What did they see in me?
In what was not truly the corner of my eye, I started to glimpse the world outside the office. There was Neko, focused on the surface and vibrating with nervous energy within. And beyond—I pulled back, but not before brushing against the miasma of frustrated prideful joyous anger that was the campus.
I retreated to my own body, singed and abraded and caressed. I wanted a warm bath, or to wash clean amid cold waves, but I also wanted to immerse again in the fascination and comfort of my companions’ not-quite-unfamiliar selves.
Charlie rubbed his arms, and Audrey stretched so nonchalantly that it surely masked some other urge. Dawson wrapped her arms around herself, pupils wide. Caleb touched her back, tentatively, and after a moment she relaxed her grip.
“So,” she said to me. “Is this all going to be ever more intense get-to-know-you sessions?”
“After a fashion,” I admitted. “Magic is about knowing yourself. But sometimes the best way to know yourself is by knowing others, or the world beyond.”
“I suppose that makes sense. Is it always this terrifying?” She tried to sound flip. Odd how automatic masks are, even with those who’ve seen beneath them. Or perhaps not odd at all.
“Yes,” I admitted. Audrey and Charlie nodded confirmation. Seeking the steadier ground of didacticism, I continued: “Sensing emotion can be used for good or ill. With a little work, one can learn to calm others’ fear, share joy, or ease suspicion. For those who aren’t Trumbull that usually requires ritual preparation. Weather control, to the degree that it’s possible, is much the same thing—it just connects the mind with patterns of cloud and wind rather than an actual body. They’re surprisingly similar. And as with emotion, if you push too hard you just end up stumbling.” Charlie smiled at the reminder.
“Hmm.” Audrey closed her eyes, and the ritual connection—dimmed but not yet ended—swelled around me. When I felt Audrey gently pushing I gave way—not as one who falls, but as one who allows her partner to lead their waltz. A strange enthusiasm bloomed in my mind. I would have said “alien,” but suspected it was merely that the untrammeled anticipation that came easily to my blood sister had long been foreign to me. Slowly, as if it might break, I offered that same emotion to Dawson. Then, tentative, I thought of how I felt during the best moments of prayer, the awe and wonder and fear at the scope of the cosmos. I shaped that feeling and took the lead with Audrey.
Luminous and strange, emotions passed among us in splashes of impossible color.
Wind thrummed against the window, and in this state it seemed another sort of body, another emotion. I touched it gently, felt it move with the rhythms we built between us, felt it whirl up to break apart the winter clouds and let the distant stars light our work. And beyond those stars—or through them—I felt other things, moving to their own rhythms. I breathed slowly, with the wind, trying not to disturb them. But in the clarity of the ritual, it seemed natural to explore this larger pattern of which we were a part. Worlds that once birthed gods, music to guide inhuman dances, intelligences scarcely recognizable as life, all lay just out of focus. At any moment, the draft from our movement might push aside the veil, allowing us to see—
The clouds parted further, and something brushed against me. For a moment, all I felt was cold: beyond the winter ice outside, beyond childhood stories of benthic depths and blackest space, cold too absolute for breath or blood or thought. I recoiled, shocked to discover I could, and realized with further shock how I’d let the ritual lull me.
Outside the haven of our workspace, in our own ordinary world, it was full daylight, and no beach far from the prying eyes of the public. I could still feel the rhythm of our shared emotions feeding the break in the clouds, but further veils lay once more shut and invisible. I pulled away from the wind, gently as I could, and with mingled relief and reluctance felt the whole synchronized spell of mind and nature collapse back within the boundaries of the everyday. I stood and checked the window. Whatever strangeness we’d worked had vanished.
“Lost track, did you?” Dawson asked as I returned to my companions. She looked more thoughtful now, less folded in on herself. Whatever I’d felt, there at the end, hadn’t come close enough for the others to share my perceptions. For that I was grateful. The sense of what had frightened me was already fading, as if only the ritual had let me come close to understanding or even sensing it. Such things, our books warned us, lurk always at the edges of perception, and it isn’t wise to try and know more of them.
“A little,” I said ruefully, and let the disturbing half-memory slide away in favor of my more immediate connection with the confluence.
Dawson looked around. “Funny-looking family, but you could get used to it.”
Audrey nodded, but Charlie ducked his head. “What happens after this? These sessions have been … this is a bigger, better family than I’ve had in a long time, but I’m settled in California. Miss Koto, too, I think. Aphra…” He trailed off. His eyes flicked to me, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“I don’t know,” I said. I wanted to call Neko to join us, but feared breaking the bubble of honesty. “Having an Aeonist community around”—I broke off, realizing that Charlie and I might be the only people in the confluence who worshipped—“or something close, has been amazing. And I don’t want to lose any of you. But I’m not ready to leave the Kotos. I love them too, and I love San Francisco. Out here, I’m reminded of everything that’s broken. And I want desperately to rebuild, but California has been healing me, and I need that too.”
“I’m staying,” said Caleb firmly. “And rebuilding. I’d like all the help I can get. But I also think that we can’t be as closed off as we were before. Having connections outside of our spawning grounds could make the difference between extinction and survival, next time someone comes after us.” He looked at Dawson. “And having other people in town who don’t fit elsewhere—in different ways—that could be a good thing too.”
Audrey looked at me intently. “Whither thou goest, I will go.” I blinked at her sudden formality, and she added. “It’s from the Bible. Wouldn’t hurt you to know something about your neighbor’s religions, either. But I’ve learned more from you, more of what I’ve always needed to learn, than from any class at Hall. If you go to San Francisco, I’ll go too.”
I felt grateful and frightened, and uncertain whether to express either. I settled for: “What’s your family going to think about that?”