Freebie Short: For the Love of Mortals

I found another old Le'enle short! So here it is. Illustration above, "To Outlast Eternity", is of Distant Song (creamy colored) and Argent Star (silvery).

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"Turn the storm, Empress."

Distant Song's silver eyes rested on the froth of the agitated waves rushing to shore. On the horizon the knot of lead-gray clouds were heralds, only heralds. "I cannot."

The magistrate turned to her. "You made this world from the wick of your soul and will alone. You have the power."

"Yes," she said.

"It is a storm the likes of which we have never seen. Our wizards have seen it in their fires and dreams."

"Let them turn it, then," she said.

"Do not mock us!" The flush of mortal blood reddened his cheeks. "You know we do not have the power. You take our form but you will not be the one who dies when that beast comes to shore."

White lashes lowered over her uncanny silver eyes. Distant Song, who was not human but Le'enle, reached out past the frail shell she'd wrapped around her true self, saw the coastal town set a-light with the bright flames of living souls. Thousands of them clustered beneath flimsy wooden roofs in the path of the white hurricane that advanced on them with the inevitability of nature.

"My lord, it is no magical attack. No unnatural thing. I cannot interfere with the weather. It is against the code of my people."

"The code of your people!" The magistrate drew himself up, fists clenched so tightly yellow tendons colored the skin over his wrists. "For some paltry set of laws you would allow thousands to die?"

"It is no paltry set of laws, lord," Distant Song said. The bruise in the sky had darkened, and her fingers chafed the frail chain of silver and pearls at her hips. "It is woven into my soul and is the font of my power. The Le'enle cannot transgress against the J'hena."

He glared at her and his words when they came were sharpened by bitterness. "They said that you were different. Distant Song, they cried! Empress of the East, of Justice! The most mortal of the immortal Le'enle! Of all the Compass Rose, the one beneath whose auspices we should pray to fall. I welcomed your visit, Lady. But you are not the creature they have said you are." His lips curled back from his teeth but he did not spit; for all his anger, he feared her. He flung himself from her side and walked to town, stiff as an automaton.

Distant Song watched him go, then sat upon the stones and sand. She felt all of her years, and they were countless. It would be so easy -- a tug here and a gentle kiss there and the storm would come undone. Weather was so fragile. Like the shells beneath her feet: sharp-edged, but easy to crush.

Not so long ago she would have done it. But between now and then so much had happened….

You take too many risks, Analeil. His voice. Argent Star's, Emperor of the North, of Truth. A memory of him leaning over her, his pale eyes fierce, between them the healing bath of mii'vas, that most precious fluid, the only water that could heal her of the wounds of coming off the Paths. Magic such as the Le'enle commanded was perfectly balanced: for the power to make suns and worlds and lift the Vague between universes, the threat of complete and total annihilation of the soul. Not death, but unlife. Non-existence. 

And this she skirted by interfering in the lives of mortals. It had almost killed her twice. Argent Star had refused to heal her ever again, and he the only one with the power to do it.

Distant Song rested her chin on her knees, the wind tugging strands of long white hair from her braid to slide over her damp cheek. The storm sent its runners before it, streamers of weighted gray clouds. She felt the sun set, but could not see it through the black veil on the horizon. Beneath her feet she could sense the soft throb of power of the earthlink, the magical font of the world still attuned to she who had spun it from dust and rock so many thousands of years ago. But she was a Guardian now, an Empress of her people, without the freedom of the Creator’s path.

Later, in the gloaming, she took the path to town. Her simple gray gown whipped against her ankles; the rising wind drove the miasma of the low tide before it, and she went barefooted and unmarked, for she wished it so.

Yellow light spilled from lanterns depending from the corners of every house, opening cones of color in the gray twilight beside short thin palm trees. Soft white sand and grit pressed between her toes, and the occasional shell pricked the sole of her foot. The humidity lent a sheen to her ivory-pale skin. Unaccustomed to it, she let absent fingers glide over her throat, her lips. The neck of her gown clung to her breast.

The wooden houses creaked and swayed. Yellow light spilled through windows, most blocked with damp cloth shades that sported fleeting brown silhouettes. Mortals, all, lives that would fly in a beat of her heart. A few years more or less should not matter.

Distant Song remained in the dark shadows between houses, her body leeched of color. The clouds obscured the moons and stars, leaving nothing to prick out the silver of her eyes or jeweled belt. She wandered thus until her feet and joints ached and the wind had unraveled her braid. A slender palm offered scant shelter, but she sat beneath it, staring into the window of the house facing her. In it, the silhouette of a mother rocked with a child. Her soft soprano floated beyond the yellowed shade, rising now and then above the whistle of the wind.

The Le'enle closed her eyes. Her hair a bone-pale cloak, gown clinging listlessly to her slender legs, she sank part of her soul into the earthlink, letting the world’s body echo to her own.

The pressure first – against her hips and legs, insistent and oppressive. The sense of the hurricane sucking the water from the coasts, pulling it up into a shelf of water higher than the house with the mother-singer. The clouds spiraled out over the town, dark with promise. Distant Song hugged her knees, barely aware of her flesh and the layered gray shadows. The least she could do, would do, was to stay.

A drop of rain darkened the sand, and another. Without further warning it sleeted from the heavy clouds, just rain; not yet the winds she could sense coming, the ones that would rip the houses apart like so much kindling. After that the storm surge, and the sea would reclaim the cove. It was only a matter of time, their time.

Through the pounding rain, Distant Song heard the lullaby. The woman's voice quivered, but she sang on. The Le'enle lowered her head. The rain plastered her white hair to her skull. Her fingers chafed at the pearls of her silver chain, sole concession to the title that had been forced on her. Empress. Protector of worlds, but not of the people on them. Creator of suns, but not of the souls that worshipped them.

She could no longer hear the singer over the rising wind. Hiding her face between her knees, Distant Song bit her lip. Her ribs heaved; beneath the sodden wool of her gray gown, her shoulder blades twitched apart for her gasp. White tears clouded her vision, opaque and thick as honey. The song had been extinguished. There was only the wind.

She lifted her head. No yellow light remained to glitter on eyes gone flat with Le'enle weeping. She receded into the earthlink.

Too many risks. And their lives were short enough. A tug and a gentle kiss. It came undone.

The wind quit. Gray clouds remained but the rain sloughed away and the knife-pain she remembered so well slammed into the bidirectional flow between her and the earth, shattering it.

She slumped, lost awareness of the gray shadows and clouds, the silver palms and the white sand, the sharp edge of the shell beneath her foot. Could not feel the frail cloak of flesh around her trueself; could not see the yellow lamplight. But she could hear the lullaby.

Too many risks.

You said you would not come back to me, she whispered. Did you mean it?

He was Truth, and Truth could not lie. His voice in her mind: Analeil, why?

Because I love them, she tried to answer.

You love them unto stupidity, you fool!

Yes, she said. And laughed. Yes.