In all of White Lightning City Melila's Tower can be seen. In none of the city is it spoken of with anything less than complete reverence.

It's a dagger scratching the sky. It's a sword bigger than ambitions. It's a daiklave of human achievement.

Don't compare it to a blade. Don't compare it to anything at all. The monks wouldn't like that.

Here's what it is to you:

A building taller than dozens of men on dozens of men, pocked gray and weathered smooth and looming great and standing unbroken. One of three forming an equilateral triangle in the heart of Mnou Wat, with darker, more recent buildings like matted stone fungi growing around its great, rectangular base to form an interconnected complex. People, mostly learned punna, Immaculate monks, Realm officials and venerated Dragonnblooded, bustle through on important business like termites in a hive.

Braziers of incense on every lecture hall, library, and passage, vomiting fumes of sweet smoke, seeping into every article of cloth or fabric on the walls, floors and people. Lanterns pouring bile-yellow light from nooked in cramped hallways, skylights washing great open halls. Disapproving glares from holy men and reproachful 'tch' sounds because you're wearing boy's clothing, a young man staring at the Vashra mon emblazoned on your back. Tight stairways that go up so far they make your brain whirl, sheer steps like gigantic, smoothed-by-the-ages teeth that will kill you if you trip once on your way up to the 30th (Dragons, it has that many?) floor.

It's your first time inside, and you can't help but be awed. You don't favor Air as far as the Dragons go, but even you respect Melila. Surely she must be great with such a monument to her name.

Your sister refrains from making jokes about your height as you look, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, down the stairwell you just ascended.

A long walk past tall windows and you're before the quarters of the Great Teacher of White Lightning City, Rain Washes All With Truth. The Immaculate Order has stayed out of local politics for a very long time, as per its rules. But there was a time that the word of the Order would make or break public perception in White Lightning City. With white lightning having become your home's biggest export, you need help to politically push back on the Rivdatka and start chipping away at their public support.

Enter, Masumi.

You follow your sister silently as she opens the doors and walks into a room with a vaulted ceiling with a skylight, fat cushions arranged in a semi-circle before an open space. At the other end is a prayer gong, and a rug for kneeling. An bald old woman is there with her palms pressed together. That would be the Great Teacher. She's muttering in High Realm--what, you can't say. You don't know a word of the language. Probably a prayer.

You both bow, Masumi's necklaces jostling, her pewter bangles clacking together. She cleaned the grains out of her fine white sampot and is dressed up in full formal wear, the cloth flowing around her. Hair parted, a green dot - for Wood - in the center of her forehead.

You wear a black button-down coat with a sash tied around the middle, the sleeves just a little big on you to conceal your hands. Men's formal wear, easy to move in, and easy to hide weapons in. Idly you finger where your knives would be--all you have with you is a garotte in the pocket of your left inner sleeve. For some reason it's considered rude to take weapons before a holy woman.

After two minutes of being ignored, Masumi clears her throat. "O venerable and wise one, Great Teacher that leads souls to harmonious practices, might we have a moment of your time? I understand you are very busy, but your secretary led me to believe that you would be willing to see me now?"

With a weary sigh, the woman stands and turns around. She walks past a table empty save for one single cup of tea. Her weathered face is set into a deep, world-weary frown, pulling lines in her face like it has a physical weight all its own. "I would think Vashra Roshi's children would be smart enough to see when they aren't wanted," she says bluntly with the gravelly voice of someone who's smoked a pipe every day for a long time.

Masumi's jaw drops. The monk guffaws like rocks scraping together. You had heard she was rude--but not this rude.

If she weren't disrespecting your sister, you think you'd like her. If she wasn't so powerful, you'd be ready to punch her for such behavior. But it's your job to watch and protect Masumi from physical threats this mission, not rude old women. So you stay quiet.

"Well." Masumi manages a tight smile. "What can I say? We're here on official matters and so have an obligation-"

"Unfortunately."

"-to see done. I can see that you're a very candid woman. So I'll say what I have to say, and then leave you be. Is this acceptable?"

"I don't think you people are going to leave me alone until I agree." Great Teacher makes a motion with her hand as if to say 'get on with it'.

"Very well. Here is what I say to you, Great Teacher: I understand the toll that duty takes. I understand what it's like to give up the joys of a normal life. I understand that all the priviliges of power in the world do not make any easier the heavy weight of responsibility." You brush your sleeve against your sister, just a little touch without words to say 'I am here'.

"We all do things we aren't proud of. We make mistakes. Oh, we think they're minor--and they are. An indescretion here, an oversight there. Drinking when you shouldn't. Fucking who you shouldn't...""

The Great Teacher's eyes narrow.

Masumi's expression is beatific. "I understand, is what I'm saying. Just like you understand that even those minor indescretions will come back with consequences.

So what will happen to your career when I tell the whole temple that you were with child while in the Order?"

The wind roars outside, shaking the whole room gently. The wind spirits are loud. You think they don't like that there are people at this elevation.

Masumi can't keep the smugness out of her voice as she continues. "What. Nothing? I have your life in my hands. Give the Vashra your blessing, and I keep quiet... and your child's safety is guaranteed. We won't even tell the foster parents about you."

As far as Masumi is concerned, she's won this already. And you can't blame her for that. She picked the target, she convinced Roshi, she did the research. She said everything exactly the way she rehearsed with you.

She was flawless.

The monk is silent. She clasps her hands together behind her back and regards Masumi.

"Tell me. Do you two have a mother?"

Masumi's eyes go wide. Your culture is matriarchal--to ask if someone has no mother is to ask if they were raised wrong. It's to paint them as deficient. It's one of the highest offenses a person can make.

You take a step forward. Masumi's hand comes down on your shoulder. You look up at her, and her mouth is a flat, pressed line.

"Ah. I thought not." The Great Teacher smiles. "How I know that is thus: if you had a mother, young Vashra, you would know that just because I carried the child to term, does not make me its mother. I did not suckle it at my breasts; I did not teach how to walk; I did not sing it the songs of my ancestors. I did not love it. That baby is an adult now, and it is no child of mine. I will tell you now its fate is of no concern to me."

"And your reputation?" Masumi says, desperately trying to regain control of the conversation. "Your place in the Order? Are the works of your lifetime of any concern to you?"

"I am old and I am tired, in my bones and in my heart. Exposing this secret would just let me retire. Get out of this wretched city and spend my final days somewhere there aren't a dozen murders a night. Do as you will, little Vashra." The Great Teacher smiles, turns her back to you, sits at the table and loudly sips her tea.

You see yourselves out.

Sometimes perfect isn't good enough.



The silence holds until Masumi and you enter the stairwell. "The nerve of that woman! What kind of freak doesn't value their place in the institution they've dedicated their life to!?" She jabbers swears, her fists miming strangulation. "Who does she think she is, talking to us--to [i]you[/i]--that way! That sanctimonious--that presumptive--that [i]impertinent[/i]--aaagh!"

Masumi's rant is seemingly endless. How can't that decrepit old monk see that the Vashra are the only able stewards of the city? Damn Vashra Herself and her laxness in fighting the Rivdatka. She goes on like this the whole way down, doing the talking for you both. So much so that it takes you a second to realize that she's stopped talking, because she's waiting on an answer.

You blink once.

Masumi looks at you sideways, her expression scrutinizing. "I said, 'Why aren't you bothered?'"

"I am bothered," you answer. Your held your tongue in large part because your frustrations made sharp your tongue, and all your thoughts sour. You had nothing to say to make Masumi feel better. You still don't. "She insulted you. And Roshi will be... displeased at our results." You scratch where the bruises are under your makeup with one jagged fingernail.

"Not that!" Masumi snaps. Instantly she winces, her expression softening as she draws a steadying breath. "I mean when she asked if we have a mother."

"Ah."

Silence again as you exit the building, a connective thread in the roar of the crowd. You walk a perfect grid of broadstreets to a quiet green, six blocks away. Masumi waits patiently, for she knows words are not always easy for you, like they are for her. Halfway to the green, in a quiet alley shortcut, you speak.

"Your mother died in childbirth, sister. But the woman who birthed me died before my tenth summer. One summer day her husband slaps her for her misbehavior, like he sometimes would, and her head hit the dirt. Leaking liquid thought and blood through chips of bone. Like a cracked egg." You speak in a monotone, pressed so flat it becomes again sharp.

"Oh, Tesaki." Masumi says achingly. "I'm so-"

You look at your sister.

She stops talking.

You continue. "The woman suffered a lethal wound, but she didn't stop moving. She became as a young child, or an animal. She lay on her back in her own filth, eager to play. She crawled on top of her children, clinging to them for scraps of affection. She showered them with love.

This, they did not know how to deal with.

For when she was whole, the woman was not playful. She was not loving. She was cruel and she was hateful, and she hated her children most of all. She beat the children and she beat her husband, and when they defended themselves she beat them more. When the father defended the children, she would beat him so badly he could not walk for a day.

She hated one child in particular. The youngest, the only daughter. She grew up rough and without talents, learning how to fight from her brothers. When she was caught in boy's clothes, she would be thrown out to sleep in the street. And her father would defend her." You hiss humorlessly, eyes fixed on the end of the alley ahead of you.

"One summer day the woman's husband slaps her, because she had beaten her daughter within an inch of her life. She dies that day. A week later, the daughter - who, deep down, knows she is no daughter at all - approaches where the woman sleeps with a rock in her - his - hands. He means to put the woman out of her misery.

But he hesitates. His footsteps wake the father. The father sees the boy with the rock, and he decides that the woman, or what remains of her, is more important. His daughter would never kill the woman. The boy is a stranger and so must go, or the father will kill him."

You stop at the end of the alley, shaking in the long shadows.

"He goes. A year later he returns to corpses, and that same day he finds that he's good for something after all.

"Murder."

You squeeze your damp eyes tight. "I do not want a mother. I do not want a father. All they do is find ways to pass on their pains. And I do not need more pain."