"Kae!" Emera shouted out through the doorway into the bustling street.
Kae and Anelle turned back to the house. "Can you go past the market and buy some hilgrm fruit?"
"How many?" He shouted back.
"Four or five."
"Will do." He responded.
Emera rushed out the door and grabbed Kae's arm. "Make sure your back well before sun down." Her eyes darted up and down the street. She lowered her voice to barely a whisper. "The red guards have been targeting young folks, especially..." Emera looked at Anelle with concern.
"Of course, mother. I will keep her safe." Kae offered his arm to Anelle and they strolled off down the street.
Once they were out of ear shot Anelle asked, "What was that about?"
"Nothing to worry about. Mother is just being overly protective. Come on." Kae grabbed her hand and picked up the pace.
With winter waning and the spring markets starting their season Athon was getting busier by the day. Merchants and travelers were entering the city from both sides. High end merchandise being unloaded from the harbor and caravans of travelers pulling wagons from the city gates, squashing the locals in the center. The season of Sereus brought money into the city but Kae always felt trapped by the influx of people everywhere.
He wove in and out of side streets to avoid the foot traffic. He looked over at Anelle and hid a smile at her expression. Her eyes were jumping from one new thing to the next. She always had a child-like awe for everyday life, something he both envied and cherished. A part of him hoped that time wouldn't dampen her sense of fascination.
They rejoined the crowd as people funnelled onto the cathedral bridge. Anelle squeezed his arm as a male tilk, pulling a cart, passed. They were docile creatures that could pull loads ten times their weight, making them ideal for pulling carts as they were cheaper and more common than horses. They had thick leathery limbs and the male ones were covered in a long shaggy coat, usually beige or brown, which covered their eyes. They mostly ate grass but for some reason Anelle was frightened of them. He wondered if she realised Lile was also a tilk or if she was just scared of the larger males.
They crossed the bridge and headed down another alley that joined a side street that ran parallel to the main road.
The domes and spires of the Orello cathedral rose above the rooftops blotting out the morning sun.
They entered a darkened alley and emerged in front of the cathedrals' back doors. Parchment with notices hung on the outside of the doors. Mostly with easy to identify symbols and pictures; a missing girl or the icon of an animal. A young man in an imperial servant's uniform, a simple black tail coat, was nailing a new notice to the door. The parchment had the words 'fake gold' and the drawing of a noose. Kae looked it over for a moment with curiosity.
Kae held open the other door for Anelle to walk through. The entrance was dark except for the stained glass in the ceiling. Anelle stopped and looked up. The glass image was of two fish, one golden and one black swimming around an orb of iridescent colours.
"Why are they swimming around the pearl?" Anelle asked.
Kae scrunched his eyebrows and followed her gaze. "Oh, you mean the world?"
Anelle looked at him confused. He held back a laugh, admiring the way she scrunched her nose to the side.
"The goddess of light, Eabra, swims around the world and the god of darkness, Khylfe, chases after her. With her presence we wake and with his we rest. It's a depiction of the old gods who we show respect to. Once he finally caught her there was both light, darkness and neither. They married and sired twins, the high gods, who both married and sired the lower gods." Kae explained.
"This way." Kae gently pulled Anelle towards a door under the right staircase. The cramped corridor led towards the back of the cathedral. Wooden doors intermittently appeared on the right wall, each with a plaque bearing a symbol. Kae headed to the end of the corridor to a spiral staircase leading upwards. Light and sound from the world outside entered through thin slits on the curved walls. The top opened into a room filled with books.
Anelle looked around in wonder. She reached out and ran her fingers across fabric spines. But her eyes turned down and her lips thinned.
"Is something wrong? I thought you would like seeing the library and reading." He said. She mustered up a sad smile. "I know you struggle with reading but I'll help you improve." Kae reassured her.
She shook her head. "It's not that. I…I spent years reading books to escape my tiny life but now," she looked away, "I have experienced more of the world than I ever thought I would. I know I should be content with this much but a small part of me wants more." She turned back and looked Kae in the eyes. "I want to experience it for myself. I love hearing your stories of traveling all over Ealrian and sailing to Eteric. I want to see the Siahon rolling desert with my own eyes. I want to stand on the bow of a ship and sail across a vast ocean."
"Then you should come with us." Kae said.
"Really?" Anelle's face lit up with a smile. She leaned up with her face inches from his.
Kae blushed and took half a step backwards. "I'll ask father but I'm sure it will be alright." Kae cleared his throat. "How about you use these books as a way to practise your reading skills, even if you don't want to."
"I never said I didn't want to read. I …just don't have the same hunger as I once did." She chuckled as she walked down the next shelf. "You could say I have found another way to fill that longing. How about this, I challenge you to find a book that is at my skill level and help me enjoy reading again."
"That's a rather tall order." Kae responded.
"So you can't do it?" Anelle asked with a slight smile.
"I never said that." Kae looked sideways at her along the shelf and returned her smile.
Anelle walked round the shelf towards the back of the room. "Kae, is this where you learnt to read and write?" Anelle asked.
Kae grabbed a book off the shelf and headed towards her voice. "Of course. The church is the only place people can learn to read and write. The priests believe that all people should be able to read the scripts of Paeneya and Ibaris if they should please."
"Will Tiione also come to study?" Anelle asked.
"Uhm, no."
"Why not?"
Kae emerged from the shelves to the back of the room. Rows of desks faced a wooden stand against the back wall. Slates and white chalk sticks lay neatly on each desk. A holy tomb of Paeneya sat open on the plinth.
Kae took a seat at one of the desks. "Well you don't need to be able to read and write to make and sell musical instruments. Father has done it for years. Plus the priests don't work entirely for free. They make it as fair as possible but as our family has a decent income they pressure us to pay more than most. As you know I'm not very good with my hands, so learning to read and write to track the business income became something I could do."
Anelle sat at the desk next to him and asked. "Is that what you really want?"
He looked away. Over the entire winter season she hadn't mentioned the day she heard him playing the violin. She was sweet and kind to a fault. He was falling more and more for her. She asked the very question he avoided thinking about because he couldn't face the answer.
After a moment he answered. "I don't know. The head of a successful business is a good profession that will keep my future family clothed and fed. I don't think there is anything wrong with that." Kae responded.
"Future family." Anelle whispered under her breath. She held her lips together and turned away as her face heated.
"Oh, uh, well…" Kae looked away awkwardly, pretending not to notice her flushed cheeks. "I…I grabbed this book. I think you might like it." He placed the book on the desk in front of her.
Anelle looked down. It was a thin book with a reddish brown cover. She opened the book and read the title on the first page.
"The White Scrifin." She furrowed her brows. "What's a scrifin?"
"Um, it's a small creature with two sets of big ears and four eyes. They often fight and take each other's tails and limbs." Anelle still looked confused. "Oh, Mother yelled at you the other day for feeding one scraps of meat at the back door."
"The cute creature that lives in the alley." She nodded before turning to the next page and started reading. "Long ago in Reimse Soilse?" Anelle looked up at Kae questioningly.
"Reimse Soilse is the garden of the gods. It's often used as the setting for myths and its geography varies wildly depending on the author." Kae informed her.
Anelle nodded and returned to the page before her.
'…there was a tribe of scrifins. Each had a beautiful fluffy coat. Some were black and hunted gilcos nests at night, blending into the shadows. Others were brown like the trees, lying flat on the branches and pouncing on khins when they flew into their nests. There were orange ones too that lay in wait, hidden amongst the orange leaves of the hilgrm plants that carpeted the forest floor.
But there was one with a coat of pure white.
At night the white scrifin's coat reflected the moonlight and alerted the gilcos. In the trees the khins would fly away if the white scrifin lay close by. On the ground the nillmice would avoid the hilgrm plants when the white scrifin hid, as the fruit could be poisonous once the plant turned white.
The other scrifins grew angry with the white scrifin as they could not hunt and their bellies grew empty. The colourful scrifins flung mud and leaves at the white scrifin and the white scrifin ran away.
The white scrifin grew hungry too. They ate berries and tree roots to survive over the summer and buried them in a hollow for the coming winter.
But as winter reached over Reimse Soilse he sank his claws deep into the land. The berries had frozen and the white scrifin could not eat them. They decided to venture out into the forbidden cold.
A strange powder covered the floor and the trees. The white scrifin yipped in excitement as it jumped around in the snow.
"The earth looks like me. The trees look like me." The scrifin thought.
The white scrifin's stomach grumbled.
They moved to the edge of the clearing and settled down to wait. Their body shuffled down as flat as they could, their ears folded flat over their eyes, just as they had the summer before but this time they disappeared into the snow.
Heavy footsteps approached.
The white scrifin stayed completely still.
A low growl shuddered through the forest. Large paws padded past the white scrifin. A trail of blood dripped from it maw. The legs of an orange scrifin hung from its mouth as it snarled. It hunted all winter. The black scrifin's had nowhere to hide. The brown scrifin's could not blend into the trees. The orange scrifin's stood out like beacons.
By winter's end the beast had satisfied their hunger and left to find a cave to weather the heat of summer.
The snow began to melt away. Colour returned to the forest.
The white scrifin raised its ears.
The last scrifin left in Reimse Soilse was white."
Anelle closed the book and they sat in silence for a moment.
"Why did you think I would enjoy this book?" She asked.
"Well… I thought you would like the cute animals." Kae said apologetically.
She raised her eyebrows. "They all got eaten!"
Kae let out a nervous laugh. "I will admit I forgot about the ending."
"I'm glad you don't think I enjoy stories about cute creatures being eaten." She responded with a laugh.
"The story itself isn't real. It's a metaphor to teach kids. Every individual is the white scrifin in some way. We all have limitations and need to find a way to work with those limitations."
Anelle thought about his words for a moment.
"Don't you think it could be interpreted differently?" Anelle asked.
"How?"
"Well if every person is the white scrifin then we should spend our lives trying to find our snow. A place where we thrive or spend our lives doing something we are uniquely made for."
What was his snow? Looking after the family business? No, he was trying to fit a role he didn't belong in. But what else could he do? His family had been lumberjacks before they made instruments. Now they were a well known company. Could he really throw that away for a future he couldn't even imagine?
Kae looked down with a smile. "I like the way you think."
He looked up into her chestnut eyes.
A bell tolled off in the distance.
"We should go, morning prayers have just ended." Kae said. Anelle looked disappointed. "Brother Olivis only allows me to be here during morning prayers." He picked up the book and returned it to the shelf. "I promise we can return another day and read something less morbid. Plus the market will have doubled in size since last week."
Anelle cheered up at the prospect of the sprawling market. He reached out his hand and she took it. They walked through the shelves and out of the library.