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.

[mirror_brightly]

Ayel had always spoken easily, his words were light and caught air. He could sing. It was fitting, though, Nero's responsibility, Oren's, to tell the stories first. With tales came some measure of fault and he would wear it in his skin, within his grief.

The comb was light, made of high strength aluminum and coated steel. It was kept by S'harien. The mark on Nero's left leg almost burned as he lifted it from the container. It would serve well, it was what had marked the others.

"Baohn is wide and tall and bends like a reed to his wife," Nero started as he set aside the container. The sound of glass on table heralded Ayel's motion. The whisper of cloth punctuated it in the dim amber light.

The first cut is clean, crisp, and inkless as he sets it. Ceremonial more than practical, Baohn would have mocked Ayel for flinching. He didn't.

[loyalty_ever]

It burned, hitching and wet, dragged the truth through his skin. Baohn curled down a shoulder blade, finally joining his wife and children. A patient man, he'd taught them all something of waiting, in that place. Made an art of it without tolerating nonsense.

Precise, angry stickings like neirrh's teeth pressed his lesson home. It was a small forever, hard, bitter, farewell fixed in his skin. But they were there. Always there. Together again.

Baohn wound into stillness, moved from sound to finished sign as Nero wordlessly bent past Ayel and replaced the comb.

The legs, for crew and working friends. The names of work-brethren to shade in nearly bare space. There had been losses, accidents over long and dangerous years, but for a while--no, Ayel had always known they were right, that what they were doing was the only kind of fairness 'Fleets and Vulcans understood, but he'd never thought they would live through it. Any of them. They all should have died

[mirror_brightly]

For a moment, the hitch of a heartbeat, he wasn't sure that the swell of heat against his leg was real. Ayel drew up, slid politely against a wall, into the half-shade where the lights didn't quite stretch. There was so much of that here. The scent of copper was too light. It was everywhere now, couldn't even smell it fresh.

"Veyn," Nero exhaled into the space between them as he took up a different comb, one more simple and proper, so neat it was almost a joke. It was reserved. "Is quick and bright and..."

He had the words, knew them as he looked over Ayel's shoulder and chest, but he could almost hear Veyn, almost see him somewhere in the ship that didn't exist. His pause was inexcusable and he moved forward with a slow apology to the dead, started the story as he marked the outline of a name, of a whorl.

"Is quick and bright and flies the sky," Nero continued.

[loyalty_ever]

Ink over bones bit in the hardest. He ground his teeth and held still.

Veyn was quiet. Ayel owed him the same.

Veyn kept his own company, hardly spoke except for work: their orders, jobs, intersected. Even then Veyn was quiet, precise coordinate callbacks in a low voice that did not repeat them, not for you, not for anyone; listen once and get it right, understand?

He did. He couldn't rely forever on others. He had a name to finish.

Lhaerrh would haunt them otherwise. He deserved to rest. They all did.

Ayel sank against the wall as Nero's arm lifted. He pressed the chill into his back, made sure it ran through him without leaning against Bhaon.

The right comb found his fingers and he nodded, slipped to the floor. Saw only the sign, the name, the memory of a lopsided knowing grin.

"The Galae thinks to do him a discourtesy," begins Ayel, "but Lhaerrh is not ashamed of his new life