estdeus_innobis | (no subject)

Current Mood: exhausted

Entry tags:

hermia,
nanshe

(no subject)

One week later

Our life has become a happy haze of the sort that I had nearly forgotten.

Sleep comes in small snatches between times when Marie needs to eat - and sometimes even smaller, if Luc has a nightmare or simply decides that he does not wish to sleep when it is bedtime. And during the day, all is exhausting joy, with Luc chattering away and asking if Marie can come play now,

Valmont does what he can, and so does Alice, and Nu and Kate and others come to help as well, and yes, it is easier to handle the second time around! But still, there are moments of deep exhaustion for all of us.

Sometimes I cannot sleep at all, though, not even then, for sometimes I feel that I must look at Marie while she sleeps. I must watch every twitch of her tiny perfect fingers and every scrunch of her little mouth, and embed them all in my mind so that I might always remember them.

But other nights, I fall instantly to sleep. Like now.

[Open to Nanshe]

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Stone and water I am, ploughed earth and tree root. I am behind the lids of every eye that sleeps: man, woman, child, bird, beast. I am thin-stretched as gossamer and deep rooted as oak.

There is little I left. But sometimes something of that I catches on a memory in a dream, and I shimmer briefly into something like the thing I was. A shadow on stone, a reflection on trembling water.

The dream is all water, and I lap against the shore. The dreamer is here, and I rise up out of sea foam (http://alisonamazed.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/set-6052180-vnno1oxp3rg8sbwt1vvcqw-l1.jpg?w=990) like something she remembers. Once, once.

In my dream, I am at the water's edge. A broad ocean, of the kind that I have never seen in the waking world, but have only read about.

And seen a few times, in dreams.

I smell the salt-fresh air, hear the call of gulls, feel tiny waves lap against my bare feet. The water is warm, as warm as the summer evening, as warm as the touch of another person's hand on mine.

And then with a rush, there is a person - a woman all made of water and starlight and moonlight. A shiver runs through me - a shiver that is both very familiar, and one that I have not felt in quite some time.

In an instant, my mind is more awake than it has been in months, even though I know that I still dream.

"Kyria," I whisper.

How can it be?

"Kyria."

I feel the waters tug into a clearer shape, more edges. I was called that, once.

"Once... Hermia." I say her name as I remember it, voice a hiss of foam on sand. "Once I was... But no more." The waters coalesce, and I feel pebbles beneath my feet, and I step out of the water onto the sand. The moonlight shines through me. "I am...not I, now. I am...Excolo. Yet here I am." I wonder why.

She steps forward, and the sand takes shape beneath her feet in a thousand shining pebbles. I move into the moonlight mist - and only when I step closer do I realize that it is shining through her. She is made of water and light, but she makes the world more solid around her. More real.

"Here you are," I repeat, a smile of wonder rising to my lips. "How are you here? I did not think that you could still speak, but I have felt your presence." So many times, through the last three years. The tiniest hint of power, the tiniest shining thread in the corner of my vision, reminding me of that strange dream day. "Are you - are you well?"

"I am well. You... stirred me," I say, after a moment's reflection. I remember so much about Hermia, but those memories are dispersed throughout me, hard to catch at. I remember our friendship, but I cannot for the moment pluck out the parts of it. "We are connected, you and I. Because..." I reach out with a watery hand and touch her skin. I watch my shape become more solid. "Because you helped me become this." I smile at her. "Tell me how things are with you." I feel her hand, and - "you have had another child." I can feel it in her, new motherhood.

Nanshe wraps her hand around mine - the moonlight turns to water, and then to warmth that I can feel, and that I can close my hand around in return.

"Marie," I confirm, my smile growing brighter. "She was born a week ago, and she is perfect. Her brother wishes that she could run around and play, and we all wish that she would sleep more, but she is an absolute marvel, and the most wonderful thing in the world. And she lives in a safer town," I add, "because of what you have given us."

Safer, but not safe. Nothing in Excolo can truly be safe, not even in our sunlit garden, not even here in a dream with the lady who once ruled all dreams. But it is better than it once was, and everything around us is touched by divinity.

"Thank you for coming, Kyria. I am honored to have this kind of bond with you."

I feel a smile rise up from within me, like the moon coming out from behind a cloud.

"I am glad for you, Hermia," I say. "I cannot watch over you any longer, but I am with you always, now."

The sea roars softly behind us. I sigh softly, a long sound, as I half-remember many things past... and let them go.

"There is danger coming," I say. "I sense it. The thing we have all feared." Looking out to sea, I see a lighthouse, black against the sky, a winking red light at the top. I know it is not a lighthouse. "I cannot stop it. But..." I gather my thoughts together as hard as I can, bring myself into this moment, because I need to be able to remember. "But you can use me to help you stop it."

Nanshe turns to look across the water, and there is a lighthouse there now - a lighthouse that is not a lighthouse, that is so dark that it swallows up light instead of giving it off, and she tells me that there is more danger coming.

I want to run. I want to swim out to sea, far away from all of the strife. I want to take Valmont and Alice and Luc and Marie - my little Marie, so new to the world! - and wrap them all up so that nothing can harm them.

But I cannot. I never can. Even if it were possible to do so, I would not.

And I think there was a part of me that could feel this coming. Something not right about Excolo, something in the Tower that was even more wrong than usual. Something that I must stop, if there is any way for me to do so.

So I turn back to Nanshe and hold her hand tightly, and ask, "What must I do?"

Her fingers are warm in mine. Her faith makes me more solid, for a time.

"Remember... the town motto," I say to her, dragging the memory up from out of me - or is it from her? A memory of the library. Est deus in nobis. "I don't just have to be in the land, in the stone and water." I put my free hand on her chest, over her heart. "You are Excolo too. All of you who love it."

"Est deus in nobis," I whisper. It feels like a prayer as I say it - but then, what else would it be, when one is speaking to a goddess? I listen hard, with both my hands wrapped around hers, one holding her tight so that she will not float away, and the other pressing close against my chest. I feel her hand growing stronger, more real, as she touches my heart, and I keep my hand close against hers. We draw strength from each other, here in this strange middle space on the shore between land and sea.

"Do you mean…" My heart beats quickly, even though I am asleep and dreaming. She must feel it too… "Do you mean that I must put some of your divinity into…us? Into the people of Excolo? How can I do that, Kyria?"

Hermia flutters with excitement, and I smile at her. This last gift I can give my town.

"Do you mean that I must put some of your divinity into…us? Into the people of Excolo? How can I do that, Kyria?"

"Yes," I say. "I can be in all of you - all of you who have had faith in me... or faith in our town," because now it is much the same thing, I think. I am become Excolo, its soil and roots and sun and shade. "I cannot tell you how it can be done," I add, "because... I have forgotten so much of myself, and the past, since I was changed... But if you call me, I will come." I stretch out my hand, and in it forms an old sigil of mine, a pelican. I pin it to Hermia's breast in the form of a brooch (http://cdn.supadupa.me/shop/14943/images/1304974/pelicanbroochfront_grande.jpg?1384960598).

"That will be with you when you wake," I say. "It is not just a sign, but a symbol. Use it as you see fit. You have enough power in you, now, to harness mine to your will."

"The pelican in her piety," I murmur, as Nanshe pins the brooch on me. An old story: a mother pelican who fed her children by wounding herself. An old symbol: of service, of sacrifice.

The brooch feels solid and warm under my hand - more solid than my hand itself -and I can feel the Power running through it. "I will use it well, Kyria," I whisper. "I swear. I will do what I can on my own, to draw you out. To get others' help so that we can draw you out."

My mind is already racing. Syl. I must speak to Syl - she helped me the last time, and her magic connects more easily to the earth than mine does. Nanse-kam. All of the faithful at the abbey. Everyone who can do even the slightest bit of magic. The task is immense, and when I wake, I am certain that I will feel every bit of fear that I should at the thought of trying to work such ambitious magic.

But for now, Nanshe's closeness comforts me, like the warmth of the sun and the cool of the sea beneath my feet. My voice is almost steady when I ask, "How much time do we have, before the task must be done?"

I look out over the water, at the dark lighthouse, its dim red light. I turn back to Hermia.

"Soon," I say carefully. "How soon I am not sure... But before the turning of the next season." I take both her hands in mine, clasping the brooch between us. "Make sure there are people left to gather the harvest, Hermia," I say urgently, thinking of the town laid waste, its fields of crops ripening then rotting. "Because if Excolo falls, so too will the world."

"The harvest," I repeat. Two months, or a little more. Not much time, but it will have to be enough. "I will do it. I swear."

There is a lighthouse, far out at sea. The light is red, dull, angry. But Nanshe and I are safe here in the blue water, under the blue sky…

This is the battle. This is the dream that we all had that long-ago summer when I first arrived, about the red city and the blue. We who chose blue - we must work together once more.

I wrap my hands tightly around Nanshe's, feeling their warmth and the solidity of the brooch that she has given me.

"I will not let Excolo fall."

The words stagger me even as I speak them. Who am I to say that I will not let the town fall - that I will not let the world fall?

But what town is like Excolo, with a goddess woven into its stones and streams and buildings? What other town might have a chance of standing against the red darkness? And I did not claim this power for myself - I am simply the person who happens to be here right now. The messenger.

"I will do it," I say again, holding Nanshe's hands in mine.

Edited 2013-12-11 22:30 (UTC)

"I know you will," I say to Hermia gravely. "You, and others like you. You will all for a little while be my priests." I lean forward and kiss her gently on the lips; a last blessing, for I know I will not see her again. "Goodbye, Hermia. I'm glad we had this last chance to speak."

I feel the seafoam of my body begin to drift apart, bubbles breaking on the shore. Dawn breaks over the water, and the sea rolls as I

d i s s i p a t e

"There will always be those who serve you." I look up into Nanshe's eyes, and it feels as if I am falling into the blue of the ocean and sky all at once. "And we will always remember."

Her lips and breath touch mine in a soft kiss. It makes me smile despite everything, for to be kissed by a goddess must bring joy even in the midst of grief and sober duty.

"Goodbye, Nanshe," I whisper. I dare to use her name, this once.

This last.

For then she is gone, nothing but seafoam. Salt lingers on my lips from her last kiss, mingling with the salt from the tears that are already slipping down my cheeks.

When my eyes open, the sun is rising, and I have work to do.

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