Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work--the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside--the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once.
S
ome days, a sense of deja vu overcomes Khier when going about mundane tasks. He might be eating, or preparing for bed, or walking down he street when a scent, or sight, or shadow transports him from the present to the past. He supposes the experience does not belong to him, but to Chara. One day, in the market, they had passed by a fruit vendor. She had stopped him. Those! Those are my favorite! and Khier purchased a basket of pomegranates.
He had hated the flavor, and the texture of the seeds on his tongue. They were sticking between his teeth, which he found irritable and overall unpleasant. But Chara—who feels, sometimes, through him—could not have been more pleased. Khier, why do you not find more things like pomegranates in your life to love?
When she asked him, he could not think of his favorite fruit. On St. Foxglove they had gruel more often than fresh produce, and his sense of taste had been numbed by it. There were other deck boys who, each night in the hammocks, would fantasize about the food they would find on the next island. Never Khier, who preferred bland foods. Never Khier.
Until Chara, who has an appetite for bold, exotic flavors. From where I was raised, she says to him now, as he examines the goods in the market of Delumine. Khier prefers the market of his hometown to that of the other Courts, even Denocte. It is humble, and quiet, and anyways—he feels at ease as he visits the early morning farmer’s market, and listens to Chara as she demands certain purchases. That honey! Oh, get that!
Khier laughs under his breath as he goes, resisting the urge to speak to her aloud. He pauses, using his height to stare over the heads of other citizens as they browse the wares. He is looking for something very specific, after placing the honey in the basket—
Yes. They are difficult to find, but a foreign salesmen has recently brought in a shipment of more exotic foods, from some tropical climate.
Fruit of the angels? Chara’s voice chimes excitedly. The amulet, resting at the hollow of his throat, nearly burns him as he cuts through the crowd. “I think they’re just called papayas, Chara,” Khier comments under his breath.
He knows the story, of course—he knows how she had once shared them with her mother, what seemed like an eternity ago. They had been a favorite between them, and Chara had told him it was her father who convinced the near-goddess the fruit could be better than ambrosia. Khier smiles but that smile disappears, suddenly, when he nears the stand to see the mare standing over the fruits.
Khier cannot remember a time when Chara had gone completely silent. She exists as a warmth in the back of his mind, a constant presence akin to light. She feels, to him, as the sun does on a late summer day. And for a moment, she conceals herself from him. She is there, loud and present and bright, and then—cold and empty and uncertain.
That’s my mother, she says, and Khier cannot find the words. She urges him forward and so he steps, but neither of them are prepared for the meeting. He stands beside her as if waiting for an opportunity to purchase the fruit.
He clears his throat from behind her. “Have you—have you ever heard them called the fruit of the angels?” Khier asks, shakily.
My father—my father called them that. A joke, because they weren’t the fruit of the gods.
Some days, the deja vu creates a life of its own. Some days, he cannot escape it, even if he had wanted to.
watch as I turn into God, watch as She turns into Me
It is the second time I find myself within Delumine’s borders, within their walls. I have moved on from the mountains, and the places below it that are no longer mine. I have moved on from the smoke-scented, fire-lit streets, the busy port, the familiar faces. They are no longer mine. They can never be mine, again.
I am not quite burning, but rather it is as though something has gaped open inside of me. Some hungry mouth, some aching emptiness, seeking to be filled. I am not sure it can ever be satiated.
I am not quite burning, because if I allow myself to burn I know that I will have lost. If I allow myself to burn, and to anger, and to fight, I go back to being the thing that the gods had made me. I go back to being an entity for nothing but hate and war. I have lost so many things already.
And yet, with every passing hour and every set and rise of the sun, I find less and less reason to continue on in the way that I have been. I think of all the deaths I have been party to, and all of the ones that have bloodied my hands. There is no poetry that can glorify the things that I have done. I think of the takin, on the mountain, that I had allowed to die.
Perhaps I have never truly changed, only wished that I have.
The market here is nothing as I am used to. The crowd is almost listless in its wandering, as they meander from stand to stand. It is too tranquil, and does not smell of spice and smoke but something floral, and sweet like honey, almost.
I have never had much of a sweet tooth. Perhaps that was part of my making; in being made to kill—to be good at killing, to nearly enjoy it—I have always preferred foods that were more savory than sweet. Foods that my teeth would rip and tear into, not ones that make me groan in pleasure. If I had to choose a favorite fruit, it would be pomegranates.
They were native to my homeland, and sour in a way that would sting behind my cheeks, and crunching on the seeds always sounded strangely to me like bones. I have not eaten a pomegranate in many years, though I had often found them being sold in Denocte’s market.
I am aching, and aching, when I find the stand selling the fruits I recognize so well. Pomegranates, the fruit of the dead, persimmons, the fruit of the gods, and papayas, the—
“Have you ever heard them called the fruit of the angels?”
I turn, sapphire sharp eyes cutting and bright, bright, bright, when they land upon the young man standing behind me. I am caught off guard, and every muscle in my body is tense in a way that ignites the magic in my bones, as the lioness in my veins rears her head. He is scarcely more than a boy, and somehow familiar. I don’t know what to think of him.
“Who are you? Where did you hear that?” Rezar had always called them the fruit of the angels, jokingly, as they were the sweetest things he had ever tasted, and the flesh smooth like cream. Heavenly, but not of the gods. This boy can’t possibly have known such a thing, and yet here he stands, using a phrase I have not heard since Rezar’s death. How?
Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work--the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside--the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once.
W
ho are you? Where did you hear that?
Khier wishes they had more time for forethought, for planning, because he finds himself aggressively underprepared to answer these questions. On top of that, Chara’s mother is terrifying.
Chara had told him Antiope had been a warrior-goddess—that she had been less mortal and more deity, like the Amazons of old. Khier had not understood what that meant then, but he does now; because when Antiope’s sapphire eyes bore into him, Khier feels beside himself.
Tell her, Chara demands. Tell her I’m here.
But Khier does not know what to say. He feels himself tongue-tied and instantly afraid. What if Antiope demands the amulet? What if she takes Chara from him? And all the while, Chara screams protests in his mind. No, no, no you have to tell her!
I will, Khier answers back. Just—just maybe not yet.
He smiles, but nervously. “A very good friend told me. I used to be a sailor, and we visited an island once. The people there told us the island fell from the sky, from a battle between gods, and entered the mortal realm—and anyways, there was a girl there, a girl who told me that is what her father used to call them.”
Khier wonders if reveals too much, too quickly. Delumine around them continues to flow, quietly; his nostrils fill with the odor of sweet, sweet fruit.
Chara, in the back of his mind, is near hysterics. That’s my mother! You have to tell her!
If I do—if I do—she’ll take you from me. I know it.
watch as I turn into God, watch as She turns into Me
His smile is almost-shy, and I think I am making him nervous but the lioness inside my bones won’t let me rest, and I cannot decide how to care. Am I already forgetting what it is, to not be something wild and unnatural? How easy it is to fall back into old habits. How easy it is to go back to the things I once knew.
I do not know the story he tells, of an island that fell from the sky, of a battle of gods. But a girl, a girl whose father called them the fruit of angels. It is almost too much of a coincidence, almost too much to overlook. Her Chara, her Rezar.
Who am I to say it is not a different daughter, a different father.
Who am I to say that I only tell myself this to make myself feel better. To only allow myself the relief of not having to think of more of what I have lost. (So much, so much).
Because of that, I’m not sure that I can tell him. Because of that, I think I must keep them close to my heart. He is just a boy, just a boy who can’t have ever possibly known my daughter, and that, maybe, makes it hurt more than it otherwise would. What would I have done, if he had?
The vendor barks something at us about “buy or move” and I turn back to him with ghosts gnawing on my bones and darkness leaking from me like ichor, or magic. I grasp a few of the papayas and bag them, and a single pomegranate, and pay the man from a purse tucked safely beneath my axe.
My edges are less like glass and more like stone when I push the back of gold and green skinned fruits at the young man. Not quite as sharp, not quite as cutting. Still hard, solid, rough. Echoing. “You should try them, if you haven’t yet,” I tell him. I say little else, as I move away from the stand, out of the way of the others trying to buy.
I am not hungry, but I am gripping the pomegranate for dear life. It’s outer shell is hard and unyielding to my hand, as I press it closely to my chest. Like I am trying to push it inside me. Like I am trying to replace my heart. Like it will mean something more.
I think that he is following me, but I do not stop until I reach the nearby gardens, and all their life like a deep sleep. I pass beneath a sprawling rose covered arch, and it is too quiet. I am buzzing, and roaring, and aching inside. “Who are you?” I ask him again, without turning.
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