The Endless Solvent

Despite herself, Aris learned. She wished she had the spare paper Jorra got her, but she wasn’t sure how happy the Munna would be if they saw her write things down so she resigned herself to simply remembering it all.

The structures were built from ‘coaxing’ branches and foliage into growing the way they want it to. It was a combination of innate abilities and runeology, although the Munna don’t consider their abilities something outside of themselves. Aris realized that the Gaian perception of abilities was fundamentally different to those of Yscians - to them, innate abilities and the use of runeology was as natural as breathing. It wasn’t some formal spell, it wasn’t mixed with some political sentiment, it wasn’t a statement of your heritage or religious beliefs: it was purely functional.

Their village, bordering on the size and density of a city, was kept in darkness partially because that was simply what the tree canopy provided.

“Why can’t you cut some of the trees down?” she asked Tassik once. Usually he or the pregnant woman called Nari accompanied her exploration of the city.

“Then we lose material for building. Why kill a tree when we can use it indefinitely while it lives?”

“You can plant another one,” Aris pointed out. “And you can do so at a location of your choosing. Isn’t it more difficult to adjust your living space to the intrusion of a tree that grew out of nowhere?”

Tassik seemed to find what she said extremely amusing. When he finally stopped laughing, he said: “It is simply our way of life, it seems.”

He then went on to point out the darkness wasn’t entirely useless as it attracted a certain kind of moth to them. Their children were a kind of cocoon spinning worm in which they collected the threads from and made clothing out of. The clothing Tassik gave her were made out of those very threads. One day he showed her the area to the north of the village where they kept fields of flowers the moths liked.

Aris felt rooted to the spot when she saw them. Small blue flowers the size of her fingernail. She never saw them in darkness and so didn’t know they glowed in the dark. What did Morton call them again?

“Moon Iron,” Aris whispered.

“Yes, I hear your people calling it that,” Tassik said. He went on to tell her what the Munna call it and why it was an important crop to them, but Aris returned to a dream-like state staring at the pretty blue glow. Time passed without her realizing. She blinked and realized she had sat down on a stone; so entranced she was by the Moon Iron flowers she didn’t notice.

Her limbs were numb and cold. She lifted her gaze after an indeterminate amount of time and saw Tassik stare down at her worriedly. A blanket of some sort was set on her shoulders.

“Lyssiin, you left us again.”

Aris shivered and huddled into the blanket. It was still summer, so it shouldn't be so cold. Hearing Tassik’s nickname for her brought back some sensation to her limbs. Only people that cared about her ever called her by a nickname. Tassik cared.

“I should never have brought you here, I’m sorry,” he said, crouching next to her to inspect her face. Wordlessly, she stared at his green eyes and slowly, so slowly, she returned. “Yes, return. Feel the rock here, smell the air. Look at my eyes. Hear my voice.”

He reached out and held her hand and she could feel the warmth. Slowly her hand turned so her palm met his and she held his warm hand until she could move again.

“If you do that, you’ll be swept away in the Great Solvent,” Tassik said. His voice was even warm.

“That… might not be a bad idea,” Aris murmured. “If I dissolved. If I disappeared. It wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

Tassik looked startled, perhaps because she finally said something or perhaps because her words shocked him. “That is not the truth. To dissolve into the Great Solvent means you can do nothing here in the corporeal world. And you still have things to do, do you not?”

She gripped his hand harder. How could he know? How could he possibly know that she tried to make a difference, she tried to take back what was hers and it had all gone to shit? People died, monsters came, and she was just a stupid child who couldn’t do anything. What else could she possibly do? Her anger meant nothing! Her heritage meant nothing! Her existence meant nothing. Camaz saw that, and perhaps Rask did too.

“Think not of complicating things,” Tassik said, settling on the rock next to her. “Think of things as they are. Observe. Look, someone is harvesting cocoons to make thread. That is simply what the flower is for, nothing else.”

Aris held his hand and listened to him talk, soothed by his words. She tried to match his breathing, hoping it would allow her to see through his eyes.

“Think of the technical steps of every part of the process, leading up to the clothing we wear. The seed growing from the earth. The blooming of the flowers. The moths drinking nectar. Moths finding their partners and procreating. The eggs being laid. The worms hatch and eat the leaves of the flowers. The worms then spin a cocoon. The worker collects the cocoon and boils it to release the fibers. The stretching and drying of the treads. The threads coaxed into fabric. The fabric stitched into clothing. Then finally the clothing being worn by a worker aiding flowers.

The flowers upset you, lyssiin. But here they are a step in the process of clothing a village of people. Perhaps if you think of them that way, they will upset you less.”

She stared at the flowers and they no longer stabbed into her heart. She could watch the workers collect cocoons in baskets, watch the flutter of moths in the dim light, and admire the blue glow of the Moon Iron. Seed, bloom, moth, worm, cloth. The mundane process was a wave of silence through her noisy mind.

“I know you have witnessed much. Lost much. You must feel but not allow it to wash you away,” Tassik said gently. “You must think but do not get lost in thoughts. Often I find you lost in thoughts and feelings and rarely do they show the truth.”

It took a long time for her to be able to stand again. Tassik led her by hand back to her little house at the edge of the village.

“Keep the blanket,” he said. “It’s made of the same material. I hope you remember the flowers in a different way, lyssiin, I hope it brings you comfort.”

That night, despite it not being that cold, she lay huddled under the fabric and kept the hand that held Tassik’s curled into a fist. Maybe she could keep the warmth in.

Hear my voice. Tassik cared. She wanted to hold his hand again, wanted to immerse herself in the calmness he exuded. Aris fell asleep thinking about the Munna man and slept longer and more deeply than she could remember.

The next day it was Nari that accompanied her. Aris found herself both annoyed and relieved - annoyed because Tassik wasn’t there and relieved because Nari couldn’t walk very far being pregnant. It meant there would be little to no chances of them visiting the flower field situated at the far northern end of the village.

Her outings with Nari were usually short and practical: the woman showed her where food and water could be retrieved, as well as places with other supplies she wouldn’t need unless she lived there. Nari ignored her a lot more, busily chatting with other Munna she came across, but she still answered questions the best she could with her broken Gaian.

Their food primarily came from foraging and hunting. They also traded their fabrics with other Munna people for necessities. When Aris asked, Nari even allowed her to observe a few of the Munna create a new little house on the upper reaches of a tree. Branches sprouted from the tree and creaked and groaned as it grew and twisted around itself to form the latticework. Then very slowly, the pulpy leaf-and-wood walls joined the lattice together to form the walls. It took considerable time and effort with several caster working on one house and another Munna etching runes that seemed to change the shape and thickness of growths.

The entire process was fascinating and Aris wished she could study it, but the other Munna kept giving her dirty looks as she watched. Even Nari noticed it and she gave a few curt words to them in Yscian, but few of them stopped. So when Aris felt her welcome had worn thin, she told Nari they could go somewhere else.

“They don’t like me,” Aris said nonchalantly.

“No,” Nari agreed. “Your people killed many of us.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“You think that changes anything?” Nari gave a cold smile. “No matter. Things are what they are.”

“Why do you all keep saying that?”

“It is the Munna way,” Nari shrugged. “It is written in Forest Stones. Things change and we observe. You come to us so we observe.”

“What are the Forest Stones?” Aris asked.

“Story stones. Holy stones,” Nari said. She was starting to sound a bit tired. “We write story in it.”

“Is it here? Can I go see it?”

Nari paused a bit, then led her towards a different part of the village. “Yes, but only because of Ulkyssa blessing.”

This again. Aris sullenly followed the Munna woman. “I don’t owe that thing anything.”

“The Ulkyssa saved your life,” Nari said. “You owe him everything.”

“Tassik’s the one that saved me,” Aris insisted. The older woman gave her a look she didn’t try to decipher. It’s not like the Munna woman would understand - she wasn’t there. They continued the rest of the way in tense silence, going along winding paths around great, thick trunks of trees and intricate webbings of branch and foliage.

Aris roughly estimated they were reaching the center of the village, although the area wasn’t symmetrical. The boundaries of the Munna village were what the trees allowed for them to be and constantly changed with the forests’ growth. But roughly in the middle was an open area circular with compact dirt packed down around huge, tall stones. Only one or two other Munna were there, sitting around and casually chatting. The stones themselves at the center of the clearing were easily the height of six or seven people stacked atop one another and chipped down to a relatively smooth surface. Five of these tall monoliths leaned together, like a group of people with their heads together to share a secret. Two of these huge stones were covered in tiny etchings no bigger than a fingernail.

Upon closer inspection, Aris couldn’t recognize any of the etchings. They were obviously not Gaian words nor any other languages within the empire. They had a rune-like quality to them but she didn’t recognize any as such. They did not hum with power nor did they connect to the Great Solvent in any way - it was just Yscian writing in literal stone.

“You said you write a ‘story’ on here,” Aris said, not looking up from the etching. “What story is it?”

“The story of everything,” a voice rumbled out. Aris whipped around to meet the green gemstone eyes of the Being in Smoke. His incorporeal form swirled around before condensing into the rough shape of a person. “At least, from the perspective of the Stone Wall Munna.”

Nari looked surprised and made a quick gesture with her hand. Aris had seen several other Munna do the gesture to her before - it seemed to be the way they greeted one another. The Being in Smoke nodded at Nari before turning back to Aris, who glared at him. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“That is an interesting question,” the Being in Smoke sounded amused.

“Oh I have a lot more,” Aris assured him. “But you can start with that one.”

“Precocious as ever,” the smokey ‘face’ crested the gemstone eyes as if it was smiling. “Would you settle and listen to what I have to say? Or would you rather continue to be angry?”

“It depends if what you have to say is shit or not. You’ve already avoided one of my questions. Fine, here’s the most important question: are you a Part?”

The being in smoke briefly closed his eyes, the green glowing stones disappearing in gray-black smoke. Then he opened them again. “Yes, I am what Gaians call a Part,” he said. “I am Heel. But my common name is Doran. I’m glad we can finally speak to one another, Daughter of Moon.”