At the Feet of the Sun (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #2)

by Victoria Goddard

(His Radiancy would have hated to come back and discover what Cliopher had left him in his will.)

oop!

Cliopher reached out and took Fitzroy’s hand.

“Jullanar said it was important before you do laundry. Don’t you check your pockets first?” “I’ve never done my own laundry.”

“Don’t worry,” his Radiancy said, his voice ringing in the air. “Cliopher has often accomplished the impossible when I have sent him to negotiate with people who didn’t think he had any possible right to be there.”

Oh, this was not how he had ever thought meeting the ancestors would go. (A quiet voice said that it was … better.)

“You are remarkably good at not thinking about things you don’t want to think about.” Fitzroy’s voice and face were both more neutral than anything.

oop!!!!

That your attention and … regard … had drawn magic around me.” “My love,” Fitzroy said, very quietly.

the way i gasped

“The first time I saw you,” Fitzroy said, “I had a vision—a glimpse—two people on a boat, a vaha, in the dark, with the stars around them …” “That hasn’t happened yet,” Cliopher said, shaken. “It might not have been us.” “Who else would it have been?”

He was still chasing a viau. He was the man from the proverb, who had gone looking for the sea. (And he had found it. He had. He had.)

“Thank you, my l—Thank you, Fitzroy,”

MY LOVE. SAY IT. CMON AND SAY IT. okay coming back to this he was obvs gonna say my lord. but love is def better

“What a song I shall write of this,” Fitzroy added, in a low voice, when Cliopher looked down once more at the pot in his hands. “Of you.”

“East first,” he murmured, his breath warm and sweet on Cliopher’s face. “Then west and home. Come home to me, Kip. Come home.”

His Radiancy—Fitzroy, Fitzroy, Fitzroy—stood

No doubt if he were a proper hero on a quest, he would have somehow or other made friends with a finch or a mouse or a whole family of uncannily wise birds who would be delighted to do the sorting for him.

Cliopher was not a proper hero, and the only creature he had assisted was a sea turtle, quite possibly the least useful animal for this task he could imagine.

There was something unutterably soothing about taking a muddled pile and turning it into order.

real asf

Cliopher was singing the Lays to himself, and was on the fourth day of them, so it had been … a while. A while, yes, he would go with that.

“My grandmother always told me that ‘half-done is easily undone’.”

i like the emphasis on his grandmother rn

“They should send grown men on quests more often,”

her hand rather lower than Cliopher liked, from a sea-witch so early in the morning.

plssss. versus if it was later in the day you’d be okay with it?

“You are allowed to ask questions at some point,” the sea-witch replied tartly.

so true

He thought he could hear singing around him, high voices, sweet and clear.

are these sirens haha

(Buru Tovo had delighted in scandalizing the young Kip with tales of his lover. Cliopher knew far more about Vou’a’s prowess in bed than he had ever wanted to know about anyone, let alone the god of mysteries.)

“Kip Mdang,” said the Son of Laughter, and let him touch foreheads together. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Not like you,” Vou’a went on. “You didn’t even notice the sirens.” Cliopher blinked at him. “There were sirens? I heard singing …”

he’s soooooo aroace!

Never quite of one place, nor of the other, but doing your best for each, and for those who fall between the cracks.”

perhaps I cared about those poor lost fools on the other side, one hiding deep down as my dear Ani, one as proud as proud can be and never asking for help, let alone the path home to his fanoa.”

awwwwww

“I like things that do more than one thing at once.” He waggled his eyebrows suddenly. “Like my Tovo! Goodness me, he can do things with his hands you never thought of.”

PLSSSSSSS i’m obsessed i also love the narrative that a fanoa and a husband can coexist and both be meaningful to him. edit later: this is so my current nonfiction book coded

(And what was the Protocol for blindly plumbing the depths of a cave that was somehow also his heart, on an island far into Sky Ocean?)

One clam shell, missing its pair.

Fitzroy was his beloved not because he was the Sun-on-Earth or the great poet, but because he was funny, and intelligent, and sorrowful, and because he loved.

On the other side was a huge cave with a ceiling covered in glow-worms, like the sky writ somehow larger for its constraints.

alecto the ninth coded

He wanted to go home. The stars above him were singing. He wanted Fitzroy to be his fanoa. He wanted … this.

hoping, with a fury and a fear he had never told anyone, that someone would see the fire and come find him.

🥺🥺🥺🥺

It was every fire he had ever lit.

The fires he had lit in the hearths of the world, by working so hard, so relentlessly, towards a peace that was made of a home and a hearth, food and friendship and family, and the possibilities of art.

For a moment it burned, the concentrated fire of all of Cliopher’s love for his Radiancy, for Fitzroy, for the idea and dream of what fanoa could be—all

For a moment it burned, and then his tears fell upon it, and in a great upwelling of steam the coal went out and left, in the palm of his hand, the second half of a common, ordinary, simple white shell.

No one worshipped Vou’a, really (except his Buru Tovo, with a salacious wink and a comment about what making love to his god meant—),

And— And it was easy, for once.

That secret, the fire at the heart of him, that love for his own fanoa (that was not the secret; it had never been a secret to anyone but himself),

“It is the best of what I have been, not who I will be, Buru Vou’a,” he replied, “and I do not lose the fire by giving it to another.”

tehehehehe

“Oh, you Mdangs! Always ready with yet another metaphor about fire!”

He’d been at court far too long to have his head turned by that look in someone’s eye.

uh huh that’s def why

To be fair he’d never had his head turned by that look in someone’s eye. A brilliant conversation, now—

real LOL he’s just like me fr

He might have hired one or two of the sirens, if they’d been willing to apply themselves to something other than seduction and swimming.

i see where this fic came from haha

(his love, Fitzroy himself had said, before Cliopher left on this quest),

The Uttermost East

is this a mistake or…? the last chapter was also called this

He didn’t bother knocking. His hands were full.

And then, with a finely judged sliver of sarcasm, for he had spent his lifetime at court and he knew this dance, “Kifa’ana imai?”