Siuvai returned to Gale Heights with an ancient denizen and a brand new name. Siuvai the Hurricane. It had a fierce ring to it, as if it represented a warrior or a dancer, someone in constant motion, a roaring force.
Everything Siuvai was not.
The denizen, Procella, churned within her totem, her power settled in Siuvai’s veins willingly, though with a discomfort that had made it difficult for Siuvai to sleep in the days since he’d found and freed the ancient force.
Gale Heights did little to settle his blood either. The great Heaven Falls poured into the sky betwixt Watertown and the Heights, its booming voice not as tranquil as it’d once been. In the other direction, Ashburg burned on through the night, flames of the tallest buildings licking at the undersides of the Steamstone Bridgeway that rose to the Height’s hovering islands.
Siuvai could occasionally feel the heat from the steam whenever the gusts whipping and whistling through the islands dragged it in its wake. Not for the first time, Siuvai considered moving closer to the other side of the city where crystallized homes wafted a chillier, dryer air upward into Gale Heights. Perhaps there he would find what he was looking for. Then again, leaving the Heights in favor of the serene lakes at the base of Watertown might prove more worthwhile.
When he finally found sleep it was out there upon his veranda, the never-ending roar of the Heaven Falls a crushing lullaby and the turbulent winds of Procella sweeping around his house, emptying the void his home had felt since Verravia.
He woke to Procella as well, a splash of sea-rain spraying against his face to alert him someone stood at the door. Siuvai pushed to his feet with a reluctance that sank all the way to his bones. With mind lagging still, he took his time straightening himself out before stepping off the veranda and inside the house proper. There he paused.
Procella had been busy. Her totem, freshly carved with swirling streaks of grey, hung swaying in satisfaction from his mantel above the hearth. His house could be aptly described as a disaster zone. The outer walls shook with a frenzy not seen since Saburranae, while oft-moving spinning columns pulsed throughout the room. Siuvai closed his eyes briefly as one such hurricane-strength column swept over his bathing area, spitting a jet of water across his small library and the dining table beyond.
“Procella, please,” he murmured.
Her columns settled into more understandable and predictable patterns, shifting around the edges of the bathing space, the library and the sleeping area to give a sense of privacy within those sections of his house. The floor remained a slippery mess, spotted with ink-blurred paper, unworn clothes and odds and ends that Nim, Verravia or Mirrimati would have never thrown about. Procella swirled even more, that disconnect between them growing, yet her strength dimming. With another murmur, this time in apology, Siuvai stepped up to the door and willed the whirling wind and rain to part. It did, with a last spit that blew directly into the face of the man standing just outside the house.
“My apologies,” said Siuvai instantly, “I’m terrible at—” Continue reading →
In the soft soil along the banks of the jungle-hidden Lake Phanta, just past the curve where the Creeping Falls gurgled, lay an aged bottle. Stoppered with browned wax and coated with a mottled decor of muck and algae, the bottle sat lodged, its squat bottom stuck between the twisted roots of an ancient willow.
He watched the wretched
These stairs we climb
Emmi Lawrence 