29By Lady Tempest
Part 4:
Danyl plopped to the ground in a controlled sprawl, cradling his journal on his lap. Quickly, he began tugging at the laces of his dusty boots. With a swift pull, and another, both feet were free. A warm, late-morning breeze brushed along his bared feet, as he set the boots aside.
Beside him, hand resting on the hilt of his sword, Kei slipped out of his own shoes. Nudging them near Danyl's with his feet, he followed the momentum, his flowing trousers swishing while he stepped in front of his young friend.
Without a word, Kei held out a hand to Danyl. For several moments, Danyl sat, arms wrapped around his journal, silent, and stared blankly at his wriggling toes. Taking a deep breath, he finally looked up at Kei.
"You okay?" Kei asked, windblown strands of hair wisping across his face and masking his somber expression.
Danyl gave a gentle nod. With a weak smile, he accepted Kei's hand and let his friend haul him to his feet.
"Thanks," Danyl said and his hand lingered in Kei's. Abruptly, he pulled away and padded to the pair of decorated paving stones.
Flipping the skirt of his robe aside, Danyl knelt down in the center of one slab, the skin of his feet scraping against the weather-roughened stone. He turned to Kei and waved his friend to join him.
At Kei's quirked eyebrow, he said, "It may have no effect, but it can't hurt."
With an offhanded shrug, Kei strode over to Danyl. The youth patted the stone beside him, his blue eyes soft and encouraging. Bracing his hand on the hilt of his sword, Kei lowered himself to his knees.
Kei glanced across his shoulder to Danyl. Journal open on his lap, the young scholar flipped through its pages. One hand held the book from sliding to the ground, a finger tapping against the leather-bound cover like it usually tapped against his lips.
"Well?"
Danyl paused on a page, his finger trailing down his scrawled text. "Hm," he muttered absently. His eyes darted to Kei, then back to the book, as if they had never been interrupted.
Arm draped over a thigh, Kei leaned forward and peered through the fall of fine, dark-honey hair veiling Danyl's face.
"How long?"
"Uh... I..." Danyl looked up, then away. His brow crinkled. "... I don't know. All any of the pictorials showed was worshippers kneeling before the temple. A radiant figure, I presume was Aisha, would appear, and then they'd enter. That's it." He sighed. "I wish I knew what the text here said."
Kei arched a brow. "So we wait for Aisha to show up?"
"Well... or... or... something..." Danyl's fingers fidgeted, ruffling the corner of his journal pages. "... I don't know... Something."
Gazing up at the pale blue sky and the sun nearly overhead and peeking through airy blue-white clouds, Kei shook his head.
"This is pointless," Kei grunted.
Brow creasing, lashes fluttering then blinking slowly, Danyl gaped. "What? You ..."
"Danyl, you know gods don't exist."
"I... I know." he stammered, forcing his mouth to work. "B... but, just because we don't believe, doesn't mean we can't show respect."
Kei flung out his arm. "No one is here to show respect to."
"It just feels right to do." Danyl shrugged. "Give it a little time."
Kei let out a breath and gazed down his shoulder at Danyl. The youth's blue eyes gazed back, expectant. Ruffling Danyl's hair, he smiled.
"Okay."
They remained kneeling. Shadows crept slowly across the aged-stone, shrinking with the rising of the sun. Danyl shifted uncomfortably, tightening his grip on his journal. His hair, a gold-bronze in the sun's light, swayed with the movement and fell across his face. As he lazily tucked it behind his ear, he paused. With a jerk, his head shot upright. And he blinked.
"Uh, Kei..." he stammered, tugging at Kei's vest without moving his gaze from the temple entrance.
"Yeah, Dany, I see it."
In the darkness of the temple an eerie blue glow gently pulsed to life. Growing. It started faintly then began building and building;
Danyl scooped his journal into his arms and scrambled to his feet. Bounding to the arched entrance, Danyl stopped, eyes wide, bright, and shining with the blue light.
"Kei!" he gasped. "It's..."
"Dany! Wait!" Rushing to his own feet, Kei surged forward, a hand grasping for Danyl while still several strides distant from him.
"I am," Danyl quickly mumbled with a sigh, rocking on the balls of his feet. "I... I... it's incredible. It's..."
Smoothing his hair back from his face, and his eyes, Danyl paused. He blinked, and blinked again, pupils tiny black specks in a sea of vibrant blue.
"Isn't this amazing! Three-thousand and fourteen years old and still intact." He spun around to face Keijiro. "It's like stepping into the past, into history. Thousands of years of people, just like us, stood right here, just like us."
"Not quite." Kei smirked, standing beside him. "I doubt anyone's ever been quite like you, Dany."
Danyl flashed Kei a playful glare and stuck out his tongue.
Chuckling, the swordsman clapped his free hand on Danyl's shoulder. "So, ready?"
Danyl hugged his journal to his chest, his body jittering under Kei's hand. A huge smile beamed across his flushed face. As he began to step towards the doorway, Kei squeezed his shoulder.
"Uhn uh! I go first," Kei stated, golden eyes narrowing.
Danyl's lip puffed into a pout, yet did little to dampen the unbridled zeal glowing in his eyes, on his face, even his skin.
Kei strode forward, the blue light altering his blue-black hair to a midnight blue. Hand tightening on his sword, he stood at the threshold. A walkway stretched before him, white-blue and sparkling with millions of vibrant blue flecks, like sapphires on a field of snow at twilight.
Bracing himself with one hand against the thick inside wall of the doorway, Kei peered around the opening. The chamber was small, and narrow, but long. A marble floor was broken down the center by the glittering path.. Lining either side was an arcade of slender, blue-tinted columns. Kei's green-gold eyes roamed the walls, delving into the faint blue shadows.
Danyl approached behind him. Brushing against him, Danyl rose up onto tip-toes to peek over Kei's shoulder. His eyes, too blue and wide with wonder, flitted over everything within his sight. Body quivering with energy, he lost his balance and nearly fell into Kei.
Kei's fingers clawed against the stone doorway, steadying himself. "Danyl!"
"Uh, sorry," Danyl winced and flashed a timid, apologetic smile.
"Stay put." Kei snapped, glowering, only a gentleness in his eyes softening the expression, and pointed at the ground under Danyl's feet. "Right there."
Danyl nodded.
Kei stepped forward onto the walkway. His bare feet sunk lightly into a fine sand which slid between his toes with each step. It ground and crunched underfoot as he stalked several more paces into the chamber.
He turned slowly, the sand lapping over his bare feet, eyes scanning the room. The side walls were flat, niche-less, banded with splashes of color and images. There was no where for any one or thing to hide, and no obvious sign of traps.
No sign of footprints or animal tracks, nothing to show whether anyone had visited the temple recently, or even in hundreds of years. The blue-white marble floor was perfectly smooth and polished, pristine: no dust, no dirt.
Journal still clutched to his chest, Danyl stood quietly, teetering, toes curled on the edge of the threshold. Gnawing his bottom lip, he craned his neck around the doorway, glancing this way and that.
Kei paused in his inspection of the chamber,. Looking over his shoulder to his anxious young friend, he waved Danyl into the room.
Danyl practically bounced onto the walkway. His head darted every direction as he shuffled along the sand.
"Maa'sha! This is...is... is..." Danyl's mouth opened and closed and opened and closed, struggling for speech it couldn't find.
Kei shook his head and softly grinned. "You okay?" he chuckled.
Twisting around one way then another, the flaps of his robe flailed about Danyl's slender legs. His arms were outstretched, feet shuffling a circle in the sand, in an almost-dance. Danyl's wide eyes flitted from the wall to the colonnade to the marble floor to the path to the arched doorway to another wall to the ceiling. To Kei, then to the ceiling once more.
"Oh! That's... Oh..." Danyl blinked, his mouth parted. His head was thrown back as he stared above him.
Threads of liquid, blue light covered the dusk-blue ceiling in a pattern of intersecting starbursts: glowing, bright, and beautiful, like a brilliant web of living light. Danyl reached up, too far away yet still straining to touch, bathing his fingers in a greater intensity of the eerie blue glow.
"It's so beautiful," he murmured. "Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?"
Kei was silent as he wandered over to Danyl. He glanced above him as well, for a moment, then looked to his friend.
"Dany..." Kei paused. "... Let's get through the rest of this place first."
When Danyl didn't respond, he laid a hand on the younger man's shoulder, his fingers grazing along the nape of Danyl's neck.
"Dany."
With a sigh, Danyl lowered his arm. His cheeks were tinted purple-pink and eyes a brilliant blue as he turned his gaze to Kei. A shy smile crept across his lips.
"Of course," he replied, nodding, and tucked a lock of ever-wayward hair behind his ear.
tbc...
Author's note: Not quite as long as I'd like, but I have an exam tomorrow. Hope to have much more before the weekend.
Maa'sha! = (roughly) My god! or similar exclamations, but carries the context of great surprise or other high excitability. 'Maa' is taken from the japanese exclamation 'maa maa' (Oh! Wow!) and the story-world's 'sha' which means 'god'. I tried to use it in a way that was self-explanatory, but thought it might be interesting to mention anyway. :)
Thanks to those who have left me feedback. It does help motivate me, although I am excited about my plans for the is story. Knowing others care about it too makes pushing myself through the rough bits more rewarding. And don't despair, the angst is coming...