“So you’re pliant now?”
“No. I don’t have to soften to be with Iorvil. I can be myself.”
“She must already love you if she can tolerate all your glaring flaws, huh?”
Hymn swatted her twin’s shoulder, since she kept begging for it. “Iorvil and I probably have more in common than you’d suspect, than what’s obvious on the surface. I don’t think we’re that different. I wouldn’t hate spending my days with someone like her. I…”
“You’re cosying up to a bear.” Gale turned her back against the railing, crossed her legs, and touched the rapier stuck into the scabbard at her waist. “You know I may not always be there to defend you, right?”
“Since when have I needed you to defend me?” Hymn snorted, yet she could remember many moments when Gale had sung louder, or kicked over a tankard while dancing across tables, to distract the worst customers of the tavern. “And if Iorvil is a bear, what do you think Phoxene is? A puppy? I saw you whispering.”
“Oh, she’s a viper, no question about it, and we did a lot more than whisper.”
“You do understand a viper is worse than a bear?”
“I’m not here for a long time.” Gale threw her hands up and donned that dumb grin of hers that told everyone she didn’t care about what happened to her, as long as someone got a kick out of watching it. “If my death brings me greater fame, then that’s a sacrifice I’m—“
“Shut up.” Hymn surprised herself when she pressed her hand over Gale’s mouth. “Just shut up. I’m not going to stand by and watch you throw your life away. If I have to drag you along with me, like a ball in a chain, for the rest of my days, I will.”
Gale removed her hand from her mouth, nodded solemnly. “You know, one reason to marry Iorvil… She’d carry me for you.”
“You’d be lucky if she dragged you after us, along the ground.” Hymn shook her head, exhaled a drawn out sigh, and hugged her twin. “You need to take a bath, but I’ll try to love you despite the smell.”
“Very considerate.” Gale returned the hug. “But you stink of alcohol yourself, so I’m not sure who’s worse. What did you do last night?”
“I think it’s best if we draw a line between what we do with certain people, and what we tell each other. We can keep secrets, even from each other as twins, if it’s a certain type of secret.” Hymn smiled. “Let’s leave it at how I had fun and enjoyed my time with someone new.”
“Should I assume you’re too much of a prude to fuck a stranger even when you’re shitfaced then?”
Hymn pushed Gale into the railing of the airship and stepped away from her. “I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that.”
“Will you hear me better if I sing it?” Gale whispered.
“Depends. Do you want to lose a tooth?”
“No.”
Gale didn’t break into song until Hymn was halfway down the staircase to the lower decks, and then she didn’t improvise one of her rhymes. She picked a lesser known ballad about a soldier who got lost between dream and reality, but eventually discovered the road to a new home with the help of a nymph.
Hymn couldn’t tell whether she should take it as a comment on their current situation, or a spontaneous impulse on Gale’s part. She stopped to listen to the heartfelt rendition and wished her sister hadn’t forgotten her lute. Gale was a wonderful musician. She deserved fame.
To Gold
The moment her head hit a pillow, Gale fell asleep. She didn’t know how long she’d been awake, but she’d broken her previous record, and it gave her a sense of childish pride while she drifted off into dreams.
She might have preferred to rest, uninterrupted, until she awakened again, but instead she found herself standing outside of The Amiciers’ Rest in Caelora. Night had begun to fall, and the familiar voices of dozens of guests emanated from inside the tavern.
Even though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, she knew something was different with her home. She didn’t think Caelora had ever had as many lights in the streets as it seemed to have tonight. She noticed a few new houses too.
Hope opened the door to the tavern, hunched over, and Venviel assisted her wife along the street. They walked in the direction of their home. Venviel did not appear a day older since Gale and Hymn had been children, but Hope seemed like she approached the end of her natural life.
Gale hated to see her mother claimed by age, so she tore her gaze from the old couple, strode up to the tavern, and stopped when she noticed a poster with her face nailed to the wall. She worried she would discover a wanted poster, but no, even if it was hard to read the faded writing, the poster seemed to advertise an event of some kind. Maybe it was Furore telling her she would become famous in the future, if she didn’t abandon love.
She opened the door to the tavern, peeked inside, and found a bunch of rowdy pirates drinking to their heart’s content while Hymn stood behind the counter. She looked decades older, happier too. Art appeared from out of the kitchen and carried a couple of plates with meals on them. Her brother had grown into a lanky man, who attracted looks from a number of the pirates.
If she became famous in the future, Gale wished her mothers would have hired another musician to replace her. The Amiciers’ Rest sounded eerily quiet without her around to cheer everyone up and give them an escape from their sorrows. How long had it been since she’d last visited Caelora if the poster on the wall was so faded she could barely make out the writing? Did they miss her?
A woman put their hand on the door and shut it. “Everything reaches an end. Heroes die. Legends fade. But you, you’ll live on in the hearts of humanity and elvenkind, won’t you?”
Gale turned towards the new arrival. The demon with large wings, horns, and purple skin couldn’t be anyone else than Furore. Venviel had described the goddess to them, so they wouldn’t mistake her for a friend. In person, she didn’t appear intimidating. She played with a brittle-looking glass dagger, but it couldn’t hurt anyone.
“If…” Gale bowed to her goddess. “I hope so. It’s my dream, if it’s not too much to ask of you.”
“You will miss this.” Furore gestured at the village. “You think now that this is what you want. This dream. But dreams are dreams for a reason. They’re fragile illusions that won’t hold up to the light. If you pursue this dream of fame, you’ll find yourself broken and battered and broken again. Your family won’t always be there for you. Caelora won’t welcome you like its daughter.”
“I know, but I thought you wanted me to… to chase my dream. Or you wouldn’t have put the desire inside of me.”
“Who taught you that?” Furore scoffed, pointed the dagger at her, and drew a pink heart in the middle of the air. “Hope? No, the temple beat my words into her spine, even if they twisted and corrupted them in the process. Venviel? Venviel is a true believer. She would have made a better follower of the former goddess of love than me, but here we are. I don’t plan to disown the woman who restored Hope’s light to the world.”
“Then…” Gale scratched her head. “What? Are you asking me to give up on my dream? On fame? On music? What if that’s what I love? What if I don’t need a person to be my true love?”
“No, Gale. I’m asking you to acknowledge the deity who did put those ideas in your head, or abandon them and consider where on the scale between true love and hate fuck Phoxene ends up.” Furore raised both her hands, tilted her head from side to side. “Is she too far towards the left or the right?”
“What…?” Gale glanced behind her, but the door of the tavern had disappeared. She only saw a wood wall. “Phoxene won’t love me. What other deity?”
Furore bared fangs in a twisted grin. “I can make anyone love anyone. Since Thotrix wouldn’t think to search my lands for a lost lamb, Phoxene would be safe in Caelora if you’d rather pursue a relationship with her than fame.”
Gale would miss her family, and they may miss her, but at least they’d always know they loved each other. She wouldn’t forget the
m. She would sing about them through the years and years. Phoxene could delude herself into thinking Gale would write hundreds of songs about her, but even if she did, she’d write thousands about Hope, Venviel, Art, and Hymn. She’d sing about Caelora too. But still, she would never feel that she’d been meant to settle down and run a tavern with her twin.
“I can’t have love and my dream?”
“You can.” Furore nodded. “But I can see you’d intend to climb the highest mountain, and then, you’d have halves at the worst of times. You wouldn’t be whole. In the end, this would always be the outcome. Your family would carry on without you.”
Gale didn’t want to think about why the goddess had chosen this moment in her life to tell her all of this. She didn’t want to imagine what may lay further up the road. “Would they be happy? My family?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t need love, then, if they’re happy and safe.”
Furore laughed. “And isn’t that what it’s all about?”
“Why—“
Before she could ask her question, Furore kicked her through the wall of the tavern, shattered the wood, and sent her sliding along the floor under the legs of people.
When she stopped sliding, she found a gorgeous golden creature standing above her with a cheeky smile on their face. She couldn’t help thinking they resembled a deer, if someone had crafted a half-deer, half-elf statue out of pure gold. Behind the woman, she could see a blue sky with clouds sprinkled across it.
“Hey.” Gale waved at the deer woman. “I’m passing through dreams.”
She noticed she laid in the middle of a busy street when someone almost stepped on her. Humans hurried past her on every side, and the stone buildings along the street didn’t look like any buildings she’d seen before. Not in dream or reality. They were too rectangular, too similar to each other, too bland, to have been constructed by elves.
“Don’t go to love, ask her to make you famous,” the deer woman said in a strange accent. “Come to me, Gale.”
“Who are you?”
“Fate. Goddess of destiny, luck, and...” Fate paused, her cheeky smile widened. “Creation. All around you, everywhere.”
“Powerful, aren’t you?”
“Your goddess too.” Fate turned her lips downward in a frown. “Second goddess of Lho Allanar. Your mothers forgot me.”
“No, no, they didn’t. They—“
“No lies!” Fate slammed a heavy golden foot down next to her head.
Gale took it as the threat it was since she understood that foot could have cracked her skull like an egg, but why did she find herself kicked from one domineering woman to the next? Couldn’t they lighten up? Would she have to seduce Fate to make her purr like Phoxene?
Fate stared at her like she could hear her thoughts, waved her hand, and summoned the robe of a priestess to cover her golden figure.
“They forgot you. Or I forgot they ever mentioned you.”
“No matter.” Fate crouched by her head, flapped her deer-like ears. “You want to be famous. Control your destiny. Furore showed you what I will ask.”
“She did…?” Gale tried to sit up, but Fate put a hand on her forehead and froze her in place.
No one around them reacted. Either the humans couldn’t see them, or the dream realm didn’t bother pretending they were real. The city breathed with endless noise, but it stayed in the background where she couldn’t discern landmarks.
“Love for fame. Family.” Fate traced some pattern on her skin with her fingertips. “We’ll learn how far you’ll go. First, return Phoxene to the empire. She’ll have jumped the ship when you wake. Wrong place. Serene. You prevent her from jumping twice in a day.”
“I’m not comfortable doing that. Phoxene’s…” Gale trailed off when Furore appeared in the crowd, strode past her, and drew a red heart in the air with her dagger. “Phoxene has suffered enough in life.”
“You’re brave, arguing with the goddess of your destiny and your creation.”
She’d listened to her mothers’ stories. If she did not betray Phoxene, Fate and Furore would punish her, and still do whatever they wanted with the woman. What choice did she have? Why pretend she could affect the outcome?
“I’ll… keep her busy.”
“Wonderful. You make me happy,” Fate said yet her expression hinted at neither joy nor sadness.
The Flow of Days
After a breakfast which consisted of the apples, pears, and oranges they’d discovered in crates in the hold, the Gustfin made another leap through space and landed on a meadow by a lake. The bow of the ship teetered on the grassy edge of the lakeside where it threatened to slide into the water.
Iorvil gripped the handle of her axe as she spotted the massive stone towers of the Bridge of Oriel on the horizon. She couldn’t mistake the landmark for anything else after she’d seen it once, years ago, and Keeper Jerfell had told her about it.
The Bridge of Oriel had been built on the southern edge of the empire between two hills the size of mountains. Someone could stand at the foot of the bridge and scream, yet no one on top would hear them. The distance between the bridge and the lake was too great.
“What’s got you nervous?” Hymn asked, leaned her head against her arm, and chomped a bite out of the pear in her hand.
“I’m not nervous!” Gale exclaimed and startled them both with her sudden appearance. “If you don’t want me around, I guess I’ll check in on Phoxene! This is such a wonderful place to land! What a view!”
“You can stay…” Hymn glanced at her twin, raised her brow, but the woman didn’t seem to listen as she strode across the deck towards the stern. “I’m not sure if she’s worse before or after she’s slept.”
“You’re very different.” Iorvil removed her hand from her axe to grip the railing instead. Even if Phoxene had brought them closer to the empire, she didn’t think they’d entered its borders yet. Perhaps it would be best if they disembarked before Phoxene jumped them into the sky above the capital and claimed it was an accident.
“We are, but I hope you don’t think less of my twin because of her… peculiarities.” Hymn finished her pear, dropped it over the railing, and watched it plummet into the lake. She took a step backward when a shadow moved under the water’s surface.
“I won’t judge anyone.” Iorvil assured her. “I leave that up to the gods.”
“I’m not sure they’re capable of doing that fairly either.”
“You might be right.”
Hymn fished another pear out of her dress. “Do you want to go for a swim with me? I haven’t gotten a chance to bathe in a while, and I’d like to see…”
“Me, naked?” Iorvil cracked a grin.
“T-that’s, well, I-I-I…” Hymn stuttered. “N-not what I had in mind, but sure.”
“Intriguing. Consider the feeling mutual.” Iorvil stroked her back. “I don’t think this is a good place to land though. Regardless of what your twin says, so we might want to ask Phoxene what she thinks she’s doing. If she’s going to betray us, I’d like to know before it happens.”
“You won’t leave the revelation up to time?”
“No. I’d prefer not to.” Iorvil clenched her jaw at the memories of those she’d lost. They’d not been slaves to time. They’d been warriors. She hoped Hymn hadn’t gotten the wrong impression about the faithful. “I’m not a leaf caught by the winds of the circles. I’m a boulder. If I don’t want to move, I won’t. Not even for Rhabour. I may be his champion, but I won’t obey mindlessly.”
“Gale’s smart. She’ll warn us if Phoxene tries something.” Hymn stuffed her mouth full with fruit before muttering: “Besides, if they’re busy screwing, they won’t bother us or anyone.”
Iorvil didn’t know Gale well enough to determine whether that was true, or something Hymn wanted to believe, but she supposed they were stuck together. And if Gale was smart, she would not trust Phoxene. She would keep an eye on her in case the mage had a method to co
ntact her former masters.
“She wants to go home too,” Hymn said. “Maybe not today, but she will soon enough. Whenever this adventure becomes too difficult to endure. We’re simple girls, despite appearances.”
“I’ll get you there.”
“I don’t doubt it, but…” Hymn tossed her second pear into the lake, ran her hand along Iorvil’s arm, intertwined their fingers on top of the railing, and bit her lip. “It seems we’ll have a lot of time together before that happens. Wouldn’t Rhabour tell us it’s a mistake to not take advantage of it?”
“You really want to get me naked that bad?”
“Think of it as…” Hymn rolled her eyes at some unspoken thought, looked at the stern where Gale and Phoxene stood. “Catching up on lost time. Rhabour—“
“This isn’t about my god as much as your twin, is it?” Iorvil flicked the full moon around her neck, but out in broad daylight, the holy symbol didn’t change into a half moon. “You’re not planning something, are you?”
Iorvil had only met the twins days ago, and even if they seemed the honest sort, they could have deceived her from the start. They could be agents of the empire. She’d no idea why they’d do any of this if that was the case, but she may have been too trusting.
Hymn rubbed her elbow and huffed. “She called me a prude.”
“Ah.” Iorvil tried to conceal her laughter by coughing. “We can’t have that, can we?”
“I’d rather not.” Hymn tapped her foot against the deck. “Not while she’s thrown herself on this Phoxene.”
“Right.” Iorvil hadn’t needed to know about them. They didn’t seem like they’d make a compatible match, but she hardly knew either of them. “You give me little choice.”
“I do?”
Iorvil hoisted Hymn into her arms, embraced her, and carried her halfway across the deck before she stopped to drop her axe. Hymn protested loud enough to alert Gale and Phoxene to what she was doing, but when they stared, she grew quieter than the dead.
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