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shrestha (SHRES·thuh) noun When a dream comes true—but not for the dreamer. Archaic; from Shres, the bastard god of fortune, who was believed to punish supplicants for inadequate offerings by granting their hearts’ desire to another.
A man should have squint lines from looking at the horizon, not just from reading in dim light.”
“What’s a horizon?” Lazlo asked, straight-faced. “Is it like the end of an aisle of books?”
It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming?
So he hoped, so he dreamed: that, in the course of time, grain by grain, the gray would give way to the dream and the sands of his life would run bright.
thakrar (THAH·krahr) noun The precise point on the spectrum of awe at which wonder turns to dread, or dread to wonder. Archaic; from the ecstatic priestesses of Thakra, worshippers of the seraphim, whose ritual dance expressed the dualism of beauty and terror.
“Well, I’m no alchemist,” Lazlo said, affable. “You know me, Strange the dreamer, head in the clouds.” He paused and added with a grin, “Miracles for breakfast.”
The last night of wondering. Lazlo looked to the Cusp, subtle in the starlight. The mysteries of Weep had been music to his blood for as long as he could remember. This time tomorrow, they would be mysteries no longer. The end of wondering, he thought, but not of wonder. That was just beginning. He was certain of it.
And that’s how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, any way you can.
Eril-Fane’s ghost of a smile became somewhat less ghostly. “Are you narrating?” he asked, amused. “I should be,” Lazlo said, and began to, in a dramatic voice.
mahal (muh·HAHL) noun A risk that will yield either tremendous reward or disastrous consequence. Archaic; from the mahalath, a transformative fog of myth that turns one either into a god or a monster.
Weep slept. Dreamers dreamed. A grand moon drifted, and the wings of the citadel cut the sky in two: light above, dark below.
She had a distant memory of the taste of real tea, buried with her recollections of sugar and birthday cake. She fantasized about it sometimes—the drink itself, but this, too. The ritual of it, the setting up and sitting down that seemed to her, from outside of it, the simple heart of culture. Sharing tea and conversation (and, it was always to be hoped, cake).
“Good people do all the things bad people do, Lazlo. It’s just that when they do them, they call it justice.”
He’d learned, the moment he glimpsed what lay beyond the Cusp, that the realm of the unknowable was so much bigger than he’d guessed. He wanted to discover how much bigger. With her.
But there was the whole day to get through before it was time, again, for dreams.
That’s what a kiss is like, he thought, no matter how brief: It’s a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption of the mundane.
That was the curse of dreaming: One woke to pallid reality, with neither wings on one’s shoulders nor goddess in one’s arms.
The desire to not die had never been so piercing. It was like hearing a song so beautiful that you understood not only the meaning of art, but life. It gutted him, and buoyed him, ripped out his hearts and gave them back bigger. He was desperate to not die, and even more than that, to live.
