Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
With the motion, Rit raised his head, looking at her through the smoke. At the
start of the ceremony, Kori and Silassic had each thrown a hand of joss sticks, Rit
adding a single burning stick to cross the pattern made by the fall of the others.
The Zimmer chant came as easily to his lips as it did for Peecit and each time
Ulanda let herself listen too closely, she saw him as a Zimmer, saw the red
shadings on his skin, the blue eyes, making her wonder if her memory hid a
similar transformation to what he had experienced in the dream. Had she held
him - her, not Cassa - and had he become Zimmer to her human? Or was it that
his reality could overwhelm hers so easily?
From the rigid form of the medic as he knelt beside Kori, Ulanda could sense
the glow of quiet pride, and an almost human sense of disbelief, but from Kori,
only a quiet certainty. Or it was all she could understand of what the freeborn
woman felt. Regardless of what her memory might hide, she hadn't taken the
same widening of perception back from the dream that Rit had. Regardless of
what Garm said, they weren't the same.
The chanting died in a final harmony as Cici brushed the last Seals on the
document of marriage. Ulanda glanced to where Garm watched from the narrow
slit opening to the looping corridors that worked a long way to the Station Center.
Eunni was with him; not just to keep him company but to keep him from being a
distraction. Op'ki'na was just outside the exit.
“May this marriage exist in all the ways the universe can form,” Ulanda said in
the prayer form of Zimmer-native Rit had been speaking, but with Net
translations into all the languages of those present in the flitter bay. Silassic
bowed and stayed down, a prayer sign partly hid by his actions. Kori didn't bow;
her eyes were glacial.
Scroll in hand, Cici stood, then handed it to her uncle. “Uncle, wish me luck.”
Outside of the intimate scale of the ceremony, her voice was small.
Ceon touched the scarified tattoo at the side of his mouth before speaking.
“Your courage does our family proud.” Then to Ulanda, “Lady Ulanda, may her
intent alone be considered acceptable?”
“Acceptable certainly, but her service is also accepted as intended,” Ulanda
said and bowed honor to him. He looked again to his niece, then back to her and
bowed in return.
The long braid securing the marriage scroll danced in the warmer air flowing
from the higher level. For the garden above them, time had stopped in the middle
of a hot afternoon. Ceon kept his eyes to the lavender cords trailing from the
scroll in his hand, his manner as still as when he had first met her. “Lady Priest, if
you please, the girl is impetuous, unthinking, a poor servant for...”
Ulanda signed Closure and put the same into her voice. “You had better go
quickly.”
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca