Moyo & Silk

Just watching what surrounds him, trying to make sense of its existence. Sitting there, in the middle of nowhere, or isolating himself in the crowd by closing his eyes, slowly letting meditation take over. Like a river flowing drop by drop. Like a salutary parenthesis, so as not to be drowned in noise and fury. Moyo had always had that ability to shut himself off, to batten down the hatches and retreat into his inner world. Now, he could curl up within Silk’s folds to cut himself off from the outside world, to look at it as a detached spectator. As a child, he never would have imagined knowing such a bond with anyone. Still less with a creature. But he was deeply aware of the privilege he had been given. That foreign consciousness had been like a window opened onto the world, a new vantage point through which he could see things differently—and, just as importantly, weave connections he never could have forged on his own.

The little boy he once was—quiet, dreamy—already longed for fairy-like animals, magical, microscopic beings. Whenever he could, he would spend hours watching insects go about their lives, oblivious to the giant looming above. He left them alone, and so did they—unlike the other children, who constantly picked fights with him. Because he was odd. Because he was different. His love of little creatures, he had inherited from his Muna mother. In any case, his parents, Abu and Tascha, gave him great freedom. They lived in the backcountry, roughly halfway between Kestia and Amorgand, in a lumber village deep in the heart of the blue forest. Tascha often said Moyo was, in a way, the forest itself made flesh: mysterious, with his head always in the clouds.

His curiosity pushed him to roam the countryside in search of small insects, avoiding whenever possible the village square where the other children played. His parents often found him nose-deep in a bush, or crouched on the ground, talking with a beetle or a grasshopper. After one anxious evening searching for him after nightfall, his father Abu strapped an enormous straw hat onto his head so he could be spotted more easily. It didn’t bother him much, even if it made him a target for mockery. In fact, he turned the hat into his banner, his trademark, his emblem—and, in a way, his armor. Of course, it was trampled, torn, smeared with mud. Just to make fun of him. Those were probably the only times he dared to fight back—fighting to defend it, to reclaim it. He would return home covered in bruises, nose bloodied, and hand the battered hat to his father to patch it up again.

His passion for entomology and the infinitely small might naturally have led him toward a naturalist’s calling, but over time his focus shifted. The Nutsuwa Highlands differ from other regions of Asgartha in the porousness of the Veil that separates reality from the realm of imagination. Which is why strange phenomena occur there, bathed in the bluish hue that colors even the underwood air. Aether singularities, ghostly apparitions, oddities of all kinds… Many Yzmir made their home there, far from the Kadigir, to study the permeability of the boundary between worlds, and also to measure its effects on nature. Moyo witnessed the emergence of many new species, tinged by imagination. He cataloged them in his notebook, with sketches and annotations. Gradually, his passion shifted to a related and equally fascinating field, one the Initiates called exobiology.

The study of foreign lifeforms, foremost among them the so-called Chimeras; the observation of Aether’s influence on living things, a common sight in Nutsuwa… For him, it was a brand-new field of study, with infinite possibilities. Biology and magic, woven together into something captivating. But it was also a discipline aimed at understanding difference. And perhaps, in some way, it was his way of taming his own difference—the one he had always felt in relation to others. At night, he often spoke with Maris Chira, an Yzmir mage stationed in Tsunoo. Since childhood, he had brought him altered insects captured in jars or nets. Unlike the others, Maris never judged him or mocked him. On the contrary, he told him that difference was wealth, and standardization was impoverishment.

That was what convinced Moyo to join the Yzmir. Not to truly become a mage, but to embrace a very specific career. After the launch of the Rediscovery Endeavor and the recapture of Caer Oorun, he was recruited as a specialist in unknown lifeforms. And when the Expeditionary Corps entered the Storhvit, he was called to work tirelessly on that snowy biome, whose rules were unlike anything he had ever known. His assignment came by letter, written by a naturalist named Saskia Averina, who sought his expertise. She was studying a peculiar lifeform she had rather prosaically named the Mana Moths. With fascination, Moyo discovered the aethereal moth, its properties, its reproductive cycle. First as her assistant, then as her colleague, he uncovered nearly all the secrets of that strange butterfly.

Through countless sleepless nights spent analyzing samples and drafting theories, Moyo came to hold profound respect for Saskia. Her instincts were incredible, her sense of observation unmatched. Her intuition allowed her to extrapolate and spin out a thousand hypotheses, which they doggedly tested, sometimes at the expense of sleep. More than anything, she inspired him. Each of her insights sparked in him an idea, a sudden illumination. That was how Moyo came to understand what was happening in the Storhvit. Saskia stressed the need for a holistic approach—to understand how the ecosystem functioned as a whole. What role did the Moths play? The Belisenki? Why was the Winter Folk immune to the Belisenki’s hostility? Suddenly, it all clicked.

They had the help of Akesha during their experiments. If Moyo and Saskia’s approach was empirical, Akesha’s was closer to applied science. The Initiate even went so far as to ingest a chrysalis and expose herself to a Belasenka to test their hypothesis—that the Belisenki watched over all beings exuding “moth pheromones.” Following the trio’s unexpected success, an action plan quickly took shape to end the skirmishes with the white threats, even as the danger of the Tumult loomed near. Thanks to Akesha, they gained precious time to raise moths in captivity and harvest their cocoons. Through a concerted effort, with the invaluable support of the Yzmir, countless chrysalises were distributed among the Corps. Overnight, Moyo became a hero. A household name.

After Kuraokami’s liberation, fragments of the Nilam’s bark were recovered by Yzmir Initiates to study how an Oneiros could have remained trapped in the crystallized world-tree. Pragmatically, the fragments were also used to build an observatory whose walls could withstand the Tumult. In the end, the surprise did not come from the bark itself, but from what it contained: a frozen larva, which emerged from hibernation when exposed to favorable temperatures. Without a doubt, it was a Chimera. And because of its theoretical kinship with the Moths, it was Moyo who was tasked with overseeing its growth and studying it.

The walls of his workshop are streaked, made of bark so pale it looks like bleached bone. From the undulating ceiling hang myriads of cocoons. Whenever one is about to hatch, he carries it into the nursery, where the moths emerge to flutter and reproduce. Of course, that doesn’t stop some from flying above his desk or workbench. He can’t keep an eye on them all. On the table, Silk crawls lazily toward a Mana source. It spits out filaments, wrapping them into a ball around the energy source to keep as a reserve—a snack for later. Then it tucks the ball into the fold of its skin, safely nestled in its ringed segments. Moyo watches the caterpillar and thinks back to his childhood, when he watched lines of ants carrying bits of leaves and petals.

Except now, he no longer has to imagine what goes on in their heads when a giant bends over them. Since the Musubi, he knows. He had struggled at first to adjust to its cognition, so different from that of humans—or from his own, at least. But then, wasn’t he always called different too? He told himself it was like bonding with a newborn, whose concerns were purely primal: hunger, discomfort, thirst, fatigue… But gradually, more complex thoughts emerged from the Chimera’s proto-intellect: attachment, distance, memory, projection… Was it a natural development, or was the larva drawing on his own capacity for reflection to shape its own? What had started out as a mere specimen inevitably became a partner in life.

Moyo had never thought he would one day be bound this way to another being. He had always thought himself too different for anyone to truly understand him. Even his parents never really understood him, though they had been tolerant and kind. But Silk did. They shared a common perception. Each one’s experience was the other’s. It wasn’t like training an animal—it was more like raising a child. Not by teaching it tricks, but by teaching it to think. More than that: it was like letting a part of himself flourish. Looking at Silk was like seeing himself from the outside. And the more he did, the more he understood himself: his reflexes and instincts, his biases, his limitations…

It allowed him to change, to adapt. He had always been aware of his difference, but he had never felt truly special. Becoming part of an Exalt had made him special. Saskia often said that all life stemmed from the capacity for symbiosis: electromagnetism, which allowed atoms to join into molecules; living cells, which bonded to form multicellular organisms… Perhaps that was what she called the Skein, the bond through which Silk and he were tied. But in truth, it was just the artificial extension of a natural mechanism. The bond with another—the relationship, the joining of two beings… by extension, friendship, camaraderie, even love. What were these, really? Just the result of the Skein? The only certainty, as he watched Silk grow, was that he too was growing in turn, within. Silk’s presence forced him to look outward…

In the workshop, Saskia and Akesha are talking together. Both stand near the window, cups in hand. At first, the Initiate’s presence had unsettled him—even irritated him. He had seen her as a distraction, an intruder. But little by little, he grew used to her, and had to admit that without her, the Belisenki threat would have lasted much longer. When they weren’t there, the laboratory was quiet—almost too quiet. And in time, Moyo found himself wondering what it would be like to go back outside, to poke through bushes again, to turn over stones to see what crawled beneath. Silk rekindled his urge to let curiosity roam free, to confront the open sky. And above all, to test a hypothesis. For in retrospect, something in the Storhvit had deeply troubled him. Everything there was perfectly arranged, organized to the point of seeming manufactured, synthetic. Looking closer, it was as if the entire region had been counterfeited—a parody of nature.