#toucan nevan

[piyo13sdoodles]

day 26, chapter 72:

Ghilly shook the paper to gather their attention. 'Shall I start with the position or the personage?' 'Definitely the personage.' She grinned at her husband and settled herself. 'Cliopher Lord Mdang was born in Gorjo City, the exotic floating capital of that wonder of the Nine Worlds...'

[alfgifu]

Inktober 22 - in which Cliopher assumes that if the government put out press statements, his friends and family would queue beside the noticeboard to read them (it's a moot point, the press notices have been languishing in an unopened comms box somewhere)

(I may have overdone it with Toucan's nose.)

[sockich]

Ghilly returned with a tiarë flower tucked behind her ear and another for each of them. “There’s a thicket of them over there,” she said, handing the flowers out. “There, Fitzroy, that’s a proper Islander look.”

“Proper for Tisiamo,” Toucan murmured, but he was smiling. “No, Fitzroy, you put it behind your left ear if you’re single—your right if you’re taken.”

Fitzroy gave Cliopher a very brilliant look and carefully moved the flower to his right ear.

Cliopher felt a wash of some nameless emotion—some indescribable wonder, some intense humility, some astonishing gratitude, some sort of awe. He blinked hard, unable to prevent the smile, the dawning joy, from showing on his face.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Toucan whispered. “He’ll still be there tomorrow.”

—At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard

[sockich]

The Hands of the Emperor:

“His Radiancy would give you the house if you asked him.”

“His Radiancy would probably give me an island if I asked him, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to.”

At the Feet of the Sun:

“I was thinking of Vou’a and Ani,” he murmured. “The original pattern.”

“Were you now,” said Fitzroy, with a sudden strangely speculative tone to his voice. “Now there’s a challenge…to do something as splendid and grand for my fanoa as Vou’a ever did for his…”

“Vou’a raised up the islands for Ani,” Cliopher said, laughing.

Fitzroy turned to him, face stern. “And you don’t think I, Fitzroy Angursell, cannot come up with something equally impressive? They may be gods but I am your favourite poet.”

“You are,” said Cliopher.

[...]

Fitzroy smiled slowly, like the sunrise. “Let us walk in legends, Kip Mdang.”

Cliopher’s heart was hammering. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes. What—What is your island, Fitzroy Angursell?”

“This one.”

Fitzroy dropped his hands.

The fire at the heart of the world rose up.

[...]

“Kip! Look what I just did!”

“You made an island.”

“I made an island.”

They grinned at each other, each as astonished by the magnitude of Fitzroy’s daring as a person could be.

“You made an island,” Cliopher said again.

“I did.”

The fire of Cliopher’s heart, deep in that cave full of moss and secret lights, corralled within the hearth of the fire pearls he had never been able to dive deep enough to find—oh, the fire at the heart of him was blazing like the star in the sky they could not see.

Fitzroy was dazzled with his magic, smiling with such power in him that Cliopher felt that inner flame rise up just a little further. He said, “Fitzroy. You made me an island.”

[...]

Ghilly tutted at them fondly. “Kip understands philosophy. And math. Don’t you, dear? You wrote that great paper in uni about the logical underpinnings of Hiskae’s Two Theories of the Self, do you think you still have a copy?”

Cliopher felt too sozzled by surprise and magic and pure happiness to answer that. “I have no idea,” he said. “Fitzroy made me an island this morning. I cannot think about philosophy right now. I have only poetry in my heart.”

“Fitzroy Angursell made you an island,” Toucan said, and then crowed with great delight. He turned and pointed a finger at Bertie. “You owe me a meal at Enya’s, Falbert Kindraa! Didn’t I tell you?”