The Stormcrow Cycle [Slow-burn Slice-of-Life Tragic Fantasy Romance]

Chapter Five: Sandstorm

Updated 20/03/2022 for typos. Thanks to Royal Road user for the help! <3!

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"Um, okay. Try this one. I have no weight, but if you put me in a bucket, I make the bucket lighter. What am I?"

"A hole."

"...You've already heard that one, haven't you?"

"Yes. It is common." Ba'an was only half-paying attention, trying to stitch the many small leather hides into one big sheet. It was slow, tedious work, and Ba'an hated it.

"Well, I think it's your turn then."

"No. You not solve third riddle yet."

"Oh come on, Ba'an. That's just mean. Give me another one while I work through your really, really hard riddle that I totally answered correctly."

"It not correct."

"No way. It has to be. One, you can't stop it. Two, you go absolutely crazy. Three, it's something everyone wants, but can't buy. 'Rarer than jewels, and far more precious'? That's love. The real kind. Gotta be—nothing else fits."

"Dolkoi'ri love is strange. Why go mad? Make no sense."

"What? Of course you go mad. Have you never been in love? Or do K'Avaari love differently? Are you lot all calm and rational about it? No way."

"Madness is not love. That is..." Ba'an frowned, trying to find the right word. She failed. "...Something else."

"That's not really helpful, Ba'an. And for the record, I see you've avoided my question. Though I guess there's more than one kind of love. Do K'Avaari only know philia and storge? That can't be right. Is that even possible? I mean, for individuals, sure. But every K'Avaari?"

"I do not know words."

"Oh, right. Um, well when I say 'love'—" And here he used the new Dolkoi'ri word that he had taught her—eros. She had thought it meant love in the K'Avaari way—a strong sense of attachment and loyalty—but now she suspected she had misunderstood him. "—I mean the kind where you go just completely crazy over someone. It's a sort of divine madness. You can't stop that arrow. Once it hits, it hits. That's it."

She felt her brows knit. "Arrow? You shoot your lover?" It was the most Dolkoi'ri thing she had heard all day. Was there no end to their insanity?

He started to laugh, but slapped his hand over his mouth, forcing it down. "What? Oh, theoi, no! No, it's not—it's not literal, Ba'an. Eros is the name of a god. He's the one that makes you fall in love. You'll love whomever you see first once he shoots you with an arrow, you know?"

"...That is very stupid, Lukios." Surely they did not truly believe this. It was absurd. Absurd. "If a god shoots you, you will die." This was common sense. Even the small gods, the basa'an, were fearsome in their fury.

Lukios finished wheezing, then cleared his throat. "No one actually believes that's what really happens, Ba'an. It's just a story you tell your kids when they start noticing girls. Or boys. Whichever. Anyway, eros is exactly what the poets go on and on about—where you just go so crazy over a woman, you'd do anything, just anything, to have her. Well, it can be between a man and a man or a woman and a woman too, but the most famous story is about this woman named Kallisto, who was so beautiful that the ruler of one of the old city states went to war to take her."

"To take? By force? That is...not love. We call it...hm...violence. No, K'Avaari word is utani. Take woman by force. Violence. And for beauty, it is something else also. We call it...hm...ru'talani. It is for...young ones. Burns hot. Burns out. Done. Sometimes utani and ru'talani happens same time, but...utani is very bad, Lukios. No K'Avaari woman wants this."