Aetherion, the First Wing's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The platform was ready. Aetherion still had no lessons to teach on it. He had trained students one at a time by feel, watching each steed for weeks before touching her. That method had cost him his last student. She had flown into the boundary storms because he had never taught her to turn back from what pulled her. If he brought pairs here now, riders and steeds together, he would lose them the same way. He needed a curriculum before he opened a single gate. He spent two days on the platform with a slate and a piece of chalk. He wrote the steps he used. He crossed them out. Every step assumed he was the only teacher, watching one animal in one field. None of it survived a second student standing beside the first. On the third morning a small figure climbed the spiral stair. Blue hair in two long tails. A torn red banner on a wooden pole, dragging behind her up the steps. She stopped at the edge of the beacons and waited for the ring to glow pale before crossing. "You are the horse teacher," she said. "I heard you were stuck." "I am Aetherion. Who told you." "A pink goat on a rock. He said you were writing alone. He said that was the problem." She set the pole down. "I am Hatsune Miku. I know about singing alone. It does not work." He knew the goat she meant. He had climbed to that pedestal once, looking for an answer about his lost student, and left with none. Catharsis guarded what a person was worth when no one was watching. He dropped the truth as part of giving it. Aetherion had walked down the mountain empty. Apparently the goat had spoken after all. "Show me what you wrote," she said. He showed her the slate. She read it standing. "You wrote it for one," she said. "Write it for two." "I do not know how." "Then we write it together. Baa is what the goat says. He said that too. Two voices seal what one voice cannot." She said it flat, no smile. "I tried the one-voice way. Something leaked back." He did not ask what. He heard the quiet in her voice and left it alone. They worked until dusk. She named what a rider needed to know: when to trust the steed's pull, when to override it. He named what a steed needed: a signal from the rider that meant turn now, no argument. They matched the two lists. Where a rider's signal met a steed's instinct, they wrote a lesson. Where the two fought, they wrote a drill. By dark he had twelve lessons. Enough to open with. Not enough to finish anyone. "You will teach the riders," he said. "I will teach them to listen," she said. "You teach the rest." He agreed. Then he thought of the boundary storms, and the pull, and wondered what he had just promised a stranger.