They stopped near the edge of the village.
Not by agreement. Not by announcement. Blaze simply slowed near a low stone wall and the others arranged themselves around her the way they always arranged themselves — Maze at her position, Lain slightly behind, Aleric finding a spot on the wall itself and sitting on it with the easy comfort of someone who had decided this was a reasonable place to be.
Blaze was examining her new ink.
The dark blue one. She had gone back for a second bottle. This was a practical decision and not worth examining further.
Lain was standing with his arms folded looking at nothing specific in the middle distance in a way he would have described as thinking and everyone else would have described as hovering.
Maze was present. Composed. Watching the village move around them with the patient attention of someone who was always watching something.
Aleric opened his notebook.
Settled it on his knee.
Uncapped his ink.
Looked at the first blank page for a moment.
Looked at it the way you look at something that is about to become something else and you want to remember what it looked like before.
Then he started writing.
Aleric's Record of Bizarre and Noteworthy EventsVolume OneEntry One
I am going to be organized about this. I have decided.
Today we left the town. I was asleep for most of it which I have accepted. Maze carried me. This was practical of her and I am not going to make it into anything else.
The town looked different when I woke up. Empty different. The kind of different that happens when something has finished rather than when something is about to start. Lain and Maze had expressions. I know those expressions. I didn't ask.
I asked Sis two things.
She answered both.
That's more than I expected and more than she usually gives anyone so I am counting it.
Then we walked to this village which smells like ink and dried paper and something underneath both of those things that I don't have a word for yet. There was a book at a stall written by an ordinary person about their ordinary life and it was apparently very famous.
I have better material.
Sis gave me money today. With a full pouch of silver. I wasn't going to write about it because it felt like the kind of thing that gets smaller when you put it into words but I think it actually gets bigger so I'm writing it.
She called me an eyesore after.
I think that's affection.
I'm choosing to interpret it as affection.
Lain's face when she gave me the pouch was genuinely one of the funniest things I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of things. He opened his mouth and then closed it and then opened it again and then closed it. Like a fish. A very composed fish who has opinions about fairness.
I bought ink and paper and this notebook and a brush with good weight and then I bought ingredients for tonight because decent cooking deserves decent ingredients and because she paid me and I intend to earn it.
The broth is going to be good.
Everything is relatively normal right now.
He paused.
Looked up at the village moving around them.
At Blaze holding her ink bottle to the light.
At Lain still hovering.
At Maze watching everything.
At the sky above the village rooftops. Blue. Ordinary. Holding nothing remarkable.
He looked back at his page.
Dipped his brush.
Wrote, mostly to amuse himself, the way you write things when you are alone and can be funny without witnesses:
Imagine if something fell from the sky right now.
He smiled at that.
Set the brush down to let the ink dry.
Looked up.
Blaze had already turned her eyes to the sky.
Not obviously.
Not with any motion that announced itself.
She had been looking at her ink bottle and then she was looking at the sky and the transition between the two had happened in the space between one breath and the next.
She had seen what he wrote.
From where she was standing, at the angle she was standing, with the particular quality of attention she applied to everything in her vicinity whether she appeared to or not.
She had read it the moment the brush lifted from the page.
And something in the back of her mind — some part of her that categorized and filed and cross-referenced without being asked — had gone very quiet.
Don't, she thought.
At nothing.
At the sky.
At the specific quality of coincidence she did not believe in.
Don't you dare.
The sky did not listen.
It fell without warning.
No sound preceding it. No shift in the light. No indication from the air that anything was about to change.
One moment the sky above Aleric was empty.
The next —
something was in it.
Coming down fast. Not falling the way objects fell — not with the helpless acceleration of something dropped. With direction. With the specific quality of something that knew where it was going and had decided to go there quickly.
A shape made of energy.
Almost solid.
Almost.
The edges of it uncertain in the way the edges of things are uncertain in heat haze or in the moment just before sleep when the world hasn't quite committed to being real yet. It had dimensions but they shifted slightly depending on where you looked. It had a quality of light that wasn't quite light. It had presence — the specific density of something aware — without the features that usually accompanied awareness.
It landed beside Aleric.
Close.
The air it displaced scattered his loose pages across the stones. His ink bottle tipped. A dark stain spread across the wall beside him and dripped down the side. His notebook flew from his knee and landed face down on the ground.
The village reacted.
A woman at a nearby stall made a sound and stepped back hard into the display behind her, sending brushes clattering to the ground. A scholar dropped his parchment and simply ran without deciding to. Two stall keepers grabbed their goods and pulled back. Someone somewhere dropped something ceramic and it shattered cleanly in the sudden quiet.
Lain moved.
His hand went to something at his side — instinct — trained and immediate. His stance shifted before his mind had finished processing what he was looking at.
Maze was already in front of Blaze.
One step. Precise. Positioned between the thing and her master with the unhesitating efficiency of someone who had been ready for something to require this since the moment they arrived in the village.
"Master —"
"I see it," Blaze said.
Flat. Quiet.
Maze stayed where she was.
Aleric looked at his notebook on the ground.
At the ink spreading across the wall.
At his scattered pages.
Then at the thing beside him.
Then slowly, with the careful movement of someone trying not to startle anything, he reached down and picked up the notebook.
Turned it over.
Found the page.
Read what he had written.
Imagine if something fell from the sky right now.
He looked at it for a long moment.
At his own handwriting.
At the ink that was still slightly wet on that last word.
He looked at the thing.
It waited.
He looked at the page again.
Very carefully, without drawing attention to what he was doing, he angled the notebook slightly away from the others and turned the page.
New page.
Fresh.
Nobody needed to see that.
The thing did not move.
Did not expand. Did not contract. Did not make any motion that suggested intention beyond simply being where it was.
It waited with the patient quality of something that had arrived where it intended to arrive and had no interest in going anywhere else until whatever came next arrived with it.
Lain looked at it.
At the edges that wouldn't commit to being edges.
At the light that wasn't quite light.
What is that, he thought.
He looked at Blaze.
Maze had stepped aside slightly. Not back to her position. Just aside. Still close. Still angled correctly. But giving Blaze a clear line of sight to the thing.
Blaze looked at it.
One second.
Two.
The full focused attention she gave things she had already decided to categorize. Not the lazy half-glance of confirmation. Real looking. The kind that required time.
It gave nothing back.
No entry.
No file.
No prior encounter.
No category.
She looked at it a moment longer.
At the edges that wouldn't settle. At the quality of its waiting. At the specific way it existed in the space beside Aleric as if that space had been the destination all along.
Then she looked away.
What an eyesore.
That was all.
Clean. Final. Filed under the only category she had available and left there without further examination.
She turned back to her ink bottle.
Aleric had watched her look at it.
Had watched the full second of real attention.
Had watched her turn away.
As expected, he thought.
He looked at the thing beside him.
At the edges. At the almost-solid quality of it. At the patience it had that felt oddly familiar in a way he couldn't place.
He looked at his notebook.
At the closed cover.
I need to write this down.
He opened it.
Found the page.
Picked up his brush.
Update, he wrote. Do not write hypotheticals.
He paused.
Looked at the thing from the corner of his eye.
Something fell from the sky. It is made of energy or something like energy. Almost solid. The edges won't stay still. It landed right next to me which I am choosing not to think about too carefully.
He dipped the brush again.
Lain's hand went to his weapon immediately. Maze moved in front of sis before I finished blinking. Sis looked at it.
He stopped.
Thought about how to write the next part.
Sis looked at the sky before it fell.
He underlined that.
Once.
Clean.
She was already looking.
He stared at what he'd written.
At the underline.
At the thing waiting beside him in his peripheral vision.
He added one more line at the bottom, small, pressed close to the margin:
I need to be more careful about what I write in here.
He capped his ink.
Closed the notebook.
Looked at the thing directly for the first time since it landed.
It waited.
He waited.
Behind him sis was examining her second ink bottle.
Unbothered.
Already elsewhere.
What an eyesore, she had thought.
And that had been enough for her.
It was not enough for him.
The village had gone very quiet around all of them.
The sky above held nothing further.
For now.
The village stayed quiet around them.
Nobody had returned to their stalls yet.
A brush lay on the ground where it had fallen. A sheet of parchment moved slightly in the air near an abandoned display. The scholar who had run had not come back.
Aleric looked at his closed notebook.
At the thing.
At the village.
He stretched his legs out from the wall, decided they had been sitting long enough, and stood up.
His foot caught the edge of a loose stone.
The kind of thing that happens when you stand up while still looking at something else. When your body moves before your attention does.
He pitched forward.
Reached out instinctively.
His hand found the thing.
Just for a second.
Less than a second.
The fraction of time between falling and catching yourself.
It was warm.
That was all.
A warmth that moved through his palm and traveled up his arm and settled somewhere in his chest for one moment — quiet, small, already passing before he had fully registered it was there —
then gone.
He caught his balance.
Straightened.
Looked at his hand.
At the thing.
At his hand again.
Then at the ground where the loose stone was.
He moved it aside with his foot.
Looked at the thing one more time.
It waited exactly as it had before.
Same shape.
Same edges.
Same almost-solid quality.
Except —
something was different.
He couldn't name it.
He had already forgotten the warmth.
The thing remained where it was.
Same position.
Same shape.
Same edges that wouldn't commit to being edges.
But the quality of its waiting was gone.
The presence that had occupied it — patient, directed, specific — was gone.
It was the same shape now holding nothing.
A vessel that had arrived where it intended to arrive, delivered what it had come to deliver, and was now simply occupying space on a low stone wall in a village that smelled of ink while the people around it slowly began returning to their stalls.
Nobody looked at it twice.
Nobody noticed what it had become.
Nobody noticed what had changed.
Nobody except Blaze.
She had felt it the moment it moved.
Not saw. Not heard.
Felt.
The way you feel a door close in another room — not the sound of it, not the motion of it, but the specific shift in the air that follows. Something that had been open was now shut. Something that had been full was now empty.
Her eyes moved to Aleric.
He was brushing dust from his sleeve.
Looking at the ground where the loose stone had been with the mild expression of someone who had tripped and was choosing not to make it into anything.
She looked at him the way she had looked at the thing when it first arrived.
Really looked.
Something had settled in him.
Small. Quiet. The way things settle when they have finally arrived somewhere they were always going.
She couldn't name it.
Wouldn't.
The distinction lived somewhere she didn't examine.
...so.
One thought.
Flat.
Final.
Lain was still looking at the thing.
Arms folded. Expression composed. The particular stillness of someone running calculations they hadn't finished yet.
"It hasn't moved," he said.
"I noticed," Maze said.
"Since it landed it hasn't done anything."
"I noticed that too."
He looked at her.
"Does that not concern you."
Maze considered the thing with the focused patience of someone who had learned a long time ago that rushing to conclusions cost more than taking time to form them correctly.
"It concerns me that I don't know what it is," she said. "Whether it doing nothing is concerning depends on what it is."
Lain looked at it again.
"It came from the sky."
"Yes."
"Without warning."
"Yes."
"And landed next to him." He glanced at Aleric, who was brushing himself off and reaching for his basket. "Specifically."
Maze said nothing.
Which was, Lain had learned, her version of yes, I noticed, I don't have an answer, stop asking.
It came, Lain thought.
Not for master.
Not for Maze.
He adjusted his collar.
Filed that away next to everything else he was filing.
The pile was getting considerable.
Aleric picked up his notebook.
Looked at the thing one more time.
"It looks different," he said.
Lain looked at him sharply. "Different how."
Aleric tilted his head slightly. Studied it with the open uncomplicated attention he applied to most things.
"Less..." He searched for the word. Didn't find the right one. "Less there. Like something left."
Lain stared at him.
"When did it—"
"I don't know." Aleric shrugged. Picked up his basket. "Anyway. We should find somewhere to stop. The broth needs time or it won't be worth eating."
"The broth," Lain repeated.
"The broth," Aleric confirmed.
The broth, Lain thought. Something fell from the sky and landed next to him and he's talking about the broth.
He looked at Maze.
Maze looked at the thing.
Then at Aleric already moving toward the road.
Then back at the thing.
Her expression shifted by exactly one degree in a direction that wasn't readable.
"Maze," Lain said quietly. "Did you feel anything. When it—"
"No," she said.
A pause.
Something in the way she said it suggested the no was accurate and also that she wished it wasn't.
She felt nothing, Lain thought. I felt nothing.
He looked at Blaze.
She put the ink bottle away.
Looked at the sky.
At the village slowly returning to itself around her. Stall keepers creeping back. A scholar retrieving his parchment from the ground with the sheepish energy of someone who had run and was hoping nobody remembered.
Eyesore, she thought at the sky.
At the village.
At Lain standing with his arms folded looking at the shell with the expression of someone running calculations that weren't going to produce a satisfying answer.
Eyesore.
At Maze positioned correctly as always, composed as always, giving nothing away as always.
At the shell on the wall.
Her eyes moved to Aleric.
He was adjusting his basket. Checking his notebook hadn't bent in the fall. Completely unbothered. Already thinking about something else.
She looked at him.
Why does he look familiar.
The thought arrived uninvited and she looked at it with mild displeasure.
The more I look at him.
She looked away.
Forget it. I have killed and seen more insignificant people in this world than he could count. Familiarity means nothing.
A pause.
Her eyes moved back to him without her permission.
Or is it the name.
She considered that.
Aleric.
I gave him that name. It simply appeared in my head and I used it without thinking which was careless of me and I don't intend to examine why it appeared.
He laughed at something. To himself. About something in his notebook probably. The easy unbothered laugh of someone who found their own writing amusing.
What a hassle.
Should I change it.
She considered this seriously for exactly two seconds.
No.
I don't go back on my word.
That harms my reputation.
The name stays.
He stays.
This is entirely practical.
She turned.
"Move."
They moved.
Aleric fell into step beside her immediately. Basket in one hand. Notebook under his arm. Ink still slightly on his fingers.
They walked.
The village fell behind them.
After a moment he looked up at her.
"Sis."
"What."
"What was that thing."
A pause.
She looked at the road ahead.
"An eyesore," she said. "From above."
Aleric considered this.
Nodded slowly.
"Okay," he said.
And meant it.