ASAIMC.7.16. "Sky Carp"

ASAIMC/7/16

Everyone had always called it rice, but by sight it clearly wasn't. Closer to wheat, now that she looked, the hot sun against the nape of her neck, a hand intertwined with the pleats of their harvest. But wheat wouldn't grow here, and they'd never tried rice, although whatever it was that they now produced had been given a name by a people who didn't speak Standard, therefore creating more hassle than crop was worthy of. Instead, they kept the grain's name simple, and grew it in paddy's which sprawled to the eyes surrender.

The birds loved it though. that was the issue to worry over the name. Even now she could turn and look over her shoulder at small flocks waiting against forest banks and bright blue, searching for an opening between the tin-can automatons constructed to harvest the crop when it was ready and ward off the pests while it grew, their rusted appendages and heads of wire trundling over the thin paths lined with their labours which swayed with the evening's cool breaths, which you could track with an eye and a finger as it approached and left, rippling over the woods like droplets of air, to sway the heavily laden telephone cables which flanked the roads, an overgrown and then overweight intermission between the well-worn stone and the harvest it traced.

She stood, feeling now the heat against legs and the breeze against her shouldered cloak, which wound around her neck in loose folds and then draped down to her waist, giving her a silhouette defined among the community, to warrant waves and gestures simply out of recognition. Her shorts, she saw, as she looked down to a loose lace, had been speckled with freed grain and she brushed it off with a quick flap, lifting her foot against a pile of rocks forming a bank and retying the shoe.

The uppermost section of the village allowed a slight leverage in sight on its raised ground and so she could look on, as the low sun framed home, to see the pools of crop interlaced with ribbons of housing which curled and weaved with the demands of their food, slipping between the reaches of the surrounding forests and down to their body of water at the base.

It didn't look that big from up here, but it was a pain to walk through, following the seemingly random stretches of dirt and light, sun-bleached stone to cover now meagre distances, but she couldn't say that she ever tired of the journey. Her scarf's lacing kept her cool while she worked during the day and held in the heat when it went dark, and the people resigned themselves to their streaks of low light and chatter. There mustn't have been more than twenty houses all together, broken up by the paddies, so she knew every resident well. From the youngest farmers, huffing under large, brimmed hats while they laboured to the oldest of their people, who sat in equally aged chairs. And watched. And talked.

The sun dipped by sight, urging her on as she picked up the wooden harpoon, tied with knots of worn cloth for her hands and continued, nodding to the machines which groaned their efforts. Overhead the colours started to bloom, prickling the collage of orange and deep blue which seeped as ribbons through the cloud and became from evening to nightfall, allowing their settlement's illuminations to brighten and cast soft beams over the fields.

There were other roads through the forests which lead to her destination quicker, but she was in no immediate rush, and to stumble through the undergrowth with the things which skulked fell to a clear stone path, which moved into the nearby hills and carried her to where she needed.

The birds, not ravenous things but the species' mellower tones moved through the bush and within the parting above her, weaving between the streamers weighed with wishes of a good harvest tied to hang and then sag with their quantity, to sway between weak streetlights and old totems around her as she walked. With only their light she couldn't read the messages, but she could spot the ones she recognised, bound by friends or children who needed someone stronger to hold them up. Around her, the woodland moved with the winds and blocked the sun, but it was still up, lingering against the horizon to watch her climb the wounded path, often traced, but rarely ever scaled, its rays cut and left as shards against her and the trunks. She walked quickly but she was not worried; now, there was little in these neighbouring woods to frighten her, save for tales told to keep the young within the grain's boundaries.

She had made it sure.

The further she went the lighter it became, as slowly she rose among the shorter, upper trees, harpoon brushing aside any branches which swayed onto her path. Levelling off to pass through two lines of foliage the walkway of flattened rocks stretched, suspended in evening amber but otherwise bare as she left the village borders, hurrying a little as darkness approached. With her harpoon she'd be safe from anything which crawled out of the wilderness, but she still wanted this finished, and if she was injured now then she'd probably lose her chance forever.

Even as she walked, she could recall the word. Remember the sudden cold which provoked her.

The Toad is here.

Shadows curled and she glanced mildly upward, watching a vast Sky Carp weave the air, big and bright against the setting sun, its scales golden and its eyes bulging sea. She let her gaze hold and waited for the others to come, a glide of fish following behind their leader, moving from the uppermost direction down past the village with their cumbersome, bloated movements, caught in gold. They looked wild, free from any harnesses or clear signs of control, so she waved up as they passed, following the last lights toward wherever they were going. Watching from down on the ground, the ripples of brightness skimming over their surfaces, she thought of how many times she'd seen wild groups, separate from the caravans which drifted with riders, established in timber towers and turrets built upon their mounts. She reckoned she hadn't seen many. At least not this close to home.

She stopped and reached into the folds of her scarf, rummaging until she grasped a crushed pleat of paper and pulled it loose, tucking the harpoon under her arm as she opened the sheet, eyes wandering through the foliage with a yawn. It would be a while until darkness fully fell and she knew she could reach her rest before true night but when worrying about her pace, nightfall wasn't what pushed her on. She knew that if she got lost or dropped her nerve then she wouldn't get another chance like this, so to take a few moments to study her guide was something even she could allow.

The script said the same thing as it did last she checked. She'd walked this road before and she knew the port at its close, and everything else there read as simple imagery, easy to follow regardless of sunlight. And even then, once she crossed their neighbouring lake and found harbour on the opposite bank, she was told that she could maybe hear the amphibian, even from so far away. A rumbling croak, she thought, stuffing the sheet back into her cloth, the breath of the woods murmuring in damp green and chilling winds, wavering in tune with obedient bird song.

She took a deep breath and let the air rising the incline take her hair, cast in gold stolen from the backs of Sky Carp.

Her thumb traced the etching on her staff and she glanced down, seeing the inscription as she continued on. It read Saramoki, a word for determination which would be adapted into her name, carved quickly but with care to run down the rod, aged but still clearly visible on the spine. The word, in of itself, meant little to her, as the only person to translate it had arrived when she had but left soon after, leaving her with just that title. But it was a name which stuck among the people who had taken her and her brother in, as the one thing obvious of the child when she had appeared.

She blinks and she's holding a hand, her other clutching the diver's weapon with pale dread.

Saramoki blinks, staring at the clouds, seeing the waning light which failed to dark shadows spreading, rolling from the forests as though trailing the Carp, and she moved on with the cold picking at her legs, scarf working to keep in the warmth.

She walks.

She reached the next town in certain night, passing under dark-wood flagpoles tied with trailing Kǒngmíng lanterns, tethered to sail in red and gold which speckled the sunken region and illuminated her face in their regal shades, lining the lake which the town bordered.

It's a place for trading, with ports and roads connecting it to the veins of the woodland and waters, but welcomes travellers all the same. She wasn't tired though, so didn't pause outside the hostels or linger among the stalls, weaving between the giant Ox which followed their bearers, laden with ribbons and lights to better sell themselves, cold breath pluming from wet noses which leaned toward every vendor. Saramoki could walk under them and just bend her neck, heading for the docks with little but sideways glances offered to the loudest of salesmen, who stood atop arcing bridges and by the wooden beams lining the holes for fishing, which exposed dark water below, calling to the crowds which flowed with purpose. Nobody would recognise her and nobody would slow her, so she weaved without difficulty among the mass.

She's almost running despite herself when she finds a ferryman, compelled to rush and so stoops over the weary face which stares back, unmoving until she reaches into the folds and produces a satchel. He changes his gaze, taking the bag and peering in while she climbs in, her haste rocking the craft and forcing him to steady. There's enough and more in there, she knows, and she points across the waters to the other side, her eyes unmoving from the thing which snags her attention and frames the lake, standing tall on the other side, a faint outline but still one clear and distinct.

It is a sudden, cutting slow in things which marks her, as she stares at the thing fabled as salvation. Suddenly, having it so close, in a place she may recognise with effort, disturbs her a little, as the old man watches.

He takes his oars, still shaken, and starts to paddle, asking what the rush is. But it's broken and weak and she can't pretend to know the language well, sitting there and only half trying to figure his words. Regional dialects which differed by the extremes, she mumbles an apology but nothing more, the lights behind curling with the gentle push of the boat. The bustle is loud and the harbour is large, with a barrier of dark timber holding the craft in at port, so they are forced to move with the other craft, most larger but all of the same long, stretched shape.

He stares at her, blinking at the side of her head as she holds focus on the other side, following her glare but seeing nothing unusual, to turn back and huff with the effort of the crossing. A web work of fine hairs form a beard which hangs white from his face, but his age is well worn and what may have become frailty was kept at wisdom. He asks her where she's come from, in words which tugged at her head and forced her to think. She told the truth, that she was from just over the pass in the neighbouring fields. She knew there to be many like her village, with much of their harvest going to this port.

He nods, anticipating her silence, keeping to his stride as free lanterns skim the harbour, inches from the black which rippled bright underneath. He asks if she's alright, listening to her heavy breaths and looking to the tight grip with which she holds her weapon, which suddenly looks odd, even though this was a fishing town. She lifts it and places it behind her, hiding it from view, saying she's fine as she pictures herself running through the crowd with the stick. Still, he does not pester, and he does not seem to mind, rowing quietly now, content with his passengers reluctance to talk while his gaze wanders back to the lights which sail from the outstretched hands of those by the shore, some delivering for sight as the illuminations float upon the end of a line, and some letting the embers fly, to glide across the black with the wind.

The capacity of the boats improved the further from the docks they moved, as sailors called to one another in the pursuit of what moved below, leaning over the edges of their vessels to track shapes in the darkness. Some were small, no bigger than that in which Saramoki sits, with hunched figures playing with netting or long pikes, but there are larger craft which pursue a greater catch, with the shapes of crew moving with their prey, pointing and shouting hurriedly as their lights caught thick scales. Occasionally something would surface, with the bright colours of great Koi rising to trace the above in a patchwork pattern of golds and whites, a larger and older nishikigoi rising alongside her boat, its beauty speckled with water moss which hung from the largest of it's plates, mouth wide as it caught whatever food drifted upon the top.

She used her time to imagine what she would say, when she found the Toad in its temple. Her captain didn't sit there staring at her but he was notably attentive, his eyes only partially seeing what they focussed upon as he kept focus toward the scarfed girl with the harpoon who sat across from him, huddled close against the lake breeze, her hair floating on the nightly cold which came and took the lights with it. She didn't mind, as long as he didn't ask too much, so she instead thought of the beast which she was to meet, and how she would introduce herself. She should bow, as anyone would, but to bow to a great fish or ox and then to bow to a toad was totally different. She had no idea what the toad would do, or how it would act. And it was the Toad, after all, referred to with reverence and a reputation held simply as that, without anything to actually follow.

A renowned thing, which arrived to harbour in an abandoned sanctuary, so close to the one who needed its guidance most.

She looked up, adjusting her shawl, through the looming mount of timber to the sharp roof atop, under which could call the monster for which she was here.

The craft rocked against the shore, no particular harbour waiting aside from the rivets of fellow boats which cut through the soft silt, with stones lining alongside to give the disembarking passengers footing. She has given the captain all of her coin but she won't need any more, and nods him goodbye as she walks for the treeline, the remains of stray lanterns hanging limply from the high branches to cast soft shades on the undergrowth, the bleeding light of the mass execution calling her forward.

Truly, in these woods, so close to home yet divided by these waters, she should find things to fear. But she is oddly calm as she enters the forests, echoes from the past settlement still knocking dully against the damp bark.

The flow of the forestry is impossible to properly see but breaks in the thicket above allow the light of night to guide her, toward the mound peaked with the prayer house long since deserted. The vague instructions there lay in ink scrawled onto her paper, voiced by a traveller entertaining memories and fables who said that her Toad would be out here, on the forefront of unloved lands, where things worse than giants find their homes, and those who wander its paths seek something similar to her.

Roots and damp and the illusion of good ground make her ascent tiresome, but it is an ascent regardless, and the mirage of the temple becomes more persistent among the wounds in the green. She is thankful that the journey is short, but it could have been shorter, with bridges passing the lake nearby, unchecked and mostly unused, to give her beast comfort in the closer woodland back home. These trees are different to hers, and foreign. They are taller and sharper and darker, their pines a trap should her bare legs graze their thick green points as she trudges through, using the harpoon to move the most dangerous from afar.

If something were to come for her here, she thought, she would never be found. Already, she knew, her boat would be back or near town, its captain forgotten to her as he awaits another, to ask for passage further up or down the town, and not across. Across, to the peaks and spires of a jade graveyard, suspending with the dead ornaments of their festivity.

Stones emerge underfoot and she finds a loose path, built for someone to track this trail with the memory of each rock clear, so leaving any newcomer to dance between the stools, the scarf weighing her on with each jump to roll forward and over her face if she leant. The fishing tool keeps her upright if she slips, so that she can support herself over the heaps of sodden pines and roots, and up ahead the climb becomes clearer, with an obvious rise in the forest apparent by the more scattered, lonely spires visible over the rest.

If there are any birds, they are not here. If they are asleep, then to accommodate the spikes of their beds then they have had to become something unreasonable to call a bird. The same can be said for any other residents, as the soft pull of the wind sends shudders through the trees, like those of her paddies although harsher, and more disturbed. Not soft and cool but cold, and scathing, as though the foliage has a warning system which alerts every member. She stops to brace and takes the jarring gusts with a heavy breath, her shawl doing its best to keep her warm. Her knees are trembling by the time she reaches a break in the woodland, and she looks around shivering to make sure she is alone.

It's a path, clear and structured now, bordered with the spires which, unlike those at home, which fall and arc to roof as a canopy, stand straight to block her entirely from anything on either side, save for that which falls behind her and climbs ahead, on the trail she knows that no one has walked in an age. Still, here, lanterns have survived but fallen to the break, given a second to believe relief before they are ensnared, so that there is a multitude of still glowing corpses to her right as she climbs, strung up alongside their long dead familiars which waver with the night air.

Snakes, she wagered, would be here too. Their size she could not predict, but this channel in the thicket would be the perfect width for the larger ones, with a length to stretch to the bend at the bottom and the temple at the top. If one came she could only run, but as she stares ahead she can see the house now, squat with its sunken structure but still sporting its high point, slightly cocked but straight.

She is from afar, but she can start to make distinctions.

The entrance is shrouded, and she cannot see anything within the shape of black, but then she is of a distance to allow this even in day. The Toad is resting here, after all. This is just refuge, not its habitat, and it would sleep as others do when the sun falls.

She blinks and stutters on the cold, unsure when toads fall and when toads rise. Surely she has no need to fear this unknown but still she is sceptical, now watching all aspects of the building and glancing around, in case of a mass of wet feet and vast, ogling eyes watching her from the dark, standing there as an alien shape among the thin, high points.

She lets the thought linger a moment too long, caught on a nothingness framed as terror, before she forced the thought out.

The waning flames fed the chilled night their final efforts, catching the side of her face which walked determined, scarf floating on channelled air which reached before her, searching by feeling the space ahead. She is cast in the soft embers of dying red, her footfall the only noise to be heard across the lake aside from the wind among the branches, tugging to create false impressions of movement within the pines. The vague bubbles of light produced by the now distant town emerge through, speckling the shore far to her left, but there is no sound to be heard from there. She is alone and she is quiet, ascending the abandoned pass with the haste of the cold but the hesitation of the unknown.

She reached the temples level, a flat dividing her and it. An outcrop of the hill, not yet at the peak but near, as the trees continue their climb beyond and to the right. Flattened ground cleared save for light grass, which is splayed in patched and mounds leading to the wooden mess of a prayer house, murmuring its own song of worn whistles and moans to play alongside the night. Here too the lanterns die, but there are not so many. Few have reached this altitude to be caught. But the oldest and long expired lights trail from their snagged cords, wound by the wind around the spire of the house, swaying without energy to be limp and similarly forgotten.

It is an odious place. A place forgotten and best left so, hosting someone here who uses its sinister aura in guarantee at being left alone.

She, in a tongue it probably cannot hear, in a place it seldom likes more than she does, will approach and wake it, and ask for salvation without true payment.

She inhales, caught on a gust.

A light flares.

like a grand match struck, and the doorway is illuminated by a winking glow, hot amid the dark. It is a greeting; not one necessarily of welcome but one of acknowledgment of a visitor, and she knows she cannot turn back now, so leaves the line of the forest and crosses the short ledge, weaving through the larger tufts of green and coming to the steps at the temples base, the building channelling the night breeze so that it catches her and sends her scarf fumbling around her neck. She holds the harpoon low but pointed forward toward broken slats forming her entrance, and she climbs the steps with a grimace, unprepared for what might be at the top.

It is a short rise but one just long enough to make her vision solely stairs for a second, and it draws everything from her.

Makes her mind wonder in a moment where it best be still.

The warmth is the coldest she has ever seen warm embrace, and she is oddly compelled now to remain outside, in the dense night.

She reaches the top, taking her step up and onto the buildings front, and stares through the dismembered and distorted door at those within.

A cosmic thing, it looks back with a dreadful, wet face and a wide grin. It's flesh is loose but worn and so bleached, making it at a glance a mass of skin, which falls into folds behind the smooth, grotesque head of near humanoid comparison, so large that the face alone is taller than she. It is a detestable guise of a nightmare, great and morose, with eyes which conveyed perpetual intrigue on a tearing, monstrous level.

It is not a toad, and more a vile head which deforms and melts into a body, with legs sticking through the folds and planting it in the centre of its accommodated space.

She would have run. She should have.

She would have cried.

But there was another, who's presence gave her, not courage, but just enough time for her fear to waver enough to remind her why she was there, why she had come here.

Why she must stay.

It sits there. A boy, kneeling beside the beast, his skin not living and his hair smoke, which flows from his head and dissipated as cold breath. His face is not kind, but it is a face you can recognise as a face. Not a horror.

She waits, just long enough, her own look one of disgust, to see him lift his head a little and gesture her over with a shudder, calling her in.

She steps forward, stick held obviously high, point bare, but walks freely into the house, the interior vaguely illuminated by the boy's smoking candle, its abandonment evermore apparent from within. Saramoki does not make her hatred unknown and keeps the harpoon close, speared toward the Toad, which gapes at her with its round face, lightly layered with fine hairs which are lined by the close light. The thing's skin is slick with mucus and it heaves slowly with heavy breaths, silent but able to move its whole, disgusting form.

The boy say's hello.

She blinks, wobbling a little. His voice is so clear and so close that it was as though he were on her shoulder. She replies the same, taking a seat still a way from the two figures. With only the candlelight, the Toad's face is partially illuminated, accentuating its horror more. The boy though, he of Smokey hair and now, at this distance, streaks of unknown painted text running in lines across his features, smiles faintly and bows, inclining so that the smoke cascades over his shoulders like water. Again, she only mirrors him, but keeps her head high enough to observe the beast. Before she is fully risen, she regains some of her natural face and looks to the lined boy.

She asks what it is, the Toad, with no reaction from the beast which observes her from the corner of its watery optics, seemingly unable to properly move. The boy, who seems deaf to the address, lifts his candle, which is perched upon the end of a thin timber stick, which sags with the weight of the wax, and holds it forward to better see the face of Saramoki, who looks away but does not retreat. The warmth against her skin makes her shudder, something which the boy also ignores, his faint, tired stare tracing her features through eyes lined with rows of worn insignia. She couldn't read any of it from afar and she wasn't going to try when he was so close, and the smoke which flowed from his skull and across the floor to his knees was something to watch instead. When it touched her, she felt the pressure but no sense of temperature. Not smoke, not frost.

The boy leans back, resting his light on the scarred flooring, his motions slow and careful as he straightens once more. Now Saramoki doesn't know where to look, so she glances back and out of the temple, her harpoon laying by her leg, looking across their outcrop from the forest. She can see the town, clear and bright, on the opposite side of the lake which divides her side from the unknown.

The boy shifts to the Toad for a moment and she returns, watching as he looks the creature up and down, unblinking with unfocussed gaze before he re-joins their visitor, expression inscrutable but body stiff in a well versed manner, as a boy dressed in cloth which accentuated that image.

Tradition and wealth, with a complex pattern from the chest down, yet nothing but fabric on the sleeves or breast to only bring more attention to the scripture tattooed on his skin. Like a boy of worth who ran from home. For his dead features and smouldering mane, she had no response.

He asks her why she is here, in his light, intrusive whisper, all the while with the interest of the Toad, which holds focus on her even at this tiresome angle of view. His hair plays against her knees, lashing out and dissipating in waves, and it distracts her even more as she blinks, trying to figure what to say. Instead of answering, she returns the previous favour, ignoring him and asking now who he is, and what it is he travelled with. She questioned in thought, even as she speaks, if the boy has lived in this ruined place and is hosting his tormented guest in earnest, but she figures it makes no sense for this beast which she hears to be illusive, to abide side by side with a thing as small and as frail as this boy is, for the sake of politeness and a place to stay.

The boy, whose eyes sag at the seams with fatigue, propped up by his youth as so to make his tiredness almost inattentive, pushes his candle forward before he speaks, shunting the stick between the two of them so that the light is centred, as so to better illuminate her face as he stares, empty and heedless. His fingers are slender and near skeletal, maintained as lissom only by the rest of his well-maintained elements, but his motion is precise and smooth, and despite his apparent weariness of features he would seem healthy. It is his skin and the markings upon it which move her, as those thin hands display lines also. If it were his hair alone then she would think him beautiful, even if she knew not what he was. But his etchings are alarming, and his companion an eldritch fiend, and she finds herself on edge as he speaks, her hands balled upon her lap.

He says that he is blind beyond the light of his lamp, and that only through its glow can he see.

But through the tendrils of his hair he can feel, and sense that which surrounds him from a distance. If the light should go out, he says, eyes fixed on Saramoki, he would forever be blind, so he travels with something which can see for him, deep into the night and day. Without emotion, he says how he no longer sees light or dark, and that he must rely upon his beast to bring him food and water, and to keep him safe where else he would be doomed. The Toad, in return, is kept safe by him, who plays the other part of survival. For that of nutrients and rest, the boy needs his monster, and to face the predator and survive, the Toad needs the boy. Waiting, Saramoki half expects an explanation to follow, but she is unsurprised when the boy does not continue into his method, aside from the breadth and accuracy of his sixth smoke sense.

Now he returns, asking what it is that she wants; to find such a roaming party, and seek their company out here. He says how quickly the two can travel, with the boy on the back of his colossus which can traverse the forest from up high, reaching from tree to tree. It is odd, then, he presumes, for her to come here, when they arrived a day earlier and were to leave the next night, and find them in their abandoned, secluded retreat, to recoil in sibling horror and intrigue at their sight. He says this, his eye locked with hers while she weaved from his markings to smoky curls and fine robe, her unease portrayed in her inability to remain still, as she twitches at every inclination of movement in preparation to avoid the advance of that cursed thing before her.

She wants to talk, but not to these. They are odd, and not the wild beasts she loves. The behemoths which roam the wilds, the skies and the seas, in harmony with the pastures from which they hail. These, which watch her with mild cynicism and disregard, to crawl from a place she could never know and never want, to be the only things on this world which can aid her in the one, true, only thing that she loves. It is to stand before blatant evil and ask, without reason for belief, that they help her in a struggle meaningless to all but her.

She opens her mouth, and nothing comes.

She licks her lips, which are dry with the cold.

She murmurs, in a voice no louder than the soft breeze outside, that she has a brother.

She blinks and catches herself, adding that he is not actually her brother. She is not really his sister, but she feels that bond. With how far they've come and for how long, it is as though they have always known one another.

The boy shows no true attention save for his stare, but he listens to her without moving, the light of his candle wavering with the winds from through the entrance.

She continues, saying that she's older than him and that he's sick. He always has been, she adds, looking to the ground for comfort as her hair wavers with each line. He is not strong enough to walk for long, and he gets really ill from the simplest of things. Staying outside for too long in the cold or the sun and he collapses, shuddering for days on end. It's difficult to travel with him and he can't possibly survive without her, even in the comfort of a save village or town. She knows exactly when he needs to eat and drink, and how much he can have before he chokes. She knows how to make him comfortable and how to carry him over different terrain, and what best remedies some of his illnesses.

But she can't remedy him. She looks up, holding to the boy's gaze, and says how he isn't getting any better and she's running out of options. She found him when they were both so young, that she cannot remember anything before they, so making him her first memory. She has hauled him so far to where they are, but even that isn't enough. She had hoped that soft warmth and good food would have been enough to keep him going, but the journey from a place which would have killed him has almost done the same.

He is trapped, in every sense of the word. Trapped in that village. Trapped in his own body. Trapped in life, so that should he either live or die he causes only discomfort for others. Saramoki is the only one left by his side, and she will never leave him. But it is he who may leave her, even if for her betterment, and that would take everything from her. Her whole life, of nothing but travelling with him on her back, would be meaningless. To say that he has seen the world or enjoyed the journey even would be a lie.

She rubs her cheek and smiles faintly, unthreatened anymore by tears as the boy watches, his hands delicately splayed over his thighs and his back cut straight. She sits there, looking at him and his Toad, thinking of all the people she has seen and all the beasts she has sought for help, and she must admit that she cannot see her salvation here. She sits before a monster and its rider, neither of which give her any reason to suspect liberation. Like all on this world without a home, they are no different to her. They travel out of necessity, with no place or destination conceivable to free them from their cycle.

But the boy thinks different.

He looks away, over her shoulder, and out into the darkness.

She wonders whether he breathes, for to sigh now would perfectly encapsulate his face, as it straightens slightly, and he inclines his head.

He asks her what she wants.

She blinks.

He rolls his neck and says that he is no evil. Without emotion, he says that he has no reason to harm her, and that giving her advice, for that is all he can offer, can do nothing to harm, and only help him. But he must ask her, simply, what it is she seeks. What she wants to achieve from this, at the apparent end of her suffering. If her brother is sick and in pain and she has nothing left to give, he has something easy to suggest.

She shakes her head, eyes closed for the motion.

Then, the boy says, drawing the word out, there is only one alternative.

Another journey.

Saramoki is surprised by his apparent and sudden willingness.

Just one more, to a place which the boy knows, with the ride and equipment all prepared. But it will be further than she has ever been, and to a place truly alien to that with which she has become accustomed. If she is truly unable to go any further now, then to push onto this place would be pointless.

So he asks her, in his unnerving whisper, whether she is prepared to die. Die for her brother, when it is he who would be long dead without her, and in turn save him from the suffering he so endures. If she is willing to leave her brother behind, while she goes forward to finish her journey without him.

Saramoki stares, her mouth slightly open, not in confusion but on the precipice of question.

She asks, in her own hushed response, how she can save him if he is not where she is. How her journey can find him a cure if he's not there to take it.

But the boy mumbles in disagreement, and Saramoki wonders if she sees the Toad smile a little broader, as the lined smoke leans closer forward, shaking his head.

He says that he can get Saramoki a ride. He knows where foreigners dock their ships when they visit, to trade or otherwise, and he knows how to get there. He's been there before, he says, and he's seen their ships. He says how he visited recently, he and his Toad, looking for a way off this world and to someplace else, anywhere else where they can fix him. He blinks as he speaks, seeing only his faded world of candlelight, and he tells Saramoki how every ship he got on had the same message. He tells her how he can't fly. He never will, not with his sight, but that he reckoned she could. He sees her hands, worn with the work of farm machinery, and he thinks that she could bargain her way onto one of their boats, or take one or whatever she needs to do to get out.

But she doesn't know the way from there. Neither of them do, he says, nodding. But he can get her there, and she can only follow the directorate of the message he's seen,

She frowns, leaning forward also, and asks what the message is. She doesn't understand how information on a random craft can help her, unless they're a doctor. What can help her, in her case of illness, that cannot help the boy.

He is quick to respond, telling her that he doesn't know for sure, but he can recognise some things when he sees them, even with his sight. You wonder through a forest, he says, and you can tell if you've actually seen a branch before, or whether you're just imagining it. Maybe it's his eyes, he mutters, looking up, which make almost everything a blur save for what he is sure of.

He has heard a rumour. Of a place he has before heard of but had never believed to have existed.

Salvation, he thinks, for the girl hoping to save her brother.

A place where she can find what she needs to make him whole again. Where she can become strong enough to save him.

Because the boy thinks there is no medicine to remedy this illness. No cure to his fatigue. So he must be made strong again. The body, which makes him weak, must be pushed aside for what is within to survive.

The boy leans forward, the closest thing to a grin she has yet seen etched against the corners of his mouth. He says that what she needs is the strength to save him. She needs a soul. To make herself capable or to give him life, the written boy does not care, but he knows where it is. The soul that she needs.

The boy says that he can care for her brother while she is gone. He can keep him safe, in these forests. If she comes back and promises to help both the boy and her brother, then the boy is willing.

He sits there, emotionless and cold, his hair ribbons of false steam which roll over his robe. He asks her if she will go there, to this place well fabled, with the path only the boy can prescribe, and in turn come back as the one treatment to the ill she now knows.

In response, she need not think. She is almost embarrassed by her haste, as she nods and asks where she is going. She expects the boy to recoil and tell her to wait. To think before she rushes forward. To take the time to consider the peril she now approaches.

But the boy does none of these things. He is as desperate as she.

He sees that they serve one another. That they are each other's power.

He nods, and raises his arm over her shoulder to point.