Ceremony of the Origin Clesig
Joanni finished singing her song, and as the vibrations emanating from the vouronium crystal now placed into the well of the upper bridge of the Origin Clesig continued to reverberate out over the audience and beyond, she recalled how, several days before, she had stood beside the Chief Crystal Manipulator as that mistress of vouronium secured the faceted jewel into place. That was the beginning of the transformation of her clesig; that was the beginning of the end. It now had a different voice. When the last echoes died in the distance, she returned the Origin Clesig to its place of honor on its pedestal and bowed to the crowd. It was the last time she ever touched it.
The Oreanian Governing Council was seated on the stage diagonally behind the Origin Clesig. Joanni walked over to them and sat down on the empty seat next to the Primora. One by one, each council member rose to speak. As she sat there, their words were drowned out by memories and half thoughts flooding her mind, unbridled emotions issuing from the wound inflicted by the permanent removal of her clesig from her embrace. She remembered how the night before she had sat on the stoop outside her little guest house that looked over the valley across which she could see the ringed stone statue in the distance and the city below. Sitting there, unable to sleep, she had ruminated on how lofty her intentions were in coming to this faraway world, and how, while it met or exceeded her expectations in many ways, she was so often reduced to bargaining with the Oreanians for what should have been givens. How it was beautiful and repellent at the same time. How she could see herself fitting in and how she wanted to leave.
To be fair, in addition to being granted permission to establish a small memorial to her father on Oreana, Joanni had won an additional concession from the Primora: as a personal favor to her as the returner of the Origin Clesig, her Captain Chipman—alone, no diplomats—would be allowed to come down to the planet several hours before the signing ceremony. The Primora had, in the end, given her blessing to Joanni’s request as the two women toured the Oreanian Cultural Arts Hall where the mutual cooperation and mining rights treaty was to be signed. “He can meet you here,” the Primora told her.
The Hall was a beautiful structure—golden light streaming down from various hanging lamps and sparkling installations spanning the high ceiling; softly lit sculptures scattered throughout the grounds resembling gigantic obsidian drinking straws twisted into fantastic shapes with water trickling out of both ends. Instead of being captured in some sort of fountain, the water from these sculptures was allowed to run out onto the ground, causing puddles which the Oreanian gracefully leapt over and the humanoid visitor reluctantly tiptoed through, tracking water into the hall. The Oreanians were not big on containment.
As the last council member to speak returned to her seat, a troupe of young dancers assembled in the center of the ceremonial plateau. Their complicated choreography of swooping gestures brought Joanni out of her reverie and back to the present. The momentousness of the occasion became too much for one of the dancers, and she abandoned her training to start bouncing up and down on her toes, rising higher and higher in the dusky air with each rebound. Almost immediately, the Primora stood up and raised her arm, index finger pointed, a signal to everyone to quickly lie down in order to stop this outbreak from spreading to the others on stage and distracting the audience during such an important ceremony. Everyone did her bidding, getting into a prone position on the ground and lying still. The broadcast being transmitted to the Eridanus did not end or go on standby during this hiccup, so the officers and crew were treated to a silent video of women lying on the ground for some twenty minutes. The fact that once in a while one of the Oreanians would adjust her position (it was hard lying on one’s back when one had wings) was the only clue that all were still alive. At a certain point, this communal gesture was deemed sufficient, and the ceremony resumed without explanation or comment. The fact that Joanni participated in this stunt made Chipman shift uncomfortably in his captain’s chair. ‘Why does she indulge them in all their inanities?’ he thought. In that moment, it made him think a little less of her and diminished the power of her appeal.
The ceremony concluded with the same dozen women Joanni first encountered upon landing on Oreana, once again assembled into the now familiar series of tableaux, one complex positioning of arms and wings and clesigs and crowns held static for several minutes before shifting and reforming into another complicated arrangement. The participants, along with a few silver-black ravens, were all adults, so there was no danger of another bouncing outbreak. When the last tableau was struck, one of the four tableau musicians broke from her position and ran over to Joanni. The clesig player smiled at her with her tiny toothless mouth and held out her clesig, smaller and plainer, for Joanni to accept. Joanni smiled back at her under her mask and accepted her offering. She stood up, holding her new clesig in one hand, gesturing her thanks to her newfound sisters with the other, but in her heart, she felt as if her own child had been taken from her and replaced with a doll.
Image: Mistress of past voices. Source: “The Impotent Wing Did Not Lift the Animal Into That Black Space” by Odilon Redon, France, 1883. The Art Institute of Chicago. Public Domain.