Amehana's Workdesk AKA Teresa Garcia's Workspace

The sparkling studded tentacle swept across the deck, disturbing the peace of the gloaming. Ordinarily, it would have been able to grab one of the plentiful small forms usually found on such platforms. It knew gelfling were aboard. They were the land-dwelling forebears of an ancient foe its kind sometimes fell prey to while still small. Shouts reverberated in the air, footfalls thudded across timbers. Food was there, clearly, yet… something was wrong. Where was it exactly?

In the charm and tapestry strewn cabin of the seafaring Sifa family’s vessel a sunfire-red-haired mother clutched her equally Rose Sun blessed daughter. On a table against the wall a rock carved with the three moons, remnant of an ancient temple palace handed down generations from mother to daughter, rested on a small pillow. A small dish held sand from one of the sacred sites, smoldering charcoal, and a mixture of vision inducing herbs and fire coral dust. Languid ropes of scented smoke laced the air and opened the senses. Neither mother nor child were anxious, there were no whimpers despite the heaviness of the air and tension emanating from the deck.

There was no need. They’d been given warning. The crystalline octopid currently assailing the crew above deck was a gift, after all. Soon, there would be steaks and tentacle bits, and the hide could be stripped and treated for boots and belts, crystal outgrowths processed into gems and charms for sale, and ink. Of course, they’d have to earn those boons. Thra was generous, but still required they make effort.

The childling looked into the wisping flags of smoke and reached a tiny hand out at what she saw in them. Her piercing blue eyes dimly glowed with the blue-green vliya her parents were beginning to associate with the odd events, even for a Farseer, that tended to unfold around her. “Up. Need up.”

“Up? You are up.”

“Up!” She pointed up. “Up there. I need up there.” The child proceeded to wriggle and squirm, attempting to worm her way out of her mother’s grip with enough force she began to worry about damage to her daughter’s wingbuds. “Now. Must go there!”

Sidima didn’t want to go out, didn’t want to risk her precious baby girl being snatched by the octopid... whether or not it was a gift of food. If her eyes weren’t already glowing and getting brighter… “Merfid! Stop. You’ll hurt yourself. I’ll take you up but you have to stay with me.

“Up.” Merfid settled down and leaned placidly against her mother’s chest again. “Important.”

Sidima flicked her ears and sighed. “You’re already talking like the Maudra I’m know you’ll be one day.”

“Maudra.” Merfid tasted the word and wrinkled her nose. “Bitter. Heavy.”

She nodded at her daughter’s statement as she went to the door. “It is. Many hard decisions, but you’ll make them well. It runs in your blood from the old places. We have a duty we’re waiting for.”

“Boring.” Her new favorite word. It didn’t sound like flying or swimming, things she wanted to do but in one case wasn’t allowed so far out and in the other not physically possible yet. “Up. Hurry, Mama. Almost time.”

She made her way through the hall, up the steps from the living quarters, and then out the door. The charm and talisman festooned crew, her current husband among, them busily avoided the reach of the hungry octopid. This one was a red so deep it was nearly black, obviously very close to the infuriated state her vision had said it would be near the time their foe would die. She just hadn’t seen how.

Merfid pointed at the creature. “It will come up. Need eye and mouth.” She pointed to the other side of the ship. “Grabby thingy coming. Cut. Mouth and eye both be big.”

“Sidima, Merfid!” Her husband signed sternly from his current spot on a spar above a sweeping tentacle that was still occupied with trying to find where all the morsels were hidden. “Go back in. Not safe!” His dark eyes snapped, rarely firm or forbidding. His Drenchen ancestry showed in the darkness of his dreadlocks, breadth of his nose, gashes of gills pressed tight shut, and the green though somewhat chafed hue of his skin.

Sidma shook her head, then spread regal moth-like blue, green and silver moon-marked wings to flit over to him. Her hands were full of childling, who was busily watching what she knew would be at least two timelines, thus silencing her hands from signing in return. She held Merfid tighter and leaned to his ear, relaying to him what little Merfid had had the language to share.

Wide partly webbed hands flashed instructions to his crew. Males rose higher in rigging, some grasping ropes to swing. Females changed their positions in the air. Every one of them had their blades drawn. They knew the hunt was about to get more interesting.

As predicted, the creature rose. It locked a baleful eye on Merfid, who cheekily waved at it. “Thank you.”

The Bosun coughed, yet again caught off guard by the strange progeny of the Lost Hiding In View. The octopid would have squinted if it could. It focused on the strangely calm tiny thing. Prey, in its experience, was never so calm. Yet, the eyes that looked back not only glowed with something that prickled the back of its brain… but the spawn seemed impossibly old for such a tiny frame. Something about its lack of fear prodded just right.

He would teach it fear. Now all the morsels could be seen; they must have been mocking him. He struck, intending to lash and grapple both the young female and its mother. Eyes widened and mouth gaped, preparing to receive them.

Fire bit tentacles deep. Harpoons and swords struck for eyes and mouth if they weren’t already occupied.

Merfid watched, whispered ancient words no one had taught her, honoring the passing. The glow left her eyes.

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Bobbing in the bay she could see Sifan and Vapran refugee ships, only able to harbor at docks or further out due to preparatory labor from an offshoot race, the Marelings. They restored the entry of the sleeping former capital.
The Lunar Temple at the gates of the ancestral palace enfolded her welcomingly. The hole she’d fallen into as a child was still there, and so too her father’s impromptu rope. Those braids had weathered the trine surprisingly well. On the other hand… Drenchen hair was famous for its durability. She touched her own braids, blazing Sifan red fragmented stories said came to them via a child born of the Rose Sun and San, the Hidden Moon. Perhaps one day she’d find more details of the fosterling that had birthed the gelfling who became the original Sifan Maudra.
Her tail swished and flared its fins as her thoughts wandered. Sometimes, to her embarrassment, it seemed to have a mind of its own. This time it brushed Alarii’s. Merfid still didn’t quite grok how they’d gained these adaptations. His had come while he obtained the seed from Oszah-Staba, the Wellspring Tree. Hers began growing after she’d fallen into something she suspected now was the Pool of Tears in Mithra on her way to enlist aid from the Firelings, calling on ancient treaties she’d only learned of through luck.
“All-Maudra?”
She looked at Alarii, the gentle Mystic’s smile she often teased him about rarely truly left his face. It was there now, but the soft concern in his eyes melted her before she could needle him. “It did it on it’s own.”
“Right.” He said, waiting for her real thoughts. His muski, Aaru, chirped her version of, “Right,” after him.
She smiled. Aaru did so love to be part of any conversation. “Thinking, that’s all.”
He hummed softly.
Her Drenchen archer often made her laugh without trying. She was glad that things were no longer as awkward between them as when she first laid eyes on him in that tavern in Duppington and Knew he was the one. She never called him her Apeknot to his face, far too embarrassing, but he was far stronger than his scrawny and now bowed physical frame led observers to believe. She loved that about him, his steadiness. His quiet presence made her feel full and blossom in fiery, windy, fluttery ways she’d probably never fully understand.
“I think I should wake the city. There are gelflings to live here again. No longer sleeping.” She mused, following the same pull that had led her to him, to the seeds, her true self and her appointed destiny. She laid a hand over the tree shaped birthmark on her arm just below where the cuff of the last maudra of the Lost Island, regained from its keeper in one of the royal families of Mithra, rode her upper arm to remind her of all the history lost to those ancient wars that had shaped the Sifa into what the urskeks and later the skeksis had found them as. Maybe, after the Darkening the the Replanting were dealt with Mother Aughra might see fit to help her try to reclaim what ghosts the Lost Countries had left behind.
“You keep calling them that.” Alarii said, looking around for the spirits of urVa and skekMal, the remnants of the urskek that had joined them on their journey. He sighed. Who knew where they were off to at the moment? He didn’t. They, like others, came and went.
“Because they do.” Merfid smiled and leaned on the walking stick her grandfather had carved her long ago, graven with ancient Sifan and Drenchen symbols meant to help her in her growth. “They have a very different feel than the main cities we’ve met around the Great Trees?”
“I suppose...” He said carefully. He may have bonded with her but he’d probably never ever fully understand the paths of her mind. “Sifa stuff?”
She laughed at the shared joke. “Sifa stuff.” She said warmly. Merfid touched the Stonewood emblem on her clothes. Ending up as the Stonewood Maudra by vote after their deeds in the Deep Forest and then All-Maudra after being attacked by what she considered a rogue swarm of lunamoths with the remnant of the Living Crown after landing in Ha’rar qualified. Anything unexplainable or strange their little group collectively labelled “Sifa Stuff,” thanks to him.
“Are you doing something that might make me concerned?” Alarii asked.
“Maybe...” She looked down at the worn stone in the center of a dais. “This looks a bit performative...” Merfid looked around again, finding herself where she’d consider center stage. “I feel like more than coronations happened in this particular spot. I can probably be seen by anyone down at the foot of the road by the docks even though we’re waaaaay up here, up the rise.”
“Probably.” He frowned slightly, then sighed. “Uh?”
Merfid’s eyes had taken on the green-blue glow he’d gotten used to observing whenever Thra took hold of her. She unsheathed the small dagger she wore on one of her belts next to San’s Blade. She tilted her head slightly as she listened and watched. As she became lost in whatever vision she was being shown his hands itched. A familiar urge to go touch the indentation in the platform tugged his hands, but something inside the still locked gates of the palace tugged harder. He’d wait, he could only use that gift once a day, and they still had yet to investigate the thing here that was to help urVa and skekMal. For now she was safe.
“Oh, that’s how it works. That’s some weird spiritual technology.” Merfid cut her left palm deftly and mashed her hand into the hand-shaped indent before he could do anything.
Aaru squawked. Alarii reached for her. “Merfid! What are you doing!?”
“Connecting Past, Present, and Future.” She said nonchalantly as the blue vliyaya streamed out through the city in swirls. Crystals, tucked away in strategic places through the city began to light in sequence while the water flowing through the channels that provided its running water filled, flowed, and took on life.
“You cut yourself. Why?” She rarely annoyed him, but he was very definitely unhappy she’d intentionally hurt herself.
She flicked her wings then stood after she was certain it was done. “I heal.” She smiled at him, trying to hide the fact that her hand stung. The line of blood in the indent was rapidly disappearing. “What it does with my blood… is none of my business.”
“All Maudra!” He took her hand, looking it over. “Don’t do that again.” With a frustrated sigh he began cleaning her up.
“Sorry, Dear.”
“You’re going to do it again somewhere, aren’t you?”
“Probably.” She said mildly.
Alarii grumbled. Aaru reprimanded Merfid loudly. He couldn’t help his irritation leaking through their bond with either.
Alarii eyed her after finishing. He couldn’t smile, not right now, but he did stroke an uninjured part of her callused and scarred hand in reply.This is the version of Wake the City that I submitted for Flash Fiction Month. The longer story is only available to my mate and to Patrons on Patreon. This is only A version of what might happen for these scene. Merfid's well aware she's operating within possible timelines and sometimes forsees different versions of events.


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