Mineral Rights

“I hate moving between hemispheres. I never know what to pack.” Lidea hauled eir bag up higher on eir shoulders. 

“It’s nice to get away from the winter for a little bit.” Sunny didn’t look up as Lidea came off the transport circle pad, his head bent over a fistful of telegrams. He sighed at them, annoyed, then tucked them into his back pocket. No one was coming through behind them, so the human attendants didn’t bother to rush them out into the open.  

Sunny put his own bag down a moment to take off his topmost shirt. It was a cloudy day, so he could stay in his sleeveless undershirt for a little while without the usual risks of sun damage. Lidea did the same maneuver, taking off one outer layer but keeping eir long-sleeve linen shirt on at least until ey could get to eir sun lotion.

Lidea had sort of settled with the idea that ey hadn’t ever seen Sunny shirtless. It was weird, but it was something. It was only now that ey was starting to also realize how rarely ey even saw him sleeveless. He was denser with muscle than he looked with sleeves, and ey hadn’t really appreciated it before. Not that ey was particularly attentive to that sort of thing, only noting it now for its peculiarity.

The travel pads here had solid walls with open arched passages that could be closed with heavy doors against the weather, if needed. They were far enough south, they probably got snow even at the base of the mountains. Lidea looked westward, attempting to trace the line of mountain range as it paralleled the northern coast, losing line of sight from how low the angle is. The closest ones were rounder, shallower, the higher peaks beyond not quite tall enough for a permanent snow cap. Sunny said they were old, but Lidea didn’t have a good reference point for what that meant at a geologic scale.

It was sandy and dusty but not desert. Just dirt. Not in an unpleasant way but, rather, a boring one. A sort of endless quality to everything only broken up by rolling splits in the ground. The buildings made up for the ubiquity with large, bright, multi-colored interiors that flashed through large, open windows. 

There was another, low-slung building perched behind the transportation circles. Ey crinkled eir brows at it. It was a gatehouse, but ey couldn’t place the connection point. Ey dipped back into the travel station for a moment to read the map on the inside wall. This gate dropped onto Miraalan on the edge of trenglate territory, not a path ey would voluntarily take.

“Do you know what we’re doing next, honey?” Lidea asked.

“No,” Sunny grumbled. “The plan is ‘wait,’ right now. Someone named Tamira is supposed to meet us.” 

“Do we know anything about Tamira?” Lidea asked.

“Telekinetic magician. That’s about it.”

“Feel like you should start getting more information about people we’re meeting.”

“It’s never been a problem before.” 

“For me, then?” Lidea asked sincerely. “Because I like to know who I’m working with?”

Sunny took eir hand casually and nodded vaguely. It wasn’t something he actively thought about, so he couldn’t exactly promise anything. He could try to do his best, though, when it came up.

“She said she’d find us,” Sunny said, casting around. 

In any other “hub city” that would have been too tall an order to fulfill. This town, however, was barely moving. No casual foot traffic. Buildings that looked more administrative or industrial than commercial. No evidence of a significant nearby residential block. There was standard seaport to the north. In other circumstances, a gate and port so close together would create a massive, multi-nucleic metropolis despite the minuscule risk of a stable gate melting down. 

It was the jyantaur in the mountains. Even if anyone wanted to build this close to the Corre indige, the locals would only allow it in very very narrow circumstances. This semi-city was probably the result of whatever that negotiation was. 

They wandered aimlessly toward a central plaza. On one edge perched artificer tower, a tan and yellow thrust of a building with teardrop-shaped windows. A quick beam of sun shot down through a stained glass element in the roof, painting a geometric splash of color on the ground. It disappeared as a cloud passed by. 

“They clearly have a local artificer,” Lidea said. “Why’d they call you all the way out here?”

“Who the hell knows. I don’t know how jyantaur think.”

“Grandmaster Childress!”

All these years and they still cringed horribly at the sound of either of their formal address. This was someone who looked like she could be a telekinetic named Tamira. A very pretty dark-skinned human woman in a flowy green dress and coordinating brown headscarf. Her gold and gemstone bangles clanked dully against each other as she brought her hands together in a gentle clasp before bowing at the chest.

“I’m Tamira Youseff from the Office of Translation and Inter-Phonetic Communication.”

“Fancy,” Sunny said. 

“Is that really the full title?” Lidea asked. 

“I know, right?” She made a placating gesture with her hands. “If you don’t mind walking, we’ll head to the gondolas to take us up. Carts and cars are in short supply, lately.”

“We’re going up there?” Lidea asked, pointing to the track of machinery running up the side of the mountain. Sunny grabbed eir hand. 

“You going to be okay, darling?”

“We’re about to find out,” ey said, and nodded that they should move toward the mountains.

From the central plaza, the mountains had seemed close enough to reach out and touch. Actually traveling to the base of the gondoliers on foot took a chunk out of the morning. They passed a few people riding hump-backed pesokoh, but it was mostly foot traffic moving up and down through the gently rolling hills. The particularly steep sections were fitted with stone stairs, but they tilted backward, throwing the walker off just as they pushed up on them.

The gondola station appeared, half dug into the side of one of the hllls. There was someone else waiting for them, a person shorter than even Sunny with a stout, frame and a short beard braided up into their blonde hair. They turned to Sunny and Lidea then immediately lit up in recognition spiraled bun bouncing within the cage of a netted snood. She moved up to greet them.

“Scholar Iphy Oleg,” she voluntered with a winking grin, offering a hand. The height difference meant it was mostly to Sunny, but she desperately tried io include Lidea, as well.

“Fellow dyerga?” she asked, not entirely sure of her question but optimistic enough to try. 

“Possibly,” was all Sunny could reasonably offer based on what he knew of the more enigmatic half of his parentage. She took the ambiguity exactly for what it intended and didn’t press on it any further.

“This gondola.” Tamira moved around them, opening the door and gesturing inside. Lidea took in a deep breath and stepped through. Iphy, for her part, seemed to catch Lidea’s anxiety and positioned herself between Lidea and the door of the gondola. 

“Where are you two coming in from?” She asked as the gondola started moving upward. 

“Grandmaster Artificer out of Latolan. My partner is an Alpha from Apolais.” With someone else there that might possibly bogart Lidea’s attention, Sunny suddenly felt like talking.

“Huh…then maybe I don’t actually know the full-scope of the discovery.” She made to readjust her hair, then was thrown against the side of the gondola as it swayed on its track. Lidea grabbed the edge of the railing, knuckles going white immediately. 

“What’s your specialty?” Lidea asked, trying to use the conversation to keep focus off the swinging cage they were all in. 

“Cave biologist,” Iphy answered. “Which is weird, because jyantaur typically have their own biologists and hydrologists. I don’t think any of my colleagues have ever consulted with the jyantaur before.”

“I had been thinking the same thing when Sunny told me he had been hired,” Lidea agreed. “Why do they need to call in someone from completely out of the country?” 

“Master Bukhari is too close to the situation,” said Tamira. “They have a trade agreement. This is the kind of big thing they want a neutral party for. At least that’s what I understand.” Tamira sighed and leaned against the wall of the gondola. “I’m not supposed to know that, by the way. I’m just supposed to translate, not know things. But then they always forget I can understand them when they talk around me.” She looked up the side of the mountain and clucked out her frustration.

The gondola stopped midway up the mountain to let them out into the grand opening of the jyantaur’s eyrie. It was hollowed out directly from the mountainside, detailed reliefs of jyantaur historical events and folktales carved into the walls. They weren’t familiar with the specifics of the stories themselves, but there was a sort of universal flow of pictorial story to read in the flow of figures. While most of the grand entrance was sharp with machining, there were soft corners that suggested the presence of preexisting voids and caverns extending further back into the eyrie. These rooms and offshoots were covered by a metal gate that kept people out but let small cave-dwelling critters go back and forth.  There were probably other entrances and exits, but this was the one they brought visitors through. 

Then of course there were the jyantaur themselves, tall furry bipedal things with wings they used to glide down the mountainside. Their faces and heads were almost cute, like a rodent with large eyes. But underneath that short snout were powerful jaws and sharp teeth that even the weakest could use to bite through bone.

 Like all Correlan natives the jyantaur had three genders, and it was mostly ABs that greeted them. There was one alpha in the back that watched them even more closely, her sharp eyes and triangular head tilting down at them from a foot above the others. There were no betas visible and probably wouldn’t be for most of their trip. Betas were born without claws, and their wings were proportionally almost too small to glide. They weren’t considered fit for combat. If they weren’t fit for combat they couldn’t meet strangers. Instead they were safeguarded in the back of the eyrie with the young and the infirm. Of the four corre indige, the jyantaur were notably the most precious with their males.

It was also well known that a jyantaur would give you one chance then leave you on the side of the mountain to die. The three that stepped forward to greet them seemed friendly enough, and Tamira started translating immediately. 

“Hello I’m Gray-like-stone welcome to our eyrie.” 

There were probably a hundred different ways people found their names in different languages, particularly when working with completely different sets of phonemes. Neither of them had the linguistic background to know how the jyantaur handled it, but “Gray-like-stone” wasn’t any weirder than any other transliterated name they had ever heard. 

“Come down this way, if you please,” Gray-like-stone continued, gesturing that ze would lead them all down to whatever it was Sunny was here to see.

Jyantaur were so large that even their tight, working passages left plenty of room to move without hunching. Only it also meant the sliding drop-offs the jyantaur could just hop down turned into full-on free-climbing for the rest of them. Gray-like-stone helped Tamira at the front, but the jyntaur in the middle of the group kept moving on without stopping. Lidea used eir height to ease Sunny down first in a half-rappelling motion, and their combined their efforts to make sure the even smaller Iphy didn’t get hurt. That left Lidea at the top of a sharp drop-off alone. 

Well, not alone. There was  third jyantaur at the back. 

Ze gently sidled around Lidea to take the step down the ledge, then signaled that Iphy should continue on to give hir more space to move. Ze turned to Lidea with hir arms outstretched.

“Are you expecting me to jump?” Lidea said, Signing alongside in case ze didn’t understand. The jyantaur signed in the affirmative. Lidea shrugged and did a little hop, landing half in hir arms, half on the floor. Ze shuffled them both around until Lidea was in front. 

“Thanks,” ey spoke and Signed. “I’m Lidea, by the way.” It was a sort of flat moment of introduction, but it felt like the thing to do.

“I’m Sharp-Pink-Flower,” ze replied in Sign. The carved passage opened large enough that they could walk side by side. “Only speak Illurian? No Sign? I’m practicing.”

“Oh…um…okay.” Lidea made to sign again out of habit, then actively stopped eirself. “I can’t understand your language, so it feels like it would be a little one-sided.”

“I like listening.” 

Sharp-Pink-Flower helped Lidea down another steep ledge, bringing everyone into a puddle of darkness, a breeze blowing in from a larger, still unseen cavern. With a fizz, a nearby lantern turned on. Then another, then another, a chain from the first light reaching  so deep into cavern that they disappeared. 

“Holy shit,” Sunny and Lidea breathed in unison. Iphy favored a complex profanity in a different language. 

The size of the cave, of course, was overwhelming, but it was also filled with huge, several meter long crystals. Not pillars of rock created by water dripping and mineral deposits. These were jagged, rhomboid prisms of translucent pink crystal, jutting out at all angles from the wall. 

A path had already been carved further back into the cavern, winding around into the the dimness beyond a sharp corner. 

Sunny moved up to one of the crystals before asking, hovering his hands a few inches from the nearest face. He remembered himself fast enough to turn back to Gray to ask permission. Ze gave a little nod of hir maned head. 

“That’s what we brought you down here for,” Gray said through translation. “We found the cavern a decade ago and have mostly left it untouched, structurally. It’s only calcite, so there’s not exactly a demand in artificer spaces.”

“It’s a good carrier base,” Sunny countered. 

“Well, yes, exactly, so we play the markets,” Gray replied. “Mine some and sell it off when the price is higher.” 

“Not a bad gig,” Lidea agreed softly, mostly to emself. Sunny caught eir eye and scowled. He hated that rocks, of all things, had a price at all. He ceded a little ground when ey reminded him that miners needed to be paid, but he never gave up more than that. 

“What I’d really like to show you is something we found recently.” Gray continued deeper into the crystal cave. Sunny following behind with Tamira walking alongside. The third jyantaur waited for Iphy to go, then brought up the rear. 

“You’re nervous,” Sharp signed, tapping Lidea on the shoulder.

“Uh, yeah, I don’t really do underground a lot. And the last time was a cave-in. I don’t know how Sunny’s not freaking out.” 

Sharp-Pink-Flower dropped to a patch of open cave floor and patted it.

“Sit. Talk.” 

Lidea took off hir topmost shirt, folded it to make a cushion, and sat. 

“You’ll get cold,” Sharp said, and ey shrugged.

“So the small one is your mate/spouse/partner?” Sharp asked, curving hir hands on the multi-part word. 

“Yeah,” Lidea said. “We’re not married, yet, but we’re thinking about it.”

“Only thinking? Not plan?” 

“It’s complicated,” Lidea said, unsure why this was the topic of discussion.

“Family restrictions?”

“No. Just…figuring it out.” 

Sharp made a crackling, chuffing sound. 

“You people/humans/elves/sylvan. I have to apply to mate, and you complain?”

“Do you really?” Lidea gasped. 

“Limited space,” Sharp shrugged. “Not supposed to talk about it.”

“And Sign probably doesn’t have enough words, anyway,” Lidea sighed, leaning back. Ey could get a sense of who Sharp-Pink-Flower was. Ze was holding secrets of this little world ze was stuck in and wanted to burst. Probably why ze was learning Illurian. To have someone outside hir circles to talk to about it.

“So you wanted to practice Illurian,” Lidea said. “What do you want me to talk at you about?”

“That cave-in? What’s the story?”

“Oh, god. Alright, so — “ A scuffle from the staircase distracted them for half a moment, and ey turned to follow the sound. It was another jyantaur, sort of on the smaller side but not enough to be young or male, with a scraggly look about hir. Ze hopped down into the cavern. Ze stopped to look at Lidea, eyes a little wide in the dark. Ze folded one hand over the other then decided to crawl back up the staircase. 

“That’s Lake-at-Dawn. Odd. Went to Areylan and back.” 

“Are you serious?” Lidea gasped. “Fully went to Areylan?” 

“Magic storm,” Sharp-Pink-Flower explained, and it was just enough for Lidea to pull together the narrative. In all eir year, ey’d met two people who had been spontaneously transported across worlds, and it had happened decades apart. Not that it was an overly common thing, but traveling for work upped a person’s odds considerably of getting trapped in a magic storm with enough force to rip you through space-time. Ey certainly didn’t know anyone who had ever been to Areylan. 

“Ze came back weird,” Sharp-Pink-Flower said, growling dismissively. Ze clicked hir fingers. “Cave in. Story.”

“Right so…”

“What thing did they end up showing you?” Lidea asked. They were down the mountainside again by the afternoon. Iphy was still in the crystal cave somewhere consulting on some kind of unidentified, cave pool dwelling micro-draconid. Which was particularly weird because Correlan didn’t natively have draconids. 

The elders needed a night to confer with one another on Sunny’s opinion, then they’d get back to him the next day. Either way, he was going to be leaving with some free samples of crystal cave calcite. 

There was a communal road house at the base of the mountains, though, that was a much shorter walk than back to the city proper. They were trusting the verbal instructions that suggested they just needed to get around one more curve, otherwise they were in for a rough night.

“Made a gentleman’s agreement not to talk about it,” Sunny said, “but who are you going to tell?”

“No one,” Lidea agreed, but ey made a note to lock down this information even tighter. 

“They found some pyrite inclusions. For the size of the crystals, it’s a good chunk of pyrite. And while that’s still on the softer side for a lot of direct conduction artificery, it’s one of the primary components of magic radio receivers.”

“They want to know if it’s worth getting the pyrite out,” Lidea guessed.

“I cold only give them half an answer because I don’t know market prices off the top of my head. Said they’d probably be better off selling the crystals in pound-chunks to a middle-man who can break everything down and do the separation.”

“If they start selling off one-pound chunks off crystal, people will notice,” Lidea said. 

“That’s what I think they’re going to talk about,” Sunny replied. He hooked his fingers around Lidea’s pinky. “Tamira said that one jyantaur was flirting with you.”

“Sharp-Pink-Flower? Oh that’s silly.”

“Hir body language. The shoulder touching with the claws.” 

“Oh, well maybe if that’s jyantaur flirting. That’s funny.” 

Sunny’s hand gave a really tight squeeze around hirs.

“Do you not like that, Sunny honey?” Lidea asked, cutting through the hints of his body language. 

“Of course I don’t like the idea of someone flirting with you. I should be the only one flirting with you.”

“Yeah, but you don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Flirt with me. I don’t know that you’ve ever actually flirted with me.”

“Would you like me to?” Sunny asked. 

“I could take it or leave it. Unless you’re going to get mad about someone else doing it. Then you need to put up or shut up.” 

“Hm.” He pulsed his hand a few times. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Tamira, run me through that again.” Lidea stood with canted hips at the bottom of the gondola the next morning.

“Sorry that you walked all the way over here,” Tamira bowed tightly. Iphy stood nearby, looking nervous. 

“They promised I could take some of my own samples,” Sunny objected. 

“Oh, you can go back,” Tamira clarified. “Just Lidea has to stay behind.”

“Why?”

“Jyantaur politics,” Tamira tried to evade. 

“Was it because Sharp-Pink-Flower was ‘flirting’ with me? Apparently?”

Tamira grimaced without affirming. 

“Okay,” Sunny said, “I’ll meet you back in the main plaza how about that?”

“Wait, you’re still going back up there?”

“I need to get my samples.”

Lidea stared at him, feeling the heat rise in eir chest but not totally sure exactly where it was coming from. Ey grabbed him around the wrist and pulled him away a little. 

“So you’re okay going somewhere I’m not wanted?” Lidea said. 

“I…I’m just going to get some rocks and leave.”

“So rocks are more important that my feelings?”

“Are you genuinely upset that they didn’t let you back in? Everyone knows how fickle jyantaur are.”

“Not really, but I’m upset you didn’t even turn to ask how I might feel about it.” Lidea didn’t really know why ey was mad. Sharp-Pink-Flower had spent a whole hour listening to em yesterday. Had, apparently, flirted with em. Sunny never did those things. Sunny was obsessed with em according to the ramblings of his brain, but he couldn’t even act like a normal romantic partner.

But then that didn’t feel like a fair assessment. Yet ey was already biting back. 

“I feel like you don’t have my back. Feel like you’re punishing me for one of the jyantaur flirting with me,” ey said. 

“And I feel like you’re looking for something to fight about.” 

“Grach!” There was a loud, shouting growl above them, coming down from an hidden entrance into the eyrie.  It was a jyantaur doing a downward glide, wings spread between huge jumps down the mountainside. Even in the daylight, Lidea recognized hir as the scraggly Lake-at-Dawn, the one who had been transported to Areylan and back. Ze had a sort of bedraggled feel as ze galloped over the last of the hills directly toward them. 

Ze dropped a bag in between then, opened to reveal chunks of crystal from the cave. 

“What is this?” Lidea Signed.

“Solution,” Lake Signed back. “Knew there’d be a fight.”

“Did you?” Sunny asked, forgetting to Sign. 

“No Illurian,” Lake replied. “Humans/elves/sylvan predictable. Apologize.” Lake took a step back but then waited with hir hands folded. 

“I don’t need an audience,” Sunny grumbled.

“Just fake it. Then ze’ll go.” 

“No,” Sunny said sharply.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to fake anything. Not with you.” He stared at the ground for a moment. “I apologize for not conferring with you before deciding to go back up into the mountain. If I was kicked out of event for something I didn’t do, I’d secretly want you to storm out with me. I do have your back, and I don’t actually care if someone flirts with you. You’re attractive. It’s going to happen, and it’s not going to be your fault.” 

Lidea tilted at him. 

Ey had been encouraging him to use his words more, and it seemed to be working. He spoke like he wanted to get all of it out at once, like he didn’t want to linger in the words and rehash them over and over, but he was still using them. That was a solid compromise. 

“I’m sorry for getting mad so quickly and assuming malicious intent,” Lidea replied. “You shouldn’t also have to suffer just because someone pulled some shit with me. And if someone does flirt with me, I will be more aware of it in the future and how it might affect your feelings.” 

Lidea nodded. 

Having a towering jyantaur nearby to threaten them both into submission made talking it out come easier. They both turned to hir. 

“Kiss,” ze demanded. 

“What?” Lidea signed.

“Mates kiss,” Lake insisted.

“Taking kiss and make up a little literally,” Sunny grumbled. 

“Just do it.” Ey leaned down and set eir lips to his. They didn’t really kiss that often, still, and the action felt stilted. After a moment, though, the warmth took over, settling into the kiss like it was as natural as it should be. Nearby, the sound of huge wings folding, refolding, and shuffling suggested that Lake had taken off again. 

They parted with just few smaller follow-up kisses, then turned to watch the dark shape move back up the mountain.

“That was Lake,” Lidea said. “Sharp said ze was a little weird.”

“Hate to see if jynataur get any weirder,” Sunny replied, bending down to look in the bag. 

“If you want to go back in and get your samples, I won’t be mad,” Lidea said. 

“Nah,” Sunny replied, gently picking through the crystals in the bag. “I don’t really want to go anywhere you’re not welcome. They can write me for any more reccomendations through the right channels. Let them take the risk of everyone knowing what they have.” He paused, hand resting in the bag. “Oh. Yeah, we need to go. Now.” He picked up the bag and hauled it over his shoulder. 

“What is it?”

Sunny was already moving quickly, trying to get away without risking losing stamina. 

“I’ll explain later, but it’s not just calcite in there. They’ve got a vein of something they haven’t reported on the market pages.” 

“We’re not doing anything illegal are we, Sunny honey?” Ey could definitely get farther faster than him on leg-length alone but kept pace. 

“No. No no. It was a gift. A perfectly reasonable gift. But your new friend is telling secrets, and I’d prefer none of us get caught.” 

“So I should get more jyantaur to flirt with me?” Lidea snorted. 

“You know what? If this happens every time, maybe.”