Chapter 29 #2
It isn’t long before the adults of Hehet arrive.
A tall Sarian-tan woman with metal in her graying braids and a broad grin welcomes Maimeri home sooner than expected, and the fallen-star Lyric Aharté with ahz!
They’ve heard Lyric Aharté has a wife. Is that true?
the headwoman immediately inquires. She’s speaking Old Sarenpet but with a dialect closer to Sarian that Lyric is familiar with analyzing but not fluent in.
Maimeri scowls at the headwoman, Sah’set, but Lyric doesn’t mind.
He laughs and answers, “It’s complicated,” even though it’s not.
They’re invited to a welcome dinner in the square, and the moment Lyric agrees, Setka volunteers to help move tables and chop whatever needs to be chopped.
Lyric ends up with a handful of people around his age hanging lanterns across the square.
They try to keep him from manual labor, but Lyric simply picks things up and climbs a ladder.
Maimeri reluctantly goes to help one of the older men with something Lyric doesn’t catch, while Setka is drawn away by some of the children eagerly asking her about her scales and tail and why she can talk so well but most of the monsters Maimeri brings to Hehet cannot.
At that word, monster, Lyric focuses on her, ready to intercede.
But Setka answers them sincerely. They admit to thinking she was some kind of dragon person, and have never seen an alliraptor, though they’ve heard of them.
The last thing Lyric hears as they pull her away—unafraid of grabbing her knobby wrists and dancing around her tail—is a child asking where her claws go and another if she’ll jump in the little river out back to show them how long she can hold her breath.
“It’s cold!” Lyric calls after them. “If Setka gets wet, be sure to dry off!”
“Is Setka Lyric Aharté’s child?” a man asks, a long bench balanced in his arms.
Lyric shakes his head, helping the man with the bench. Strange to think she even could be, given her chimera status—but then, they might think he’s as godlike as the Moon-Eater and capable of who knows what.
The food is brought out, simple fare but with so much variety, as if every household brought unique dishes to share.
There is too much to try everything, and Lyric is glad when he is pressured into sitting and letting the people fight over putting bites of food on his plate.
Maimeri squeezes onto the bench next to Lyric, and they share a larger plate, and Setka laughs on the other side of the square, seated with a quad of children on grass mats.
He can’t eat very much, and hates to demur, but his stomach is finicky.
Maimeri notices and, without speaking up, begins taking larger bites from their shared plate, moving food here and there, obscuring Lyric’s lack of appetite.
Gratefulness lightens Lyric’s chest, almost as if he’s hungry again, and he nudges his shoulder against Maimeri’s, and the next time someone sidles up with a famous family recipe for a little pastry with savory nut butter, waxing about how it’s “laminated”—a word Lyric does not know—he accepts with his own fingers and puts it first to Maimeri’s lips.
It’s perhaps a mistake, as several observant townsfolk gasp, elbow one another, and in one case squeals under her breath.
But Maimeri, eyes hot as embers, bites into the pastry.
It flakes on ahz lips, and Maimeri cups ahz hand under ahz own chin to catch the little bits.
Sweet, Lyric thinks as he smiles, and Sah’set laughs along with her nearest spouse, and she says, “Ah, there it is, the real reason Maimeri refused all proposals!”
Lyric winces delicately, but Maimeri murmurs in mirané, “Thank you. It will keep them from their usual impropriety.”
“You started it.” Lyric nods at the plate. “Thank you.”
“You feel sick?”
“Only slightly,” Lyric demurs. “I’ll be fine.”
(He doesn’t really think so.)
Lyric meets the couple marrying in seven days, and easily offers a blessing for their lives and love.
He stumbles a little with the Sarian dialect, but Sah’set, the headwoman, smooths the way.
She wants to know news from the crater city, as do most of the adults and elders.
As the main dinner is cleared away, Lyric and Maimeri are drawn nearer to the large central pit where six fires are blazing in six braziers along the perimeter of the pit.
Lyric wishes it was four or eight, but six is not the worst. More wine is passed around, which Lyric again declines, glad for warmed water with some kind of infusion—it isn’t tea or fruit, but it’s fine, and not transformative.
Lyric says what he can about the Night of Chimeras, describing the basics of what happened, giving praise to the small king of Rivermouth.
Setka sidles up and, with a conspiratorial glint to her smile, spins a story about Lyric Aharté being half dead for his efforts to save this very chimera Setka, and in turn being saved by the miracle of Iriset Sunderer’s sacrifice.
It sounds very pretty and mystical when she tells it, and Lyric tries not to fidget.
Speculation runs wild about what miracles Iriset performed, so he says it was not a miracle, but skill and love.
And he tells them his sun-bright eye used to be in Iriset’s head, and he and the Holy Syr share it now.
It was hers, now is his, and so perhaps they will always be part of each other no matter the time or distance between them.
“Complicated, hmm?” Sah’set murmurs knowingly.
An older woman takes pity on him and throws herself into telling the best love story she’s ever known, which clearly the people here are familiar with.
Lyric listens, trying not to fall too hard into the give-and-take of storytelling.
Setka wanders off to curl up with the children, playing their own game of dice, it seems, except they aren’t only rolling, they’re grabbing things—Lyric has no idea what kind of game it is.
Maimeri offers him a small plain cigarette, its tip smoldering. “You don’t drink, but this helps me with the disorientation. Try, or take back your necklace.”
It’s the most commanding Maimeri has been with Lyric since az jumped out of that tree to tackle him.
Lyric considers for a moment, the lanterns and laughter, the dark sky covered in clouds, the haze of the hidden moon, his companions safe enough, and Maimeri’s intensity, and Lyric takes the cigarette.
Maimeri instructs him and Lyric is good at breathing, so he gets a good lungful of the unexpectedly soft drug, holding it in his mouth and slowly exhaling.
It leaves a taste on his tongue he can’t describe.
The evening fades into night and people drift away, though not all. “Do you know,” Lyric says, at first to everyone but then realizes he’s speaking mirané so it’s only for Maimeri, “I’ve never been cold before this winter.”
Maimeri frowns, and it’s very cute. Or Lyric is—yes, he can feel the gentling of his mind, the cloudy comfort of whatever he’s smoking tenderizing his edges. “Not cold?” Maimeri asks.
“I have always lived in a desert, and even the winter is dry, and if it is cold enough to frost, that does not reach inside the palace of the Vertex Seal. There are force-nets to hold temperatures in place around windows, fire of course, and it was easy to go days and days without venturing outside.” Lyric sighs, tilting his head back.
“The valley will have snow,” Maimeri says, putting the cigarette to ahz lips again.
Az makes another cute face, puckering ahz lips for a kiss, eyes closed as az drags, and Lyric is just staring.
It’s funny, he’s so relaxed, and he does wish Iriset was here, or Singix actually, his real wife, the one that’s both of them, the role Iriset played for so long.
Lyric wonders if she’d have liked him at all if they met here in this hamlet instead of that garden, far away from the crater and apostasy and the mirané council.
Lyric nearly falls asleep in the crowd, but he and Maimeri are shown to a guest room in Sah’set’s rambling house.
Lyric does remember to check on Setka, who is happy snuggling with two of the kids and a few dogs out near the fire under blankets.
Lyric is glad and vaguely surprised dogs tolerate her.
But then, animals are better than people sometimes, the stories say.
Lyric doesn’t know. Garnet liked animal stories, probably because of growing up with the royal griffons.
He’s still thinking about Garnet when Maimeri pushes him into a bathing room to wash up, and it’s good, thinking of them in the same heartbeat, though Garnet never wanted to kiss him and Maimeri very obviously does.
So Lyric tugs Maimeri by the hand and kisses ahz. It’s sloppy and warm and loose. Lyric’s eyes close and he’s only touching Maimeri at the wrist and mouth. Maimeri leans in, barely kissing back but ahz lips are open and ahz breath hot. Az tastes like the smoky drug, and Lyric blinks, pulling back.
Better to stop until he’s not altered. Except he might keep smoking forever, he doesn’t even notice his nausea or the angry twisted forces knotting up his inner design and making his fingers numb. Like this, it seems normal to have slightly numb fingers.
Maimeri’s red eyes are so near, ahz lips glistening, and Lyric sighs softly. With tender hands he cups Maimeri’s jaw, and he can feel the slight pressure in his fingertips. He kisses Maimeri again, chaste on the corner of ahz mouth, then steps away to wash.