The Lunar Temple Newcomer

She’d arrived early that morning—“before the sun,” Elder Jokuh had explained, in that bemused tone he typically reserved for mathematical equations and anomalies.

“Sìo,” the Lunar Temple’s Head Astronomer had warned, a glint of amusement in his small eyes, “you wouldn’t be volunteering to show this newcomer around to get out of polishing the entrance floors, would you?”

Sìo had looked at the elder’s all-knowing half-smile—the kind all the senior astronomers wore like a mask over their wizened features—and wisely kept his mouth shut.

Oh, fine. He was eager to show this newcomer around, and it did release him from temple chores for the day. Perhaps he’d shown his enthusiasm a little too transparently, he considered, brushing a hand along the polished cherry oak of the railing. But in his defense, he was also curious about this person. Before they’d set off, Jokuh had pulled him aside and explained, in a hushed tone, that the newcomer was mute. And true enough, the Ixi hadn’t uttered a sound or a word all morning.

He dared a glance towards her hands. The Head Astronomer had given her a scrap of papyrus to write on—a rare gesture, and a generous one too, considering how expensive paper was, reserved for only the highest-ranking astronomers.

He hadn't seen her use it once.

They ambled along the many outdoor corridors that connected the temple complex, pale dawn light filtering through the curving eaves, the scents of ozone and freshness suspended in the thin, mountain atmosphere. Dewdrops beaded like gemstones on the tall blades of grass and their breaths clouded the air.

“Don't worry—all this will melt away in a few hours by the rising sun,” he said, observing how the Ixi wrapped her arms across her chest. He pointedly did not curl his spine or tense his muscles against the cold, shaping his posture into something deliberately unbothered. He was, after all, a winter varwolf, from the region of the Greatest Lakes, far to the icy east in the Shenkuu mountains. It was a matter of pride that he should be built for the cold.

Sìo was pleased when he caught her glancing his way. They always noticed.

He wiped his nose. Alright—perhaps it was a fair bit colder today. Evidently, he was losing his eastern edge.

The Lunar Temple hadn't received a newcomer since Sìo's own arrival almost a year ago. Being the youngest novice, he was the miserable recipient of all the temple’s broom-and-bucket tasks. Now, with this newcomer, there was a real possibility that he wouldn't need to clean the dishes, or scrub and polish the floors, quite as much. He’d finally have more time to push through his studies.

Sìo craned his neck, spying the structure at the peak of a nearby mountain, perhaps a mile from the temple complex. It housed the astronomer’s largest telescope and the temple’s most senior astronomers. He belonged up there. The sooner he fulfilled his duties, the sooner he graduated to the rank of astronomer, the sooner he could leave this hollow, joyless place.

The temple had grown so quiet. So still. Too still. Sometimes, he wondered if even the wind would stop visiting.

Beside him, Sìo caught a flicker of movement: the Ixi stretching out one slender finger to touch a dewdrop clinging to her hair. It shimmered harshly against the ink-black strands, refracting the rising light. And not just the dewdrop. Her skin, too. There was something unusual in the way it caught the sun at certain angles, though he couldn't quite place it. Not shine, exactly. Not smooth. Almost… scale? Like the iridescence of a fish’s flank, if he had to name it. But that couldn’t be right.

Then there were the jewels. Tiny, brilliant blue stones nestled along her cheekbones, and a matching scatter were embedded in the ridges of her horns. Sìo squinted, half convinced he was seeing things. The way they caught the light made her look as though she were dusted in frost. Or stars.

Like a blade of grass breaching the frost, a flicker of a story pushing to the surface of his memory. Sìo’s breath hitched. An old clan tale, whispered to the pups. Of a distant sea ruled by sea folk, sirens whose beauty was a lure, whose shimmering scales and haunting songs spelled danger for the unwary. He’d begged his emee to recite it again and again around the fire, morbidly fascinated and gleefully terrified. For one who’d never set foot off the mountains, the idea of sea folk was deliciously foreign.

But she wasn’t a siren, he reminded himself firmly. Couldn’t be. She had no voice. And besides, sirens weren’t real, no matter how desperately pup Sìo had wished them to be. He was letting his imagination get the better of him, again. Her foreignness was a product of the fishing village she’d traveled from, her cerulean gems a mark of that culture. Sìo had never visited a coastal town—they probably all looked like that down there.

Sìo stiffened. Exactly how long had he been staring?

“Right,” he said too quickly, pulling his eyes away from her and clearing his throat. He and they ixi came to a halt in the center of a courtyard. “This is the heart of the temple. The hermitage.”

The enclosure they found themselves in provided a silent sanctuary from the rest of the temple, the stony ground veiled beneath soft moss. A crescent-shaped pool lay at the center of the cloister, its surface disturbed by flashes of purple opalescent scales from a school of belonthiss.

Three bright-eyed statues rose in an arch beyond the pool, following the shape of the crescent. Their surfaces had been worn away over the course of centuries.

The unusual Ixi stepped closer, though she stayed a pace or two behind. He was suddenly glad for the distance—and just as quickly, a sharp sorrow twisted into his gut. She was alone. She had no one here—the temple was likely as foreign to her as it had been to him when he’d first arrived. Had her pilgrimage been just as silent, just as lonely? Something wary flickered in her dark gaze, perhaps trepidation or solitude, and he wondered if her reasons for coming all this way stemmed from more than just study.

“This courtyard is a place of contemplation and meditation,” Sìo explained, offering what he hoped was a reassuring smile when he caught her eye. “It is also where you will find our moral pillars.”

The Ixi nodded, ever silent, like the statues rising before her. Briefly, he wondered if she understood him. She seemed to, at least. Carefully, she approached the leftmost statue. It was a cybunny, eyes lowered, head bowed. The figure had been lovingly sculpted in its time, the detail in the cybunny's clothing and long hair evident, even to the untrained eye. She reached a hand and traced, feather-light, the totem's pale, iridescent eyes.

“Moonstones,” Sìo explained in response to the ixi’s quizzical stare. “The eyes are symbols of the temple's namesake. And purpose. ”

He approached the statue and offered the Ixi another smile, imploring her to continue exploring. She glanced at his canines before returning her gaze towards the figures.

“The pillars represent the, uh, temple's three founding astronomers, as well as the values for which each stood. We strive to live up to their example during our time here,” he went on, though his voice had adopted an unbidden, rehearsed cadence. This was the first lesson astronomy disciples received, and one they were encouraged to memorize. “In front of you: that's Inna, or patience.

“While here, you must exercise forbearance and restraint in everything you do and with whomever you speak to. Or write to, in your case. You must also be patient with yourself.” Not bad, he thought, privately pleased with himself. He'd been up later than usual, re-reading and practicing these words.

The Ixi turned to him again, dark eyes questioning.

“I know–it wasn't the easiest thing for me to learn, either,” Sìo admitted with a laugh. “But you'll get the hang of it.”

They moved to the center-most statue, a Kougra, taller than the others. Her iridescent eyes were of a yellow moonstone.

“This is Lyeon. Discipline.” He’d always felt her presence in the courtyard overly domineering. Everything about her stance and her forward-facing eyes exuded power. Absolute control. Focus. Her shadow spilled long across the courtyard, and Sìo felt she looked down on him when he came to meditate.

Beside him, the Ixi stepped forward, and something in her went still and dimmed. Her breath caught, her gaze seemingly trapped in the kougra’s countenance.

Her reaction was so unusual, so quietly sad, that Sìo couldn’t help but stare. What had she endured to carry herself like that?

“Her, uh—” he stumbled, trying to remember the texts. “Her yellow eyes are for sincerity, elegance, and control. I think.” He tried to remember the rest. Not easy, when he lacked all three.

The Ixi awoke from her trance and shot him a look. She then drew her gaze towards her scrap of parchment. Her stencil scraped over its surface—clumsy strokes, each one laborious, and he found himself watching the way she gripped the stylus, how her brow furrowed with focus. When she finally raised her writing so that he could read it, It took him a moment to decipher the unusually clumsy scrawl.

You're doing good job :)

“That's kind,” he said, squinting at the final bit of her inscription. “Is that a little face?”

She nodded vigorously, then pulled her own features into an exaggerated grin. Her lips stretched comically wide, baring teeth and all. Sìo blinked at the bizarre expression—and then, without warning, a laugh escaped like a sneeze from him, echoing off the beams overhead. He threw a hand to his mouth, but it only made him laugh harder, shoulders shaking with the force of it.

Heavens, it felt good. When had he last laughed like this? Not since before his initiation, certainly. The temple was full of polite chuckles, floating about the grounds as readily as incense. Nothing like this. Real, unfiltered joy rushed out of him in great, warm waves.

“Oh dear, they can probably hear us all the way from the dining halls,” he gasped, trying and failing to rein it in. “Or—at least they can definitely hear me,” he added when the Ixi gave him a sly, sidelong look.

So much for elegance and control.

“Thank you,” he said at last, his voice raking across leftover laughter. He bowed with exaggerated solemnity, then leaned closer and dropped his tone conspiratorially. “Don't tell anyone, but I was trying to memorize all this on my way to meeting you and Jokuh. I hope I haven’t scared you off.”

The Ixi giggled silently—then snorted, sharp, helpless, and clapped a hand to her face far too late. Her eyes went wide, but her shoulders quivered with delight. The sound of it—soft, sputtering, contagious—warmed him unexpectedly, and a quieter laugh spilled from his chest. Sìo turned to watch her more closely: behind all that silence and elegance, she'd been hiding a surprisingly silly disposition.

The scrape of her stencil filled the silence again—but now, it crackled with anticipation. Something in her had split open—her tension breaking like spring water suddenly freed from the ice.

She clearly wanted to write fast, but held the stencil at an awkward angle—and that poor scrap of papyrus was quickly running out of space. She hesitated, eyes bright, and Sìo realized he had been wrong, earlier. Her eyes weren’t dark—not exactly, not in the morning light. No, they weren’t black, but grey, grey as a blizzard, as the fog in the east.

She raised her paper once again:

Say of your way.

“What?” Sìo said, squinting at the writing. “I'm sorry, what does that mean?”

That measly bit of paper wouldn’t do, Sìo decided. Already he was wondering how he might go about stealing more from the astronomers, and the ixi appeared to come to a similar realization. Abandoning the parchment on a raised boulder, she gestured at him, then moved a pointed finger from her throat outward, and pressed her hand to her chest. Without thinking, Sìo mirrored her movements.

“I should speak… from me. From myself?”

Her excited nodding was encouraging.

“Ah-ha! You think I should abandon the sacred script?”

She shrugged her shoulders, pressed both hands to her chest, and bowed.

“You'll probably like it more if I explain all this my way, is that right?” Sìo asked. “Yeah, I think I can manage that. Besides,” he went on with a smirk pressed between clenched teeth, “between you and me, who knows how much more of that text I remember.”

A quiet giggle rippled through her again. She stepped to stand beside him as he gestured toward the third and final statue in the sanctuary. It was an elephante, its moonstone eyes reflecting a soft cerulean light. The Ixi idly let her fingertips rest against her own azure jewels.

“This one's my favorite,” he said, a small grin tucking at the corners of his mouth. The moss had been flattened at the base of the statue, tribute to the sheer number of hours he spent meditating in the elephante's shadow. “Gam reminds us to exercise empathy, and to be willing to understand one another. He also teaches us to think kindly and compassionately of ourselves.”

Her brows drew together in a slight furrow.

“Elder Jokuh always says how important it is to accept our thoughts—even the bad or sad ones—and to let them drift through our minds unbothered,” Sìo found himself explaining with ease. “The same can be true with our faults. At the temple, we disciples must learn to see our shortcomings for what they are—without anger or disgust—in order to work at bettering them.”

The Ixi nodded, less assured than before. Her fingers traced the soft moss curling along the statue's arm.

Something compelled him to settle down in the cool shadow of the Elephante. He tilted his head toward the space beside him and felt a small flicker of relief when she eased herself down beside him.

“What is your name?” he asked softly, watching her lean against the statue's smooth, weathered stone.

The ixi’s face brightened. Without a scrap of parchment, she carefully traced her name in the soft earth, her fingers pressing gently into the soil.

“Mara,” he whispered, eyes following the movement of her finger more than the faint marks left behind. Her expression softened, blooming at the sound of her name spoken aloud

“Sìo,” he added when she gestured to him.

She mouthed the shape of his name carefully. After a moment’s hesitation, she traced a smile across her face with both hands, then mimed the shape of his protruding Varwolf’s canines. She waited for his reaction, something shy and searching swimming in her gaze.

Sìo couldn’t help but laugh, utterly delighted. “Yeah, that’s me,” he agreed, mirroring her movements with his own hands. “Do you also have a gesture like that? For your name?”

Mara shrugged. No. Again, that careful, appraising glance.

“You should make one, then! It’s only fair—if I get one,” Sìo said with an encouraging nod.

She glanced away, reflecting on his suggestion for a moment. Then, gesturing towards herself, Mara drew, with her index fingers, twin paths beneath her eyes, and swung her hands in a half-circle on either side of her head.

“Your jewels, and your horns,” Sìo observed, mirroring the gesture. “It definitely fits you, but something’s missing…” She tilted her head in question, and a wolfish grin split across his face. Now, how to represent a snort with hand signs…”

Mara’s eyes grew wide, and that delightful snort escaped along with her bubbling laughter, just as he’d hoped. Those unusual fish scales and gemstones sparkled like opals as she moved, and Sìo pressed his back into the statue, content. How rare, how right it felt, to finally get to make someone laugh again. To laugh with someone. She bowed, resting one hand, palm flat, on her chest.

Sìo. Thank you.

They stayed a little longer beneath Empathy’s silent vigil. Mara rested the back of her head against the cool stone, eyes closed, breathing slow and even. Dew glittered like tiny gems on the grass, and somewhere close by, water murmured softly over smooth stones. The rest of the temple could wait.

     The End.