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rainbowfic2025-08-06 02:56 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-08-06 02:56 pm
Techelet #7, Nacarat #2 [The Fulcrum]
Name: A Secret Place
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Techelet #7: Mitzvah (commandment), Nacarat #2: Gigil (Tagalog): a situation of such extreme cuteness it's overwhelming; the irresistible urge to hug or pinch something cute.
Styles and Supplies: Silhouette, Life Drawing, Calendar Page (National Wiggle Your Toes Day), Pastels (August 6 prompt from this post: Help), Glue ("Issues regarding love and romance may be confusing today, Leo. You should be aware that strong forces are at work to tangle the current situation. Try not to get too discouraged by whatever transpires as a result of this energy. Keep in mind that this, too, shall pass, and things will become clear again. Right now you should just sit back and take things with a grain of salt."), Novelty Bead (this image, given here)
Word Count: 3497
Rating: T
Warnings: Fantasy Drug (Ab)use
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1912.3.1.2, (approximately) -9500
Summary: Qhoroali shows Setsiana a secret.
A couple weeks passed, and Setsiana began to feel more and more useless. Peatäro’s story had gotten her fired up and angry about the priesthood’s actions again, and she wanted to help out, but Liselye continue to deny her requests to do so. She had tried practicing Guiding with Qhoroali, in the hopes that Liselye might accept her help if she could at least do that, but targeting exact times was much harder than she’d anticipated, and she had some sympathy for Cyaru’s failure when he’d helped return her to 1647. Eventually, Qhoroali had suggested that she take a break.
Maybe Qhoroali had been right, and she was no use here after all. Maybe she was just getting in everyone else’s way, and taking up Qhoroali’s time and supply of qoire in asking to be taught how to Guide. She felt herself start to slip down the familiar slope of depression, and couldn’t find the will or the energy to claw her way back up again. Sometimes Qhoroali would offer to show her some paper or other, but in these dark moments she thought that anything she said about them would only help Qhoroali in her quest to kill Sapfita. And Sapfita Herself would be no help, since She for some reason wanted Setsiana to do that.
One day, after she awoke at an uncharacteristically late hour and wandered into the living room, Qhoroali put down the paper she had been reading and said, “You’re unhappy because of me, aren’t you?”
“No, this isn’t your fault.” Then Setsiana amended, “Well, I guess this whole thing is technically your fault, but I don’t blame you.”
“Ok,” said Qhoroali, “I’m glad it’s not because of me. When I feel like shit, I take a vacation by myself, to a time that no one else here has ever been to, and come back again before I leave so that no one knows the difference. Since I think I still owe you for kidnapping you in the first place, I figured I could take you there, if you think it might help. There are no people there, no city, no nothing. It would just be us, and undisturbed nature, it’s pretty peaceful.”
“No dangerous animals around?”
“Nope.”
Setsiana thought about it for a minute. Maybe that would cheer her up. “Sure,” she said. “Worth a shot, I guess.”
Qhoroali got up with a certain amount of excitement. “Great! I’ll go pack us the things we’ll need. Go get your other clothes.” She disappeared into her room.
A little while later, she emerged with a bulky pack, which she put Setsiana’s clothes into. They left the apartment, but as they stepped outside, Qhoroali said, “Let’s use the circle on the top of the hill this time.”
“We’re not going to another ghlídrow orgy, are we?”
“No… it’s just a really nice view, from up there.”
When they time traveled, it was much like it had been when they went back to visit Cusäfä’s tribe — they had to stop along the way and refresh the qoire, and continue for another long travel after that. When they exited the circle a second time, Setsiana saw that there was indeed no city, and no roads or buildings that she could see in any direction, and no carpet of ghlídrow like there had been in the 15th century. It was just a vast expanse of grass in all directions, with a small wooded area nearby to the northeast of the hill. Standing on the top of the hill and looking out at the untamed, uninhabited grassland extending all the way to the foot of the mountain and beyond, she understood the appeal of traveling on the hilltop. It felt like they were the only two people in the world here, in this time and place; a very freeing idea, but some part of her also worried that there would be no one to help them, if anything went wrong.
“Is this the same time period as the one Cusäfä is living in?” she asked, guessing based on the length of the time travel. It felt a good deal warmer than it had been when they had visited him, but maybe it was just a fluke.
“Not quite,” said Qhoroali. “It’s about 500 years later than that. Things have warmed up considerably now, so it’s much more comfortable for us. There still aren’t a ton of people living here, though. You remember where the city was in the Sohanke timeline, right? There are people living in that general area right now, but none of them come down this way until much later.
Qhoroali led her down the eastern side of the hill, into the trees. A small brook burbled its way through them, and in it, Setsiana could see fish. “What river is this?” she asked.
“I think it’s a small piece of the Hweskár, actually,” said Qhoroali. “It’s still further north right now, at least the main branch of it is, but some tributaries do actually come this far south in this time period. This one probably becomes the Hweskár we know in our own timeline, after it moves again.” She toed off her shoes, and rolled up the hems of her trousers. “Look,” she said. “This is how we get dinner.” She waded into the small river, and unhooked something attached to a post that had been set into the ground near the bank; a net. She drew the net across to the other side of the brook and hooked it onto another post. Something near where the net crossed the middle of the stream thrashed; Qhoroali wrestled with it for a moment, and then stood up, holding a fish. “There are so many in this time period, we don’t really have to go fishing. Just set up a net, and you’re guaranteed to get a few. We’ll catch some later to cook.” She threw the fish back and returned the net to its original position, and then climbed back up the bank.
Qhoroali led her further into the trees, along the brook, and they came upon a small clearing, which seemed to house some kind of garden. The green shoots of plants rose out of the soil at regular intervals, belying the uninhabited appearance of the place. “I planted these,” Qhoroali said, forestalling Setsiana’s question. “They grow quite well on their own here, so I just come here in the spring, plant the seeds that I’ve saved, and then when I come back in the summer they are grown and ready to eat. These, the fish, a bag of dried rice and some sauce from home, and I can live here for a week or two on my own.” She set the pack down and pulled a small shovel out of it, and used it to unearth one of the plants and its thick root. “Radishes,” she explained. “These are smaller than the ones we have, but they’re also more peppery, and the greens make a nice salad, too.”
“Are there any nice mushrooms around here?” Setsiana asked, thinking about other possible sources of food.
“No idea, I hate mushrooms. I imagine the ones growing in this time might also look slightly different than the ones you’re used to, so you probably can’t quite trust whatever knowledge you have of which ones are safe to eat. I wouldn’t try it.”
Qhoroali moved to the edge of the clearing, and used the shovel again, on patch of dirt that seemed like it had been disturbed at some point in the not too distant past. Setsiana followed, curious. After a few minutes of digging, a bright spot of blue appeared, a striking unnatural contrast to the rest of the area. A little bit more, and Qhoroali pulled out a large blue bag, tied with a cord; both seemed unnaturally slick and shiny. “This is my little time capsule,” she said. “All of this stuff is some form of plastic — it’s a substance they invented in the future, specifically to be indestructible. Eventually they realized that that meant they had no real way to dispose of it and there was a big push to stop making more of it, but for me it means I can keep a cache of stuff buried here, and it’ll weather the years in between my visits. I actually dug it up in the present, to see if it was still there and still in the same shape, and it actually still was there and wasn’t too decayed, even after eleven thousand years.” She laughed. “Please don’t tell Cusäfä about this, though, he’d kill me if he I knew I buried plastic for that long.”
Qhoroali opened the bag and dug through it, setting aside plates, bowls, cups, spoons, and cooking implements. She pulled out a ridged tube, wider on one end than the other, and then another one. “These are lights,” she explained. “Torches that work with batteries. Very convenient, you don’t need to carry fire.” She went back over to get the pack, rooted through it a bit, and then produced a handful of cylinders like the ones Setsiana had seen her put into the earmuffs. The ends of the tubes popped off, and the cylinders went inside, and after the ends had been put back on again, Qhoroali flicked a switch on the side of one of the tubes, and light emerged from the other end. She flicked it off again. “We’ll use them when it gets dark. We can’t bury the batteries, unlike the plastic, they actually decay and bad stuff happens when they do. We’re supposed to give all of our batteries to Peatäro when they wear out — I don’t know what she does with them.” At the bottom of the bag were two bedrolls, rolled tight. “These are plastic, too, would you believe? And they do still last, although they sometimes get ripped and have to be replaced.”
Setsiana looked at the two bedrolls, and the two lights, and then back to the dishes, and saw that there were two of everything — two plates, two bowls, two cups, two spoons. “Why is there two of everything?” she asked. “Did you use to come here with another person? I think I remember you saying that no one else knew you would come here at all.”
“Oh… years ago, I had this idea that someday I’d bring Cyaru here, and that it would be, like, romantic, or something, I guess. But there never wound up being a time when I actually felt like doing that.” She sighed. “It never really was that comfortable with him, in retrospect; a lot of the time, part of my reason for coming here was actually to be away from him for a while.”
“What happened with you guys, anyway? I mean, you still seem to be pretty good friends, it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“Are you ready to tell me the details of your last breakup?”
Setsiana thought about her last conversation with Yeimicha, and that hopeless frustration and heartbreak. She still didn’t even know what had prompted that. “No,” she said.
“Right,” said Qhoroali. “When you feel ready to tell me about yours, I’ll tell you about mine.”
They put the plastic things back into the blue bag, and set about creating the base of a campfire on the edge of the radish garden from scavenged branches, encircled by stones. The day was still young and they did not light it yet, but instead spent some time exploring the small wood, or going to the edges of it and looking out across the grassland. Some small critters were occasionally visible among the trees; squirrels, or brightly colored birds, but as Qhoroali had said, there were no large animals, and there did not seem to be any ghlídrow, either. They kicked off their shoes and sat with their feet in the brook, for a time, and pointed out the birds they could see on the other side to each other, and marveled at the clearness of the water and the number of fish.
Setsiana watched Qhoroali unwind and lose some faint patina of irritation, that hint of grumpiness that seemed to be almost ever-present in her daily life, even when she was making an effort to be agreeable. It felt like she was seeing some more real and true version of her here, in this place that she had never taken anyone else to before. Setsiana thought about how Qhoroali had planned to bring Cyaru here with her, when they had been dating, and how she had now brought Setsiana here instead, but she quickly brushed that thought away. It probably meant nothing; Qhoroali probably didn’t see her relationships with women that way. Still, she couldn’t help thinking about it from time to time; she wondered what it would be like to pull her into a hug there on the riverbank, when gawking at a bird with her, or playing in the water.
She realized, too, that at some point she’d stopped seeing Qhoroali’s strange clothes as strange, or as men’s clothing; she now saw them simply as Qhoroali’s clothing, her own unique style, and she saw now that they suited Qhoroali, and looked good on her. And if they were a little masculine, so what? Wasn’t Qhoroali herself a little masculine, in her direct approach to things, and the way she’d heedlessly thrown herself into danger to protect Setsiana back in the Sohanke timeline? Setsiana had never wanted to be saved by a man, but she could be happy to be saved by a woman.
Towards the later afternoon, they lit the fire, using supplies from the pack, and while Setsiana tended and fed it, Qhoroali caught some fish and dug up more radishes. She had brought the pans for cooking in the pack. “Can’t make these out of plastic,” she’d explained. “They don’t work well that way.” Setsiana cooked some rice in a deeper pot over the fire, while Qhoroali stir-fried fish, chopped radishes, and the greens. She had brought two bottles of sauce with her: a more traditional tlichrún sauce, and a Dlestan sauce favored by Mosetai, and offered Setsiana the choice. Setsiana was feeling the need for something familiar, and chose the traditional sauce, and what they produced did indeed feel a lot like a simpler sort of tlichrún, that one might find in a simpler sort of place.
After they had eaten, they let the fire burn a little lower, and returned to sitting on the side of the brook. Qhoroali had gotten out the two lights from blue bag, and had brought two bottles of qoire over as well. “Lots of people use this for things other than time travel, you know,” she said. “It’s a nice way to relax. I think we’ve got plenty, so it shouldn’t be a problem to spare a few drops.” The sun was setting in front of them, and they could see the pink and orange sky through the gaps in the trees.
Qhoroali took one bottle and uncorked it, but she must have been planning to use more than a few drops, or else she had just gotten used to opening the bottle for time travel, because she removed the inner cork as well. As she raised it, a fish leapt out of the water in front of her and she startled, and dropped the bottle. It landed nearly on its bottom, but then tipped, and before Qhoroali could grab it, it had spilled its contents onto the grass. In her desperation to reach it, her arm flew wide and knocked the other bottle into the stream. She plunged her arm into the water, but it was no use; they could see it bobbing swiftly away, carried off by the strong current.
“It’s ok,” said Qhoroali, but she sounded almost winded, on the verge of hyperventilating, the calm and carefree feeling from earlier now gone. “There are other bottles.” She scrambled up to her feet, turned on her light, and returned to the pack, hunting through it. Setsiana came with her, with her own light; she saw that, indeed, there were other bottles, but most of them were almost empty. After coming up with a number of mostly empty bottles, Qhoroali dumped out the whole contents of the pack on the ground and began sifting through it there, but it was no use — those were the only ones left. They looked at what they’d managed to find. There wasn’t enough qoire in any of the bottles for what Qhoroali would need for a single regular time travel, let alone the double amount needed to travel eleven thousand years.
“I thought they were all still full,” said Qhoroali, helplessly. “I didn’t realize they’d run so low.” Her voice trembled unsteadily, and in the fading light Setsiana could see her hands begin to tremble as well, with fear and tension.
“It’s ok,” said Setsiana, her voice much calmer than she felt. “We’re safe here, right? We can stay for weeks, didn’t you say? We’ll have plenty of time. We can find some qoire plants, and make our own, right?” Qhoroali must know how, if she had helped her parents sell it at her temple, and she must be making it for her own use back in 1912.
Qhoroali shook her head. “We don’t have the tools we need. And it doesn’t grow here, not in this time period. It was adapted to the colder temperatures, and the interglacial Warmings killed it all off here in the north. It didn’t do well in warmer places until we started domesticating it…” She paused, and it seemed like she was working herself up into further panic. “We didn’t wait to see ourselves return this time before we left. We didn’t return. We are stuck here forever.”
Setsiana thought, desperately now, if there was any way out. They couldn’t go down south, where it would be colder, where the qoire would still be growing — they didn’t have the clothing for it, or a place to stay warm. And if they waited here too long, it would eventually be winter, and they would be in the same situation. They could go northeast, to find the people that Qhoroali said were there, but what then? Would they have to just live the rest of their lives in this remote time, and never see anyone from any other time again?
There was one last idea she had. One very risky idea that could result in them getting even more lost in time than they were now. She had no proof that it would work, but she believed in it in her soul. It would only work if the Sapfita of her dreams was the real and true one, and so Qhoroali would never go along with it. But she had to try it. She had to find a way to get Qhoroali to let her try it. Qhoroali had saved her before; maybe she could return the favor.
“Look,” she said, trying to conjure a reasonableness and steadiness that she did not feel. “We’re not in any immediate danger. We have supplies to last us, for the time being. Let’s take a minute to calm down, and go to sleep for the night, and we’ll think of something in the morning.”
Qhoroali was still trembling, and she didn’t look convinced by this. But she didn’t say anything, and consented to sit with Setsiana by the dying fire. Setsiana tried to tell some stories to lighten the mood, accounts of adventures in the woods she’d had as a child, of oddities she’d found at the T’arsi Fair, of the people she’d left behind in 1647. Eventually Qhoroali relaxed enough to join in with some of her own; Setsiana learned about her little brother, who might or might not be nominated head of her temple in her absence, the further unpleasantnesses of Liselye’s mother, and other people she’d left behind in Clérzyund. Setsiana got the feeling that, just like the friendships Setsiana had left behind in her own time, Qhoroali had not been all that close to most of the people she’d known, either.
Eventually the fire burned down to the last coals, and they pulled out the bedrolls and their nightclothes, extinguished the last bits of burning wood, and used the portable lights to find their way to bed. Lying there next to Qhoroali, Setsiana looked up, through the branches of the trees, at the stars. She’d thought before that the stars in the Sohanke timeline had been the same as her own, but this place was too distant, too far removed for that to be the case, and the sky she saw was slightly alien. A few stars were missing from some constellations she knew, and others were present that she had never seen before. She tried not to think about it, and willed herself to sleep.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Techelet #7: Mitzvah (commandment), Nacarat #2: Gigil (Tagalog): a situation of such extreme cuteness it's overwhelming; the irresistible urge to hug or pinch something cute.
Styles and Supplies: Silhouette, Life Drawing, Calendar Page (National Wiggle Your Toes Day), Pastels (August 6 prompt from this post: Help), Glue ("Issues regarding love and romance may be confusing today, Leo. You should be aware that strong forces are at work to tangle the current situation. Try not to get too discouraged by whatever transpires as a result of this energy. Keep in mind that this, too, shall pass, and things will become clear again. Right now you should just sit back and take things with a grain of salt."), Novelty Bead (this image, given here)
Word Count: 3497
Rating: T
Warnings: Fantasy Drug (Ab)use
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1912.3.1.2, (approximately) -9500
Summary: Qhoroali shows Setsiana a secret.
A couple weeks passed, and Setsiana began to feel more and more useless. Peatäro’s story had gotten her fired up and angry about the priesthood’s actions again, and she wanted to help out, but Liselye continue to deny her requests to do so. She had tried practicing Guiding with Qhoroali, in the hopes that Liselye might accept her help if she could at least do that, but targeting exact times was much harder than she’d anticipated, and she had some sympathy for Cyaru’s failure when he’d helped return her to 1647. Eventually, Qhoroali had suggested that she take a break.
Maybe Qhoroali had been right, and she was no use here after all. Maybe she was just getting in everyone else’s way, and taking up Qhoroali’s time and supply of qoire in asking to be taught how to Guide. She felt herself start to slip down the familiar slope of depression, and couldn’t find the will or the energy to claw her way back up again. Sometimes Qhoroali would offer to show her some paper or other, but in these dark moments she thought that anything she said about them would only help Qhoroali in her quest to kill Sapfita. And Sapfita Herself would be no help, since She for some reason wanted Setsiana to do that.
One day, after she awoke at an uncharacteristically late hour and wandered into the living room, Qhoroali put down the paper she had been reading and said, “You’re unhappy because of me, aren’t you?”
“No, this isn’t your fault.” Then Setsiana amended, “Well, I guess this whole thing is technically your fault, but I don’t blame you.”
“Ok,” said Qhoroali, “I’m glad it’s not because of me. When I feel like shit, I take a vacation by myself, to a time that no one else here has ever been to, and come back again before I leave so that no one knows the difference. Since I think I still owe you for kidnapping you in the first place, I figured I could take you there, if you think it might help. There are no people there, no city, no nothing. It would just be us, and undisturbed nature, it’s pretty peaceful.”
“No dangerous animals around?”
“Nope.”
Setsiana thought about it for a minute. Maybe that would cheer her up. “Sure,” she said. “Worth a shot, I guess.”
Qhoroali got up with a certain amount of excitement. “Great! I’ll go pack us the things we’ll need. Go get your other clothes.” She disappeared into her room.
A little while later, she emerged with a bulky pack, which she put Setsiana’s clothes into. They left the apartment, but as they stepped outside, Qhoroali said, “Let’s use the circle on the top of the hill this time.”
“We’re not going to another ghlídrow orgy, are we?”
“No… it’s just a really nice view, from up there.”
When they time traveled, it was much like it had been when they went back to visit Cusäfä’s tribe — they had to stop along the way and refresh the qoire, and continue for another long travel after that. When they exited the circle a second time, Setsiana saw that there was indeed no city, and no roads or buildings that she could see in any direction, and no carpet of ghlídrow like there had been in the 15th century. It was just a vast expanse of grass in all directions, with a small wooded area nearby to the northeast of the hill. Standing on the top of the hill and looking out at the untamed, uninhabited grassland extending all the way to the foot of the mountain and beyond, she understood the appeal of traveling on the hilltop. It felt like they were the only two people in the world here, in this time and place; a very freeing idea, but some part of her also worried that there would be no one to help them, if anything went wrong.
“Is this the same time period as the one Cusäfä is living in?” she asked, guessing based on the length of the time travel. It felt a good deal warmer than it had been when they had visited him, but maybe it was just a fluke.
“Not quite,” said Qhoroali. “It’s about 500 years later than that. Things have warmed up considerably now, so it’s much more comfortable for us. There still aren’t a ton of people living here, though. You remember where the city was in the Sohanke timeline, right? There are people living in that general area right now, but none of them come down this way until much later.
Qhoroali led her down the eastern side of the hill, into the trees. A small brook burbled its way through them, and in it, Setsiana could see fish. “What river is this?” she asked.
“I think it’s a small piece of the Hweskár, actually,” said Qhoroali. “It’s still further north right now, at least the main branch of it is, but some tributaries do actually come this far south in this time period. This one probably becomes the Hweskár we know in our own timeline, after it moves again.” She toed off her shoes, and rolled up the hems of her trousers. “Look,” she said. “This is how we get dinner.” She waded into the small river, and unhooked something attached to a post that had been set into the ground near the bank; a net. She drew the net across to the other side of the brook and hooked it onto another post. Something near where the net crossed the middle of the stream thrashed; Qhoroali wrestled with it for a moment, and then stood up, holding a fish. “There are so many in this time period, we don’t really have to go fishing. Just set up a net, and you’re guaranteed to get a few. We’ll catch some later to cook.” She threw the fish back and returned the net to its original position, and then climbed back up the bank.
Qhoroali led her further into the trees, along the brook, and they came upon a small clearing, which seemed to house some kind of garden. The green shoots of plants rose out of the soil at regular intervals, belying the uninhabited appearance of the place. “I planted these,” Qhoroali said, forestalling Setsiana’s question. “They grow quite well on their own here, so I just come here in the spring, plant the seeds that I’ve saved, and then when I come back in the summer they are grown and ready to eat. These, the fish, a bag of dried rice and some sauce from home, and I can live here for a week or two on my own.” She set the pack down and pulled a small shovel out of it, and used it to unearth one of the plants and its thick root. “Radishes,” she explained. “These are smaller than the ones we have, but they’re also more peppery, and the greens make a nice salad, too.”
“Are there any nice mushrooms around here?” Setsiana asked, thinking about other possible sources of food.
“No idea, I hate mushrooms. I imagine the ones growing in this time might also look slightly different than the ones you’re used to, so you probably can’t quite trust whatever knowledge you have of which ones are safe to eat. I wouldn’t try it.”
Qhoroali moved to the edge of the clearing, and used the shovel again, on patch of dirt that seemed like it had been disturbed at some point in the not too distant past. Setsiana followed, curious. After a few minutes of digging, a bright spot of blue appeared, a striking unnatural contrast to the rest of the area. A little bit more, and Qhoroali pulled out a large blue bag, tied with a cord; both seemed unnaturally slick and shiny. “This is my little time capsule,” she said. “All of this stuff is some form of plastic — it’s a substance they invented in the future, specifically to be indestructible. Eventually they realized that that meant they had no real way to dispose of it and there was a big push to stop making more of it, but for me it means I can keep a cache of stuff buried here, and it’ll weather the years in between my visits. I actually dug it up in the present, to see if it was still there and still in the same shape, and it actually still was there and wasn’t too decayed, even after eleven thousand years.” She laughed. “Please don’t tell Cusäfä about this, though, he’d kill me if he I knew I buried plastic for that long.”
Qhoroali opened the bag and dug through it, setting aside plates, bowls, cups, spoons, and cooking implements. She pulled out a ridged tube, wider on one end than the other, and then another one. “These are lights,” she explained. “Torches that work with batteries. Very convenient, you don’t need to carry fire.” She went back over to get the pack, rooted through it a bit, and then produced a handful of cylinders like the ones Setsiana had seen her put into the earmuffs. The ends of the tubes popped off, and the cylinders went inside, and after the ends had been put back on again, Qhoroali flicked a switch on the side of one of the tubes, and light emerged from the other end. She flicked it off again. “We’ll use them when it gets dark. We can’t bury the batteries, unlike the plastic, they actually decay and bad stuff happens when they do. We’re supposed to give all of our batteries to Peatäro when they wear out — I don’t know what she does with them.” At the bottom of the bag were two bedrolls, rolled tight. “These are plastic, too, would you believe? And they do still last, although they sometimes get ripped and have to be replaced.”
Setsiana looked at the two bedrolls, and the two lights, and then back to the dishes, and saw that there were two of everything — two plates, two bowls, two cups, two spoons. “Why is there two of everything?” she asked. “Did you use to come here with another person? I think I remember you saying that no one else knew you would come here at all.”
“Oh… years ago, I had this idea that someday I’d bring Cyaru here, and that it would be, like, romantic, or something, I guess. But there never wound up being a time when I actually felt like doing that.” She sighed. “It never really was that comfortable with him, in retrospect; a lot of the time, part of my reason for coming here was actually to be away from him for a while.”
“What happened with you guys, anyway? I mean, you still seem to be pretty good friends, it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“Are you ready to tell me the details of your last breakup?”
Setsiana thought about her last conversation with Yeimicha, and that hopeless frustration and heartbreak. She still didn’t even know what had prompted that. “No,” she said.
“Right,” said Qhoroali. “When you feel ready to tell me about yours, I’ll tell you about mine.”
They put the plastic things back into the blue bag, and set about creating the base of a campfire on the edge of the radish garden from scavenged branches, encircled by stones. The day was still young and they did not light it yet, but instead spent some time exploring the small wood, or going to the edges of it and looking out across the grassland. Some small critters were occasionally visible among the trees; squirrels, or brightly colored birds, but as Qhoroali had said, there were no large animals, and there did not seem to be any ghlídrow, either. They kicked off their shoes and sat with their feet in the brook, for a time, and pointed out the birds they could see on the other side to each other, and marveled at the clearness of the water and the number of fish.
Setsiana watched Qhoroali unwind and lose some faint patina of irritation, that hint of grumpiness that seemed to be almost ever-present in her daily life, even when she was making an effort to be agreeable. It felt like she was seeing some more real and true version of her here, in this place that she had never taken anyone else to before. Setsiana thought about how Qhoroali had planned to bring Cyaru here with her, when they had been dating, and how she had now brought Setsiana here instead, but she quickly brushed that thought away. It probably meant nothing; Qhoroali probably didn’t see her relationships with women that way. Still, she couldn’t help thinking about it from time to time; she wondered what it would be like to pull her into a hug there on the riverbank, when gawking at a bird with her, or playing in the water.
She realized, too, that at some point she’d stopped seeing Qhoroali’s strange clothes as strange, or as men’s clothing; she now saw them simply as Qhoroali’s clothing, her own unique style, and she saw now that they suited Qhoroali, and looked good on her. And if they were a little masculine, so what? Wasn’t Qhoroali herself a little masculine, in her direct approach to things, and the way she’d heedlessly thrown herself into danger to protect Setsiana back in the Sohanke timeline? Setsiana had never wanted to be saved by a man, but she could be happy to be saved by a woman.
Towards the later afternoon, they lit the fire, using supplies from the pack, and while Setsiana tended and fed it, Qhoroali caught some fish and dug up more radishes. She had brought the pans for cooking in the pack. “Can’t make these out of plastic,” she’d explained. “They don’t work well that way.” Setsiana cooked some rice in a deeper pot over the fire, while Qhoroali stir-fried fish, chopped radishes, and the greens. She had brought two bottles of sauce with her: a more traditional tlichrún sauce, and a Dlestan sauce favored by Mosetai, and offered Setsiana the choice. Setsiana was feeling the need for something familiar, and chose the traditional sauce, and what they produced did indeed feel a lot like a simpler sort of tlichrún, that one might find in a simpler sort of place.
After they had eaten, they let the fire burn a little lower, and returned to sitting on the side of the brook. Qhoroali had gotten out the two lights from blue bag, and had brought two bottles of qoire over as well. “Lots of people use this for things other than time travel, you know,” she said. “It’s a nice way to relax. I think we’ve got plenty, so it shouldn’t be a problem to spare a few drops.” The sun was setting in front of them, and they could see the pink and orange sky through the gaps in the trees.
Qhoroali took one bottle and uncorked it, but she must have been planning to use more than a few drops, or else she had just gotten used to opening the bottle for time travel, because she removed the inner cork as well. As she raised it, a fish leapt out of the water in front of her and she startled, and dropped the bottle. It landed nearly on its bottom, but then tipped, and before Qhoroali could grab it, it had spilled its contents onto the grass. In her desperation to reach it, her arm flew wide and knocked the other bottle into the stream. She plunged her arm into the water, but it was no use; they could see it bobbing swiftly away, carried off by the strong current.
“It’s ok,” said Qhoroali, but she sounded almost winded, on the verge of hyperventilating, the calm and carefree feeling from earlier now gone. “There are other bottles.” She scrambled up to her feet, turned on her light, and returned to the pack, hunting through it. Setsiana came with her, with her own light; she saw that, indeed, there were other bottles, but most of them were almost empty. After coming up with a number of mostly empty bottles, Qhoroali dumped out the whole contents of the pack on the ground and began sifting through it there, but it was no use — those were the only ones left. They looked at what they’d managed to find. There wasn’t enough qoire in any of the bottles for what Qhoroali would need for a single regular time travel, let alone the double amount needed to travel eleven thousand years.
“I thought they were all still full,” said Qhoroali, helplessly. “I didn’t realize they’d run so low.” Her voice trembled unsteadily, and in the fading light Setsiana could see her hands begin to tremble as well, with fear and tension.
“It’s ok,” said Setsiana, her voice much calmer than she felt. “We’re safe here, right? We can stay for weeks, didn’t you say? We’ll have plenty of time. We can find some qoire plants, and make our own, right?” Qhoroali must know how, if she had helped her parents sell it at her temple, and she must be making it for her own use back in 1912.
Qhoroali shook her head. “We don’t have the tools we need. And it doesn’t grow here, not in this time period. It was adapted to the colder temperatures, and the interglacial Warmings killed it all off here in the north. It didn’t do well in warmer places until we started domesticating it…” She paused, and it seemed like she was working herself up into further panic. “We didn’t wait to see ourselves return this time before we left. We didn’t return. We are stuck here forever.”
Setsiana thought, desperately now, if there was any way out. They couldn’t go down south, where it would be colder, where the qoire would still be growing — they didn’t have the clothing for it, or a place to stay warm. And if they waited here too long, it would eventually be winter, and they would be in the same situation. They could go northeast, to find the people that Qhoroali said were there, but what then? Would they have to just live the rest of their lives in this remote time, and never see anyone from any other time again?
There was one last idea she had. One very risky idea that could result in them getting even more lost in time than they were now. She had no proof that it would work, but she believed in it in her soul. It would only work if the Sapfita of her dreams was the real and true one, and so Qhoroali would never go along with it. But she had to try it. She had to find a way to get Qhoroali to let her try it. Qhoroali had saved her before; maybe she could return the favor.
“Look,” she said, trying to conjure a reasonableness and steadiness that she did not feel. “We’re not in any immediate danger. We have supplies to last us, for the time being. Let’s take a minute to calm down, and go to sleep for the night, and we’ll think of something in the morning.”
Qhoroali was still trembling, and she didn’t look convinced by this. But she didn’t say anything, and consented to sit with Setsiana by the dying fire. Setsiana tried to tell some stories to lighten the mood, accounts of adventures in the woods she’d had as a child, of oddities she’d found at the T’arsi Fair, of the people she’d left behind in 1647. Eventually Qhoroali relaxed enough to join in with some of her own; Setsiana learned about her little brother, who might or might not be nominated head of her temple in her absence, the further unpleasantnesses of Liselye’s mother, and other people she’d left behind in Clérzyund. Setsiana got the feeling that, just like the friendships Setsiana had left behind in her own time, Qhoroali had not been all that close to most of the people she’d known, either.
Eventually the fire burned down to the last coals, and they pulled out the bedrolls and their nightclothes, extinguished the last bits of burning wood, and used the portable lights to find their way to bed. Lying there next to Qhoroali, Setsiana looked up, through the branches of the trees, at the stars. She’d thought before that the stars in the Sohanke timeline had been the same as her own, but this place was too distant, too far removed for that to be the case, and the sky she saw was slightly alien. A few stars were missing from some constellations she knew, and others were present that she had never seen before. She tried not to think about it, and willed herself to sleep.
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Sorry, mods, I just realized that the post I originally linked for Modeling Clay was actually a Pastels prompt. I edited the body of the post to reflect that and added the Pastels tag, but I don't seem to have permission to remove the Modeling Clay tag.
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“Can’t make these out of plastic,” she’d explained. “They don’t work well that way.”
LOL, no, can testify to various melted implements over the years. XD
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Thank you! I hope you enjoy the resolution to this that will be posted in a few days, as well.
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Though very intriguing. I think from some other summaries that they DO get back, so I am excited to see what this idea is and how it plays out.
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I hope it meets your expectations!
I guess you might get a little spoiled for some things by seeing summaries for later parts before reading the earlier ones, haha.