#22 - Can't Fling Off the Vermin

Then Ahrimiar and Wenhiffar and Pel moved off to train.  Rutaçyen sat next to his rictus self, the rigid and staring statue of a man in ruins. She was close enough for him to feel the heat of her body in the cool salle.  Outside it began to rain.  He could tell from a spatter of rain on the tiny port-hole windows above.

Their training was odd.  It wasn’t a lot of screaming and repetitive motion.  Not like whipping juniors on to the point where they could really learn.  They traded a song as they sparred against one another.  Every note, every word seemed to have a dozen possible strikes associated with it.  Singing. Sparring.

Rutaçyen laid a hand on his shoulder and occasionally sang out, apparently some kind of instruction because three on the floor changed their songs and their wooden swords rang and clacked differently, more intensely somehow.  “You are free to lie there, lad.  No one is asking anything of you,” she said and called two of the Innéan war dogs over to guard him.  Or just to keep him warm.  They were both gold and white and short-coated, just big enough that an armoured man would find it hard to pick them up and throw them.  Block headed.  Both of these had lolling tongues and goofy faces.  “Stay. These are Sure and Teh.”

Ahrimaz wasn’t sure where he was, wasn’t sure he was even in his own head.  He could feel his heart beat and his lungs expand and contract but it was as though the inside of his own head was broken into a thousand thousand pieces of glass and he didn’t dare do more than breathe or it would all come shattering down and cut him into chunks of darkness and blood.

The dogs lay down on either side of him, panting, pressed up close.  One put its nose under his ear and he could hear it begin to snore.  They didn’t hate him. Even the animals touch differently in this world.

A huge snuffle in one ear nearly broke him out of his stasis, whiskers tickling in his beard.  Wait.  Both dogs were still there on either side of him.  What animal was this?  He couldn’t make himself move.  A heavy weight settled over him and the dogs, like a blanket, and a tongue as rough as emery paper began scraping through his hair and beard.  Purring.  One of the war cats.  It was as big as the two dogs put together.  He couldn’t be bothered even to twitch, much less fling the vermin off.

The warriors’ song had changed again and they now sat, bare handed, slow-speed, in a box, knee to knee, that eventually became a unified hum.  Their meditation song sent him tumbling slowly, mixed with the purr, out of broken stasis into true sleep.  The animals even smell good.  Like cinnamon and malak.

*

The dungeon. The mass on the floor. Servants gathering it up and taking it away.  The look on Father’s face as he directs ‘Mother’ to get us upstairs and presentable.  I never knew that my mother had a twin.  In the Empire she was forced to abandon herself and become her sister, Wenhiffar.  My aunt, Rutaçyen.

In this world.  Nothing so twisted.  Ahrimiar… the old man… and his wife Wenhiffar are still alive and still married.  Rutaçyen is a war teacher of some kind.  She looks like an Apphoreitos. But she is clearly not hiding her gender.  Why am I terrified of them all?

In my world they conspired to hurt me, to torture me. Well, the old man made it so. In that world we were all helpless in the face of his violence.  In this world… from what I saw… Ahrimiar the Second in this world is a warrior who would put my father onto the mat in moments.  Father was too rigid, too fixated on winning. He always had to dominate.  He beat me down until I could beat him.  My other teachers taught technique.  Father taught brutality.

In this world they spar to teach not to win, not to prove the teacher’s superiority. Oh Tiger… Ma… Mast… Scorch and Drown.  Tiger Mistress... am I truly yours?  Am I?  Can You help me?  Can You save me? I’m lost and drowning in all these loving touches. I cannot bear to be touched.  It hurts.  But these people… I hear the purr in my ears even as I… I’m in the bed.

The repaired bed.  I sink into the feather mattress. They fixed it.  It’s warm, it’s safe.  This isn’t a dungeon any longer.  It’s a place where I can lock them all out if I need to.  Except the dogs and the cat.  They can all squeeze through the bars.  All three of them have come and are helping me stay warm. The blasted cat I don’t even know the name of lies on me and purrs almost constantly and I have to move sometimes or he… she?  He for now.  He’d rasp my cheek raw.  I am apparently a hurt kitten with a filthy coat.

I am shaking all over and a hand slips behind my head, offers me water, offers me Imaryan remedies. The fungus that sooths the raw edges of my life and my pain and lets me into the safe dark of Lyrian. I’m a witch, a lover of both women and men, no one will torture me here or make me rape and torture my brothers.  Not my sisters.  That the old man kept to himself.

I am a witch? Lyrian.  Mama. I am in darkness, gathered into someone’s arms, against someone’s chest.  Safe.