“You keep coming back.”
⸢Signet⸣ glanced over her shoulder at the familiar voice, smiling just a little. “Would you prefer I not?”
“No, it’s just—” Archil Kermes shook her head, sending her coils of rainbow-tinted hair shimmering around her. “Many people see my work as a curiosity, or as a finished product. You come to see the works in progress.”
“Mm.” ⸢Signet⸣ turned back to the loom she had been studying, with its long warp threads arranged so carefully over the heddles. The warp’s background was a lovely mix of dark blues, purples, and greens, and the weft threads woven in so far picked out reds, golds, and silvers—shining stars in endless space no longer made shimmer-bright by the Mirage. Belgard whispered in her mind, telling her, These are the constellations of Veldara. ⸢Signet⸣ said, because Archil had asked, and was kindly waiting, “There are few people who fly with us now who choose such patient arts.”
“Patience is what makes it necessary.” Archil stepped up beside ⸢Signet⸣, contemplating her work. “Machines can do this work. They’ll do it without any errors, if you program them correctly.” She pointed, scale-backed finger held precisely above the threads without touching at all. “Even at my best and most patient, there are flaws in the work I do.”
⸢Signet⸣ bent over at a nod from Archil, carefully examining the spot she had noted. “The errors are difficult to spot, for one untrained in your art,” ⸢Signet⸣ said, as the silence drew long. She straightened, smiled, meeting Archil’s saffron-struck hazel eyes. “The weave is a thread off?”
“Yes.” Archil lifted her hands, joy bursting from every angle of her posture. “Few take the time to look, even when I point it out.”
“Few people take the time to truly appreciate tapestries, even ones you wear, now that we move with such a mission.” ⸢Signet⸣ sighed, and stepped back from the loom. “In the Mirage—”
“Everyone says that.” Archil reached out a hand, slowly placing it on ⸢Signet⸣’s arm so there was plenty of time to deny the contact. ⸢Signet⸣ did not move. Archil’s hand was warm through the eminently practical and tight-fitting shirt ⸢Signet⸣ wore today, having just come from working with Belgard and a covey of engineers to shore up the oldest ships of the Cadent’s Fleet. Archil’s fingers rested, perfectly still, radiating purpose matched by her eyes as she said, “You lost that long before I met you and chose to remake my home here.”
⸢Signet⸣ looked at the constellations still incomplete on the loom. “It is no easier to recreate that which you left by choice.”
“Then remember.” Archil squeezed ⸢Signet⸣’s arm, and ⸢Signet⸣ met her eyes, startled. Archil stepped forward, bringing her other hand up to ⸢Signet⸣’s face. Belgard murmured, She means no harm, and ⸢Signet⸣ kept herself still, cautious, curious. Archil paused, hand millimeters away from ⸢Signet⸣’s cheek (the same distance as from her work, ⸢Signet⸣ noted, in the part of her that must always study, calculate, care), and met ⸢Signet⸣’s eyes clearly and deliberately. Then, as Archil laid her hand on ⸢Signet⸣’s cheek, she said, “You are always making something new.”
⸢Signet⸣ leaned into the contact. She did not decide to. She did not even realise she was, until Archil’s body was pressed against hers, Archil’s warm skin against her neck and almost floating filaments of hair cloudlike against her chin. Slowly, ⸢Signet⸣ raised her own arms, placed her hands against Archil’s shoulders (the texture of loom-woven cloth: patterns of warp and weft subtle to the eye but achingly clear to the fingers), and asked, “Is that what you are—” She paused, reconsidered: “What we are doing?”
Archil drew back, just enough to look at ⸢Signet⸣. “You don’t come here just to see the cloth.”
⸢Signet⸣’s lips curved up only slightly, and Archil saw it. Her hand slid down ⸢Signet⸣’s cheek, along the side of her neck (and ⸢Signet⸣ felt her skin prickle, alert in pleasure), and came to rest on her shoulder. “⸢Signet⸣,” Archil said, very softly, “I would like to show you how to weave.”
“Thread over thread?” ⸢Signet⸣ tilted her head, allowed her fingers to spread wider along Archil’s shoulders. “Or is this a metaphor?”
“Could it not be both?”
⸢Signet⸣’s hands tightened, and she felt—
Belgard humming in the back of her mind, gentle and ever-present. The steadiest presence ⸢Signet⸣ had ever known, except when she had been lost. (Except when she had died, except when ⸢Signet⸣ had been forced to run away; the memory would always ache, even so long after.) Belgard’s attention was primarily on the trade convoy she was guiding into the Fleet, and she said to ⸢Signet⸣ only, You deserve joy.
Tears fluttered at the edges of ⸢Signet⸣’s eyes. Her skin flushed. Underneath her hands were natural fibers, natural dyes (she could smell them, if she were close enough; she was not quite close enough yet); under the cloth was a woman who was asking for something ⸢Signet⸣ had not thought to want for longer than she could remember.
I am only what I am, ⸢Signet⸣ thought, abstractly, losing herself in the way Archil’s hair slowly shifted colors, the same pastel rainbow rotating throughout thousands of strands. She does not look at me and see one of the last Excerpts of fallen Divines.
“⸢Signet⸣?” Archil murmured, thumb stroking against the (too-thin, too-present) collar of ⸢Signet⸣’s shirt. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” ⸢Signet⸣ said. She drew a breath, and leaned down, pressing a gentle kiss to Archil’s forehead, and then resting her own against the same spot. Archil’s breath quickened, and her hands pressed against ⸢Signet⸣’s body, drawing her closer in. ⸢Signet⸣ closed her eyes. “It can be both,” she whispered, “though the gift of learning shared is the more familiar of the two.”
“No two lives are the same,” Archil said, and ⸢Signet⸣ could feel the vibrations of her voice in her skin, running along her spine. “The ways they weave together are never the same. And spinning more closely together doesn’t mean anything else needs to change.”
“But it can be quite pleasant.” ⸢Signet⸣ slid her hand, as quickly as she dared (achingly slowly, careful with the patience of hundreds of years of chosen distance) along Archil’s neck, feeling her pleased hum in her bones. She buried her hand in the (yes, cloud-soft) rainbow hair and said, “I want to learn.”
“Together,” Archil said, her own hand now at the nape of ⸢Signet⸣’s neck. “We will learn together.”
Belgard’s pleasure sang through ⸢Signet⸣, and she smiled.