thisbluespirit (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thisbluespirit) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2025-05-10 08:46 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2025-05-10 08:46 pm
Beet Red #28; Azul #30 [Starfall]
Name: Hidden Lights
Story: Starfall
Colors: Beet Red #28 (Beg steal or borrow); Azul #30 (Token of strength or loyalty)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Pastels (also forno_true_pair prompt March 26th - Leion & Pello at the beach) + resin (also for allbingo May color fest square "true colors.") + Giftwrap + Triptych + Novelty Beads - https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/00/09/8b/00098b9d3a37c21ed8bd3ee00da58c7c.jpg (September Secrets 2020) + "Fire Opal" (Birthday prompts 2020) + Graffiti - for the May Parents challenge.
Word Count: 1918
Rating: PG
Warnings: Brief mention of possible death, risk of drowning, abandonment.
Notes: 1297-1306, Portcallan; Pello Ahblan, Joend Ahblan, Leion Valerno, Tana Veldiner, Tam Jadinor. (Introducing a new character who we're going to see more of in time. The end scene of this takes place immediately after the recent Atino and Leion sequence.)
Summary: Pello's fascination with starstone leads to an unexpected encounter on the beach at midnight.
Pello's been fascinated by starstone forever. He doesn't have the money to waste on the little shell tokens they make for casting into the sea, to beg favours from Shara, but so many other people do that he and his friends can comb the beach for them or catch them in a net in the shallows and rockpools. They play at guessing what kind of dream each glimmering, glass-like shell shape is, and steal it for themselves; guesses growing wilder the longer the game goes on.
"Six hundred and eight starflowers to spend!" says Ky.
"A boat!" Xianto chimes in.
Pello clenches his fist tighter around his little haul of wishes. "If you say it, they don't come true. My jumeiki says so."
He takes the shining tokens home. Some are worn smooth into cloudy pebbles; others have washed straight back up as if Shara didn't want to know—often chipped but still sparkling and shell-shaped.
Some are different colours, not like the clear ones they sell on market stalls by the handful. Those are rare, to be treasured or swapped wisely.
Portcallan throws its dreams into the sea, while Lower Portcallan nets them in, and puts them to use.
Pello's father, his jumeiki, is a carpenter. He builds and mends ships. Pello remembers toddling about the workshop when he was small, playing with long curling strips of wood shavings. On rare occasions, birth anniversaries and special days, Father sometimes makes toys; carved and brightly painted strange creatures and figures that his friends go wild for. He swaps a yellow and orange cat one day for ten whole pieces of sea-stolen starstone, all different colours.
He keeps some, though, like a peachy, many-armed sea creature, and a soldier-figure in Sea Watch green.
"You must find what's inside, waiting to get out," Father says. He traces the blank piece of wood with a weathered and scarred brown thumb, darker than the wood. He lifts his gaze and grins at Pello, then pats his shoulder. "Trees are living things, you know. They speak after death, like the Powers. You listen. That's the trick."
Pello complains. That's silly. He never hears or sees anything in dead wood. His efforts at carving are lifeless, never mind how well Father teaches him how to put together a table or a box. That's just know-how; even he can learn that. But you can't see through wood, like you can with starstone. Wood doesn't hum in your ear as if whispering secrets from an unseen world. Father knows all kinds of things, but he's got that wrong.
Father's accident happens when Pello is thirteen. He catches his hand between a join when he's working, and damages the bones. He can't do the work he used to, and makes do with the lesser tasks he can manage in the shipyard, and the lesser pay that goes with them. His gift at pulling out living things from old wood isn't what it was, either; arthritic hands betray him. But he paints and repairs figureheads for the prows of ships, and makes signs for shops and inns. He says the wood whispers to him yet of what it wants to be—colour, shape, story, all there underneath it to Father, always waiting to get out.
Mother doesn't live with them. Pello doesn't really remember her. When he was little, she visited a few times. Sailors are like that, Father says when he speaks of her; a faraway look in his eyes. "She'd come back if she could," he tells Pello. He says he always knew that one day she'd go looking for the Barrier or sail away to Varravil and never come home again.
She had the wind and the waves tangled up inside her, is Father's explanation. "I ought to have written to her people again," he adds with a sigh. "But I knew what the news would be, and I didn't want to hear it."
Father prefers to imagine Mother forever out there, sailing far, far away towards the Barrier.
Pello stares into one of his newest, cleanest shell tokens. If he squints, he can see a ship and a figure in its depths. He likes thinking of Mother that way too.
Pello joins the Sea Watch at seventeen. He has a proper go at learning carpentry first, but he hasn't gained any more true feeling for it in the intervening years, not like Father. Wood has never yet rivalled, for him, that enticing first glint of a piece of starstone—the spark of a mystery waiting to be uncovered.
But Pello doesn't want to leave Father behind in Lower Portcallan, and he has to try something that will pay him sooner rather than later. The Sea Watch will use him right here, and he's bound to pick up useful skills, even if he doesn't stay forever—which of course he won't.
He will do something else one day—go places, see things—but for now, looking out for other people travelling in and out of the port is a start.
The Sea Watch aren't the army, exactly, or the navy or the Guardians of the Peace. The rest of Emoyra, outside of Southern District doesn't even have them. Pello learns that from the first talk they give all the new recruits. Even as near as some parts of Western District, the army and the navy guard the coastal forts and stop smugglers, while local volunteers or town council workers watch for ships and people in trouble and mind the beacons.
Portcallan's Sea Watch was once under the control of Calla Fort, now long buried deep under the north eastern quarter of the city. Calla Fort ended up belonging to the Allins of Calla Island, and then so had the Sea Watch, and many an Allin had been its Captain—then a much grander and more powerful position. Except somehow, these days, that has been turned right around and now the Sea Watch belong to the city instead.
The Sea Watch might not be the army, the navy, or the Guardians, but they have to work with all of them. Pello is sent in turn to learn some things from all three organisations. In the course of that education, Pello learns one thing for certain: the only thing all three of those agree on is despising the Sea Watch.
The trouble with being such a new Sea Watch officer—not even properly one yet, still only on probation—is that he has to prove himself by doing things he doesn't want to do, like taking on night patrols on during the Sea Festival, when his friends are busy partying.
Pello walks along the sea front and pauses there to watch a bonfire down on the other side, not far from Lower Portcallan, where most of his friends will be, drinking and dancing and laughing. He sighs. Then he straightens his head, and tugs at the dark green jacket of his uniform. He puffs out his chest. He has responsibility—and pay.
His patrol mate has gone off to deal with some revellers at the beacon, and that's when Pello sees another idiot, probably as drunk as the rest, tearing down towards the quay and then on, down the stone steps, where the tide is already lapping at the wide stones. The beach itself is entirely covered, but the idiot runs into the sea; a tiny silhouette in dark waves that intermittently glint like starstone in the moonlight.
Pello loses a few moments of vital time in gaping at the sheer stupidity of whoever it is. Then he shakes himself and yells a warning. He runs after, as fast as he can, pounding down the path to the water. It's not a safe place to swim, here where the river Calla meets the sea. The currents can be lethal and it's nearly high tide.
By the time he reaches the quayside, a young woman has arrived ahead of him. She's pale-skinned and fair-headed, wearing a light robe as she stands on the stones below, shouting at the reckless swimmer. Pello takes a breath and dashes down the uneven steps at the side of the quay and joins her.
Luckily, the young man is already pulling himself back out of the water, clambering up onto the stone slabs beside the woman. He's dripping wet in his shirt and underthings.
"I had to," he says to her, as Pello reaches them. "I didn't know what else to do."
"Idiot," says the woman.
Pello stands in their way, as they both turn to go. He raises a hand, fingers spread. "Imai," he says. "You're very lucky to still be here."
"Oh," says the young man. His eyes widen slightly as he takes in the uniform. He's as pale as the woman, but black-haired, and probably not much older than Pello. "Oh dear. Did Tam send you?"
The young woman rolls her eyes. "Leion, he's Sea Watch."
"Right," Leion says. "Doing your job, I see. Splendid. We're both fine, so you can just -"
They all stop, interrupted by others running towards them, thundering down the road to the quay in boots. Guardians of the Peace. Before Pello can open his mouth to tell them that this is a minor matter and he's dealing with it, one of them seizes him, pinning both arms behind his back and marches him up the steps ahead of the other two.
"Hey!" he yells. "Sea Watch! Let go!"
The woman hurries after them. "Officer—he's Sea Watch. He's not part of this!"
They all come to a halt on the quayside as an older, more senior Guardian joins them. He's a tall, grizzled man, as dark-skinned as Pello. He pauses to look at them all, taking in the situation, a weary expression settling on his face and he turns towards Leion.
"Should I ask?" he says, with a gesture at Leion's sodden state and lack of clothing.
Leion swallows. "Tam. Tell them to let him go! It was me—all me, as usual. I went swimming where I shouldn't and he came to help. He's Sea Watch."
"So he is," says Tam, with a quick, frowning nod to the Guardian who's holding Pello. "My apologies, officer. We were after someone else entirely."
Pello shakes off the other's hold even as he lets go. "That's all right, imor," he says. He's not sure how important the older man is, but he uses the highest honorific just in case. Won't do any harm.
"Do you have a name, officer?" Tam asks. "I'll send you a formal thanks. We might need a statement from you as well, later."
Pello gives him his name, and then they all traipse off, back up towards Watersgate, leaving him standing at the water's edge, mystified. It's clearly not Sea Festival nonsense, not if some top Guardian official is involved.
Which is how Pello gets involved in a court case and used by the wrong side, but that's what then makes the Sea Watch move him round to do the training on starstone and smuggling at the Aiamance Arcade—which, together with meeting Leion, lead him into the most unexpected turn in his life. He really will travel everywhere, starting from here.
It's all twisted up, but it's like the starstone tokens all over again—unpromising sea dross, dirty, but still glinting underneath, bearing hidden promises.
Some of them, Pello finds, might even come true.
Story: Starfall
Colors: Beet Red #28 (Beg steal or borrow); Azul #30 (Token of strength or loyalty)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Pastels (also for
no_true_pair prompt March 26th - Leion & Pello at the beach) + resin (also for allbingo May color fest square "true colors.") + Giftwrap + Triptych + Novelty Beads - https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/00/09/8b/00098b9d3a37c21ed8bd3ee00da58c7c.jpg (September Secrets 2020) + "Fire Opal" (Birthday prompts 2020) + Graffiti - for the May Parents challenge.
Word Count: 1918
Rating: PG
Warnings: Brief mention of possible death, risk of drowning, abandonment.
Notes: 1297-1306, Portcallan; Pello Ahblan, Joend Ahblan, Leion Valerno, Tana Veldiner, Tam Jadinor. (Introducing a new character who we're going to see more of in time. The end scene of this takes place immediately after the recent Atino and Leion sequence.)
Summary: Pello's fascination with starstone leads to an unexpected encounter on the beach at midnight.
Pello's been fascinated by starstone forever. He doesn't have the money to waste on the little shell tokens they make for casting into the sea, to beg favours from Shara, but so many other people do that he and his friends can comb the beach for them or catch them in a net in the shallows and rockpools. They play at guessing what kind of dream each glimmering, glass-like shell shape is, and steal it for themselves; guesses growing wilder the longer the game goes on.
"Six hundred and eight starflowers to spend!" says Ky.
"A boat!" Xianto chimes in.
Pello clenches his fist tighter around his little haul of wishes. "If you say it, they don't come true. My jumeiki says so."
He takes the shining tokens home. Some are worn smooth into cloudy pebbles; others have washed straight back up as if Shara didn't want to know—often chipped but still sparkling and shell-shaped.
Some are different colours, not like the clear ones they sell on market stalls by the handful. Those are rare, to be treasured or swapped wisely.
Portcallan throws its dreams into the sea, while Lower Portcallan nets them in, and puts them to use.
Pello's father, his jumeiki, is a carpenter. He builds and mends ships. Pello remembers toddling about the workshop when he was small, playing with long curling strips of wood shavings. On rare occasions, birth anniversaries and special days, Father sometimes makes toys; carved and brightly painted strange creatures and figures that his friends go wild for. He swaps a yellow and orange cat one day for ten whole pieces of sea-stolen starstone, all different colours.
He keeps some, though, like a peachy, many-armed sea creature, and a soldier-figure in Sea Watch green.
"You must find what's inside, waiting to get out," Father says. He traces the blank piece of wood with a weathered and scarred brown thumb, darker than the wood. He lifts his gaze and grins at Pello, then pats his shoulder. "Trees are living things, you know. They speak after death, like the Powers. You listen. That's the trick."
Pello complains. That's silly. He never hears or sees anything in dead wood. His efforts at carving are lifeless, never mind how well Father teaches him how to put together a table or a box. That's just know-how; even he can learn that. But you can't see through wood, like you can with starstone. Wood doesn't hum in your ear as if whispering secrets from an unseen world. Father knows all kinds of things, but he's got that wrong.
Father's accident happens when Pello is thirteen. He catches his hand between a join when he's working, and damages the bones. He can't do the work he used to, and makes do with the lesser tasks he can manage in the shipyard, and the lesser pay that goes with them. His gift at pulling out living things from old wood isn't what it was, either; arthritic hands betray him. But he paints and repairs figureheads for the prows of ships, and makes signs for shops and inns. He says the wood whispers to him yet of what it wants to be—colour, shape, story, all there underneath it to Father, always waiting to get out.
Mother doesn't live with them. Pello doesn't really remember her. When he was little, she visited a few times. Sailors are like that, Father says when he speaks of her; a faraway look in his eyes. "She'd come back if she could," he tells Pello. He says he always knew that one day she'd go looking for the Barrier or sail away to Varravil and never come home again.
She had the wind and the waves tangled up inside her, is Father's explanation. "I ought to have written to her people again," he adds with a sigh. "But I knew what the news would be, and I didn't want to hear it."
Father prefers to imagine Mother forever out there, sailing far, far away towards the Barrier.
Pello stares into one of his newest, cleanest shell tokens. If he squints, he can see a ship and a figure in its depths. He likes thinking of Mother that way too.
Pello joins the Sea Watch at seventeen. He has a proper go at learning carpentry first, but he hasn't gained any more true feeling for it in the intervening years, not like Father. Wood has never yet rivalled, for him, that enticing first glint of a piece of starstone—the spark of a mystery waiting to be uncovered.
But Pello doesn't want to leave Father behind in Lower Portcallan, and he has to try something that will pay him sooner rather than later. The Sea Watch will use him right here, and he's bound to pick up useful skills, even if he doesn't stay forever—which of course he won't.
He will do something else one day—go places, see things—but for now, looking out for other people travelling in and out of the port is a start.
The Sea Watch aren't the army, exactly, or the navy or the Guardians of the Peace. The rest of Emoyra, outside of Southern District doesn't even have them. Pello learns that from the first talk they give all the new recruits. Even as near as some parts of Western District, the army and the navy guard the coastal forts and stop smugglers, while local volunteers or town council workers watch for ships and people in trouble and mind the beacons.
Portcallan's Sea Watch was once under the control of Calla Fort, now long buried deep under the north eastern quarter of the city. Calla Fort ended up belonging to the Allins of Calla Island, and then so had the Sea Watch, and many an Allin had been its Captain—then a much grander and more powerful position. Except somehow, these days, that has been turned right around and now the Sea Watch belong to the city instead.
The Sea Watch might not be the army, the navy, or the Guardians, but they have to work with all of them. Pello is sent in turn to learn some things from all three organisations. In the course of that education, Pello learns one thing for certain: the only thing all three of those agree on is despising the Sea Watch.
The trouble with being such a new Sea Watch officer—not even properly one yet, still only on probation—is that he has to prove himself by doing things he doesn't want to do, like taking on night patrols on during the Sea Festival, when his friends are busy partying.
Pello walks along the sea front and pauses there to watch a bonfire down on the other side, not far from Lower Portcallan, where most of his friends will be, drinking and dancing and laughing. He sighs. Then he straightens his head, and tugs at the dark green jacket of his uniform. He puffs out his chest. He has responsibility—and pay.
His patrol mate has gone off to deal with some revellers at the beacon, and that's when Pello sees another idiot, probably as drunk as the rest, tearing down towards the quay and then on, down the stone steps, where the tide is already lapping at the wide stones. The beach itself is entirely covered, but the idiot runs into the sea; a tiny silhouette in dark waves that intermittently glint like starstone in the moonlight.
Pello loses a few moments of vital time in gaping at the sheer stupidity of whoever it is. Then he shakes himself and yells a warning. He runs after, as fast as he can, pounding down the path to the water. It's not a safe place to swim, here where the river Calla meets the sea. The currents can be lethal and it's nearly high tide.
By the time he reaches the quayside, a young woman has arrived ahead of him. She's pale-skinned and fair-headed, wearing a light robe as she stands on the stones below, shouting at the reckless swimmer. Pello takes a breath and dashes down the uneven steps at the side of the quay and joins her.
Luckily, the young man is already pulling himself back out of the water, clambering up onto the stone slabs beside the woman. He's dripping wet in his shirt and underthings.
"I had to," he says to her, as Pello reaches them. "I didn't know what else to do."
"Idiot," says the woman.
Pello stands in their way, as they both turn to go. He raises a hand, fingers spread. "Imai," he says. "You're very lucky to still be here."
"Oh," says the young man. His eyes widen slightly as he takes in the uniform. He's as pale as the woman, but black-haired, and probably not much older than Pello. "Oh dear. Did Tam send you?"
The young woman rolls her eyes. "Leion, he's Sea Watch."
"Right," Leion says. "Doing your job, I see. Splendid. We're both fine, so you can just -"
They all stop, interrupted by others running towards them, thundering down the road to the quay in boots. Guardians of the Peace. Before Pello can open his mouth to tell them that this is a minor matter and he's dealing with it, one of them seizes him, pinning both arms behind his back and marches him up the steps ahead of the other two.
"Hey!" he yells. "Sea Watch! Let go!"
The woman hurries after them. "Officer—he's Sea Watch. He's not part of this!"
They all come to a halt on the quayside as an older, more senior Guardian joins them. He's a tall, grizzled man, as dark-skinned as Pello. He pauses to look at them all, taking in the situation, a weary expression settling on his face and he turns towards Leion.
"Should I ask?" he says, with a gesture at Leion's sodden state and lack of clothing.
Leion swallows. "Tam. Tell them to let him go! It was me—all me, as usual. I went swimming where I shouldn't and he came to help. He's Sea Watch."
"So he is," says Tam, with a quick, frowning nod to the Guardian who's holding Pello. "My apologies, officer. We were after someone else entirely."
Pello shakes off the other's hold even as he lets go. "That's all right, imor," he says. He's not sure how important the older man is, but he uses the highest honorific just in case. Won't do any harm.
"Do you have a name, officer?" Tam asks. "I'll send you a formal thanks. We might need a statement from you as well, later."
Pello gives him his name, and then they all traipse off, back up towards Watersgate, leaving him standing at the water's edge, mystified. It's clearly not Sea Festival nonsense, not if some top Guardian official is involved.
Which is how Pello gets involved in a court case and used by the wrong side, but that's what then makes the Sea Watch move him round to do the training on starstone and smuggling at the Aiamance Arcade—which, together with meeting Leion, lead him into the most unexpected turn in his life. He really will travel everywhere, starting from here.
It's all twisted up, but it's like the starstone tokens all over again—unpromising sea dross, dirty, but still glinting underneath, bearing hidden promises.
Some of them, Pello finds, might even come true.
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
Ahh, is this continuing on from the Leion-gets-taken-in-by-Atino-and-Chiulder sequence?
(no subject)
no subject
I mean, this one is water and wood, so I like it very much.
(Have we heard of the Barrier before?)
(no subject)
(no subject)