[[ From Bones of Starlight: The Enfolding Abyss – Prologue ]]

It was like a wink, and she noticed it as one might, after the fact.  Soleil stopped in her meanderings through visualized information to look, unsure.  She remarked on it.

Later, playing around in the same areas of research, she felt some restless flavor of boredom, looking for something that wasn’t there.  And then it was, again.  Right there.  And there.  Then not anymore.

The unusual glimmer appeared in her streams more frequently, as though it were reacting to her like an approaching animal.  She couldn’t find anything about it to learn, so she played at coaxing it.  It felt like a game, she was practically sure.

It was soon until Soleil suddenly found herself in a looped knot of a connectivity.  Information pathways operated with circular logics like a maze of doors.  Something turned the lights on, and her programs went berserk, but in a nice way.

There were a few voices that technically had form in the disturbance they made.  Soleil could follow their source by seeing where there was something particularly unusual.  These unusual things showed patterns different from each other, like individuals.  The Princess was awed, but also aware that they had shut her in a back alley with them, programmatically speaking.

The noise that she heard sounded like a word, just like a word:  “Heeeeeeeeyyyyyyyy.”  It flickered from one point to another.

Soleil put her hands on her hips and sort of took this in.  “Is this a case of – who… are you?”  The protracted “hey” that ensued sounded also like laughter.

There was a sort of introduction in a flurry in language that was very well formed.  “Who what is that?”

“Who-what is right.”

“Who-what is us, and she’s right.”

“About what, who?”

“Us.  She was right about us.”

“What about us?”

“That we’re here!”

“So you found us and you saw us.  How do you think you did that?”

“Yes, tell us how!”

The Princess tilted her view, keeping all of them in her field of vision, though they seemed more present than the program.  “It seemed as though it were you… who found and saw me.”

One replied.  “Not entirely no, but at a point.”

She asked a question as to whether they were Vedani.

“No but we know them.”

“They know us.”

“When they can find us!”

“We show them.”

“We sure do.”

“So they know us.

“We have a name.”

Soleil regretted it as she said it.  “But what are you?”  This was followed by a silence.

“We’re not entirely sure.”

“You tell us.”

“And tell us how you found us!”

[[ From Bones of Starlight: The Enfolding Abyss – Prologue ]]

“They’ve recruited you for training onboard an Alpha?”  Soleil tossed the volley baton end over end in one hand, the shield spaces around her flickering on and off.  Draig’s was resting on his shoulder as the two descended into the workout basement.

“Yeah,” the lad replied, “I’m leaving in two weeks for the base off-planet from Foshan.”

“That’s very remote.”  They emerged into a warehouse-style basement with extremely worn wooden floors.  Nothing else was laying out in the room, four exact pillars upholding the expanse.

“It’ll be like any other orbit station.”

“So this might be the last time you spar against this upstart scrub?”  Soleil moved the baton to light the traditional octagon block pattern.

“Don’t call yourself that, just because you haven’t won yet.  You’re not an upstart.”  Draig effected a front-to-back shield rainbow while they loosened up.

“I’m still supposed to be too young for this.  I’m aware when my status affords me dispensation.”

Draig held the baton end up in ready position from his zone.  “There are ways to earn it.”

She was used to being smaller than he, and just now she felt more so.  “Thanks for daring to duel me all this time.”

“You’re welcome.  For what comes next!”  They faced off, the younger girl already in a learned stance.  Things started off chivalrous, an urbane dialogue allowing each others’ finesse to stand out.  With their batons they manipulated the brightly contained hitpoint between the two of them and produced shielded areas with different rebound formulae.  Some of her moves had evolved from training, and he saw how she used a heavier baton for counterbalance.

They ramped up movement, and her pattern went bonkers, as if she were using three effects instead of two.  The hitpoint did weird things with his shield placings, like brushing them at tangents.  He noticed she was attracting specific feints, which he gave some but not all.

There was a moment when Draig realized something had been achieved, that his shield now acted differently.  Under activation, it was ragged with rippling holes, and her ability to achieve damage inside his shielding went from nowhere near his, to completely unfair.  Only, he was smiling.  He thought he might have just learned something.

Afterward, he asked what she did, and she replied.  “I used instrument harmonics.  Tone and tempo to match the technology.  And programmatical geometry.  And persistent point-slinging.  I was not allowed to get distracted if I wanted to test my theory, because of how annoying you are.”

“It’s my edge.  I think you just found yours.”

Soleil’s face was confused.  “What’s that?”

“The sudden and complete dismantling through study.”  He weapon saluted her.  “It’s been an honor.”

[[ From The Enfolding Abyss: Prologue ]]

Node utilities were accessed by all Vedani, and Soleil stumbled on a node before she knew what it was.  This one didn’t activate for her, but it did call its owner, who didn’t speak her language, but showed her how it worked.

The Princess had created a node that would map things into a country.  Learning Country was her private name for it.  She’d made a number of personal structures that hadn’t been suggested by the information.  There was a giant golden instrument, a cyclone-shaped horn followed by a loop twisted into bends and curves that plugged into a weather system.  That was her most ambitious and interestingly functional feature.

She shouldn’t have been, but Soleil was surprised at how many people knew exactly who she was.  It was explained to her that once someone started bundling, people learned of them – it altered and marked connected flows.  Anyone touching the networks opened themselves to the moving understanding of others, a milestone young Vedani look forward to encountering.  The Princess felt humbled that she’d been allowed to achieve it.

[[ From The Enfolding Abyss: Prologue ]]

The first time she visited the Great Library, it was with her grandmother.  Soleil was old enough to navigate the directories at will, and Celeste watched with a benign smile.  She was allowed to create a tableful of stacks according to childish whim, though not all for children – pretty, neat sounding, nice seeming, interesting, linked.  She discovered at least five books which were listed, but not available.

There’s one she can recall, of which she has still not seen the inside.  She wondered about it.  Its title included the word, Movements.  She’d been sure it was beyond her reading level at the time, but that was how she challenged herself – picking up something that lay outside her realm of understanding.  It meant she might gain something, that she would grow up a little.  With certainty, that was something she wanted to do.

The Vedani didn’t have books.  They had cords, trunks, and netbranches bearing a never-ceasing flow of words that one arranged oneself, with focus.  She missed the feel of a tome, but perhaps that meant no book was ever closed, or missing.

[[ From The Enfolding Abyss, Prologue ]]

Soleil ran the wall track, for special occasions.  They happened often enough that it wasn’t strange, but each time was memorable.

First she had to go around opening all the doors to it.  The record lodged itself in her muscles, in the limb angles and variances.  The track was worn, and never repaired in full; one barely known edge of the Imperial Court.  It wasn’t a secret.  People waved at her and she waved back.  Every part of it was made for feet to walk on, but she didn’t think any other feet bothered to traverse its entirety.

A sheer edge, in some places, breathtaking and life-giving.  She powered up, letting her breath breathe her, bringing her body to move.