Airplay

A Selection From The Entekosiaddi


Rehti has previously been published in Einkorn Field Fire and Selves: A Magazine of the New Multiverse. She lives with her wives in Rhigos.

–

This story starts and ends with the radio, as so much of my generation's stories do. Probably they got there earlier in Nochet and Casino Town, but we didn't start getting the tiny portables until I was a kid. After that, everyone had theirs tucked under the pillow.

The single-station radios in the shops were cheaper, too, so that's what our parents would get for us. In Jorsh when I was a kid, you could get RNLD in green, CLDR in red, and tucked in between a row of NTKS. Well, orange was my favorite color, so I picked that, and then I was an NTKS girl and that was that.

Of course, I wasn't alone. Everyone at school who wore orange on the uniform-free Fridays, who had Air bangles and Harmony hair clips, those were my people. There were more colors when we moved to Rhigos - better reception – and even more when I went to college in Nochet, thanks to some super-powerful retransmitter they bought and had moved piece-by-piece from God Forgot fifteen years ago. They get every station. They even got NHLH, but only at at high tide.

At that point we were done with uniforms and we knew about fashion, but a lot of people still wanted to show their roots. I carried an NTKS bag with the checked patterns of my button-down shirts, thinking, this way they'll know who I am.

But of course they looked at me and the checked patterns of my button-down shirts, and knew anyway. Knew I was the kind of person who still listened to NTKS with its bright singing and guitars and earnestness and thought, oh, how old-fashioned, we’ll modernize her.

And I listened to all of them, of course, never minding having a topic of discussion. Of course, every girl initially thought the music was new to me, since none of them listened much to NTKS, or they’d know that every Harmony Week they brought in a guest DJ from another station. I’d already heard and appreciated the hard storm rock of WRLT, the DNDR wall-of-sound, and the minimal house that the LNKM folks were into now, and I'd been doing so even as a kid with an untunable radio.

So I’d take their complimentary merch and I’d even wear some bracelets or skirts or whatever, and come back the next week and try to have an in-depth conversation, but I’d still have the checkered top and the NTKS bag, and they were all puzzled. Like they were expecting their music to blow my mind so much I would turn into a different girl. But when they couldn't get my top off, they moved on. Let me carry on being uncool forever, and it was on to the next girl.

By the end of the semester I was pretty sick of that pattern. So when I was staying up near Dizbos with my cousins, I hiked out at night to a fallow field near a couple of temples and the NTKS radio tower - which made it a multiply numinous place, as far as I was concerned.

I did a little ritual that my grandmother taught me, and I knew this was a place I could do it in. I laid three grooves in the soil all one way for the three girls who tried to get me to change radio stations, and then made another groove in the opposite direction. I had no idea if it would work, but I felt a little something when I did it, and that was enough for me.

So I went back to Nochet City College, trusting that the pattern would break, and listened to NTKS on the train the whole way up.

—

In my first three classes that semester, no one tried to hit on me. I was disappointed, in truth, as I was looking my best. Nochet wasn't as easy as Rhigos, or it wasn't for me. While I hadn't wanted girls trying to change me, being alone all semester was scarcely an improvement, and I was starting to reevaluate myself a little. Maybe going out to the shop in Nochet, getting a DNDR sundress or a RNLD push-up bra or a KLKS set of cat-earphones, wouldn't be so bad if it would help me connect.

I was pondering this when I entered class four, intro to atmospheric science, in late afternoon. The sun was already low, so the dark-haired girl’s entrance was suitably framed. She only had an inch on me, but she inhabited herself with such confidence and poise that she looked taller. She waved and smiled, and it seemed that the smile came easy to her.

I was startled like a doe at the weight of her presence, but I drew the Harmony rune in my mind and did my best to relax into it. "Hi there," I said, and smiled back.

Her eyes lit up at my words.

"I know you," she said, her voice deep and rich and full all along its spectrum, and the conversation was suddenly easy, because I knew her, too.

"I'm amazed you remember," I said to the night DJ of SDNY.

"I rarely forget a voice," she replied. "Certainly not one as lovely as yours, Rehti of Rhigos."

I loved the way she said my name, and said so. "Though, just Rehti is fine," I added. "We're off the air, and you already know where I'm from, and can I call you Aria?"

She grinned. "It's a great name, isn't it? Much better than Serena Zaleena Inira Yanafalio Scarlet Eel-Ariash, I think." She said her full name in a rhythmic, gently mocking way, and I giggled.

"I don't think that name's so bad," I said. "But I'll use whichever name you like."

"Aria it is, then, girl who made me play the fifty-three-minute version of Riverjoin Song."

"Nice to meet you, too, girl who I know loved every minute."

And the girl known as Aria sat next to me, and there were many gazes in our direction, which I was very happy about, because I was happy and a little proud that she liked me.

—

We got to know each other over those next days and weeks, in the student center and the cafeteria, on campus benches, accompanying each other on late-night runs to the store for hair ties or Caladraland spiced nuts. She explained one day over hot chocolate that she went to school on the Red Moon, but she was earthside for the next semester as part of a Lunar Republic program of cultural friendliness.

"It's a bit like the Esvularing equal-exchange students," she said.

"Oh?" I asked. "Does that mean you'll have to send me back to the Moon, in return?"

She giggled. "Nothing like that," she said, with a smile. "Though you'd like it, and you'd like Glamour, too, and Riverjoin and the blue Janube. Everything really is as beautiful as it is in the songs." And she told me how, with her own passion and not the way the tourism board sold it on the radio.

"Now I want to go," I said. "But you should see my homeland, too. It's beautiful." I told her about the wheat fields, the long swims down the Gorphing River, how clearly the stars shone at night, Entekos rising over the willows, and she agreed she wanted to see those too. We would pick out postcards in Nochet shops, and show each other scenes we knew, and talk about what we'd do when we visited in person.

She was still doing her radio show from her dorm room, five nights a week, sending digital recordings to SDNY in Glamour, but now also to the NTKS station in Rhigos, which was guest-hosting her. No live callers (except for me - "Rehti of Rhigos" called in and we sung the end of Riverjoin Song together - "Harmony can win the day," and such.) It wasn't a hardship. Aria didn't need callers to host great radio.

It was Aria's preference to do it here instead of in a studio. She'd bought her own high-quality equipment. The only issue was soundproofing - she'd been expensing an Air mage to do the needed wind spells (since the school didn't want permanent enchantments like that on their dorms), but she didn't like that he had to go in and out all the time.

Lucky for us, I knew the spell, too. So we told the guy to go have fun with his money in Nochet, and we'd take care of it. I'd sit in her dorm room every night, and do my casting, my homework, and Aria.

Eventually it just became easier to move in.

—

Our midterms were the last two weeks of Storm Season. Most people were going home for Sacred Time, but there'd be a costume party right before. Aria had been planning her costume for months, and it wasn't hard for me to tell what it would be. I'd seen the moonswords, and I'd known she was an Eel-Ariash from day one, even if she didn't shorten her name in the standard way. (When her mother called in from Glamour one day when Aria was at the vending machine, asking for "Ser-Eel," I completely understood. I had to put a pillow over my mouth to cover my natural reaction. She wasn't surprised to hear an unfamiliar girl answering her daughter's phone, but advised me to be careful around the swords.)

"If I didn't know better," I'd said a few days before, "I'd have thought you came to NCC just to dress up as Jar-Eel the Razoress."

She blushed and said this was kind of true, once, but now she felt at home, and squeezed my hand when she said that. She didn't really want to go back, not without me, but she'd had a hard time getting the paperwork through to stay. And the night before, we still didn't know what the answer would be.

But Aria insisted on me coming with her to the party, and she really wanted me to have a costume.

So I thought about it, and I quickly came to a conclusion. "If you're Jar-Eel," I said, "and I'm from Rhigos, well…" I trailed off, teasingly.

She thought for a second, and looked shocked for a moment, and then started nodding vigorously, and then practically dragged me to the costume shop.

—

She was supposed to tape a show before the party, so I showed up to her dorm room a couple of hours early. My huge white wings, inlaid with intricate air-rune whorls in a whole palette of gemstone colors, brushed against the door. I let myself in with Aria's spare key.

I didn't see Aria with the recording equipment. Instead I saw JarEel, on the bed. And Aria really seemed to be her. Sword at her side. Red Moon earrings. She'd even dyed her eyebrows bright red. There was a breastplate that looked very much like it had been handed down through the family. A couple of bloodstains were still on it. For some reason there was also a bloodstain on the harp. I wasn't sure if I'd ever ask.

But I, too, looked like the most renowned daughter of Rhigos. I had the wings, now, and I already had the honey-colored hair and the freckles. I even had a necklace with the satiny glow of old gold, inscribed with the Harmony rune on one side and the Mastery rune on the other, just like the hero's. I have no idea why it was sold to a child for cheap, and indeed, I'd practically forgotten about it in my bags until it was needed. But if there was ever a time to boldly wear it in public, that time was now.

The Harmony rune I painted on my cheek wasn't glowing when I left my dorm. I saw in her mirror that it was now. Sure, maybe there was some strange compound in Glamour makeup, but Aria's eyes widened just as surely as mine had.

"Something's happening," said Aria – or Jar-Eel - on the bed, a little bewildered.

"Yes," I said. "Something's telling me we should go with it." That's what Topi would have done, right?

"In that case…" JarEel nodded, and fixed me with her ancestor's blue eyes. "Topi Windsinger of Rhigos, Rune Bishop of Entekos, Protector of the Holy Country. It's an honor to finally meet you in person, and to welcome you to Glamour."

And Glamour was her bedroom, now. I felt it.

I felt the weight of history, but it wasn't too much to bear. Everyone remembered what the hero had said after that meeting - that we were all the children of Air, and that was just as noble as being a child of the Moon, and we were celestial, and could hold our heads high while just being exactly who we were. And the Lunars grew to learn coexistence from that meeting, and nowadays there were World Councils and all the rest, and temples and radio stations were side by side, and no one much fought, because these two made a pact in Harmony that reverberated outward forever.

And everyone knew how they sealed it.

"Jar-Eel of House Eel-Ariash, Fourth Inspiration of Moonson, Hero-Saint of the Lunar Empire." She smiled. "There's a tradition back in Rhigos that I think you'll like."

"Your town is rich in traditions." JarEel's lips quirked. "Please share it with me, Windsinger." Topi practically glided to the bed, to lie recumbent next to JarEel.

"When inviting someone into the Court of the Demivierge, properly vouched for, she is offered a kiss." Topi smiled. "Offered, mind. You can say no without penalty. But it's a sign of our love."

"Ah, but am I to be included in your Court, when you are physically in mine? How?" She feigned puzzlement.

"I propose to join your Court, your magic, to mine. We two will be the axle."

"Well… I suppose I figured it was coming to this when Sedenya stayed my hand. And I'm known for my hospitality to visitors. And you're definitely an improvement on any Belintar. And you're hot." Topi giggled at that; normally this meeting was dramatized a bit more chastely, but it felt, right, didn't it?

"So…" Topi pressed her body close, and felt the rhythm of ages before and since.

"So… I accept."

Jar-Eel turned on the radio, and we heard Riverjoin Song. And that day, Harmony won.