Page 140 of The Surviving Sky
“Stay here,” Iravan said, and let go of her. He marched forward, his eyes on the bird. On the other side, the bird, a mere shadow in the dark, scuttled to the vortex of light as well.
“No,” Ahilya gasped, and lurched to follow him, but she was unable to move. Vines had grown from the floor, tying around her legs.
“It’ll be all right,” Iravan said. “It will be all right, my love.”
“Iravan, NO!”
Behind Ahilya, snarls broke out as her shouts and the vortex awoke the slumbering yakshas. Iravan and the falcon approached the swirling blue-green light.
Iravan fumbled at the rope around his waist that connected her to him. Ahilya groped inside her satchel. She grabbed her machete and slashed at the vines trapping her legs.
“Iravan,DON’T,” she shouted. “You don’t know what will happen!”
He had almost undone the knots; he was only a few feet away from the vortex.
“IRAVAN,” Ahilya screamed, slashing faster, but he ignored her and strode forward purposefully.
He was nearly at the vortex. He fumbled with the last knot; the tension of the rope released.
Ahilya snapped the last vine off, kicked its remains, and sprinted forward. She reached out a hand for his kurta to pull Iravan away. The falcon yarped, its eyesglinting—
Flames climbed Ahilya’s extended hand, burning from theinside—
She screamed in agony, lost her balance, and slammed into Iravan.
They tumbled together into the blue-green light.
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IRAVAN
The instant Iravan saw the falcon perched on the rocky outcrop, the Resonance appeared in the Deepness.
It was the falcon-yaksha, of course, knowable in his second vision only through its raga. Perhaps to the falcon, Iravan appeared like an abstract version of Nakshar’s Constant. They hovered warily, as though they were seeing each other for the first time in Nakshar’s temple.
Iravan smiled and saw his own certainty reflected on the mirrored silvery surface of the Resonance. This was why the dust had brought them there. He had asked for clarity ofhimself, finally the right question, and the dust had opened up a path to the yakshas, tohisyaksha.
His shoulders released their tension. His breath slowed. A great inevitability built within him, a sense of rightness deeper than any he had ever felt before.I’ve lost myself!he had screamed to Bharavi in Nakshar’s sanctum.I’ve found, she replied,acceptance.
This here, finally, would be acceptance.
Within the Deepness, Iravan generated his golden stream of light aimed into the Moment, and the Resonance mirrored him, generating its own silver jet; the both of them found each other’s stars, and they trajected simultaneously. A blinding vortex of blue-green light erupted from the grass and shot into the sky, created with their combined Ecstatic trajection of each other. The falcon-yaksha cried, flitting toward the vortex.
Iravan let go of Ahilya’s hand.
He scrambled to the mountain peak within the Etherium, almost at the top.
Dimly, he heard Ahilya’s voice as he strode forward. He thought he said,It will be all right, my love, but the thought was distracted. He undid the knots on the rope in his first vision, even as he reached ever closer to the peak in the Etherium. The Resonance fluttered in the Deepness, right next to him; and a silence built in the back of his mind, a presence; he knew it was the falcon-yaksha, living within a pocket of his own awareness;then—
Ahilya slammed intohim—
The combined Ecstatic trajection of himself and the Resonance grewcomplete—
He pulled himself to the peak, surveyed thelandscape—
And as all three visions coalesced into one, Iravan finally saw themselves in their true form.
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