Chapter Text
,“The world was wrought from a mosaic of gold and ivory, flax and filth, of the noble, the divine, the lowly, and the damned…”
“...The Daybreak saw to this cacophony and raised a haven of grace, of illumination…”
“...from their dominion sprang forth winged ones whose songs enlightened the masses, whose form shifted along the wind…”
“...boundless was their benevolence, The Daybreak granted us such forms, that we might rule with clarity…”
“...for despite calamity, their charity remains everlasting…”
“...O blessed child, golden lyric, may the light consume you.”
Oriole inhaled softly, before releasing the bars that bisected the windows of his bedchamber. Honeyed hair flashed under the mighty Luminaire as he shot through the skies—bones shifting as they realigned, creating a form much more lithe than that of his human vessel. Twin wings emerged from sunkissed skin. With them he glided, shooting upwards until he was but a golden flare amidst an endless expanse of the milky firmament.
At once, fresh blasts of midsummer air greeted him. Billowing breeze tousled his feathers in an all-consuming embrace as his beak sliced them apart in return. Quivering to the beats of enormous wings, his giddy chirps were lost to his growing speed as he wheeled forward, pausing momentarily for a few frivolous, tottering loops before surfacing the blue.
Somewhere through the third phase of his flight, Oriole caught a cry that nipped at the edge of his consciousness. Io, Io, Io— came whoops from the window, an amber smudge increasing in size as he circled back, feathers fading into hair.
“One more! Io, again please!” His sister pleaded as he approached. So again he did, and again, and a dozen more, twisting and twirling through the air until his wings were ridden with waves of soreness. Touching down on the window sill, Oriole tumbled into the room. He didn't bother restoring his human visage as he buried himself deep into his covers, only to be jabbed in the side with much passion by his sweet, sister beloved.
“Io—can you teach me to fly like you?”
A strangled sigh came from under the covers before Oriole surfaced once more, human this time, and utterly expressionless.
“Dear Carillon, for the last time, please do not ask me to teach you how to fly again. Will you just understand that Shifting is a Blessing, and Blessings are yours to earn.”
Carillon whined, “And how will I do that?”
“It will happen, eventually.”
“And when is that?”
“When you’re my age.”
“But you started shifting at six!”
“Well, I guess your Blessing is just rather…quiet, but rest easy! As Father said, patience is the highest virtue—”
“What if the time never comes?”
Oriole repressed the urge to rub at his temples. The conversation was starting to bite, as always, at its own tail. Resigned, he answered: “You know my time has come, so yours won’t be far, alright?”
“Well, but—”
“Besides”, and at that he smiled softly, glazing his words with further conviction, “I promise that when yours do, you’ll be so captivated by the celestials hanging within reach that you’ll forget all about the long days spent in wait. Oh Carillon, you’ll be the brightest to have soared amongst the stars!”
“You think so, really?”
Carillon’s answer greeted her face-first in the form of her brother’s pillow. Barely dodging its trajectory, she grabbed a cushion of her own and hurled it at his head with terrifying accuracy, which he then swerved around, leveraging flight. Swiftly Oriole flung open the doors and darted down the winding halls of the Tower. Behind him, Carillon followed in hot pursuit, five cushions in hand as she cackled for great retribution.
Like that, the afternoon passed in a sunlit blur, as did the thousands that followed.
A creak. The latch gave way.
It was his first time at the Concilium—the ivory-walled chamber, far too narrow for a conference of dignity, but perhaps of ample space for secrecy. Neck craned subtly as he could, Oriole marvelled at the silver chandelier overhead, fashioned by chains of embellished constellations, then drew tight as his father took to the far end of the room, propping him aside like a particularly sizeable ornament.
“...twin heirs!”
“...my, the outlier...”
“...great peril...”
“...to the bloodline?”
Half-whispered words rippled across the room as Oriole swallowed, catching occasionally the cusp of a phrase or two. Even then, the weight of their implications seemed to fade out of his grasp, aloof as the clouds that drifted just beyond the drawn curtains. Though his mornings were often frequented with probing parchments—all tales of Etherine, the sky-bound isle beneath his very feet—knowledge of more worldliness, such as the doings of its own council, remained far out of reach for young Oriole.
After all, the concepts of nominal sovereignty remain a little too complex for a child, even and especially one born into the high life, to digest properly.
Though Oriole was aware of how he served practically as a prop, a well-mannered statue bowing in his father’s wake in this chamber. It can be extraordinary, if not of the utmost honour for one to witness the Councillium in action. Though as he stood, back straight with naive pride at the far end of the long table, he couldn’t help but wish already whirl through the azure, wingtip grazing the edge of flicking blades of wind.
At once, there came a stinging pain at his side, knocking him out of the rolling daydream.
Smiling sweeter to suppress a wince, Oriole slid closer to his sister, who had—in some inclination of fight-or-flight—sunk her nails into the back of his hand, enough to wound if it weren’t for the gloves he had worn for the occasion. Soundless, he brushed his arm against hers in hopes of coaxing into her some semblance of solace. It was a shame how inklings of unease seemed to have frozen her in place. Unlike him, Carillon was never one for the crowd or the clamour.
“Silence, please.”
Oriole reeled slightly in the sudden absence of sound. Doubtless, the echoing murmurs were beginning to wear on his nerves. With much respect he turned to fix his gaze upon the Patriarch, or rather his father, who had spoken up, as he rightfully should, bearing the role of one of Etherine’s pair of sovereigns. Oriole supposed his mother was far less engaged in such affairs.
To many, the Patriarch was a charmer, a beguiler, an enchanter who fashioned his words into strings and gold plated wires. Yet few dared to refute that he was commander, too, for his voice carried the weight of a blessing known only to his bloodline: a lilt, a tone, an undercurrent of Birdsong that compelled as much as it convinced. A voice which scorched with weighted significance just as easily as it soothed.
“Esteemed councillors, I assure you that concerns regarding the lineage are well recognised within our own. Yet, I must remind you that the heirs are of twin birth, threaded by the same blood through their veins. It shall be only a matter of months before she is to follow after the firstborne.”
Ah, the same justifications he had used, Oriole nodded gravely. Wondering how Carillon thought of it, he turned, only to find her raising her arm in a gesture which suggested that she was to bite on her nails—before snapping it backwards, perhaps reminded that it is not of proper etiquette. Seemingly indifferent to it all, the Patriarch remained collected by virtue of the pallid mask concealing his features, locked firmly in place despite the lack of proper audiences.
“Your Eminence,” came the voice of a councillor to his left, ariose yet slightly muffled beneath a mask of their own, “upon much consideration, we have collectively decided that such delayed shifting, an unprecedented record in the annals of Etherine, was one that surely merits further attention.”
Oriole shuffled, he did not particularly appreciate the direction this conference was taking, and—judging by how the stinging pain resumed, this time in his right palm—neither did Carillon.
“And as with most Houses thus far,” fortunately, his father was quick to retaliate, “the last centuries saw the unrivalled decline of Blessed souls. We must remember that gone were the golden days where divine goodwill cascaded upon Etherine. How tragic it is, that the Daybreak is dead.”
A chorus of gasps reverberated around the chamber. Oriole strained to compose himself through the pain. Of course, it was accepted that the gods were long since extinguished. Though it still remained of great sacrilege to indicate the fact as his father had done, simply because most believed—held onto it with unwavering hope—that someday, the Daybreak may return. After all, only those with privilege could afford to relinquish their faith so readily.
“Your Eminence, your speech, it seems, elucidates the significance of our inquiry.” The councillor who had spoken, was surprisingly, unfazed. “With the core of Etherine annihilated, Blessings have become a depleting scarcity. As such, the delay witnessed becomes increasingly alarming—perhaps, akin to other houses, such delay may not be as much a ‘delay’ as it is an absence.”
The councillor’s words lay afloat in the air, a silent suggestion that chilled the room into an unbearable stillness. Lulled briefly into the sway of its afterbeat, Oriole processed the implications.of those words over and over, until, in a burst of cold sweat, the thought emerged:
Perhaps—Carillon wasn’t blessed, at all.
And despite the intuition of it always lurking around, surfacing in time as questions posed in innocence, he had never—until now, faced the truth in all its plain cruelty. He had never dared to consider his sister anything but faultless. He would never dare to consider her any lesser than him.
Please, Oriole whispered, though it came more as a shaky thought. Don’t let it be.
“An accusation of the gravest nature—” uttered the Patriarch. His father had come to understand, by now, the implications behind the councillor’s words. At last, he took to a faint reply, insisting how the words were but a mere suggestion, a suggestion that was to be overturned, given time.
But when Oriole eventually remembered to retract his hand from Carillon, there etched into the bottom of his palm four consecutive marks, beads of red pooling at their seams, tainting his glove a bronze scarlet. The marks were shaped like crescents, of waning moons that hung in the night sky—-a place of immeasurable distance his sister will never cross.
For no, Carillon may never fly. As the verdict had fallen, and the sky turned on its heels, sparing not a glance back.
In the years that followed, it almost seemed that nothing had ever changed.
Except the lengthened hours of lecture Oriole spent in his mentor's study, poring over a trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric—days stretched thin between daybreak and pitch black, pressed into fragrant ink and droning murmurs, days that sucked and bled his energy dry, days which moulded, hammered him relentlessly into shape.
'What had they sought to make of me? Oriole had pondered, though in his mind, he could already glimpse the answer in the form of a crown, bejewelled and glimmering at the edges. If he squinted, he could trace the faint outlines of the porcelain mask beneath, and him, donning it all, enveloped by white and white only.
Oriole wasn’t sure if he fancied the image at all.
But gone were the days spent racing through the turns and bends of corridors with his sister as their laughter bounced off marble walls, drenched in the syrup of cascading daylight. Oh, how he yearned for carefree afternoons, when tallying the chimes of the Tower Bell could keep them occupied for hours. When time slipped through their fingers with ease.
So perhaps Oriole had been lying—perhaps just a little to himself when he declared that nothing had ever changed. A numb consolation, it was, for how terrifying it is to acknowledge that in truth, their lives had given way under upheaval so long ago.
The only constant, then, was Carillon, his anchor amidst shifting turbulence. He had begun to savour fleeting moments shared between the two of them, turning and tasting in replay until the memory lost its flavour: shared sighs before dinner, long worn gloves finding their way to his side. And him returning late to their room one night, doused in sprinkles of starlight—only to find Carillon sprawled over his side of the bunk, and wordlessly, tucking her in before he resumed in the lower bunk which was hers.
She was gone the next morning, but he’d like to imagine that she couldn’t have gone far. These days, Carillon had long lapses of time all to herself as his schedules became increasingly hectic. After all, if the path was paved for him as the heir, then there really is only one road left for his sister to go down, but God forbid, he will never think of her as a spare.
Though Oriole remained entirely powerless when it came to what those above him thought appropriate. Starting after the conference, there came profusions of spellbound trinkets by year, each a futile attempt to bring his sister closer to the gods.
He remembered feathered veils that supposedly channeled the arcane, how they swathed and muffled Carillon until her voice became diluted for months, gilded threads which wrung her wrists raw, paired with medallions that struck her neck into a lasting bow. He remembered a plethora of potions and powders—some kept his sister animated at night while others left her in slumber for days.
It was in the name of hope that she was bestowed these sweet instruments of torture. Though really, Oriole knew too well by now that his father was long above such ludicrous notions, that the effort made may only be a distorted play at comforting their defect of a daughter, or some mock revenge for bringing ill fate to the bloodline. Either way, he wouldn’t be any flattered himself if he was to be thrusted into the exact situations.
But how could he bear to proclaim all of this to Carillon, who passed him by starry-eyed as she downs the honeyed bottle in one gulp? How could he dismiss her so easily, despite knowing that her dreams were mere hallucinations, born under waves of intoxication?
He couldn’t, after all.
Not when fate has already stripped her of honour. The least he could do is to keep up the guise and be the brother she only deserves, however little it seemed to amount. In that sense, Oriole supposed that he too, had given in to the lure of hypocrisy. Perhaps he was born for the deed all along, to reap the pretty lies that he’d sow. After all, to deceive is to seize, and what constitutes his destiny, if not power itself?
A knock shattered his musing—sharp, deliberate.
“Young master. The rites await.”
Like so, it was time to dress, so Oriole rose, fingers already curling into gloves before smoothing the crease from his robe.
Outside, Etherine was adorn with wondrous clamour—pleats and fringes rustled, footfalls snapped in time with the bell, and a crowd congregated just beyond the Tower gates.
Leaning on the edge of a hanging balcony, Oriole fixed the porcelain cradling his face. The sole recognised heir, it was only during ceremonies that he was granted a release from the confines of the tower—he’d much cherished the breath of fresh air.
Head whirling with newfound euphoria, Oriole shifted, and it was as though he was rising from the confines of his body, and watching, formless, over the mass beneath that echoed his elation. Faces blurred in synchrony as bodies rippled forward. Involuntarily, he felt the faint note of a smile tease at somewhere that would’ve been the corners of his lips. Based in spooling, fawning gazes, Oriole spun, overtaken by bliss as he unfurled his wings—
Then wondered why it was that he couldn’t quite breathe.
Languidly, the ceremony drew to a close as the Luminaire began to dip below the Ether Isles—a fiery yolk seeping into the whites of eventide. The utter fervor which seemed to have enraptured the mass a few chimes prior had now dimmed to a sparse murmur, as the commons dispersed in clusters, rushing now to reach steaming homespun meals before the seventh bell.
Lingering now at the threshold which divided the Tower and the world beyond, Oriole took one last glance at the molten skies, then stumbled back into a sheen of white. Slipping past the servant’s wing, he made his way with featherlight movements, heels clicking against marble as he strode up another flight of stairs, dual steps at a time.
At last, his pace eased as he neared the entrance of his own bedchamber, which yielded without a key. It appeared that the nightlights had been blot out long since, and blackness swathed the room along cold drafts as Oriole gently pulled the door to a close.
Eyes not yet attuned to muted light, he managed to make out the shadow coiled at the bottom of the twin bunks, a tangled heap of blanket and body rising to the sway of bedside curtains. Unlacing his boots, Oriole slid towards the bunk ladder, refraining from making the slightest sounds. The shadow sat up.
“Oriole, can we please talk?”
And that’s how Oriole found himself curled up beside his sister, a position utterly foreign yet not unfamiliar—something long-shelved, recalled only by touch. Up close, Carillon’s face was painted dull by nightfall, her hair a touch metallic under remnants of afterglow. He noticed, with quiet ache, that despite his own surge in height, Carillon seemed to have only sunken in size—her stature had begun to overlap with his memories a decade past.
“By all means,” he said, resenting how his voice rang miserably airy, “have you been…alright?”
“Well…I’ve been–I suppose, not quite well.” Carillon coughed, “…but enough about me. I mean, how has the studies been? You went out again, right? Please, tell me everything.”
Hesitating for only a breath, Oriole shifted nearer, a careful gesture. For the first time in years, words failed him as he felt the tremor of Carillon’s bubbling distress—a thrumming pulse which resounded between the two of them, going nowhere but into their shared silence.
“My studies have been, fine, Cari—it has only been readings for the past months–all dull papers, nothing that would interest you, I think,” Oriole chose his words delicately. “Outside, though, was entirely different—it was wonderful…the mass, and the crisp breeze, and the view was nothing like from the windows. It would’ve been perfect, if you were there.”
Carillon stilled. “Io, you know that wasn’t my place to be.”
“Who is to say? Perhaps I could smuggle you along for the next occasion—you would’ve looked identical under that mask.” Oriole tittered, his whims unfurling in the placid dark. Perhaps he could smuggle Carillon to the next occasion. Perhaps he will. Perhaps it will be reparation enough for the fault that wasn’t hers.
“Please, don’t say that.”
“Why shouldn’t I? After all, we are of twin birth, aren’t we?”
“No, Io…you don’t understand. Shifting is something I had to earn by myself—”
“And who said that?”
“—you did…? At least, I think—I couldn’t really remember.”
“That was at least a lustrum ago—I didn’t know any better then. Cari, you know the Blessing is merely superficial—in the end, it was really nothing at all.
“How could you—how could you say that—” Carillon choked, and the sound reminded Oriole of the dull thud before thunder. “I’ve been meaning to tell you about—the cordial. Did you know how bad it burned—boiling, my skin—but I had to, even when it blistered. I had to by order—for myself. I tried, Oriole. I tried to live like you do. I wanted to fly so badly, you know? But now I see—Shifting was a Blessing, and one that was never meant for me. How foolish I was to want it. Pitiful, isn’t it…?”
At that, she crumbled into sobs—sharp, hiccuping bursts that shattered what composure she had left. Only then, did Oriole let his mask slip—or rather, rupture. The smooth edge splitting. Over and over. Until they ran jagged in his trembling posture. He let the shards crack until they tore through the dark, needles of guilt and glass diffusing into the nighttime chill.
Reaching for her wrists gently, like he once did when they fought over leftover desserts as children, Oriole whispered, and in his voice rang something low and luminous, not quite his own. A command, cloaked in comfort.
Birdsong—he thought his father was the last of its bearers.
“Carillon, you will not repent for anything, because you’ve done nothing but live despite what was asked of you. I will tell Father everything at first light, I swear. But Cari…it never mattered to me if you were blessed or otherwise. It shouldn't have mattered at all. You are my sister and that alone is enough, that alone is all I ever, ever need.”
The air stilled around them. Then Oriole felt the weight of his words settle, calming and cruel all the same. As if upon order, Carillon ceased weeping, her eyes wide as they stared at him in a semi-stabilised tremor. With the back of his hand, he wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“But Cari,” Oriole confessed, immediately regretting it as Carillon seized up once more, “you know it's not the same with Father. He may not even listen to me at all—just what will we do, if my words fall on deaf ears?”
“Then I’ll die, Io. I felt it coming.”
Oriole froze.
For a moment, it felt almost like space had flattened between them, replaced by a block of emptiness—excruciating and absolute. Ridden with sudden sorrow, Oriole could feel the phantom burn of the cordial singeing down his own throat. His fingers curled into the bedsheets, then slowly uncurled again. Yet nothing he said could mend the widening wound between them.
“Do you think that the Groundbornes had it their own way, that they could take fate as they wished?” At last, it was Carillon who broke the silence again.
Oriole blinked. His thoughts briefly drift off to the distance below—the terra firma beyond Etherine that Carillon spoke of: mainland, Arca. A land where even the council held no sway. The land of Arcans—Groundbornes, where he was taught that the lowly toiled about in their perpetual mediocrity and the damned were sent to be condemned. The thought struck him like a wayward gust.
“The life of an Arcan begins with familial crafts—carpentry, alchemy, embroidery…and of course, defence against what was left of the ruination,” Oriole recalled the teachings from his mother with ease. “Then, they’re free to go wherever their heart desires.”
“To leave everything behind like it never mattered at all?”
“There's hardly anything keeping us here, Carillon. We could just…go away one day. Who would dare to follow?”
“But wasn’t the mainland why Etherine rose—to spare us from Arca’s ruin? Isn’t it the ‘lot for filth and rot’, where the sinless are dragged into slums?”
“If it’s with you, Cari, I’d rather be ruined.”
Another long pause—a stretch of stillness where words hung between. Oriole stare unfocused into the blackened void. Sluggish with sleep, his mind wandered, before a sudden recollection nipped at the edges of his consciousness.
It dawned on him that once upon a time, many, many Summers ago, he had made a promise of similar nature, lying on the same beddings which was then dappled in daylight. He had spoken of lofty fantasies, conjured constellations—a self proclaimed older brother trying to light up the dark in his little sister’s world.
He hadn’t abided by those words.
As Oriole stirred to return to his upper bunk, Carillon pulled at his sleeve, her face pleading.
“Just tonight… will you stay with me?”
Of course, there was no hesitation. Nestling into the bedsheets, now lukewarm with their shared heat, Oriole draped a cover over both of them. Siblings again, like they once were, long before corridors turned cold.
“Enter,” came the voice—not loud, but resonant through the tarnished doors.
So he did.
There was no council this time. No masks, no veils, no feigned diplomacy. The chamber which he had once thought too tight for comfort now lay theatrically vast in their absence. Wisps of former conferences clung to ivory walls, old secrets immortalised in stone. Overhead, the chandelier hummed—chains dipped against celestials. The Patriarch did not rise. He didn't need to.
Compelled by habit, Oriole bowed.
“You wished to speak,” his father said, quill gliding across parchment, a document he could not quite read from where he stood. Steadily, Oriole drew in a slow breath.
“I did,” he said, voice even. “I wanted your permission to discuss…my sister.”
A pause. A single dot of ink bleeding into the paper. Then:
“You are aware,” said the Patriarch, “that she is to endure the trials until a conclusion is made.”
“I know, and I intend to contest it.”
This time, the quill stilled completely. Pinpricks of dawn pierced through velvet curtains. The Patriarch lifted his head, and for the first time, Oriole dared to meet his father’s eyes. Amber to amber, his own were sharp, fanned by gilded lashes, while his father’s had lost their lustre, marred by specks black as tar. He noticed—with startling suddenness, that lit by the dull yellow light, his father had looked…fatigued, almost breakable. Waist-length hair swept to the side. A faded statue threatening to shatter with age.
“And what will you contest it with, Oriole? Sentiment?” Softly, the Patriarch scoffed, his voice clipped short like the feather resting now by his right hand.
“If compassion is sentiment—yes, I will. You knew what they were doing to her, and your silence was consent enough.” The words tumbled out faster than he had planned, rough with bitter bile at the back of his throat. Perhaps, he was finally over compliance.
“Yet here you are,” the Patriarch murmured, “still cloaked in the privilege you spit at. Oriole, you may rebel for as long as you like, but do not think for a second that your hands would be clean if you wore this seal.”
Heart throbbing against his ribs, it felt as if all the heat in his body was suctioned upwards, drawn tight into his cranium. He recalled a similar feeling once, a blood-churning premonition which had thrummed about in this very room. Only this time, what Oriole felt was not fear, but brilliant, blinding fury.
How dare he? How could his father sit there and condemn him for caring—for trying to save his sister, his daughter, no less! How is he accusing him of performance, of hypocrisy when all he had done was nothing. Nothing at all.
“So then, father. Cast me into the dirt and see what happens. You’ve—you’ve always said we serve honour, but what honour demands we bled ourselves dry and praise—and praise the pain as a blessing? Patience may be a virtue, but I’ve had enough.”
"Such wishful thinking, Oriole, you must grasp, now, that divinity—even the semblance of it—always requires sacrifice. Freedom was never among our birthrights. When will you understand that the ache will lessen the sooner you stop longing for what you cannot have?”
There was something strange about his cadence. Something heavy, brushing close to the spine. Involuntarily, Oriole shuddered.
“But this isn’t about me, is it? What of Carillon, who weeps in her sleep, as her body lay, dying? Was misery among my sister's birthrights? Had god—had god decided that it was among her birthrights!”
“Oriole,” his father sighed. “You speak too freely of what you do not understand.”
And perhaps it was the way he uttered his name, with the slightest slant of weary tenderness which could almost be described as “fatherly”. Perhaps it was the condescending hint of his words—a reminder of how much he hated to be treated like a child, like he didn’t know better. Perhaps it was the scent of old parchments, or morning mist, or long forgotten sins. Regardless, it was as if something had ripped apart at the seams inside of Oriole, revealing the searing crimson remains. This unleashing—undoing of him spanned, until all he could see was red.
The room seemed to hush, walls leaned in to listen.
“Then I refuse—I refuse to understand how a dead god could ever begin to matter more than my living sister! If that’s divinity, then I want no part in your hollow, lying god! I hate—I hate it so! And to think of it, father, I hope you rot with it, too.”
Startled, the Patriarch let go of his quill. Vision blurring with tears, Oriole had expected him to grow enraged, to rise and slam him into the floor, slap him sharply across the face, or at the very least—utter something brutally venomous so he could bite back, fight back, claw tooth and nail against his father until all his anger and anguish could be consumed by their mutually assured destruction. How he wanted, in that moment, to grab that quill, and jam it into his father’s eyes.
For a second, the Patriarch's face spasmed, and it seemed like Oriole might be getting what he wanted. Then he spoke, voice bleached of all emotions:
“Oriole, you will return to your room.”
He obliged—but not willingly. Knees snapping back like puppet joints, muscles seizing and laxing, threaded by an enchantment physical, undeniable, and ancient. Oriole screamed, yet no sound emerged. The Birdsong washed over him, moulding his psyche as it carried him towards the staircase. Straining for a final glance, Oriole stared teary-eyed into the council room, and saw that his father had been looking away.
Far above them, the chandelier sang on, unhearing.
Carillon dabbed at what remained of his tears with her sleeves.
They perched again on one of the Tower’s many balconies, the distant ground a faded view. In its finality, Oriole thought the faint ringing of the Birdsong almost gone—almost.
Around them, dimming light had fallen once more.
They left before Daybreak.
Soundless, soft steps treading past vacant candlelit quarters with practised precision—they shuffled down descending stairways as the first trickles of daylight began to bleed through the night’s haze. Hands clasped tight against his sister, Oriole led the way.
The sky lightened to a pearly beige as they passed by rows of clear windows, all circle-topped—glass frames animated by soles shifting from marble to carpet, then stone. Briefly, Oriole peered at the whitening heavens, and thought that this too, would soon belong only to memory.
He didn’t know if he could name the sour soreness yearning—he deemed it belated nostalgia, at the very best. With each step, the feeling coiled to his skin, until its cloying weight was all but suffocating. Flashes of soft, spacious beds, sweetly-scented parchments, and gilded dashes of daylight began to flare before his eyes.
It dawned on him the sickening terror of it all—that they were really, certainly leaving the Ivory Tower—and life, as they had known along with it. It was a fever dream made reality—and for a moment, Oriole was overcome with the surreality of it all.
What were they doing, leaving the warm, safe boundary that was the high-life at the Tower for some impulse? They were mere children—children who were meant to be shielded from the ruins—children who had absolutely no business in scouting the wreckage of the world below. What will they even find? Ravenous pick-pockets or plague-infested dens? Could their father be right in thinking that they’ll come scrambling back in mere weeks—eyes wide with terror?
A sudden halt—and Carillon gripped his hand as she almost tripped over the polished floor. The screech of leather against quartz stunned them both momentarily. Somewhere a few rows behind, a copper knob turned as the prying servant behind it stirred to catch morning troublemakers.
In seconds, they were bolting down hallways in reckless abandonment. Carillon’s grip was that of cast iron as they wound around twisting corners. To Oriole, the foretaste of adrenaline felt almost grounding—a reminder of Carillon’s warm presence next to him. There hang the rectangular bulk of the satchel heavy at his waist—packed tight with dried bread and clothes. Oriole knew that it was futile to attempt preparation for the chaos below, but by god, he’d like to try.
And slowly, his doubt dissipated.
Unstopped, they broke out at last into the clean, unfettered chill of winter morning. Slumped against the open back doors, Carillon shuddered at the gust she hadn’t known until now, and immediately, Oriole wrapped a cloak he had snatched from the servant’s wing around her. Fixing the hood so it hung wide over her blonde curls, he drew out a cloak of his own, and headed over to unlock the Tower gates.
Wait—
Seized by rolling dread, Oriole grasped that of course, the gates were not open, nor did he have the means to open them. It was the one catch, the one loophole he hadn’t thought through—and now, they were going to suffer the price of his negligence.
Upon impulse, his mind began to conjure punishments of make-believe—father’s apathetic stare as they were dragged into their rooms—the blinds shut, and all light never again to be seen. Cold sweat gathering in his palms, Oriole pushed with the desperate force of a last-ditch effort—
The gates swung open, like they’ve never been locked in the first place.
Shot through with miraculous relief, Oriole pulled Carillon through the gates. He turned, pausing a beat for one last time, to ensure that the gates were locked properly, secure against all odds.
Outside, the isle had somewhat awakened, as early risers lined the entrance of houses and cathedrals. Together, they darted down the streets—mere servant children to unsuspecting eyes. Oriole unfolded the map of Etherine in his subliminal mind—a turn left, then right, left twice, and straight ahead. Within dozens of minutes, ornate structures turned to pillars, then limestone, as they neared the very edge of the known world.
By now, his mentor would’ve begun her studies, unmoved by his absence. The cordial would lay untouched, perhaps buried beneath overturned sheets—a servant may pick it up, and decide to notify their father. There may be scandals then—but all of it, Oriole decided then, was no longer attached, tethered to them. The end was near—it was within reach.
Pressing past the last of jutting limestones, Oriole turned to stop Carillon from stepping off the edge. Silent, for a moment, they stared down at the swirling patches of clouds beneath, then beyond—miles below, where a great river flowed, patches of verdancy and scattered firelight broke through the crevices. Struck by shock and awe alike, they stood, entranced by the greatest hymn of all.
Eventually, Oriole knelt and gestured for Carillon to come closer and perch, arms wrapped around his neck. It had been long since he shifted just for her. The act sings to him, too, in the back of his mind—neglected, but never forgotten.
“Once more?” He asked, just for the finality of it all.
“As always.” Carillon smiled.
Then they took off—a bird and his sister—as cerulean skies beamed above them, beckoning for younger overmorrows.
Fin.
