingers. Underneath them were piles of the same substance, which had obviously dripped from above. In some places they had formed columns that you had to step around to get anywhere. One column was attached to Vistara’s right shoulder. Other teeth from the jaws of the cave had splattered new rock onto the faces of the demi-gods and into Vistara’s outstretched hand. Yet more rock was distorting what was clearly a very small Depths of Forever set into the altar. Perhaps it’s more like the depths of next cycle, thought Warda to herself, but she daren’t say such thing out loud. Her newfound power was making her bold, but not that bold.
The rest of the shrine had a smooth floor, aside from where the rock-like substance had piled up or the sand had just blown in. It was made up of white and grey and black tiles cut to fit into each other in intricate patterns leading up to the altar. Warda traced carvings with her fingers and tiles with he toes. She pulled experimentally at some of the stone on the bowl. The thin top of the spikes came away easily enough but the base had been there for years. It would take a skilled stonemason to remove the worst of it without doing too much damage.
It was a long while before Utaba gently took hold of her wrist and said, “We ought to head out of here, get some sleep. She’ll still be here in the morning.”
Warda looked up into the gently smiling face of the Goddess once more.
“I know,” she said, “but we should have prayed the moment we got here.”
“She ... she can’t hear you right now, you know?”
“I know,” she looked up to find Utaba looking at her with some doubt, “I do know! I think I’ve always known. But I’ve prayed all the way along here, haven’t I? And all it’s done is good so far, so I really think I ought to now.”
“What do you want to tell her?”
“That we’re here, and that I really wish I knew what we’re supposed to do now. To help, I mean, you know. Bigger ... the big ... thing...” Warda trailed off as she looked into Utaba’s eyes again, and realised she’d not actually asked the most obvious question.
“What are -“
“Too late!” he cut her off with a grin, “bedtime!”
By the time they reached the top of the sandy slope, Warda really was too tired to argue.