SSCS 04: Installment 25 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 25 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
(And the character list is here.)
Previously…
But San hissed just then, a curse from a millennium gone. “No, we should keep him by us, close and tight. Lot is gone.”
“Foolish child,” El snarled, turning, dark eyes flashing to scan fruitlessly what little could be seen along this side hall. “If she abandons the sworn quest, the oath curse will take her.”
“Will it truly?” The voice was dark and smooth and seductive, the words spoken just a breath before Du put his pan flute to his lips, the first low notes sounding out sweet, and seeming to shake the very world.
“Go. Track her,” El ordered San, before turning back to battle her wilding own.
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 25: 23.1209
***
In her first life, Lot had known privation and plenty in near equal measure. When your mother is Death incarnate, you take what is given, no hesitation. No worry or regret.
When your mother is Death, there is only the now, and what you should like to do with it.
Sometimes, in that long-ago life, Lot would dream up at the stars, and wonder how long until her mother conquered those as well. There were patterns there. Sometimes her little brother, Du, would sketch them for her, and tell her stories. And sometimes Lot would track the patterns and the stories herself. The moon would rise over the mountains, full-bellied, and Lot would watch which stars this night would gather in her wake; it changed, but also it did not. The cycle of the month, the year, spun ‘round again. And again. Which lands her mother conquered might follow a cycle like that, if only Lot might watch long enough.
When each battle was through, the dead were as silent as the stars.
Sometimes, in that long-ago life, Lot would scavenge for shelter among their bones.
Once, she lived a month—a week? two days?—in a grand command tent sewed from indigo silk and crowded thick with all the glittering treasures she had harvested from among their dead. Copper coins. Silver spears. A lyre-harp painted in gold and studded with emeralds and diamonds.
Once she lived for a year in a tent she had sewed for herself, from scraps of cloth in every color she could find, combing through every corpse from the last ten battlefields combined. There were patterns in the colors, but she never quite learned their secrets. The bones she used for the tent spars were brittle, and when her mother chose to cross a great, windy water, she was forced to leave that tent behind.
Once, the battlefield was a place built all of paper and of stone, and afterward her mother showed Lot the patterns in the books that were letters, and how the letters made sounds.
After that, Lot scavenged the dead for words as well as meat and cloth, for a shelter needed for something hidden in her soul. The patterns in the words were obvious, until they weren’t, until they were again. And sometimes the dead could point her to making sense of them. And sometimes the stars.
***
When Lot, many and many and countless lifetimes past that long-ago time, opened her eyes to a new, bright darkness, it was, strangely, with a gaze that looked from many directions at once, forming a pattern that shifted and moved in a way that was quickly solved. The flickering stars in this new sight were the bright-dappled limbs and tentacled ‘hair’ of herself, of a body that had been all of herself only a few-hundred heartbeats before. Now it was just (flesh, home)…a piece, or would be soon. Now she could look out with the eyes of that body, and also, with other eyes, look back at herself, or around and elsewhere. And everywhere. So many things to see, beyond the darkness at least. If she should venture forth, if they should—If we…
Lot (we all) looked upon her body from many eyes. Usually it would be dark in here, this little nest, hidden safe, just big enough for several sets of eyes to gather, to hide, to rest, to start something new. But this new body, this flesh, this bit of home that had been all of her, glimmered like starlight. The bit of mind that was Lot should have wept to see how beautiful it was, to see the patterns of the stars picked out in skin worn so many and many and countless lifetimes after she had first dreamed the night sky. But that Lot had been alone in that skin, had not had eyes enough to see all the patterns.
But we will keep it safe. We will keep it close. It will become part of us. This new flesh was only new-brought to the nest, and already the sight was so much clearer. If only this nest were safer, deeper. If only the Bartering One would keep away long enough. If only the binding could be made faster. This flesh (home) had many wisdoms that would make great strength. Great many! And then the mind-piece that was Lot would not be alone (never alone).
Lot closed the eyes of her body. Like small and distant flickers, she could feel the Chiton Horde crawling over her, black carapaces whispering over her skin, measuring every centimeter, every millimeter of flesh, tracing the lines of the binding she had already been welcomed into, wrapping it in silk.
The flesh would need to rest, its magic to be let to cure into the magic of the horde (we all), but already Lot could look outward with other eyes. In its way, the horde had many eyes. Hundreds, thousands, tens-of-thousands. Just like home.
Lot closed the eyes of her body, and remembered—there was something she was searching for. She couldn’t abandon the search. It would hurt (this flesh, this precious bit) to abandon it all together.