It's a Long Walk to the Horizon

(10:1:5)

A part of Seih was tempted to lean against the back of the bench circling the Ripple’s outermost rim.

“Loh’s predicament is tragic, yes, but I don’t see what Petrah’s High Ruler expects of us. Our trade agreement should be enough for them, surely, if they wish for more Light scalelets.”

Tempted to close his eyes and take a moment to catch up on lost, disturbed sleep.

“Mm, honestly, if they increase their demand, we shall begin to run low. Even with our uniquely high levels of Light, it takes time for scalelets to grow, and they are necessary for a multitude of things we ourselves require, like the—”

“Such as your fountains, hm, Jondice? And your little beauty touches to your castle?” Dragging his focus over, he spotted Delryhn arching her perfectly cultured brows across the circle at the heavyset man.

Brei would have called him an old, fat piggle. For a moment he wasn’t sure she hadn’t just snorted straight into his mind across the soulbind link as he fought to keep his face from twitching.

Straight across from him on the steppe below, Hafest smirked almost audibly, himself.

“How dare you accuse me of putting my own comforts above this horrible situation—”

“What if we focused on increasing our Light scalelet growth?” Seih finally interjected on the adults’ increasingly childish discussion. “It would be advisable to increase our scalelet production in case of any eventual outcome of the conflict in Loh.”

“’Any’ eventual outcome? And just what outcome are you expecting, young Domini Hestas?” Hafest probed at him, resting his chin on his loosely intertwined hands in an inviting gesture.

“The kind that could require fortification of soul relays and Light Pillars in general,” he responded. “In any case, fortifying the spread of the Light shield would help reassure the populace that we’re less likely to be taken over by any spawn of Darkness.”

Not to mention that it should actually help in case any creatures related to Darkness did show up on their borders. Though, the Light shield was less of a shield and more of a deterrent, an effect formed by their geographical placement magnifying the Light Scale’s influence across the land between the Skalter’s Back Mountains and where the Black Scar cut across on the east, the territory in-between forming Firemount’s lands. Mostly by accident and years before his time, they’d discovered that Light scalelets scattered towards the edges of their territory strengthened the spread of that aura.

“It does repel Arathneans of the Arachnid kind,” Firalk commented. “I imagine the effect on Drillers would be even more persuasive if they ever dared to come closer.”

“There has been movement to fortify the Pillars already,” Alteh of the Hand spoke up, his sharp grey eyes roving between them. “Building more could be considered merely an act of placation and a waste of resources.”

Seih pursed his lips, but before he could speak, another voice on the outer edge piped up. “Oh come now, old man, what could it hurt? I thought we were trying to make people feel safer and avoid all the world-destroying riots, weren’t we?”

“So long as we laid out a plan of how much we can spare and how far we can increase our supply, we could safely manage it without depleting our existing resources,” Seih added, resolutely not wincing as Domini Tambo’s nonchalant attitude butted in. Usually he was too bored with the whole thing to even show up to a regular session, when he wasn’t off strengthening their ties with Petrah. Today was not one of those days.

“Well then, Seih Hestas, why don’t you give us your wonderfully thought-through plan for all this?”

He released a half-sigh, turning his gaze to Hafest. “I have an idea of the resources—”

“An idea! Results are not built on ideas. You seem to have been quite set on the idea of Light fortifications, and yet you haven’t put in the work to bring forward actual figures and plans—?”

“I do have a framework,” his voice cut over the end of Hafest’s question, too sharply, too intensely. Schooling his expression and stifling his annoyance, he sucked in a short breath between his teeth and continued, “As I was saying, I have pulled together an overview of the resources and expansion we would theoretically require. These are only based on the numbers currently available. If the council were willing to take my recommendation, I would ask those involved in production and construction for their practical advisement.”

He send a soulbind request to Voice behind him, taking the neatly-bound imprints the Divination had recorded and sending them on to the soul relay within the central stand the Hand sat upon. Connected to the local link, they could easily view it in pseudo-Soulspace, and from the quiet that fell over the rest of the room for a few moments, they were.

“Well there you have it.” Tambo gestured expansively towards the rest of the Ripple, Domini Gantan making a face at the theatrics from where she sat next in line around the circle. “The man has everything figured out. What excuse is there not to?”

Elka’s gaze rose to meet his, she and the other members of the Hand staying silent for a moment, talking among themselves via soulbind link. “We acknowledge your recommendation, and will now call a recess to deliberate on its merit.”

And that was it.

He stood along with the rest of the Domini, breathing out a silent sigh and stretching his shoulders briefly. It’s lucky I ran over the numbers a couple of weeks ago. Even with such a small thing as this, they still pushed back like the fate of the world depended on it, as if daring to acknowledge any kind of practical caution would drag the ink-weevils out of the grain. At least they were considering it, though.

“Well done, O he who is blessed by the numbers.” Domini Tambo sauntered up with a smirk on his face, slapping at Seih’s back and leaning in conspiratorially. “Old blowers. They should see this’ll shut the mewlers up eventually, though. And once they do, it won’t take a wing’s flutter for them to snuck it up.”

“You really think it’ll be that effective?” He raised an eyebrow at the face practically a sharp nose away from his. “Because the Hand’s right to be worried that it could make people take all of this more seriously.”

The older man smirked and patted his shoulder, finally drawing away. “Trust me, once you offer the easiest solution to a problem, people’ll dive back to the bottom of their little ponds and go right back to sleeping in the mud. All this worry and bother’s too taxing for any sensible person to want to put up with.”

“Like you?” He raised his eyebrow.

“I really don’t see the point in worrying about it all.” Tambo shrugged airily, already moving wander off to someone else on their path towards the exit. “What’s life but one big slide towards an ‘end’, after all? The future stone is always in its right spot, and you can’t argue with it.”

Seih shook his head as the other councillor went off. That was one way of looking at it. Not a view I plan on taking up any time soon. Not with so many other people involved who didn’t want to die in the timeframe of a year.

And if he could help it, they wouldn’t have to.

&&&

The way to Fire’s Temple always seemed peaceful.

Carved marble houses and streets thick with refined stone and vines gave way to the rockier terrain of the mountain, the sparser, homely villas that replaced them perched at the top of cliffs surrounded by patches of firred trees sprouting from baked, crumbling rock.

He could have taken a gondolier. The stone-paved road winding up the mountainside beneath his feet was choked with dust and sprouting little green hairs of grass, or spindly, scrawling weeds, the edges of the path itself crumbling. Only the priests and the devout wandered this road. Well, the priests, the devout, and a man who’d felt that walking would help exorcise the shadows swirling in his thoughts.

He sighed, gazing up at the smaller but still elegant wood-and-stone construction of his destination sitting on the crag above, the gentle burbles of a stream trickling down through the rocks and under a sturdy little bridge in his path. The dusty sweetness of scrawny bushes dusted with blue flowers, sprouting wherever they could gain a foothold, hung thick in his nose.

Tambo’s words kept circling in the back of his mind. Was it so bad to offer hope? His gut tightened with a nameless unease. If all it did was set everyone at ease enough to ignore what was going on....

It wasn’t like they could advocate to march for war—or ever would. The entire council would riot if one of them even suggested the idea, and so would most of the people.

But....

He shook his head as he passed the bridge by and began up the steps climbing the steep terrain towards the house. It was impossible to know what was or wasn’t the right choice. He and everyone else could only do their best, and reinforcing the Light shield was the most practical thing he could think of that wouldn’t end up rejected outright. Besides, it could open other avenues.

Firmly, he pushed aside the nagging sense of unease that hung over him like a cloud these days, and strode along the trail winding between twisted trees clothed in spiny green needles, the dappled shade a relief from the hot sun. Hopefully his trip here could help provide a clear path later. He’d taken long enough to stop by.

The figure of a woman bent over carefully-tended bushes laden with bright apricot flowers rose as the sound of his footsteps crunched on the leaf litter. When she spotted him, her sparkling blue eyes lit up with a beaming smile. “Seih! I didn’t know you were visiting today, you little skiltertell!”

He nearly chuckled. The world might be ending, whichever path they took shrouded in darkness, but some things were always the same.

He smiled. “Afternoon's breezing, Mother.”