#ambaghai

@sea-wolf-coast-to-coast

It starts with the tonic.

The tonal center.  The point at which the whole structure depends.  The note forever referenced by the rest.  In solfeggio, it is do.  

The tonic of her heart had always been to support others.  That her life - her very aether - was for everyone else.

This was her do.  The center of all she did.

There’s the portal…

Then, the supertonic.

You never end on this note if you want resolution.  It is tense.  It is aural unease.  It crawls through your chest and halts your voice.

She’s too close to it…

Next, the mediant.

This was the point of no return.  The point where one knew what the key was. 

She’s struggling-- they’ve snared her!

This was a minor key.  

There was no going back.

And then the subdominant.

The key could still change.  It could modulate.  It doesn’t have to continue this way.  It doesn’t.  It doesn’t!

I have to do something.  I have to do something!   But it hurts.  It hurts!

The dominant.

This was the next strongest note.  The next best tone.  The tone that held up the tonic.  Reinforced it.  Supported it.  Songs that alternated between the tonic and the dominant were some of the most powerful a bard could sing, full of triumph and glory.  

It’s enough to lift a soul out of dire straits…

But it’s also just unstable enough… teetering on the edge of victory or loss...

I just… have to pour all my aether into this last shot…  maybe I can break the portal.  I have to try.  I have to try!

Then the submediant.

In a minor key, this is where the melancholy lay.  When it ends here, you feel a sense of suspension.

Of ‘what now?’

Its cadence is deceptive.  It lies.  It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be left with this note.  To be left hanging.

They took her.  They took them.  They’re gone.  

What the hell do we do?

The penultimate subtonic.

It leads home.  But it doesn’t feel complete.  It’s missing something.  It’s tension, pulling at your heart.  And you feel it grow stronger the longer it’s held.

"Explain to me why we don't take that tool from him and chase them down."

"...he's an informant, Ayla can back me up and Natsumi too. If they're going to play long con, we should keep playing long con too."

"He can continue to get us information this way."

"Is information more important than going after the people they just took from us?"

"Why are we letting them go? Why aren't we chasing them? Why are we letting our friends go?"

"Impulse isn't a pretty look. Ayla is hurt, we've extended ourselves decently already, we know they aren't going to die, we have heard of the facility they're probably holding up in..."

And finally… the tonic.

The tonal center.  The point at which the whole structure depends.  The note forever referenced by the rest.

Finally home.  Finally centered.  Despite the tension in every ascending note.

She had to be strong.  She had to support the rest.

Despite every nerve of her body screaming out, seared beyond mental comprehension.

This is her do.  

The very purpose for her being.

It is very hard to say ‘No’ to Ambaghai, for he asks little and when he does, that is even more minute than the frequency of request. 

She really wants to just turn around and tell him to go fucking ask someone else.

But then she’d end up looking at that somber face and the waxen illness sweated across it.

This is one of the rare moments that she’d like Vander to walk through the door right now so that she can pass off responsibility. Kowa is probably awake too, but she is pretty sure Kowa would box her ears for bothering her - Xiaohu is the one that had the audacity to come to their home in the middle of the night, and now she had to lie in this grave.

Or improvise.

She remembers E’leyna telling her that these ‘sandwiches’ are very good for the sick. She fails to see how something crappy, and cold, can compare to a bowl of broth or congee, but E’leyna knows everything that there is know about the Universe.

And she sees one of these ‘sandwiches’ in their icebox with Jaaster’s name on the parchment paper.

He will miss it, but he will also blame himself.

...so she unwraps that right onto a plate.

Giving another attempt at drawing Amba. Sketchy-sketch.

Bonus hairflop version:

He didn’t like to think about his past, his previous life. Because the memories drew him in like moth to flame, a magnetic pull he was nigh helpless to resist. That pull left a pain in his chest that hurt somehow more than where the arrow had went in. A pull that tried to steal his heart straight from his chest.

Go to it, it whispered. Go home.

But who was he back home but a ghost, someone whose death was long since passed, grieved, forgotten. Best he remain dead. He couldn’t go home if he tried.

He didn’t like to think of it, because he couldn’t go back, and he wanted to. Wanted to so much that the longing hollowed a hole in his heart.

This new life was heavy enough without it.

And yet…

“I want the stars.”

“… What?”

“I want the fucking stars.”

The words prompt Amba to prop himself up on an elbow from his position in the grass and stare over at Dayir, lying close beside him. Dayir’s eyes slowly shift away from the stars overhead to land on him, a content expression on his face. Waiting.

Amba considers him for a few moments before asking, “Have you been chewing on some of your mother’s… less medicinal herbs?”

A slight grin. “Mm. A little.”

Amba stares at him.

“What? It’s hardly any different from alcohol. Plus, they’re a little medicinal. And my shoulder still hurts.”

He shrugs inwardly and flops back onto the grass, directing his eyes back at the heavens above. “I think they don’t work the same.”

“You’ve never had them, have you?”

“No.”

“Hmm.”

The conversation fades into silence. After a few moments Ambaghai decides to muse him.

“Why do you want the stars?”

In the corner of his eye, he sees Dayir’s head roll toward him. Can practically sense the pleased smile on his lips.

“Cause they’re pretty.”

Dayir’s gaze lingers as Amba waits for further explanation. None comes.

He rolls his own head to the side to look at him, “That’s it?”

“Do I need another reason?”

Ambaghai narrows his eyes slightly. Knowing Dayir, there was bound to be more to it than that. Too many thoughts going through that head of his at any given time. Not that that was a bad thing.

Dayir’s smile spreads into a wide grin, a brief note of laughter, and then, “There’s no matching the stars in your eyes, though.”

Amba’s face falls flat as he takes a moment to process that, while beside him Dayir squeezes his eyes shut and laughs at his own terrible line.

Amba frowns. “I’m leaving.”

Dayir breaks from his laughter, “Wait, wait! Come back! I’m sorry!” another snigger of laughter punctuates the end of the sentence as he sits up and twists an arm around Amba’s to pull him back to a sitting position. Amba allows him to do so easily, having never really intended to leave. Just a part of an act, and he smiles in spite of himself.

They don’t lie back down, but Dayir keeps his arm wrapped around Amba’s, moves his hand down to twine their fingers together. He rests his chin on Amba’s shoulder, a seemingly simple gesture that involves a complicated but familiar maneuver to keep their horns from clacking together. There’s something comforting about the gentle pressure on his shoulder.

They stay like that quietly for a time, before Dayir speaks into the silence.

“I don’t really want the stars, you know.”

Amba waits for him to continue.

“They’re just… a sign of something vast. I think I want to know them.”

“I… don’t know what that means.”

“Hm. Neither do I, not completely. But I guess it just makes sense.”

Amba hums an acknowledgement at the statement. He thinks he can begin to understand what Dayir is getting at. He squeezes the hand wrapped in his own a bit more tightly.

“Amba? Amba you should be training.”

An unhappy noise emanates from Ambaghai’s bed, and Nigen just manages to catch sight of him before he drags his blankets over his head.

“I don’t want to,” he sulks.

Nigen heaves a sigh, “Come on, it’s not that bad.”

Another unhappy sound, and the blankets shift as he burrows himself further into them. “No.”

She closes her eyes in response, in anticipation of the frustration that usually comes with trying to convince her son to do something he doesn’t want to do.

A smile, “Why not?”

The blankets shift again as another noise sounds from them, this one frustrated and uncertain.

No further response.

It’s not the hands that are the issue, it’s the memory.

A dozen slips of paper lay discarded upon the floor of his tent, left to blow away in the wind of the open front. He doesn’t care about them, they’re wrong.

Again, and again, they’re wrong.

It’s not the scale that’s the issue – never mind that he isn’t used to working so small, he can do it. Just the right curve, right weight, right thickness. His hands are used to detail work, though perhaps not in such quantity.

It’s not that perfectionism has never been an issue to him – though usually it doesn’t bring so much frustration, doesn’t sink its teeth in so deeply and hang on quite so long. Small details and bits got wrong that he would work on trying to make right. Overwork, often, until a drawing was ruined and abandoned to the wind or to a flame. But he’d learned to accept the smaller mistakes, let them pass him by even when they bothered him. Else nothing would ever be finished.