Ordinarily, I would have staged nine times as many boys for each Amarrati, but the numbers seemed as inappropriate to the task as they were to the circumstances. Twelve is much more intimate. My very best singers.
Such wonderfully long... torsos.
[The crone admires the reflection of her pressed gold body suit in a pool of brackish water. Camera drones skim through the atrium out to a basin of shattered infrastructure down to that sunless sea.
The ancient Ni-Kunni makes final preparations on the slopes, directing tall young men in sacred robes of rust-colored wool to crumbling blocks of different levels. Each group of four stands in a half arc around a disk of conspicuously cleared ground. They face the drifting mist beyond which Luminaire sinks lower in an unseen sky.
One beam of sunlight penetrates the vapors and bounces painfully off the old man's eyes, then another. Slowly, mist disengages the sky's dome; clouds break like thawing ice. With a quick snort, the Choir Master mutters that the young meteorologists will get to keep their left ********* after all. He starts back up the slope. Approaching the crone's cylindrical kameira, he whispers in the giant's ear; giant nods and witch gestures to clearing heavens.]
It's time!
[Rapidly appearing drop ships churn the dying fog and chew away late afternoon silence, to vanish as suddenly - snatched back by playful Ithaqua. After their passing, three tall wooden containers remain - attended by muscular eunuchs and a phalanx of cybernetic swordsman. With reverence, the eunuchs guide their floating boxes out of the atrium and down toward the sunless sea, each stopping at a cleared circle.
After light presses, front panels of each box shift in slightly, then open out. Moments pass, and like curious lion cubs, a small child emerges from each box. Boyish bangs bounce lightly in cold breezes; jacinth eyes sparkle. The imps explore their binding circles, and then don pristine robes of white and gold handed to them by deferential attendants. The eunuchs withdraw, taking their floating crates with them.
Above, cloud bellies glow dull orange and light pink. Everyone to their places. In unison, the boys and fey pucks pull forward their hoods and settle in to a standing trance. Thirteen Sebiestor in maxtlatl of fine white feathers and basalt mud race to assigned positions. With practiced synchronicity, they slam palms against chests, beating a Taiko rhythm with only flesh and bone. They conclude, and the first lycanthropic bunny boy emerges from obscuring shadow into spreading light.
Not a Sebiestor, but a tube baby come home, the gaunt, miniaturized Other Rabbit moves with great difficulty through the heaviness of the planet's well. His skin is pale, unnatural, almost ashen - and buried under layered white fur. It wraps around him like falling ribbon, up, up to a brilliant ushanka of snow dipped in gold.
Flanked by two Brutor in ceremonial dress, Other Rabbit moves somberly to the focus of the Choir Master's grand arc. Facing Luminaire's spreading burn, the porcelain figurine speaks hoarsely through an atrophied apparatus of natural voice. Beneath, behind, and around his words, a whisper builds:]
O Saamelaihenki!
These brave warriors, our foes and allies, now lay amongst your rock and alppikukka.
Cry out O Sammelaihenki!
Bear their souls aloft to the halls of their fathers.
Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine
Bear their souls aloft! to their mothers' hearths.
Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine
That they have given to you, now give to them.
Kyrie eleison.
Carry them home
Kyrie eleison.
and ask them to war
Sanctus. Sanctus, Sanctus,
no longer.
Osanna in excelsis.
[At the conclusion of Other Rabbit's words, the choir builds.
One Brutor steps forward, offering a lacquered tray of Ealorian grain. Weakly, Other Rabbit digs his fingers in and scatters grains on the wind. Hostias et preces, tibi, Domine. The first Brutor steps back and the second forward, bearing a wooden grail of sacred wine. Holding the goblet only with assistance, Other Rabbit pours its contents slowly over the suffering earth. He and the Brutor kneel.
Hostias et preces, tibi, Domine.
Silent to this point, the Amarrati at last begin to sing. Tempests rise within an intercostal vice, constricted by slender throats, slamming against bone and fragmenting through brilliant white teeth. Faces, placid and serene, betray none of the maelstrom below. Near the cherubim, the sound is like a milling saw, piercing and inhuman. It swells to fill the cratered space, and in reflection from the hardened surfaces - each bounce calculated by the ancient Ni-Kunni and his clapping - it returns as the Voice of God. Rising and falling, in places mellowed by the accompanying singers and a low rumble from the Sebiestor in their feathers and mud, in others, accelerated, it is a sound to carry souls of the dead into setting sun.
From their final peak, voices follow Luminaire's light down into a golden arc on the horizon. Precisely at the Choir Master's calculated moment of darkness, silence falls.
No one moves for many long moments. Reaching in to his furs, Other Rabbit produces a small namesake. As he sets the tiny creature down, it clearly weighs much more than nature would on her own allow; the fibers of its white coat permit no stain.
"Become the fear of fear itself, Carbuncle."
The small creature gives a knowing wink, and splashes into spreading night.]
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