Starflame13
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Oh the North wind blows, the South wind moans, and the West wind only howls.
But the wind from the East, it calls man and beast, to listen to the Spirit’s sound.
Oh the rattles shake, the cymbals quake, and the timbrels ring and chime.
To form together the song, that calls us along, in the wake of the Divine.
Oh the humans die, the Ioa fly, and we dance from high to low.
Deal with both hands, keep balance in the land, bringing with us joy and woe.
Gentle humming fills the air as the crimson sunset kisses the horizon. Baked earth warms her soles as she pushes her chair back crk-crk-crk and forth, wood dry and worn. A sibilant hiss slips through, the curve of the snake turning and vanishing as her eyes flick its way. The soft caress of the breeze brushes her cheek instead, a herald of the evening chill, and she rises with a sigh. Cold seeps into her bones more easily of late, as the world turns to autumn and the grasses that stretch between her and the village drying a golden-brown. The flickers of light from the windows just reach her across the hsh-hsh-hsh waving expanse. Murky eyes linger. Tongue darts out to lick her lips as fingers twist in on themselves - and then she’s turning away. Her home is here.
The woman ducks under the doorframe, low-hanging bunches of marigolds shivering at the passage, the heady musk of sun-baked earth drifting through the disturbed dust. Footsteps pad to the hearth, its surge of fire dissolving to reveal still-warm coals at her approach. Her arm stretches between the swinging copper pots, snagging a length of straw and lighting the end. The bullfrogs beyond the wall par-eep par-eep sing as she circles the hovel, lighting candles in her wake. As one world drifts to sleep, the waters of the swamp at her back awaken.
Always a cycle.
The wicks pop-snk-sck spit into the air, dried rosemary wafting from the flickering lights. Shadows rise and dance through the room as the flames grow, subduing the last glows of sunlight still caught through the upper doorway. It shimmers through the rafters, alighting on the curve of a tambourine, copper gleaming and pure - No.
Not pure. The woman turns, pupils dilating in the light, and weaves her way forward, carefully stepping over the snakes in the shadows. A hand reaches out, dark fingers trailing down the warm metal. Not a mirage, either. Her first instrument, crafted to bring forth the first note of this home, this life. Blessed by her Maîtresse to ring clear and sharp and true. With a single eddy of rust now curling around a single disk.
Three dozen turns of autumn she has stood in her role, apart from the cycle. Yet the world turns, seasons rise and fall, and she cannot remain aloft for much longer.
Perhaps it is time.
Délaila nan Koulèv passes her gaze across the assembled gaggle of children, expressionless as each dips their head to avoid her gaze. Behind them - half-hidden by the grasses - are the adults of the village, their hands nervous birds fluttering with each whisper who - if - why that reaches her. A tall figure looms behind them - then vanishes as her gaze lingers. ‘An honor,’ the Chieftain had said all those years ago, presenting her to the man who would become her Master. ‘A curse,’ his wife had murmured before she left, her relief evident that none of her own children would be offered to the Ioa this cycle. And so it repeats.
She smiles. The children peeking at her out of the corners of their eyes all flinch.
“Come,” she gestures them forward, to the circle laid out that dawn with wide, flat river stones. The snake sunning itself hisses its displeasure, dissipating as a child steps through it to hesitatingly take a seat on the stone. “We shall call forth the Maîtresse.” Délaila lets the kids settle, watches them unwittingly relax in the warmth emanating from the ground, in the constant bzz-bzz-bzz drone of mosquitoes.
A sharp clap, and the youths jump, the sharp ring of her tambourines jolting the world. A moment of complete silence lingers - then breaks with a soft shk as the Caplata takes her rattle in hand.
“And we shall see for whom she answers.”
Délaila twirls, then folds downward, legs bending to set her in the center of the circle. Her rattle comes up to rest between her hands, cymbals chnk-chnk-chnk swaying in the echoes of the motion. A soft exhale - and then she is singing, the wordless tune rising forth, every so often punctuated by a shake of the rattle. Come, Ioa. Her chest fills with the sound, building in volume, in pace, the song pouring forth as if pulled through her rather than from her. Come, Maîtresse! Wind picks up, the massive coils of the snake rising to encircle the group, and she closes her eyes against the light reflecting off bright scales. Come - !
Coolness slips beneath her skin, the hair on her arms rising. Beads of sweat break out at the back of her neck, and she jerks - only to find she cannot move. Her voice continues onward as something else joins the ritual, sound fading from her ears. It prods her, assessing. Judging.
Approving - ?
Sweat freezes against her skin, ice plunging through her veins. Her eyes open to blackness - no snake, no stones - and Délaila cannot even scream as the weight of the ground vanishes beneath her, and she falls.
She falls.
Rsh-rsh-rsh.
Rsh-rsh-rsh.
Rsh-rsh -
Délaila’s eyes fly open to a sea of rustling undergrowth. Huge, heart-shaped leaves the color of tar block out the sky. The air tastes flat across her tongue, dull, not even dust to scent. Breath after breath she drags in, otherwise unmoving, until her chest steadys, until her jaw unclenches. Coldness takes over her eyes as her expression stills, slipping into the mask the villagers expected of their Capalata. Gone is rustling grasses, the burbles of the bayou, the sun-baked earth replaced with cold stone. Palms slide along it, finding not a single crack or divot. Too perfect, too unnatural to be the workings of an Ioa. But she’s served them too long to not recognize the workings of some Divine.
Nothing else could break her free of her home.
The priestess sits up slowly, raising a hand to push away the foliage - only for it to withdraw itself, skittering away from her touch to reveal a gray, empty sky. The wind falls as she rises, leaving the vines still and silent. She turns, expecting to see one of her snakes, to catch the flicker of movement and their disgruntled his as they vanish from her view -
None reach her. The world remains silent. Remains still.
No glimpse of red or yellow. Only black - quickly retreating against the onslaught of white.
My Maîtresse…
Neither her Mistress nor the Serpents followed her.
She is somewhere the Ioa cannot touch.
Délaila turns, slowly. She knows better to rejoice the loss of shackles when she will need the weapons still clasped around her wrists and ankles. Wherever she is, she does not belong - and only blood opens the pathways from Life to Death, and from Death to Life. If she can find enough to spill. The woman turns again, watching as the vegetation recoils, no sound save chnk-chnk-chnk her own tambourines. She takes a step forward, testing the stone cautiously. Too smooth, too cold for one blessed in fire, but…
A Caplata walks the path they are given.
With each step forward the undergrowth pulls back, parting until it reveals a collection of stone structures, ivory runes choked by strangling black. Her eyes flick constantly side to side in her otherwise still expression, until her gaze settles on a structure that towers above the rest. Somewhere to start.
She encounters no other soul as she approaches the tower, no way to track the distance travelled save for the growing sparseness of the jungle. By the time she reaches the spire, only stone remains, surrounding buildings blocking her view of the gardens. Délaila cranes her neck upwards, stone soaring impossibly high, and tracks the staircase spiraling about its length. A path given, indeed.
And so she climbs.
Chnk-chnk.
Chnk-chnk.
Chnk-chnk.
Her hand drags along the wall beside her, dark skin the only deviation against the white stone. The wind has yet to return, the sound of her cymbals joined only by her ragged breathing to assure her that she is indeed moving. Again and again she circles, chest rising and falling more and more shallowly. The blackness finally returns, this time as spots at the edges of her vision that she knows better than to look at. And still she climbs, step after step.
Chnk-chnk.
Chnk-chnk.
Chnk-chchchcnk-!
Délaila stumbles on the suddenly flat surface, the roof of the tower expanding out before her. Its emptiness matches that of the sky below. She blinks, then rubs the back of her hand across her eyes. Charcoal smudges remain - lingering far away against the horizon.
There is nothing else.
No sound, no color. No wind left to drift the currents and pull forth music from the world about it.
The priestess takes a long, slow breath and steps to the very edge. I serve the Ioa of the Timbrels. If this path holds music from her, even at the pinnacle of the world? She will make her own.
Arms raise skywards, moving so slowly that not a single bead of her rattle shifts as she positions it high overhead. Come, Ioa. Her chest rises, falls. Rises again. Come, Maîtresse.
Délaila slams the belly of the rattle into the meat of her palm, sending the beads whirring with a heavy thu -
- rrrck!
Sky and stone shatter about her with the report of a rifle shot. Colors bloom - crimson and gold flooding back into the world. The stench of blood encircles her, coils of red-black-yellow scales pressing close, embrace flooding her with warmth. Pressing tighter, tighter, tighter - breath squeezing from her lungs in a gasp and tears leaking from her eyes.
You came - !
The serpent twists, tail twitching at the edges of her vision as it vanishes into a wall of fog. Toes curl against warmed earth - hard-packed dirt once more rather than chilled stone. One corner of her lips twist up in a smile before falling flat again. Motion - people - flicker in the distance. Keep the mask.
Délaila inhales carefully, rolling the taste of blood across her tongue. Scarlet rivers, their flow thick and sluggish, cut through the ground across from her. Bars of light brush her toes, the rusted tones of a permanent eclipse shining between thick stakes. Moonlight through twisted iron, rivers of blood through the sun-baked earth. A balance - blood at the gateway between Life and Death.
Murky eyes raise to the far banks of the rivers, the flickers of motion settling into humanoid forms. Black swirls in a vortex above each figure’s head even as white rays of starlight flash above her own. A mirage, yes - but not her own. Another mind still at play, then. The Divine that intervened in her summoning of the Maîtresse. Eyes narrow, a chink in her mask.
Who’s blood shall be spilled first?
A tall figure, clad in long robes the same color as the rivers and a short tail of hair nearly the shade to match.
A young man with skin as dark as her own, the moonlight glinting off the glasses adorning his face.
An inhuman creature, its insect-like appendages glittering with gold from where they protrude above a pale, pristine cloth.
Red, black, and yellow. The serpent flickers into her vision - then away.
The tides bubble glb-blb-blb and churn against their banks. Mists flicker over its surfaces - resolving into the shape of countless sprawling bodies, some writhing in agony and others suspiciously still. A horned woman strikes amongst them, a blade in each hand singing out to plunge deep through the hearts of each body passed, whether pleading, struggling, or motionless. Then the moon brightens, crimson light cutting through the wisps. So rarely is the boundary of Life and Death so literal.
How… amusing.
Délaila dismisses the voice from the waters - its meaning seeping through her minds even as she lets the words wash by. She needed nothing more than the symbols above to understand her purpose here. The priestess takes a step forward and speaks, voice deep and rolling to carry across the tides.
“It seems the Balance is uneven.”
The Capalata takes off at a sprint. Padded feet thud against the earth as she darts out of her assigned square, aiming for the center. Her tambourines shriek, jarred into motion. Feet dig in to the soft mud at the bank as bloody hands rise to grab her ankles, toes skimming the surface chnk-chnk-CHNK as she launches herself over the bank. Movement snaps at her peripherals, too sharp, too focused, her opponents all moving at once even as she twists to land in the shallows at the opposite bank. Feet splsh-SPLSH-SPLSH plunge into the viscous liquid, droplets flinging off her ankles as she twirls her next step into dry land, the world a blur around her. Rattle HSH-hsh-hsh raises high as metal flashes, tight and warm against each of her limbs.
“Let us restore it!”
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