#acenath

[scout-company]

Time for a Book (for prompt “Bookshop”)

It’s always cooler than Acenath expects when she warps to the Nova Station. Particularly after spending hours at the arid Observatory in the height of summer. Her fur fluffs against the breeze that blows across the landing pad as she walks through the open doors, but she savors the refreshing breath it brings.

The Nova Station is a large space, a testament to the newest technologies scientists have to offer, with server racks and status monitors on open display and with bright LED lights as pops of fluorescent color, illuminating carbon-fiber composite walls where wide windows do not. After spending several days in the overgrown ruins of ancient civilizations, and another day among her own people’s traditional sandstone architecture, it’s always a slight shock to Acenath to drop by the Station. Helps her keep things in perspective, at least. 

The sweet aromas of carefully-maintained crops in hydroponics, underpinned by the sharp tang of air fresheners, tickle Acenath’s nose as she meanders through the foyer and down the stairs to the second floor of the Station. It’s fairly early in the morning, planet-side, and the local star shines its bright light through the tall windows strewn across the walls, punctuating the pristine, geometric, and otherwise nigh-monochromatic construction with views of open air. Lovely, clean, and lively as ever as people of all species wander about the place. 

Most of the visitors don’t recognize Acenath, neither does she recognize them. Aside from the staff and the regular merchants, people rarely stay here long. What started as a quiet trade station above an Orion-owned city has become a checkpoint for all sorts of people seeking new homes and new life in recent years. 

Acenath is one of the few regulars at the Nova Station. Regular enough, at least, that a few of the staff out and about give her a wave as she passes; even the Floran operating the fragrant flower stall at the far end of the foyer pauses her hawking long enough to wave.

And tucked in a quiet corner of the second floor, in a clean enclosed stall proudly announcing books for sale, so too does Acenath’s friend—the Hylotl owner of the Station’s bookstore.

“Good morning, Acenath!” Osamu hails, waving her arm wide to catch her attention. Not that doing so is entirely needed—her pale coral skin and bright orange yukata already stand out against the pristine silvers framing her store.

Acenath smiles and walks over. “To you, as well!” she greets back, lightly resting her hands on the counter and enjoying how organized her friend keeps her store. “How’s business today?”

Osamu shrugs lightly, glancing over her shoulder at the rows of books and codexes lining the shelf behind her, each standing proudly as it awaits purchase. “As well as you can expect,” she hums, the sky-blue fin that circles her head flicking slightly, “So far it’s just been the odd traveler hoping for a pamphlet or two, but come this afternoon and I’m sure I’ll have more business. After all, your books should be arriving in an hour or two,” she adds, sending a bright smile back at her, “I’ve already had some preorders.”

Acenath’s ears perk, and she barely restrains herself from bouncing on her toes. A scholar’s got to have some dignity, after all. But still she exclaims, “Oh that’s wonderful! Have you had a chance to read them yet? I’m really proud of how well the research came together!”

Osamu shakes her head with a laugh, thumbing the two books stacked on the countertop of her stall, “No, I haven’t had the opportunity yet. But speaking of your research…” Her smile grows sly and she squints one of her eyes at her. “Rumor has it you got into a bit of a situation while poking around some ruins again.”

Oh, that. A long groan escapes Acenath as her ears flatten and she wilts until her head thuds the countertop. “Ah…I was hoping you wouldn’t hear about that…” 

Again Osamu laughs, a light sound despite her low voice. “Why? What happened this time?”

Acenath’s ears flatten until the tips brush the countertop as heat rises to her face. “I…may have gotten tied up between the Peacekeepers and a bounty again,” she eventually admits.

“Again?”

“Again.”

“By Homeworld,” Osamu huffs, voice somewhere between a laugh and an astonished sigh, either way partially muffled by a hand, “I swear you have the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever met.” Her voice clears as she adds with a chuckle, “Perhaps it is to balance out your fortune with those discoveries of yours.”

Acenath rolls her eyes with another groan, head still on the counter. 

Once more Osamu chuckles, and around wisps of her own hair Acenath glimpses Osamu resting one hand on the edge of the counter while she grabs an unseen book with the other. “In any case, perhaps this will cheer you up before you have to admit anything to your superiors. Or…cheer you up after having to do so,” Osamu muses, “Whichever.”

“It’ll be the latter,” Acenath automatically mutters, barely refraining from groaning again when a blend of Captain Noble’s and the Grand Archivist’s scoldings echo in her head before curiosity overrides them both when Osamu sets a new book on the countertop near her ear. Her ear twitches on its own from the brush of Osamu’s hand, but then both her ears perk as she finally lifts her head. The book is only an inch thick, with a bright lavender cover that looks like well-maintained faux leather. Not an easy material to come by; at least not this quality. “What’s this?” she asks, gingerly brushing the cover with the pad of a finger. It’s soft.

“It’s the last edition of that fantasy novel you told me you liked,” Osamu says, her fin flicking while she spins the book with two fingers until it faces Acenath. “Quite the collector’s item—it hasn’t had new editions printed since Earth.”

Reverently Acenath picks up the book, barely even attempting to restrain the smile of awe that sprouts as she savors the texture of the faux leather and the rich scent of the paper pages. They must be at least a decade old. And to have survived the exodus… 

After gently thumbing the pages, she looks up at Osamu with bright eyes. “How much is this?”

Osamu grins, her peachy-red eyes glinting in amusement. “Normally I would price such a limited item at a good few thousand Pixels. But since you are such a regular customer…”

After a minute of discussion and playful haggling, Acenath purchases the novel for a fair discount. It still takes most of the Pixels she was reserving for non-research purposes, though. But as far as she’s concerned, it’s a worthy investment. Better than the…ah…“deal” she made the other day with those bandits Captain Noble was after. Besides, if anyone back home asks, she can always chalk it up to preserving an artifact from Earth.

Purchase in hand, Acenath all but skips to the little reading nook by Osamu’s bookstore. It’s a small room, barely any bigger than the stall itself, with the only furniture therein being a bookshelf packed with bright neon blue-and-magnets Orion technology manuals and codexes in the far corner, a small geometric couch in the near corner, and a small, inverted-triangle shaped desk next to it. A cardboard box, overflowing with books Osamu has yet to organize, keeps the door open, while a small plant tops the bookshelf and an antique bobble-head in the shape of a Human dancer adorns the desk. The blue-tinted window is open, allowing bright morning sunlight and a refreshing breeze from the city below fill the room. It’s simple, but it’s all it needs to be.

Content, Acenath shrugs her scholarly white jacket off and drapes it on the arm of the couch while she settles on it herself, novel safely held against her chest. And with no one to scold her for lack of decorum, she pulls her feet up, curls around the book, and loses herself in the pages. 

Sure, she has more meetings scheduled for later, plus a seminar to start planning for eventually. She’s going to have to start coalescing her notes for that at some point. But for now, those can wait. Time for a book.

[mythrilpencil]

Petrichor (for prompt “Overgrown”)

Once again, for perhaps the fifth time this quarter, Acenath finds herself lost. After following her nose along a lovely trail of rumors and urban legends…she’s stranded.

At least it’s a nice planet this time, if a bit humid. SAIL claimed it’s a warm planet in the star’s Goldilocks Zone, and that the part of the world Acenath decided to beam to is in its dry season, but the moisture in the air is still more than a desert native like herself is used to. Not that she’s complaining—thicker, moist air makes it easier to smell things. Just makes her fur feel a bit damp.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea after all to follow those admittedly shady Humans’ claim about a signal booster over the hill. But they had been incredibly eager to help her out after her warp got thrown off-course by some weird signals…if only after she handed over a compact of Pixels she was planning on using to barter for something later on. At gunpoint. Yeah…probably not the best idea. Acenath can practically hear the Grand Archivist nagging her over her lack of foresight again. 

No matter, though. Acenath shakes her head, itches the premonition of the Grand Archivist’s voice out of her long ears, and takes a good look and sniff around. It’s nighttime currently, but the local star clusters above and glittering puddles of healing water below more than make up for the planet’s lack of natural satellites. So with her own flashlight and her natural low-light vision, navigation isn’t much of a chore. 

The ecosystem she finds herself in as she crests the hill is lovely: rolling plains absolutely covered in flowers still displaying their vibrant colors, even in the starlight; spiraling vines reaching to the stars with their leaves; the odd tree here and there standing like shepherds over their flocks of thriving shrubbery. All the pollen and scents of grass almost makes her sneeze, while the aroma of the healing water reminds her of the oases of home and almost draws her into a nostalgic lull. But beneath the fragrances is the scent she’s been looking for: a musty whiff, the smell of old stone and petrichor from eons past. To most it might be an unpleasant smell, or perhaps just dusty and uninteresting. But to Acenath, it’s a perfume most alluring.

Her ears perk as she swells with excitement, but she adjusts her large glasses and focuses on the whiff before the thrill can make her lose composure too much. It’s incredibly faint from where she is, but…

There! She finds the direction the whiff is strongest: just upwind and beyond the next hill. Like a silken thread, Acenath follows it, taking extra care to not step on the fragile flowers nor disturb the sleeping hypnares in the process. It takes more time than she would like to crest this next hill, particularly as the overpowering scent of ripe sugarcane nearly throws her off her desired musty trail, but finally she crests it.

And just past the hill is a strange tower. It’s not entirely unusual to find towers or other buildings on planets like this: the climate is conducive to many dominant species’ survival in most places, so it’s not uncommon to find dirt, wood, or even stone dwellings erected by a dwindled endemic civilization or even the passing interstellar traveler. 

But this tower is distinctively none of those. Acenath can tell that even from this far away. The stone that forms its walls, despite being a climbing surface for ages’ worth of local ivy and grasses, still absorbs and reflects the glow of the surrounding pond of healing water strangely. The tower’s structure is too square. Its angles are too perfect. And the blocks of stone are impeccably uniform save for the occasional engraving.

It’s not the biggest of towers. It doesn’t even reach higher than the hill. But it still has an imposing presence bigger than itself, especially when Acenath climbs down the hill and circles the tower’s base. Rubbles of a relatively newer structure—a mound of sorts supported by a few crumbling stone pillar; a ritualistic construction, or perhaps a burial site—flank the tower’s side. Normally the newer structures in an archaeological site are more preserved than the older ones. Here it’s the opposite. The tower stands as if untouched by time while rubble collects around it and nature grows atop it.

But despite its perfection, the building is not symmetrical: the south end of the building has a lower overhang like a balcony open to the air while the north end’s overhang is higher overhead and is enclosed. Two obelisks stand guard in front of either entrance, radiating a light from their peaks as warm as the noonday sun. It’s a small comfort, but it reminds Acenath of her home desert and that reminder isn’t one she finds often. She finds herself smiling a thank-you and bowing to the obelisks before moving past them to inspect the interior.

Inside the tower, strips of cold blue light, partially obscured by the overgrowth, run up the walls, paralleling the angular windows and framework in the corners. Acenath hovers her hand over the end of the light strip, but does not touch. Not that she needs to: the strips radiate a scent of ethereal ozone as much as they radiate a cracking, yet harmless atmosphere that makes her fur tingle and her breath catch in her throat. It’s an aura of mysterious arcane magics that not even the greatest Thaumaturges the Arcanians have to offer have been able to harness. 

Plenty of civilizations favor blue-ish lights—her own people included—but this kind of blue light, powered by this energy, is one she’s only identified one other place: the Ark, framing those ancient stairs and tracing that ancient dais. That alone, not even including the mysterious yet iconic engravings or distinctive architecture, identifies the creators of this tower beyond question:

The Ancients.

The Grand Archivist and some of Acenath’s peers often questioned her nigh-exclusive fascination with the Ancients. These structures seemingly from beyond time—from beyond space perhaps, given the Ancients’ apparent mastery over dimensional manipulation—are so unknowable that even decades of study may never be enough to decipher their secrets. But Acenath’s an archaeologist: adding her years of curiosity and drive to her people’s gradual study of the Ancients is her dream. She’s already uncovered more secrets and identified more trends about the Ancients and their culture than any of her peers and predecessors have ever managed; imagine what discoveries can be built upon hers going forward!

And despite her misgivings, even the Grand Archivist would have to admit the value in what Acenath is discovering, surely. The slit in the roof northward, an air vent, perhaps? Even the Ancients needed good air to breathe. And the writing on the walls, although not any of the symbols Acenath has come to recognize, perhaps are claims to the Ancient’s history? Or marks left by the builders to identify themselves? It’s an incredibly common practice, she’s found, for the Ancients to leave uncountable engravings on their walls. Not the graffiti sort of mark, nor a tribal patterning like the Floran’s. 

Acenath makes sure to scan the unique markings and save them to her ever-growing database before moving on.

And these pots, tucked away in the corners. Oh, if only Acenath could take them home to her museum for study! But she is afraid to even touch them for fear of damaging these precious artifacts; even cupping her hands around the smallest is enough to make her bite her lip and wish she could will her heart to stop racing so much—she’s almost shaking the tiny pot. Taking them with her isn’t an option here. But the fact that the Ancients even had such pots, in a number of intricate styles that Acenath has been able to map like anyone else would map out styles by period, shows they had a thriving culture. A history. Needs and wants. Art.

Things worth preserving and studying.

And that’s not even considering the raw power the Ancients had access to. Even the Grand Archivist has to admit that studying the Ancients and their mastery over what their people deemed the arcane is vastly important. Any discovery Acenath makes in that sphere can have massive implications. It already has. Connecting the Ancients’ essence to the Astral essence suffusing the Arcanians’ home worlds…

Acenath shivers from the thrill at the thought.

Or…perhaps from the chill in the air.

A few droplets of water peck her head and make her ear twitch while she’s studying the triangular windows, thoroughly derailing her train of thought and making her blink at the sky.

The sun is rising, its light tinted a deep scarlet by the gathering clouds. What few rays of dawn manage to pierce the clouds, however briefly, disperse into streaks in the rain.

Looks like Acenath is stuck here until the rain passes.

Sure, she’s in her field outfit, complete with a Havencrest-peach jumper and faux-leather boots specifically treated to be hydrophobic and easy to clean. And the rain gifts the lush environment around her with the delightful scent of life and water…

But Acenath really doesn’t favor getting soaked at the moment.

So instead she sits under the northern overhang, just past the threshold, near the obelisk shining outwards. She’s in no hurry to get home right now. The more she studies the Ancients, the more they feel like home, anyways.

…Although she still has to figure out how to warp back to her ship. Ah, she’ll get to that later.

[thatgreenpillow]

new oc!! mostly a background character for my webcomic