“Ah.” She could not possibly have known his father, but even as a glancing blow, it stung. “In Meridor, the fisherfolk believe that the sea’s stillness is because Meridia sleeps in her clamshell, down at the bottom of the sea. She will arise in glory, and bring them a king’s bounty if a man yells loud enough to wake her.”
Galina studied him, wary. “Is that so.”
“They have competitions,” he explained, voice warming to the story. “There is a promontory near Kentropa Mundi. Scholars have said it is the exact center of the world.”
“They say that about Kentropa Mundi itself, too,” Galina added, wry. “I wonder whose math was off.”
Caiyur laughed. “If I do not miss my guess, I would say the Academy has an opinion on that. Multiple ones.”
“The papers are almost certainly vicious,” she agreed, and for once, the smile that spreads her lips is bright, wild. Genuine. “But come now. This promontory at the center of the world…?”
“It is where men must yell to wake the goddess.” He could see it from his father’s house, the men as small as ants shouting out into the sea. “No one has managed it yet.”
“Perhaps she does not care for the volume, but for the content.” Galina grinned, though it was small, private. “After all, that is what women care about. The words themselves, not how loud one may shout them.”
He shrugged. “It is only a story.”
“Has a woman never tried?” At the shake of his head, she settles back into her saddle, thoughtful. “In Anterca, they have a similar tale, and a similar center of the world —”
“Their math is almost certainly wrong,” he assured her.
Her grin widened. “But there Meridia is a man. As it is women who sing to the sea to entice him from his sleep.”
“It seems small folk are wont to have their superstitions, no matter where they are,” he said, stiffly. “Thought I hope it is Meridor who awaken her, if she is there.”
