Name: Bedazzled
Story: Starfall
Colors: Colour of the Day – 26th July 2023 (Beguile)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Life Drawing + Graffiti - Book of the Day
Word Count: 948
Rating: PG
Warnings: Disorientation/maybe mild intoxication (ish)? Flash fic for CotD; please forgive any errors.
Notes: 1306, Portcallan; Leion Valerno. (CotD making me random again; part of something that happened to Leion when he was younger).
Summary: Leion’s having a strange first night of the sea festival.

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Leion follows the others, wading through the shallow sea water to the cave’s entrance, and along the rock ledge. Bright pieces of starstone are studded into the cave walls, reflected and fractured by the outgoing waves beside their path. Maybe it’s all that starstone that’s making him feel as if he’s drunk more than he’s sure he has; maybe it’s just the company, the festival air infecting them all. It’s an unreal path; he’s being led enchanted into some otherworld beyond the Boundary Paths.

“Told you we’d show you something,” Atino says, pulling Leion after him. He’s dark-haired, face shadowed in the gloom, but shines like the points of starstone in his certainty. “This way – watch your step!”

There’s a long, lightless stretch of tunnel – Leion hands onto Atino’s arm and behind him Tess has Leion’s free hand. Small pools of water splash underfoot, but there’s laughter from the others following.

Tess bumps against Leion, clothes and skin damp and chilly but with heat burning through underneath. “He’s just showing off. There’s a way in from the street, you know.”

“We have to come in from the sea tonight,” says Atino. He tugs at Leion, but unlike Tess, he’s not flirting, he’s aiming at converting, or trying to. Leion doesn’t know what he is, that’s the problem.

They start up stairs, first hewn into the rock, then stone and finally wood, as they emerge into a tall building near the city walls, Leion and Tess out of breath, Atino still hurrying on up as if it’s nothing.

“All show,” huffs Tess, barely able to breathe. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

Leion grits his teeth, determined to seem as undaunted as Atino.

“Here,” Atino says. He grins at Leion, and leads him off the steps and across a small landing, then on through a narrow door into a room lined with shelves. These are cluttered with items that glint in the lightstone lamps.

There’s an older man waiting for them along with three of the others, who’d evidently known what they’d be in for if they went down to the beach with Atino and the rest. He's thin, pale, sandy-haired.

“Look,” say Leion, eyeing the artefacts with unease, “isn’t all this just messing about with things that should be left to – I don’t know – the proper people?”

Atino catches Leion’s shirt and tugs him round to get a better look at the contents of the room while the rest laugh. Leion pulls back, face flushed, knocking into Tess.

“We all know whose son you are,” says Atino. “Where’s the flask?” he yells at someone behind Leion, who pushes through to pass it over.

Atino pours out sea water into a basin nearby. Leion can see the sand and grit dirtying it. Atino catches his glance and holds up a hand, like a stage magician. He winks. Then he pulls out a knife with a white hilt and a steel blade and when he lowers the blade into the water, it dissolves. Silver ripples run across the surface. “Now,” says Atino to Leion. “How did I do that?”

Leion folds his arms and shrugs. “I don’t know. Some trick – the blade’s made of something soluble.”

“No, it isn’t,” Atino tells him. “But that’s the thing. I don’t know either. Chiulder here doesn’t know. None of us know anything about it. If we don’t try, how will any of us learn?”

Leion stares down at the water. It ceases rippling, and silver-white images form in it. Something shivers right through him. Leion leans forward and puts one hand on the side of the basin. The other he runs through his hair, leaving it standing up in tufts. It’s late on the first day of the annual sea festival and he’s suddenly too tired for this. He seems to be three people instead of one – the first Leion, his mother’s son, Tam’s stepson, who says Atino could be lying about any of it, and even if he’s not, who says it should be this group of people hardly any older than him doing this? Why, says lawful-Leion, don’t you take it to your High Councillor instead?

The second, an easy-going Leion who doesn’t want to know about any of it, thinks maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s all very pretty and amusing and so is Atino, so is Tess. Why does he have to decide anything? He’s not –

And there’s the last Leion, the one who’s only here because of all the things he doesn’t want to be, flooded with resentment at people trying to make him study law, spy on people, join in dangerous games. I won’t is all that Leion has to say.

So Leion shrugs and dips his fingers into the water, as if to find the answers that way, while Tess and the others are laughing about something. Maybe it’s him. He swallows.

“Chiulder,” says Atino, to the older man. “Why don’t you tell him?”

Chiulder gives Atino a quick, nervous look, but then he takes a deep breath, and when he does he’s surprisingly convincing. He tells Leion about how people ought to know these things, and how they still study them in places like High Eisterland, and that it’s absurd for Emoyrans not to explore them, too. It’s so reasonable that all the Leions can agree and become one again. Chiulder’s words flow over him like the waves, cold and clear. They make sense of it all.

“I see,” he says, and nods, because, for a moment, he really does see everything.

Atino gives him a light, congratulatory push and Tess kisses his arm through the light shirt sleeve, and everyone else is laughing again.

One way or another, he’s done it. He’s in.