Fic: In His Kiss (The Vis Uban Is For Lovers Remix) [Stargate SG-1; Daniel Jackson/Other; PG]
Title: In His Kiss (The Vis Uban Is For Lovers Remix)
Author: eve11
Summary: You came to hear a tale of spirit people, and they are always contrary. Their humor is sharp and cruel, and their gifts are not borne well by mortals.
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Other, Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and characters are not my property and are used here without permission for no financial gain.
Original Story: In His Kiss, by melayneseahawk
Notes: AU from "Fallen", slash, ~4300 words. Thanks to the lovely jenlev and auntiemeesh for discussions, idea-bouncing, and beta.
In His Kiss (The Vis Uban Is For Lovers Remix)
-------------
I suppose you have come all this way from Maraday to hear a particular tale. Ai, you! Don't look down at your hands, what will they tell you? That's the trouble with young people these days. You want a story, and no one knows how to tell stories anymore. I don't know if your ears even work properly enough to listen. You wish to hear of Arrom, whom the spirit people named Daniel, and the gift of sia'alem. Is it so?
Hmph. I thought so. And you would let an old man sit out here in the heat of the day without even a straw hat for shade or a cup of water to soothe his throat in the telling. Your parents would be ashamed. Why, even now, the sun beats at my memories, and the tale is made difficult to recount--
What's that?
Oh. But what use have I for a cup so fine? And this hat has never been worn before, so how will it know what to do? Ai! Don't take it back, idiot! I can teach it, you know. What kind of manners do they have in Maraday these days? Come on, we can go under the awning until it learns its purpose.
Trouble indeed. I suppose my story is destined for sia'alem, now that you are here. You think you have the truth of a thing when you tie it down in ticks and scratches. So maybe I will be contrary. Maybe today you will hear Arrom's story, and maybe you will hear the birth of great things, and maybe you will hear a fool's account of fools. Will you choose one to capture? Maybe you will scratch them down all at once on your fine cloth pages, tick over tick over tick. Surely the ink running to the edge of the page would tell the truth.
And why not? You came to hear a tale of spirit people, and they are always contrary. Their humor is sharp and cruel, and their gifts are not borne well by mortals.
There now, the sun is out of my eyes, and I will begin.
--------------
Far north of Mother River, north of Maraday and north of the plain that is called Sin'aptel-- you would not know it; there are hard-houses there now but it used to be nothing but grass and churned ground, as the rallah beasts trampled river-wide swaths of land in their seasonal journey-- north of this plain is a spirit city. This city is at once hidden and not. Its structures are concealed among the rocks and high plateaus, so looking up to the mountains from Sin'aptel you would not guess it was there, and yet from the lowest of its stone pillars you can see far past the plain to the glint of Mother River, laughing on the horizon.
And this city is at once abandoned and not. The roofless rooms weave in and out of the hillside, and the stone pillars spill out onto the plateau like a child's game of bones left in the middle of a casting. So it feels this way with the spirit people too, like they abandoned their bodies between breaths, in the midst of their daily lives. And this spirit city inhaled with them and never exhaled, and instead sank into decay and stillness.
It is a touched place. Even when we still followed the rallah beasts across the vast Sin'aptel, for most migration seasons the people did not venture there. But for one summer, when drought made the gemba grass too brittle for weaving, the people were forced north to gather stiffer, hardier vellan grass that grew up around the press-moss, between the pillars at the foot of the city. And so a Family offered favors to the spirits and threw their tents among the ruins. Their prior year had been a harsh one, with little for trade in the southern markets, and thirteen people lost to fever in the drought.
Three evenings passed, and for the first time in the season a storm lit the sky with lightning and rattled the ground with thunder. And when the rain had passed the Family sent three emissaries to the stone pillars. The Elder, whom we will call Tamiz for his wisdom, who was the Family's most cautious counsel. And his brother's son, whom we will call Katir for his foolish heart, who had lone survived the fever of all his near-kin. And his brother's son, whom we will call Faran for his innocence, who had but nine summers and yet to join his first rallah hunt.
The emissaries donned blue robes in the Family's tradition and burned offerings under the pillars to thank spirits for their generosity. But the spirits were not through giving. As the ashes of the Family's gifts took to the wind, the sky burned again with blue-bright light and a thunderclap rang their ears.
And there on the ground beyond their failing fire was a man. A fallen man, still and silent among the fallen pillars.
Faran approached the man first and saw that he was naked. His body bore no scar or mark, and even the soles of his feet had no callouses, like a newborn.
Katir approached the man next and saw that he was naked. The curve of his back traced smooth lines over soft skin, and his eyes when they opened mirrored the burning blue-bright sky.
Tamiz approached the man next and saw that he was naked. He was a stranger to this body and this world, and when he tried to speak his name he discovered the spirits had taken his voice.
"Arrom," the emissaries said for him, and so Arrom the Naked One fell mute from the spirit world back into flesh and into the lap of the people.
---------------
Tamiz, who knew many stories, warned his kin to take care with spirit people made mortal. Maybe Arrom was cast out from the spirit world, or maybe he was wise to flee from them. Perhaps he spoke out against them, and so the spirit people struck a blow on his retreat so that he would not speak again. But whatever the matter, he was weak as a newborn, with clouds in his eyes and clouds in his thoughts, and they could not leave him to the ruins. So they gave him a robe and helped him to his feet and back to camp, where Katir pitched the empty tent his lost near-kin had lived in the season before.
And although Arrom donned the Family colors and understood the people's language, he was clearly touched; his first day was spent hunched over the sand in front of Katir's empty tent with a stiff vellan blade in hand, tracing all manners of shapes and forms into the ground.
A circle like the great arc of the night sky, with star-drawings the people had never seen before.
"Perhaps he wishes to call the spirits here from the sky to take him back," Faran said.
Three figures in heavy shoes-- a man with a staff and a mark on his forehead, a man and a woman wearing helmets and holding strangely shaped clubs.
"Perhaps they are emissaries, or guardians of the city," Katir said.
A river of precisely arranged dots and lines, catching the currents from sharply angled strokes to smooth swirls to neat blocks, over and over again.
"Perhaps it is the many faces of the Mother, as when she is frozen, or rushing or calm," Tamiz said.
None of the people's words stirred Arrom from his task. His hands flew through the shapes on the ground and he traced other patterns in the air, but it was all too strange for the people to understand.
Faran made it a game, laughing and tracing Arrom's shapes again with his own vellan blade, then breaking off pieces of the grass and arranging them to match the shapes he saw. Arrom smiled at the boy but did not stop. He did not stop until his body cried for it, new muscles corded and tight, new hands cramped around the wide vellan blade. Finally Katir took the vellan from his fingers and offered him water and a chair under the shade of his empty tent's awning. And Arrom rested into the night, and Katir studied the marks in the ground, willing them to speak their secrets to him. Tamiz found him there as the first moon rose.
"Do not look too closely," said Tamiz. "He is telling stories."
And Katir's heart felt as distant to him as the moon above their heads. "Are they false, then?" he asked.
"They are his, alone," Tamiz answered. "The spirits have seen to it."
And the next day it was as Tamiz said, for the more Arrom traced his shapes, the more the clouds behind his eyes darkened, as though those forms became as strange to him as they were to the people. No one could say whether they were false or true, and in the following days Arrom's hands fell as silent as his voice, and he stayed shut in Katir's empty tent for longer and longer a time.
Three evenings passed, and Faran called into the tent but received no answer. As a child will do, his attention wandered to another game and he left. Then Tamiz came and called into the tent but received no answer. As an Elder will do, he kept his own counsel and left. Then Katir came and called into the tent and when he received no answer, he pushed past the door and entered for the first time since his near-kin had died. There he saw Arrom seated on the ground and staring darkly at his hands, a storm of fear and sadness behind his eyes.
Katir held Arrom's trembling hands in his, and pressed them to his own heart, and told him, "This is my family's place, and it is tired of being empty." And he shared the names of his near-kin and told their tales to Arrom in their sacred space. And for the first time since waking among the pillars Arrom mouthed words as if to speak, and sent three silent, foreign names with no tales to join Katir's near-kin in their sacred space.
So Katir's empty tent became Arrom's tent, and neither man left it again that night.
---------------
What must it be like to be a spirit person, forced back again into skin and muscle and bone? It is a gift of senses that cannot be returned, a cage for a mind that has forgotten so many things about being mortal. Hunger, thirst, pain, voice. It is no wonder Arrom's thoughts churned against this prison for so many days. But as his body gained strength, Arrom's stories seemed to settle in his mind, and he ventured out among the people.
He visited old and young, men and women, and watched them at their chores and listened to their words. And so he learned to mend tent cloth from the women, to sharpen stoneaxes from the men, to play bones upon the sand from the children. Though it was a woman's task he found comfort in weaving vellan grass to make baskets, using the brown inkstain to color the stalks so they would bend and not break, and so they would hold fruit or sod without rotting. The women teased him, with his hands stained brown like theirs after the long days, but he only smiled.
In the Family's gathering one night, Faran and the children set out the storytelling seats, and Katir sat with Arrom in the glow of the bonfire, and Tamiz told three stories of the people. He told the story of the rallah beast and the grain of sand, and of Mother River's children, and of the travelers who met upon the road. Arrom's eyes danced from the light and he was captivated by the telling. None of the people could discern the thoughts that spun in his mind, but when Tamiz sat down by the fire Arrom stood, and in the firelight he told a silent tale to those who would listen.
And the people knew this story of course, of an old and angry God who brought a great flood upon the world. In Arrom's tale the people received a warning, and built a giant riverboat to take in the world, the animals two by two, until the rains had gone. And for that time in the firelight it seemed that they could almost hear Arrom's voice in the backs of their minds, but when the fire died he was mute again, and the thrall was broken.
Katir marveled that a spirit person would know the stories of mortals. It seemed to him that the spirit people had punished Arrom wrongly, for surely he was just a man. And that night as they lay in the close silence of their tent Katir said to him, "If you have a true name, not Arrom, but a mortal name, you should speak it, and I know I will hear it." But Arrom made no move in the darkness, except to brush the tips of Katir's fingers to his closed lips, and kiss his palm and keep his own thoughts.
The next day, Tamiz found Faran and the children darting among the pillars in the spirit city. They had gathered handfuls of press-moss, and were searching the pillars like the river bird searches for a fish among the waves. When their prey was sighted, they rushed forward and pressed the moss to the sides of the pillars. Tamiz looked closer and he saw the pillars had been carved with symbols, and the children were taking the forms into the press-moss and darting back to a single spot where Arrom stood with flat blades of vellan grass and a bowl of inkstain.
"It is Arrom's new game," Faran said. He pointed to a line of pictures traced into the ground and recited, "Sa, se, sia, la, le, lem." Sun, eye, heart, cart, chair, road. The children had dipped the tips of their press-moss into the bowl, and stamped the shapes of their spirit symbols on vellan grass under the pictures. Tamiz could make no sense of it.
Arrom saw the Elder and smiled at him, and for a moment Tamiz saw an old, strange spirit behind his eyes. Then it was gone, as the children laughed and took his hand to judge the game.
"See?" they said. "The word is ki alar for the second moon, and his says kyalam like the smooth stones in the river!"
That night Tamiz walked out among the pillars. And he found Katir there, tracing the cold symbols with the tips of his fingers.
"You search for too many gifts from this city," said Tamiz.
Katir grew angry, and said to Tamiz, "I had a wife and children and they are gone. Why should I not welcome all forms of love that the Mother chooses to share with us?"
Tamiz thought about the children and Arrom's game among the pillars, and he said to Katir, "Arrom is not like us; he is tied to this place. Eventually the people will go back to Sin'aptel, and this place will not."
Though he knew Tamiz was wise, Katir called him a fool and left the pillars under the moonlight for the warmth of Arrom's tent. And Tamiz frowned and felt the air of the still city around him, and recognized it as it was-- not silent, not settled, but alive and distant and strange.
---------------
The second storm of the season came some weeks later, accompanied by a fever that rushed through the Family's tents, striking those who had not been touched with it the previous season. And that night as rain beat at their walls, Katir awoke to an empty presence at his side.
The storm drenched him as soon as he set out from under the awning, and in the flickering, thundering gale the city seemed to be awake and thrashing against its hillside bonds. Katir called for Arrom among the pillars but of course received no answer. For hours he searched, and when he finally found him, it was on the western road that led to the mountains. Arrom was delirious with fever and shivering in the storm. His bare feet were bruised and bloodied. He was searching-- for an arc of star-drawings among the sky, for a river of symbols and a trio of strange guardians, Katir could not tell. And he saw Katir and he did not.
A thunderclap shook the ground as Arrom cried a name into the wind and rain. And in the howling night it was Katir who was mute, whose words could not cut through the storm and the sickness to reach Arrom's fevered thoughts. He cradled Arrom in his arms and they sank to the muddy ground on the road, and Arrom said that silent name that was not Katir's name over and over upon his chest. And Katir tried to tell him these were fever dreams, and again his voice was lost.
Then Katir's heart could stand to see no more suffering, and though he knew it was wrong, he bent his head against the rain.
"Yes, it's me," he said. "It's me, and I will take you home."
----------------
When the storm had passed and the fever lifted, day dawned bright on the plateau. A powerful wind set the vellan grass murmuring and snapped at the walls of the Family’s tents. And Tamiz felt the change in the air, and knew the city was stirring and would wake in the coming days.
When the day came, Katir recognized the three spirit people who came into the city from the west. A man with a staff and a mark on his forehead, and a man and a woman wearing helmets and holding strangely shaped clubs. The mark was a golden tattoo, the helmets were cloth caps with stiff brims to keep out the sunlight, and the clubs were like nothing the people had ever seen. The visitors bowed in front of the Elders and spoke their names, and Katir saw true shapes given to figures scratched roughly in the ground, and heard true voice given to the empty ghosts Arrom had named in his sacred space.
Teal'c. Faran met him with boundless awe, and the children soon gathered long sticks to match his staff and pressed inkstain tattoos upon their foreheads.
Samantha. Tamiz met her with a bow, and marveled at her tale of the Gate between the World and the Stars.
Jack. Katir stammered and could not meet his eyes, and when the man cried out upon seeing Arrom among the crowd it seemed to him as though everything false had been re-wrought true, and everything true had been swept into the river.
The one named Jack called Arrom a foreign name. Daniel, he said, like the tiny darting fish that swam close to the river's shore. And when Tamiz told them the name the people had given him, the Naked One, and Katir tried to explain, the visitors smiled but did not understand the name's true meaning.
Never was this contrary name more true for Arrom than in that moment. For in that moment he was both Family and not, and Spirit and not. His thoughts were made bare, met there by the visitors, and by the people, and by every story he could not tell.
Then the visitors gave him a gift. It was a set of thin, bright white pages and a small, strange stylus full of blackest inkstain. Arrom held it in his hands, and the clouds behind his eyes broke, and he greeted the visitors with joy in his heart. Then the people-- innocent, foolish and wise alike-- knew two truths: that he would be leaving, and that he would find his voice again with the ones who spoke his true name.
He bowed to Tamiz, and knelt on the ground to embrace Faran, and searched the crowd for Katir but he had gone. The emissaries followed Arrom to his tent and found Katir there, seated on the ground and staring darkly at his hands, a storm of fear and sadness behind his eyes. And Tamiz and Faran kept their own counsel outside the door, and Arrom entered for the last time.
Arrom took Katir's trembling hands in his, and placed them to his heart. He took the gift from the visitors and scratched strings of symbols in inkstain upon a bright white page, and tore it free from the rest. And he gave the page to Katir in the sacred space, and kissed him, and the clouds broke behind both men's eyes. And Katir did not understand, but he took the strange page and folded it three times and pressed it, silent, between his palms.
Then Arrom, now Daniel, arose and took his satchel from the ground to begin his journey home.
---------------
The moons waxed and waned, the days grew shorter, and the Family stayed there upon the plateau for a quarter-season. When the rallah beasts thundered their way southward over Sin'aptel, Tamiz found himself looking out not toward Mother River, but away toward the distant mountains in the west, thinking of a stone circle that tied the heavens to the world. And he wondered what new and great things might come next to the people in the days when he was merely a name and a tale whispered in an empty tent.
Katir packed Arrom's empty tent and turned his back upon the city, thinking not of heavens or fortune, but only of a man with blue-bright eyes. And he wondered where his heart had betrayed him and what contrary spirit had cursed his touch, that he could not help Arrom find his voice and stay among the people.
And all the while, a new voice was there, although neither the wise nor the foolish could yet see it. Because all the while, Faran and the children kept playing Arrom's game.
Longer and longer words they shouted, and then raced among the pillars with their tiny pieces of press-moss. As children do with games, they quarreled over tie-breakers, they invented new versions and wandering rules. None of the Elders, not even Tamiz the wisest counsel, could mediate a round. Like the flock of river birds that dips and turns as one mind in the air, so the children were as one mind that shaped and birthed sia'alem-- from the cold stone pillars, the wandering walls of the spirit city, and the mute voice of the Naked One who had returned to his people.
When the Family left the pillars behind, Faran gathered hollow gemba stalks upon the plains and drew them full of inkstain. Then he scratched a river of symbols on his near-kin's tent cloth, and so the game traveled with them. In the southern markets Katir gave over Arrom's empty tent to Faran, and the children reverently cut it into pages, using them to ferry lengthy correspondences for the people through the crowded streets, and to tie words to deeds to keep the merchants honest.
That season, the Family prospered as they never had before. And the following season when Tamiz breathed his last, the Elders whispered his name in his sacred space, and the children wrote his tale upon the walls.
---------------
There now, the sun is setting and my cup is empty, and I will end my story.
What's that?
Oh, but you are too clever for manners! No, Katir was not his name, nor was the Elder named Tamiz nor the child named Faran. And if I have this strange, thin page, kept folded threeways in my satchel for all these seasons, it is because I do not need sia'alem to tell me what it says.
What more do we need to hear from spirit people? Their world is an alien world. Their gifts are like the shimmer on Mother River from the setting sun; our eyes can tell us nothing about the depths beneath those jewels dancing on her surface. And what do you get should you try to seize this gift? A three-folded page. A silent sound. A handful of river water that flows through your fingers.
Is that trickery on Mother River's part? They say a fool curses her shore and beats his fist against the current, while a wise man cups his hand and sees a gift no less precious than the one he sought. So you have Arrom's gift, silent sound that pins my story to the pages of your journal. And you might bind my tale in wood or set it in stone upon a pillar, that it would burn or topple when no one is left to speak it or hear it spoken. But I think... I think I am glad to tell it.
No, I will not come with you to Maraday. I have no need for a hard-house, or for rude company. Ai! Don't look down at your hands; I am just an old man complaining. I have this tent, and now this cup and this fine hat that knows its purpose. Faran's world is no longer my world, and maybe I am wiser, like Tamiz who looked away from Sin'aptel across the mountains.
And maybe I am mourning, and I am still just Katir, still just that foolish heart who is angry at the river for being cold and wet.
You have the answer written, there, and you will take it with you to Maraday to tell the people.
--------------
Author: eve11
Summary: You came to hear a tale of spirit people, and they are always contrary. Their humor is sharp and cruel, and their gifts are not borne well by mortals.
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Other, Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and characters are not my property and are used here without permission for no financial gain.
Original Story: In His Kiss, by melayneseahawk
Notes: AU from "Fallen", slash, ~4300 words. Thanks to the lovely jenlev and auntiemeesh for discussions, idea-bouncing, and beta.
In His Kiss (The Vis Uban Is For Lovers Remix)
-------------
I suppose you have come all this way from Maraday to hear a particular tale. Ai, you! Don't look down at your hands, what will they tell you? That's the trouble with young people these days. You want a story, and no one knows how to tell stories anymore. I don't know if your ears even work properly enough to listen. You wish to hear of Arrom, whom the spirit people named Daniel, and the gift of sia'alem. Is it so?
Hmph. I thought so. And you would let an old man sit out here in the heat of the day without even a straw hat for shade or a cup of water to soothe his throat in the telling. Your parents would be ashamed. Why, even now, the sun beats at my memories, and the tale is made difficult to recount--
What's that?
Oh. But what use have I for a cup so fine? And this hat has never been worn before, so how will it know what to do? Ai! Don't take it back, idiot! I can teach it, you know. What kind of manners do they have in Maraday these days? Come on, we can go under the awning until it learns its purpose.
Trouble indeed. I suppose my story is destined for sia'alem, now that you are here. You think you have the truth of a thing when you tie it down in ticks and scratches. So maybe I will be contrary. Maybe today you will hear Arrom's story, and maybe you will hear the birth of great things, and maybe you will hear a fool's account of fools. Will you choose one to capture? Maybe you will scratch them down all at once on your fine cloth pages, tick over tick over tick. Surely the ink running to the edge of the page would tell the truth.
And why not? You came to hear a tale of spirit people, and they are always contrary. Their humor is sharp and cruel, and their gifts are not borne well by mortals.
There now, the sun is out of my eyes, and I will begin.
--------------
Far north of Mother River, north of Maraday and north of the plain that is called Sin'aptel-- you would not know it; there are hard-houses there now but it used to be nothing but grass and churned ground, as the rallah beasts trampled river-wide swaths of land in their seasonal journey-- north of this plain is a spirit city. This city is at once hidden and not. Its structures are concealed among the rocks and high plateaus, so looking up to the mountains from Sin'aptel you would not guess it was there, and yet from the lowest of its stone pillars you can see far past the plain to the glint of Mother River, laughing on the horizon.
And this city is at once abandoned and not. The roofless rooms weave in and out of the hillside, and the stone pillars spill out onto the plateau like a child's game of bones left in the middle of a casting. So it feels this way with the spirit people too, like they abandoned their bodies between breaths, in the midst of their daily lives. And this spirit city inhaled with them and never exhaled, and instead sank into decay and stillness.
It is a touched place. Even when we still followed the rallah beasts across the vast Sin'aptel, for most migration seasons the people did not venture there. But for one summer, when drought made the gemba grass too brittle for weaving, the people were forced north to gather stiffer, hardier vellan grass that grew up around the press-moss, between the pillars at the foot of the city. And so a Family offered favors to the spirits and threw their tents among the ruins. Their prior year had been a harsh one, with little for trade in the southern markets, and thirteen people lost to fever in the drought.
Three evenings passed, and for the first time in the season a storm lit the sky with lightning and rattled the ground with thunder. And when the rain had passed the Family sent three emissaries to the stone pillars. The Elder, whom we will call Tamiz for his wisdom, who was the Family's most cautious counsel. And his brother's son, whom we will call Katir for his foolish heart, who had lone survived the fever of all his near-kin. And his brother's son, whom we will call Faran for his innocence, who had but nine summers and yet to join his first rallah hunt.
The emissaries donned blue robes in the Family's tradition and burned offerings under the pillars to thank spirits for their generosity. But the spirits were not through giving. As the ashes of the Family's gifts took to the wind, the sky burned again with blue-bright light and a thunderclap rang their ears.
And there on the ground beyond their failing fire was a man. A fallen man, still and silent among the fallen pillars.
Faran approached the man first and saw that he was naked. His body bore no scar or mark, and even the soles of his feet had no callouses, like a newborn.
Katir approached the man next and saw that he was naked. The curve of his back traced smooth lines over soft skin, and his eyes when they opened mirrored the burning blue-bright sky.
Tamiz approached the man next and saw that he was naked. He was a stranger to this body and this world, and when he tried to speak his name he discovered the spirits had taken his voice.
"Arrom," the emissaries said for him, and so Arrom the Naked One fell mute from the spirit world back into flesh and into the lap of the people.
---------------
Tamiz, who knew many stories, warned his kin to take care with spirit people made mortal. Maybe Arrom was cast out from the spirit world, or maybe he was wise to flee from them. Perhaps he spoke out against them, and so the spirit people struck a blow on his retreat so that he would not speak again. But whatever the matter, he was weak as a newborn, with clouds in his eyes and clouds in his thoughts, and they could not leave him to the ruins. So they gave him a robe and helped him to his feet and back to camp, where Katir pitched the empty tent his lost near-kin had lived in the season before.
And although Arrom donned the Family colors and understood the people's language, he was clearly touched; his first day was spent hunched over the sand in front of Katir's empty tent with a stiff vellan blade in hand, tracing all manners of shapes and forms into the ground.
A circle like the great arc of the night sky, with star-drawings the people had never seen before.
"Perhaps he wishes to call the spirits here from the sky to take him back," Faran said.
Three figures in heavy shoes-- a man with a staff and a mark on his forehead, a man and a woman wearing helmets and holding strangely shaped clubs.
"Perhaps they are emissaries, or guardians of the city," Katir said.
A river of precisely arranged dots and lines, catching the currents from sharply angled strokes to smooth swirls to neat blocks, over and over again.
"Perhaps it is the many faces of the Mother, as when she is frozen, or rushing or calm," Tamiz said.
None of the people's words stirred Arrom from his task. His hands flew through the shapes on the ground and he traced other patterns in the air, but it was all too strange for the people to understand.
Faran made it a game, laughing and tracing Arrom's shapes again with his own vellan blade, then breaking off pieces of the grass and arranging them to match the shapes he saw. Arrom smiled at the boy but did not stop. He did not stop until his body cried for it, new muscles corded and tight, new hands cramped around the wide vellan blade. Finally Katir took the vellan from his fingers and offered him water and a chair under the shade of his empty tent's awning. And Arrom rested into the night, and Katir studied the marks in the ground, willing them to speak their secrets to him. Tamiz found him there as the first moon rose.
"Do not look too closely," said Tamiz. "He is telling stories."
And Katir's heart felt as distant to him as the moon above their heads. "Are they false, then?" he asked.
"They are his, alone," Tamiz answered. "The spirits have seen to it."
And the next day it was as Tamiz said, for the more Arrom traced his shapes, the more the clouds behind his eyes darkened, as though those forms became as strange to him as they were to the people. No one could say whether they were false or true, and in the following days Arrom's hands fell as silent as his voice, and he stayed shut in Katir's empty tent for longer and longer a time.
Three evenings passed, and Faran called into the tent but received no answer. As a child will do, his attention wandered to another game and he left. Then Tamiz came and called into the tent but received no answer. As an Elder will do, he kept his own counsel and left. Then Katir came and called into the tent and when he received no answer, he pushed past the door and entered for the first time since his near-kin had died. There he saw Arrom seated on the ground and staring darkly at his hands, a storm of fear and sadness behind his eyes.
Katir held Arrom's trembling hands in his, and pressed them to his own heart, and told him, "This is my family's place, and it is tired of being empty." And he shared the names of his near-kin and told their tales to Arrom in their sacred space. And for the first time since waking among the pillars Arrom mouthed words as if to speak, and sent three silent, foreign names with no tales to join Katir's near-kin in their sacred space.
So Katir's empty tent became Arrom's tent, and neither man left it again that night.
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What must it be like to be a spirit person, forced back again into skin and muscle and bone? It is a gift of senses that cannot be returned, a cage for a mind that has forgotten so many things about being mortal. Hunger, thirst, pain, voice. It is no wonder Arrom's thoughts churned against this prison for so many days. But as his body gained strength, Arrom's stories seemed to settle in his mind, and he ventured out among the people.
He visited old and young, men and women, and watched them at their chores and listened to their words. And so he learned to mend tent cloth from the women, to sharpen stoneaxes from the men, to play bones upon the sand from the children. Though it was a woman's task he found comfort in weaving vellan grass to make baskets, using the brown inkstain to color the stalks so they would bend and not break, and so they would hold fruit or sod without rotting. The women teased him, with his hands stained brown like theirs after the long days, but he only smiled.
In the Family's gathering one night, Faran and the children set out the storytelling seats, and Katir sat with Arrom in the glow of the bonfire, and Tamiz told three stories of the people. He told the story of the rallah beast and the grain of sand, and of Mother River's children, and of the travelers who met upon the road. Arrom's eyes danced from the light and he was captivated by the telling. None of the people could discern the thoughts that spun in his mind, but when Tamiz sat down by the fire Arrom stood, and in the firelight he told a silent tale to those who would listen.
And the people knew this story of course, of an old and angry God who brought a great flood upon the world. In Arrom's tale the people received a warning, and built a giant riverboat to take in the world, the animals two by two, until the rains had gone. And for that time in the firelight it seemed that they could almost hear Arrom's voice in the backs of their minds, but when the fire died he was mute again, and the thrall was broken.
Katir marveled that a spirit person would know the stories of mortals. It seemed to him that the spirit people had punished Arrom wrongly, for surely he was just a man. And that night as they lay in the close silence of their tent Katir said to him, "If you have a true name, not Arrom, but a mortal name, you should speak it, and I know I will hear it." But Arrom made no move in the darkness, except to brush the tips of Katir's fingers to his closed lips, and kiss his palm and keep his own thoughts.
The next day, Tamiz found Faran and the children darting among the pillars in the spirit city. They had gathered handfuls of press-moss, and were searching the pillars like the river bird searches for a fish among the waves. When their prey was sighted, they rushed forward and pressed the moss to the sides of the pillars. Tamiz looked closer and he saw the pillars had been carved with symbols, and the children were taking the forms into the press-moss and darting back to a single spot where Arrom stood with flat blades of vellan grass and a bowl of inkstain.
"It is Arrom's new game," Faran said. He pointed to a line of pictures traced into the ground and recited, "Sa, se, sia, la, le, lem." Sun, eye, heart, cart, chair, road. The children had dipped the tips of their press-moss into the bowl, and stamped the shapes of their spirit symbols on vellan grass under the pictures. Tamiz could make no sense of it.
Arrom saw the Elder and smiled at him, and for a moment Tamiz saw an old, strange spirit behind his eyes. Then it was gone, as the children laughed and took his hand to judge the game.
"See?" they said. "The word is ki alar for the second moon, and his says kyalam like the smooth stones in the river!"
That night Tamiz walked out among the pillars. And he found Katir there, tracing the cold symbols with the tips of his fingers.
"You search for too many gifts from this city," said Tamiz.
Katir grew angry, and said to Tamiz, "I had a wife and children and they are gone. Why should I not welcome all forms of love that the Mother chooses to share with us?"
Tamiz thought about the children and Arrom's game among the pillars, and he said to Katir, "Arrom is not like us; he is tied to this place. Eventually the people will go back to Sin'aptel, and this place will not."
Though he knew Tamiz was wise, Katir called him a fool and left the pillars under the moonlight for the warmth of Arrom's tent. And Tamiz frowned and felt the air of the still city around him, and recognized it as it was-- not silent, not settled, but alive and distant and strange.
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The second storm of the season came some weeks later, accompanied by a fever that rushed through the Family's tents, striking those who had not been touched with it the previous season. And that night as rain beat at their walls, Katir awoke to an empty presence at his side.
The storm drenched him as soon as he set out from under the awning, and in the flickering, thundering gale the city seemed to be awake and thrashing against its hillside bonds. Katir called for Arrom among the pillars but of course received no answer. For hours he searched, and when he finally found him, it was on the western road that led to the mountains. Arrom was delirious with fever and shivering in the storm. His bare feet were bruised and bloodied. He was searching-- for an arc of star-drawings among the sky, for a river of symbols and a trio of strange guardians, Katir could not tell. And he saw Katir and he did not.
A thunderclap shook the ground as Arrom cried a name into the wind and rain. And in the howling night it was Katir who was mute, whose words could not cut through the storm and the sickness to reach Arrom's fevered thoughts. He cradled Arrom in his arms and they sank to the muddy ground on the road, and Arrom said that silent name that was not Katir's name over and over upon his chest. And Katir tried to tell him these were fever dreams, and again his voice was lost.
Then Katir's heart could stand to see no more suffering, and though he knew it was wrong, he bent his head against the rain.
"Yes, it's me," he said. "It's me, and I will take you home."
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When the storm had passed and the fever lifted, day dawned bright on the plateau. A powerful wind set the vellan grass murmuring and snapped at the walls of the Family’s tents. And Tamiz felt the change in the air, and knew the city was stirring and would wake in the coming days.
When the day came, Katir recognized the three spirit people who came into the city from the west. A man with a staff and a mark on his forehead, and a man and a woman wearing helmets and holding strangely shaped clubs. The mark was a golden tattoo, the helmets were cloth caps with stiff brims to keep out the sunlight, and the clubs were like nothing the people had ever seen. The visitors bowed in front of the Elders and spoke their names, and Katir saw true shapes given to figures scratched roughly in the ground, and heard true voice given to the empty ghosts Arrom had named in his sacred space.
Teal'c. Faran met him with boundless awe, and the children soon gathered long sticks to match his staff and pressed inkstain tattoos upon their foreheads.
Samantha. Tamiz met her with a bow, and marveled at her tale of the Gate between the World and the Stars.
Jack. Katir stammered and could not meet his eyes, and when the man cried out upon seeing Arrom among the crowd it seemed to him as though everything false had been re-wrought true, and everything true had been swept into the river.
The one named Jack called Arrom a foreign name. Daniel, he said, like the tiny darting fish that swam close to the river's shore. And when Tamiz told them the name the people had given him, the Naked One, and Katir tried to explain, the visitors smiled but did not understand the name's true meaning.
Never was this contrary name more true for Arrom than in that moment. For in that moment he was both Family and not, and Spirit and not. His thoughts were made bare, met there by the visitors, and by the people, and by every story he could not tell.
Then the visitors gave him a gift. It was a set of thin, bright white pages and a small, strange stylus full of blackest inkstain. Arrom held it in his hands, and the clouds behind his eyes broke, and he greeted the visitors with joy in his heart. Then the people-- innocent, foolish and wise alike-- knew two truths: that he would be leaving, and that he would find his voice again with the ones who spoke his true name.
He bowed to Tamiz, and knelt on the ground to embrace Faran, and searched the crowd for Katir but he had gone. The emissaries followed Arrom to his tent and found Katir there, seated on the ground and staring darkly at his hands, a storm of fear and sadness behind his eyes. And Tamiz and Faran kept their own counsel outside the door, and Arrom entered for the last time.
Arrom took Katir's trembling hands in his, and placed them to his heart. He took the gift from the visitors and scratched strings of symbols in inkstain upon a bright white page, and tore it free from the rest. And he gave the page to Katir in the sacred space, and kissed him, and the clouds broke behind both men's eyes. And Katir did not understand, but he took the strange page and folded it three times and pressed it, silent, between his palms.
Then Arrom, now Daniel, arose and took his satchel from the ground to begin his journey home.
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The moons waxed and waned, the days grew shorter, and the Family stayed there upon the plateau for a quarter-season. When the rallah beasts thundered their way southward over Sin'aptel, Tamiz found himself looking out not toward Mother River, but away toward the distant mountains in the west, thinking of a stone circle that tied the heavens to the world. And he wondered what new and great things might come next to the people in the days when he was merely a name and a tale whispered in an empty tent.
Katir packed Arrom's empty tent and turned his back upon the city, thinking not of heavens or fortune, but only of a man with blue-bright eyes. And he wondered where his heart had betrayed him and what contrary spirit had cursed his touch, that he could not help Arrom find his voice and stay among the people.
And all the while, a new voice was there, although neither the wise nor the foolish could yet see it. Because all the while, Faran and the children kept playing Arrom's game.
Longer and longer words they shouted, and then raced among the pillars with their tiny pieces of press-moss. As children do with games, they quarreled over tie-breakers, they invented new versions and wandering rules. None of the Elders, not even Tamiz the wisest counsel, could mediate a round. Like the flock of river birds that dips and turns as one mind in the air, so the children were as one mind that shaped and birthed sia'alem-- from the cold stone pillars, the wandering walls of the spirit city, and the mute voice of the Naked One who had returned to his people.
When the Family left the pillars behind, Faran gathered hollow gemba stalks upon the plains and drew them full of inkstain. Then he scratched a river of symbols on his near-kin's tent cloth, and so the game traveled with them. In the southern markets Katir gave over Arrom's empty tent to Faran, and the children reverently cut it into pages, using them to ferry lengthy correspondences for the people through the crowded streets, and to tie words to deeds to keep the merchants honest.
That season, the Family prospered as they never had before. And the following season when Tamiz breathed his last, the Elders whispered his name in his sacred space, and the children wrote his tale upon the walls.
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There now, the sun is setting and my cup is empty, and I will end my story.
What's that?
Oh, but you are too clever for manners! No, Katir was not his name, nor was the Elder named Tamiz nor the child named Faran. And if I have this strange, thin page, kept folded threeways in my satchel for all these seasons, it is because I do not need sia'alem to tell me what it says.
What more do we need to hear from spirit people? Their world is an alien world. Their gifts are like the shimmer on Mother River from the setting sun; our eyes can tell us nothing about the depths beneath those jewels dancing on her surface. And what do you get should you try to seize this gift? A three-folded page. A silent sound. A handful of river water that flows through your fingers.
Is that trickery on Mother River's part? They say a fool curses her shore and beats his fist against the current, while a wise man cups his hand and sees a gift no less precious than the one he sought. So you have Arrom's gift, silent sound that pins my story to the pages of your journal. And you might bind my tale in wood or set it in stone upon a pillar, that it would burn or topple when no one is left to speak it or hear it spoken. But I think... I think I am glad to tell it.
No, I will not come with you to Maraday. I have no need for a hard-house, or for rude company. Ai! Don't look down at your hands; I am just an old man complaining. I have this tent, and now this cup and this fine hat that knows its purpose. Faran's world is no longer my world, and maybe I am wiser, like Tamiz who looked away from Sin'aptel across the mountains.
And maybe I am mourning, and I am still just Katir, still just that foolish heart who is angry at the river for being cold and wet.
You have the answer written, there, and you will take it with you to Maraday to tell the people.
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