I paused in the act of holding out my tea cup for him to fill, but it
wasn’t long enough to show. I sipped the horrible fruity grassy tisane and
raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ve been
saying that you’re all mad this whole time.
But I would never accuse you of being blind.”
He nodded. “How are the scars?” He nodded at my forearms, hidden safely under
my sleeves. “Fine!” I snapped at him,
switched hands and thrust out the arm for him to see. “SEE?”
It was a dark patch of skin, roughened and raised, a thick callus.
“And the other one?” He sipped at
his own tea, not looking at me.
“You in this world are right bastards, did you know that?” I finished my tea and he filled it again.
“Yes, so I understand.” He looked into my face in a way that Arn hadn’t,
for years. It was like part of me began
filling up again, after being burned dry.
“Did you want to hear about what I’ve been dreaming about your brother?”
“Of course I do!”
He laughed but didn’t explain what was so funny. “He’s going to be doing a spirit journey in
your world… he’s fighting the Goddess to try and get to the God.”
I was startled. I wasn’t used to
priests just talking about the Divine without unctuousness, or carelessness. He just… meant it. They were real to him. I couldn’t get the image of a white tiger,
holding my beating heart in – her – its fangs.
That little girl. That was the
voice I dreamed speaking to me. Lyrian.
“That doesn’t sound very sensible,” I said and put the cup upside down
on the desk so he wouldn’t refill it.
“He’s actually fighting his own fear.
She’s there, but truly She’s not the one he’s fighting.”
“And why would he have to fight through to Aeono, anyway?”
“Because He’s dying.”
“What? No. No. No. Gods don’t exist anyway. How can a God die?”
He sipped his tea. “Out of your
own mouth, Ahri.” He shook his
head. “We still believe, but when the
whole other world that you are from questions His existence because everyone
knows that priests are all false anyway…”
“But the God we attacked was Her not Him! His worship is spread all over the same area
as your Coalition!”
“Yes. And anyone who dares
whisper a prayer to Her in the dark believes far more strongly than your
Highest Priest.”
I bolted up to my feet, hissed as my newly tender skin scraped on the
rough floor. “How do you know all this?
How can you know all this? This is all
scorching horse shit!”
“You are here and our Ahrimaz is not,” he said gently. “There was a path ripped into our worlds and
it seems that when you were exchanged there was created a conduit where prayers
can travel back and forth. And dreams.”
His smile was so like mother’s that my breath just froze in my throat. “I’m very glad that my other self isn’t dying
of slow alcohol poisoning any longer.”
Not a
loose-lipped stinking, horridly rotting from the inside man anymore? He wasn’t drinking? Aeono bless me. “Its about time that that scorching
dipshit did something right!”
Had I said that out loud? I put my hands up to my eyes. “Scorching hells, Arn. You’re wrong about
tears, see?” I hold my wet fingers out
to him.
He nods, looking solemn and holds up a silvered hand mirror so that I
can see the bloody tracks down my cheeks.
I’m not weeping. I’m
bleeding where tears should be.
No comments:
Post a Comment