khier
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.
