☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות
"The mouth was open / stretched wide in a call or howl / (there was no tongue) / of agony, ultimate / command or simple famine. / The canine teeth ranged back / into the throat and vanished. / The mouth was filled with darkness. / The darkness in the open mouth / uttered itself, pushing / aside the light."
"The mouth was open / stretched wide in a call or howl / (there was no tongue) / of agony, ultimate / command or simple famine. / The canine teeth ranged back / into the throat and vanished. / The mouth was filled with darkness. / The darkness in the open mouth / uttered itself, pushing / aside the light."
The fire spreads slowly. I breathe in woodsmoke; small embers are already rising from the flame. Ishak drapes a blanket across my shoulders, and I move close enough to him to touch our shoulders, though I do not look at him at all.
When I ask him my question, I feel him look at me, though I don’t look back. “Does it matter? We’ll come here in the spring, and the season after that, and on until we’re ashes dancing on the desert wind.” It isn’t an answer. I wait. He flicks the tip of a blanket at me, and I finally look at him, and it is only then that he answers me.
Ishak says no. Of course he does. I already knew that he would, before I even asked the question. That did not stop me from asking it regardless. I already know that we will be back in the spring, too, just as he says – but I asked the question anyways.
“I don’t know,” I say, finally. “I’m not Pilate, or Adonai – I don’t need to show devotion, I suppose.” And that’s all it really is: an elaborately-crafted show. I might have been more devoted, when I was younger. (It was always self-interested.) Before the gods appeared. I remember, as a child, that I would crawl out of bed late at night, when everyone else was asleep, and I could no longer even hear the servants scuttling around in the hall, and I would light candles and incense that I snuck from morning worship services. I would light them, watch the smoke rise, and pray feverishly to Solis to make me whole, make me whole, please; please, just fix me, please, I only want to be normal. I knew, by then, that nothing could fix me – short of divine intervention, I hoped.
Most of my siblings begged to be the most special. I had already given up on that; I only longed to be ordinary.
Of course: Solis never granted that request, like he never granted so many requests. If he never appeared, I might have been able to accept it; if I never had proof of his existence, of his mind, of his intent, his silence would have been a simple quirk of the divine.
I never loathed him, before he appeared. I still don’t. I’m not sure that I can loathe anything.
I no longer saw the point in praying, after the gods appeared. That revelation – if you can call it that – was as good as an answer.
And then there was Raum. And now there is my family. My dead parents. My dead sister. My near-dead brother. Are we not Ieshans, the most religious family in Solterra?
(I am not sure how many of my siblings are faithful. Perhaps that is why he has never turned his gaze on us, in all the time that I have known that he is awake.)
“I don’t expect a response,” I say, finally. “I wonder, though, if there would be repercussions if we don’t come.”
Solis is a wrathful, avenging god. All flame and gold. Silence might provoke more of a response from him than depthless offerings – but I can only imagine that response would be an unkind one, and I am not sure how much unkindness my family can take.
@Ishak || is this coherent? who knows. || atwood, "projected slide of an unknown soldier"
When I ask him my question, I feel him look at me, though I don’t look back. “Does it matter? We’ll come here in the spring, and the season after that, and on until we’re ashes dancing on the desert wind.” It isn’t an answer. I wait. He flicks the tip of a blanket at me, and I finally look at him, and it is only then that he answers me.
Ishak says no. Of course he does. I already knew that he would, before I even asked the question. That did not stop me from asking it regardless. I already know that we will be back in the spring, too, just as he says – but I asked the question anyways.
“I don’t know,” I say, finally. “I’m not Pilate, or Adonai – I don’t need to show devotion, I suppose.” And that’s all it really is: an elaborately-crafted show. I might have been more devoted, when I was younger. (It was always self-interested.) Before the gods appeared. I remember, as a child, that I would crawl out of bed late at night, when everyone else was asleep, and I could no longer even hear the servants scuttling around in the hall, and I would light candles and incense that I snuck from morning worship services. I would light them, watch the smoke rise, and pray feverishly to Solis to make me whole, make me whole, please; please, just fix me, please, I only want to be normal. I knew, by then, that nothing could fix me – short of divine intervention, I hoped.
Most of my siblings begged to be the most special. I had already given up on that; I only longed to be ordinary.
Of course: Solis never granted that request, like he never granted so many requests. If he never appeared, I might have been able to accept it; if I never had proof of his existence, of his mind, of his intent, his silence would have been a simple quirk of the divine.
I never loathed him, before he appeared. I still don’t. I’m not sure that I can loathe anything.
I no longer saw the point in praying, after the gods appeared. That revelation – if you can call it that – was as good as an answer.
And then there was Raum. And now there is my family. My dead parents. My dead sister. My near-dead brother. Are we not Ieshans, the most religious family in Solterra?
(I am not sure how many of my siblings are faithful. Perhaps that is why he has never turned his gaze on us, in all the time that I have known that he is awake.)
“I don’t expect a response,” I say, finally. “I wonder, though, if there would be repercussions if we don’t come.”
Solis is a wrathful, avenging god. All flame and gold. Silence might provoke more of a response from him than depthless offerings – but I can only imagine that response would be an unkind one, and I am not sure how much unkindness my family can take.
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HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
