Against the Wind

13.1 || Raya

Corvin's flute was mesmerising to hold. Its carving was beautiful; Raya's tentative fingers glided the length of its softly curved surface, slowing and growing gentler as they climbed the steeper incline where the pipe flared out at its open end. Her thumb lingered at its edge, rubbing a listless circle. Though its elegance was startling given its origin, it was not without imperfections, and she always found herself lingering on those little rough patches—the nicks and scrapes of tiny mistakes—and wondering where or when they might've come about. Most bore the slick arcs of claw marks. It was a beastly instrument when one looked closer, but still she found herself turning it over in her hands for the hundredth time, baffled. For those claws to leave only small mistakes behind, it must've been created with immense care.

Its appearance fitted the loftiness of the music it made, the soft, floating notes she still heard echoes of. Her eyes fell upon its narrowest end where the reed stuck out. She lifted it and took in a shallow sip of air before tension constricted her throat. Releasing the breath as a sigh, she let it sag back into her hands. It rolled this way and that in her open palms.

"Raya!"

She flinched, fists closing tight around the flute as her gaze snapped to her bedroom curtain.

"What is taking so long?" her mother snapped—bellowing from the bottom of the stairs, more than far enough away, though the tightness in Raya's shoulder's didn't ease. "We need to go now!"

"I'll be there in a moment!" she shouted back, hoping her voice wasn't too soft to hear. The flute's weight doubled in her hands. Feet hitting the ground hard as she shoved off her bed, she lunged blindly for her desk, fingers bending awkwardly as they knocked against the wood before finally latching around the curled handle of her drawer. She yanked it open and tossed the flute inside, sealing it out of view.

Her heart ran sprinting loops. She stopped for a moment, jaw clenched, as she rubbed at the spot above it. She should never have picked the instrument up again. It needed to stay out of sight. She desperately needed to scrub it from her mind, to forget, but her mind continued to wander.

She shook her head sharply and snatched up the ring she'd come for in the first place, twisting it onto her forefinger as she exited the room without a backward glance.

Her family was waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase. Once again, ceremonial garments decorated them, ready for a second rendition of Amina Shi-Sabri's trial; her mother was painted in bold swathes of purple watercolour, unreal and pristine, unmissable when flanked by Yasmin's faded, ghost-like form and the dark greys and blues that swallowed her father and brother respectively like rich shadows. Raya couldn't recall whether her father had accompanied them the first time. If he had, he'd disappeared the moment they'd received the news of its cancellation.

Now, she tried and failed to catch his eye—his gaze shied from contact, and hers found nothing to settle on, slipping like water from him to Hariq's welcoming smile before inevitably gravitating towards her mother. Rana's eyes raked her. She felt a chill in her slippered feet, wriggling upward beneath the frills of her skirt and through the roots of her tied hair before sitting somewhere in her throat, beneath her dust pouch. Her mother nodded, and the world moved again.

"Tall and proud!" Rana commanded as she swung around, dress rippling so it twinkled with violet stars. She stalked towards the doorway, and they all followed. "Let us hope a trial truly awaits us today."

Raya hoped the same, and she doubted they were alone. A trial was a sign of regularity, a chance for grace and power, a celebration of all that made this city what it was. Tehazihbith craved such a reminder today. Though Corvin had fled, the turbulence gone from Raya's life, normalcy was not an easy thing to grasp. As the Kel-Jabir company marched through the streets, a dark cloud hung over the mid-morning crowds that should not have been there. An acrid silence laced it. Tragedies were rare in a city built upon perfection and safety, and so when they occurred, they spread like wildfire and left charcoal smears wherever rumours travelled.