NOVEL NEXT 191. [POLSKA] Half a World
191. [POLSKA] Half a World
When Renna Sandvik was very little—barely older than a tadpole, in fact—her mother would sometimes sneak into the guesthouse to be with her. She always brought two things: a ready smile on her otherwise careworn face and a thick tome of Pretjordian fables tucked in her thin, pink arm.
It was the one book Renna never tried to pilfer and add to her personal library. Because that time with her mother was more precious to her than all the pages combined.
That wasn't to say, however, that she didn't care about the stories at all. Long after she'd outgrown the fables, she could still recall each and every one with surprising clarity. One fable in particular seemed especially pertinent now, as she reckoned with her strange new reality—that of being stuck in one half of an incomplete world.
It was about a mermaid. A strange creature of myth with the lower body of a fish and the upper body of something akin to a Manusya woman. As with most Pretjordian fables, it told a harrowing tragedy—unrequited love, thankless sacrifice, the whole lot.
When Renna had heard the story as a child, she'd boiled with anger at the Yaksha prince and his wanton callousness that had driven the mermaid to an ultimately fatal choice. Now, however, she reflected on the 'lessons' the fable had tried to impart.
The impossibility of occupying two worlds that should never cross. The futility of masking yourself as something you were never born to be. And the final reckoning that inevitably awaited such a doomed, lonely road.
Presently, Renna felt something like an impostor herself, and not so much because she was a tree-frog Yaksha sitting among a gaggle of feline Tiryagas. No, it was more because she was a Night-sider who could read some of the Daylight that spilled across the veils.
It was a sensation she'd wrestled with in private for three full cycles. Now at the start of a fourth, she'd finally come to understand the phenomenon in her own way.
Ripples abounded here, just as they had in Pretjord and just as they would anywhere else on Mount Meru. What was unique about the ripples in Tidereign, however, were their depositing themselves within the folds of the skyveils—those 'invisible' yet somehow discernible curtains that hung from the firmament.
Indeed, Renna had come to certain conclusions about the gossamer drapes, some of which didn't exactly match up with the local wisdom. Chief among which related to the name itself. The 'sky' part of it was arguably a misnomer, for the thing clearly moved with the time of day (or Night, in this case).
At Dawn, the veils dropped down from the sky to then spread themselves over the Realm's surface. Windows, doors, and even solid walls were no obstacle. The skyveils—or their fine, component strands—would fray, unravel, then reknit themselves indoors, even as Tiryagas tucked in for the coming Day.
Renna was sure of her discovery. She'd first felt it inside the dingy cabin of the Cormorant during an 'overnight' sailing trip up the Sanzu. She experienced it again now, as she settled next to the communal bonfire at the abandoned factory.
The main floor of the factory, as it turned out, was the perfect place to test her theory. Of all the indoor locations in Duskpool, this was certainly one of the more spacious, which meant more distance for the skyveils to slowly 'crawl' back to the Night sky. And while Renna couldn't see their crawling, she could read it, thanks to sediments rolling down from the drapes to join the surface air.
The frog woman lowered her hood, the better for her patch of polished basalt to breathe. Her denticles then quivered in response to the fresh ripples. Some of them belonged to the factory and its occupants, but others were of a signature that couldn't be attributed to the physical world. Renna tilted her head this way and that, trying to capture and interpret as much of the strange signals as possible.
Nothing was concrete, but everything felt familiar enough for her to define in terms she knew. The earthy scent of trampled grass. The lingering echoes of a busy marketplace. And most 'conclusive' of all: the musky warmth of skin and fur that had been baking in the sun for some time.
Even for a born ripple-reader, the sensation was nothing short of extraordinary. Occupying one half of a world while the other half hummed along in the exact same space. With that, Renna added one more startling item to her growing list of conclusions:
Tidereign's Night-and-Day isn't so much a division as a confluence. The cycles don't proceed one after the other, but rather in parallel with each other, with the Dusks and Dawns being the times when the 'shared' nature of the two worlds is most apparent. Because they're really aspects of the same world, only kept apart and hidden from each other for… for what? Assuming this 'Keeper' that's on every Tiryaga's lips is responsible for this, what possible reason did it have to partition its people so?
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"Is the smoke bothering you, dear?"
Renna's attention made a dramatic turn, snapping all the way from the Day-borne ripples and onto the physical presences in the world of Night. The kindly remark had issued from one Feverfew ere'Tully, an aging tortoiseshell (the cat lady's coat pattern, of course, and not anything to do with Munkfred) who now turned a gray-whiskered smile onto her frog guest.
Feverfew, a pillar of the Duskpool community, wielded her 'authority' with a grandmotherly kindness that made Renna's chest ache for a certain koi woman she'd left behind in Pretjord. She was the one in charge of the factory's Nightly gathering, and she'd graciously invited both Renna and young Caraway ere'Lochlan for a meet-and-greet over bowls of long-simmering stew. The latter had refused and run off in a hurry, but Renna herself was happy to stay, observe, and learn.
"No, not at all, don't mind me." She croaked in response to Feverfew's question. She then took a grateful bite of the famous stew, savoring its meaty richness as well as its restorative effect on her [Satiety]. Not too shabby at all. Might give some Pretjordian cooks a run for our money.
As for the Tidereigner hostess, she watched with a fond smile as her newest guest finished the bowl in several [Hungry] gulps. She then continued the earlier line of questioning, "Something about the space that interests you, then? Do you have factories like this where you come from?"
Renna's eyes grew a little hazy as she recalled the week she'd spent inside Queen Loha's Greenhouse. That had definitely been the closest thing Pretjord ever had to a 'factory', but that was a memory best left firmly in the past, mostly for Renna's own sake.
"Can't say we do," she answered with a half-truth. "Do you know what this factory was for? It looks like it hasn't been functional in quite some time."
Feverfew chuckled at this. A gentle sound absent a shred of irony. She replied, "Oh, you can say that again."
The old woman then appeared to give Renna's inquiry due consideration. Her eyes, still crinkled by a fond smile, took on a faraway look, almost as though they too could 'read' something in the air that (was but) wasn't there. Her voice too changed, from a husky drawl to a strange, continuous gurgle—like a babbling brook in a shaded forest, or perhaps even thunder rumbling in the far distance. It took Renna several Ksanas to realize that the tortoiseshell Tiryaga was purring.
"Not just this one, y'know." Feverfew went on. "The whole of Duskpool used to be a hub of activity. Folks mingling and knocking their noggins together, building doohickeys and thingamajigs. And when I say folks"—the old woman leaned closer and dropped her voice—"I mean both Tiryagas and the deer-people from across the veils. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this factory was one of them, erm, collaborative efforts."
"Is that true?" Renna's eyes widened as she matched the hostess's conspiratorial tone. "How do you know all this?"
"I don't," Feverfew said, leaning back with an oddly proud smile. "Well, I never saw it for meself anyway. But you don't get to be me age without picking up some, erm, worldly knowledge. Most of the young'uns don't like to believe me, but we do get the odd queer sort here and there. Take the Quinlan boy for example, always darting around chasing his own shadows. One of these days, he might even catch them! And judging by the look in yer eyes, lass, I daresay yer cut from the same cloth."
The Yaksha wouldn't argue with that, knowing what she knew about Oriole from the short time they'd spent together. The ginger tabby was the sort to 'follow his nose' to the ends of the earth. Renna's sense of smell might not be nearly as keen, but she had her own ways of catering to her curiosity.
"Tell me more about this Tidereign of yore," she pressed, sensing a lead for her to follow. Perhaps there might be information to help her reunite with a certain Rakshasa. "How were Day- and Night-siders able to work together? And what changed?"
"Well, it's all to do with the veils, innit?" Feverfew said matter-of-factly. "The way I heard it, the skyveils used to be thinner. So much so you could reach across and touch the other side. If you said 'good moonrise', the deer-folk would hear you and answer 'good morning'. Now, ain't that something! As for what went wrong, well…"
The old woman's smile turned rueful as she shrugged and nodded toward the factory floor at large, to the younger men and women gathered around the bonfire. They were a rowdy bunch, despite the earliness (lateness?) of the hour, and clearly appreciative of Feverfew's cooking. To Renna's eyes, they all looked to be pleasant enough company, but there was a sort of restless energy about them. As if they were here whiling away the hours with food and drink by happenstance rather than choice.
"The Keeper deserted us," Feverfew continued, voice lower than ever. "Slunk back to its lofty hiding place behind the veils and left us cat-folk and deer-folk to fend for ourselves. The Gloam's influence waned, which meant day became Day and night became Night. Only the Keeper knows why the Nights got shorter and shorter. NowaNights, the cycles are too short for these Duskpooler young'uns to make anything of themselves. No workers, no artists, no inventors… Heck, it wasn't until Gladiolus came along that we even had a doctor to take care of—"
Feverfew suddenly gasped in realization. She then turned her face this way and that as if to look for someone among the crowd, gray whiskers aquiver.
"That reminds me," she said. "I meant to send a batch of stew over to the hospital. Y'know, as a token of thanks for… looking after me boys. Now, where has that Lochlan girl run off to, eh? These young'uns, I swear, they're never around when you most need 'em."
Renna heard the name 'Gladiolus' and the mention of 'hospital' as a destination. Immediately, she sensed another opportunity. Another brain to pick as she sought to understand more of this Keeper-forsaken world.
"I can take it to him," she offered in a mild croak.
"Oh, I can't possibly impose on—"
"It's no trouble at all," Renna insisted, already standing up. "Let's hurry, now. Like you said, the Night is too short to be spent dawdling."