Iseult left for the cloud library, electing to go to Elske rather than sending for him, something she reasonably assumed would peeve him. Anyway, she would like to brush up on her god dossiers anyway, she pragmatically reasoned. She lay snug on Shaia’s back, enjoying the rush of soaring through the air. It made her feel very at one with the skies, gliding, the cool rush the winds blowing past her while she was tucked safe in the vulture’s feathers. She could see the library palace in the distance, the layered circular swirls of the stacked lenticular cloud, the iridescence of the nacreous clouds stitching it together all reflecting the morning sun in the icy air. The closer they got the more imposing the structure, she had forgotten how imposing it could be. They arrived on the top, circling to find a patch of land that was not being occupied by other vultures, lounging while on break from their given tasks, enchanted harps playing soothingly.
Elske had constructed himself a rather grand desk on the top most layer of the palace, the diamond construction cut with many facets turning the whole thing into a prism of color. Iseult wondered how he got any work done on such a thing, it was almost too much for her to look at. ‘Ah, yes, Noctua,’ he hummed. ‘You did a rather good job with his file,’ he complimented in a slightly patronizing tone. Iseult bit her lip to keep in her smile. He had become more generous with time, probably because he didn’t feel as threatened by her capability now that he headed the institute. They descended the waterfall stairs together, the flowing water surging upward beneath their feet, filled with glittering ice fish and other cloud creatures caught up in the currents. It was a veritable ecosystem of life. They arrived at the god’s level, the lowermost level. It was always a trip, but the architecture of the cloud was more top heavy, a loosely inverted pyramid, and there were many more demigods and acolytes than gods themselves, so having them on the upper sections made the most sense.
‘I understand Mejias completed the gate?’ Elske asked leadingly as they stepped from the spiraling stairs and onto the level’s shining floor. Despite a layer of wispy mist, the floor of the cloud was quite stable, Elske’s paper wings making a soft sound as they brushed the floor. ‘Yes, she was pretty magnificent! Were you able to see any of the eclipse?’ ‘Of course! I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, I don’t think there has been anything like it in recorded history! The angels and I were able to see it quite well from the viewing deck,’ he replied. Elske had dabbled in astrology and the reading and interpretation of astrological events before he had joined their cause, and was apparently still quite passionate about them, Iseult surmised, as he continued on about the movements of the heavenly bodies and their potential meanings for the coming times.
They wound their way among the stacks, round thick pillars filled with thick bound books, the occasional floating text vying for their attention, some of them salty with crystallization, the texts spread open with the stagnating force of the sea salt fragments’ crystalline growth. Smaller floating clouds drifted lazily through, as cloud-fish shoals twisted between, a coral reef in the sky. They eventually located Noctua’s partition, deeper back in the stacks, passing an ice crystal barracuda that took a snap at them. The gods mostly organized alphabetically, but some of the higher level astrological gods had names that didn’t translate well, so they had to do their best with their limited resources. In addition to information about Noctua’s personal and professional life, they also had a list of his known associates, for the purpose of cross-referencing other areas of the library, cards with the matching associate's own location in the stacks tucked in a neat pile on the bookshelf within an organizational box, pulsing with subtly colored threads leading to the linked’s name. As the god of dreams, Noctua was one of the most interconnected of gods, a hub of affiliations between a huge swath of beings, including other gods, their demi-gods, and their acolytes. Additionally he also had his own acolytes, a flock of luna moths that were constantly a flurry around him, accompanying him wherever he went. They visited devotees’ dreams, wrapping up the chosens’ dreamscape in cocoons of soft silk thread as they devoured the landscape of the dream, creating pupa to be matured into dream fruit and transformed into the dream wine Noctua favored. A little flavor of soul.
‘Hmm,’ Elske browsed the listing of Noctua’s known haunts, his finger trailing down a table of contents list in a thick tome, pale light images of the gods emerging from the text, floating above the page as he thumbed through its thick cardstock page. ‘It appears you have a couple options,’ he said, peering at the page, ‘there is a method of summons that he is known to respond to, but we could also be over complicating it as you could also simply visit his moon body. However if you are really dedicated to tracking him down, the places he frequents are Tva the wolf god, with whom he has a high likelihood of responding to a call from, Novem his son the godeater, and a number of godly gatherings. I can get you the list of known god gathering locations if you’d like?’ Iseult mulled over the options. She wasn’t particularly interested in visiting either of the gods, Tva was too mournful and Novem too smug. But if she wanted to make a call they were the best options. She worried choosing to visit him directly would spark some ire, and just waiting for him to appear at a god gathering didn’t seem particularly practical, so a call it would be. Tva, he made the most sense. He was the object of Noctua’s desire so Noctua would likely hurry to his side if he called for the moon god. And she could inform Tva of the gate. The weight of his soul seemed so heavy for the previous god of the rabbits, perhaps passing through the gate could alleviate some of his burden.
Tva was where she and Orikka had left him, on the banks of the serene silver lake, still as glass in the twilight, the full blue moon reflected in its surface. He was curled up, sweet as a puppy among the lupus flowers as the fireflies blinked around him, pulsing lazily. Orikka approached the great wolf, gently shaking his shoulder. ‘Mother?’ he awoke slowly, still in a haze as he emerged from his dreams. Orikka shook their head, ‘your Nobi, beloved’ they whispered so softly, Iseult wasn’t sure Tva would hear the words. ‘Beloved, we need your help once more.’ They said, as the great wolf gathered himself. ‘Help?’ he said, his head cocked in a move so reminiscent of his heritage Iseult giggled. Orikka ignored her, focusing on her other child. ‘Yes, we need your help in calling the dream god,’ they said, stroking Tva’s head soothingly. ‘Noctua?’ he asked, yawing, ‘alright, I don’t know if he’ll come though.’ Did he have no idea of Noctua’s infatuation, Iseult wondered amused. He stood up, stretching, first his front legs, then his back with another yawn. He walked over to the waters, plopping himself down in a sitting position and suddenly tilted his head back to give a long howl. It was a sound unlike any Iseult had heard before, an eerie beautiful thing. No wonder Noctua would respond, it was something otherworldly, something compelling and bittersweet. The surface of the waters began to ripple, the ripples growing wider and wider until they reached the shore, disturbing the smattering of reeds. A gleam appeared on the shore, where the ripples had originated, a near transparent shimmer, like that on the surface of a soap bubble, growing larger and larger, until it was roughly the size of a door. A gate, Iseult wondered. A tall man stepped through, a hand running through his dark hair, causing it to drape handsomely over his single moon blue eye, highlighting the gold cat eye of the other. A flurry of pale green luna moths fluttered about his head and shoulders. He pulled up suddenly, realizing it was not only Tva in the glade. ‘Who are you,’ he asked Orikka abrasively. Iseult was suddenly glad she was not visible to those of the living, his was a mighty gaze to be under the ire of, the pupil of his cat eye narrowing fiercely.
