Ashes, Ashes, The Stars Fall Down
The double suns heat shone down on my unprotected body as I stood trying to get a bearing on the planet that was the ancestral home of my people. Sand swirled around my body, whipped up by a breeze, and I wished that the heavy clothing of the Dwellers would fit my form. A hopeless dream as I stood at 6’4” tall (which really, is quite short for a member of my race) and the tallest Dweller I had ever met stood at possibly 4’4” tall, two feet too short. And there was the issue with my wings too. Any heavy clothing for protection was useless if they couldn’t wrap around the area where my wings met flesh on my back. On my home planet, well we had designed all of our clothes accordingly. Modest coverings for women and men were what we wore during this time, thin silky wraps that were designed to wrap between our wings that mimicked the look of the silk, giving the illusion that our wings were part of the clothing.
Currently that style of clothing was failing to keep the sand from biting at my skin, which was darker than it tended to be during the rest months. Working almost twenty-four hours out of a twenty-six hour day tended to wear one out, but doing it in the light of the double suns was even more wearing. I probably got an hour of sleep most nights during this two month period, and I’d get one day off a week, most of which was spent sleeping and addressing my outfit, repairing tears and rips in the fabric, as well as replenishing the magic that caused the inter-planet jumps. When I was younger, the planets in this time would be constant in the sky, a set pattern. There was never any variation, and I never had to make calculations to carry someone across the distance. It was a perfect jump.
In the past few years though, I had very nearly lost myself a couple of times. Jumping or ferrying isn’t as instant as it was when emotions were high. In fact, you could very nearly tell where you were in relation to where the planets lay below you, and there was almost a sensation of floating and you could almost hear the secrets of the suns (whom we learned in our lessons names were Alvis the wise and Nyarai the humble) when you were in transit. At least we of Kalani birth could. Dwellers and Kun alike tended to be uneasy when traveling, as if space would swallow them whole. Maybe it would. I had lost several friends when the planets’ shift became apparent. I would not be the first to admit that my race is one of habits, and those habits are built of years and years of experience. Every Kalani learns to start carrying people across the gap when they are four in our culture, and are allowed to carry people by the age of eight. Many Kun call us child tormentors, but our idea of childhood are much different than that of theirs.
We, the Kalani, live many years past the Kun, we will see four to five generations of Kun pass during our own lifespan. In our culture, we do not count the years one is alive as one’s age, we instead count it by the decade. Physically, we do not age fast therefore we find that counting one by each year is pointless. This way, we have a childhood that is not marred by the loss of our friends; we do not fear that we will be lost. We are given a chance to learn the secrets of the universe as they are whispered in our dreams. Well, maybe not that, but it might as well be. Dwellers, well, I don’t see much of the Dwellers, and we’re not required to know their life cycles, though they must be long lived as well, as they don’t seem to change as often as the Kun do. All of this however has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was standing in the beginning of a sandstorm trying to see the sky so I could cart a couple of the “royal” Kun back to their city.
The Kun stand about halfway between my height and the height of the Dwellers, not to mention that they lack the distinctive wings of my culture. Therefore it’s not impossible for them to wear their own versions of the heavy clothing that protects from sun and sand alike. Lucky them, I really wish I could. Wait, that’s why I went into that entire spill before about how we’re different… right, anyways. There I was, fighting to get my coordinates before the sand got too much and we would be forced to delay the jump for when I could see the planet enough to jump.
I could hear the two Kun I’m supposed to be ferrying home chattering in their native language, a harsh almost Germanic language behind me, probably going on about how I hadn’t grabbed hold of them and taken them yet. How crude. I wasn’t the one who had ferried them here, and really I didn’t know who had, so I couldn’t reprimand them when I returned for simply “grabbing” their passengers. Really, that wasn’t how things were done anymore. We move silently, we move swiftly, and we do it in what could possibly be perceived as a boat. It’s not really a boat, it wouldn’t float if you were to place it down on a body of water, but it’s shaped as a boat. It’s a vessel that we carve in our training, our own design that we use to carry people across, because we cannot just carry people normally with the stone. Only if our emotions are running high, if we are threatened or angered, we can use the stones to carry someone elsewhere. But normally? No, we can’t, there’s not enough power between ourselves and the stones to carry people along.
“Come, into the boat.” It’s a simple command in the common language that has been devised between the three nations. I can see their hesitation and I step to the side of the stone “boat” that is only large enough for the three of us, and that’s if I remain standing. Perhaps whoever pulled them into their own boat had the right idea. That however, will win me no favors in the eyes of my superiors, so I repeat the command again. This time they move; first one and then the other before the settle themselves on the stone bench. Giving a nod, I close my eyes and concentrate on where I need to take them, the exact position of our home-world, Miko, in the skies of Rotem. I take one chance to make sure they’re seated securely, and then we’re gone, the sand and suns vanish in an instant. And I can see the stars, and other planets, but I know if I look over at the two passengers I’m ferrying across, their eyes will be shut and they will be cringing in fear. Because it’s unnatural to them to be able to jump, ironic as that is as to be able to cross the distance without assistance is their greatest desire.
The travel in the space is quickly over, and I find myself standing in my vessel in the courtyard of the two Kun’s home. I watch as they scramble out of my boat, visibly shaken, and the man shoves a couple of coins at me. Small compensation, greatly below the cost of the energy it takes to move them across the void of space. I’m half tempted to throw the money back at them, tell them its unnecessary even when it’s not. I am a Kalani, despised and revered at the same time. We only make a steady income for two months of the year, the others spent in odd jobs, servitude, and raising children. Turning on the spot, my boat jumps again, but this time, I’m not crossing space, so I cannot hear the stars whispering to me. Instead, I am going home.
Tomorrow is my day off, and those two were my last duty of the day.
I arrive in the “yard” of my home, a series of interwoven wooden decks strategically placed in the trees with enough room for the children to play close to the house and the farther edges that are blocked by the boats of my father and my siblings. And, of course, mine. I settle my boat within its position in lining the decks so that my younger siblings as well as nieces and nephews may play safely. I’m ready for the rest day the next day, planning to spend a fair amount of it asleep before cleaning and caring for my boat and my clothing. Maybe I can find a way to get my fingers on a bit of that heavier fabric, there has to be a way to modify it for my body. The short walk across the deck is impeded by the appearance of several of my nieces and nephews who crowd around me, wanting to hear about who I’ve been carrying recently. I only come to my family’s home on the rest days, so it has been nearly a week and a half since I’ve been here.
Pushing through them gently, I promise exploits of my travels on the morrow as I clean my boat, and they laugh and scramble out of the way, only stopping long enough to hug my legs. Smiling, I watch as the dash away into a game, their wings fluttering behind them like pale scarves, before I turn and continue into the house. The entrance which I come in is the kitchen door, where branches have been woven together enough to give a shelter away from the elements while leaving room for the smoke to drift out without causing the place to become a death-trap those Kun entertain as a kitchen. I feel so tired even as I stop, looking around and spotting my mother at work. Her wings are fluttering behind her, looking almost like someone had fashioned them out of pale honey that was still pliable enough to be flexible. In contrast, her dark hair swirls between and around the honey coloured wings, and I feel a sense of longing and jealousy. My hair is short and bleached by all the time I spend in the double suns that it is nearly white, and for a moment I feel like a pale shadow of my mother. But the long hair is a sign of contempt even in the Kalani culture. Many Kalani, like my brothers and sisters, have children and turn them over to the community to raise, their thoughts first on paying their dues to the ancient traditions and ferrying people across the distance. My mother, one of a handful, had given this up. She had turned her back on the ferrying tradition, and had taken it upon herself to raise every child born into the family. While I was one of the last of her children to be born, I had many nieces and nephews whom I had simply grown up calling my siblings.
I sometimes wonder why people like my mother are shunned by everyone, Kalani, Kun, and Dweller alike. Is she not like those parents of the Kun and Dweller races who want to raise their children? Why is that not allowed for my own race? What is it that we owe them that they don’t owe us the same privilege? My thoughts are broken however when my mother turns from the food she is fixing, a cold soup, a fresh salad, and fresh loaves of bread if my nose isn’t deceiving me. For a moment she simply looks at me, and I fear that she might launch into a lecture of how I don’t eat enough, or maybe one of how I should settle and find a man who could support me. She forgoes this course of action however and simply smiles and holds her arms open. “Nthala, my little star of a child, welcome home.” Her eyes, like the eyes of all of my people are multiple shades that match the colours of her wings. Warm browns and honey colours draw me in and I wrap myself in her embrace.
“Nata,” I murmur, and I feel her hold me tighter. It has been years since I addressed my mother by the childish word for mother, and for a moment I’m not even sure why the word slipped through my lips. I am nearly fifteen, and far too old to call her that anymore, but for the moment, I enjoy the embrace feeling as if I’ve just come from earning the blessing of the priests to carry passengers to Rotem. But then she spins me out to arms length and jumps into both lectures that I expected only moments earlier, before looking at my clothing and fussing about how it’s becoming rags quickly. I smile, not taking any of it to heart as she bustles me over to a small table and places food in front of me as well as a glass of berry wine.
Dutifully I listen to her grumbles of how thin I am (we’re all then, we’re Kalani, if we were heavy, we wouldn’t be able to fly), how dark I am (I spend twenty-four hours in the light of two suns, of course I’m dark), and how I should find a man. On automatic pilot, I simply agree when she pauses for breathe, and hope that she doesn’t require more of a response that I give her while I eat. Eventually, she gives up and turns away again to work on the food until a child comes running into the kitchen crying. Taking the appearance of the child as a cue to leave, I slide my plates into the bucket of soapy water that serves as a sink. Neither of the two notice as I slide past them into the living room which is hollowed into the center of the massive tree’s core, with staircases that are carved into the wood so that we can easily reach our rooms. It’s not often that I find this room to be abandoned, but I know that I’ve gotten off early today, and others of my family are still ferrying people. Those who aren’t are probably asleep, the place I wish to be.
Still, there are things that must be done before I can rest. My first stop is in front of the mantle of the fireplace. The fireplace is the only thing in the room that is not made out of wood, it is lined with stone and a few pieces of metal to keep any fire built in it from burning our entire home down. On the mantle, our home shrine sits, honoring the gods and saints that my people have looked to for safe travels for centuries. Small figurines representing the suns Alvis and Nyarai, two more for the planets themselves, and one for the saint of boatmen, Saint Benedict all sit housed within the shrine that always has incense burning near it. Relighting the stick, I pause before blowing it out and watching the smoke curl upwards in a pleasant scent of cloves. This done, I bow to the figures and offer a small prayer to them and to the ancestors who have gone before me. Smiling gently, I turn and head for the staircase. Now I can sleep until I’m well rested.
My room is little more than a balcony off the staircase with a braided curtain for a door. The young children all share an inner dormitory room that’s further up in the tree, however when we learn to be ferrymen we live in a community dormitory with peers throughout the commune for the years that we are learning. Once we graduate and are full ferrymen, we are allowed to live wherever we wish. My mother had made it clear for the first couple of years after I graduated though that I was to live with her. It was unusual, but everything in my family was. My mother’s father was a shaman, one of the priests who understood everything of our culture and could have possibly been considered part of the history of the worlds. Really, what his job entailed was a mystery, one that only the next shamans would be enlightened to. The shamans are also our governing body. They run everything that we do, from our assignments in ferrying to whether or not the person we choose as a partner is suitable. One couldn’t ignore a direct order from a shaman, even if that meant going without sleep for days to see it fulfilled.
Back to my room though, my room here in my mother’s house contained a small chest set against one of the rails that held my extra clothes and material to make clothes, as well as a cleaning kit for the pendant I wore around my neck and my boat. The bed wasn’t a bed as much as a hammock made of thick and sturdy vines. There was a pillow, one my mother had made me and a blanket that had been mine when I was much younger of patchwork fabric. To combat the fact that the double suns meant the sun rarely if ever set during this time, there were thicker vines surrounding the balcony to offer shade and darkness. These vines would respond to any natural magic within the owner of the bedroom, darkening it more when touched, or opening up and moving away to allow more light. Now I touched them so that the room instantly became almost pitch-black as I settled into the bed, letting my thoughts drift as I settled my wings over the side of the bed and pull the cover up. Yawning, I settled down, allowing myself to drift off into a dreamless sleep.
Currently that style of clothing was failing to keep the sand from biting at my skin, which was darker than it tended to be during the rest months. Working almost twenty-four hours out of a twenty-six hour day tended to wear one out, but doing it in the light of the double suns was even more wearing. I probably got an hour of sleep most nights during this two month period, and I’d get one day off a week, most of which was spent sleeping and addressing my outfit, repairing tears and rips in the fabric, as well as replenishing the magic that caused the inter-planet jumps. When I was younger, the planets in this time would be constant in the sky, a set pattern. There was never any variation, and I never had to make calculations to carry someone across the distance. It was a perfect jump.
In the past few years though, I had very nearly lost myself a couple of times. Jumping or ferrying isn’t as instant as it was when emotions were high. In fact, you could very nearly tell where you were in relation to where the planets lay below you, and there was almost a sensation of floating and you could almost hear the secrets of the suns (whom we learned in our lessons names were Alvis the wise and Nyarai the humble) when you were in transit. At least we of Kalani birth could. Dwellers and Kun alike tended to be uneasy when traveling, as if space would swallow them whole. Maybe it would. I had lost several friends when the planets’ shift became apparent. I would not be the first to admit that my race is one of habits, and those habits are built of years and years of experience. Every Kalani learns to start carrying people across the gap when they are four in our culture, and are allowed to carry people by the age of eight. Many Kun call us child tormentors, but our idea of childhood are much different than that of theirs.
We, the Kalani, live many years past the Kun, we will see four to five generations of Kun pass during our own lifespan. In our culture, we do not count the years one is alive as one’s age, we instead count it by the decade. Physically, we do not age fast therefore we find that counting one by each year is pointless. This way, we have a childhood that is not marred by the loss of our friends; we do not fear that we will be lost. We are given a chance to learn the secrets of the universe as they are whispered in our dreams. Well, maybe not that, but it might as well be. Dwellers, well, I don’t see much of the Dwellers, and we’re not required to know their life cycles, though they must be long lived as well, as they don’t seem to change as often as the Kun do. All of this however has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was standing in the beginning of a sandstorm trying to see the sky so I could cart a couple of the “royal” Kun back to their city.
The Kun stand about halfway between my height and the height of the Dwellers, not to mention that they lack the distinctive wings of my culture. Therefore it’s not impossible for them to wear their own versions of the heavy clothing that protects from sun and sand alike. Lucky them, I really wish I could. Wait, that’s why I went into that entire spill before about how we’re different… right, anyways. There I was, fighting to get my coordinates before the sand got too much and we would be forced to delay the jump for when I could see the planet enough to jump.
I could hear the two Kun I’m supposed to be ferrying home chattering in their native language, a harsh almost Germanic language behind me, probably going on about how I hadn’t grabbed hold of them and taken them yet. How crude. I wasn’t the one who had ferried them here, and really I didn’t know who had, so I couldn’t reprimand them when I returned for simply “grabbing” their passengers. Really, that wasn’t how things were done anymore. We move silently, we move swiftly, and we do it in what could possibly be perceived as a boat. It’s not really a boat, it wouldn’t float if you were to place it down on a body of water, but it’s shaped as a boat. It’s a vessel that we carve in our training, our own design that we use to carry people across, because we cannot just carry people normally with the stone. Only if our emotions are running high, if we are threatened or angered, we can use the stones to carry someone elsewhere. But normally? No, we can’t, there’s not enough power between ourselves and the stones to carry people along.
“Come, into the boat.” It’s a simple command in the common language that has been devised between the three nations. I can see their hesitation and I step to the side of the stone “boat” that is only large enough for the three of us, and that’s if I remain standing. Perhaps whoever pulled them into their own boat had the right idea. That however, will win me no favors in the eyes of my superiors, so I repeat the command again. This time they move; first one and then the other before the settle themselves on the stone bench. Giving a nod, I close my eyes and concentrate on where I need to take them, the exact position of our home-world, Miko, in the skies of Rotem. I take one chance to make sure they’re seated securely, and then we’re gone, the sand and suns vanish in an instant. And I can see the stars, and other planets, but I know if I look over at the two passengers I’m ferrying across, their eyes will be shut and they will be cringing in fear. Because it’s unnatural to them to be able to jump, ironic as that is as to be able to cross the distance without assistance is their greatest desire.
The travel in the space is quickly over, and I find myself standing in my vessel in the courtyard of the two Kun’s home. I watch as they scramble out of my boat, visibly shaken, and the man shoves a couple of coins at me. Small compensation, greatly below the cost of the energy it takes to move them across the void of space. I’m half tempted to throw the money back at them, tell them its unnecessary even when it’s not. I am a Kalani, despised and revered at the same time. We only make a steady income for two months of the year, the others spent in odd jobs, servitude, and raising children. Turning on the spot, my boat jumps again, but this time, I’m not crossing space, so I cannot hear the stars whispering to me. Instead, I am going home.
Tomorrow is my day off, and those two were my last duty of the day.
I arrive in the “yard” of my home, a series of interwoven wooden decks strategically placed in the trees with enough room for the children to play close to the house and the farther edges that are blocked by the boats of my father and my siblings. And, of course, mine. I settle my boat within its position in lining the decks so that my younger siblings as well as nieces and nephews may play safely. I’m ready for the rest day the next day, planning to spend a fair amount of it asleep before cleaning and caring for my boat and my clothing. Maybe I can find a way to get my fingers on a bit of that heavier fabric, there has to be a way to modify it for my body. The short walk across the deck is impeded by the appearance of several of my nieces and nephews who crowd around me, wanting to hear about who I’ve been carrying recently. I only come to my family’s home on the rest days, so it has been nearly a week and a half since I’ve been here.
Pushing through them gently, I promise exploits of my travels on the morrow as I clean my boat, and they laugh and scramble out of the way, only stopping long enough to hug my legs. Smiling, I watch as the dash away into a game, their wings fluttering behind them like pale scarves, before I turn and continue into the house. The entrance which I come in is the kitchen door, where branches have been woven together enough to give a shelter away from the elements while leaving room for the smoke to drift out without causing the place to become a death-trap those Kun entertain as a kitchen. I feel so tired even as I stop, looking around and spotting my mother at work. Her wings are fluttering behind her, looking almost like someone had fashioned them out of pale honey that was still pliable enough to be flexible. In contrast, her dark hair swirls between and around the honey coloured wings, and I feel a sense of longing and jealousy. My hair is short and bleached by all the time I spend in the double suns that it is nearly white, and for a moment I feel like a pale shadow of my mother. But the long hair is a sign of contempt even in the Kalani culture. Many Kalani, like my brothers and sisters, have children and turn them over to the community to raise, their thoughts first on paying their dues to the ancient traditions and ferrying people across the distance. My mother, one of a handful, had given this up. She had turned her back on the ferrying tradition, and had taken it upon herself to raise every child born into the family. While I was one of the last of her children to be born, I had many nieces and nephews whom I had simply grown up calling my siblings.
I sometimes wonder why people like my mother are shunned by everyone, Kalani, Kun, and Dweller alike. Is she not like those parents of the Kun and Dweller races who want to raise their children? Why is that not allowed for my own race? What is it that we owe them that they don’t owe us the same privilege? My thoughts are broken however when my mother turns from the food she is fixing, a cold soup, a fresh salad, and fresh loaves of bread if my nose isn’t deceiving me. For a moment she simply looks at me, and I fear that she might launch into a lecture of how I don’t eat enough, or maybe one of how I should settle and find a man who could support me. She forgoes this course of action however and simply smiles and holds her arms open. “Nthala, my little star of a child, welcome home.” Her eyes, like the eyes of all of my people are multiple shades that match the colours of her wings. Warm browns and honey colours draw me in and I wrap myself in her embrace.
“Nata,” I murmur, and I feel her hold me tighter. It has been years since I addressed my mother by the childish word for mother, and for a moment I’m not even sure why the word slipped through my lips. I am nearly fifteen, and far too old to call her that anymore, but for the moment, I enjoy the embrace feeling as if I’ve just come from earning the blessing of the priests to carry passengers to Rotem. But then she spins me out to arms length and jumps into both lectures that I expected only moments earlier, before looking at my clothing and fussing about how it’s becoming rags quickly. I smile, not taking any of it to heart as she bustles me over to a small table and places food in front of me as well as a glass of berry wine.
Dutifully I listen to her grumbles of how thin I am (we’re all then, we’re Kalani, if we were heavy, we wouldn’t be able to fly), how dark I am (I spend twenty-four hours in the light of two suns, of course I’m dark), and how I should find a man. On automatic pilot, I simply agree when she pauses for breathe, and hope that she doesn’t require more of a response that I give her while I eat. Eventually, she gives up and turns away again to work on the food until a child comes running into the kitchen crying. Taking the appearance of the child as a cue to leave, I slide my plates into the bucket of soapy water that serves as a sink. Neither of the two notice as I slide past them into the living room which is hollowed into the center of the massive tree’s core, with staircases that are carved into the wood so that we can easily reach our rooms. It’s not often that I find this room to be abandoned, but I know that I’ve gotten off early today, and others of my family are still ferrying people. Those who aren’t are probably asleep, the place I wish to be.
Still, there are things that must be done before I can rest. My first stop is in front of the mantle of the fireplace. The fireplace is the only thing in the room that is not made out of wood, it is lined with stone and a few pieces of metal to keep any fire built in it from burning our entire home down. On the mantle, our home shrine sits, honoring the gods and saints that my people have looked to for safe travels for centuries. Small figurines representing the suns Alvis and Nyarai, two more for the planets themselves, and one for the saint of boatmen, Saint Benedict all sit housed within the shrine that always has incense burning near it. Relighting the stick, I pause before blowing it out and watching the smoke curl upwards in a pleasant scent of cloves. This done, I bow to the figures and offer a small prayer to them and to the ancestors who have gone before me. Smiling gently, I turn and head for the staircase. Now I can sleep until I’m well rested.
My room is little more than a balcony off the staircase with a braided curtain for a door. The young children all share an inner dormitory room that’s further up in the tree, however when we learn to be ferrymen we live in a community dormitory with peers throughout the commune for the years that we are learning. Once we graduate and are full ferrymen, we are allowed to live wherever we wish. My mother had made it clear for the first couple of years after I graduated though that I was to live with her. It was unusual, but everything in my family was. My mother’s father was a shaman, one of the priests who understood everything of our culture and could have possibly been considered part of the history of the worlds. Really, what his job entailed was a mystery, one that only the next shamans would be enlightened to. The shamans are also our governing body. They run everything that we do, from our assignments in ferrying to whether or not the person we choose as a partner is suitable. One couldn’t ignore a direct order from a shaman, even if that meant going without sleep for days to see it fulfilled.
Back to my room though, my room here in my mother’s house contained a small chest set against one of the rails that held my extra clothes and material to make clothes, as well as a cleaning kit for the pendant I wore around my neck and my boat. The bed wasn’t a bed as much as a hammock made of thick and sturdy vines. There was a pillow, one my mother had made me and a blanket that had been mine when I was much younger of patchwork fabric. To combat the fact that the double suns meant the sun rarely if ever set during this time, there were thicker vines surrounding the balcony to offer shade and darkness. These vines would respond to any natural magic within the owner of the bedroom, darkening it more when touched, or opening up and moving away to allow more light. Now I touched them so that the room instantly became almost pitch-black as I settled into the bed, letting my thoughts drift as I settled my wings over the side of the bed and pull the cover up. Yawning, I settled down, allowing myself to drift off into a dreamless sleep.