Page 7 of The Amber Sunburst

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OPHELIA

“Hands of the sun, hold us close. Grant blessings to your humble servants below,” Ophelia sings with all the other Priestesses of the Sun, standing in carefully organized concentric circles around the flaming forsterite blessing bowl.

“Undeserving of your praise, unworthy of your gifts, unable to conceptualize your Goodness.”

She doesn’t need to think about the notes or the words or the hand motions. At this point, you could probably behead her and she’d still be able to complete the chants perfectly before keeling over and dying.

“But bless us still today, undying Form of the Good. Bestow the knowledge of Good and light to what we create in your Forms-blessed name.”

Ah, yes, the Forms. The unreachable ideal of all that is beautiful, good, and just in this world distilled down to three worshiped symbols: the sun, the rose, and the scale. Nothing she hasn’t heard already, hence why she is bored out of her mind.

“Praise be to the Good. Give us light.”

She holds hands with the two Priestesses next to her and they begin their rotations, whose number depends on how many amber pendants they’re making—today it’s only one. They come to a slow stop once they’ve completed a circle and wait for the girls in the outer layers to come back around.

Then the chanting resumes, heads tilted toward the sun. She could close her eyes and ‘reflect on the Forms’ like she’s supposed to, but she’s done so much reflecting in her life she could be a mirror by now.

So instead, she performs the equally dull task of scanning her surroundings for the thousandth time. She may be tired of her humdrum life here, but even she can’t deny that the temple is ethereal.

Amber ceremonies like this one are held exclusively in the Atrium, with walls covered in a mix of terracotta, tile, and sea-glass. It’s built in a perfect circle with an opening on top that follows the arc of the sun.

That isn’t what Ophelia’s eyes are really drawn to, though. She’s watching the precisely placed mirrors and magnifying glasses around the room as they turn the sun into a force capable of melting even the toughest of stones. Until sunset, the mechanism creates a brilliant power source with almost no environmental impact.

It’s genius, the whole setup. And it accomplishes its mundane objective very well: to make Forms-blessed necklace pendants for all of the Auxiliaries training at the Academy. But she wishes the system could be used for more dignified purposes. To save lives or help the planet or make work less laborious in the lower Arcs. Instead it’s hidden away, wasted here.

She feels a bit like that too. Wasted.

She’s not so arrogant as to think she’s a genius or prodigy, but she knows she’s smart. Crafty. Pretty.

She knows she could do something amazing, if she were given the chance to try. But Priestesses don’t get to try; they get to ‘reflect’ and chant the same words every day of their stupid lives.

Her ambition isn’t something most of the girls share; they’re all quite happy at the Temple. That leaves Ophelia the odd man out, wondering why she’s even here at all. In a philosophical sense, at least.

Because she knows all too well why she’s here in a technical sense.

If a Guardian’s female child is rejected from the Academy, as most are, they end up with the Priestesses. Meaning that all the girls here were born with the potential to be leaders. But, in some arbitrary process that everyone knows is rigged against women, children are weeded out before training at the Academy starts.

She’s one of the only Priestesses sent here at less than a year old. Deemed unfit to lead at the age of three months, because obviously they could tell whether she was worthy of power based on how many goo-goos versus ga-gas and the contents of her diapers.

How else would they do it when testing a child barely old enough to sleep unsupervised?

But it doesn’t matter anymore. Because here she is, chanting ‘Praise be to the Good. Give us light,’ over and over again in her billowy Priestess robes with no prospect of change.

She watches the Mother take her ceremonial walk through each of the concentric circles, then approach the blessing bowl. She steps on a tile that deactivates the sun system, and all of the mirrors involved curl into themselves to cool off.

Then she slides her hands into two forsterite gauntlets positioned next to the now-extinguished bowl and scoops up the amber from inside to close it between her hands, one on top of the other. When pushed together, the gauntlets form a small mold that pushes the amber into the almond shape necessary for the pendant.

Keeping her hands joined, the Mother walks through the circles once more, approaching a basin of water at the far west point of the Atrium. She drops the amber in to cool it completely and solidify its shape.

The moment it enters the water, a resounding crack echoes through the room and Ophelia flinches. It’s not irregular for the amulets to have small cracks running in their interior, but she’s never heard one make a noise so loud and unforgiving. The Mother sets her fireproof gauntlets into the wall’s divots and, after a moment of surprise, pushes another tile to flush the amber down to the Priestesses of All Forms. She turns on her heel and returns to the circle.

Ophelia is dying to see what this pendant looks like, but the Priestesses don’t get to alter them after they’ve been made. The pendants are whatever the Form of the Good determines they should be for the person receiving them.

The Priestesses of All Forms will join it with the rose quartz crescent from the Priestesses of the Rose and the iron crescent from the Priestesses of the Scale. Then, they’ll give it a leather cord and send it to the Academy.

Ophelia taps her foot in impatience while the Mother completes her re-grounding walk at a torturously slow pace.