Shine took a deep breath and pushed aether out of herself, shoving it into them.
She closed her eyes and imagined aether-threads sewing up the wounds, filling their stomach and poking their heart into stronger beating.
It hurt her, a little bit, to be so careful, but Shine didn’t want to wound them by pushing too hard or too much. She clenched her jaw tightly.
“Thank you” came a whisper.
Shine looked, sitting back in surprise.
The person was whole. They sat up, and with warmth in their cheeks and pink in their lips, they seemed older than before—Kirin’s age, around nineteen. Their black hair fell straight and sleek as rain, shimmering with rainbows, and their eyes shifted back and forth from silver to blue like clouds passing quickly over a cold winter sky.
Aether swirled around them, caressing them like they were magic’s favorite person.
This was one of the sorcerers. Shine tripped in her hurry to stand, and the sorcerer’s smile faded into concern.
“Wait, please,” they said. “I will not hurt you, not as those other fools did.”
She didn’t listen but turned and dashed away.
The door to the stone chamber remained open for her.
“Please, Night Shine, come back,” the sorcerer called.
She made it out of the chamber and down the hallway before she stopped. Her chest heaved and she leaned against the wall with one hand, head dipping. Sweat trailed down her temples, and she wiped at it with her wrist. She’d wanted a chance to talk with one of them. She had to be brave now.
Kirin would put on an arrogant smile and return calmly. Sky would—what? Sky wouldn’t have gotten himself into this position in the first place. The sorceress would tell Shine to be herself: volatile, cunning, bright.
That, Shine took comfort in. The sorceress would say that Shine could do this and do this well. Volatile, cunning, bright.
Shine returned to find the sorcerer standing in a long gray dressing gown embroidered with lines of aether and slippers with up-tilted toes. Their hair fell past their shoulders, sliding around their jaw and slender neck, and they smiled in a way that touched their eyes and slowed the shifting of silver and blue.
“How did you know my name?” she asked, trying to sound calm. She didn’t remember saying it aloud here, but there might be plenty she didn’t remember.
“I can see it, pulling out from you.” The sorcerer tilted their head, looking her over from crown to toes. “You should guard the fullness of it better, Night Shine.”
“Just Shine,” she said.
“Shine.” Their smile broadened. “Welcome to the First Living Mountain, Shine. I am The Scale, but you may call me Lutha, as you used to.”
Shine’s mouth fell open.
The oldest sorcerer in the world.
And they knew her—or had known her before.
“I called you a name before?” she asked, barely getting the words past her teeth.
“We have been friendly for centuries. I knew you when you were a newly great spirit called A Meadow of Fire Balsam, and I knew you when you were a demon called Patience.”
“Patience!” Shine laughed in disbelief. What a name for a demon. “That can’t be true.”
“And yet…,” The Scale said, shrugging only one shoulder. “I imagine it was part of a longer name like, The Trouble with Patience, or perhaps Patience Never Pays.” They laughed, a bright, amused, friendly laugh, and Shine understood this ancient sorcerer was teasing her.
Shine’s knees felt weak, and she slid to the floor, forgetting to be volatile or sly.
Patience. Had the sorceress called her that?
In that moment Shine wanted only to ask, to see the sorceress and ask what the name Patience meant. She longed for her cool smile and that summer-green graveyard eye, the haunting, bone-white eye.
Shine’s heart skipped, and she felt like she’d forgotten how much she’d enjoyed the sorceress’s company until that moment. She missed her.
She licked her lips.
The Scale crouched in front of her, balanced on the balls of their feet, and held out two shallow cups of tea, equally balanced on either of their palms. One cup was delicate ceramic, painted with waves and gilded fish; one was carved of smoky quartz so thinly and perfect it seemed to be made of sunlight.
Shine took the ceramic, and as the sorcerer drank, so did she.
The tea restored her confidence like magic. She blinked and finished every drop.
The Scale tipped theirs back too, then set the quartz cup on the floor and said, “What would you have of me?”
“Um.”
They waited, as still as a statue but for the slow-drifting clouds in their eyes. Still crouched in perfect balance.
Shine gathered herself and said, “I need my things back, what I was taken with. And then I need to be returned to Kirin Dark-Smile.”
“I will see to it. But that is not what I meant, little star.”
“What… did you mean?”
The Scale did not answer, but waited.
Shine thought for a moment, of stars spilling from her guts, of patience and fire balsam. She asked, “Can you tell me what I am?”
They smiled again. “You are good. You are compassionate, clever, and loyal.”
Shine snorted and repeated their words. “That is not what I meant, old man.”
“Am I?”
“Are you what? Old?”
“A man?”
Shame flushed her cheeks, and she felt the echoing heat in her chest. “I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you.” They put two fingers under her chin, lifting her face. Their touch was neither cold nor hot, but both, like sunlight and a breeze.
“It’s a balance scale,” Shine said. “Not like armor or a fish.”
The Scale nodded. “That’s right.”
“I’m not one thing, either,” she guessed.
They nodded again.
“Not demon or girl or spirit, but many things.”
“When you named yourself, you were fully reborn. Did you know that? It rippled in the aether, and that is how they knew to look for you and how to find you.”
Shine scowled. “Still Wind and A Dance of Stars.”
“They are young too.”
“What? They must be centuries old!”
“Babies,” The Scale said, somehow both tenderly and annoyed.
It made Shine laugh. But she sobered quickly, thinking of those other sorcerers. “They hurt me. They tried to dissect me.”
“They don’t understand you.”
“You didn’t need to hurt me to understand!” Agitated, Shine started to stand again, remembering the pain of cold, the drowning sensation when she’d swallowed that ocean of blood. She shuddered, bile crawling up.
The Scale said, “I did my own experiment, when the others grew weary.”
She scoffed.
“You healed me,” the sorcerer said.
Of course, Shine thought, furious. She shot to her feet. “It was a trick!” This sorcerer hadn’t been injured. They’d staged it, distracted her—delayed her! “Let me go. Give me my things and return me to Kirin. He must be out of his mind.”
“He is, but you have some time,” The Scale said. “It has already been… five days since you were taken.”