Ollune Marker of the passing for a shoal of Freyari, Cirrane — the one whose near word is what the shoal sends across the shear at a passing

Vellire

ollune
cirrane
freyari
vantine-system
federation-of-sentient-beings
star-rangers
near-word
far-word
author
non-humanoid
civilian
histories-in-their-own-voices

Vellire is an Ollune of Freyari, the band of habitable air around Cirrane, and the person in their shoal whose near word is what the shoal sends across the shear at a passing. The people's page gives the office its ground without naming it: everything between two shoals is settled in the hours they are within near-word range or waits for the next passing, and Ollune agreement-drafting practice, the discipline of writing terms that hold across parties who cannot confer, is the one thing Cirrane contributes to the Federation's compact procedure. For Vellire's shoal the terms are Vellire's mark. The record holds one account of theirs, The Thing That Did Not Fall: the history of the Ollune, cried in the far word at the flank of a Star Rangers courier hull through one passing, taken by the hull's pressure instruments and rendered by the Archive's translation desk, with the one near word Vellire composed at the same flank, which says the far word was theirs and on what terms it is to be read.

The name is the record's rendering of the far-word call by which the shoal calls them, as Ilyare's is, spelled as the survey's instruments render a low-frequency pressure sound into something a human can say. The far word carries no speaker's identity, so the call is a name only in the sense that everyone in the band knows whom it means; what identifies Vellire to the people who hold them is the near word, the chemical signature of their own body, which the record cannot reproduce. The pronoun is the people's page's own usage of an Ollune: they.

Known History

Born in Freyari, in a shoal of a band the record does not name, and held unconscious by others every night since, as every Ollune alive has been. The Federation record lists the shoal by depth, bearing and phase from the Long Eye, and the Archive does not reproduce the notation.
Marker of the passing for that shoal, for some number of passings the record does not count. The account says what the office is for: a mark for a passing says what is to be done, by when in the drift, what is to be done if it cannot be, and what is to be done if nothing is heard, and the last is the part the Ollune are known for. How the shoal comes to what Vellire marks, the account declines to give in the far word, and the record has not established it.
Answered the Survey Archive's asking, carried into Freyari through the Federation record by a Star Rangers courier, for the history of the Ollune by one of them. Cried it at the courier hull's flank through one passing, with the band coming in over them at three places the desk marks and does not render, and composed one near word at the same flank in the latter part of the passing, carried out by the courier and held in the Archive's general collection as the object it is. The passing's year is not fixed by the record and Vellire gave it in the people's notation, which the Archive does not convert.
Not one of the handful of Ollune who travel. Vellire has never been in a Federation pressure hull and has never been set down, and the account speaks of both from what carriers have told them.
The second Ollune individual the record names.

The Work

A passing is the window, sometimes only hours long, in which two shoals in adjacent bands are within near-word range before the shear carries them apart for years. The far word reaches the other shoal at any time, and binds nothing; so what one shoal agrees with another exists only as a near word, composed slowly at a flank by consent, readable by anyone close to it, and attributable to the body that made it. The account gives Vellire's part plainly: the people they are marking to cannot ask what was meant, since they will not be there, so a mark for a passing is drafted for the silence after it, and the clause the Ollune put on everything that goes to a party who cannot answer inside the passing is the one the Federation record's readers know from Cirrane, keep this until an answer can be carried back.

The account also says what the office cannot tell. A mark that holds, Vellire says, is not longer or finer than one that does not; the difference is in whether it was true when it was made, nothing in the mark can show that, and only the next passing can. It is the one offence the Ollune rank as grave, a false near word, seen from inside the office that consists of near words, and the account treats it as a fact about the work rather than a danger to the worker.

What Vellire Cannot Do

Be held to anything they have cried, the history included, and the account says so first and last. Keep an agreement confidential, or see why anyone would. Set anything down, or rest unless carried. Reach the shoal along their own band, whose far word arrives inside a breath and whose near word never will. Name a place without saying when they will be at it. Be in the Federation assembly's room, or in any room: the account answers the standing item that the Ollune delegate is not in the room by saying that no Ollune has ever been in one, and that the Ollune settle things with people they cannot reach as a matter of course.

Character Notes

The account shows a drafter who gives the form before the history and keeps the two channels apart in the telling, the way the people's page says every Ollune does without needing it explained: the far word spent freely, with boasts and guesses marked as such and given in company, and the near word kept short and composed late. Vellire turns several of the record's own lines in the far word and binds themself to none of the turns: a hold is a thing the Ollune are and not a thing they are proud of; the first weeks of contact were not a failure of Ollune instruments, since the band saw the falling thing and said so at once; the room the Ollune are not in is no different from the shoal along their own band they will never reach. They decline, in the far word, to say which shoal made the first carried mark or marked membership first, since the far word has it several ways and the desk would write down whichever they chose. The one place they will not guess is whether an answer has ever been carried back to a Cirrane mark in the assembly, and they say why: guessing is what the far word is for, and they would rather not spend it there.

The quiet joke the account keeps is the band's own: the far word says the first hold was eight, and says it was thirty, and gives three bearings that cannot all be the same place, and Vellire has said all of it themself on nights when the band wanted something to say. The account ends on the thing of the Archive's that the drafter most wants understood, that a rendering kept where nothing lifts it costs no body an hour of warmth, and finds the Ollune already had a word for it, the old gentle one first said of a body the hold caught on its way down.

What the Record Does Not Carry

Vellire's age, and the span of an Ollune life, neither stated anywhere. The shoal's name, if a shoal has a name that is not an appointment, and its band. The hold's members. How the shoal arrives at what Vellire marks for it, which the account declines to give and the record has not established. The passing's year, and the courier's name and corps, which the account gives by role only, one who goes where the air ends. Whether Vellire has ever marked to Ilyare's shoal, or to any shoal the record names; the record names no other. Whether Vellire has ever dealt with a Krenyi. Any chapter. The Ollune language beyond the handful of words the record renders, and the far-word call itself, which nothing recorded. The body, beyond what the people's page gives every Ollune: a broad, low, translucent gas envelope several metres across with a dark upper hide, a ring of filter-vanes beneath its rim and fine tendrils hanging from its centre; the account says nothing of Vellire's size, lean or patching, and the record has no portrait on file.