The path at the feet of the rulers of Day seemed to beckon them. To draw them forward. To whisper to their spirits that there was something spectacular awaiting them at its conclusion.And why wouldn't there be? Marici couldn't help but think to herself. The Voice had created this path. Of course, the destination would be magnificent.
Something within her knew that He would never create something less than that. He wasn't capable of it.
And so, before the first star was created, Ilios and Marici began to descend.
Step by step, the Voice's Court fell away above them. And as it did, other colors began to reach upward. Gold, first — warm against their faces even before the source was visible. Then blue — wide and open and uncomplicated.
The path curved once in a gentle arc, and they found themselves at the threshold of a great room, the doors standing open before them.
Hand in hand, they crossed the threshold.
The first thing Marici noticed was the light. Everything was bright with golden hues. Instinctively, her eyes darted to the side of the room in an effort to find the source of the light and found that where walls would be, there were vast panes of glass through which the brightness of the outside world shone into the room. Some were clear and the view beckoned her forward.
She dropped her brother's hand and strode further into the room. But before she could reach the clear glass, her eyes fell on the pillars between the panes. They were made of stone and gold and had beautiful details worked into them. Her eyes trailed one of the intricate details upward where it blended into a series of interlocking arches and carved intersections. And the ceiling that could be seen behind the golden arches and intersections had a bright blue hue that seemed to shift subtly. And as she watched it seemed as if little patches of white began to move from behind the arches. The patches grew and condensed into a number of differently shaped creatures atop the blue backdrop.
Marici squinted and it almost looked like the creatures were moving. Her eyes followed one until it reached the far side of the room and the far wall.
It was then that she noticed that there were more than just clear paned windows. Atop many of the windows were sections of multicolored glass shards that shifted between one another. The glass above held no fixed image, only light moving through color. Gold bleeding into amber bleeding into blue, as though it hadn't yet decided what it wanted to become.
Curious to see if the first window was the same, Marici turned back to it. It was. Like all the others, it held no settled image — only the same shifting light, the same colors that hadn't yet decided what they wanted to become.
She studied it more closely and noticed that the light that moved through it changed color according to the glass shards it moved through. She traced the line of the light down to the polished floor and noticed that while it created a mirror image of the glass, the light also seemed to lightly shift like the surface of water by a gentle breeze.
Blinking her attention away from the rippling image, she looked at the floor on which it was resting instead.
It was made of some kind of pale golden stone that had a glossy sheen to it. And while there were several sections of simple, unbroken stone, several symbols and motifs were constructed within the floor itself. Some appeared to be rays of light extending outward from a central point. The largest of which pointed further into the throne room.
Her eyes raised, and caught sight of Ilios standing before a dais at the far end of the room. Colored light decorated the floor at his feet from another set of stained glass windows set behind him.
And on the dais were the thrones.
Side by side the seats of day stood sentinel.
They looked almost like a set of golden fires that had been frozen mid motion. Marici almost expected to see them move.
Marici stood where she was for a moment longer, looking at the thrones.
Then she crossed the room to where Ilios stood.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
The colored light moved slowly across the floor below them. Through the clear panes the realm was visible — empty still, and quiet, but present.
"We're responsible for all of that," Marici said.
Ilios looked out through the nearest clear window.
"Yes," he said.
"And we've been awake for —"
"Not long."
"Not long," she agreed.
A beat of silence.
"We can do it," Ilios said.
Marici looked at him.
"I know," she said. "I just wanted to say it out loud first."
He understood.
He reached over and took her hand briefly.
"Come on," he said. "There's a terrace."
She looked at him.
"How do you know there's a terrace?"
He gestured toward the far side of the room, where a second set of doors stood between two clear windows.
They crossed the room together, and Ilios pushed the doors open.
The terrace was wide and open, its railing worked in the same gold as the throne room's detail, curving along the edges with a line that was both practical and beautiful.
Marici walked straight to the rail and looked over it.
As she did, something within her — some layer of knowledge given at her creation that had not yet fully surfaced — came clear. What lay below was a court. Buildings of many shapes and sizes, set with care and intention among the terraces and bridges and open plazas. They were empty now. But she knew, with the same certainty she had known her name, that they would not remain empty. Even now, she understood, the Voice was singing their people into existence as He had sung her and her brother into existence a brief time ago.
She stood at the rail and looked at all of it.
"He's giving us a court," Ilios said.
His voice was low, roughened by something Marici had never heard from him before. When she turned, she found the same thing had risen in her own chest — a fullness, a pressure at the corners of her eyes.
"He's giving us a court," she agreed.
A laugh burst from Ilios, full and sudden, and he caught her around the waist and spun her.
They were alone. But soon they wouldn't be.
They hadn't known they were alone — not truly, not until this moment. They had known it was just the two of them as they descended the path. They had known a place waited for them. But they hadn't understood until now how vast the realm would have been for only two. How quiet. They hadn't known they were missing something until they learned it was coming.
But they wouldn't be alone anymore.
"We have a court!" Ilios said.
"We do!"
Finally, he set her down.
"We need to keep going."
"What do you mean?"
His eyes were bright.
"We need to see our realm before our people arrive."
Marici smiled at him.
"And how are we supposed to do that?"
A snort sounded from behind them.
They turned.
At the terrace's far rounded end, a chariot waited — the same gold as the throne room, clean-lined, purposeful, built for motion rather than display, wide enough for two. And harnessed to it were two creatures unlike anything either of them had yet seen.
They were large. Larger than anything the court held. Their bodies were lean and long through the flank, their legs — four of them, fine-boned for their scale, ending in solid hooves that caught the stone with a particular ring — built for something that was not walking. They had wings: broad, feathered, folded now at rest, but even folded, their edges moving in the warm current with the responsiveness of something built to read the air.
The nearer one was the color of deep fire — not red, not orange, but the shade that lives at a flame's center where color becomes so concentrated it approaches light itself. Its coat shifted slightly as the current moved across it. Where its wings caught the light, the feathers shaded from amber-gold at the base to near-white at the tips, the way fire goes pale where it burns hottest. When it turned its gaze upon Ilios, its eyes were the deep amber of banked coals — patient. Knowing.
He looked at it. It looked back.
Then Ilios smiled.
The second creature stood slightly apart. Its coloring was gold — softer and more luminous than its companion's, the gold of light through thin cloud, warmth without the edge of heat. Its mane moved in the current with an unhurried quality entirely its own, its feathers at the wing-edges shifting between gold and the palest amber as the light changed across them.
It turned to look at Marici. Its eyes were warm and deep and steady.
"They were waiting for us," Marici said.
Excitement danced in Ilios's eyes.
Before she could say anything, he let out a whoop and caught her hand, and they ran — laughing — the length of the terrace toward the chariot.
They climbed aboard. It was exactly the right size for two. Then, on instinct, Ilios reached his hands forward toward the creatures at the front. Twin lines of fire stretched from his own luminescence and settled into the shape of reins.
The creatures felt the shift.
Marici took hold of the rail.
"Ilios —"
"Yes?"
"Before we —"
"Don't worry! I've got this."
"But you —"
He snapped the reins, and the creatures leaped.