[Fic] "Barycenter" -- original, Ekanu

[edenfalling]

I said the nature of Firsthome's moon would probably never arise in a story. Clearly I should not make categorical statements of that sort. The back of my mind takes them as dares.

This is set a couple hours after the end of Learning to Listen, while Ekanu and Denifar are still up on the University clock tower. But now dusk is approaching and the moon has risen.

The title -- barycenter -- is a word meaning the center of a system's mass, or the point about which two bodies in space orbit each other. Firsthome and its moon are a double planet system; I am arbitrarily declaring their barycenter to be about two thirds of the distance between them, closer to Firsthome than to the moon. (Firsthome is more massive; it has a greater concentration of metals.) Metaphorically, it refers to the point/s of stability around which two very different people can form a friendship.

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Barycenter
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"I'm sure I've said this before, but it bears repeating," Denifar said as he and Ekanu lay beside each other on the clock tower roof. "I have never in my life met anyone quite like you. And don't say it's because you're the only Snow Person I've ever met -- I think you'd be just as unique up on the Ice. After all, you're the only one who left."

Ekanu shrugged, the motion rucking her shirt against the painted wooden tiles of the roof. "Maybe in this world. But everyone has a heart's twin on the moon. There perhaps my mirror is now saying the same to yours. There perhaps you are the one to leave home and follow the wind."

Denifar rolled up onto his side and gave Ekanu a quizzical look. "Twins on the moon? Where did you hear that nonsense? Anyway, haven't you ever looked up through a scrying tube? There are no cities on the moon. If anyone lives there, they're like your people -- moving all the time, never building anything to last. And without cities, they couldn't have nearly enough people for everyone on earth to have a counterpart."

Ekanu stared up into the gathering twilight, letting her eyes wander over the gibbous moon. White swirls of cloud shrouded the southern ocean and dotted the northeastern forests. Between the storms, the moon shone brilliant blue and green, the light of the sun pouring back from distant earth and water. "It is not nonsense. The moon is earth's mirror. It has land and water, trees and storms, life and death. When the worlds are twins, their children must also be twins. What else could be truth?"

Denifar laughed. "Oh, religion! I know a nursery-tale like that. The Church of Three teaches that souls return to the earth when we die, where the Serpent sorts us. Then Nesta guides us back to life, until we finally purify ourselves enough to join the Star in the heavens. But ages and ages ago, people used to think that when we died, we'd go live on the moon; when we died there, we'd come back to earth, over and over again. They even though there were different gods for each world. Up there, they said, there's a god of iron, a goddess of grain, and a goddess of storms and ice -- and maybe the Star, but never Nesta and the Serpent. It's a children's story, of course. Nobody believes that anymore."

Ekanu sighed. "Denifar. Do not mock."

He was right that it was a foolish story -- people belonged to the world of their birth, not scuttling back and forth like spiders on a string -- but of course different worlds had different gods, different patterns of life. They were mirrors of the heart, not physical reflections. Any fool could see that the Ice on the moon was shaped differently from the Ice on the earth -- a flat, round cap of land sat at the roof of the moon, sending arms of land stretching south toward summer, while on earth the summerlands stretched fingers up through the tundra into the emptiness of ice and water.

But the earth and the moon were still twins. And if two friends on the moon lay in a meadow and stared up at the earth, talking of gods and nonsense, then they were twins to her and to Denifar. What a person did -- what a person dreamed -- mattered far more than the flesh that embodied the heart.

"Fine, fine," Denifar said, reaching over and flicking his fingers against Ekanu's arm. "You're right, I can't know for sure what the moon is like. Nobody can; nobody's been there." He lay back, settling in against the tiles and stretching his arms above his head as he watched the darkening sky. "Do you think anyone ever will?"

"On a wagon? No. But someday perhaps a mechanist will learn to fly," Ekanu said.

"Not me," said Denifar, sighing. "But maybe our children, or grandchildren. Imagine soaring through the air, higher and higher, until you could see the moon on your left and the earth on your right, both full and both the same. Wouldn't that be amazing?"

And maybe those grandchildren would find their hearts waiting with open hands. "Yes," Ekanu said. "It's a good dream. I'll write a song."

"Oh, more nursery-tales," said Denifar in a disparaging tone, but his hand slid sideways to touch Ekanu's fingers, and she knew he didn't mean it.

They watched the rising moon together.

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Inspired by the 8/24/09 15_minute_fic word #120: every

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In other news, as I walked to work yesterday I surprised a squirrel perched on a giant sunflower. It had been nosing into the flower's heart, looking for seeds -- its face was dusted with orange-gold pollen -- and it froze as I approached, unable to climb higher and unwilling to descend to earth. It stared fixedly backward at me from its left eye.

I got within a foot of it, close enough I could have reached out to touch its back and tail, before it snapped and lunged through the air toward a nearby telephone pole. It landed in a frantic scrabble of claws and dashed upward, not stopping until it was safely twice my height in the air.

Then it paused and stared at me again, as if willing me to leave or drop dead so it could return to the flowers.

Squirrels are such an odd mix of fear and aggression. *grin*

Comments

[cherokee1.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the information. I enjoy unusual terms
C

[edenfalling]

'Barycenter' is more technical than unusual, I think, but it's a pretty cool word nonetheless. (The metaphorical use is basically me being weird -- it's not standard -- but then, all metaphors are somewhat unlikely at heart, right? *grin* That's what makes them fun.)

[rianax.livejournal.com]

I love how honestly you reveal the character between them in the dialogue. Very fitting.

[edenfalling]

Ekanu's friendship with Denifar is interesting to me because they have such different personalities, backgrounds, and expectations... and yet they both love learning and have a drive to excell in their chosen fields. And they both feel isolated, for various reasons, so they latched onto each other before they knew each other very well, and in some ways have been doing a running patch job on that unstable foundation ever since. In other ways, of course, they know each other better than anyone else, and each will always be the person the other can rely on in times of trouble, whatever the current official status of their relationship.

[rianax.livejournal.com]

Best friends last longer than firsts loves any way. They both belong to their fields before any one real person.