WHO: Cinna & Badr WHEN: The Past WHERE: Simurgh SUMMARY: Who are you to judge a thief when you're a liar? CW: N/A
It was the mouse’s hour—the darkest segment of night—and Simurgh was silent. Even the flames that had warmed the village pathways earlier in the evening had guttered, and it was only the lack of trees at the center of the village that allowed the moon’s wavering light to wash over their path and guide them. At an hour like this, one had to be especially silent—for the dogs of the village were wont to make a nuisance at unexpected noise. Most nights, after all, were largely silent save for the occasional papery sound of owl’s wings, or the cry of something small caught up by something bigger. The wind rustled through the trees, and in some seasons, the songs of dragons—or the humming chorus of their ghosts—might be heard from somewhere far away.
But Badr led the way from the Marwan’s cottage to the shrine with a practiced ease—especially for a night so dark and still. Though it was cold, he wore only a soft pair of slippers, and a dark, single-layer set of robes. When he bounded to the shrine’s portico, his step was as soft as that of a mouse, and in the dark, it was only the bright gold sheen of his eyes that glinted as he whirled around to her, smiling silently, eager to see how clever she thought him for this little feat.
Cinna stood out here, tonight, in ways she never had before. All her life—or, for at least as much of it as she’d lived in Simurgh, which was most of it—she had been an anomaly. Odd name, indistinct features, pale eyes, and traces of an accent that, no matter how hard she tried to smooth it, never really went away. What parents had left this strange creature and disappeared? And what for? She had few memories of the country of her birth, and what she did remember came to her only in fragments: stone spires, marble columns, flat tiled courtyards with fountains, windows too far out of reach, the sky even further. There were words she could recall, certain customs, but only fleetingly. Still, she wasn’t native Simurghian either. Outsider—which was a rare enough breed among the trees.
Even so, dark-haired, lithe and deer-like Cinna had always blended with the forest easily. She had made herself fit, even if she didn’t. Now, though, tonight, she was something else entirely. Something too bright and glaring, even in the dark, with her frosted features, her silvery hair, the pale, almost white trousers and white, hooded cowl. She was a marble carving against the green.
Did it strike her as symbolic? That she had become more of that other place, the place which had a claim on her blood if not her soul, in the very midst of betrayal?
No, Cinna only noted how stiff she felt among the trees now, how out of place. As it had always been, really, she thought; as it always would be.
She stood back, though, smiling faintly in the dark, as she followed Badr up onto the portico. He, of course, was as much a part of the forest as a deer or a bird, flitting among the branches and leading her as quick as a fox through the night. Cinna had little of Badr’s natural grace, but hers was studied, precise, and she managed it with all the silence of starlight filtered across the dark wood. Thin and translucent, barely even there, she was quick on his heels.
From there, he moved around the side of the veranda, towards the back of the building, finding an old tree whose now-barren (soon to be lush) branches stretched up towards the next level of the building with some sturdiness. Badr was not a warrior like so many of his classmates, and he had not been allowed the luxury of long hours of play like many of his peers in childhood, but he was still a child of the forest, and his leap to the lowest branch from the veranda, the tight-rope walk up one of the fatter branches, and light hop onto the shingles above was done with a surprising ease. He went on ahead, thinking that Cinna would catch up quickly enough, edging his way along the narrow segment of roof towards a south facing window.
And she was quick enough, though more like a ghost than a forest animal.
It gave with a push, entering into a study room thick with reed matting and rich carpets. Certainly there were many books in the shelves inset across the delicately tiled walls, but it was only a public room, for those who wished to read or quietly ruminate.
Despite his elegance outside, he nearly tripped on a sitting pillow and stumbled his way across the remainder of the room to the door, quietly tipping it open. He did not expect anyone to be awake at this time. Unlike Serenitas, there were not guards swarming Simurgh at all hours. There was magic to warn them of any threat that made it past their boundaries, but it had not happened—save by errant creatures from time to time—since well before Badr’s lifetime. He hadn’t even seen any particularly dangerous animals trespass their boundaries, save for one early winter when an ancient blackbear had wandered in from the trees to whuffle about the remains of a wedding feast. Upon its discovery, the elders had simply bid everyone return to their homes and leave the old giant in peace. It had returned to its forest by sunrise.
Cinna, who had delicately stepped over the pillow that had caught Badr so unawares, stood still in the center of the study, glancing up and down the shelves with a brief flicker of irritation behind her eyes. She had been here plenty of times before. She supposed the documents would be further in, in some secret room perhaps. But she was anxious to be through this part. The hour was late, but it was never impossible for one of the old scholars to have fallen asleep on a pillow among the stacks.
And she had been through the library countless times before; there was no need to focus on it now. Even if it had been months since she was last home. She and Badr together had spent hours here. Just the two of them, when they had failed to coerce Zuya into studying. Poring over the legends and myths, soaking up the ancient, dead language of faith that so few of the locals knew, but that she and Badr had made a career of knowing.
She followed close beside him now, feeling her heart tight in her throat when she glanced at the back of his head, then shifted her eyes again onto the books and the path ahead.
Beyond the study, an ornate balcony framed a large, open room below. That room led into various sanctuaries, all with a particular purpose (such as birth rites, marriage rites, and death rites). When the people gathered in daylight and there was sound issuing from space below, the entire building swelled with beautiful, crescendoing melody. Now, though, it was only the creak of old board that echoed in the shadow overhead. For it was a surprisingly tall building, the delicate woodwork, colorful glass, and dragon-gem tiles soaring to heights rivaling the oldest trees of Simurgh. The eaves, in this darkness, could not even be seen.
Cinna held her breath, craning her neck to gaze upwards toward where she knew her favorite glass window to be. She could not make out the gleaming, colorful shape of the dragon in the darkness. But in daylight, this was one of her favorite places to pause and contemplate the power of the Dragon. She could feel, bathed in light from that window, with the swell of music all around her, that the spirit and the voice were true. That life, her life and everyone’s, had a purpose. That it was good to venerate that power, and good to contemplate that melody.
She lowered her gaze from the darkness of the rafters, following the echo of floorboards in Badr’s wake. This place was not, in itself, sacred. But sacred work was done here. She would protect that faith, whatever the cost.
Badr padded along the balcony to the back wall, opening a door at the center of the passage into a windowless room. This, too, was not the secret archives. But it was the deepest room in the building, which is to say, a room adjacent to the sheer rock face that bordered the back wall of the shrine—a section of the mountain that housed the Resting Grounds of the Chosen. Its curiously flat formation had been deemed a suitable shelter by the early denizens of Simurgh—tall enough to both protect the shrine from the elements (and also slanted enough to conceal the building from overhead watchers) and slanted in such a way that any geological traumas (such as rockslides) would tumble the other direction, away from the village. There was a myth that the Sacred Dragon had shorn the face of the mountain as a gift to his people, but it was a word-of-mouth story that was not found anywhere else except in stories for children.
This room, which was large enough to encompass the entire back wall of the building, was home to Simurgh’s central archives—the shelves thickly packed with scrolls and tomes. These were the books that any hands could touch, and any eyes could peruse. The great library of secrets…supposedly. Though not much in this room was all that secret, at least not comparatively. These books offered instruction on basic Rites of Song, histories of the nation since its foundation, guides to the forest life surrounding, basic magical manuals—both for elemental magics and song—and various tales of adventures and tragedies. It was, essentially, a perfectly normal library that might carry some knowledge that certainly anyone outside Simurgh might be surprised to learn, but which the people of the country largely were familiar with without even cracking open a book. There was even a section of foreign writing, which Badr had contributed to—after devouring the books presented to him by returning pilgrims—which meant that there was, in a fashion, a miniature shrine to the Chosen of Light housed in this very library.
Cinna felt herself smiling, almost fondly, at the shrine. Not at the thoughts of the Prince it now invoked, but at the young Badr who had made it, who kept this library, and who had grown up with her here. It had seemed so guileless, this pure, childlike devotion to a hero.
Some silent hum of amusement passed unuttered through Cinna’s throat; how funny how much things had changed in only a few short months.
The shelves took up the entirety of the space, leaving no room to sit and peruse. One would, customarily, take the books they wished to read to one of the other rooms on the second floor. It was darker and warmer and smelled sweeter than the library at the academy—the wood a rich, near-black hue, the tiles awash in starker colors, like red and navy, along the walls. It was a library that lived in a forest, and there was nothing about its atmosphere that did not inspire that thought, for walking among its rows somehow gave one the impression of walking through the trees.
Badr moved through the shelves, again with the careful step of a mouse, approaching the back wall, where it looked as though there were only more shelves. He stopped, tapping his chin and then moved a few shelves over, until he stood before a row of pretty blue books, their spines all painted with flowers. He pulled them out, one by one, until he spotted something hidden at the back of the shelf in the dark. Whether this was part of how the secret room was opened was not clear, but he began to hum a wordless song that sounded…frankly odd. It would be difficult for anyone who did not suspect its origin to say why it was so strange. Much of the Chosen of Song’s magic issued from songs calling to the natural world around Simurgh, but this song did not quite make sense to the human ear. It invited tones that seemed too low and rumbling for prettiness.
While he sang, Cinna stood back, eyes falling closed, hands clasped before her in a pose of divine adoration. She would always love the sound of Badr’s voice. Though this song was not a pretty one; she felt the haunting of it in her bones and in a place so deep within her that Cinna was not sure whether it was entirely her own anymore. The spiritual center, she thought, that connected what was hers with all that was not. Badr’s voice was profound, touched by the Holy Score Herself, and he the mouthpiece of Her blessings. So it was with reverence that Cinna waited, as her heart finally slowed in her chest, and she felt her skin cool for the first time since they had hurried across the portico outside.
Yes, it was with the Score’s own blessing they entered the inner library. So it was right, Cinna thought. She was doing the work, dirtying her own hands so that the faithful could flourish.
And just like that, Badr grabbed onto something at the back of the shelf and pulled, swinging the entire bookcase away from the wall to reveal a tiny, black room leading into the rock beyond. There was, in fact, a small gap between this corridor and the building, and he pointed at it, to warn Cinna to watch her step, as he ducked his head (for the path into the mountain was so low that even Cinna might need to stoop) and started into the darkness. The corridor did not go very far into the rock, and soon it opened into a very small and crowded feeling place (because it was impossible to actually see anything in the gloom).
Cinna opened her eyes and let out a soft breath. She gazed at the opening, then ducked to follow him into the narrow corridor.
Badr felt along the wall until he had set foot into this room and then softly sang a quick melody about fireflies, causing yellow-green lights to hang and sway in the darkness. Not a perfect illumination, but enough to see that whether it was due to Badr’s theory that the “off-limits” nature of the secret archives had caused its visitors to sneak around and leave things in disarray, or simply because, as the village elders would have one believe, the “key” to the space had been long lost and the room no longer accessible, there was no one to organize or tidy the place…Simurgh’s hidden archive was madness. It truly was thousands of books and scrolls and pieces of art all tumbling together—some on low wooden shelves, others just piled across the floor, and there did not seem to be even the slightest rhyme or reason to the sheer chaos of literature.
Badr smiled back at her, a little embarrassed (because it somehow felt like it was probably his responsibility to straighten this mess, even if he doubted that was something he would ever accomplish), and opened his arms, his hands slipping through the pale bobbing lights.
“Well, this is it. Not our most sacred space, but…certainly our most secret one.”
Cinna’s white clothes looked almost yellow in the light of the luminous globes that bobbed through the air. She parted a span of them, her heart back in her throat, as she gazed around at the clutter of the library’s innermost sanctum.
“I can see why nobody talks about this place,” she said, trying for humor despite herself. “Look at the state of these records.” She would have liked to spend hours here, not only tidying, but reading over whatever it was Simurgh held precious enough to keep hidden back here. There had to be more worth reading than only what she was looking for. But there wasn’t time, she reminded herself. And already she felt her hands trembling, as she moved a scroll carefully, then another.
(This was a mistake.)
“How do we know where to look for anything in this mess?”
“You’ll need to use a spell, like in the cathedral,” he explained. “A spell of searching.” He looked away from her, and the flicker of fear in his expression was lost to the other side of the room. He was afraid of what he could find here, and there was not enough danger of being caught, or excitement of a late-night adventure, to wholly disguise the dread that had brought him to this place.
In truth, he had intended at first to come alone—to find out if Gaius had spoken true…and if he had, to sit with that without an audience until he could at least school his expression into something that did not suggest the end of the world had arrived.
But…as time had passed, bringing them closer to their trip home…he’d become frightened of facing a confusing and painful reality alone. Cinna had helped him in the cathedral, and so he had asked her to come with him then, too, on the pretense of finding whatever they could about the Catastrophe and the Dark Knight among Simurgh’s most secret collection.
“If we both do a bit of magic, we ought to be able to find something of use,” he said after a moment, turning back to her with a bright smile—the same “little brother” smile he’d been showing her for years. The one that wanted to be rewarded for some feat of cleverness, and occasionally, athleticism. But it did not reach his eyes. “Let’s get started.” He moved away, so that they would both have a bit more space to work, and began murmuring a song (for he had been learning other ways of magic, but he always, always felt safest in song) to do the work that probably a more proper scrying spell would achieve…
Cinna gave a slight nod; she supposed that was obvious. Searching spells to sift through this uncatalogued jumble. She should have thought of that; she wasn’t sure why Badr’s suggestion came almost as a surprise to her, something secondary that she had to take a moment to consider, as if the idea had never occurred to her before, despite having done something like it not very long ago. She was not thinking clearly at all.
(This was a mistake.)
“Sure,” she said after a moment more of looking around at the cluttered hills of old paper and leather-bound books. “There has to be…something here, right? Something that can tell us anything useful…”
Her voice trailed off with a distant sort of expression in her eyes, as she looked anywhere but at Badr. It wasn’t entirely a lie; Cinna did want to know what the Knight and that other one had been up to in the Cathedral. But what she was after was something specific, something about the “truth about Crystals and about Serenitas,” and something about whatever it was that “all countries wanted to keep buried.” She glanced furtively in Badr’s direction again, as she bent through the luminous orbs to examine a loose bit of parchment. Badr was looking for something too, Cinna thought; he was keeping his distance here, keeping his eyes and mind apart, and there was something unnatural in his smile, something she didn’t like. Besides which, his suggestion to search the secret archive of Simurgh had been rather timely, after all, and Cinna had a quiet, sickening feeling in her stomach that he was looking for something specific too, just the same as she was.
Hopefully not exactly the same thing. Though, even more than what she planned to do with the knowledge, Cinna was suddenly afraid of what she might learn here. She had told the Knight that Simurgh didn’t keep secret vaults the way Serenitas did. Apparently, she had been wrong, and the revelation of this place left her feeling…uneasy.
But she nodded again when he stepped away, turning herself back to her own work. She focused her mind inward with a gesture of her hands. She had not brought her staff—it had seemed excessive for sneaking around the woods—but Cinna had learned enough control for a simple searching spell…
She made the shape of an invisible orb between her palms, then spread the spell wide with a silent frown deepening on her features. She felt outward with the gesture, her mind stretched the way a cobweb is pulled from one corner to another, feeling for the movement of little legs, the telltale vibrations of prey on the threads she unspun…
Their ancient records of the Calamity. I’m looking for something all countries want to keep buried, even for themselves,... Secret tomes of forgotten spells, the truth about the Crystals, the truth about Serenitas.
Cinna knelt among a pile of dusty materials and began sifting with her hands through them toward a faint tingling of something that had brushed against her spell.
He closed his eyes, focusing. He wanted to know of the Dark Knight and the Catastrophe and the Phasma, about all the secrets Simurgh and Serenitas and everyone else might be hiding, of course, but mostly…he had to know if what Gaius suggested was true. He heard the faintest ripple of something close by and carefully moved through the mess, still singing, straining his ears for the vague sound.
It seemed to be wrapped up inside something else. An ancient, cracking bit of paper inside of an ancient, cracking bit of paper. He knelt down, his back to Cinna, and began to very carefully prise the outer layer of scrolls away to reveal a single sheet of handmade paper. He did not know how old any of the writings in this room were. Some might well be from the time of the Catastrophe, or shortly thereafter. Some might have been written in his lifetime. But this…he thought it could be the former. It was so yellowed, the ink so faded, and it was so fragile he was afraid to hold it in his hands, lest it turn to dust.
But at first glance, he knew it was written in the Old Language; he thought, too, that the script looked like a woman’s writing. He could not tell if it had been damaged by water some time in its storage, or if its writer had wept over the paper. It would be hard to discern, and he was afraid to read its contents with Cinna in the room. He pulled out a little book from the pockets of his robes, carefully placing the paper inside for protection. He glanced over his shoulder to see if Cinna had noticed his find, but he thought she might be engrossed in something else.
But the fact that the spell had seemingly located anything… He would need to brace himself to read it. For more likely than not, there was some indisputable proof in those timeworn characters. He was still for a moment at that, using a breathing trick he’d been taught as a child to regain his focus; back then, he had been so afraid of standing before people… of speaking in front of them. But it had always done the trick, and it did not quieten his mind entirely, but it did take the edge off now.
He began to sing again, this time searching for bits and bobs about the Catastrophe. Perhaps…perhaps…he would…
Because what did it matter?
If all of this was no more than lies…then why should it matter what he did or didn’t tell? What had he even been protecting? He stopped, realizing he’d gritted his teeth, and the song was coming out wrong. He began to breathe again, readjusting the melody.
Cinna felt. First with her inner senses, then with the outer set. Like feathers on her fingertips, barely tangible but a tickling something just on the edges of perception. She shuffled aside a few books that seemed to be in the way of something, carefully moved some scrolls (though, despite her efforts to straighten them, they fell in a messy slump as soon as she released them), and sifted some loose parchment like leaves scattered in the fall. Something hummed across one of her invisible threads, something that had a particular weight to it. Like something irregular, or too big, really, for the web she had constructed. For a moment, she felt a twinge of anxiety, as if whatever it was had the power to stretch and break her spell.
Slowing her efforts, Cinna separated another stack of books, then pulled free a packet of pages so old and loose and worn they might almost have been dust. Yet they didn’t crumble at her touch, didn’t tear even slightly when she set them down and carefully—so carefully, so gently it was as if made of glass at first—moved the small, flat stone the Knight had given her from her pocket to pull it lightly across the surface of the page.
It made a soft sound of rock on paper, and Cinna stopped immediately, holding her breath. Then, exhaling as quietly as possible, she moved again, letting the rock do the work of reading for her, for now. It must be done quickly, she told herself, yet kept the gesture as slow and deliberate as possible. She couldn’t quite make out the words before her. Some phrases and words were familiar, but the text was old. Perhaps in code. Cinna had studied the ancient, dead language of the faith and Old Simurgh alongside Badr, but this was all but unrecognizable. She supposed it would have to be. If it concealed as much as the Knight had hinted at.
She flinched, the stone sliding across the page, at a shift in Badr’s singing. Cinna was used to Badr’s singing; she had more or less grown up with it, and as striking as his voice could be, it was also something as natural to the world as wind. But something in his melody had faltered briefly. An unusual sound. Cinna straightened and let the stone slide to the edge of the page before stopping in her work.
(She hoped it wouldn’t damage the results.)
Craning her neck, she glanced behind her to where Badr was still sifting through records with hands and song. “Anything?”
“Not yet,” he replied, stiffening—his back still to her, so that she could not see the way his eyes widened in alarm at having to tell such a lie so blatantly. He cleared his throat. “This mess…” And he gestured vaguely at the jumble of writings all around them. “But I thought maybe…” He had to stop talking before he gave himself away, so he resumed the song, until the humming echoed back to him from somewhere in the corner. He wrested free a few scrolls, taking them carelessly from the clutter. For a moment, he looked at them, still neatly sealed, and then he stuffed them into his robes.
“That will do. Unless there is anything else you wish to…borrow?” Or keep. It was wrong to keep these things, even if they were not shared with all of Simurgh. He knew this. Those illustrated scrolls he’d brought along, still hidden under layers of rugs in his room back at the dormitory? Those were not his. They had been put here for safe keeping, because he was fairly certain that the little cave did have some sort of ward on it to preserve the documents within. They belonged here, so that they would not be lost to time and element, but he had not brought them home. It was selfish and sinful, and he knew that, but he wanted to lash out, and…that was one small way to do it at least. One of the few in his power that would not cause much harm.
He still cared about that.
He did not want to punish anyone who was not at fault. But he did not know who was. He feared that perhaps there was even a reason, and so there never would be anyone to blame, nowhere to put these feelings of betrayal…
“I will teach you the song later. You should be able to learn it easily enough; you have learned so much of the Old Language, after all.” He said it, meaning to speak to the fact that learning Simurgh’s forgotten language was a task; as always, he failed to think of how such a remark might land on someone whose name was shaped in another country. But then, perhaps he always did… “I would like to know…one day…about why we keep some of the secrets that we do,” he said, very carefully, after a moment. “Such as this one.” He stared at the floor, at a book by his ankle. “But for now, we should return, before the roosters begin to crow.”
Cinna did not turn around right away. She tried to finish her work quickly, keeping her back to Badr, as she moved the stone over the parchment, wondering at the same time what all the stone was absorbing. She wished she had the time to examine these documents further. She supposed she could slip a few items into her pockets and take them for further inspection elsewhere. Badr wouldn’t stop her; he almost seemed to be encouraging it.
But Cinna did not want to risk being caught with the documents. Not with what she intended to do with the information—it would break his heart. So she kept her back to Badr, as she let the stone do its work, trying to conceal her last few strokes from his view, while he went on finishing his song.
They made quite a pair of thieves, Cinna mused, slipping the stone finally into her pocket. It felt heavy there, thumping her thigh as she stood, forcing a plain expression onto her features.
“I told the—well, I was thinking recently,” she started, her pale eyes searching Badr’s face from across the scene of their crime, “that Simurgh was…that we were different. You know, there’s guards everywhere back in Serenitas. Especially at that Cathedral of theirs. You just know there’s so much they don’t share. Not even with their own, until you rise high enough in the right ranks.” Cinna sighed with a slow glance around the shadowy edges of the cave. “I just thought…I expected something different here.”
She’d been wrong. They both had.
But Cinna shook herself. She turned briefly to re-stack and arrange the few of the items she had disturbed in her search (little good it did in the grand scheme of things here, it soothed her), and then drew a breath to call back the threads that still hung limp in the air around her. Then, blinking off the remnants of the spell, she started toward the low entrance through which they had arrived. “We aren’t usually the troublemakers,” she added with a small smile. “It would be quite a blemish to our pristine reputations to be caught down here.”
Badr stared at her for a moment…perhaps there was something he wanted to say, though the expression on his face had flattened and become inscrutable. Perhaps the only reason they did not have guards around their shrine was because they were small, and because they had the luxury of being hidden. Otherwise, it seemed to him, especially in that moment…how could he not feel that Simurgh was, at its root, just as questionable, just as cold, as Serenitas? He shook his head and thought to laugh. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, because his throat was filled with bitterness, and he could not trust any word that might issue from it.
After a moment, he slowly, staggeringly, nodded. He bit back a sigh and forced a smile instead, shrugging. “For…for what it’s worth…I think…some of these writings…really are just here for safe keeping.” He idly picked up an illustrated scroll. “To preserve them…Or, they were put here…only for that…and then simply…forgotten.” His face felt hot, and his throat felt tight, and the small room felt like a box. He rubbed his face and laughed through his hands.
“Well, at least I don’t intend to throw down any gauntlets…” For now. “So I think Zuya is still technically the troublemaker.” He swallowed and then nodded, waiting for Cinna to pass through first so that he could extinguish the illumination spell and brush away the trace of their intrusion.
Badr seemed to stall, looking back at her, and Cinna felt her expression go dull and featureless. She felt as if Badr was keeping his inscrutable too, despite the laugh he managed. Perhaps he had expected something different here too. Perhaps he was looking for something he didn’t want her to know about either. It wasn’t like them to keep blatant secrets from each other, but perhaps they had both put too much faith in this place.
Anyway, Cinna reminded herself, she did not make a point of lying to Badr and Zuya, but had they ever really known her? She had her own agenda, her own ambitions. She would not leave him behind once she had succeeded.
So it was, perhaps on instinct, that Cinna paused in the doorway, glancing back at Badr where he stood putting out the lights, and waited in silence for him to join her, so she could follow him. She had always followed him, him and Zuya and the Dragon and the Score, and she always would.
Back down the narrow dark corridor, moving towards that faint line of light filling the small crack between mountain and shelf, and into the warm, dark confines of the library. He said nothing more as he led the way back to the first study room, the roof, the tree, and then the veranda. He was glad, at least in that moment, that they must be quiet to avoid discovery. He did not think he would make a good conversationalist, and his thoughts kept pushing too close, eager to swallow up the little bit of focus he had for where he placed his feet.
So it was with a start that he rounded the corner, She was sitting on the railing, gazing silently in their direction with her unblinking eyes—her tail feathers painting pink strokes in the shadows. She said nothing, but he could understand the request without words. He closed his eyes, because he didn’t want to talk to Her right now. He wasn’t even sure what this creature even was. Not a goddess. Maybe not even the actual Holy Score, as he had been led to believe, but some queer manifestation of a rock. But there She was, and even with that strange missive tucked inside his pocket, it was hard not to obey. He swallowed and then nodded. Fine.
Fine.
“Sister, you should continue home. I won’t be long. At least, if we are to be caught, better only one than both.” It would be harder to explain both, at least. For the Chosen of Song to be at the Temple of Song in the middle of the night, at least, was strange, but swimming with potential explanation. “Just make certain no one sees anything you’ve borrowed, or we shall both be in for it.” He smiled a little more naturally then, though a ruefulness hung heavy in his eyes, and he moved away from her, towards the strange and lovely bird.
He stopped just before Her, silence hanging between them, and waited, watching for Cinna to continue on her way.
Cinna flinched internally. Though her placid face remained cool as ice in the moonlight. Indeed, Cinna made a pale ghost of a figure in the darkness of that forest. More than she ever had before. Some will-o’-the-wisp lighting up unusually bright, with white hair and white clothes, silently shifting in a breeze and only the dark weight of that stone in her pocket to shadow her steps.
But he was waiting for her to depart. And it felt strange to sense Badr sending her away like that, while he stood back. Waiting to converse with Her, Cinna supposed. He had always had his duties, and Cinna knew she was not always meant to be a party to them, however much she sometimes wished to be closer to the Score. Still, there was an uncomfortable distance in him now, something that didn’t want to be seen, and so made itself all the more obvious, as he stood stoic and soldier-like before the bird.
Cinna nodded. Slowly, politely, respectfully. Then she turned to go, silver fleck wavering, then blinking out into night.