A wooden bowl that had been sipped from for decades, grooves and minuscule cracks keeping fingertips and palms company to tell the stories of such years, it was lifted from her hands, their shared stories coming to a pause. But she trusted Qel to take care of it, a hand gently grabbing her arm as she felt the rest of her settle back onto carefully placed cushions. If her companions in the room spared worry for her, she didn’t know it, as quickly gone as she was. The sound of the miqo’te saying something skimmed past her hearing and it was the last thing she knew.
This lantern was square, boxy and reeked of the industrial sector of Garlemald. Its metal frame, base, and handle were clean of rust, shining with promise. It was the illumination from behind four panes of colorful glass that added in something else, something eastern in the pattern of stained glass and bright hues. Today she didn’t have the time to truly inspect it.
But it’d do.
“There you are!” The exclamation turned her around, a hand lifting the lantern to cast its light wide and scattering the watercolor landscape. Her safe place, prompted by Ginko, had proven to be the lake. Isui’s lake. But she hadn’t expected the auspice to be able to see her.
The two very real eyes blinking at her suggested that it could, however. It was not the first time she’d caught it as it was truly, fulms long and at least a few wide. Isui was not bothered by her surprised silence, swimming in the air as it was.
“I came to update you… there’s things you need to know. How fast can you move?”
She knew how to travel in the Between, but it’d hardly give Isui time to pass along information. So the Raen ran, holding her lantern up to scatter the darkness and its inhabitants away from her path. Isui could feel her run and it darted after her in the proper realm, dancing between trees as in one realm she splashed a puddle of swirling colors, but it saw nothing.
“Kaireek, the Luminous! He was from the Ruby Sea and used levin…”
“Yon, the Enkindled, a rabbit who controls the fire and warmth of wildfires and is highly regarded in summer celebrations…”
“Ban-Fei, the Nightbringer. I’m not certain how long he’s been missing but he’s only seen during solar eclipses, as old as he is…”
“But there’s also Aua, the Soaring! She may be the most recently missed one, an eagle able to quell or conjure storms in Hingashi…”
“Understood, I’ll remember them and try to find them in the manor, if they’re still alive!” Mine lifted her lantern again as it swung with her momentum, keeping in mind the place she wanted to go. The Hato Sect’s manor sprawled across the slope of Mount Daitenzan. And there she went.
Isui felt her presence suddenly disappear from its vicinity, its winding, swimming ways slowing to a halt as it found itself alone. With a deep inhale that was altogether a mimicry of human exasperation and worry, it returned to its lake, to the woman’s safe place in this realm.
There were no guards to be seen outside, true to their warnings or they were out of sight — she’d made her way here in the daytime before, after all. Mine did not venture inside, though. No, she wanted to find this creature that scared this Hato Sect and all of its people. And so with every prayer she knew, she ventured out into the lands surrounding it, searching with her lantern of colorful lights for this creature.
Surely it was out here.
