long time no see :P
It was just the kind of plan Calyx expected from Sacred-Palm.
Simple enough. Crude enough.
The common people would be evacuated over the course of the month, moved from the outskirts of the kingdom as refugees and brought to temporary camps at the fringes of the capital. The Order of Angels would double their patrol efforts, and train an elite courier team to run between the kingdom's edge and the Abbey to alert the exorcists. As for the exorcists, they were now being ordered to remain in Sacred-Palm for the foreseeable future as a singular task force — no longer free, working agents, but once more reduced to a unit of soldiers under the heel of the church.
How it reminded Calyx of their childhood.
"What do you think?" Hani was leaning closer to them, voice lowered conspiratorially, though not so quiet that Abilene Grimmalt could not hear on their other side. Both of them wore the same look, equal parts wary and expectant as they waited for Calyx's answer.
"There isn't much to think about," they said, shrugging. "It's not like we have a choice in the matter."
Hani frowned. "You like the plan?"
Calyx paused, ran their tongue over their teeth. The truth, which they loathed to share with their friend, was that they had realized long ago that it was far too late for any kind of plan. There was no amount of evacuations or patrol measures or states of emergency to pull their kingdom back from the brink. Maybe five years ago, it could have made a difference, before they had buried the best of their Order. Before the Blister had obliterated the heart of the population, before the people had become too heavy with grief to be spurred into action. Calyx looked around these days and saw a nation of those who had lost so much, they had no reason to carry on.
No reason, of course, except the Homecoming. The faintest of dreams. The return of a god who had let them all die in the clutches of sickness.
"Like is a strong word," Calyx muttered after a pause. They felt for the back of a heavy golden earring, the clumsy ridges of twisting metal faintly detectable beneath their gloved fingertip. "I will go along with it. For now."
"How agreeable," Abilene said lowly, her tired blue eyes peering at them. "How unusually agreeable, Stemenos."
The comment irked, at once wry and knowing. They thought to themself that Abilene and Priam must have been related after all; just the added touch of arrogance and it could have been something out of Priam's horrible mouth. But Abilene offered just enough blankness in her gaze, just enough of a softness to her voice, that it was not quite the same.
"Yes, well, contrary to popular opinion, I do not argue for the sake of arguing," they replied, in a clipped sort of tone. That was a lie, of course, thanks to the continued survival of one Dominik Nesterko. "For the time being, I will stay. And I stay because I agree that Sacred Palm is the best place to be."
"Best place to die?" Abilene suggested, one corner of her mouth tipping up, and Calyx was forced to concede a bitter smile to her behind their mask.
"Indeed."
"And what of Kosta?" Hani interjected, lowering their voice to a whisper. "Are we really letting him rejoin?"
Calyx shot a glance across the room, to where waxy-faced Dorian Kosta sat in his chair like a marionette abandoned by his puppeteer. It was so unnerving, the way he stared into the middle distance, the way his hands did not fidget or fret. He sat like a propped-up corpse. They pressed their lips together. "What alternative do we have? Bully him out like school children? None of us have the time to waste on such a futile endeavor."
"Obviously not what I mean," Hani said, rolling his eyes. "I just — he's killed children, Calyx. He's a murderer and he's crazy and he… he freaks me out."
This last part was admitted under his breath in a hiss, and Abilene laughed quietly, the sound surprisingly sweet for her thin, wan face.
"A fair complaint," she agreed. "What do you propose, Hani?"
"Just that we keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't try anything," Hani said. "The three of us at least, and anyone else you might know of who feels the same way. Dominik, maybe."
"Sure." Calyx snorted. "But you can be the one to ask him."
There was a pause in their conversation as they all took notice of the flurry of motion at the front of the room. A Scholar dressed in white robes had slipped into the room and made her way over to Sister Liutlinde to whisper in her ear. The Steward of the Library briefly conferred with the woman, and then nodded and dismissed her. Taking the cue, Father Adelhelm cleared his throat and rose to his feet.
"Exorcists, please," he boomed, and the room fell silent again. "There is one more crucial component to the new emergency initiative that you will all need to know. Sister?"
Sister Liutlinde stood to her fullest height, which was still quite diminutive, and cleared her throat.
"There have been unprecedented new developments in the Order of the Scholars, in accordance with some recently-unearthed documents," she began, wringing her hands together. Her eyes were bright behind her wire-rimmed glasses, the gaze of a much younger woman set in her lined face. "A pilot program of great secrecy was initiated some years ago, with participants from within our Order. The result of the work done since then now culminates in one person." With a nod to Adelhelm, "Let her in please."
The girl who stood behind the door to the meeting room was short and skinny as a rail. She couldn't have been more than thirteen years old, with dark brown skin, two thick plaits of blue-black hair, and the big, frightened eyes of a prey animal. Calyx heard themself make a disgusted noise quite without meaning to as the girl slipped in and scampered to Sister Liutlinde's side.
"This is our treasure," Sister Liutlinde announced, beaming as she slipped an arm around the young girl's shoulders. "Sister Marianne Capable will be the key to the new emergency procedure because she is the first child in many hundreds of years to be trained as a seer."
Silence.
Calyx laughed abruptly, because they could think of no other reaction to have.
"I assure you, Brother Calyx, her ability is nothing to laugh at," Sister Liutlinde said, pinning them with a steely-eyed stare that did not befit her plump, rosy face.
"I am no one's brother," Calyx retorted, just to be petty. "And you cannot be serious about this."
"A seer?" Miriam Hope-Still asked, wonderingly. Her pallid blue eyes were sparkling for once. "Is that really possible?"
"And through what means?" Artem added on quickly, suspiciously. He was always like that: a sighthound of an exorcist, always eager to flush out heresy.
"I assure you, we have gone through all the proper channels," Sister Liutlinde said, sounding slightly stung by his implication. Artem's stony expression did not flicker. "The project began with the unearthing of some documents on Seer training penned by Saint Orliot of Bestlewith."
"Those texts have been lost for centuries," Calyx heard themself point out through gritted teeth. Surely they weren't meant to buy this horseshit? Tomes like The Last Writings of Abbot Orliot Maithwaite did not merely appear out of thin air — Calyx would know, since they'd been fruitlessly hunting the text for the last seven years. "It is broadly agreed by historians that Maithwaite burned them during the Riots of Mirth to keep them out of heretical hands."
Contrary to their expectation, Liutlinde did not look incensed by their words, but seemed to grow even more animated. Clearly they had given her an opening to begin babbling about her favorite flavor of history, lost media. "That is precisely what Maithwaite wanted everyone to think! In fact, his last act as Abbot before his tragic martyring was to send a secret second copy he'd been making to the Tharnes Friary, which was then hidden for many years. We only acquired it very recently when renovations ended."
The Tharnes Friary, they knew, was now the central barracks on the east-most side of Hallowclave. Renovations had begun a long time ago, in a time when no one knew enough about demons to know where they came from. Back then, there'd been some backward idea that the beasts were migrating down from the Blackcrest Mountains, and Pope Felicitas XII had thought more fortification on the kingdom's east would solve the problem. Then, a hellmouth had opened in the city square during the first public sermon of Clean Week and eaten him for all to see, and everyone understood the demonic threat that much better. Based on how his reign had been chronicled, that had been one of his better contributions to the health of the kingdom.
"We are digressing from the matter at hand, Sister," Father Adelhelm interjected with a frown. "Perhaps a demonstration from young Marianne would be most effective in ending this discussion."
All eyes in the room turned to the trembling girl before them, whose white novice's tunic hung off her wasting frame like a bedsheet. Calyx thought they could see her knees knocking behind the draped fabric, and felt a stirring of pity for her.
"Go on, dear," Sister Liutlinde said coaxingly. She reached into her apron and pulled out a bundle of dried herbs Calyx couldn't identify. Wormwood, maybe, probably paired with ironwood and sage. "Don't be nervous. Just as we practiced, hm?"
Calyx wondered how it did not make her sick, training a soldier who had to be talked to like the baby she was. They had not wasted energy on such niceties in the Order of the Exorcist's trainees, but then again, Scholars had always had just about everything easier.
"Call the voice?" Marianne whispered back to Liutlinde, eyes wide. The woman nodded encouragingly, and Marianne closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Is this going to be ugly?" Priam asked, sounding very bored as the little girl began to recite under her breath. "Shall we prepare a mop, Father? I can't imagine the scorch mark will be very big, but preparation is key, no?"
"Silence, Priam," Adelhelm snapped, but based on the way he was eyeing Marianne, combined with Nadya Novipax's arched eyebrow, Calyx could tell the rest of the Corpus also had no idea what the display would involve.
Marianne broke her low droned chanting and said, suddenly, "THE FLARE."
The bundle of herbs in her hands began to spontaneously smoke, filling the room with the heady scent of sweet grasses, and everyone in the room tensed as the girl returned to her inaudible mutterings.
"What the fuck?" said an incredulous Dominik Nesterko. This wasn't the refined maths of exorcism, that sacred geometry. The hair on the back of Calyx's neck prickled. This was magic — real, organic, ancient magic, rather than the stale, diluted scripts they had all been trained to recite. This kind of stuff hadn't been seen since the Golden Age, when people knew how to conjure miracles and power forged them into gods or saints.
This was the kind of stuff that made Calyx's mouth water.
"Devil's work," the little burned waif from Cruorsolis whispered, grabbing for the crucifix at her neck.
"Watch your words, Dotterweich. Clairvoyance is a holy art," Artem snapped, his eyes fixed hungrily on Marianne. Calyx couldn't blame him; their own breath was coming out in huffs against the sealed lips of their mask.
"Here, Marianne," Sister Liutlinde said, encouragingly, now passing her a powder-pouch not unlike the one all of them carried. Without thinking, Calyx's hand went to their own, which was buckled to their belt.
Eyes still closed, Marianne accepted it and pulled out a pinch of blessed-bone, scattering it in an arc. Her nerves appeared to have left her as she fell into whatever strange trance this process induced in its host. As the dust floated to the ground, Marianne said, "THE DOOR."
This time they felt it, the power thrumming through her words that made the whole room feel electric. Calyx imagined the room as the inside of a divine instrument, where Marianne alone could pluck the invisible strings and send pure energy ripping through them all. Their teeth were buzzing in their gums, each one feeling as though they were on individual frequencies.
"What was that?" Abilene demanded. Her hand was white-knuckled on the hilt of her knife.
"Feels like a hellgate," Dominik remarked uneasily, glancing around like he expected a demon to burst out from behind someone's chair. "Doesn't it?"
"Quiet, or you'll break her concentration," Liutlinde commanded. She turned back to her prize student, pulling a final item from the depths of her robe. It was a plain white candle, no more than three inches long — the kind of shoddy little thing that Angels were given to pray with in their ration kits.
"THE BRIDGE," Marianne declared, touching the tip of her burning bundle to the candle's wick. "Open to me, open to me, open to me, open to me—,"
There was no mistaking the moment it happened. One second, Calyx was seeing little Marianne Capable with her eyes squeezed shut, and the next, pure nightmare was literalized before their eyes.
There was a horrible, anguished scream from the girl, and then, as though sliced by an invisible blade, her entire body butterflied in half from the neck down, opening up like a book down the line of her sternum, her stomach, and the inseams of her skinny legs. Only her face stayed whole, frozen in agony as she gazed skyward with bulging, whitened eyes. Her organs and muscles pulsed and twitched before them, her intestines writhing as if they'd been replaced by a mass of knotted pinkish eels and her throbbing heart was hideously swollen under the strain of whatever magic held her in its grip. Her tunic had been cut as perfectly and mysteriously down the same line as her skin — if not for the way her body was flung open to reveal the awful display of meat and bone inside, they would have seen far too much of the poor child's form. As it was, there were far worse things to worry about.
Dominik, Haniel, and Leda immediately turned away from the sight to vomit. Like falling dominos, Abilene instantly followed suit. The remaining onlookers all looked as ashen as Calyx felt, except for the cursed Kosta, who seemed only to display a child-like fascination at the sight.
"It is devil's work, I knew it," Elisheba said fervently, her voice trembling awfully. "Oh, Our Lady of Blessed Purity, Our Lady Divine, Our God Most Beloved…"
As she launched into the Believer's Plea, Calyx found themself utterly unable to look away from the specter of carnage that had once been Marianne Capable. So this was what ancient magic looked like. It was primitive and horrible and…and so resonant with power that it felt like the very fabric of reality in the room was stretching thin. Dominik was right, it did feel like a hellgate. They could feel that same shimmering, warping sensation, as though they were standing in a mirage.
"Why? Why have you done this?" Ariel Temperance demanded hoarsely. He retched quietly into his hand, but seemed to have retained enough control that he did not actually evict the contents of his stomach. "This is… this is cruelty beyond imagining. Have you butchered this child for nothing?"
"Just wait, Brother." Liutlinde, whom Calyx had always thought of as one of the more benign members of the Corpus, was beaming at the sight of poor Marianne's innards. She looked at the girl as a wolf grinned its next meal. "She's done it, that genius girl."
And she had.
"HEAR ME!" wailed the meat doll that had once been Marianne Capable. Her mouth moved jerkily open and shut, and her limbs thrashed around like a crude puppet show. "AT THE FONT OF ENDYMION, ON THE FIRST DAY OF REST, THE TRANSGRESSION WILL CROSS THE VEIL. ONE SHALL SING, ONE SHALL SCREAM, ONE SHALL BEAR THE CROWN."
With the message apparently delivered, the whole production unraveled quickly from there. There was a high-pitched whine of sizzling flesh as Marianne Capable's body knit itself back together. First the splayed front-half of her body folded back up, then an invisible needle sewed her seams back together, tunic and all, until she was perfectly whole once more. There was no trace of what had just transpired, not even blood on her clothes. Marianne's eyes fluttered open for long enough that all could see the burst blood vessels clouding the whites of her eyes with crimson, and then without making a single sound, she collapsed away in a dead faint.
"Oh, God!" Leda cried, rising to her feet and rushing over. She knelt beside that tiny body, her pale hands fretting over throat and eyes and stomach. It was not even a second before Ariel Temperance was beside her to assist.
"She's alive," Ariel announced after one fraught second, the relief stark and clear in his voice. "She's alive, her pulse is strong."
The whole room exhaled, even Calyx, as they came back into their body enough to feel the blood pounding painfully hard in their veins. Adrenaline had left their hands shaking, and they stuffed them resentfully under their thighs to stop it. Get a grip, Calyx, they scolded. You've seen worse.
"What was that?" Calyx asked, when they were sure their voice would not betray them. There was no need to have said anything — they already knew the answer. Judging by the mix of expressions around the room, everyone did.
Nonetheless, Sister Liutlinde was all too happy to say what they were all thinking. She was gloating, the horrible old bitch. Gloating at being the Scholar who revived the lost art of clairvoyance. Oh, she could do all the wise old grandmotherly acts she wanted — there was no mistake that Marianne Capable was nothing more to her than a lucky little lab rat.
"Isn't it obvious, Brother Calyx?" She sounded gleeful. "Her Ladyship has given us a prophecy."
…
When the meeting was over, they walked back to the Abbey in silence. Haniel and Abilene had both fled early thanks to that prowling nuisance Priam Grimmalt, and so Calyx had no company as they crossed through the echoing stone halls. This was just as well for them, since they needed time to think anyway.
A prophecy. A real prophecy. The first in centuries, and one that had warned them all of a hellmouth event that had yet to come. It had only taken a moment for all of their minds put together to remember that the Font of Endymion had been demolished a hundred or so years ago in order to erect the belltower in the north of Sacred Palm. This Sunday was the first of the month, so they had all figured that set the time.
No one could make much sense of the singing-screaming-crown portion of the prophecy, but Calyx had a bad feeling that it wasn't the sort of thing they would be able to decipher. It struck them more like the kind of thing fate liked to force people to wrestle with just so they'd curse themselves for not understanding it after whatever horrible thing had already happened. Fate was cruel like that, and unlike the rest of their idiot coworkers, they didn't much believe that this message had come from Her Ladyship. No, more likely Marianne had harnessed some dark spell and seen into Chaos herself. Dead gods didn't send messages, after all.
"Stemenos," came a voice from behind them. Calyx did not stop, but they certainly slowed. It was not out of any compassion, a trait which Calyx had been barren of for years, but more of a sick curiosity. After all, what could Dorian Kosta possibly have to say to them?
"Yes," said Kosta, smiling eerily as he limped to catch up to them. His ranks of teeth were perfectly white, perfectly even, but the tongue that swiped over cracked lips was an odd, grayish-black hue. "I remember you, Ever-Devout."
"Forget me, then," Calyx snarled. "I don't care to dwell in your memory."
Kosta laughed, a soft, sawed-off noise that grated on the ear. His murky eyes were utterly lightless, the color of a stagnant pond. "Alas, a task not so easily done. You always did make an impression."
They walked on in silence for a few beats, punctuated by the click of Kosta's gold-tipped cane on the stone flooring, until Calyx could not stand it anymore.
"What do you want from me, butcher?" they asked brusquely, hoping to elicit at least a flinch from the man. Kosta fielded the name with only a blank, placid sort of expression, like tepid milk. Perhaps he'd grown numb to it over the years.
"Nothing," Kosta said. "Can a man not simply catch up with his schoolmates?"
Calyx's lip curled as they surveyed this strange, hollow shell of man. "Not you."
Kosta shook his head. "So hostile. I hope in time, you will change your mind. We were friends once, don't you remember?"
"No. We weren't." Calyx leaned close into Kosta's face, enough to smell the sickly-sweet scent of rot beneath a bouquet of botanical perfumes, enough that they were sure he could see their narrowed black eyes glaring behind the mask. "And if you've come to me now hoping for that, you're even madder than they say."
Seemingly undeterred, Kosta merely smiled and said, "I only thought to —,"
Calyx lost patience.
"Allow me to be perfectly clear with you, Kosta," they hissed, fingering the hilt of their ironwood knife. "You are not a man to me. As far as I'm concerned, you don't even count as a person. I don't buy your little foggy-headed act, nor do I, for the matter, think this is sufficient atonement for the kind of evil you've done. This is an undeserved promotion decided by people who won't be there to protect you from the rest of us when the time comes. So think carefully about your next choices." They offered a cruel, thin-lipped smile. "For what it's worth, I think the best thing you could do for this kingdom is to jump into the Serpent's Belly and rid us all of the trouble, once and for all."
Kosta did flinch then, his expression half-shock, half-pain, like that of a little boy who'd just been backhanded across the face. Satisfied they'd made themself clear, Calyx strode on, leaving pathetic, tattered Kosta hobbling alone in the corridor. As the distance grew between them, the sound of that awkward gait shrank away. Shuffle-click-drag. Shuffle-click-drag. Shuffle-click-drag.
Yr had left the exorcist meeting in a blind daze. They did not know what to think of the little seer, so they did not think, and instead let their feet carry them away from that horrible place and those horrible people. Sacred Palm was worse than they remembered, had rotted even more since they'd been gone. They had not thought that was possible. The Sacred-Heart they had known had been like a worm-eaten apple, its skin still pristine and red. Now even the facade of purity had eroded away. They vivisected children before audiences now, they smiled at the sight.
Out, out, they had to get out. They need clean air, not the sour, stale cocktail of vomit and old wood that had permeated the meeting room.
In the end, Yr found himself in the furthest, most forgotten reach of the sprawling cemetery at Shining Heart, a place he had not been in a very long time. Some part of him was relieved by the endless stretches of green, some part felt heavy, weighed down by the white stone speckling the field. It had been another version of him who had come here, a little less than twenty years ago now. A young, foolish child who had fallen atop the freshly-buried plot where Elias Fortitude Hesperos had been laid to rest, and wept until they could weep no more.
The grave Yr stood before now looked far worse for the wear than it had in his memory; the smooth white face of the unmarked tombstone had grayed with grime, and the grass was overgrown with weeds. On the grace of his family's reputation, Elias had just barely been spared the disgrace of internment in a potter's field; now looking at the wretchedness of the site, Yr wondered what the difference would have been.
His knees ached something awful as he got down on them in the hard soil. How quickly the years seemed to catch up with him, he thought, as he began yanking up the colonies of crabgrass and purslane which had thoroughly conquered Elias' grave.
"You know, more lenient men than I might consider what you're doing an act of treason."
Yr stilled, stiffened, sat back on their heels. The soft booted footfalls of Ariel Hesperos circled closer until he was within view, his hands tucked into the pockets of his crimson coat, his mouth pulled in an unconvincing smile.
"Hello, Yr," Ariel said. Then, when they took too long to respond, he added sheepishly, "Er, I was joking, of course. About the treason thing."
"Ah," said Yr, staring.
There was another pained silence as the two of them regarded each other — Yr kneeling down upon Elias' grave and Ariel standing just on the other side of it. They thought to themself that Ariel looked very tired and very sad standing there now, sadder than Yr had ever seen him when they'd been in the Abbey together. But there was no question that he was still his same golden self, despite apparently being down a left eye and up a very distinguished blonde beard.
"You look well," Ariel offered and Yr could not stop the derisive scoff that escaped them.
"Not really." They knew the ugliness of the scars that criss-crossed their face, striking out any vestiges of what might have remained of the beauty their mother had gifted them. They cocked their head. "You look tired."
Ariel smiled. "These are perilous times. I've been told I don't wear them well."
"I won't hold it against you," Yr said gravely, and ripped up a reedy stalk of grass.
Thirty-four-year-old Ariel laughed more like he was sighing, the sound all air, his lips never quite turning up at the corners. Once, Yr recalled, his laugh had sounded like big chiming bells, bouncing around the stone corridors between lessons. He had never understood how anyone in the Abbey's jaws could sound so buoyant, so light.
"I'm surprised to find you here," Ariel commented as he slowly walked a circle around the blank headstone to stand behind Yr. "I didn't know you knew where he was buried. No one, aside from family, was meant to know."
Yr said nothing. There was no need to tell Ariel what he'd done to figure it out. He had atoned often for that already, the sin of being fifteen and crazy with grief.
"I thought there might have been a chance," Ariel said, and he knelt down now too, and Yr could see in the corner of their eye where he was rubbing at the golden signet ring on his index finger, "that you had forgotten him."
That could have made Yr laugh, if someone else had said it. As it was, he paused so that he did not confess to anything foolish. Then, selecting his words with utmost care, he said, "With all due respect, I think I could as easily forget him as you could, Ariel."
Were they on a first-name basis? Yr did not know. It did not feel right to call him Hesperos. Elias had always called him Ariel when he spoke of him, and they supposed that had cemented in their mind all those years ago. They'd had little occasion to use it back then, but now it had risen to his tongue unbidden anyway.
"I only mean that I would not fault you if you had," Ariel continued, as though he had not heard what Yr said. He was staring at the gravestone, saying, "It was such a long time ago, and I'm sure you have lost enough people since then to fill a hall." His eyes flickered to Yr's and he smiled weakly. "If these years have been anything for you what they have been for me, anyway."
"I did not forget," Yr said. He was my friend, he thought, chest aching something awful. They had not permitted themself to think about Elias in recent years and the wound felt fresher than it should have. My first friend, my only.
"I was so sorry," Ariel announced abruptly. Yr was beginning to wonder if he was listening to their responses at all, or just sort of rambling aloud. "—to hear about your mother's passing. My utmost condolences."
"Ah," Yr said. They grasped for the silver rosary hanging from their neck — its feel was so immediately identifiable, though they wore three jingling together most days. This one's stones had been worn smooth from years of fingers soothing along their facets, a habit Yr had inherited from his mother. "I did not know news of that nature would reach you in Saintshelm."
Ariel shrugged. "I suppose it doesn't. But I kept an ear open for news of you." When Yr blanched, he frowned and said, "There were some years in the middle we did not know anything about how you fared, other than your letters to the Church. Which, I confess, left something to be desired on the personal side of things."
"I…did not know you desired such updates," Yr said lamely, taken quite aback. "You…you could have written to me yourself." That could only have been a lie. It tasted sour in his mouth.
"If I could, then I did not know." Ariel was still smiling crookedly. "I thought you… well. Candidly, I wondered if you had any real affection for me, enough that you would have replied."
Yr chewed the inside of their cheek as they looked at Ariel's one mournful gray eye peering back at them. How aggravating to see the freedom with which he bestowed his candor, even after so many years of silence. How horrible that he'd been listening for news of Yr, and wishing to write. Even after Yr had been so perfectly awful to him the last time they'd spoken.
They were not that child anymore. They had to make that known.
"Listen. I should like to apologize." Yr refused to try and avoid the shame of swallowing his pride. He leaned hard into it as he met Ariel's gaze. "For my behavior at the Abbey last we spoke."
Ariel, perfect, angelic Ariel, recoiled. "Yr, nonsense."
"I make no excuses," he continued, determined now, "—except that I was very young and very foolish. And I hope, in the time that we are working together, to prove to you that I have shed my selfishness from that time. If you will allow it."
"I do not need to see any such proof," Ariel rebutted. "I never thought you selfish. You were mourning."
"You were mourning." The words burst out of him in a way that made him feel so, so young. He bit his tongue, remembering the moment. How he had not been brave enough to be cruel, nor brave enough to be kind. I can't be around you, he'd blurted out, consumed in the throes of his own tortured grief. Sorry. As if the weight of losing a friend could compare to that of losing a brother, a twin. Oh, the self-loathing welled up in his mouth like saliva now. "Sincerely, Ariel. I cannot regret my actions toward you enough."
Ariel's lips thinned into a line beneath his golden mustache. He said, heavily, "I do not want this apology, Yr. I have never resented you. If my forgiveness will ease your heart, then you have it. But know that I held no grudge toward you these past few years. Only a hope for friendship at a future point, if ever you were ready. I swear to you, that is the only thing I have ever wished for."
Yr's hands were closing into fists. He looked away from Ariel, jaw tight. There it was, that old feeling he had always associated with the man. He always said the right thing, the good thing. Like he was bankrolled for it. Like it cost nothing. Something in the pit of Yr's stomach was burning like sin, and he reached for the rosaries at his throat, grabbing hold of them like they would save him.
"Yr?"
For a second, the way he'd said his name— it had almost sounded like—
Yr looked back at Ariel Temperance, the face he wore which might have one day belonged to the boy six-feet below them. The face of Yr's friend. He forced a laugh he did not feel.
"You are a beautiful speaker. I had forgotten how I always envied you both for that," Yr said wistfully, and was rewarded by a broad, embarrassed smile from Ariel. There was something of Elias in it, written in the precise scrunch between the brows and the rising of the cheeks, and it was that glimpse that had him adding, "Perhaps if I had written you more letters, you would have learned me the skill."
"I lingered too long in Sacred Palm as a young man," Ariel remarked darkly. "Now I cannot shake these unnatural excesses of language, I'm afraid. Good that you did not make the mistake of letting them snare you, too."
"Just so," Yr agreed, amused. He liked Ariel's implication that between the two of them, they'd had equal chances of getting picked to stay and Yr had just been wiser than him. As if Sacred-Palm would have ever accepted gutter trash from Belhaven to represent their pristine city. "Have you never requested a transfer then?"
"Oh, I did. I'm stationed in Saintshelm now." Yr felt a pang. He probably should have known that. "With Abilene Mourn-Much. It is…I am grateful for it. She is a good exorcist. I trust her."
"Mourn-Much," Yr repeated softly. What a sad name it was. Old name. Those kinds of epithets had been popular in the first century after Her Ladyship had begun her slumber. One could find them on the oldest, most dilapidated gravestones, all the Muira Many-Sorrows, and the Tomas Tears-of-Gods. Yr ripped out a bit more crabgrass, and tossed it to the side. At least Elias's grave was somewhat cleared. They didn't have any means of cleaning the headstone itself, but maybe they would come back.
"And you, Yr?" Ariel prompted. "We heard you got sick. And then we heard something awful. No one knew if it was true or not. Until we got your letter, of course, and now you're here and you're—"
"I am not dead," Yr agreed, one side of their mouth slanting upward. "As hard as the Blister did try. Honestly, I am well. Far better than in the time you knew me. I am happy."
"Happy…"
"Under the circumstances, anyway," Yr amended. "I was a bit ill as a child, you know. A bit mad. Since overcoming that hurdle, I've been feeling better than I have in years."
Ariel was looking at them with the strangest expression, as though trying to parse something from their face. He said, slowly, "Well… that is good news indeed. I did not know you had been ill. I would have prayed for you, Yr."
Of course he would have. Yr resisted the urge to laugh. It was so funny contemplating the two of them as children, nearly strangers except for the link of the boy interred beneath their feet. One so golden and beloved, the other detested and sick. Now set to become…coworkers? Friends?
Fate was such a funny thing.
"It's all in the past now," Yr said lightly. "Thanks be to Her Ladyship, I have banished that particular trouble."
They rose to their feet now, brushing away the crumbling dirt from their trousers. For now, the ripped-up weeds would have to remain here, since Yr had no way of disposing of them. He did not think Elias would mind.
"I'm headed back," Yr told Ariel, clearing their throat. "They said patrol assignments are being released soon."
"Indeed." Ariel dipped his chin. He was looking at Elias' grave, again, his gaze somewhere far, far away. "Er, head on without me, I'll be back in a minute."
Yr understood. He left Ariel there, standing over his brother's grave with all the stoic grief he would expect from that man. And against all odds, his heart felt light and easy to carry.
meow meow meow meow meow