5.
Ʌ DisɅster in Jubilife VillɅge
It was time to say the Prayer of the Diamond Clan.
"We call Him Almighty Sinnoh," adamaN began, "because He is, in fact, Almighty and Sinnoh. We do not call Him Not Almighty Sinnoh, because He is not, in fact, Not Almighty and Not Sinnoh. That is why we call Him Almighty Sinnoh. Because He is, in fact, Almighty and Sinnoh. Almighty Sinnoh, if you will."
"And if I won't?" iridA interrupted.
"Then, my beloved iridA, she who dares to interrupt an ancient ritual in the eyes of He who turns both bone and stone to sand, you and all your relatives and ancestors, humans of both natural opposing and complementary natures, the aged and the newborn and previously deceased, shall asphyxiate speedily in your continuous expanse of readily available emptiness. Now, Almighty Sinnoh, ceaselesS timE, He who is the slowinG of breatH, the seizinG of the flesH…"
The Sekki's sermon went on for six hours. Much of it was acknowledging whom he was speaking to, as well as asking Almighty Sinnoh (Not Not Almighty Sinnoh) to be his witness, and listing all his favorite synonyms. There were several hundred tangents and anecdotes — supplemental, he assured the villagers — crucial for context, he argued, when iridA asked why he kept slipping a fingernail under the scab on his forehead and letting it bleed, just so he could bring up her shoes again and again.
And the village was captive. Back down in the basement office where the bookkeepers pushed numbers, with flickering electric lights and the rank scent of sweat they all sat and listened carefully to what wisdom the Clan leaders could provide. Six hours, adamaN was given, until his face was so pale and his blue coat so spattered Matron Pesselle was forced to call a recess and drag him upstairs to the infirmary, where his Leafeon awaited him.
Eiffel had long taken to the most well-lit corner to read. Zisu was back at her quarters with her children. It was now iridA alone who stood trembling and tired. She was barefoot. Her blue eyes were shadowed. Her lips were pulled tight. Without a sparring partner, she simply raised her voice and launched into a scatterbrained sestina:
"Almighty Sinnoh is air and flesh and emptiness,
For emptiness, though unseen is still perceived.
With emptiness, humans know longing and sadness.
By emptiness, humans grow and learn what matters.
And no human who dies in emptiness is empty herself.
For she is not born of emptiness, but of spacE."
Cyllene sat at one of the tables, hands clasped and salvaging what she could. Emptiness as a teacher? A reminder that human life was meant to determine the empty from the spacious…? The silly girl wasn't trying to make it personal, was she!?
You're sitting alone right now, Cyllene's own thoughts reminded her. Eiffel doesn't want to sit by you. He's not even thinking about you, and he doesn't think about you when he's alone.
Because he doesn't have to think about me every moment, she argued back. And there's nothing between us, and nothing will form. We're not compatible. It can't be forced. Don't even entertain the idea.
Something should be forced if you want to have any enjoyment.
Didn't The Sekki just say there's infinite time for experiences?
While acknowledging how short our lives are. Brutally.
Then it's more repulsive to feel a fat, whiny, imaginative Galarian breathing into your mouth than it is to languish in loneliness, isn't it.
A headache was tightening just above her left eye. Her stomach was in knots. iridA's poem was fading to background noise. The flickering lights burned the shifting, glowing patterns of the nacre tiara deep into Cyllene's retinas.
"And does death, then, cancel her presence in spacE?
Is death the changing of the body into emptiness?
Or is it simply the coda of her mind? Of herself?
Who she was, by loved ones, is still perceived
As memory. And to that end, she still matters,
And within her loved ones, there is sadness.
And then, they should argue, there is substance in sadness
Substance in knowledgE. wilL. emotioN. Intangible spacE
That dwells within the human mind and all matter,
Opposing only that which lies in sleep and emptiness —
That which by a human eye cannot be perceived —
That which is not and cannot be any true part of herself.
Cyllene wished she could become sleep and emptiness. That odd taste still lingered in her mouth — the stuff from Ginter, that was not beer but was in the bottle anyway. It was a stickiness she'd never tasted before. Unbearably sweet, a bit citrusy, now strong and sour and mixing with the foul tang of dead membrane sloughing and wet scars toughening where she'd carved a crescent-moon crater into her left cheek.
She pressed a knuckle against the same cheek and chewed more. Cyllene loved the feeling of her incisors slicing into the old, soft ridges. It wasn't painful, and she didn't mean to hurt herself. But for years and years, it had been so oddly satisfying — having a platter of half-healed flesh in the morning to shape, tracing and testing the textures with her tongue.
In Hisui, there grew a stalky leek whose juice could heal minor wounds on contact. It was yet another "magic" that had Eiffel molesting his typewriter at all eccentric hours. A single drop could knit a cut without a scar. Drinking a drop could put a grown man into a painless, dream-filled stupor. And of course, using more than a drop inside or outside the body would kill a human of any age in minutes.
The Galaxy Team had learned this the hard way. Cyllene had stated many times she would rather chew a hole through her cheek than drink magic leek juice.
"So test me, worshiper of time. Who is the human herself?
What creates her fears and her sadness?
Something taught, or something else she perceives?
Was there never anything like her in all of spacE?
Without her, is there left an emptiness?
Or shards and shadows, left by things that you say matter?"
iridA was getting flustered. She grasped at her sash with both fists, rocking back and forth on her feet while she recited. Another handful of villagers left their seats and exited the room. It was meant to be a meeting on the Clans' wisdom regarding the storm. But so far everything was irrelevant. At least to the "embryonic foreigners," who couldn't see the point in traditional poetic structures or six-hour theatrical sermons.
Only a dedicated few remained now. Eiffel was absorbed in his reading. Cyllene would rather entertain her headache and nausea with nonsense than work. And in the very back of the room sat Commander Kamado, huge hands gripping the grain of the table.
He was an enormously muscular warrior of forty — a Johtoan by birth — who now in Jubilife wore the same black mustache and kimono as on the day he watched his old village burn to swirling ashes. Patiently, he'd waited out The Sekki. For a moment, he'd entertained The Kkai. But something about iridA's repeated end words and her callow posture had his brows furrowed and his breath beginning to grind in his throat.
"And… can you see, by looking at her… what she found to matter?
Does she find these shards and shadows in herself?
Reflections, made of… of light and emptiness,
In mirrors formed of confusion and sadness?
We… We are our own inventions in Sinnoh's spacE.
So test me! Test your strength to know! And p-perceive!"
A deep and powerful growl issued from the back of the room. "Kkai, please end this," it said. "Now."
But iridA refused. Her pale white cheeks had gone red, and she was shaking:
"Look at me and say what you perceive!
Look at me and say what you think matters!
Am I a wretch!? That fabled 'wasted space!?'
A careless fluke of time!? A mistake of Sinnoh Herself!?
Why do you believe humans were meant to live in sadness!?
Why do you flood your wicked heart with emptiness!?"
The Commander stood.
"YOU WILL STOP THIS NOW!"
The electric lights' flickering intensified. They grew dim and bronze — so dark The Kkai seemed changed to a stiff gold statue where she stood. Then they brightened and brightened until hot sparks burst from the bulbs and the room was cast in a blaze of fiery white that blinded all for a moment.
Cyllene stood up at once, squinting as a shower of sparks rained down to singe the carpet inches from where iridA stood. Then one of the bulbs exploded, a hot shard of glass zinging down across the girl's cheek and cutting it. Flames began to bubble and smoke around her bare feet.
Still, she shrieked:
"WHAT A HUMAN PERCEIVES IS HER PURPOSE! HER SELF!"
SINNOH IS THE MATTER IN THE STILLNESS AND THE SADNESS!
SO IF I… IF I'M GOING TO… IF I HAVE TO DROWN IN SPACE, THEN EVERYTHING WILL TURN INTO EMPTINESS!"
And at the close of her envoy, "everything" happened at once. Commander Kamado began by flipping the table across the room. It landed with a resounding CLATTER-CLANG upon the chalkboards, which toppled over, cracking into pieces. Dusty, rusted wheels rolled erratically around the carpet, thumping against the walls.
Cyllene had just barely managed to leapfrog over her own table and somersault right into iridA, knocking her out of the way of another exploding lightbulb. With the sound of fizzling and crackling, the whole room was plunged suddenly into darkness. Small orange flames crawled up the sleeve of Cyllene's jacket sleeve. More of them had descended upon the chalkboards. Smoke billowed up black and putrid. Burning wool erupted into the odor of sulfur and curled up into small black smoldering beads.
"Eiffel!" Cyllene cried, struggling to pull iridA onto her skinny wobbling legs. The girl choked only for a second before she loosened and fainted in Cyllene's arms from the heat. Now Cyllene's headache exploded, and she slumped against the nearest wall, vision watering and stinging in the smoke.
And you had dozens of candles lit in your study. Watch how fast this place burns down.
Something round and heavy crashed into crumbling furniture. Eiffel, she knew, when she saw his silhouette stumbling through the flickering veil toward the door.
"EIFFEL!"
"Cyllene!? Are you still in here!?"
"ACCURSED, EIFFEL! CALL OUT OSHAWOTT!"
"There's no time to save the building, Cyllene! Quickly, teleport outside!"
"There is accursed time, you fool! Oshawott! Now!"
Cyllene's heart pounded. Her whole forehead throbbed. She slid down the wall, inhaling her own sweat with the smoke. Bile swelled up her throat and burned when it trickled over the puffy red crescent. Meanwhile she fought to keep squeezing iridA tight around the waist. The girl was made of paper. Her tiara tumbled out of her hair, and another moment had Cyllene's sandal thundering down to scuff and crack it. It gleamed like scarlet lava in the firelight.
"Eiffel! Ei… Eiffel!?"
Eiffel was gone. He'd saved himself. Selfish. Accursed. Untrustworthy. Waste of space. What was left was emptiness, and Cyllene felt it filling her lungs and her stomach. She dropped The Kkai to tear off her jacket, using it to beat the smaller flames away, then scooped up the girl again and dove toward the smoking hallway.
That was before the whole ceiling of the bookkeepers' room collapsed. A gale of fire was forced overhead as Cyllene ducked down, covering iridA with her own body.
CALL OUT ABRA AND TELEPORT, YOU ACCURSED IDIOT!
Cyllene's thoughts screamed at her. Pleaded. Her hands trembled, the right closing in around Abra's Poké Ball still tied around her waist. Her thumbnail slipped beneath the latch. She felt it click. She felt the heat blaze overhead, tiny flickering embers forming a spinning, churning galaxy on the ceiling.
And then hesitated once more. The emptiness… Emptiness tasted like fear and flesh and smoke and black silk crumbling to nothing as it burned. Emptiness was still Space. Emptiness was an emotion she almost… found herself enjoying.
She'd wanted Eiffel to save her, she realized. But he hadn't. Because he didn't love her. He wanted her to save herself. He wanted her to be alone. He thought that was what she wanted. He thought she could do it. He thought—
"The galaxy is burning," she choked out, mesmerized by the skittering sparks.
Indeed, the galaxy told her. A pair of eyes opened on the ceiling. They were the color of the moon in eclipse — a bloody, rusty red with pupils like craters, and ringed by the ever-burning fire of the sun. A burning circle peered down at her. Curiously. Suspiciously.
Something grabbed her then, forcefully. The endless, star-filled galaxy, (or was it a vast and ever-expanding void?) was forced from her view, replaced only with blackness and emptiness. Commander Kamado, his kimono smelling like meat as it burned, tugged so hard on Abra's Poké Ball the string snapped. He slammed it against the wall until the wooden shell cracked and steam hissed against the crackling of flames.
"TELEPORT!" the Commander roared, seizing the creature by the tail and shoving it into the faces of the fainted.
There was a pop, and suddenly cool moonlight streamed down upon Jubilife Village. Not moonlight. The storm above Mount Coronet was brighter than the moon. It spun and pulsed erratically in the eastern sky, with threads of bluish lightning snapping along its edges. Steeling his muscles, Commander Kamado raced away from Galaxy Hall's steps, a woman in each arm, until he had reached the creek bed. He cupped his hands in the waterwheel and doused their faces and bodies.
"PESSELLE!"
"Working as quickly as I can!" the pink-haired woman spat.
"LAVENTON!"
No hope lay with Eiffel Laventon. He was clutching a pile of partly-charred books to his chest and sobbing, bronze figures of Cufant and Copperajah littered around his feet and his hat missing. His face was black with soot. A dark substance — dirt or blood — was crusted over his fingernails.
"Years of research, burned and drowned," he whimpered, before collapsing in the cool grass. Oshawott, a little mammalian Water-type Pokémon, along with Rowlet and Cyndaquil, nuzzled lovingly against him.
"I can help," adamaN told the Commander. Very gently, he lay iridA on a flat patch of ground and began to pump his bandaged wrists against her chest.
"So you can speak normally," Kamado scoffed.
The Sekki grit his teeth and scowled. "You don't even believe in Almighty Sinnoh," he said.
"I don't believe wasting time is virtuous," Kamado told him, watching and repeating the motions on Cyllene. (At least, before Pesselle rushed over and slapped his huge hands away.)
"Look at that girl," Kamado continued, pointing at iridA's prone form. "How long did you spend today talking about wanting to see her like this?"
adamaN almost pouted. "I don't waste time. I revere time. I acknowledge that time is endless and—"
"And what happens when time takes a life!?" Kamado thundered. He smacked adamaN with the back of his hand just as iridA came to life crying and gasping beneath an unusually stoic Zisu, ready with the vial of leek juice.
"You're a teenager. Barely a man. You think time is infinite. You make jokes about 'bones turning to sand.' Is that the way you lead your people? What do the elders of your Clan think? Are they eager for death? Does everyone in the Diamond Clan just sit around waiting to die? When you get too old will another child call himself The Sekki and make fun of you?"
adamaN held up his fists, daring to glare at a man twice his width and a whole head taller.
"It is the pearL claN who sit around waiting for light and sensation to perish. timE marches on whether or not there is a world within it. That is why Almighty Sinnoh rules timE. That is why the diamonD claN will inherit Hisui. That is why I cannot show The Kkai any mercy, mortal as she is."
The Commander scooped him up and threw him, lips curling into a sneer when the little Clan leader skidded across the mud of the creek bed and let out a whine.
"That'll teach him!" Zisu hollered.
But Kamado regained his composure, walking back over to where Cyllene was now struggling to breathe again.
"We are not arbiters of justice, Zisu," he chided. "I only need remind adamaN of his natural duties. He would do better to speak less."
"That's for sure," Zisu said softly. She held Cyllene's head in her lap, tipping a handful of water into her mouth and stroking her short blue hair.
"And Cyllene's brilliance confounds her," said Kamado. "She chooses the worst times for deliberation."
"She's scared, Commander."
"We're all scared. The Galaxy Team needs a scrivener. Toughen her for me."
Zisu opened her mouth to protest, but now the Commander had switched his attention to Eiffel, marching over and kicking the man where he lay.
Galaxy Hall smoldered. Some of the guardsmen possessed Water-type Buizel as their partners, and they commanded them now to spray the building down. The brick foundation and thick iron smokestacks didn't burn, but the wooden interior did, and the building was beginning to look hollow. The remaining glass in the windows shimmered brown with heat stains. Flames poured out like ribbons, breaking off into the sky with deep black plumes of sulfur-smelling smoke.
"Th… thank you," Cyllene spluttered between sips.
Zisu's face was grave. "Don't listen to Kamado. I'm just glad you're alive. It must have been all that lightning in the air. We can be so careful about the candles, but careless about lightning."
Cyllene breathed shakily. She furrowed singed eyebrows, straining to remember, but all that came back in the moment was a field of stars and some kind of burning light.
She tilted her head toward the storm in the distance. It was true. Strangely-colored lightning lanced forth freely now from the bright white center, sending the circular clouds into a stretching and trembling ripple. The bruise in the sky was infected. Black, starry fabric was made an eerie dark green. And every so often one of those lightning bolts would stray too far, breaking off and zinging to the ground below with a far-off crack or pop. Distant thunder rumbled. A stray wind whipped through the village, sending the plume of smoke swirling up with cinders.
"'S too far away," Cyllene whispered.
"Huh?"
"There wasn't any thunder. The Hall wasn't struck by lightning. It was the electric lights. Something was wrong with them."
But before she could say any more, a skinny pair of arms were thrown around her, and iridA squeezed her tight where she lay. The girl had lost all sense of composure now, sticky with sweat and fighting through her tears.
"You saved me," she sobbed.
"I didn't," Cyllene replied. "The… The Commander must have. Right? And Abra."
Abra nodded where it floated idly by. Its eyes were open now, wide and shiny and peering curiously around the chaos.
"I want to sleep," Cyllene said.
Zisu nodded. "You'll sleep. Open your mouth."
Cyllene shook her head.
"Just a drop. I promise."
"I don't trust you."
"You don't trust the matron either."
"You all just need to build up your tolerance. You're smart, Cyllene. Zisu gave me three drops of medicinal leek juice," said iridA, giving the large woman a sly eye.
The Kkai took the glass vial, then, and very carefully poured a single tiny drop onto a fingernail. She held it over Cyllene's mouth and let it trickle down to splash on her tongue.
She fell into immediate healing sleep, her cheeks fizzling and foaming as the flesh grew back, and that fiery circle peering into her dreams.
all of a sudden, it all became critical...
~N~
MWS jokes aside, here's where things start to get interesting...
With the posting of this chapter, at least, according to FFN's word count system, I have officially archived 1 million words on this site. That's since February 2017! Thank you all for reading!
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net June 4th, 2023. Please don't repost. Please do review!
