Entry 6
It's odd to brush the crumbs off the old journal and take pen to papyrus again. It must have been three or four months since I brought my request to Timna-vay. After he denied me, I fell into a melancholy and felt it not worth documenting the daily minutia of the history department.
A quick round-up of news before I begin:
Ami-var is almost finished penning his formal appeal and has enlisted Idda-var, who has returned from the West, as a co-signatory. Gania-vay seems to have discharged Ami-var from his tutelage.
Nen-nan-vas, that kattakati admissions worker who joined the staff last year, has moved to a position in budgeting and project management. This is relevant for one reason: I greeted them in passing in the hall of natural science and they asked if I was going to be on Timna-vay's expedition team.
"What expedition team?" I asked, of course, as anyone naturally would. Do I even need to say where his team will be going? Would I be committing my misery to papyrus again if it was some wholly original jaunt with no connection at all to my study? Only the fact that Timna-vay is currently with Iunti-vay-or at the Dominion Palace keeps me from climbing to his bower and ripping his feathers out one by one.
So I went to my fellow student under Timna-vay, Inda-vas, and he was shortlisted for the expedition. It seems many of my esteemed colleagues were; granted I have had to work through the clouds in my head these past weeks and I've been less attentive than perhaps I should, but I still heard nothing of this.
"Well," Inda-vas says, "if you applied you might be accepted. But we will be flying first, and then you'd have to be with the second team that arrives next summer when the water is likely to recede again."
The second team. I really don't know what to think of this. Tiimna-vay knows of my interests, he believes that I am only one publication away from a -vas suffix and that ridiculous cape and collar they all wear. I have worked uncommonly hard for far too long, longer than Inda-vas has indeed, to still carry my -var suffix and the assumption of junior status it provides.
I hope it wasn't meant to exclude me. Timna-vay told me - his own words! - he told me I didn't have to have been raised in the Spire to do great things. I would see the Precursors like nobody ever has before, all because young Kedinnan looked up at his hometown's mast and wondered where it came from. That, Timna-vay always said, that was the qualifying factor of a scholar.
It's a mistake, surely. I might have missed a letter or a summons to a meeting. For all I know, he referenced my original survey proposal when pitching his own variation. He might have improved it; two teams of different speed sounds wise, and very doable. He would have told me.
But I can't do anything about it while he's away. Given that this is all a misunderstanding, I can at least sort some things out with Nen-nan-vas.
--
The mystery continues. Nen-nan-vas revealed that I had been placed on a survey team, alright. It's even in the West. One of Timna-vay's lesser projects, a study on north-mid-sea benthic gastroliths and their historical roots. There is budget for a three-person team of one scholar, a ferry, and a navigator.
I must be mistaken. Perhaps Timna-vay has named some other poor soul 'Qedi-var' and that is why I almost believed he had chosen to pack me off to the other continent with no fellow scholars to work on a project on which I have no requisite expertise. I must speak with him immediately.
--
He returned three days after I stopped writing there. I was only tying my nerves into knots thinking about his reasoning, so it was no use focusing on it. Instead I proof-read Ami-var's appeal letter and provided some comments which I honestly can't say were helpful. But he saw I needed some distraction and was kind enough to provide one.
But I fear nothing will ever distract me again after my meeting with Timna-vay. Coming from Mast I often find the blunt speech here a bit much but this was an assault.
"You are biased," Timna-vay told me. "You cannot approach this site with objectivity. This is why I always voted against your being granted a -vas suffix; with this Precursor focus, you are too emotionally invested and your discipline is lacking - I have heard how you abused Idda-var and several longwing harpies from the Hall of Faces. You're like a child following its own whims. I have assigned you a simpler survey in the north-mid as a test of your ability to produce high-quality results when researching a topic you do not have personal interest in. If I am pleased, you will advance your rank."
And he said this like it was a favour. I was too surprised to do as I should have done, in that moment. I should have knocked that mastery hat off his head and wrestled him to the base of the cliff. There is nobody under his direct supervision who has a deeper understanding of Precursor artifacts and material technology than myself. I told him that leaving me off his expedition was a mistake which is, at best, an ignorant lapse of judgement, and at worst an act of self-sabotage on his part. I told him that by letting his feelings about me get in the way of correct scholarly processes, he was thus not a true researcher at all. He was not well-pleased with this and told me to leave and I did! Should I have? No! But I did.
"There must be some kind of crack-down on rank-climbing," Ami-var said, when I was back at our bower. "There's no other reason for them all to start holding us to these ridiculous standards."
Easy for YOU to say. I'm quite used to ridiculous standards, and this isn't anything new. It only hurts because it's my master doing it. I believe, still, that he is wrong and I can prove it wrong.
I can
--
I dropped my pen and ran to speak to Nen-nan-vas. And, journal, you will not believe: Timna-vay's expedition, the first of two halves, is due to leave in four months. Only four months. Idda-var swam across the sea in one. I will not be swimming, but I can be there before Timna-vay's team, and if I leave now I can overcome the disadvantage of my useless wings. He will come to regret not taking me if I do not go to provide my expertise.
I simply… have to set out on my own assigned survey, and accidentally-on-purpose arrive somewhere else. In that case I will need to make my choice of colleagues for this journey with extreme care.
First, the navigator. Nen-nan-vas put it bluntly in writing - I only have enough allowance for a visored harpy going in one direction. No return trip. But there's no option not to bring a visor; we may have to interface with more of these artifacts.
Perhaps a longwing currently boarding at the Spire who originally hails from the Hall of Faces? That would make an adequate one-way journey and we might have cause to stop at the Hall to discuss the artifacts -
I'm getting ahead of myself. Stealth, also, is a priority. I can't just post an advertisement on the notice-wall. I know I'll find visored longwings on the cliffside…
--
That's one thing to check off the list. It feels strange to do something without Timna-vay's approval but lying is something taught at Mast and I've learned it well. No Spire-born scholar would sneak around like this and no it's not in the spirit of the university I love but I have to get things done somehow. I have to admit that spending my youth at Mast has prepared me well for this - and that's the only way that place has ever served me.
It was actually Red Nen-nan-vas who helped me. Blue didn't want to, it seemed, but after some internal discussion they mentioned a visored harpy who has been boarding at the cliffs in the longwing accommodation. All-white, with a green and orange visor. The longwing boarding houses are not particularly accommodating to me but I didn't trust anyone else to do the job.
I climbed down the back skeins of the Spire supports and went to the cliffs. You know, I rarely get to see such a view. The pontoon market was still being assembled and the boarding houses were starting to fill up with divers drying their wings in preparation for round two. There's a zig-zag path set into the cliffside for selkies too unimportant to use the lifts and I used it to get to the cluster of wings around the boarding house.
There was a lot of white on display, alright, but it was mostly tempered by grey or black or dark brown. I've often wondered what makes longwings so monochromatic, though it's hardly my area to speculate. I'm sure the biologists have their theories. In any case the longwings were true to form, out on the perch poles jutting perpendicular to the cliff face, bundles of reeds bobbing and bowing in the wind. There were three visored harpies among the melee.
Two were visitors on their circumnavigation mission, I believe. It's a practice I know little about personally but they visit the Spire with some regularity. The board houses clustered over the cliff face are very generously stocked, but I'd like to think it's the scholarly atmosphere that attracts them. Either that or the mast in the core of the Spire.
With the visors unlocked and open, those two were deep in discussion, rolling over the syllables of some western tongue. They didn't speak my language when I tried to engage them and even with some charades they were not very helpful. I let them be, hopping to the next pole in reach. Even my useless wings can help extend a jump into a short glide.
I wanted to have been born a longwing when I was younger. Mast was not big enough to accommodate them in great numbers so we had few permanent residents. Instead they were visitors, studding my early memories with visions of graceful wings and stories from the other side of the world. I still think it would be grand to fly about without even having to flap but having to eat so little would be off-putting to me now. One too many scaleworm pastries and I'd be grounded.
The subject of my search was sitting at the edge of the one of the poles, apart from the rest of the group. All-white, as described. He introduced himself as Terw-yef, through the visor Nen-nan had described. He did not show his face, likely a custom of the western longwings who have fully integrated themselves with the characters of their visors.
"Where is it you want to go?" he said to me. His Spire-speak was very good, with no discernible accent. I complimented him on it, which went down well. When I explained the nature of my quest, he nodded to himself, the projecting front of the visor very close to knocking me off the perch pole.
"I know the place," Terw-yef said. "It is a flight of twelve days."
"Ah - well, no," I was at great pains to admit, "we will be going by sea."
"Oh? Am I not carrying you?"
This is such a degrading assumption, as I'm sure you know. Some western longwings think us shortwings can't fly more than three spans without having to stop for a break.
"I'll have you know that I could fly half a day without stopping," I told him. Yes, yes, a lie, but so what?
"Half a day?" Terw-yet said, to mock me. He has a very quiet voice - muffled by that cracked visor - and speaks very slowly. Clearly not a scholar; in a debate, he would give his opponent too much time to annihilate him. "Half a day would take you there." He pointed at the western horizon, at one of the rock spires.
"Yes, alright," I said, annoyed. "But that is neither here nor there. We are going with a ferry. You would assume a solely navigational role."
"Hmmm." Terw-yef exhaled a puff of slack smoke, which is what led me to understand that he was smoking inside his visor. Pity the poor creature's eyeballs, that stuff burns. "And the compensation?" he said. "I am from the Hall of Faces, I have over-flown the area you describe many times over. There is no one here more suitable than myself."
I almost don't believe him. But he is a navigator, as the suffix implies, and if I wanted anyone more renowned or skilled I would have to go through the finance office and let Timna-vay select a navigator for me. And I just know he'd pick someone specialising in the north-mid-sea, which is exactly where I will not be going.
"You may have partial credit for whatever publications I produce," I told him. This would be enough for any scholar, but I had to sweeten the deal, too. I told him he would get half of my own share of the monetary reward. The other half, I suppose, will go to the ferry. If I have to live on nothing but the leavings of undergraduates at the canteen all year, so be it.
-
Terw-yef took his time getting back to me. I was scared he'd never respond; I have already arranged my ferry and we have been waiting on that white menace ever since. Well, I have my answer now: yes, which annoys me almost as much as a no, at this point, because now I must accept the aid of this slack addict for the rest of the expedition. Perhaps it is very lucky he is not carrying me.
My ferry came to me from an unexpected source: now, I know well what I've said in the past about Tektei-vas, and I stand by all of it, because I am always right, but I must admit that he came through for me here. You see, journal, he was once the officially-appointed translator for Huarvaa-aal. I almost didn't believe it when he told me.
Famous leviathan hunters are not the type of people who attend lectures at the Spire. I thought Huarvaa-aal would have far better things to do than entertain me. Actually, I thought they had been attending the dominion's celebrations, like Timna-vay himself. Huarvaa-aal makes a fine landmark on the beach at the base of the cliff, most days, and I would have been blind to miss them, but even with the evidence in front of my eyes I had imagined them important enough to warrant an invitation to that particular event.
And yet there they were, as I made my unsteady way down the cliff-face. A black and white monument among the reeds. I forgot how big a phocid can be; a hundred spans up and already I was intimidated.
As I descended, though, I was suddenly put in mind of the nomad of Mast. I don't know why it has taken me so long to put it together, but I'd almost forgotten them at all, packing them away into a box at the back of my mind with the rest of my memories of Mast. The tailless nomad talked to me once, under the shade of the lower canopies of the titular mast. It scared me; I think I rather made a fool of myself back then. But there is something indescribable in it. Being so small, and staring up into a face of stark bicolour, shrouded by cloth and beads under the woven wet-straw hat. I think the thing that struck me was the similarity.
It's one thing to be small in a world of large animals; whom among us shortwings hasn't snuck a ride on the back of a drill-milipede and marvelled at its size?
(that may be a rather regional example, I admit)
But even riding around on the back of a gigantic animal, we still do not see it as a giant. A giant is like us. A person, with a person's face. And - I would never admit this aloud - my reaction to the nomad at the time was fear of sameness. Seeing the faces of my family reflected in this one huge visage, I was afraid. It seemed to have stepped out of the depths of mythology, like the selkie Odr who carved the mountain ranges in the north.
It's silly to think of now. Phocids are people, like any other, and it would probably be offensive to think of them as otherworldly giants. In speech they are far more mundane. The nomad really only spoke of news from the Breaks and their latest supply of slack, bathing the entire Mast in smoke the whole time, and seemed to take great pleasure in never providing a straight answer. I really haven't thought of them in so long… I hope they are alright. I wish I'd worked up the courage to ask what happened to their tail, and why they couldn't go back to the sea.
Having stood beside them now, I can say for certain that Huarvaa-aal is indeed larger than the tailless nomad. They were sunning in the shallows, the green mane of plants presumably attached to their hair fanned out on the water surface around them. They were asleep, I thought, so I stood to the side and politely waited. Tektei-vas would certainly be the one to ask about Ii!wal leviathan killer customs, but I will walk off this cliff before I go to him for advice.
Simple is best, and it's even better to not assume how someone prefers to be treated. But perhaps I was a bit premature in thinking I should just wait until acknowledged; ten minutes wasted, before Huarvaa-aal finally opened an eye and asked me what I was doing. I don't think they were actually sleeping.
"I was directed here by my inimitable colleague, Tektei-vas," I said.
A bright smile appeared on their face, half-submerged in the clear water. I suppose it's reassuring to think that somebody enjoys Tektei-vas's company. There's hope for everyone.
"Tektei, how is he?" Huarvaa-aal said. "Long time no talk. Busy, yeah?"
I found it easier to talk to them like this; myself on the bank, them kind of hidden, with only their head out of the water. Makes it easier to forget that this is a warrior who could kill me effortlessly. Their harpoon, the only keepsake they had brought with them from the southern Spiral, was planted upright in the beach by the pool, a grim and brutal reminder of its owner's reputation. Even though it's not my area of expertise, it's still a treat to see a real leviathan-hunting weapon up close. The barbed end is bigger than I am (though admittedly much slimmer).
"Tektei-vas is well, and very busy," I said. "My name is Qedi-var, I was told you might be able to help me with an expedition I'm planning. We will be sailing from here to the southern coast of the Western continent, circling the Spiral, and travelling north again to this region…" Good thing I had the foresight to bring my maps. Nothing would have humiliated me more than presenting a half-formed plan to someone like Huarvaa-aal, though, in hindsight, they seem very informal.
They pulled out of the water enough to see my map, coming so close I was drenched in moments by the dripping from their whiskers and plant… hair(? I will have to ask how this works).
"Yes, I know this place," they said to me. Unlike that flake Terw-yef, Huarvaa-aal's Spire-speak is still rather rough and unpolished, and I have to focus to get what they're saying. But they are an enthusiastic conversationalist, barrier or no. As I took a step away to shake water out of my feathers, they exclaimed at great lengths about their childhood in the Spiral.
"Here, in the descending arm," they said, pointing with a single fingertip at the region on the map. "I swam in there many times. Learned everything of that place, my all-bearer taught me. Wow, I have not been back in so many years! Here, now, here I see leviathans drawn on the map, you will meet them also here, and here, too. Don't go this route. What are you learning there? It's for research, yes? Do you research language, like Tektei?"
I thanked them profusely for their suggestions and drew a new, hypothetical route for their consideration. As they examined it, I said I was a scholar of archaeology.
"Oh, like Odr?" they said thoughtfully. "Though, for that, you would go north. There are stories of Tel!am in the south, if those are of interest?"
"Well, Odr and Teltam would be more the realm of mythology," I said. "I'm looking into some Precursor structures at this location." I wouldn't even attempt to pronounce 'Tel!am' as it's spoken in Spiral tongue, but Huarvaa-aal makes me want to learn it. After all, the language they spoke was mine. I should be able to reciprocate the courtesy.
"Precursors," Huarvaa-aal said slowly. "Visors and things. And what type of structure? Masts?"
"Similar, I hope," I said, "but I haven't seen them with my own two eyes just yet. Do you recommend that route?"
"This, yes," Huarvaa-aal said, tracing a wet line through the papyrus to link the Spire with our destination. Curiously, they drew the line through the middle of the western continent. I inquired about this, and they said with much pride, "I know this area well. Cut through here, there is a narrow pass. We sheltered from leviathans here, ones bigger than me could not follow. Now. Through there. Faster journey, quicker to your masts. Take a small barge, avoid the Spiral. No need to complicate it."
It sounded better by the second. Any time I could save on the journey would be a greater head-start I could claim over Timna-vay.
"And would you be willing to pull a barge for me?" I said.
That surprised them, and their smile disappeared. I admit I was slightly nervous - had I misread the situation? But after a pause they slowly nodded.
"Here," they said, indicating the altered route where it passed through the continent. "This, but not this." They traced a finger over the original path, the loop around the Spiral.
"Of course," I said. "And, naturally, in return you would receive partial credit in any published articles and, of course, half of my own pay."
"Oh, pay?" they said, brightening rapidly again. "For pay, of course. Tell Tektei thank you for sending you to me. I cannot be on this beach all summer. When do we leave? I can get the barge. I do not need a navigator, but, it is useful, for people not used to travelling…"
"I may have a navigator already," I said, to reassure them. "He is very skilled." I really don't know why. I suppose I don't want Huarvaa-aal to think I'm some kind of hack.
I agreed to get back in touch if I ever heard back from Terw-yef. That way, I could always find another navigator on short notice if he never got back to me. But, that was before he did actually accept my proposal.
I'm writing this from my bower. It might be my last entry from this location I write in a very long time; even allowing for additional time at the site, it might be a year until I'm back here. I thought I wouldn't be nostalgic about Mast but look at how I've been writing of it, so maybe I'll be nostalgic about this place, too. It's comfortable, it suits my needs, and Ami-var is good company.
He was very excited to hear I'd bagged Huarvaa-aal, and as surprised as I was.
"You'd think they have more important things to do," he said. We had just spent the night in my bed. Maybe my last night there in a long time. I've left a list of instructions for Ami-var and one of them is that he may use my bed if he so pleases, as mine is the more comfortable of the two. My treat.
"How dare you! There's nothing more important," I said in faux-shock, but I am in agreement with him.
After that I had to say my farewells. I promised to send letters, though we both know that I can't commit unpublished data to text for fear of plagiarism. So we must speak only of non-research related topics. He is optimistic about his new proposal with his master. I wish I shared his optimism.
The last thing I had to do before taking my bundle of equipment down to the docks to find Huarvaa-aal was find Tektei-vas. He will be working on his translation of Precursor speech in my absence; I have to admit there's no one more qualified for it. Unlike Timna-vay, I can see past my emotions to the most logical choice. Tektei-vas, as my colleague under the same project, may also receive my correspondence without being a plagiarist. He and Ami-var should spread my cover story adequately.
I have to go now. The eye of Odr is riding over the horizon and the wind is in the east. Next time I stand here in my bower, it will be with Timna-vay's apologies in my ears and a new cape on my back.