An kissed her again, hands on her hips, and she tasted the threads of ans design on her tongue!
* * *
“Why are you a cultist? What is your cult?” she asked Irsu, draped against an later, half-dressed but lazy with kissing and touching and sharing knots of force between them. She knew an would say the hope cult that Insarra supported, but she longed for an to say something else. Give her a reason to argue.
“Roc Aliel is the leader. Have you read any of his philosophy?”
“No,” she said, though she knew the name: he was the founder of the hope cult.
“He writes about possibilities. About being better than our design, pushing past what we know and believe, into a realm of infinity.”
“What does that mean?” Elir asked, trying not to sound intrigued.
“Well.” Irsu kissed her shoulder. “For example, he thinks we should have names for more than four genders.”
Elir snorted softly. “More between? Or beyond?”
“Either. Both. I know you are stuck at four in the same way most are, especially because you are an architect. Four-way thinking is the foundation of our entire society. Four genders, four directions, four forces! But there are more ways to walk to the horizon than east or west or north or south, and there are more possibilities between bodies and what different designs—physical and inner—signify.”
Elir hummed, staring at the tiny whorls of hair on Irsu’s forearms.
“Isn’t it more wonderful to imagine more than to limit your thinking?” an said.
That made her sit up. She stared down at an, stunned.
She’d had the same thought about architecture. About life itself.
“See?” Irsu grinned. “You’re imagining possibilities.”
But this was the thinking that had led to catacombs of dead babies and rampant sky-whales. Imagination and power running wild together. It sounded exhilarating—and dangerous.
Irsu said, “Soon, Roc and I will crash over the city, and everyone will change in our wake.”
“You and Roc? The leader of the hope cult.”
“I’ll take you to meet him.” An lifted her hand to kiss the pads of her fingers, trailing them against ans lips. “I’ve been going to meetings and funneling cash. Mother has no idea. Rivermouth will be the stronghold of hope.”
Elir’s pulse pounded in her fingers. Irsu was the one supporting the cult, not ans mother. An was the one her college should have her kill.
She could never do that. She loved an. She agreed with an. Elir wanted to imagine more.
Irsu sat up, holding her close. “Eliri, stay with me. You were made for infinite design! Born for this—for me. It is a fight worth fighting. Limitless potential! Hope!”
She pushed away, climbed to her feet. She had to think. “The fallen god will not let you amass against him.”
“He likes ambition!”
“I should design you those wings,” Elir said, picking her robe up off the floor. “You would fly all the way to the stars.”
Irsu laughed, and an was so beautiful it took her breath away. “I’ll let you, if you design a matching pair for yourself. I’m a little in love with you.”
“A little?” she laughed, giddy and horrified—she’d not realized before they were so much the same feeling.
“With all the possibilities ahead of us for more!” Irsu said, finally rising to ans feet, too. “A little love is only the beginning. This is the beginning.”
Elir stared at an a long moment, at the curve of ans thin lips, the brightness of ans eyes, and the perfect haughty lines of ans bearing.
She fled.
* * *
Her personal room in the college complex was tucked among those of other final-year students, in a honeycomb tower grown from the red rock of the crater. Elir hid herself within, curled on her pallet with her knees drawn up. She stared at the wall, papered with chimerical diagrams she’d drawn as a child: a griffon, its bones, muscles, connective tissues, feathers, and wings all on separate tracing papers; a thorn tree with bisected branches to show rings and veins; a rainbow bee, stingers drawn in large scale to show their mechanism; pear blossoms randomly sketched in corners; lips; her own name repeated over itself, again and again, to form a complex heart-design that might suit a massive monster like a sky-whale. From the ceiling hung the real wing of a tree dragon, furry chimeras made of lizards and rain-forest megabats. The wing’s long bones splayed like an open hand, with white-gold membrane stretched between, and the longest bone arced down, glinting pearlescent in the small bobbing force-lights.
She thought of Irsu with such wings, though an probably would prefer graceful feathers, the black-and-white patterns of an oasis vulture.
Elir thought of many things that long week she confined herself, sketching wings for both of them, various models and skins. Avian, draconic, mammalian, insectile. She thought of the first lessons of architecture, that there were only four forces; of the special blaze she felt when ecstatic pops fizzled into something more like flow; of what made the fallen god a god—his ability to change his design at will, without architecture, without external design; of her parents, especially her ama, who had so strongly proselytized moderation yet had worked design on az own womb to give Elir this crystal gift. Az had certainly imagined possibilities. Maybe the difference between college and cult was merely education and skill. Or only regulation. Maybe the cult needed someone to describe the distinction between true possibility and doom.
Maybe Elir was arrogant to think she could make any kind of choice like that.
She was only sixteen.
But maybe only somebody at the beginning of their life could change the course of the future.
A little love is only the beginning, Irsu had said. Maybe a little arrogance was only the beginning, too.
* * *
The song of the riot did not vibrate through the intricate security of the college, but Elir heard the noise. She was already on her feet when Sahdia came to drag Elir out of her reclusion, rolling her sharp eyes. “While you pouted, never finished your work, the hope cult has risen, Eliri! The commander will see you now, and you need a good explanation for your failure.” She pulled Elir into the corridor.
Elir grabbed Sahdia’s wrist, jerking free. “What do you mean it has risen?”
“That leader, Roc, has taken over Rivermouth, and you are the only one who can stop him.”
“Why?”