Every child born in Cythetria knows the story of the missing sun. 

 

The city rumbles away with the activity of mid-afternoon. Traffic is minimal and easy to miss; footsteps are nearly impossible to discern from the distant—but never too distant—sounds of the factories, the smoking and grinding and chuffing of machinery. The darkness, too, keeps its secrets; though the iron-wrought gas lamps shed their light onto the dirty cobblestone streets below, creating small pockets of illumination, even the brightest ones leave the distant tops of buildings bathed in inky shadow.

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To Icaria, the noise barely registers, and the darkness is what she has always known. She knows better than to bother trying to squint her way past it; best to focus on keeping her head down and her pace brisk. Though she was born and raised in Cythetria—her home, through and through—she’s never been able to shake the uneasiness of its constant shadows, nor the stifling nature of its miserable isolation.

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Somewhere distant—to the northeastern end of the city, several streets over past clusters of tight-packed homes—she hears a familiar noise, deep and ringing as it carries through the air. Her pace slows, and she counts. One toll, two, three. Rhythmic and predictable, she knows exactly where it’s going to stop, but still listens until the fourteenth toll; followed by silence, the lingering echoes are eerie, but it is an eeriness to which she is accustomed. Midday. The clock towers, too, have their place in her life, and she knows she isn’t the only one who counts. It’s instinctive, she thinks—a search for order and an understanding of time when the simple concepts of night and day have become so alien. In the absence of a sun to rise and set, the hours tend to blur together, but for the clocks. 

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At this time, the streets aren’t busy, and Icaria is thankful for that. Cutting through the Ruins usually affords her some space during the busier parts of the day, but she can never shake the feeling of discomfort they leave with her. The reminder, however small, of the goddess who left them, is enough to drive most away from visiting that part of the city. People are bitter about it, though it’s a story several generations old, and nobody who’s bothered to go looking for Her—to bring back the light and warmth that was taken away from them, maybe even stolen—has ever made it back.

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Those heroes are rare, but all of them are fools. If the sun cared to return to them, She would. There’s no sense chasing a legend, a long-forgotten story of someone who shouldn’t matter anymore. They’ve moved past Her; the city gets by just fine like this. Cold, bleak, miserable—but fine.

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This is what Icaria tells herself—what she tries her very best to convince herself—no matter the dreams that whisper to her. The warmth, the light, the thrill of altitude—she knows damn well to keep those feelings to herself, along with the ideas and ambitions that threaten to creep up along with them.

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It’s worked for her so far. It’s nobody else’s business what she builds in her workshop, and if she manages to create something that can bring her just a little bit closer to those feelings from her dreams…

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Drawn as she may be to the temple remains, she cuts a wide path around the heart of the city, finding her way through the edges of the industrial sector, instead. She keeps her cloak pulled tight around her body and her scarf close against her face, taking as few breaths as possible. Even with the industry that litters the city with noise at all hours, the thickness of the air does little to warm it. She fights off a shiver, quickening her steps.

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Thankfully, it doesn’t take long to reach her destination.

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***

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Her father isn’t home. This is of little surprise and little consequence; his work keeps him away during most of their shared waking hours, and in truth, Icaria is grateful for it. He makes no secret of his disapproval of the new project she’s taken on, and she prefers that he keep his nose out of her business. Being able to tinker in peace is a blessing, and she goes straight to her workshop once she’s safely inside, eager to make use of every unmonitored second she has.

 

The state of things here is familiar: surfaces littered with sketches and blueprints, metal shavings scattered underfoot, and the low hum of the forge at rest. She coaxes it back to life with coal that stains her fingers and a quiet request for the great beast to wake itself up; soon enough, the hum has grown into something more consistent, more powerful—not a song on its own, certainly, but the foundations of something close to one.

 

Klia lets herself in while Icaria is in the midst of preparing her materials for the day. The stacks of metal ingots by her desk are perhaps the more organized part of her workshop; something about treating such expensive supplies with anything but the utmost respect feels like it would taint the work, somehow. She counts each ingot—nobody has access to this space besides her father, but still, she worries—and has gathered the silver she needs to begin when her friend makes her presence known.  

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“Wasn’t the commission piece supposed to be gold?”

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Icaria doesn’t answer right away. Klia knows how to make herself comfortable here, with how often she’s come by recently, so for now, Icaria focuses on her work; maintaining the correct temperature to soften the silver is a tricky thing. Even wearing heavy work gloves, her sense of it is intimate; she can feel the way the metal responds to the heat, the pliability that sets in when she hits the right spot. Though she has some power to maintain that state away from the forge’s fire, she prefers to let it set in deep before she begins to shape the metal. 

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“It is.” She eventually responds to Klia’s question as she removes the silver from its place among the coals, gripped carefully with a set of tongs. Already, she can hear the beginnings of its melody—it wants to sing for her, to become something beautiful. She brings the silver to her anvil, barely sparing her friend a glance as she sits down. She doesn’t need to look to know that Klia is as effortlessly beautiful as always: a messy bun that leaves a handful of bronze curls hanging free, brighter clothing than most people bother within the city.  
 

Unfazed by Icaria’s inattention, Klia continues. “You’re the expert, but that doesn’t look like gold to me.”

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“Gold is expensive.” Icaria picks up her hammer and sets to the early work of shaping the silver; she needs it thin for the shape she has in mind. Between swings, she adds, “But silver is less expensive. And practice makes perfect.” 

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It’s not entirely a lie, but they both know it isn’t quite the whole truth, either. Among the sketches and blueprints that decorate her space, there are prototypes, too. She sustains herself largely on commission-based work, but on occasion, she’ll start a project for herself, out of curiosity or ambition or boredom. A few swords hang on the wall along with other odds and ends—projects to pass the time, to show off her repertoire to potential clients—but on the flat surfaces around her workshop, other half-formed shapes have slowly been eating up the space. Ovals, curved slices of flattened metals—some of them have scores marked along their edges, ultimately poor imitations of what she’s been trying to create over the past few weeks. Good for the learning process, bad for her stash of crafting materials. She’d been smart enough not to start with the expensive metals; the gold she’s purchased for this project remains untouched in her collection of ingots.

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In one corner of the room, separate from the other projects and propped up across a couple of chairs, rests a construct of pure iron. Skeletal, stretching wide and delicate with strength at its core, whispered into its foundations. Bird-like, awaiting the adornments that will fill it out properly, bring it to life.

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Practice isn’t the only reason she’s set herself to making so many mock-ups.

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Once Icaria is done with her hammering, Klia speaks again, as if following her train of thought. “This seems like an awful lot of practice.”

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Klia, like Icaria’s father, seems worried about the personal project she’s started alongside the most recent commission. Instead of acknowledging this, Icaria sets to the next part of her work: a sharp tool that allows her to separate pieces of the silver from the main body, a careful shaving motion. It’s more akin to carving than most of the work she does—it requires a great deal more detail work—but it is also, as she’s found, necessary for the integrity of this particular project. Once she’s found the rhythm of it, she responds to Klia without lifting her head.

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“It would be easier to make them solid.” She speaks softly, focused on the silver she’s working to shape. She’s teasing it out into short, fine strands, delicate as a silk string once they begin to cooperate. It’s intricate work and it’s just as much magic as it is physical technique; though the metal is too hot to touch with her bare fingers, her skills allow her to shape it with the same intimacy by manipulating the air around them. It would be impossible to recreate the correct microstructures without this kind of power; even the finest tools don’t allow for work at that scale. This isn’t her first attempt to make a feather—the messier examples that litter her workshop speak to that—but it’s the one in which she has the most faith now that her failed prototypes have paved the way. “To use full plates of metal. But that’s not how feathers are made, and it would make them much heavier than they need to be. The barbules all connect to these little branches—barbs—and the barbs connect to the central rachis.” She finishes the strand she’s working on and weighs it between her fingers. She can barely feel it, it’s so light, though the silver whispers to her, a living thing now as she pays it the attention it needs to respond. “Like capillaries branching out from veins and arteries.”

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Klia hums, and when Icaria offers her the tiny piece she’s finished—the fraction of the whole feather she’s working on, one barb of dozens—Klia takes it with careful fingers, looking closely. She turns it this way and that, letting it catch the warm light of the forge. Her eyes flicker back to Icaria, and there’s concern there now, a furrow in her brow. Icaria watches her set the piece down gently, ready to be lined up with its brothers and sisters—flawed though they may be—on the worktable. “Like a living thing. You’re really doing all of them like this?”

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Icaria nods, settling back in her seat to start on another barb. “I want to stay true to the structure.”

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Klia doesn’t respond right away, but Icaria doesn’t mind the silence. It only lasts a few seconds. “She must have paid well.”

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There’s a question in her voice, and Icaria chooses to ignore it. It doesn’t work, as Klia prompts her again a moment later. “You’re sure you can trust her?”

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Typically, Icaria is pickier with her clients. The woman had been a stranger, and strangers can be dangerous. Steel-singing is a rare talent, and though technically not an illegal practice, anything to do with magic will get someone in trouble around here if the wrong people find out. She could be imprisoned, or worse. Probably much worse.

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“A golden feather. The kind you would find on a bird.”

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Icaria shrugs, not looking up from her work. Caution has always been her father’s domain more than her own. “Sure enough.”

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Silver is for home and purity. It’s a comforting metal and a safe one, a parent’s love and the cool light of a full moon, a concept she’s only ever read about. She’s using it for the secondary remiges, the feathers that will overlap in a tight structure and provide most of the lift during flight. She wants the reliability it provides as well as the safety, a clean base to sprout out of the iron skeleton she’s built.

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If Klia speaks through the rest of the process, Icaria doesn’t hear her. She’s absorbed in her work, and she stays that way right up until she has, cradled in the palm of one hand, a completed feather, shimmering pretty and golden in the firelight. It’s fragile in its complexity, but soft and whole, barbs swaying gently with the air currents in the room. Just like the sketches she’d managed to dig up, the ones detailing the way birds managed to stay aloft despite every other force of nature working against them. This one little success is enough to reinvigorate her, and she’s ready to start another, to create as many more as she can before exhaustion forces her to rest.

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“It’s beautiful,” Klia offers, and Icaria barely has the presence of mind to look up at her friend. She manages, though, and finds Klia watching her closely. “How many are you going to make?”

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Icaria glances toward the lanky iron skeleton and tries to come up with an answer, running calculations in her head. She was only paid for one—cast of pure gold, serving no purpose beyond its beauty—but this project has taken on a life of its own. “Hundreds, probably. Could be over a thousand.”

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The answer doesn’t seem to surprise Klia, though her brow knits together once more and she frowns. “That’ll take weeks,” she says, as if Icaria doesn’t know. “Or longer. Why?”

 

Icaria doesn’t have a good answer to that question. It’s an instinctual, bone-deep thing, the part of her that itches to finish as quickly as possible, to take to the skies and reclaim what’s been lost to her for so long. To don the wings she seeks to build for herself and soar the way she does in her dreams, the way she yearns to whenever she closes her eyes. She can’t cut corners, though, not for this. Each and every feather needs to be perfect, or this whole ordeal will go to waste.

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“Because,” she says after a moment, and starts on another piece of silver. “I need to.”

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“For what?” Klia keeps pushing, though, and she comes closer now, her hand catching Icaria’s wrist before she can lift her hammer. Icaria doesn’t look at her until the grip tightens. “What if your father finds out? Or the guards? You know what would happen.”

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This is not a risk exclusive to her new project, and Klia must know this. Icaria frowns. “And what’s the alternative?” she asks plainly. “Find work in the factories? Somewhere worse?”

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“No. Maybe.” Klia exhales, and her grip loosens once more, though she doesn’t release Icaria. “I just—I don’t want you to get hurt. You know that.”

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She does.

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Icaria pulls her wrist free, and Klia lets her go, though she stays right where she is. “I need to do this,” Icaria repeats, her voice quieter now. She can feel the iron skeleton nearby, a tangible presence, as if responding to the anxious, burning thing that’s driven her here in the first place. “You know I need to.”

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Klia stays quiet after that, though she doesn’t leave. Icaria resumes her work, her grip on the hammer just a little tighter than before, and privately, she’s grateful for her friend’s continued presence. As deep as she’s thrown herself into this project and the risks that come with it—financial and otherwise, as the hefty gold ingots dare her to make a mistake—she thinks it would be a little harder to bear if she were completely alone.

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She does her best to ignore the part of her that knows she’ll end up that way no matter what. This is what success entails—an escape from this world, this life. Leaving Cythetria behind in favour of finding what’s been lost to her—to all of them—for so long.

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Maybe Klia knows this too, and maybe this is part of her concern. Icaria just hopes they can both pretend for a little while longer.