Even if you had been training for it all your life, there was little you could do to prepare yourself to meet a god. Noelle's palms were sweaty where they clutched her bag of seed. The steps up to the offering-platform were steep and narrow, and the heavy bags of seed jounced against her with every step. Ahead of her Joffrey'sWhen I'm drafting I don't pause to fiddle with names; unless I have something in mind from the beginning, I'll slap in literally the first thing that comes to mind. My placeholder names are almost universally dire.
Anyhow, this Joffrey guy seems like a good friend. steps were light and sure. He'd done this hundreds of times, if not more. He would be looking forward to moving into the High Priest's personal retinue, but before he could do that, he needed to train his replacement. That was how it worked: the quick and the virtuous climbed up the many-rayed ladder towards the Sun. Those above helped those below ascend towards warmth and light. Together everyone rose.
"Noelle," Joffrey said, and she hurried up the last couple of steps. She couldn't belettingNice. her head go off into the clouds. Now she needed to pay attention and to learn.
It was dim, of course. The Sun was still far away. Noelle watched as closely as she could while Joffrey showed her the way through the routine. They asked the Sun's permission to approach, made the first blessing. They cleared the offering platform, brushing away old seed hulls and scrubbing away droppings from the pidove that had flocked to the Sun's leavings yesterday. joffrey let Noelle help with theseparts, but took for himself the task of scrubbing scorch marks from the stonework. Noelle worried he might have feared her slow and hovered anxiously nearby, clutching the seeds while he scrubbed and brushed at the stonework, until it was as clean as the day it had come from the mason's workbench.
However long ago that must have been. Fifty years? A hundred? AnnakAnother placeholder. I remember that this was somehow related to a discussion on the TR Discord server, but what it relates to, I have no clue. hadn't always had its Sun. Once there'd been a Sun that lived up above the clouds--perhaps lived there still, only hiding its face--and none had been able to reach it, not even the high priest. Once there had been a time when the clouds broke and you *could*I never bothered to convert my oldest drafts to HTML, so they still contain raw markup like this. Something I intended to post would have a script run over this to convert this to an appropriate italics tag. see what was above.
Next was the most important part, the preparation of the day's offering. At Joffrey's gesture Noelle hesitantly stepped forward with seed at the ready. She concentrated hard as Joffrey showed her the motions to be made, had her recite the blessings with him. It would be months before she was entrusted to do this on her own, but she wanted to learn much, much faster than that, to show she was worthy of a place near the Sun. Joffrey never rushed her, nor chided her for slowness, but she could sense, as they went through the motions carefully, slowed down or even repeated for Noelle's benefit, his impatience with her, even an edge of worry. It was growing warmer as they continued the blessing. Soon the Sun would arrive.
The most important step came last: pouring the new offering, the gift from the people of Annak to the Sun. Golden seed poured into the top of the altar, the hole in the center of the carven cactus-flowers, then spilled from the mouths of the human and pokémon faces carved on its sides. It spread out to fill the trough below, vibrant against the pocked gray stone of the altar. Impossible to miss.
By now the heat had rown to sweltering, so Noelle half expected the seeds to pop in their bowl.The offering is still "seeds" at this point, but you can already see that I'm thinking of it as corn. She could see the Sun hovering about the altar not far away, sure to turn towards theirs any minute. She wanted to stand where she was and watch its approach, even knowing she'd be burnt to nothing.
Joffrey grabbed her arm and urged her back down into the tower's central stair, clad in stone, where it was deep cool and dar. Joffrey stood above her on the staircase, which wasn't realyTwo typos in as many sentences! The reason for all these errors (like the smushed words earlier) is that this is actually, in some respects, a second draft: it's retyped from a handwritten copy that was the actual rough draft. I write by hand sometimes when I'm having trouble with a draft; it forces me to focus solely on the writing and proceed linearly instead of jumping all over the place like I do when I'm having trouble with a story. The only reason I don't do it more often is that having to type everything up afterwards is AWFUL and takes FOREVER, even though I type fast. For this draft I'm typing flat-out as fast as I can, which leaves it much dirtier than it otherwise would be. meant to hold two. Noelle's breath caught in her throat as the Sun's glow appeared beyond the grate above, growing brighter and stronger by the second.
Sh craned her neck in an attempt to see around Joffrey, and only after found herself considering whether it was a blasphemy. Fortunately Joffrey was distracted, staring up through the grate with sweat beading on his face. He was still closer to the Sun than Noelle, but even in his shadow she was closer than she'd ever been before.
In fact, Joffrey seemed to have forgotten she was there at all, starting the invocations of the Sun's descent without pause or any glance down to see whether Noelle was keeping up. She tried, at first, mumbling the words at a slight delay. But it was impossible to concentrate on words once the heat enveloped her and the glare of the Sun found her even in that stairwell, even in Joffrey's shadow. It was like she'd been plunged into the heart of a fire, hotter than she'd ever been, brighter than she'd ever seen. She clutched dizzily at the wall and couldn't tell if the roaring up above was coming from the Sun's mouth or was only the sound of the air catching fire.
Above, something rasped and scraped against stone. There were crunches and pops--Noelle was sure the corn *was* popping now. Something thumped and thumped again, with each irregular beat sending a new wave of heat cascading into the stairwell. Embers blew and scattered through the grate, landing in Teacher'sOop. Who's this clown?
It's not uncommon for stories to change as I'm writing them, and when that happens, I generally go with it. By this point in the story I was thinking I really wanted "Joffrey" to be at the same level as the protagonist; it worked better/made more sense for her to be betrayed by someone directly competing for the same spot she was. That meant I needed a third higher-ranked character to show them the ropes. I simply wrote him in here and continued as though he'd always been there, on the understanding that I'd go back and redo the beginning to include him. hair and cloths, and now Noelle saw where the speckled pattern on Teacher's robes had come from.
She couldn't even hear Teacher over the crackle of the Sun, had forgotten the invocation entirely. She couldn't even think to run, which she later realized was a blessing, that otherwise she might have fled blindly in search of shade and cool and so rined herself. None who sought to draw close to the Sun could hope to justify fleeing from it so. It was impossible to say how long she was caught there, fighting not to faint, before the awful heat and light retreated, the Sun taking its leave. The smell of burning yet lingered in Noelle's nostrils, and she clutched the wall, uncertain that it was really over.
But Teacher shoved them down the stairs, wiping sweat from his face with one wide sleeve. Noelle had rare occasion to be grateful for the short sleeves and thin fabric of her apprentice's garb, but she didn't envy Teacher his heavy ceremonial robes now.
At the base of the tower the door let them out into a field of corn--the Sun visited and grew the corn with its light, and in return the people of Annak gave some of the corn back to the Sun. Pidove, and perhaps the rare bug pokémon, would come to eat whatever the Sun had left. And tomorrow the priest--and now Noelle and Joffrey--would return to preset another day's offering. That was her job now, Noelle realized with a thrill of pride and unease. That might be her job for some time. Shewondered whether it would ever get easier to be in the presence of the Sun.Ordinarily I'd be inclined to slap a scene break in here and move to the protagonist finding out the gravecaller's gone. The next few paragraphs were all me telling myself, "Write out the dang transition, you wuss! Write it!"
She exchanged looks with Joffrey all the way down te shot path leading through the fragrant corn and then back to the Temple of the Sun. He looked as flushed as she imagined she must be, skin a bright red except where he'd been in teacher's shadow. They couldn't speak freely until Teacher left them to themselves, and then it was a quicksilver, excited conversation they snatched in the brief time before they had to go and prepare the midday meal.
"What did you think?" Noelle asked, quiet despite the fact that there was no one about to overhear. "The sparks, falling on Teacher's face! I never would have imagined."
"Yes. It was brighter--brighter than anything I could imagine."
Brighter and hotter, too. The sun was never far off, in daytime, at least, lest Annak freeze below the dark sky, but it was dim in whatever parts of the city the Sun wasn't blessing at the moment, its glow far-off. "Yes! It was bright. Even closing my eyes didn't help."
"You closed your eyes?" Joffrey sounded so scandalized that Noelle regretted bringing it up. "It was hard being in the presence of the Sun," her fellow acolyte said with the quick surety of something known by rote. "That is why we must study, and prepare ourselves, to be worthy of the Sun's grace."
"Of course," Noelle said, disappointed. She had hoped to share her feelings with someone who might understand, not receive the kind of doctrinal reprimand that might come from any one of the priests. Once again she thought of the one spot waiting in the high priest's retinue, but only for a moment. GrandmotherGrandmother also kind of appears out of nowhere! When I started writing this draft, I wasn't really sure how "Joffrey" would betray the protagonist. The stolen gravecaller was something that came to me as I went along, only after I'd stuck Teacher in there, so true to form I inserted it here and planned to properly integrate it in a rewrite. would come to visit her in only a few hours, and there at least she could be assured of an enthusiastic and sympathetic ear, and none of the high priest's dourness.
That evening, though, once the Sun had retired and abrupt darkness come down on Annak, Grandmother did not come. Noelle had gone to her usual spot, where Grandmother wouldn't even need the facecallerI was delighted to have found my fantasy concept to get a smushname! I did actually try to think about a good one to use rather than throwing down an immediate placeholder, but ultimately this was all I could come up with, so I moved on with the intention of changing it to something better later. The idea is, like, yamask... hold... faces? So you call the face? Sure. to know where to go. But Noelle was left alone in the dim glow of the fires lighting the Sun's temple, bursting with news she had no one to tell.
Noelle's hand slipped under her outer shift, to where the facecaller always lay, just above her breastbone. This was where she always carried it, never once leaving it behind. It didn't do to go losing a fragment of your grandmother's soul.
It wasn't there.
Noelle turned, heart in her throat, patting at her tunic, her trousers, searching the ground around her. The facecaller was gone. Where? Had it fallen somehow the last time she'd changed clothes, its cord snapped? Surely the dormitory, that was where she needed to look.
But it wasn't in the dormitory, as even a cursory glance could tell. Wherever the facecaller was, so would be Grandmother, and there was no ghost lurking among the narrow beds tonight, ready to gently chide her for inattention, to make Noelle laugh away her terror and listen with intent to her stories. Where the facecaller was, Grandmother would be, so if it was lost, so was she.
Where could it be? Grandmother had visited last night, so it couldn't have been gone long. Not in the dormitory: the kitchen, then, or latrine? But as Noelle thought of where the facecaller might have landed, there was one horrible possibility that kept growing larger and larger, until it eclipsed all the others.
The ceremonial tower. Perhaps her shaking had somehow undone the cord, or the Sun's heat burned it away. It seemed too dreadfully likely that the facecaller was resting on those steps. But if a priest found out, if anyone saw a yamask drifting about the platform--Noelle couldn't even think of it. The Sun ruled daytimes, shdding light on industry and striving. Ghosts were creatures of the night, of rest and peace and dreaming. For a ghost to appear in the sanctum of the Sun was the very worst offense.
These thoughts chased Noelle from the dormitory and out of the temple completely. She was soon lost among city streets, trying to find a path she'd followed only once before in the deep dark of night. All the while she told herself that this was foolish, that even if the facecaller *had* fallen on the stairs, if Grandmother *was* there, it was very unlikely anyone would see. Noelle would retrieve the facecaller and lead Grandmother away, and all would be well.
She found at last where the corn salks were split by the tower's path and hurried down it, only to bowl into the shadowy figures coming in the opposite diection. Noelle cried out in surprise, and then, to her dismay, recognized the voice that yelled in turn. Teacher.
And then, flying at her, beating at her face with rattling clay wings single eye glaring, a sigilyph, one of the servants of the Sun. Noelle threw her arms up to protect her face, then froze when she saw what the sigilyph was dragging behind, trapped in a glowing psychic bubble. *Grandmother.*
"Noelle," Teacher barked. With a sharp gesture the sigilyph drew back from her. In its psychic glow Noelle could faintly see the deep frown on Teacher's face, the facecaller dangling from his fist.
"Teacher, I," she began.
"Was careless," Teacher finished for her. "Impossibly so. Do you understand, Noelle, why we cannot allow the dead to enter any tower of the Sun?"
Grandmother threw herself at the wall of the bubble, shadowy fists rebounding from it. Noelle's mouth was dry as grave-dust.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, the words harsh and whispering from her parched mouth. "I understand. It won't happen again. I'll leave the facecaller in the dormitory. Whatever penance there is, I'll pay it." Grandmother made noises of indignation from within the psychic bubble, but Noelle couldn't bring herself to look at her.
Teacher's expression didn't lighten the slightest bit. He shook his head. "We won't be able to use this tower until it's been purified. That won't be a task for you. Joffrey. Tomorrow you will prepare for the cleansing. Ask back at the temple for what you'll need--the ShrinekeepersI vigorously resisted having two fantasy smushnames in this story. That felt like it was laying it on way too thick! But in the end I couldn't think of anything else that sounded as nice as a name for the ghost priests, so it got to stay. are bound to be awake yet."
Noelle turned in shock to the small figure beside Teacher whom she'd forgotten about entirely. Had Teacher really asked Joffrey here to handle Grandmother?
How had Teacher even known there was a ghost about the tower?
How had the facecaller come to fall from its place? The burning Sun, or something--someone--else?
Noelle turned from Joffrey again, a cold pit opening through her. "Teacher, I'm sorry," she began.
"I'm afraid no amount of sorry can fix this," Teacher said firmly. "My cofidence in you has been shaken, Noelle. Badly shaken. Be quiet for now. Follow. We shall have to think of what this means for your future."
That stunned Noelle into silence well enough. She watched Teacher walking off, Grandmother floating trapped and furious at his side, and with him went dreams of the Sun, of the temple's inner sanctum, of the bright rainbow robes of the true priest. It couldn't be that simple, could it?
Joffrey brushed past her, but she put out a hand and grabbed him before he could catch up to Teacher. "It was you, wasn't it?" she asked. "You took my facecaller and left it there!"
Joffrey had to twist out of her grasp, not meeting her eye. It was as good as a "yes." "Why?" Noelle asked. "Why? Because only one of us can--?"
"It isn't fair," Joffrey said abruptly. "You've always had that ghost. I've had to do this alone. I had to make up for it somehow."
The bitterness in his voice stole Noelle's words from her once again. She could muster only a single, "but," and then, "It didn't have to be like that. You..."
"I wasn't the one who decided only one of us could advance," Joffrey said, coldly, and finally wrenched himself free from Noelle's grip. She watched him go. She watched both of them go, and her future go with them, and still she felt she couldn't understand.
--
Nothing could prepare you to meet a god.Here we go again! The beginning... take two. Noelle had been training for it all her life, and still here she was, with sweating palms and butterflies in her stomach, almost running to keep up with Teacher.
At least Joffrey didn't look unaffected, either, hurrying to keep up with she and Teacher both. Noelle flashed him a grin that he shakily returned. "Can you believe it?" she whispered at him, one eye on Teacher's back up ahead. There was nothing that said the two of them couldn't talk, but the situation felt like it forbade it, somehow.
"No," Joffrey muttered back. "I couldn't sleep at all last night."
"I don't think anybody could!" Certainly Noelle hadn't. The dormitory had been full of creaks and rustlings, young disciples of the Sun alive with sleepless nerves, awaiting their first encounter with the Sun, on its rise tomorrow.
"Did you talk to your... grandmother?" Joffrey asked quietly.Establishing this properly this time around. It's time for some worldbuilding!
"Yes! She's coming tonight, too, to see how things went." Noelle's hand went to the small lump that was where her facecaller rested, always with her.
She was lucky to have Grandmother's help. It was rare for ancestors to return as yamask, to take such a direct interest in the lives of their descendants, and of everyone in the family, Grandmother had chosen to give her facecaller to Noelle, to visit her in the night, and not anybody else.
Under ordinary circumstances that would have marked Noelle out as a Shrinekeeper, with the responsibility to look after all the ancestors of Annak. But she'd been born on the second Sunday of the month, and that marked her as belonging to the Sun. The Sun trumped all the spirits of the night, even ancestors, and so here she was now, about to meet the Sun properly for the first time.
Joffrey didn't have his ancestors visiting in the night, listening to his hopes and fears, passing along wisdom and encouragement. "How close do you think we'll be able to get?" Noelle asked him. "I heard DiracDirac???
I knew I only had a couple paragraphs left before this draft was done, so I was putting even less effort than usual into my placeholders. I was ready to be OUTTA here! bragging about how he caught a scale from the Sun's wing. Maybe we will, too!"
"I'm sure it would just burn to ash," Joffrey muttered gloomily. He was probably right, of course. Noelle wondered if his mood was nerves just for meeting the Sun, or if he was thinking that only one of them could be chosen to continue past this point in their training.Oh, right. I should probably mention this at some point. One would go on in the priesthood and grow even closer to the Sun, maybe even enter the High Priest's retinue. The other would be relegated to temple maintenance, sweeping floors and cooking meals for other chosen of the Sun. There was much that would be decided by how they served the Sun here.
Teacher led them through the cornfield around the base of the offering tower. It was itch black now, awaiting the Sun's touch. Teacher unlocked a grate at the base of the tower, and within, a set of stone stairs led up.