The Icon Unbound

Chapter Two, Part A - Rigel

So here is the updated version of the chapter, split for easier reading. I was so pleased to hear from a lot of you that you like the look inside the family life of Waterwall! In this closed tight-knit community  they believe in doing things as a group. They work, and sleep, and eat, together, usually in inside an extended family unit. Jobs are usually inherited. Hopefully this edit corrects some of the things you found in previous editions. As always, please leave me a vote or a comment if you enjoyed this! --Elizabeth, UPDATED 4/23/2017

-Eight Years Later-

Secrets are never as buried as we hope.

We forget; but still the secret gains power.

Shame caused the forefathers to do what they did; and the price of their pride has now been passed on to a distant generation.

Here it is: they drew the dark water from the depths of the earth. And dark water twists every single thing it touches. Perhaps it twisted them just enough to ensure that one day it would again flood the world...

-From fragment of a manuscript preserved in the annals of the Bone Palace

Attributed to Saint Black,

Rigel pulled his long sleeve out of the way and carefully selected the tea leaves from their copper container.

His mother sat on a cushion similar to his own, her hands folded precisely in her lap, her face serene. He knew, despite her relaxed demeanor, that she watched his actions with a critical eye and any mistake would be met with swift correction. She considered the winter season to be her only opportunity to practice arts gentler than any farmer needed to know. Tea ceremony, dancing, music, and language were among her favorite pastimes. Rigel often wondered how a simple farm woman ever learned these skills, or why she felt it necessary to educate her children in these arts, who had no better expectations.

Placing his fingers on the fine porcelain teapot, he judged the water to be the perfect temperature. After putting his own blend of herbs and flavors into the infuser, he gently poured the steaming water into the cup. When the aroma of the steeped leaves curled in the air, he served the brew to his mother.

Every move Honor Nickolidna made was poised and elegant. No matter what she did, sewing a quilt, churning butter, or tending a sick animal, she did with a relentless sense of correctness, that meant she never had so much as strand of hair out of place, her hands and nails always clean.

He prepared a second cup and served it to his brother. Saiph mirrored their mother's spirit completely. Aloof and precise in a way that made him seem more like an Icon than the Sentinel he'd become.

They did not speak as they drank their tea. This silence that had consumed them all winter, and it thickened like a miasma yet again.

Hopes of meaningful conversation dashed, Rigel began to clean up. The tea things were all enormously complicated and delicate and they gave him excuse not to stare at his family as though they were strangers.

Any minute now, one of them would start talking about the weather.

"Spring is so early this year," Honor said regretfully.