[She took What?] - Chapter 91: Davy’s Story – Into Penumbra: And then they came.

“Fools cross the chasm while thinkers measure its depth. Are you the fool or the thinker? Both have their merits.”

Rebecca's words

|Location: The Ringtail Planet|

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The Bird settled on a rocky crag above a verdant valley that was falling into shadow as the sun set. Its river pointed to a standing stone on a faraway cliff. The Bird’s beak opened, and a female grey stepped down the ramp. She walked tall and proud, a small kit scampered across, jumped and clung to her back. She crossed to a human dressed in grey ringtail pelts. Behind her followed families of ringtails, their fur brown and fluffier than her own.

 

She stopped in front of him, and he met her with a gesture, the Diri, that had become more than a greeting. It bound them together and was made using both hands and covering the eyes. Casting them briefly into the shadows before opening them to the world.

 

They hugged, then eased apart, though Davy held on a heartbeat longer. His hand closed around hers like he might never get the chance again. In that moment, something shifted inside him. It wasn’t just relief. It was something heavier, older. Like a man who’d already lost too much finding something that he didn’t want to lose.

 

He looked her over, slow and steady. She’d changed; any fool could see that; but Davy could feel it. Sense it.

It was like her shadow had grown teeth, and the light that burned inside her was different. Brighter.

“Boss,” he said, voice low and rough, the word carried an edge, reflecting what recent events had sharpened her into.

“Boss,” she echoed, and even how she said it now carried a different weight. Stronger.

 

Then the motes came.

 

They sparked and flickered into the air, swelling around her in a riot of colour, their mantels evident. Greens, blues, purples, even a few reds that shimmered like coals. They lit up the ledge, pushing back umbra’s arrival and forming shadows that leapt across the rocks. They were alive with their own intent, moving in time to the cadence of their purpose, an ancient history reflecting in Old Music.

 

The air itself felt changed, loaded with memories past and future, with charged expectation. Happiness spilled from the motes; a tangible emotion that everyone felt; raw joy.

 

It pulsed through the greys and browns that were gathered around them. Then one after the other they started to drop down on one knee, a wave making the Diri. First to Davy. Then to Rebecca.

Then finally to both with a single word, repeated over and over.

 “Boss. Boss, Boss…” It started as a quiet whisper then grew in intensity until it was a deafening chant.

BOSS!… BOSS!… BOSS!…

 

Back at the grey’s camp, they talked for hours about what she’d learnt, heard and seen.  Their voices low as they sat close to a fire that spat and cracked. Davy listened more than he talked. He had questions that he needed to ask but not the sort that you could just rush and ask.

 

He was surprised that the reds were so careless. “Overconfidence,” he thought as he rolled the dollar, bright and shiny, around its braid.

“Ain’t nothin’ that makes you more careless than thinkin’ you’re too good to get things wrong,” he muttered to himself.

Still, one thing stuck like a thorn he couldn’t let go.

“So,” he asked, eyes narrowed, “you think their tech comes from a ruined factory?”

Rebecca response was curt, sharp. “No. The factory is the ruin. We think that’s how where they change it; pervert it.”

The decoder hiccupped on the last word, like it didn’t quite know how to translate what she meant. He noticed.

“Still learnin’,” Davy thought with a smile. Then out loud, “And your side? The pistols, the shields, the Birds; same factory?”

“No,” Rebecca said firmly. “They’re gifts.”

“But you receive those gifts at a ruin?” Davy pressed.

She shook her head. “No. Somewhere else.”

Before he could ask more, she stood and lit up like someone had suddenly put a fire under her. “We need to find that ruin,” she said, already halfway out the drey.

 

He followed; they walked by a group of flyers; young ones bickering over a fat green fruit. One clutched it like treasure, twisting away from the others with a gleeful shriek. The others lunged, but all froze as Rebecca stepped through their play.

The greedy one slipped off with the fruit, like smoke.

“Question,” she said, raising her voice. “You knew where the Reds kept me. How?”

 

Chatter exploded.

 

“One at a time,” she ordered, lifting a hand. Then pointed at one wearing a cocked hat just like Davy’s. “You.”

The flyer puffed up, pleased to have been singled out. “The Bird remembers the places it’s been and stores the markers. That’s how we knew where the camp was.”

 

Within an hour the flyers had narrowed down the Bird’s stored markers to just two locations that could be what they were looking for. Both were well inside red territory and in what the greys called the Valley of Wrath, a volatile and dangerous system of linked valleys.  Everywhere else had been visited regularly by the Bird and was known the greys.

 

Davy called for volunteers to join him on a scouting mission, but no one stepped forward. A silence fell over the group.

 

Davy scanned the mob, disappointed.

 

“This is for the good of the mob. Doing this can make a big difference.”

 

Most kept staring at the ground, fidgeting or pretending not to have heard. Davy shook his head, before turning away.

 

He found Rebecca leaning against a tree, arms crossed, waiting.

“You can’t blame them,” she said, her voice calm but firm. “Those valleys have a terrible reputation, and you did ask for volunteers.”

“Yeh, but…” Davy sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “We need to know if that’s where the ruined factory is and find out more about it.”

“Agreed but I’m not sure we need them.” She shrugged. “Just the two of us can go.” Then she looked directly at Davy and added, “We’ll need a flyer.”

Davy blinked. “Just us? You sure? I thought you’d want to take a team or somethin’.”

She shook her head. “That would be ideal, but it could also slow us down. After the Alignment, the Veil between realms grows. It’s a time when we can ‘hear’ voices, messages from the Rift. Artifacts come alive. That’s when we’ll see what’s truly there.”

 

Davy frowned. “Veils and Rifts between realms? Ya need to help me.”

Rebecca straightened, meeting his eyes. “That’s when we can hear echoes of the SolDiri. With the Veil thin, their presence can reach out and touch our world through the rifts. Things touched by them come alive.”

“SolDiri? Like… Diri?” He pointed to his ear, arching a brow. “What’s a SolDiri?”

“Not what,” she corrected. “Who.”

“Ok, who are they, then?”

 

Rebecca took a step closer, her tone growing serious. “They weren’t like us; flesh and bone, bound by time and space. They were beings woven into existence itself at the time of creation; maybe before. They are part of the forces that hold reality together. Within the ultimate darkness, they held matter and void in balance, held it together with purpose.”

Davy stared. “That’s… a lot. And these SolDiri, they’re real?” His voice was sceptical.

“They were. But something destroyed them, breaking them up into fragments. It is said those fragments became the motes; pieces of their will, scattered across the cosmos and along all threads.”

 

He nodded slowly, trying to process. “And this break up; what caused it?”

Rebecca’s expression darkened. “No one knows. Our stories call it ‘The Shatter’, there are fleeting glimpses of it in our stories and our music but it’s beyond any of us.”

Davy scratched his chin. “And you’re saying the best time to go and find the ruins is during this alignment?”

 

She nodded again. “Yes. During The Shadow Eclipse, it’s when the black moon aligns with the sun. The boundaries weaken. That’s when answers are most likely to come; or whatever’s left of them.”

For a moment, Davy said nothing, staring at the horizon realising that what he had thought to be mumbo-jumbo was very real and he was slowly becoming a part of it.

He looked back at Rebecca. “Alright. How long have we got to prepare?”

“Two days.”

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