The Endless Solvent

He was blessed with a clear night sky after the bout of sandstorms that day. The moon lit the ground with its silvery light and a part of Ral was convinced that his sister was there, guiding him. He ran feeling less alone.

Something crashed down just to his left and Ral yelped and lunged out of the way. He briefly saw Bette’s blue eyes reflected in the moonlight before a spray of sand and dirt pelted his body with her violent landing. She then seemed to blink out of existence to reappear right next to him. He stumbled back as she shoved him down to the dirt floor.

“Too slow,” she snorted down at him. He was always too slow. “You lack the stillness required to control your body.”

The Somas were taught that learning how to be still was the key to learning how to become fast. It made absolutely no sense to Ral, but he never mentioned that detail and simply nodded when someone said it to him.

“Say it,” Bette said, backing off and preparing to disappear into the night again.

“The difference between stillness and lightning-movement is divided by a thin line,” Ral replied in Yscian. Then he started running. To be able to move a short distance in a blink of an eye was described to be lightning-movement in their language. The most talented of them were able to travel almost twenty paces almost instantly.

Ral wasn’t able to move like lightning but he could estimate where Bette was in the darkness. She would frequently lie in wait on a tall stone or ledge and attack at opportune moments. He heard the rocks whistling through the air and he pushed himself into a safe direction, tumbling through a dry tundra bush. Bette had allowed him to put on some clothing against the cool night so the branches didn’t harm him. The rocks embedded themselves into the ground at the immense force in which she threw them. If they had hit him, they would have pierced flesh.

He concentrated briefly trying to discern where the Somas Leader was, then widened his eyes as he sensed her approaching him at high speeds. A strike aimed at his injured shoulder was barely deflected and he tried to strike back but only hit air as Bette flitted away. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he hurled himself in the direction he thought she escaped to and twisted to try to land a heel strike. No matter how good one’s body control or speed was, they couldn’t move at that speed for more than twenty paces. They also had to factor in the environment and other people around them.

Bette was right there, he knew it. His foot smashed down onto the ground about two paces from Bette who watched his failed strike with an amused expression. “Your instincts can only get you so far,” she said, shaking her head. “We both know this. Why do you insist on relying on it?”

“Instincts is all I have,” Ral protested, panting at the effort to move fast enough. “I don’t have the years of training you put Mikol through.”

“Complaints. Whining. Excuses.” Bette folded her arms under the pale moonlight. “Should the heir to a kingdom act this way?”

Ral straightened and stretched his sore, healing shoulder. “I am no heir. My kingdom is dead.”

Bette snorted. “And so you hide here among the Somas, breaking pieces off our sacred monuments.”

“Look, I’m sorry I broke the rock, I didn’t know - ”

“There is much you don’t know. I thought you came to us in order to learn,” Bette interrupted. “You did much convincing to your Freerunner man to let you stay. Why is it then that you refuse to learn?”

More frustration simmered, threatening to boil forth. How could she not know he was trying? Why was it that no matter what he did it wasn’t enough? He wanted to learn their language, he wanted to know how to travel twenty paces in an instant, he wanted to be able to use his manus ability in a way that would make Rask proud. Why did failure haunt him at every turn?

“That is why I am angry and disappointed. Your actions are the very reason why you have failed the milyssk jor. You should have been contemplating your reasons for being here and sharpening your resolve for learning. Yet you ignore our customs and use your ignorance like a shield.”

“I didn’t know - ”

“I understand we are different. But you have been here over three cycles,” Bette said. “You came to us as a boy, now you are nearly a man. You must decide what the future holds for you. You must look clearly onto your path and walk it.”

“How?” Ral finally burst out. “What path? What future? How am I supposed to know where to go when my own home has disappeared and I am of a people that no longer exists? I’m sorry that I disappointed you but impressing you was not my original intention, not until your own people threatened to cast me out if I didn’t attempt to.”

Bette stilled, contemplating his words for a long while. She then drew herself taller and pointed in a direction. “Keep running. This will not be the final destination for your punishment.”

The rest of the journey was not interrupted with Bette attacking him, Ral merely picked a comfortable pace and jogged in the direction she indicated. The Somas Leader hung back, remaining in the shadows at a distance, occasionally shouting out an adjustment to his direction but not saying anything else otherwise. Without a map, he had no clue where they were headed until he spotted a familiar group of stone silhouetted against moonlight.

With dread sinking in his stomach, he turned to look for Bette for his ‘punishment’.

“As a regular milyssk jor is beyond your comprehension, you shall stay here and hold your own, much milder milyssk jor,” Bette intoned. He found her standing on a boulder not far from him, her figure shrouded in darkness, blue eyes glowing faintly.

“I’ll have to stay here and cling to the rock again?”

“No,” Bette hopped down lightly to the ground. “You can remain on the ground or sit on one of the Standing Soldiers. Try not to break them again.”

Ral scowled at her retreating form. “Then what’s the point? You’re just making me sleep outside?”

“No, I am making you do the one part of milyssk jor that seems to be the most difficult part for you,” Bette snapped over her shoulder. “The thinking part.”

Ral made an incredulous sound, gesturing helplessly at the moon that watched on impassively. No, Aris would probably find the whole thing funny: her idiot twin brother taking a lesson on thinking.

“And lest you tell others old Bette is a heartless old bitch, I will even give you something to think about,” she added, waving carelessly behind her. “Why was it important for you to leave your Freerunner man to live here with us?”

Then there was silence. The Ivassk tundra made noise, of course: trills and chirps of insects, the soft whoosh of a slight evening breeze between brush and rock. But any sounds of people, any trace of Bette disappeared. If he tried to make his way back to camp in the dark, he would definitely get lost. Resigned to his fate, Ral found the tall upright rock he recognized as the one he clung to earlier that day (it still had the small hole he’d made). He picked up the broken off piece still sitting at the base of it, climbed up to the hole and tried to fit the piece back. Then he climbed back down and gathered handfuls of sand and dirt and tried to ‘repair’ the spot, carefully pushing in sand between the gaps to keep the broken piece in place.

“Sorry for hacking you up,” he muttered to the Standing Soldier. “It won’t happen again.”

The rock didn’t respond. Ral sighed and climbed all the way to the rounded top and sat with his back against the side of a taller Standing Soldier adjacent to his. The clear night showed a sea of stars that twinkle and winked at him without a trace of empathy for his situation. Back at the Caelis castle, the court sky watchers would be ecstatic over a clear night like this. He sighed again and sullenly knocked his head back against the rock.

What the fuck did Bette mean with her question? He left Rask to join the Somas to learn how they used their manus ability so well. Everyone knew this. Why did she ask something with such an obvious answer? Perhaps she didn’t believe the reason.

Rask had brought him to Ivassk on a Freerunner errand under the employment of a wealthy merchant in a small town east of the Heart. They had wandered the continent for years as Freerunners and Rask took the job as an opportunity to scout out the area for Gate activity. Ral enjoyed traveling with Rask, especially in the years when the nightmares finally subsided. But ever since they dropped Aris off at the Academy, Ral had tried to figure out what he should do.

Surely his clever and ambitious sister would be learning all that she could at the Academy. He still remembered that angry vow she made many years ago in the darkness of the cave. Fear, hunger and exhaustion plagued him back then but he remembered that moment clearly - his young heart was gripped with a kind of dark emotion he wasn’t ready to place.

Now, Ral understood: it was dread.

Aris long had ambitions of returning to their home and reclaiming the land; it was only right that he followed. They were the Lunaris and Solaris now that their parents were dead and the status of their aunt undetermined. He had to go back and make things right. He had to prepare to fight. So when Rask finally made contact with the Somas, Ral took one look at their soldiers and believed it would be the right thing to stay with them. All he ever had growing up were his manus abilities. The persistent tree rat, the fidgety boy that always had to twirl around a stick or get into trouble. He had nothing else. So he decided to stay with the Somas to learn of their martial abilities and be there for Aris and Rask when they needed him.

The night breeze picked up and rushed over him, dragging his dirty red hair over his face. It almost sounded like it hissed in disapproval. But why was it important? He thought he heard a voice whisper.

He frowned up at the stars. Aris was important to him. His home was important. Why did the wind accuse him of lying?

He thought back on the day he first set eyes on the Somas: the day was hot and miserable. In their customary suspicious ways, the tribe was treating both Rask and Ral with barely concealed contempt. The item that Rask sought after for his client was not easily obtained. For all these reasons, Ral should have felt nothing but the desire to leave, yet he ended up convincing Rask to leave him there that evening, even if there was no guarantee that the Somas would teach him anything. If Bette had not taken him under her wing, they would have left him to starve. The decision didn’t make sense in hindsight.

Even if the odds were stacked, he still decided to follow the Somas. Why was that? He closed his eyes and thought harder on that day.

The laughter of children. The image of elders sitting in a circle and laying out a kind of root to dry in the sun. Ral remembered recalling the sky watching parties Papa used to throw. There was good food and Aris and himself played with handfuls of children their age in the great stone halls. He remembered staring at the group of Somas just sitting together, just chatting while the children played, thinking it was the same atmosphere in the dining halls back home.

For years it was just him and Rask. Seeing the Somas sitting and talking together made him miss everything stolen from him, terribly. It made him miss Aris, selfishly. Ral pressed his mouth together at the welling emotion and covered his eyes with an arm but the tears squeezed out anyway. The milyssk jor finally worked as he found the real answer to Bette’s question.

He joined the Somas because he felt lonely.