Swirling Bright and Merry

(12:0:5)

As always, Seih Handsome Hestas looked stunning.

Brei flipped a long strand of her dark, lightly curled hair back over her shoulder, one hand settling on her hip as she looked him up and down with a smirk, taking in the slim but strong lines of his calves, the hem of the tunic not too flaring as it angled across from upper thigh nearly to the knee, lightly clinging around the waist to hint at the shape of his torso beneath the flowing fabric.

The asymmetric cut of it did wonders to hint at the light muscle. Without the close-fitting undershirt and shorts it would be practically scandalous with the high hem and that low side-cut neckline trailing across his chest down to his ribcage, flowing folds wrapping up and around his arms to end in short, flowing sleeves. The thinly-woven but wide sash brought out that solidity to his waist just perfectly.

“How long are you going to stare?” His dry voice brought her eyes flicking back up to his face, and she smirked wider, giving her attention to that smoothly-shaven, gentle but strong jawline and the amused twinkle in eyes almost blue enough to rival a Divination’s.

“Shush, I’m taking it in. Those earthy tones look really good on you.” She threw one last glance over him, checking his calf-length sandals in case he’d managed to make them dusty in the week since they’d picked them out, and finally approached him, slipping her arms over his shoulders. “You look amazing. I think I’ve picked the winning look of the night.”

He smiled, his eyes running over her face and hair, and flicking down to the bare shoulder of her ruby-red dress. “You do, too. Did you pick that out to match on purpose, or...?”

“No, of course, it’s just a happy accident.” She ran her finger down the carved ridge of his nose and poked the tip, grinning at the light blush that rose to his cheeks. “Of course I did. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“Too good an opportunity,” he echoed, his eyes lingering on her mouth, a sly hint to his gaze.

“No, you are not ruining my hair or all my hard work,” she sniffed, pulling back.

Only for him to press forward, lightly catching her hand and nearly brushing soulbind crowns, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “You’re the one practically leaning all over me.”

“Assaulter! Molester!” She gasped dramatically, barely putting up a struggle with a light shove at his shoulder, tossing her head away from his teasing advance.

He laughed, safely pecking her above the eye before she could duck away and stepped back, twirling her around his hand. “You’re a fire-bell and a teaser, Brei-sé.”

“What a dirty mouth you have.” She held her poise perfectly on the spin, shimmying her shoulders to drag his eye, before letting out a laugh of her own, holding his hand just a moment longer until their fingers inevitably slid apart.

Usually she’d be working or sleeping by now, but with the festivities going on, she’d managed to wrangle some free time, letting the Divinations and the head doctors take care of everything. Not that the Divinations didn’t do most of the work, anyway. Most of her job was just making sure they ran at optimum capacity, and working with the conduit constructions she’d eventually learn to design and improve on. Playing nurse to patients was just the practical, better-paying part of her layered tutelage, even if it had made them both late to the party itself.

She’d have to thank Seih again for waiting. “We won’t miss the eclipse,” he’d reassured her, as if it was nothing and no fellow Domini would pounce on him for being late, but it wasn’t exactly nothing to put aside his reputation for her. And she appreciated it.

Especially with Tools and his grumpy tush falling down stairs every other day, or whatever it was he did to throw himself out of alignment so thoroughly.

But she wasn’t going to think about that. Not tonight. “Tonight is going to be perfect, just you watch.”

But she wasn’t going to think about that. Not tonight. “Tonight is going to be perfect, just you watch.”

His face did that thing again, the one it had been doing ever since that “prophetic announcement” a week ago, a shadow crossing it and darkening that twinkle she’d worked so hard to build up. He noticed her look, immediately pulling up a smile again, but it wasn’t the same. “I’m sure it will be.”

She sighed, moving for the archway and ignoring Seih’s Divination standing silently just outside. “It’s really eating at you, isn’t it?”

They were out of the house before he replied. “I don’t think they could have been wrong. The tenders are designed to catch everything the Scale emits, and they’ve never been wrong before. And if they’re right....”

Letting him hold the gate for her, she eyed him. “And yet nothing’s happened.”

“It didn’t say the world would end in a week’s time.”

“It also didn’t say why we were being thrown into the fires in the first place,” she sniffed. “You’d think a benevolent entity would at least give an explanation.”

“Maybe we’re wrong to think we’re owed one.” He offered her his arm as they strolled up the street, stones illuminated by the glow of street lamps in the dusk, the shadows of leaves from vines casting shadows at the edges. “Maybe it’s obvious.”

She tossed her head with a laugh. “Obvious that we live in a utopia? Obvious that we’re progressing in elemental conduit technology every year, and can even communicate with the rest of the world— something we couldn’t do even a century ago? Or that we’re increasing in medical science every day, that more people are living than dying— that we’re at the apex of civilisation?”

“Obvious that we’re stagnating? That all this development is going more and more towards impractical and useless things, like that colour-changing fountain Jondice had added to his grounds just a few months back?” Seih countered. “That more councillors care about the money going into their own pouches than benefiting their Dominions? That they care more about adding weight to their image than the truth? Even the Hand cared more about putting everyone at ease than asking what we should do.”

This was the problem of getting involved with someone in politics. Well, at least it had sharpened her debating skills. It wasn’t like he was wrong about the other councillors, either. “And what would you have us do, Seih Hestas? Stumble around like mindless bees?”

He made a face at her. “You sound just like Hafest.”

“Pretend he’s far smarter and prettier.”

That at least got a quiet snort out of him and an almost-smile, even if it did disappear immediately. “No, but I’d ask the priests to make inquiries. I’d reassure the people with a promise that we’ll be prepared to do whatever we can to avoid it, not dismiss it outright.”

“Mhm. Did you tell them that?”

“I didn’t have much of an opportunity to. Hafest dug the ground from under me before I could gain enough momentum,” he said, a bitter twist to his mouth as his eyes roamed up towards the lights of the Firial Palace outshining the growing twilight.

“Well personally, I wouldn’t worry about any of it until something happens.” She waved a dismissive hand. “The Light will shine where it will, and all that. We are but its humble, clueless servants.”

He just exhaled, humming a noncommittal answer. Well, if he was set on brooding over it all until one of his worry-eggs hatched, then he’d keep doing so even if she stood on her head and juggled a dozen of those filled brekk buns he loved so much. Handsome he might be, but his head of stone couldn’t be broken even with a mallet.

She put it out of mind as they stepped onto the rolling platform rising up to the heart of the Upper Abode—with its political, societal, and cultural centre—at the gondolier station just up the road from Seih’s mansion. And it was a mansion, despite his protests. You couldn’t live in an elegant place like that with more room than people and call it a house.

Then again, it didn’t compare to places like the Ripple, or the Palace.

Especially, she noted as they stepped through the platform’s gate and onto the grounds, not the Palace.