While We Wonder

Rhenan reckoned the only thing stranger than Drithen—five impossible weeks wedged between winter and spring on the floating island of Hyacynth—was how everyone dealt with it.

Drithen brought both an interminable twilight and an eerie stasis to the seventh and highest of the Levenfol Isles and Rhenan believed the midweek convocations, complete with performative chanting and lantern patterns, were an elaborate show for a season that had requested none of it.

Drithen came and went every year like clockwork. Just keep your wits about you, and you'd be fine. Absolutely fine.

Still, Rhenan changed into a fresh robe. In this stratified, matriarchal village, he knew skipping would only invite unwanted attention.

As he adjusted his collar, an unshakable weight settled between his shoulders. Rhenan wondered if this year's hush felt… heavier.

Oa looked up at Rhenan expectantly, familiar with this routine. Had anyone thought to ask, the felcan would gladly share their displeasure at losing Rhenan to stupid convocation.

Rhenan studied his slightly crooked nose in the mirror, a source of endless embarrassment. Ashen grey eyes, soft and smoldering like embers, peered back dimly, as though they knew things that Rhenan didn't.

He frowned in thought, his slightly rotund jawline suggesting a soul far more attuned to contemplation than battle.

Oa meowed an unmistakable sigh.

"I know, widdle Kuppy. I hate it too." Rhenan worked his fingers through the soft tuft of Argentine fur between his compeer's ears. A faint tremor passed underfoot, causing Oa to shudder briefly. Rhenan paused, but Oa shook it off, yawned and hopped to the floor.

Without a word, Oa trotted to their crate and crawled in, shutting the door with studied paws. Rhenan always found the crate amusing. Oa could enter and leave it at will, so what was the point really?

Rhenan gave the room a final once-over. Everything seemed in its place. Small, sparse, and fiercely theirs, the tiny home exuded unpretentious coziness. A chipped glowstone cast a warm light over walls just shy of bare.

Passing unnoticed in the corners, the shadows danced a little wrong.

Rhenan cast a final look back at Oa and smiled at his little friend. Their eyes met briefly, and something unspoken passed between them—a flicker of shared uncertainty. Rhenan chuckled, brushed it off and stepped outside, pulling the door shut.

"Hold the fort, Kups!"

Oa barked softly, locking the door with a faint shimmer and click. A louder bark followed, echoing into Hyacynth's chilly evening—a sound that answered the command yet seemed to also carry a plea.

The evening air tugged at Rhenan's deep brown hair—stubborn strands slipping into his sight. He batted them back into place and surveyed the square below.

The faint aroma of fried batter wafted up from a stall, slithering seductively up the wooden beams and clinging there. Lanterns strained against Drithen's gloom as the scrape of carts and brooms echoed in the modest square.

Above, endless layers of cloud stretched like a heavy blanket, matting the world beneath. Rhenan secretly always loved Drithen's perpetual twilight. It comforted him; even felt romantic.

He checked the clock tower in the square. A quarter-to. Time was slipping quickly…. Was that fried punch?

The sweet tang of blissberry teased him. His stomach growled angrily at the fleeting temptation, but Rhenan steeled his resolve. With a swipe of his hair, he gripped the railing and flung himself over, exploiting gravity.

For a moment, his pudgy frame hung awkwardly before the planet of T'kye yanked him down with all the grace of a falling anvil.

He hit the ground hard—knees buckling, ankles cracking, and feet twisting.

His eyes flashed viridian, and he blinked. His fractured bones knit back together as though nothing had happened, the pain a pinprick. A landing so awful—and awesome—all at once.

Across the square, Fenna crinkled her eyes with quiet amusement. "That boy again," she murmured, before returning to sorting bundles of dried herbs. She never went to convocations anymore. Crones her age wisely kept to themselves.

Rhenan rolled his shoulders, casting a wistful eye upon the stalls in begrudging acceptance. I'm already jogging—that's basically walking for everyone else.

He hurried. The Sisters would seal the hall at seven sharp to prevent intrusion, and perhaps intrusive thoughts. For after that, no one entered.

And no one left.

Rhenan slumped into a wooden bench near the back just before the Sisters placed the seal. Everyone packed tightly within the stone confines of the great hall. Vaulted ceilings swallowed the susurrations below. Rhenan adjusted his slouch, half-listening to the hushed whispers around him, feeling more a spectator. He reckoned convocation soothed an anxious village.

From his slouched vantage, Rhenan wondered how many of them were witches—and how many of them knew they were. His stomach growled in response: fried blissberry punch….

A soft shaking voice interrupted this lamentation, calling out lilting and deliberately—spoken in the old tongue, no less. Rhenan looked up and beheld her standing near the front: a girl—nay, a lady.

Light rose from her poised hands. Slowly. Beautifully. It unfurled like radiant ribbons of reddish gold, not unlike her flowing cinnabar locks. The light bent and shimmered above her fingers, then settled into a glowing orb. Though seemingly effortless, Rhenan noticed the faintest tremble in her fingers and a trickle of sweat—hints of cool composure masking some internal struggle.

He straightened, shifting forward slightly, lips quirking faintly. Cool! And practical to boot! Most light spells were useless outside of spectacle. But this? The orb was steady. Stable. That took skill—or grit. Probably both.

He considered her. She wasn't much older than him, if at all. The light caught sharp in her cheekbones, softening beneath her amber eyes. Her voice trembled. He could hear the hesitation, like she'd rather be anywhere else—but she did not falter.

Rhenan's eyes cut briefly to the front row and he immediately frowned. A man and woman silently watched with an expectancy that felt suffocating even from the back row.

The Teylans.

And she, their promising daughter. He snatched fruit from a tree he'd planted long ago and nearly forgotten….

Madisyn…. Madisyn Teylan.

Her quiet determination reminded him of… well, himself. He tried recalling the name she actually preferred, because he knew it wasn't "Madisyn."

The light wavered, breaking his thoughts.

The orb pulsed—once, twice—as though tugged by something unseen. The air around her shifted, bracing for a force unbidden, guttering the orb's glow like a candle in a sudden gust.

Rhenan straightened further, his brows drawing together. The crowd remained oblivious. Women on either side of him softly chattered on.

The light wavered again. This time, Madisyn's voice hitched slightly, and a quiver traced an unfamiliar path across Rhenan's skin. It wasn't cold in the hall—far from it. Yet cloaks and tunics shivered as though something had subtly shifted the space between their threads.

Rhenan's eyes darted everywhere in an instant, then returned to Madisyn—Madi. That was it. Her face remained impassive, determined, but he saw tension coiling her posture taut.

Then, as quickly as it had dimmed, the light stabilized. The orb hovered steady, golden and silent.

Rhenan exhaled slowly, his mind churning. What was that? And—ugh—why, "Madi"? Madisyn's a great name….

He didn't have time to answer. The Sisters rose, robes pooling like ink, and began the ritualistic chanting. The sound grew from a din, layering in rhythm, until it felt less a hymn and more like the room itself was breathing. Though distracted, Rhenan remembered not to roll his eyes visibly.

Rhenan slumped back, eyes on Madi. The room moved on, but he hadn't—the lanterns dimmed into afterthoughts beside her light.

But something about her incantation hadn't been right. Its glow had steadied, but not naturally—it was too perfect, too deliberate, as if the spell clung to something it shouldn't.

And Rhenan had learned long ago that, besides Oa, his instincts were his best friend.

The hall quaked, its stone bones groaning as a sudden, violent upheaval rocked its foundations and a shockwave rippled through.

Rhenan jolted upright as he watched Madi's orb flicker, then burst like a defective firework.

What in T'Kye's pits!?

Panicked buzzing within the crowd replaced the Sisters' chanting, which had faltered. No more seal. A cacophony of scuttling benches and shuffling feet grated against Rhenan's ears. Lanterns swung uneasily from their hooks, flames sputtering just as his sense of urgency roared to life.

Rhenan snapped a quick mental image of the chaos and made straight for the exit.

Bursting through the heavy doors, the cool, damp night air flushed his skin. The others would scurry the opposite direction, toward the imagined safety of their homes—including haughty Sire Teylan and his retinue.

Outside was entropy.

Another tremor rolled beneath his boots, seemingly confirming its direction. The mighty Norveyn. Had to be.

But, why?

For years, Rhenan had quietly suspected there was more to the veyns than anyone understood. Unnatural, some called them. Others simply shrugged.

Fed by unseen springs deep within the island, the four veyns' restless waters snaked and twisted across Hyacynth's surface—always searching, always spilling over the island's edge into the fathomless abyss below. And Norveyn was the widest, longest, most unpredictable of them all.

Breaking into a steady jog, Rhenan jiggled and jostled with effort. Wanted to be more active, he reminded himself bitterly, as the wet cobbles turned slick beneath his boots. The air thickened as he neared the veyn, a low rumble thrummed through the ground.

The roar hit first—a thunderous explosion that shook the ground beneath him. Rhenan skidded to a stop just as an improbable geyser erupted from Norveyn's center, not fifteen feet away. A column of water surged skyward, shimmering in the dim twilight. The ground trembling beneath him felt alive, reverberating faintly in his chest like an unbidden second heartbeat.

A strange, earthy scent hung in the air: petrichor, sharp and clean, as though a storm swept through without leaving a single drop. The bank beneath his feet shifted, crumbling slightly as the veyn's waters sputtered and frothed with restless intensity.

More tremors sent jolts up his legs, leaving him rooted. Rhenan swallowed hard. Then the newborn fountain splashed him incessantly.

Rhenan stumbled backwards, trying to avoid the spray, but his heel caught on something—no, someone—behind him. He tumbled, twisting awkwardly, and landed in an ungainly sprawl, arms tangling with another's in the mud.

He looked up.

But, how?

"By the half-moon in the sky, what are you made of—a burlap sack of tuberlings?" The voice was steady but faintly breathless, and every thought Rhenan had been having promptly abandoned him — so much that he entirely forgot to get up.

"Madi... right?" He hadn't anticipated exchanging pleasantries with anyone this evening, least of all her. She was tied up with her parents....

Never one to remain allayed too long by shock, Rhenan's mouth quickly twisted into a devilish grin, which then widened. Coquettishly, he continued, "I am begging your pardon, miss. It does appear old Norveyn here couldn't contain his excitement."

She blinked, her expression composed, though a faint crease formed between her brows. "That's one way to put it," she said softly, her tone carrying a wry edge. Her saffron eyes lingered on him a moment longer than either expected. How could someone tumble so gracelessly, yet recover so unabashedly?

Before she could add more, Rhenan's footing betrayed him again. His left foot slid in the mud, and he landed arsefirst with an audible splat.

"Frickit!" he snapped as the fountain caught him full in the face.

Jerking his head free of the spray, he looked sheepishly toward Madi. "Guess my words aren't the only things both dirty and falling flat."

Madi glowered.