Azrieth

In Zahreth, children are named after a bird or a wind. Azrieth was given neither. The readers of Tel-Azra Eyrie read the sky. On the night Azrieth was born, lightning wrote in the sky. The readers read that lightning and took her name from it. No one told her what it meant. Later Azrieth learned the truth: they did not know either. That night the lightning had written only that syllable. It never finished its sentence.

At twelve she became an apprentice Wind Reader. She read the Sky Script faster than anyone. She could guess a storm's sentence from its very first letter. Every correct reading left her one white hair. Reading lightning costs Dem. Dem is time in solid form in Devran. It ages the body it passes through in strange ways. By sixteen, all her hair was white. The Storm Council called it an honor.

In the spring of 1244 AS, the Council read a storm. AS means After Stillness; it is how Devran counts its years. This storm was a great sentence born at the bottom of the Sea of Clouds. It was writing itself slowly. The readers worked it out letter by letter. At the end of the sentence was the name of a place: Tel-Azra. The storm would tear the Eyrie from the cliff and throw it down. The Council argued and voted. Its decision was plain: no one interrupts the speech of the sky. The people would leave the Eyrie, and the storm would finish its sentence.

Azrieth knew the evacuation would not finish in time. No one could move the elders and the falcons in the hatchery. On the night the storm came, she took her staff. She walked to the very edge of the cliff. Then she did something no one had taught her. She did not read the storm; she wrote it. She rewound the wind letter by letter and pulled it into the orb at the tip of her staff. When morning came, the Eyrie still stood and the sky was clear. Inside the orb in Azrieth's hand, a storm turned and murmured.

The Council did not thank her. Interrupting the speech of the sky is the gravest crime in Zahreth. The Council exiled Azrieth. A courier of the Falconers brought her the verdict. That courier was her childhood friend, Kestrel. Kestrel did not cry as she handed over the letter. But Azrieth saw that the seal was already broken. Kestrel had read it. After reading it, she brought it anyway. She left it to no one and delivered it with her own hand.

In the first week of her exile, Azrieth was walking the basalt highlands of Gurhal. Then the storm escaped. For a whole night it seeped out of the orb and spread across the sky. Then it rained on a mountain pass for three days. Azrieth fell while trying to call it back. A red-haired warrior found her. He carried her on his back to his clan's caves. He asked nothing. In the end Azrieth got the storm back. But she never learned which pass the rain fell on. She does not know what happened there either.

Azrieth calls the storm Half-Sentence. The storm never stops writing inside the orb. It writes letters made of sparks. These letters continue an unfinished sentence. At night Azrieth tries to read them. Sometimes a word almost appears, then the letters scatter. The storm wants to finish its sentence. Azrieth believes that if she sets it free, the sentence will be complete. The last word will again be the name of a place. She does not know which place. That is why she never lets go of her staff, not even in sleep.

She came to the Arena because of Half-Sentence. An exile can only earn Dem in the Arena. Tavellin's agents have already named their price for a bottled storm. Azrieth will not sell. Then came the Skip. The Skip is the moment all of Devran stopped for a single heartbeat. In that moment the orb stopped too. Then, for the first time, Half-Sentence did not break off a word. It wrote the word from start to end. Azrieth read it. Ever since, she has been writing a letter to Tel-Azra. Every time, she tears it up.