See the Leaves Flutter Down

(6:3:6)

The light filtered through dust and smoke onto scattered, broken warm-boxes and the remains of splintered shelves. It ran soft, frail fingers across a chipped countertop etched with jagged lines, like claws dragged across the wood. Dried, sticky blood filled them with a dull red, trailing from the limp hand of the woman slumped across it, her face hidden from his sight.

It was so quiet.

“Seih?”

He startled, blinking into Celaph’s very alive, concerned hazel eyes in the present, instead of the ghost of her corpse. “Yes?”

Her concerned look deepened, leaning her elbows on the counter. “Are you alright? You seemed to fall asleep on your feet for a moment there.”

Offering her a wan smile, he opened his money pouch and picked out a pair of kernels, setting them on the wood and trying to ignore the ghostly memory of vague stickiness. “I’m just fine. A pair of brekk buns?”

He allowed the expression to drop as she bustled about her work with a cheery whistle, closing his eyes briefly. The shadow of Darkness stretched ever further across the land, and his nightmares only grew more vivid and more frequent with it. Last night's still haunted him.

I’m trying, he pleaded silently with a distant, judgemental Scale. I’m trying to avoid this.

The sound of a paper bag rustling was his only answer, his eyes opening just as Celaph set it in front of him. As he reached for it, her hands stopped him, curling around his own and patting at his knuckles with a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry too much, Domini. The Light will have mercy on us.”

He attempted a smile back, grabbing the bag. “I’m sure it will.”

(6:2:3)

“—It’s a problem is what it is!” One of the other Higher Domini’s words rang from pillar to pillar, echoing off the glass window in the ceiling. “These rats must be stopped! I had an entire cartload of scalelets disappear yesterday! And what in Darkness’ Void they’re using them for can’t be anything good—”

Seih idly wondered that, himself. There were... rumours, of a group who were creating constructs and smuggling them to the Loh Unity. He hadn’t thought they were big enough to require that many scalelets.

“Anyone caught stealing scalelets will be punished.”

The Hand’s declaration put the official seal on it. He frowned, lifting his voice as they finished and drawing wary eyes towards him, feeling Tambo’s sharp gaze in the corner of his vision. “It seems to me as if they’re only attempting to help the efforts against Darkness. Perhaps they would be less of a problem if we worked with them instead of pushing out a call for their arrest.”

“You intend to enable them to supply these nations with whatever weaponry they dream up?”

He sighed quietly as Hafest immediately pounced on him. Here we go again. “No, I would intend for us to supply them with constructs, instead.”

“Are you not content with strengthening the Light shield? You have already increased production—”

“And that’s commendable! If these supposed forces of Darkness dare to come this far, they will—”

“—a good way to supply them with the means to destroy us! What if they join with the Dark-kind? We will have fomented our own destruction—”

Individual voices degraded into a maelstrom of noise, every action they could take seemingly hemmed in by a thousand wrong paths. An eternal, endless push/pull. With time, maybe they could sort through it.

He closed his eyes.

Time was the one thing they were running out of.

(5:3:4)

“...Why are you here, Brei?”

She turned from the crowd as a familiar, soft voice came from behind her through the noise, spotting Winds. “I could ask the same thing. I haven’t seen you at the market much, lately. Isn’t your master here?”

“I took a deviation. I can still complete my tasks within the time set and avoid his wrath.” His calm, golden eyes remained unblinking, his hair slightly... longer than usual? That was interesting.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Well aren’t you becoming rebellious. I approve. Down with the lazy councillors and all that.”

His gaze drifted past her at her fellow demonstrators lifting their voices in a half-chant, half-choir outside the towering edifice of the cultural and political heart of Firemount. They were only sympathisers, not active workers like her and her fellow constructors/distributors, but the Ripple needed to know that there were some very loud, very disgruntled voices who weren’t content to trust that Darkness would simply bounce off their holy, oh-so-righteous and pompous aura.

He hummed. “An interesting choice of rhetoric.”

“Well, it’s better than the suicide cult.” She grimaced, setting her hands on her hips, eyeing passers-by either hurrying past, sneering and jeering from the sidelines, or offering a brief smile in support. The latter were depressingly rare.

“That tends to only be spreading in poorer districts. Tenth Dominion is suffering because of its long-standing issues with crowding and unchecked crime.”

“I never heard much about there being crime.”

He tilted his head, eyeing her. “Poor districts have sturdy doors where they can for a reason.”

Hm. She’d always just correlated it with the general aesthetic. Firemount didn’t have crime like other places. Not really. Not until... recent times.

Shaking it off, she folded her arms. Technically she was one of those criminals, in the Ripple’s eyes. “I hope Hafest isn’t tossing you around too much.”

“No. He’s been less agitated since Domini Seih lost favour. Since Seih has picked up the constructors as a point of contention, though, I will probably begin to bear the brunt of his temper again.”

She turned to frown at him, his gaze locked on the demonstrators with an unreadable expression. “You shouldn’t have to, you know. He shouldn’t treat you that way.”

“I am his Divination. He can treat me as he likes.” The gold of his eyes seemed duller than usual. “Why should it be different?”

Opening her mouth, she struggled to find an argument to that. He was... yes, he was right, but that didn’t mean it was right. He didn’t deserve to be kicked around. She’d never do something like that to Rounds, and Winds was a being who could actually feel the pain inflicted on him.

But... but he was still a construct, at his core. And the one who owned him had the right to do what he liked, even if she didn’t approve.

She turned away, the uncomfortableness of it all crawling over her skin. It wasn’t right. Just as people killing themselves to appease Darkness or whatever and hasten the end of the world wasn’t right. Except that unlike the death and crime, this injustice had always been present.

Perhaps... their world had never been quite perfect.