wayside-parliament

The Director of the Senate Archive knew she was dreaming, because she'd been here before.

Her first day at the Archive, fresh from an internship at the Traymetropolis university library, staring up at the statue of St. Fay that the previous director had inexplicably installed dominating the entryway.

Except the first time she'd seen that statue, it had been early morning, and now it was the dead of night, icy moonlight ribboning down from the windows in the rotunda, across the statue's marble face and down to where she stood, feeling as tiny and defenseless as a hatchling.

The statue hadn't spoken to her that day either.

When she woke, she couldn't remember what the statue had said, but she knew it had been important. That feeling stayed with her through breakfast and all the way to work, where the real statue gazed out at the grand front doors and added nothing to the conversation.

She sat down at her desk in the back office and reached for her inbox, and in that moment everything changed.

The first piece of newsprint she'd drawn from the stack was at least a week old, driven to the back burner in the last several days' flurry of damage control, as the archivists raced to figure out what a vote of confidence overturning a Traditionalist majority meant for them, and for their funding. It was the arts and culture section of the Metropolis Gazette, with nearly all the space above the fold on the front page taken up by a wirephoto portrait of half a dozen people in some public park—

and among them, off to one side, was a woman who looked exactly like that statue of St. Fay.

REVIVAL REALIZED, proclaimed the headline, over a byline from a prairie town where nothing notable had happened in—she couldn't be sure, but at least a couple of centuries—

What had her predecessor known, when they commissioned that statue?

She pulled a memo pad in from the corner of her desk and began to write.

***

The Deputy Director, arriving just a hair late to the office, found an utterly baffling memo in his inbox.

Dave—Can you take the Committee meeting this afternoon? Sorry about the short notice; I've got work to do in Lest We Forget.

What in Sidney's was so urgent as to send the Director away, without prior planning, to a place he'd never heard of, on a day the Senate expected her?

Not that he had the luxury of sitting around and thinking about it now. There were budget reports to reread.

***

The Director paused on the platform to look back at the Wildcat Express. She remembered wondering, as a junior librarian, why both it and the City of Metropolis stopped in Lest We Forget, the continent’s busiest rail routes crossing paths in this nothing of a town. Historical reasons, was all the books had said.

“Madam Director?” She turned back. A young Shade woman with a clipboard stood before her. She held out a hand, palm up. “Lyna Richards, Sturmkraw research group.”

The Director held out her own hand to where their palms would have touched, just long enough for a professional handshake. “I don't think I told anyone out here I was coming. Did the Archive send you?”

Lyna shook her head. “Better'n that. There's someone who wants to see you down in Memorial Park.” The look on her translucent face gave nothing away.

Bending down to pick up her suitcase, the Director finally got a good look at Lyna's clipboard. Beneath a newspaper clipping advertising some kind of “sunrise cure” patent medicine was that same wirephoto from the Gazette.

“Is this about St. Fay?”

Lyna set off through the station, and the Director scrambled to follow. “Your folks've been librarians just about forever, right?”

“As far back as we have records. There's an old family joke that my eight-greats-grandmother was the high priestess of something or other, but that's it.”

“That'll be less of a joke in a minute. Firial's been lookin' for the descendants of her old priesthood, an' it sounds like you're the only one who's answered. Makes sense you're in the high priests' direct line.”

Dathius' pinfeathers. She had so many questions. “Firial?” was the first to make it out of her beak.

“She don't like bein' called Saint Fay. That's a name was come up with after the Cyclone to hide the history from the Metro. Credit to your ancestors, it worked well enough that you work for the Senate now. But she only answers to the name she gave herself.”

They were out of the station now, and crossing a quiet street into what could only be Memorial Park. Little sparks and swirls of magic faded into the Director's vision, all headed for the sixteen standing stones a little way away, in various states of disrepair, and the striped pavilion that cozied up to them. It felt like something in the current was converging here.

“So does she want me to be a priestess?”

“Nah, it sounds like she likes you where you are. Director of the biggest library on the continent? Keepin' it runnin' every year the Senate tries to cut taxes on itself? You're doin' Her work already. Besides, she's already got me trained up to speak for her, an' I get the sense she don't like changin' her mind much.”

A teenage orc sat against one of the standing stones in the outer ring, current eddying around him and a werewolf in work clothes watching over him. The Director glanced at Lyna, who shook her head.

Not my project. You can ask him what he's doin' if you're still here when he wakes up.”

They stopped before a stone in the inner circle, straight and smooth as the day it was carved, with the sign of St. Fay inlaid near the top. Lyna knelt before it, hands resting palm up on her thighs, and craned her neck to address the faintly glowing glyph. “Firial! An heir to the priesthood has answered your call.”

In the silence, the Director felt the pressure of the current building inside her head. She considered kneeling, but it didn't quite feel right for the moment.

Barely a breath after that decision, she became aware of a figure who hasn't been there before, who seemed to fade into view as she watched. A human woman, but nearly as tall as the obelisk beside her, and identical to the statue in the Archive.

“Welcome home, Director,” the goddess said with the gentle coolth of the waning moon. “I'm glad you were able to join us. We have much to discuss.”

***

“Cent for your thoughts?”

Startled, the Director looked up from her plate. They'd retreated to a boardinghouse on the far side of the park, and been given hot sandwiches that Lyna swore were worth coming to town for all on their own. Whether or not that was the case, the Director found herself without appetite.

She shrugged. “It's just a lot to take in.”

“The gods never do anything halfway, do they,” Lyna said. “What's eatin’ you the worst?”

“I think…” the Director said, and thought for a while. “When I joined the Order, I got the sense we were safeguarding history for other people. Protecting the truth until we didn't have to anymore and could teach everyone how the world really worked again. And I was good at it.”

“An' it sounds like you can't think of it like that anymore.”

“No, I can't. Because it's my history now. My eight-greats grandmother was the first head of the Order. She watched her parent die of a broken heart after the Cyclone, because Firial was gone. Trying to stay objective about all this, in the face of that, feels like an insult to her.”

Lyna considered. “Maybe try bein’ subjective, then.”

“What?”

“As I understand it, the gods from the Revival are the ones that really wanted to come back. Every single one of ‘em had somethin' they loved about the world, so much that it held them close and made us able to reach ‘em. Even Firial. You'd think to listen to her she'd be the most distant and impartial of anyone. But every single one of us is here because she decided, as soon as she was back in the world, that she needed her child back too, and she needed mortal help to find him. I say leave the objectivity to folks who're farther away from the history. Study this because you've got ties to it, not in spite of 'em.”

The Director felt that same shrunken and stranded feeling from her dreams. “How?” she asked, mostly at her sandwich.

“Stay a couple days, talk to the librarians here. Maybe they've got somethin’ in their Cyclone archive that'll help you get your bearings. And then you can decide what to do when you feel like you know enough.”

“Spoken like a member of the Order.” The Director looked up. “…Are you?”

“Nah, Firial’s still workin’ out what to do about that. But it could happen.”