Chapter 30 #3
(And oh, that snow. It falls gently, without gusting or storm, and hardly any ice.
Lyric stands outside letting it drift down around him, freezing and in awe.
The gentle sound of it and the peace it lays down feels like someone put a deep lake inside Lyric’s stomach, endless and filling, like he could stand there and only be until the end of the world.
Setka hates it.)
As they walk the valley, Lyric asks Maimeri about ahz childhood, about leaving the crater city and finding this home.
In return, Maimeri asks Lyric about Iriset who traded her eye to him, and about how they met, and Lyric finds himself describing his sister, Garnet, his disappointment with his mother, and his almost-fear of his father.
He lets himself be sad, lets Maimeri hold his hand while he chokes on things his mother said, tries to explain how kind she was, how good he thought she was.
Diaa of Moonshadow gave him his first copy of Word of Aharté, encouraged him to transcribe his own.
Held him when he needed comfort, treated Garnet like her own, hoped he would be happy, told him it was good to be strong but better to be true.
At least, that’s what Lyric thought until he found out she killed his wife, because she didn’t actually trust Aharté, didn’t believe in the promise of the Holy Design.
“I’m not sure anyone in my family ever treated me like I could make my own choices,” he confesses to Maimeri. “Until Iriset.”
“My mother didn’t want me to go,” Maimeri says, “but allowed it, because I was suffering.”
It does surprise Lyric to find out the gratuitous, cruel, bizarre Moon-Eater was a good parent. He cannot bring himself to say they’re going to unravel him.
But carefully, once he’s been to each peak and has a better understanding of the natural balance of the valley, Lyric begins to tell Maimeri about Moonshadow City and Aharté’s Holy Design that pulls the forces of the world into alignment much like this valley and the anchor necklace Lyric made.
To Maimeri it obviously sounds like a distant heaven, an unlikely but wondrous place.
Lyric dislikes painting it in too pretty of colors, because he knows how terrible it could also be, but he does miss the Silent Chapel and the Color Can Be Loud Garden, his sister and Garnet, especially Garnet.
Maimeri asks more, for more details about Lyric’s family, and doesn’t seem to mind hearing about Iriset and Singix, in abstract at least, interrupting stories to push Lyric down and kiss him like Lyric could forget everything else.
And Lyric allows it—craves it. They aren’t snowed in, drifts not even as high as Lyric’s knee, but ice keeps it all hard and dangerous.
The lake freezes over, and Setka worries about the catfish unnecessarily.
They’ve endured worse cold, Maimeri assures her.
To stay warm they make fires in several rooms: in the unicorn’s, which is covered but open to the world in the east, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom, getting cozy and close.
The griffons come inside, and the snow foxes, all of them huddled in the three main rooms. Lyric grows restless, unused to such a lack of privacy, and to the smell of so many living creatures.
To mitigate his restlessness he teaches Maimeri combat-design, how to disarm and disable, how to find inner design and reach for Lyric’s, to feel the rise and fall of breath and action, the flow of motions and ecstatic steps, ecstatic punches.
It’s good for Lyric to refresh himself, and Maimeri learns fast, and even though it’s not as immediately satisfying as sex, they certainly aren’t doing any of that with such an audience.
Unfortunately, Lyric notices right away that despite the balance of the valley and the lengthening number of days he’s been in the past, his body continues to deteriorate.
More than tingling fingertips, more than nausea and headaches, everything feels simply off.
Wrong. He believes he manages to hide it, as nobody in this valley knows what he should be capable of, how strong he used to be and the level of his stamina for long hours combat dancing followed by walking meditation and impossibly strenuous meetings.
But Lyric knows, and it confirms for him a hard constraint of time. Even with the eclipse before summer solstice as a defined ending point to the work Iriset and the rest continue in the crater city in order to save it, Lyric might not have so long himself.
Would it be so bad to stay here? To let the future take care of itself and to lie in the shade of this mountain until he dies?
No more arguing or fighting or governing or life-and-death-for-hundreds choices every fucking day.
If he faded from existence because the future changed too much, so what?
Nothing can keep Iriset down for long, even if he pretends for a moment his death might break her a little bit.
But it isn’t just him, is it?
“What are you thinking about?” Maimeri asks, with this look on ahz face that is not a smile but seems like one: With a change of muscle tension around ahz eyes, something moves across ahz brow, and az focuses ahz complete attention on Lyric.
There is a pile of griffons and one alliraptor chimera snuggled beside them, feathers rustling and a few cute little snores, while Turo sleeps on his feet, one hoof tilted back like an ordinary horse.
Sometimes when the unicorn stands in the open wall, he seems to block all the cold without stifling the moon and starlight.
“The future,” Lyric says, trying to study ahz expression in the flickering yellow firelight. “What are you thinking about?”
Maimeri ducks ahz head. “Keeping you here.”
Lyric laughs gently, easy, easy. “I would stay,” he admits.
“If I asked you?” Maimeri doesn’t look back at him, red eyes soft on the fire.
“If I could.” Lyric sighs. “It would be easy to live my life here, in this strange place, with you. So easy.”
“But?”
“Easy isn’t always, or often, right.”
Maimeri frowns. “It isn’t right with me?” az says a little sharply. Not enough to disturb the sleepers, but enough to press guilt against Lyric’s chest.
“It has nothing to do with you, Little Rabbit,” Lyric says, knowing that won’t sound very good, either.
“Is this about your holy city? About balance and Aharté?”
“Yes. And my family.”
“It must be nice,” Maimeri whispers.
“What?”
“Having a family.”
Lyric’s lips pop open like he’s been slapped, and he reaches for Maimeri’s face. He holds the other’s jaw. “You…” he says, stunned, and then stops because he’s hit again, but this time with the realization he can take this and—and use it to manipulate Maimeri into what Lyric wants.
Like Amaranth would. Like Iriset would.
He swallows. “Come back with me. To the crater city. Remake it with me into what it needs to be.”
“With you?” Maimeri asks tentatively. Az shifts so az’s facing Lyric fully, expression intense. “With you.”
“With me,” Lyric agrees. “But…” He grimaces.
“What?” Maimeri demands, and it’s ahz turn to grab Lyric’s jaw.
Az holds strongly, almost painfully. It takes Lyric’s breath away.
He forgets for a moment what was going on, staring at Maimeri’s vivid mirané eyes, the scowling line of ahz brows, the almost cute dimple under ahz bottom lip where the skin presses up like az’s trying to pout but doesn’t quite know how.
Lyric takes ahz hand and pulls it off his face. He keeps it held between both of his, and rubs his thumb against Maimeri’s palm. “No matter what happens, I won’t be here for much longer.”
“Here?”
A little helpless about it, Lyric shrugs. “Here, in this place, in this… life.”
With great seriousness Maimeri studies him. It’s disconcerting and almost a relief to give in to it, and Lyric wishes they were alone so he could take off all his clothes and let Maimeri see that, too. He wasn’t lying: It is so easy to give these things to Little Rabbit, and Lyric doesn’t know why.
“You aren’t like my mother or the other one, Never, and you aren’t like Turo,” Maimeri says. “You’re like me, but not quite, either. Not a chimera, but there are no humans exactly like you.”
Lyric looks down at their hands. He wants to say there are no humans exactly like anyone else, but that isn’t what Maimeri means and this isn’t a philosophy lesson.
The truth is the miran are designed to be the same, their inner design balanced and their outer design nearly impossible to corrupt.
At least, that is what Lyric was taught to believe about Aharté and her holy people.
And of course, the miran haven’t been created yet, here. Maybe they’ll be Maimeri’s children, not Aharté’s.
Maimeri says, like az can read minds, “Sah’set told me Aharté is an old goddess of the Sarian and Bes peoples.”
Lyric nods almost absent-mindedly.
“Lyric Aharté, are you a god?”
“Little Rabbit,” he says, laughing breathlessly. “No.”
“My mother made me because he wants to be embodied. Did you know that? He spent years and many lives to make me. The Moon-Eater wants to be more like you, more like me. Who is to say a goddess did not want the same and succeed?”
The passion in Maimeri’s eyes seems alive, like az’s decided this thing and it lit ahz up.
Lyric shakes his head slowly, concerned, but at the same time pained to know that, as a god, he can make Maimeri do what he wants.
Instead of answering directly, Lyric says, “When we can move about the valley again, help me make an anchor necklace for the whole thing. It will draw the already balanced forces into perfect Silence, and you’ll feel it. You’ll understand.”
“Fine,” Maimeri agrees immediately. Then az kisses Lyric, grasping his face and pouring ahzself into Lyric, fingers warm as always.
Lyric welcomes the kiss, opens his mouth and returns it, careful to only lean in, not disrupt the sleeping chimeras all around him.
Maimeri’s tongue is soft, ahz teeth forceful, ahz grip insistent, and Lyric wants to push back, to bite back, but it’s too easy—all of this, too easy, and Lyric stops suddenly, a sick knot in his throat.
He pushes Maimeri away, swallowing, eyes tightly closed.
“What’s wrong?” Maimeri whispers.
“This…” Lyric swallows again, shakes his head.
He pats Maimeri’s thigh, this is fine, it will pass, to reassure.
He breathes in his eight-count, glad the air is cold when he tilts away from the fire.
It soothes the knot, soothes the nausea.
He keeps breathing, unwilling to shake apart right now, under this very familiar weight.
“I’m not a god,” Lyric says plainly. “I do want you to balance the valley with me and return to the crater city. Not because I’m a god, but because it’s what I need to happen.” He looks at Maimeri. “I need your help, Little Rabbit.”
(Not how Amaranth or Iriset would do it at all!)
Maimeri looks back. They breathe softly together, in and out, and it’s not quite a perfect alignment, but Maimeri nods. “I will, Lyric Aharté.”
“Just Lyric, Little Rabbit.”