#7.19.15

If something existed   merely to consume,  that something would                   be your gaze. The way it makes my   skin creep back;     splitting in two,  with all the veins becoming                       transparent,     the bones melt —      to show my most vulnerable     organs:    the lungs from which oxygen flows    & the heart,   from which blood disperses with nourishment  into the being which possess it,   as your gaze floods   my body with tremors  & stimulation, I can only begin to breathe     again when your lips touch            my soul.

She had gone through the books but a true reference would mean the Library or the offices of her teachers. It was the day before turn-in and even if it meant failing she was determined to puzzle through.

She turned her calculation sheet over and started on the next ring. Incoming energy from mainline of four hundred forty seven points, she thought. Split into two arcs and realign to generate initial field. Saturate with...

She tapped at the second ring with the other end of her pencil and set her head on the edge of the desk. After another moment she rose and got her cloak and walked from the room.

It was almost summer and she could feel it in the air. The snows had been gone months and the rains had come in their place. Now the rains were thunderstorms full of warmth and the park trees in the city were blooming. But in the Spires summer showed only as a humid heat that saturated everything. No room was exempt and even the Royals complained.

She went down into the Commonway without her cloak and passed through the crowds and then through the arch to the Valley. There were soldiers in plenty passing through and she was one of the few layfolk but this did not dissuade her. She kept her hood up and walked slowly with her eyes to the ground and the guards in the alcoves ignored her. When she came to the end of the tunnel she looked up and her hood fell back.

There was fog over everything and just outside under the cover of a wide pavilion there was a commander giving orders to a group of soldiers. A loud strong voice naming assignments and directions. Two children in black-hemmed robes passed by in front of her and she walked in the direction that they had come from, up the nearest stairway and to the first terrace.

It was not raining but there was a spray in the air that came with the fog and she closed her eyes for a moment as she walked and let it settle on her face. Scent of growing things, a comforting humidity wholly different than her room. Shouts of soldiers at their work and the striking of tools in the ground. An ox lowed loudly somewhere and she opened her eyes and nearly stumbled on a step.

She took the stairway up toward a higher terrace and the fog covered where she had passed. There was some strange breed of rice growing there and a soldier passed among the planted rows taking measurements she could not fathom. She watched him for a moment and then walked on.

It was the day before turn-in for her exam but she did not have the heart for it. She had gone into the learning path to spite her parents who were of the Service but there was no fight left. In the beginning the discipline had promised paths and choices of all kinds but ultimately it came down again to working for the City. Perhaps not in the Service but it was a kind of service all the same and freelancers skilled enough to earn well were few and far between. She had danced through parties alone or spurned them entirely and her few friends were of her same station. Middling families and of questionable drive. Of them one had taken her leave already and gone home but the others were doubtless holed up in their rooms and working still. Her friend Yachui had taken to writing equations on the walls and then on paper. Another tried to work through them in her head alone and write diagrams fullformed.