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A grin?
“Reminds me of when your father and I came out together!” Jaxlim shouted at Eshonai over the stormwinds. “We’d decided not to leave it to fate, where one of us might be taken and the other not! I still remember the strange feelings of passion when I first changed. You’re too afraid of that, Eshonai! I do want grandchildren, you realize.”
“Do we have to talk about this now?” Eshonai asked. “Hold that stone. Adopt the new form! Think about it, not mateform.”
Wouldn’t that be an embarrassment.
“The lifespren aren’t interested in someone my age,” her mother said. “It simply feels nice to be out here again! I’d been beginning to think I would waste away!”
Together they huddled against the rock, Eshonai using her shield as an improvised roof to block the rain. She wasn’t certain how long it would take the transformation to begin. Eshonai herself had only adopted a new form once, as a child—when her father had helped her adopt workform, since the time of changes had come to her.
Children needed no form, and were vibrant without one—but if they didn’t adopt a form upon puberty in their seventh or eighth year, they would be trapped in dullform instead. That form was, essentially, an inferior version of mateform.
Today, the storm stretched long, and Eshonai’s arm began to ache from holding the shield in place. “Anything?” she asked of her mother.
“Not yet! I don’t know the proper mindset.”
“Attune a bold rhythm!” Eshonai said. That was what Venli had told them. “Confidence or Excitement!”
“I’m trying! I—”
Whatever else her mother said was lost in the sound of thunder washing across them, vibrating the very stones, making Eshonai’s teeth chatter. Or perhaps that was the cold. Normally chill weather didn’t bother her—workform was well suited to it—but the icy rainwater had leaked through her oiled coat, sneaking down along her spine.
She attuned Resolve, keeping the shield in place. She would protect her mother. Jaxlim often complained that Eshonai was unreliable, prone to fancy, but that wasn’t true. Her exploration was difficult work. It was valuable work. She wasn’t unreliable or lazy.
Let her mother see this. Eshonai holding her shield in defiance of the rain—in defiance of the Rider of Storms himself. Holding her mother close, warming her. Not weak. Solid. Dependable. Determined.
The gemstone in her mother’s hands began to glow brighter. Finally, Eshonai thought, shifting to give her mother more space to enact the transformation, the recasting of her soul, the ultimate connection between listener and Roshar itself.
Eshonai shouldn’t have been surprised when the light burst from the gemstone and was absorbed—like water rushing to fill an empty vessel—into her own gemheart. Yet she was. Eshonai gasped, the rhythms disrupting and vanishing—all but one, an overwhelming sound she’d never heard before. A stately, steady tone. Not a rhythm. A pure note.
Proud, louder than the thunder. The sound became everything to her as her previous spren—a tiny gravitationspren—was ejected from her gemheart.
The pure tone of Honor pounding in her ears, she dropped the shield—which flew away into the dark sky. She wasn’t supposed to have been taken, but in the moment she didn’t care. This transformation was wonderful. In it, a vital piece of the listeners returned to her.
They needed more than they had. They needed this.
This … this was right. She embraced the change.
While it happened, it seemed to her that all of Roshar paused to sing Honor’s long-lost note.
* * *
Eshonai came to, lying in a puddle of rainwater cloudy with crem. A single rainspren undulated beside her, its form rippling and its eye staring straight upward toward the clouds, little feet curling and uncurling.
She sat up and surveyed her tattered clothing. Her mother had left Eshonai at some point during the storm, shouting that she needed to get under cover. Eshonai had been too absorbed by the tone and the new transformation to go with her.
She held up her hand and found the fingers thick, meaty, with carapace as grand as human armor along the back of the hand and up the arm. It covered her entire body, from her feet up to her head. No hairstrands. Simply a solid piece of carapace.
The change had shredded her shirt and coat, leaving only her skirt—and that had snapped at the waist, so it barely hung on her body. She stood up, and even that simple act felt different than it had before. She was propelled to her feet by unexpected strength. She stumbled, then gasped, attuning Awe.
“Eshonai!” an unfamiliar voice said.
She frowned as a monstrous figure in reddish-orange carapace stepped over some rubble from the highstorm. He had tied his wrap on awkwardly, plainly having suffered a similar disrobing. She attuned Amusement, though it didn’t look silly. It seemed impossible that such a dynamic, muscular figure could ever look silly. She wished there were a rhythm more majestic than Awe. Was that what she looked like too?
“Eshonai,” the malen said with his deep voice. “Can you believe this? I feel like I could leap up and touch the clouds!”
She didn’t recognize the voice … but that pattern of marbled skin was familiar. And the features, though now covered by a carapace skullcap, were reminiscent of …
“Thude?” she said, then gasped again. “My voice!”
“I know,” he said. “If you’ve ever wished to sing the low tones, Eshonai, it seems we’ve found the perfect form for it!”
She searched around to see several other listeners in powerful armor standing and attuning Awe. There were a good dozen of them. Though Venli had provided around two dozen gemstones, it seemed not all of the volunteers had taken to the new form. Unsurprising. It would take them time and practice to determine the proper mindset.
“Were you overwhelmed too?” Dianil said, striding over. Her voice was as deep as Eshonai’s now, but that curl of black marbling along her brow was distinctive. “I felt an overpowering need to stand in the storm basking in the tone.”
“There are songs of those who first adopted workform,” Eshonai said. “I believe they mention a similar experience: an outpouring of power, an amazing tone that belonged purely to Cultivation.”
“The tones of Roshar,” Thude said, “welcoming us home.”
The twelve of them gathered, and though she knew some better than others, there seemed to be an instant … connection between them. A comradery. They took turns jumping, seeing who could get the highest, singing to Joy, as silly as a bunch of children with a new toy. Eshonai hefted a rock and hurled it, then watched it soar an incredible distance. She even drew a gloryspren—with flowing tails and long wings.
As the others selected their own rocks to try beating her throw, she heard an incongruous sound. The drums? Yes, those were the battle drums. A raid was happening at the city.
The others gathered around her, humming to Confusion. An attack by one of the other families? Now?
Eshonai wanted to laugh.
“Are they insane?” Thude asked.
“They don’t know what we’ve done,” Eshonai said, looking around at the flat expanse of rock outside the city where they’d engaged the highstorm. Many listeners were only now making their way out of the sheltered cracks in the ground.
