#94 - As You Will

The winter this year had been short and light.  The snow was gone, except for grubby patches in the shadows of cliffs and under coniferous trees here and there.

The water of the Veil ran freely again, though icy and only the dedicate priestesses and priests meditated on the stones or platforms scattered throughout the whole Vale.

The elephants were beginning to  trek up from their Orangery and little Mwanga wasn’t so small any longer.  Didara and Jagunjagun were beginning to talk of going home and sending other ambassadors.  Innéans were talking about visiting the Elephants’ country.  They would have a faster way to sail home, it seemed, if they took ship all the way down the Innéthel to the sea, though it angled away from their continent.  Overland to that side of the land was still slower.  Perhaps when Mwanga was a full year old they would begin.

Ahrimaz came up the path, scrubbing his hair dry, tying it back with a lace after working with Rutaçyen all morning, since before sun-up.  He wore the priest’s robe comfortably now and paused at the Goddess tree to scatter a handful of seed for the birds and clear away an empty cage or two.  New ribbons fluttered from the branches and he smiled as he imagined people setting their prayers here, on the wind.

Most of his prayers went either to Lyrian herself, or in support of his doppleganger, lost in the Empire of another world.  Who knew if they helped?  Or hindered?  Only She knew.  For now it was enough to continue healing his own damaged soul.

His towel went onto the peg in the shed, hidden just off the path, where the empty bird cages were kept and cleaned before going down to the city to be re-filled with birds so that people could release them.  Some birds had been captured and released so many times they hopped into the cages in the square voluntarily.

He smiled again and picked up one of the rakes. And a basket of wood chips.  The paths were still muddy in spots and he cheerfully went to make up the path.

Once he would have thought that he would be screamingly bored if forced into the life of a priest but he found that once chosen, it was amazingly peaceful.  Sure, who had been clinging close to him for some reason these past days, lay in a patch of sunlight, panting, as he emptied his basket and raked.  Limyé would be up later to have luncheon with him at the waterfall and they would talk about how his book “Nature or Nurture: The Monster Within” was being received.

A class of children giggled by and he nodded at their greetings.  It is possible we need to set a brick or two here.  It is always muddy this time of year.

Several priestesses, staffs and rakes in hand passed him the other way, going out to begin building the new rock garden outside the Vale and he didn’t address them but everyone bowed.  It was very quiet.

The birds went still and Ahrimaz dropped his rake where he stood.  Someone is trying to die. He spun on his heel and ran, Sure on his heels, whistling for healers and assistance.  It was cold still and very practically, few people tried to give themselves to the Goddess this early in the spring.  Ever practical the Innéans, they didn’t want to be uncomfortable as they died.  He smirked to himself and ran faster.  She didn’t want this one dead, he could feel it.  This supplicant truly didn’t wish to die either.  It was the sense of ‘people will be better without me’ cry.

Ahrimaz dove into the pool in a flat, seeking dive, aware that the Vale behind him was suddenly full of urgency, his hands swept through the roiled up foam.  Nothing.  He burst to the surface, gasping with the shock of cold.  Sure had plunged into the water after him.  “Get away, dog!”

He went under again and kicked, feeling Sure set her teeth in his ankle even as he jarred a finger a stone, felt the pounding of the water on his back, on his head, he was dizzy, spinning, light-headed… there!  His hands locked in cloth and he dragged the would-be suicide to the surface.

He found himself clinging to the neck-cloth of gold just under his own face.  Hair draggled across his own face.  Him. Dressed as an Emperor, distraught, grieving, fighting to go under again.  Ahrimaz shook himself once, twice, until his eyes opened and locked, disbelieving, on his own face.   

“Whatever you have done,” Ahrimaz said to himself, “is forgiveable.”

Disorientation, a whirl of light and dark and he found himself standing in the water at the bottom of the Veil.  His priestly robes were gone.  In their place were the bedraggled and hampering court clothes of an Emperor.  His neck was sore, his lungs sore where he’d apparently managed to inhale some water.  Sure surged to the surface, coughing, barking and he gave her a boost toward the rocks behind the waterfall.

The Vale was changed.  There was only one meditation platform.  The rest was wild, as it had been when he was a boy.  There were no healers running to save him.  No mind priests or Imaryans.  He was alone, save for the dog who had followed him.  He was home.

He threw back his head and looked up the waterfall, splashing on his face like tears and would have howled but he knew… he knew that it would not help.  Goddess… ow. Scorch me. Scorch me. It will hurt no less.

Yolend, the Empress, screaming imprecations at him, came sliding down the muddy, untended path to splash her gaudy robes into the water, slosh up to him and begin slapping his face.

He flinched but let her hit him.  This Yolend was trained enough to hurt him but her strikes were open handed.   

“Excuse me, lady, I did not mean to flinch away.”  He turned his head back toward her.  “Please, strike again for I surely deserve it.”

She froze.  “Ahrimaz?”

“Yes.”

Sure scrambled out and around barking at the man coming down the hill who was dressed in a way the Empire hadn’t seen in a dozen decades.  He bore the chain of a Senator-Immaculate, the singular position under the Emperor.  “Ahrimaz, come out.  We can fix this.  You needn’t…” His voice faded as he took in how Yolend was looking at him, the white dog guarding.

“Sure.  Down, dog,” Ahrimaz said mildly and offered Yolend his hand. She took it as though picking up a venomous serpent, and they waded out to the shore.  He handed her up to the stocky man now standing on the edge.  When she was safely clear he followed her, looking down at ruined boots and silks and brocades on his body, loathing every stitch, mourning his homecoming.  Sure pressed against him, whining. He took a deep breath and went to his knees before the Sen-Immac and the Empress who both gazed at him, dumb.

“I am Ahrimaz Kenaçyen, once Emperor.  I…” He pulled open his sodden shirt exposing the brand on his chest, with the Flamen in the centre. He could feel his tears begin and could not stop them. “… I was away for a time.  You are obviously an exceptional man or Ahrimaz, from the other world, would not have appointed you. Knowing this world it is very likely that you shall have to execute me to let the good the other Ahrimaz has done continue. So be it. Do with me as you will.”

-         30    -

#93 - I Write My Gratitude

I write.  Thoughts wish to pour out of me but I find it hard to express what I am seeing and feeling.  Emotions of fear and anger and hatred are so much easier to spew.  Very much like mental and verbal cholera.

I am seeing everyone and everything outlined in this… glow… this… shine… I finally asked my priestly brother and he sat and gazed at me and past me, closed his eyes and prayed hard enough that flickers of fire danced before his brow, breathing deep and slow and then smiling just as slowly.

I forced myself to sit and watch and not shove him into a carpet and roll him about the floor beating on him to put out the flames.  He laughed out loud when I said that to him.  “What doesn’t glow for you?” he asked.

The questions.  Goddess they never ask the easy ones.  Once I should have wanted to shake the sacred out of him… shake the fool who would be so in tune with his God that he… he would have let me shake him.  It wouldn’t have touched him no matter how loud I raved or foamed into his face.  That’s what I am feeling.

Even as I stand aghast and in awe of the whole world… don’t get me started on babies, kittens, puppies… young things… I am bursting into smiles and tears just looking at them.  Didara has had her calf… I am using this enormous baby’s back as a desk and she insists on rumbling laughter at me – in her baby pitch – every time she catches me indulging, watching her sacredness! The elephants hear this lightness I see as sound.  Fascinating.

I was with Didara when she gave birth.  How can something so big and so small at the same time emerge from an elephant that looks as uncomfortable as any female birthing?  Female.  Birthing.  I am no longer terrified.  The blood and the fluids no longer terrify me, no longer make me think of my own mother’s dissolving body on the floor of a dungeon.  My mother loved me and loves me and is either with the Gods, both male and female, or is off to another life, another creation.  There is more to the world than I can imagine, and I have a very fertile imagination, especially now.

How do I deserve this?  I am writing in the Elephant’s Orangery which is what this once riding hall is now being called.  There are more animals and children playing around me than I had ever thought to allow, ever in my life.  The cat.  The dogs.  The horse who is currently slobbering in my hair.  The elephants who are not animals but people, or they are as much people as I am an animal.  I finally understand that.

Limyé, my constant presence, is writing his own book, as I write mine.  The family are off working… Pelahir has taken his does and his stags and has gone off to meet the migration as it comes around the continent.  He doesn’t like being sedentary, but he likes being part of the family, so he splits his time.  I wonder how he does, how he is, in my world.  Has our paladin Ahrimaz saved him?  Held himself together to unravel the evil I did?  I hope so.

Teel shall be coming to question me about his next story idea.  I fear they have mined out all my odd ideas and innovations from my Empire, at least I cannot seem to come up with anything much new lately, as I watch people’s souls glow through their skins.  Arnziel just fell off his chair when I answered him.  “I even see rocks glowing, step-brother.”  Rocks.  I think the only thing I can look at without seeing its life, its blessedness is clear air and I’m starting to wonder about that.

The high priestess Mara says that I need to come to the Vale full time as the weather wanes towards the next winter.  This fall has been very warm.  Aeono the God has a fever and the world sweats.

My daughter is home from her studies and I am astonished at her skill with people.  She does not use truth-telling as a bludgeon, but a scalpel.  She smiles at me quite a bit.

I… am concerned about being a Lyrian priest full time.

I do not think I have the balance yet.  I have achieved a point where I will not punish my poor, suffering body for its existence and for its emotions.  But I don’t know how long that peace will last.  Who knows when the wheel of my thoughts will spin and I fall into hell once more?  Mara says that hell gets less hellish every time around.  I shall have to believe her.

Tomorrow.  Tomorrow I will put on the robe and go barefoot to Lyrian’s Vale and do the chores and listen to the supplicants who find me.  Feed the birds.  Rake the paths.

Thank you.  My gratitude for such peace is much bigger than my heart can hold.  Thank you.

#92 - Out of the Darkness

“You are hiding in my dark, my son.”

I am.

I am?  But I just barely know you, and I am healing and I’m allowing them to look after me.

“You are lying in the childhood bed with soft bands upon your arms to stop you tearing at yourself with your teeth because you are screaming that all you deserve is pain.  This is part of your healing.”

I am?

I don’t deserve pain.  I don’t think I do.  I don’t believe I do.

“Then you need to come back to your body that is thrashing and writhing and attempting to do itself an injury.”

My conscience.  But I’m just making it worse, being so awful.  Someone has to care for me and I have to add that guilt onto my former guilt and it becomes a never ending spiral until I manage to die.

“To stop that, you have to reach into yourself, my son, and forgive yourself.  The others have already forgiven you, for all that you cannot see or bear it.  This is your worst crisis. You must forgive yourself.”

I.

The silence here is wilder than any roaring, raging star.  Where Aeono burns and flings Himself into the dark, She is a vaster deep than even He can fill.  They can fill?  My Gods what an idea.  What if our Goddess is One and the Gods many?

I am distracting myself from the main point.  The point is. The point is.  The point is…

Do I have the strength, the mercy, the capacity to forgive myself?

I see the little boy playing with his toys, the carved and painted soldiers and dragons and horses, singing to himself.  I see the old Monster watching. Then I see him deliberately and viciously smashing the child’s toys, paying particular attention to the ones he loved most.  I see him punching a much younger Kinourae because the little boy loved him.  I am angry for the child.  I wish to protect him but I am helpless.

“You at not helpless.  You are that child.  Forgive him for raging at his father until the old man knocks him unconscious.  The old man set up the whole scene to lead to that beating.  You love yourself, your younger self.  You no longer have to hate him for being a victim.”

Every abused child begins to hate themselves because they come to believe they are somehow responsible for their pain.  Every abused child begins to hate others for not saving them. Do I need to hate other people any longer?  Do I need to hate myself?

I was innocent.  I made myself culpable.  No.  He made me culpable in my own destruction.  I… I want to go back to being innocent of hurting people.

“You may.  Listen to the elephant singing to her child.  Let her joy rumble through your soul.  Let Limyé’s medications heal the scars in your mind as well as in your brain.  Let the lovers of a great soul show you how to be like him.  Let them love you.  I cannot say it will not hurt but I know you.  In all your incarnations in all the worlds.  You are capable of this.”

Am I? I am, am I?  Goddess I’m tired.

“I understand.  If you choose to rest, you may.  If you choose to go on, you may do that also.  I cherish either decision, for you reflect your world to me in your own unique way.  There is no other soul like you, however similar all the other Ahrimaz’s, all the other hateful Emperors, are.  You can be the one who healed.

I can hear Didara rumbling to her calf… and her calf to her.  It’s like floating on sound.  I can bear Pelahir and Yolend holding me.  I can bear his father and his mother holding me.  It no longer hurts.

I can be the one who heals?  Or one of the ones who heals?  But it is up to me.  I must choose.

I choose.  I choose.

Yes.

**

Ahrimaz opened his eyes to a blazing mid-day, sun pouring into the green child’s room.  He looked down at the bloodstained bandages restraining his arms and felt the cotton in his mouth.

He felt terrible.  His whole body hurt.

He felt wonderful.  He didn’t have to do this any longer.

Yolend sat up from where she’d laid down on the sofa and looked at him.

She was beautiful, even as tired as she was.  Her soul shone almost brighter than he could stand. The wash stand and basin next to her was somehow just as bright and just as shining.  It was glorious.  It was real.  It wasn’t a dream.  It was the dream of the divine, who could not interact with their own worlds, without help.  Everything shone.

Even with the bite-gag in his mouth, he smiled.

Limyé got up from the chair by the door and came over to check him, fingers on his neck.  “Is your paroxysm over?” He asked, softly.

Ahrimaz managed a sore-muscled nod and when Limyé removed the gag and he could feel the rawness inside his own mouth and the taste of blood on his tongue he just started to laugh because it was so wonderful that he could.  “It’s so real.  It’s so solid.”

His voice and his laughter was a rasping whisper but Limyé smiled back and gave him water, that was in itself miraculous.

91 - Quivering On the Edge

Ahrimaz couldn’t make himself move.  His eyes followed the razor, then blinked shut as Yolend’s hands began kneading the insides of his thighs.  He was so hard he ached.  He felt the edge of the razor and the sliding, almost melting sensation as Pelahir drew it gently over his chest.  He couldn’t look, desperately wanting the stinging of hair-fine cuts. 

Then there was a burning smack across his chest, across one of his nipples and he caught his breath.  Had Pel actually cut him?  He couldn’t look.  He had to look… no, just smacked him with the flat or the back of the blade. He clenched his eyes shut again.

He sank into the sensation and Yolend ran her lotion covered hands over his whole groin, her touch hot as fire and he could feel Aeono’s spark roaring up in him, and with it… with it… behind it, under it… Her flood.

He caught his lip in his teeth and clamped down on his feelings.  He could come… he needed to.  He had to.  He couldn’t. 

As he tightened up, quivering, another slashing near-pain and he yelped and relaxed.  Pel had swiped the back of the razor hard over one of his nipples.  “Let us do as we will, you,” Pel said again and Yolend started humming.

The damned Yhom were always singing, humming, whistling, clicking their fingers or lips or teeth.  Something.  It seemed as though they were never, ever still.  But this hum was so deep he could feel it in her fingers, her palms her fingertips… like the sound the elephants made.

He couldn’t help it, he relaxed a little more, the sound shaking him loose from his clinging.  His whole chest was shaved and Pel gently set the razor into the foam on his abdomen, the line of hair he had, like a fawn, down his centre.

“P…p….p… oh Gods!  Please!”  He nearly screamed the word, hating himself for begging, his plea an echo of what he did in hatred to the man in the other world.  As Pelahir slowly, carefully began shaving down toward his navel he felt the hot tracks of tears on his face and it just added to his confusion.  Was this enough pain?  Would they allow him to come?  No, they would insist on it.

He was so confused.

She had his penis in her hands, the razor threat on his skin, like a predator’s teeth lightly scratching.  He moaned when she began to suck on him and then the flash of cold air when she let him go, lotion, hot hands

RazorlotionmouthohG..g...gods...

Pel kissed him, holding the blade against the pulse of his neck as Yolend… my Gods had she filled her mouth with fire?  …pulled him deep into her mouth and

His confusion tumbled him into Aeono’s Fire and Lyrian’s Flood, full, free, as he and Pel clicked teeth and he tore his face away, screaming and it went on, and on.  There was no more pain in it.  It just was.  It burned through the rotten chains his father had scorched into his soul and the skin of his back burned as if he were being flogged.

His screams became tears and sobbing.  “I’ve always loved you,” he stammered.  “I’ve always loved you both.  I’m sorry I’m sorry I loved you, I hurt you… I hated you… I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Ahrimaz kept repeating those words even as they devolved into an incoherent mumble and the Cylak and the Yhom woman wiped him clean with warm towels and bundled him up and took him up to the humble bed he’d first woken up in, wrapped in their arms.