Tracker: Notebook 2025
February 2025
2/16/25
Some Kind of Heaven
Kharshtha Ahima-kiyoni remembered the first time he'd met Irya several clans gatherings ago in the midautumn before he turned ten. At the time, he'd been both amused and befuddled at Irya's propensity to run around, chatter in his friendly way at kids until they'd become his friends before they really knew how it happened, and despite all his being underfoot in such a crowd, never quite getting hurt.
Of course, that particular faculty of his suddenly made sense.
Ahima vaguely recalled having seen it before once, Irya's arm waving right through a supposedly solid object while he stretched dangerously far overhead for a book on one of his built-in shelves.
"Convenient," Ahima said dryly.
Irya glanced down with a curious expression but kept waving his arm through the bottom of the shelf until he caught on the book he wanted and pulled it through the shelf too.
"Can you make anything like that, so it goes through things?"
"Kind of." Irya tossed the book down on the bed and flopped backward against the pillow. "It's not really making it go through things exactly."
Ahima studied Irya for a long minute, trying to imagine where Irya's contract marks were hidden. He'd never noticed them, though Ahima was fairly certain Irya knew where Ahima's were. "So what is it then?"
Irya frowned. His fingers fiddled with the book a moment, then he sighed, sat up, and draped himself over Ahima's back.
Even though they'd only known each other four years, Ahima knew that Irya actually wasn't much of a cuddler, so he presumed that this wasn't something Irya liked to talk about–or would want him sharing with anyone else.
"It's like your name," Irya said after a moment. "This is the near heaven, but everyone knows there are others."
And wasn't that a startling thought. "You can make things pass through other heavens?"
"Instead of this one. Or this one too, but"–Irya blew out a sigh–"they have to pass through some kind of heaven."
Ahima chewed on that for a long moment. He wasn't sure exactly what about it bothered Irya. "Your head is heavy," he finally said.
"Sorry," Irya answered. And didn't move. At all.
Ahima sighed. "My parents want me to be the next bridge builder of our band."
Ahima was thirteen years old. By all rights, he was far too young to even be thinking about a lifelong sworn duty or whether he was at all well suited for it. But there had never been any question his parents were thinking about it from almost the moment Ahima was born.
Irya hmmmed thoughtfully. "You'd be good at it."
"I wouldn't," Ahima replied promptly.
"Of course, you would." Irya shifted around to go from lying on Ahima's back to basically hugging him. "You're everybody's favorite friend."
Ahima stayed silent.
Irya was the friend maker of their group. Irya had fished Ahima out of the crowded Doschtongar encampments and played with him one year, then introduced him to two more friends the next gathering from completely different clan land allotments, then two more the next. The size of their friend group seemed to grow faster than Ahima really knew how to deal with, but he mostly got by sticking close to Irya and Uchulr and only saying something when he knew how it would go over. Ahima wasn't the favorite, nor the anchor of the wheel, nor the bridge maker, and he never had been.
But trying to change Irya's mind had always been pointless.
"You're my brother, right?" Ahima asked lightly, invoking a promise from several summers back. "You'd say that even if I was just your favorite."
Irya sat up and grabbed Ahima in a playful strangehold. "You are my favorite. You'll just have to deal with it."
Ahima laughed and laughed. There wasn't really escaping someone who could control which heaven your bodies were in, but Ahima didn't particularly want to escape, for all he tried.
Ahima's parents liked Irya and liked that he was forcibly broadening Ahima's friends group beyond what Ahima was willing to do himself. Ahima always felt like he could breathe a little easier when he came out for the summer, slept in Irya's bed, and ran around Irya's mountains where kids were allowed to be kids without being forced to be anything else just yet. So he'd never let on how much he left the friend making and keeping to Irya and just let the tide of other kids ebb and flow around him, as if he was just dangling feet in the ocean instead of swimming.
Ahima stared at the ceiling that night a long time after Irya had fallen asleep and burrowed into Ahima's side as if he were a pillow. Ahima almost wished their other gathering friends were here, so he could figure out if Irya was actually right, but he also shrank from the idea. It was easier not to test the theory.
...
The day was very quiet, tall evergreen trees swaying in the soft rush of wind the only real sound. Ahima had thought he'd be able to hear the distant gurgle of the river, but it was quiet.
His left hand rested over the contract mark on his right arm. It wasn't the only one, but it was the most visible and accessible. He held it and really thought in the direction of whatever high one was on the other end.
"Can you help?" he asked.
