"He won’t go into the barracks and lie down in a bed, will he?” Pelahir
asked Limyé quietly. The two men stood
looking over the dimness that was the hay barn, barely large enough for the two
elephants.
“No. I am amazed that he made
himself step out of the cell, the stage of healing he was at,” Limyé said.
Pelahir’s smile flickered across his face and then fell away. The elephants were dozing, with Jagunjagun
lying down and Didara sleeping standing.
Ahrimaz lay coiled in his feather bag tucked next to Jagunjagun and
Ologbon. Sure and Teh and Heylia lay
snuggled around the two men and even the mare
stood with her ears pinned back flat, head down just inside the door, as
close as she could get without getting too close to the grey, snoring mountains
that upset her.
“I don’t understand about the animals,” Pel said. “They adored our Ahrimaz but this man has not
loved animals, but rather tortured them.”
“Been forced to torture them.” Pelahir nodded acknowledgement of the
Imaryan’s point. “The moment he was out
of that world, that whole world, he began changing.”
“To fit this one?”
“Possibly. I don’t have enough
information to do more than guess.”
Limyé shrugged. “He’s becoming
more and more like our Ahrimaz every day.
I am assuming our Ahrimaz is being similarly driven in the world of the
Empire.”
“He’d hate it. It would drive him
crazy to…” Pel stopped. “Ah. So… perhaps… can our world heal their Ahrimaz
and can our Ahrimaz heal that world before both men go completely berserk?”
Limyé made another note in his book.
“It is entirely possible. I am
starting to wonder if I should be consulting more closely with the Priestesses
about this.”
“There’s a Shaman who has settled here.
She works well with the young priestess in this village.”
“I shall have time to consult, I believe,” Limyé said, making another
notation in his book. “I heard the
plowmen talking to you when they came in.”
“It is snowing again and the plows are behind. We’ll be here for most of a
week, it looks like.” Pelahir shrugged again.
“So once you’ve spent some more time with our broken Ahrimaz, come join
Teel and I at the barracks. We have a
very nice tea for you.”
“I shall bring along a small bottle of medicinal brandy that I have in my
possession.”
“Excellent!”
**
I write from hell, albeit a
hell that I now realize I have some control of, a hell that was forced onto and
into my young mind and body by the monster.
The Scorching Demon herself. In
my father’s mind. He took his own hell
and poured it down my throat.
I… may be able to one day look
at my actions without wanting to howl, to scream, to gnaw on my own limbs. The scars on my forearms are both raw and I
haven’t had an orgasm in days. I’m not
sleeping well, though my dreams – when I do not have foaming nightmares – are gentle. Limyé gives me remedies that edge the whole
world in gold or pink and blunt all the edges of my agony so that I have a
chance of sleeping peacefully.
I imagine their Ahrimaz in my
world. Soft, emotional, decent, horrified
by ruthless dispatch, disgusted by the violence expected of him… If Mother and
Uncle and perhaps Arnziel… no, he’s too much a fool, they’d never talk to him
if they discovered something so profoundly and potentially coercive.-- They would gleefully wring that Ahrimaz out and use
him up to put themselves in power. Uncle’s
cadre are all military and when I was there, I would send them all out away
from me in the hopes they’d get themselves killed. He’d never managed that so he’s as dangerous
as my brothers. He wants to be Emperor,
I know. I wonder how this-Ahrimaz is
handling that-Inné?
Did they find him out? Did they expose him and let the nobles kill
him and begin trying to put their own on the throne? I don’t feel he’s dead. And these people who say that he’s such a
gentle person also say that they could see his violence and craziness merely
exaggerated in me. Does this mean I have
the same capacity to love as he does?
I look at this battered, water
damaged, ink-spattered little volume of my introspections and wonder if Teel
would be interested, since his ripping me open exposé has neither brought
howling mobs to rip me limb from limb, nor secret cadres of would-be rulers
wanting me to figurehead an Empire here.
It did not even damage me, much.
Such an Imaryan idea. Living an open, whole hearted life? The idea terrifies me, so of course I’m
certain that is the way I shall be driven, like a man on fire, blind to his own
salvation, being chivvied into the water.
And like such a victim I am fighting them blindly burning them as they struggle to fling blankets about my flaming soul. I wish I could see my direction so that I could fling myself into my own salvation, but until then my eyes are firmly clenched shut to save them from melting down my face.
I shall have to share this gruesome image with Limyé. He will make copious notes in his book and hear it all calmly, as he does everything.
It would be nice to not be running around with my symbolic hair on fire though, however metaphoric.
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