Chapter 5 #5
I didn't trust him to recognize what he needed to tell me, and I could ask Inmadra any questions at all without worrying about her telling me it was fine for me to flout convention and chart my own course. Araxis was generous, but his generosity had its own cost too.
"I trust you to be kind," I said finally, chest tight.
"And – I mean, you're not exactly the most typical abaya, are you?
Which is good, but I want to know how to do everything properly, so that if I'm ignoring the rules, it's on purpose.
You'd just tell me there aren't rules or that I don't need to worry about them. "
Araxis was quiet, his jaw tight. "Of course you have my permission to see a cultural tutor," he said, soft.
"You have my permission to do whatever it is that you wish.
Whatever brings you – happiness and joy and comfort.
You never need to justify yourself to me.
Understand that my permission and support can be assumed, always. "
That wasn't true, but he needed it to be. I watched him and then, because I had to know, "Why was Vivith watching me? I know I've been headed out on my time off, but that was your idea. So I don't understand."
Araxis exhaled, looking weary. "They are feeling displaced, I think.
Vivith thought you would be much as an abayan virra; instead, you are my equal.
I wish to spend time with you; I want to know your thoughts.
And you're challenging me to think in new ways, which Vivith – Ah, well.
It's hard to say. But they will not bother you now.
I have told them, as head of house. It is decided.
" He used an abayan word, one of the cultural words Inmadra had explained to me. "Hm, that means –"
"A binding command," I finished. "I know."
Araxis's head tilted in surprise.
I stopped myself from rolling my eyes. It wasn't any harder to learn abayan than it had been to learn Standard; in fact, it was a lot easier.
I had worksheets and a language tutor, even if he didn't know that.
"Don't look so shocked," I said. "I do a lot of worksheets.
" I went to mention Inmadra too, but I found myself hesitating – like maybe knowing I was seeing someone else as a culture and language tutor might hurt him.
He'd offered both, and I'd declined. Instead, because I wanted to show off a little and because I thought it might leech some of the tension and what felt a lot like sadness out of the air, I added in abayan, "I aim to be a diligent student.
I aim to please my sinnenthi." I'd worked on that sentence structure during the morning meeting.
At once, Araxis flushed pink and ducked his head. Point proven, I walked past the partial wall to go look at the rest of the pieces out back – partly because I wanted to see them, but also because I wanted a little space to think about what Araxis had told me.
So Vivith had been spying on me, and it sounded, based on what he said, like it was because they were… jealous?
But what did Vivith have to be jealous of?
It wasn't even like Araxis had been spending much time with me: we went to meetings and appointments together, which was expected for a virra-sinnenthi pair; we slept together, even if we weren't fucking, which surely Vivith had to know given that they apparently knew I hadn't accepted Araxis's apology yet; but on my time off, Araxis didn't have anything to do with me.
Vivith had even been the one to message me about the meeting with Creche Miras, because Araxis had refused.
So –
You're challenging me to think in new ways, he'd said.
"What do you mean that I'm making you think about things differently?" I asked as I studied a striking blue and white tapestry with little threads of metal glinting throughout, like waves on the ocean or fish jumping from the water. "What's changed?"
Araxis stood by another plinth, but when I turned it became clear he wasn't looking at the piece.
He was watching me, eyes wide and black.
"Hm. Many things. You said, in your judicial interview, that we might have approached the Tournament by aiming to help the other competitors.
Instead of looking for weaknesses, might we have identified common ground or ways to alleviate suffering?
I wonder that now, as we forge new relationships with other creches.
Do we need to have the upper hand, or – should we be a helping hand?
It seems to me that too often, we aim to use others for our own ends.
I don't want to do that. I do not want that to be who we are.
I do not think that is the future for Creche Thiel or for Xitera. "
I had to look away, my chest suddenly tight. What a beautiful way to think about the work he was doing. How had I made him think like that?
Although I suppose he understood now how using people for your own aims did harm.
"Vivith says that I am being soft and sentimental," Araxis admitted, letting his stare drift back to the sculpture in front of him.
"But I do not think it is a bad thing to be soft.
You often said that you liked when I was soft and gentle.
Though," he glanced up, a darting look accompanied by a sly smile, "you said you like a firm touch as well. "
"I think I said that it depends on who's doing the touching," I found myself saying, studying him there, haloed by the bright lights overhead, the rest of the room cast to shadow around us.
Araxis's smile fell for a reason I didn't understand, and he turned, pacing over to another wall. Maybe he was feeling guilty again about… everything.
"Well, thank you, anyway," I said, drifting toward him, "for putting a stop to... Vivith's spying, or whatever."
"Of course," said Araxis, shoulders stiff.
We stood in silence near each other for several minutes, walking from piece to piece.
The longer we went without speaking, the more something itched at me.
I tried to see if I could make sense of it, studying the tick of tension in Araxis's jaw, the way his fingers were knotted behind his back; I tried to make sense of it in myself as well.
"Who's the artist?" I asked finally, grasping for anything.
"Her name is Celravi. She's a crecheless inavil. I gather that she was understood to be another gender before she came of age, when she declared herself to be as she is."
I pulled up short. It couldn't be. "That's a pretty name. Is it common?"
Araxis shook his head, staring at a small tapestry in front of us, although in truth he was staring at nothing at all, a familiar empty distance in his eyes.
"No, not at all. It is very old. She apparently chose it for herself when she left her previous creche – which does befit an inavil.
The story is in the literature about this collection. "
I'd have to ask my Celravi when I saw her later today if she was an artist. This work suited her, or at least the little I knew about her. I'd have to tell her I'd been here with Araxis.
Next to me, Araxis straightened, blinking rapidly. "I meant to ask, Sashen, if you're comfortable speaking about it – how is it that you came to choose your name?"
I shrugged. It wasn't a particularly good story.
"I picked Sashen because it's close to a common nickname for Alikander – but it's different, so it wouldn't remind me too much about where I come from.
I guess I just liked how it sounded. Surnames are inherited from the father on Seraphim, and I didn't want his name attached to me. Solar means... of the sun, I guess.” I offered the Standard translation, or as close as I could, before continuing.
“I liked the idea that I could give myself a name that was kind of connected to where humans came from – we call our home star Sol – but also just to space.
Picking that for my surname was like I wasn't so much his child as I was a child of the cosmos, or something like that.
" It sounded stupid when I said it, but it had felt important when I'd been fifteen and choosing a name for the ID Alet Trident was paying a lot to have made for me.
"It does suit you," Araxis murmured, watching me. "You are a bright star."
I swallowed, throat tight. "I mean, not any more. Now I'm Sashen of Creche Thiel."
Because I was, wasn't I? Another name I didn't choose, given to me by my attachment to someone who mattered more than I did.
It was why I was trying to also be just Sashen in that second part of my life here on Sozamia.
I didn't want to be someone who existed only in connection to someone else who mattered more.
I wanted to have substance on my own. I wanted to believe that I could, anyway, even if I was believing a lie.
I stopped in front of the largest tapestry, a sprawling piece of a dozen different shades of gray and gold that seemed to depict two figures reaching desperately for each other on either side of a gulf, a chasm fracturing the earth below.
Next to me, Araxis was silent; when I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, I could see the tension in his jaw; I could see his throat working as he tried to swallow back a subvocal of some sort.
I wrenched my attention back to the tapestry, but the longer we stood there looking at it, the tighter my own throat felt.