A Meeting of Water & Ink
E
ventful was the first word Selka Greenveil thought of as soon as she woke up. The word was already on her tongue though, and was quickly replaced by a string of obscenities when she realized she was late. She found her favorite black boots and black pants with the silver stitching. Her dark green top with the half sleeves smelled clean enough, so she threw it on. Kitty Wompus, her lazy black cat, buried herself beneath her thick tail, unbothered by Selka's rushed, chaotic energy saturating the morning air.Throwing her long black hair up and taking an apple from the table, she headed for the door. On her way out, she noticed the lantern that always stayed lit was burning a low, dull blue.
This was rarely a good sign. Unknown energy was making its way to her.
“You'll have to wait, I can't deal with this right now, I'm late.” She grumbled as she grabbed the nearest black cloak she could find and headed outside. She rushed towards her boat to row the nearly twenty-six minutes down the river to where the Ferry was docked.
Twenty minutes later, she was heading to her little office tucked in the back of the Driftlight Ferry. She made it here in record time. The early breeze carried a mix of river-blossom and drift wood. A light mist wafted onto the Ferry, cutting through the thick humid air. She walked inside the office and closed the door. She had volunteered on the ferry for four years now, getting her office about a year and a half ago. She hadn't planned on joining the Ferry but Selka couldn't stay away. She fell in love with the place on day one. She was home.
The people here were hardy folks. They lived barefoot most times and weren't afraid of a hard day's work. They didn't gawk at her either. She was one of the few Oneiroi that actually left the Plains. Most people that lived here were too busy with their business to worry about her heritage. In the Respite, her heritage wasn't what they talked about, so much as how she got here. People said all sorts of crazy things about her. She didn't correct them either.
"In Atheria, every unsaid truth gathers acoustic mass until the room itself begins to lean."
Carved into the stone archways of the Bardic College of Musical MagicSelka watched from the apothecary window, her fingers sorting through dried sprigs of Moonfen Petal and Driftleaf. Each herb held its own pitch when bruised: Driftleaf hummed a quiet, comforting C-major, while Moonfen vibrated with the faint, unsettling static of a dream trying to finish its sentence.
As she tended to the herbs growing in the windowsill, she thought of the dream again and the name it always carried. Moonfen-petal and Driftleaf herbs began the drying process. As she moved onto the next box a pounding on her door interrupted the humming of the plants. She opened the door to see Tovin Reed, Ferry's last student listener. A witty fourteen year old boy, smarter than he let on and loyal to the Ferry. Selka liked him immediately. When she opened the door he didn't wait for her to greet him before grabbing her wrist and leading her to the mercy deck.
“Come on, we need your help to get him out of the water” Tovin said walking hastily along to the side of the ferry.
“Get who Tovin? What's going on?” she asked and as they rounded the corner, there he was in the water. Floating face up and pale as a whistle reed in winter. That's when she noticed Tovin was soaked from the waist down and the twins, Neraya and Thea Hopewind, the eleven year old Apprentice bell‑runners were leaning over the rail with long sticks.
In unison they yell, “Selka! He won't wake up to grab our sticks!”
“Guys, chill out, I'm here. Back up over here now.” she said moving them back from the railing. Taking her boots off she calls to the twins to grab a couple towels from the linens.
“Tovin come help me. I'll lift him up, you pull him on the deck.”
She jumped in the waist deep water and wadded towards the man.
He was breathing but still unconscious.
“He's alive! He's breathing!”
Selka called, as she began to drag him to drag him towards the Ferry.
Then, turning him around, she lifted him up and Tovin hooked his arms under the man's armpits pulling him up and onto the deck.
♫ A Memory In Yesterday
They finally got Echorin out of the river. He was barely conscious, gasping for breath, and his clothing bled streaks of a strange, unnatural black ink across the floorboards. Selka and Tovin got him to her office and into her chair. As Echorin’s ink-stained body collapsed onto the cushion, the resonance strip beneath the seat immediately came to life. Singing in sympathy to the resonance of whoever is seated in the chair. The tone it made reacting to his presence told Selka exactly what afflicted him. He was suffering from a deep suffocating grief, and he was a child of the river. She knew this, because she was too. She wondered if the river spoke to him the way she spoke to her.
Echorin sat up, he rubbed his eyes. When he rose to stand his knees buckled beneath him. Selka reached out to hold him steady, and gently lowered him back into the seat. The strip sang again. Confusion this time.
"Hey you're ok, you're on the Driftlight now, you're safe." Selka said calmly as she sat across from him.
"What were you doing in the river?" She asked once he settled back.
Echorin looked at her and around the cabin before settling his eyes on hers.
"That's a long story" he rasped, clearing his throat, "I was running away from a terrible mistake." He dropped his eyes a moment.
When he looked back up he says, "You're Selka Greenveil aren't you?" Her face answered before her mouth could form the words.
"I've heard a lot about you from Sam. He's a huge fan."
Echorin caught a flash of a smile on her face before it disappeared. Her nebula pupils asked the question before her voice did.
"Your planter box has your name painted on it. You're Oneiroi. How many dream folk named Selka live outside the Plains?” he answers the question she asked only with her eyes.
“Oh, right.” Selka glanced at the planter's box, then back to him.
He gave a half smile then continued, “He visited the Astral Plains during the Nebula Bazaar Cosmic Events. He went to your tent for a reading. He said you were the most accurate reader he's ever seen. When it was over, he said your temperamental lantern erupted into green flames, he got scared and bolted." Echorin continued.
"I remember him, that was years ago. Very few go from star struck to fearful that quickly. Even fewer, return hours later with an apology and a tip. He was a sweet boy. I've always wondered what happened to him.”
Selka traced the rim of her mug as she recalled the night Sam came to her tent.
“He came in during the time I usually set aside for the younglings. He didn't realize that and I had teased him about it. It was slow that mid-morning and told him to sit, I'd do a reading.” She moved around the room like a dream, as she spoke.
“It was a resonant reading. The runes told me Sam belongs to the dirt, he almost got offended before realizing it was not an insult. Sylvara herself blessed Sam. You can see her mark all over him. They also said his father put too much pressure on him and his mother would have been proud of him.”
She paused for a moment before adding, voice low,“That's when his demeanor changed.
Like a melancholy washed over him. Then he rushed out of the tent."
Her voice trailed off as Echorin's face made the same look Sam's had made. ♫
♫ A Crack in Stone
"He didn't tell it quite like that. He said your lantern made colors at him.”
Echorin said with a weak laugh.
“Yeah it did. A green blue flame when it senses Sylvara's mark. Why do you think he ran away like that?” She asked him.
“I know why.” Echorin cleared his throat, and continued. “His mom left, a few years after he was born. His father woke up one morning, when Sam was three and she left. She was just gone. He doesn't remember much of her but she'd sing to him. He doesn't like to talk about her much. Blames himself for her leaving." Echorin dropped his head, hands in his lap, awkwardly twirling his fingers together.
“My mom died three seasons back. It's hard being without a parent, no matter how old you are.” Selka said, grabbing their empty mugs and beginning to prepare a second.
He kept his head down, unsure whether or not he should share his story. Enough sadness had already saturated the air.
He could feel the cold it left. He decided against it. When he finally looked up he said bluntly, "So I hear you know things about the river that others don't."
He says, their eyes locking for a heartbeat longer than they should have. She inhales sharply and holds it. Echorin continued, "I read the old head archivist's ledger. In the Scriptotium, he kept many personal ledgers. One said he was to meet you about the Rootmother. I also heard you don't ask questions. That you know things and you can keep your mouth shut."
Selka offered no immediate reply. She moved toward the iron stove with careful, rhythmic grace, pouring two cups of Riverblossom tea from the clay pot.
"I ask the river questions and it answers more honestly than people," she murmured, her voice a low, steady anchor in the gloom.
"I remember your archivist and his obsession with the river.” She moves like oil in water around the room to face him, “You heard correctly, I rarely ask the clients questions beyond their name. Though, I never did get yours. What name do they call you, stranger?"
"My name is Echorin," he muttered.
As soon as the sound formed his name, the river-rune stone that she had had for over two decades snapped clean in two as it sat resting on her desk. Echorin’s eyes snapped to Selka's.
"Well that doesn't sound good.” saying nervously while sitting up straight in the chair.
Selka glanced from the sundered stone to the ink-spattered man sitting in her chair. She exhaled a slow, deliberate breath. And sat down across from him. As she slid a steaming cup of Selunaris milk-tea across the grain of the wooden table.
"That," she said, "was the sound of twenty-three years of patience finally cracking. Have some more tea, Echorin.
We have a few things we need to talk about."
"Yes, I suppose we do Selka." Echrorin no chuckle in his voice this time, picked up the teacup, placed the rim to his lips, and took a long slow drink.