Circling, Circling

“Well, it can’t be helped, can it?”

“I suppose not, Mother.” From where he sat, Seih watched Zaelahn bustle busily around the room, pulling down a pair of little wrulf sculptures carved from dark stone. Not white, like the one that haunted the edges of his dreams.

She turned to him with a smile, patting at his cheeks, her bright blue eyes crinkling softly. “You could come with us, you know.”

“I’ve only been suspended from council meetings, not thrown out. Yet.” He smiled slightly back, catching her smaller, older hand and squeezing at it. “I don’t think I could even if they did.”

She sighed, patting at the back of his hand and drawing away to continue packing her little bag. “You’ve caused quite a stir, you know.”

“She was bristling like a little fluffwing by the time you’d finished,” his father commented from the doorway, reading through the news-stack in his hand and sipping at a cup of tea. “Yelling at the Ripple, too. It would have been good if you’d had an opportunity to expound on things, though, and give a more reasonable account, rather than being swallowed up in emotion.”

His mother huffed, a hint of exasperated amusement in the sound. “The son of a debater must always bear his praise with criticism.”

“Emotion needs reason to temper its edge.”

“Well, the water’s risen over the dam now.” Seih put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the wall behind the bench, exhaling a tired breath and watching the leaves trickling down around the recessed skylight flutter slightly in the draft created by the air vents. The light streaming through bounced off the perfectly white walls, giving it a roomy feel despite the smaller size. “Half the population have taken my words one way or another, I have the tentative support of at least a handful of councillors, and the rest are opposed. And I won’t have a public opportunity to defend myself for a while.”

“That time can be used to flesh out the points of your argument and define your stance,” Kellore told him, regarding him with stormy green eyes over the top of his papers. “Take every opportunity you can. They won’t be kind to a man who is under-prepared and uncertain.”

Forcing a smile he didn’t feel, he found his gaze turning to the little travel bags. All of his parents’ most important and necessary items packed into a pair of little sacks, ready to head off to Petrah. “I know. But what action can I call for when they’ll rein it back from the first word? Most people are frustrated that nothing’s happening, but most of them don’t want war. I’m not sure I really do, either.”

In the heat of the moment it seemed like the right choice. But there were considerations that had to be made with the business of war that his echo-addled brain hadn’t been up to making at the time. Now, with the last traces gone—even if the horror of it threatened at the corners of his dreams—it didn’t seem quite so clear-cut, anymore.

“Even against Darkness himself?”

“I suppose you can’t argue with that,” he admitted. “But one of the problems is that everyone else still isn’t convinced it is Darkness. And most are deeply apposed to the concept of marching off to war. We have no army, in any case. No true warriors, no soldiers, nothing apart from Divinations, who would be our best option, but....”

“But?”

“Is it fair to create sapient beings only to throw them to near-certain death? Besides, even if we started now, I doubt we could create the numbers we’d need. Crafting Divinations is a tedious art.” He closed his eyes, rubbing at the skin between them and letting his fingers run up into his hair with a long, silent sigh.

“You look tired, Seih,” Zael’s voice broke in sympathetically, and he opened his eyes to see her settle on the bench beside him, her hand coming to rest gently on his arm. “Has all of this business lately been running you down?”

“It’s nothing.” He tried a reassuring smile on her, but her eyes stayed steadily on his, her brows rising. Well, if there was anyone who he should ask... a caretaker of the Scale and the Temple would qualify. Rolling the words around in his head for a moment as she waited patiently, he finally settled on, “Do you think dreams have meaning, Mother?”

She tilted her head slightly. “Well, they’ll always have meaning to you.”

He decided to come out with it. “And if I’ve been dreaming of Firemount in ruins?”

“...What exactly do you see?” She searched his eyes.

“A black sky. A fiery glow on the horizon. Empty, destroyed streets.” He kept his gaze on the light streaming down on the bed of his parents’ room. “Sometimes I see a white wrulf-like creature with antlers and blue eyes trying to lead me somewhere. Trying to tell me something.”

“...There are times when the Light reaches out to us.” Her hand rubbed softly at his shoulder. “Telling us of things to come, or things we should do. Coming to us through dreams isn’t unheard of. Though if this is happening often enough to leave you looking like something the nightmare dragged out, I might personally ask it to let you have a decent night’s rest!”

“It isn’t every night.” He smiled wanly. “But it’s more often than not.”

Gathering himself and standing before she could reply, he looked between the both of them. “Well, I’d better get going. The council’s meeting soon, and if I can’t be part of it I’ll just have to watch. I’ll let you keep packing.”

His mother rose as well, catching his face in her hands. “I’m sorry we can’t stay, Seih.”

“It’s alright.” He smiled, moving in to hug her. “It’s better if you get out while you can.”