Serial, Kherishdar's Exception, Episode 5: Broken Tool

My intent posting this on my blog was to get comments going over there, but people don't really comment over there. So let's try moving it here. (Discussion in the Discord chat, of course, stays in the Kherishdar channel, #tsuni!)

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 Episode 5: Broken Tool

      It’s a given that all Ai-Naidar love Thirukedi. Farren wouldn’t tell you this aphorism, because it is old and more in keeping with Kor’s way of looking at reality, but we say that your reaction to Him reveals how you respond to love. I think that’s naïve. Thirukedi’s presence in our lives is more than the revelation of love. It’s also a gift, a gift intangible and irreplaceable and awe-inspiring and precious.
      Or maybe this is something I told myself to make peace with the complexity of my feelings every time I saw Him.
      This time He was waiting in a garden. The seat of Civilization has many of them, and Thirukedi is known for His talent for flower arrangement, so the setting was no surprise. But I had never seen Him outside. He was seated on a bench, in a way that suggested immobility because His robes were so heavily layered that they fell in statuesque folds whenever He stopped moving. Beside Him was a shallow basket, an in it a single tinsel leaf.
      Something about that leaf drew my eye at the time. But the scene overwhelmed me, because here was Civilization amid Nature, where He had no jurisdiction: the one place the man who never rested could rest, if only He could set down His mantle.
      I was relieved that it was for me to kneel and rest my brow on the ground. I preferred that to showing Him my face and forcing Him to acknowledge whatever I was failing to hide in my eyes. I closed them too, just to be sure, and inhaled the sun-warmed scent of soil and grass. Have you noticed that, aunera? That soil smells different during the day than it does at night when it is cool and damp?
      “Rise, my osulkedi,” He said, and reminded me with the title of my encounter on the steps. That would certainly be why He paused. “How now, Haraa? What has disturbed your peace?”
      I schooled my face, but there was no schooling my eyes. There never had been; given their eloquence, my training had emphasized their use, not their concealment. I was the bold one. It was in that spirit that I let Him see my passions—good and bad. “I met the Exception on the way in.”
      “Ah,” He said, more gently. And maybe with a little whimsy. “She did not charm you.”
      “She was insulting,” I said, ears flattening. “I know the Exception is necessary, but there was no call for her to be rude.”
      The wind passed gentle fingers over His hair so that the sun could find the pale gold shimmer in its ends. “The unexpected is by its nature different. And thus, threatening. How otherwise? You might pity her, for that her role often requires her to be frightening.”
      “She didn’t frighten me. She annoyed me.” I looked away, forcing composure. “My apologies, Thirukedi. I don’t mean to disturb Your harmony.” I folded my hands on my lap. “I came to request a permit for Gate travel so that I might begin the work of my ishas.”
      Thirukedi lifted a hand with that perfect deliberation that made every motion of His sleeve grace itself. Summoning a Servant, for I heard the whisper of slippers on the paving stones behind me. “Bring me Haraa’s packet, please,” He said to the woman who bowed to Him. I envied her the ease in her body. I still didn’t feel like I belonged where I was, not yet. But that was what I was here to fix. After she’d left, He said, “It is earlier than I thought, menuredi. You need not rush into your duties.”
      “Forgive me,” I said, eyes on His feet and the rolled silk hem that spread over them. “But I have been idle too long, Thirukedi. I won’t ever feel right until I’m at work again.” I lifted my eyes. “You said this work would suit my soul. I must see that you are correct.”
      …and I hoped, very dearly, that He was, and wondered what was wrong with me that I could doubt.
      “Very well,” He said.
      I would like to say that I passed the ensuing moments in peace, waiting with the Emperor in the warm spring sunlight. But what I felt was a restlessness that made me hate the Exception for noticing my boots. I wanted to be doing something, and this intermediary stage didn’t feel like a peaceful interlude during which I could gather strength or find deep meaning in the liminal spaces between momentous events in my life. If I’d been anyone else… maybe. But I was in no mood for contemplation. I never was. To me, living was an act. Thinking was a tool, that was all—and often a broken one, besides.
      At length, the Servant returned, and brought with her a parchment envelope. This Thirukedi handed to me. The texture was silky, with just enough drag to make me want to caress it, and my thumb did keep rubbing the flap as I looked at the contents. The pass to the colony world, that was expected. It was the other paper that I found puzzling. Unlike the envelope, it was slick, frictionless. I wondered what Farren would have made of it. Unfolding it I found… a letter. In Ai-Naidari.
      And the human tongue.
      “Lenore Serapis left it for you,” Thirukedi said, quiet. “When I told her the task I had set you to.”
      My ears trembled, but I forced them to remain straight. “I will read it. Thank you, Thirukedi. Is there any reason I should delay in my duty?”
      “No. You may cross whenever you are ready, menuredi. Come back to me with your observations when you return, however. I would like to see you.”
      “Yes,” I said, head bowed. “Thank you.”
      “Go on, then, Haraa.” Gentle, the words. His tenderness made my skin flush. “And make use of your family. They are there for that purpose.”
      “I will.”
      I left Him and thought no more of how I’d found Him in the garden, with that one lonely plant in a basket meant for dozens. In retrospect that moment was the beginning, though it wasn’t until later that I began to ask the questions that would change me forever. Much, much later. I was consumed with the letter I was carrying.
      Didn’t I say that thinking is a broken tool? Such a useful distraction, thinking. Sometimes I think all our self-discipline is an illusion.
      Lenore Serapis had written me a letter.