Day Twelve

The hall was gleamingly, achingly white, airy and brilliant with the gentle undulating carvings Bala loved. Pillars, each a unique, blissful statue of one of the goddess' early disciples, snaked their taut forms up, supported a lattice-style roof that let in tantalizing snippets of sky. It was a smooth darkness now, but gusts of perfumed breezes poured in, bringing the scents of her gardens, her orchards, the wide green fields. With the orbs that sparkled like stars, some milky and rippling with a wild nebulous rainbow, that hung in the air and wove graceful, carefully-timed paths that kept the vast expanse softly and evenly lit, the guests agreed their hostess' coastal celebration hall was tasteful, wonderful, a thousand congratulations to her.
It was the fourth day of the festival and some of the attendees were still moving slowly around the edges of the vast expanse, admiring silver-thread tapestries showing the purifying of the Bay of Isla, Bala, wearing a crown of fangs like a halo, breaking the necks of the sea serpents that coiled in nests of thousands just below the surface, their viscous black blood pouring down her arms, her legs; the same crown of fangs, glowing with a rusty aura, thrown into the deepest part of the bay, sealing a pact between the restless spirits that moaned with the creaking voices of dead ships, that they would watch over the waters, that none of her people would drown unless willfully and one of their kinds would be pulled into Bala's paradise every hundred years.
The scenes blended into one another, the spread of the goddess' power across the planet through the depths of the seas that covered most of the surface, into the heated rock until every cell of every plant and beast bore an awareness of her...it wound like a ribbon around pillars, slid across carefully placed screens. One end was laid across a simple ivory loom, threads tattered and unfinished and while certain historians and one or two Narrators recognized the machine, most were puzzled and bemused by the notion that this clumsy, delicate device had produced this continuous expression of splendor. Jokes were hushed when a suspended projector informed them that the loom was the goddess' own and this, not the library, not the vast reservoirs of Archivist memory, was the true history as made, thread over thread, by Bala's hand.
When asked about it, she would dismissively wave her fingers at the inquirer, laughing low and saying only that it was "good to keep a hobby going."
The mistress herself was floating out on the promenade where one end of the hall had been removed and converted to a wide, sweeping balcony overlooking the murmuring waters. Her gowns were black but so heavily beaded with fire opals and pearls that they rippled with the colours of a seductive, carnivorous plant, fluttered rather stiffly in the soft winds. Feathers of a long-extinct bird bloomed from her collar and framed her perfectly painted face. Small bells were hidden in the glossy sheet of her hair and the tiny sparkling tones chased each other around the goddess' company, a suspended, angelic-faced head that radiated serenity and was said to be amongst the leading linguists of the times, able to create a language precisely suited to any person it spoke to, a deeply personal construction of sounds that echoed all the truth a person held within them; the bartender from Planet's favourite place, who bore the strained nonchalance of someone bursting at the seams with recent thrills, the songs of Bala's skin on his lips, in his brain; and the pouting Brigadier General Electorus Majour of a small, agricultural planet far from anything of note. He boasted he was all the soldier the world needed and was quite correct in that regard. It was a sleepy place of perpetual dawn, dense, smooth-trunked trees and low, worn-out foothills. The native humans had a bad habit of whispering wherever they went and wore flowing skirts and robes in a dozen layers, of golds and tawny hues, the tans of wood smoke, looking like clusters of dreaming flowers.
The head, who insisted upon being called nothing more than Thee, which annoyed the Brigadier, who placed status with name, claimed to be a construct that projected the sweetly beaming face into the current set of dimensions to facilitate its favourite hobby and anyone who wandered behind it through a space of several yards felt a strange vibration in their bones, moved quickly from the spot no matter how crowded it became elsewhere. There was so much empty space in the celebration hall that people flowed together in erratic clumps, occasionally foraying across the smooth floor to another cluster. Perhaps long ago, molecules bonded together in such a way to avoid the frightening, inviting voids around them.
"Your ability doesn't solve the problem of mutual communication, I'm afraid. While the notion is lovely, I can't see the collective sentience agreeing to a Babel state," said Bala.
Thee's teeth were small, wonderfully even with a pale bluish sheen. An aura like the dreams of butter floated around the construct.
"You operate under the conviction that communication is egalitarian, that it is to be shared between everyone. Standard or any language not built by the speaker, it is my observation, pleases none and creates deep-seated frustrations that are further compounded when those frustrations cannot be adequately expressed. Perhaps we should restrict those we talk to by restricting those we are capable of talking to."
"How does that work precisely? Won't it be rather lonely?" The bartender, despite his fugue state, attempted to impress by joining in.
"Loneliness is not a condition soothed by speaking but by receiving," said Thee, "also, psychological and emotional resonance between two beings will allow for translation of said resonance. The truths you hold, whether love or fear or hatred, will be conveyed more simply and perfectly than any current possible assembly of words. We all know you cannot lie to others from your subconscious. To yourself, you can, but others would remain free of duplicity."
"Sounds like the garbage back home."
Thee arched its head slowly towards the Brigadier General but said nothing. Bala purred in the back of her throat and smiled brilliantly.
"Master Rotham, this is surprising to hear. Your home's language is regarded as one of the last truly evolving varieties of Old Arkeen. I had arranged for some singers later in the week to attend us."
The Brigadier General rubbed his shiny forehead, curdles of steam almost rising off his meaty skull under Bala's glittering gaze. His cheeks looked packed with suet and shook slightly as he spoke.
"No....no offense meant, mistress. If they were speaking Old Arkeen, I'd have no damned problem with them. They speak..." a hand rough and red, like a slab of ribs, waved jerkily in the air, "Standard gibberish. Stuff about deserts and bones and holes in the earth. It puts a man off his course to see his own staff with nothing to say besides this crap, and then boom...back to normal. Why, my wife..."
"A compulsion plague?"
The jowls shook harder.
"We've had them all tested, every one! I thought maybe it was this wave of tourists, the trees are a popular place this time of year, but there was nothing, everything clean. We even brought in a clear-skilled impressionist fellow."
"They just say these things and then are fully functional again? Do they retain memories?" Thee asked, craning eagerly towards Rotham, who wrinkled his fat red blob of a nose.
"My wife, Etylline, she fair remembers enough for both of us, would lose my head without the girl, came home one day talking about the eyes of hope opening and listening or something like that, and when she was done, just clammed up, sat down on the table and then looked up at me. 'Rotham, how was the market projection conference?' as if nothing had happened. Couldn't for the life of her remember anything she'd said. I got the clear in, then, and he found nothing. Headache for a week and he found nothing."
He bit the edge of his fluted glass savagely before gulping the rest of his honey-smooth drink.
"That is fascinating," murmured Bala, "if it is specialists you would like to study this strange thing, I can make arrangements with my priests."
"I'll find whatever did that to my Etylline, mistress, and I'll end it faster than it can blink."
Thee sighed, a tremulous low note that pricked at Bala's ears. The feeling touched at the base of her spine, rolled upward to areas of higher functions. It felt oddly intimate and she realized this was his own language resonating within her and smiled inwardly at the sentiment.
[That is what we are afraid of.]
"If you are available sometime tomorrow, Brigadier General, I would appreciate it immensely if you made a quick stop over at one of the memory halls. I don't doubt the capabilities of your clear, but a fast scan would take no time at all. I would like to make sure my other guests remain safe."
"Security procedures, I understand," said Rotham, then nodded at the gathered company, "I'm not feeling as good as I was earlier. I think I'll call it a night."
He stumped off, leaving the trio momentarily thoughtful.
"You'll be sending someone anyway," said the bartender, looking up at the goddess. Even perfectly still, her breathing deep and calm, the air seemed to shiver around her, excited like a puppy, eager to be filled with her action.
"I may go myself if this dry spell continues. This is the first interesting thing I've heard, aside from your sweet words, in months. With Planet gone and no upstart gods to smite, I've had next to nothing to do. If something doesn't happen soon, I may die of boredom."
She rolled smoothly onto her back and locked eyes with the bartender, who trembled as she grazed his high cheekbone with a gilded nail.
"But you can keep me busy in the meantime."