A Gathering Dark (Scrawled)

[loyalty_ever]

The air was still thin. It was a little warmer, here; almost enough heat to keep his breath from ghosting.

N'arada was still singing to herself, the hissing, broken whine of drones crawling behind the metal, in and around and through it as she stammered toward repair. Wouldn't be able to point the way for him

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[mirror_brightly]

They were floating, trapped between hard and silent darkness, barred in by screens and icy cold. The heat was up, better, but still green and dark. It leaked across his skull and through his fingers and the slow rattle of glass in his feet and in his arms faded. He couldn't taste it on his tongue, but he knew the smell was there.

He'd wiped it off, scrubbed at his hands in the coolant, in the ice that melted from the sheets of ceiling and the dampness of the broken screens, but he could still feel them on his fingers. He'd feel them until he marked them in, made them part of himself.

"Ayel."

Sound carried between the buzzing fields and the warped space. It was strangely familiar, the way everything fit together here. It was unacceptable.

"Ihir stev?"

[loyalty_ever]

"Docaere'hir, rekkhai." The words puffed through clenched teeth as he bore down on the cutter in his grip. The latches were gone, fused, melted into the rest of the--it had been the floor; it was diagonal wall, now. She didn't want it disturbed.

He leaned, twisted down hard, still-healing nerves shrieking protests he ignored. Life was pain.

The metal squalled and gave. He let go immediately--wouldn't risk the glass with errant tapping. The catch was there, and groaned open when he pried into it.

Careful fingers enfolded glass, drew it out, followed the twining curve that kept it sealed.

The shadows flowing in it were midnight-dark. Copper shavings fixed in uaith'laehval oil. Green so deep that it was black.

"Hir'krenn."

This was his half of the burden. The combs remained. Undisturbed. Waiting.

He clutched the jar firmly and stepped aside.

[mirror_brightly]

Ayel parted the space, swept aside as clean and quiet as the glass. Nero took it as Ayel pulled back, receded into the air between. The combs were too familiar, their container still felt warm, all flitting with the heat of memory and the sound of static.

His hand lingered in the dark, beyond his eyes. He drew a breath filled with what he could not smell and it broke him free, set a rattle in his chest again. The combs were silent, still as he pulled them up. They were clean, untouched, guarded in their sorrow.

"Tempaer temar," he exhaled as he lifted on free, carefully selected the shape of words, of stories from memory. His voice was flat, clattered across the floor and the wall where it was the floor, fell like parted screens. "Staere. T'lhoi hna'h."

[loyalty_ever]

In a proper shrine in another life, there would have been a braizer, a bowl with water and a breath of ancestor dust.

As it was, shikaen were around them, were with them, and what was left of the ship was mostly Earth and Air, a little Water. Green, all in the walls, everywhere and he couldn't think about it. It would have to be enough.

First, the destructive cycle. The undoing of what was.

"Fire scorches Earth buries Water stifles Air, leaving only One." The Archelement, the unknowable final thing, of which death was one face and birth another. "From darkness, into darkness, all memories must pass."

He turned the neck apart, slowly--it couldn't spill--and held it out.

Now the ink had meaning to go with weight. Now it could hold stories. Now it would write names.