It is autumn now, or we are getting close to autumn. If the turning of the leaves is any honest clock, two months have vanished since I fled the only world I ever knew. Two months of "dashing exile"—humor keeps the damp from the bones. It has been a perilous trek, and the pen finds little rest when the hand is so often trembling.
The spheres must rumble, for through Alaric, I have become a scholar of Hesa, though I have never looked upon their lands. He speaks of a mountain there called Gespaltener. The word is like a thorn, impossible for me to pronounce, but he says it means something like a split.
The legend, as I have woven it from his sparse words, is this: In the first days, Gespaltener split open as if the sky itself had been lanced, and the stars spilled over the land like silver grain. Too many lights, too many stars for the earth to hold. And so, the Hesan people believe they must contend with that chaos—to catch the stars and force them into a rigid, unyielding order. It is an overwhelming task, a labor that never ends. It explains much of the iron in Alaric’s soul.
Then, there is our own Pindaron. Or what was ours. Or what fate once deemed to be our own.
They say Pindaron is the seat of the gods, still humming with the low, resonant song of creation. But Pindaron did not "hatch" like Gespaltener did. Perhaps that is our grace, or perhaps it is our undoing. Because it remained whole and silent, Alendria slowly forgot there was anything important hidden inside the stone. Or perhaps Fortuna simply means to hatch Pindaron in a different way—one we are not yet wise enough to understand.
I had a dream about my father.
Silence eases my heart.
But it also whispers the truth.
Still, I hope somewhere he is waiting.
We'll read poems again.
For now he holds up the sky.
(Related to the item @Hazelnut Bracelet)
If the court could see us now, they would not believe it: Alaric wrote a poem.
In truth, it is a song—one he carried in secret since he was a small boy. I encouraged him to write it out as a poem, in the tongue of his father, exactly as he once sang it. It felt like watching a man surrender a hidden dagger, though this one was made of breath and memory. Within a circle of woven twine around my wrist, he has secured the tiny poem in a @Hazelnut Bracelet, which I will cherish and never wish to lose!
He told me they do not sing in Rochefort Castle. Music is a softness the Hesans do not permit. But when he was a child, he would sing in the dark when his younger brother—the one who is now Sir Lorenz Rochefort—was frightened. He sang of Sky Knights, weaving a canopy of courage over a shivering boy.
Alaric and I are kindred in spirit, though a stranger may not see it. To think of that towering, armored wall of a man as a boy singing in the shadows... it makes the world feel a little less like a grave and more like a story that hasn't found its ending yet.
The Hesan words, are these:
Diu Himelrîter rît dur die naht,
mit swerte lîhte als sternenlieht.
Er klîvet wolken, dâ gotes bluot ergôz,
und ûz der wunde webet er den himel nû
...
Sô webet er nû des himels dach,
mit swert und muote stêt diu werlt zehant
Und swenne diu naht diu allerfinsterste scheinet,
hôpe ist daz, daz ewig blîbet
And they mean something like this:
The Sky Knight rides through the night,
with sword as bright as starlight.
He cleaves the clouds where gods once bled,
and from the wound weaves the heavens anew.
...
So he weaves anew the canopy of heaven,
with sword and courage, the world endures.
And when the night seems darkest,
hope is what remains eternal.
The sky is a cathedral of blue, streaked with clouds that rise like marble towers. @Princess Elara of Alendria stands atop a crumbling wall of the @Ruins of Dunhallow, her storm-forged nightgown catching the wind, @The Veil in hand. She gazes down at the ruins below, regal and radiant, as if crowned by the heavens.
She lifts her voice and quotes Eremos:
Shall I curse the wheel for turning?
Shall I beg the sky to stay?
Or shall I learn the art of yearning,
And sing what cannot slip away?
So let the wheel grind down my name,
Let banners fall and tyrants fade.
I’ll be forged with truth in ash and flame,
And return again to your loving gaze.
Below, her lone audience: Alaric. His @Zweihander of the Sky's Wound slung over one shoulder, his red iron breastplate replaced by a white padded jerkin. He shields his eyes with a gloved hand, squinting up at her.
"Get down," he calls.
Elara’s shoulders slump. "You said it was safe here."
"I lied. There’s boars and giant cockroaches."
She flinches, barely. Then gives him a look—a mix of theatrical disdain and reluctant obedience. She climbs down.
As she lands beside him, she mutters, "You’re lucky I’m not the kind of monarch who holds grudges."
Alaric places a fist to his heart, stiff but sincere. "Then I shall count myself blessed."
She smirks. He almost smiles.
They walk side by side, the ruins behind them, the road ahead. @Delia awaits—the capital of Thelidor. Civilization. New trials. New truths.
But for now, the sky is a city of gods, and the earth hums with cicadas. And they are together.
Somewhere in Eastern Thelidor
The rain here does not wash; it buries. We huddled beneath the roots of a great fallen oak, the hounds of desperate sell-swords baying somewhere in the valley below. It was there, pulling mud-soaked parchment from the pockets of a fallen bounty hunter, that Alaric read the words to me. Erbbruchrecht. The right of rupture. My father, King Theodor—my gentle, dreaming father who believed the world was governed by song—is dead. Executed. House Landon is extinguished in the eyes of the Emperor. I am not merely a runaway; I am the last, note of a silenced symphony. If they find me, they will erase us. Alaric sat facing the wind all night, his Zweihander bare across his knees. He did not speak a word, but his silence was an iron promise.
The Bough & Bind, Eversford
We have found a place where the air smells of fermenting apples and woodsmoke. They call it Eversford. It may appear a quaint timber settlement spanning a shallow river. But it is a garden of grace. It was only our third day here when I slipped while arranging a high shelf of heavy, brass-bound books in the shop. Alaric caught me with the gentle, terrifyingly careful hands of a man holding something immensely precious. We are building a world together in the margins of this one. He asked if this was the garden I wanted. I said yes.
We went to the young priest today to marry us. Ignatius Cato of Halion. His hands shake, and his robes are frayed, but he knows the hidden things. I do not know how, but when we knelt before his small altar, he looked at the towering Hesan and a plucked coastal flower. He simply said, "The princes of the earth have no jurisdiction over souls."
We cast our old names into the brazier, but yet they too would be bound in the aethersphere. He tied our wrists with rough twine—not the silk of Sphaira, but it felt ten times more unbreakable. We stood up as Richard and Lotty. The priest smiled and promised that our secret would be buried with him. I am a Constable's wife now. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I know the constellations and the music in the air is familiar. And Constable Richard can rest after his long duty.
He smells of rain and leather bindings,
Not of war, but simple findings—
A polished stone, an apple core,
The creaking boards beneath our door.I pin the stars on Ruby’s play,
While he drafts knights who bravely fly.
His great sword wrapped and sleeping deep,
Which once cloudy heavens would sweep.The cider turns, the season bends,
To where the russet autumn ends.
And here I am, a Constable’s wife,
Who covers a crown to keep our life.
A letter arrived today, slipped into the pages of a ledger from a passing merchant. Unsigned, from an old friend. It speaks of a refugee camp in the south, in Caelthorn. Alenderians under the banner of a man named "C", who speaks of a reclaimed Alendria. Richard... Alaric looked up from the poem he was writing. When he heard the letter in full, I saw the storm-grey eyes again ready to cleave heaven. I ache at the thought of him putting down the pen to face the east once more. As for me, I want to have children and grow old with my husband. To be surrounded by the smell of cinnamon and cider. Do I owe them the ending of the song? Or have I earned this quiet? I don't know what to do.