1021. Eudaimonia, 9
(Selya)
My mother figures are not there and I have to make my own choices.
I took a while to recover my composure and am again grateful to Temee.
S - You know, how you were educated on sexuality... It was not the same as I. Because in my land, everyone loved me and respected me. A lot. I was not made with this fear built in me like you have... And here... These animals... I learnt what reproduction is, but it still shocks me. And I don’t care about giving life if it should hurt me. I...
T - Take your time...
Temee lets me squeeze her hand generously. I refocus my painful thoughts.
S - I thought... Of murdering them. All of them. Because I could. And then, because of what they did to... that person in the middle, feeding them... But they don’t know. And that person too is long dead. And that root tree at the heart of this nasty ecosystem, it still holds all. I mean all! Of its pain. This person is in hell. A decaying soul is. And I thought even killing it now is mercy. And I thought... I felt...
I’m crying again.
For the shortest but most painful of instants, I’ve felt everything it feels. But it’s constantly for it. For how many years I don’t know.
Where is the beautiful world they told me to see?
S - I’ve got to kill them... There’s too much pain. These other beasts will just go extinct and that’ll be all for this place... But I...
I feel like something heavier than tears and words tries to come out of me, and fails. I can’t express it. It’s a moral trolley problem in essence, but I lack the words and concepts still, and emotions overwhelm everything.
Something about hope, life and death. About me needing to be better than this, than all of this. Something about being worthy of the ideal implied by me being a goddess. A self-proclaimed goddess, as many other daiûas, like everything else.
But one which holds or curtains the source of power that wrecked the world, and the moral duty entrusted to me by the Aïsshea and more... I have to do something more than rightful as I face this unfathomable extreme. I’m scared. It hurts so much.
And all my dogs can see, is hurting me. Just killing them all, the mere thought now hurts my young moral me.
Me. I’m seeing me! A small light hidden inside of this greenish shell.
I’m afraid for it, it’s so frail.
And whatever is left in the other one, in the tree. Whatever right to live these every things have earned naturally...
The right to live isn’t about morals but politics I heard someone say.
I have to rule... So I struggle for this step of my journey.
~
We’re in the afternoon already. The sunlight hurts me. The warmth is getting harsh already. The stench of fornication is heavier and nauseating. I’m getting myself back together and nervously ready.
S - Come with me?
I’m begging inside. Temee nods. She’s terrified but trusts me to such degrees now... She’s too trusting, probably because I’m a girl. It’s more than heroic virtue. Now I’m petty...
I focus.
I glow a bubble around us.
I make it wide enough, and dangerous enough. It scorches the ground where we walk slowly, and blows dusts around in embers.
We dig our way into this hell hole or cloaca of a city.
~
No wish to sight see. I plough straight ahead steadily.
Temee is rightfully nervous as these frog monkeys with more mouth and genitals than head and tummy swarm us instinctively, and burn to crisps against us.
Very few of them don’t rush at us blindly.
And then there’s a feast of the burnt ones we leave behind, so that’s okay, we’re not that interesting per se.
It’s hellish. I hold my vomit all the way. Temee is challenged too. I swipe my tears that vaporise away.
The waves of beasts washing over us crumble into roasts as they fall behind. We have to keep moving or we’re going to get buried.
We’ve got to believe in something.
Even when the world we live in has pits of unspeakable hell.
I’m lucky enough to be the one with the power and duty to make the world a better place. Most of the time, morally by not doing anything.
And sometimes, sometimes, by affecting what reality can actually be for more than myself.
With teary eyes, a friend on my side holding nervously my arm, and a line of festive gorging and gouging of flesh behind; I’m reaching the heart.
I brace myself and push the palm of my real hand through the wall of intense heat.
Easier to burn a little than to tweak my spherical spell to make a window, so I endure.
My flesh matters less and will regenerate, just like that thing.
I touch the tree, and I get overwhelmed. I sweat. I cry. I hold the vomit again, and whatever else.
My fingers clench. We’ve got to believe in something.
We’ve got to believe in something!
I cry and yell.
I extract all the brain in constant pain. I separate the ghost tortured to amorphous and unconscious self from the transformed shell. I rip away from the absurd body its unneeded mind.
The monstrous thing twitches, changes slightly as it loses some of its nervous impulses and feedbacks, but remains.
I see that its own rates now are no longer responding from constant stress will go milder and slower.
The beast population will survive, more calmly, and never expand.
As for this ripped soul I’ve structured forcefully to hold in my hand, for I now I pull back within the confine of the bubble of fire, and stick inside of myself.
We make our way outside of this circle of hell.
~
I vomit. A lot.
I breathe. I wash.
I don’t sob anymore, but Temee does washes her eyes repeatedly.
I look down to my chest.
My breasts are useless and so is my womb now. But I’m not ready nor willing to make anything of that later end.
I focus a new spell around one of my breasts. I make it glow slightly. I turn the lipid cells into a new environment.
And I gather the lost soul inside the warmth there.
I brush my eyes again when it’s done.
Temee doesn’t understand what I’ve done and looks bewildered.
S - I couldn’t let it die... I couldn’t let it live like that... I can’t give it a body just yet. Its mind is a desolate wreck. Less even, far, far less is left. It’s about hope... About giving it time to mend... At peace, and safe.
I touch my heart. It’s warm now.
S - I will hold onto it until it’s healed and regrown enough into a proper mind in that peaceful place. And no one has to die... Well, beside the animals that rushed at us blind.
T - You’re... keeping a human soul, a mind, there?
S - What’s left of one. Yes. Now it’s free from the torture of its body. I’ll keep it fed and watch over it. It’s no longer bound so it’s free to change, to think, or to die, or just to stay the same. And if it regrows enough will to eventually want to go outside, then I will give it a new, human, body.
When and if it’s mature enough, I will.
But for what I’m saying...
Temee’s eyes are a little wide. She’s frozen.
I don’t need to read her thoughts to understand why.
I get closer, first to hold her hand, then to hug her. She’s a little stiff and about to sob again.
My dearest friend, I’m sorry I wasn’t there in time for Ukhtukht.
~
We’ve put enough distance from the nauseating city. We don’t see it anymore and more importantly we don’t smell it anymore. It eases things.
I keep looking at my breast now holding an odd form of protean life. So does Temee.
S - It won’t grow, and it can take its time. For now I see it as a swimming flow of glowing particles in this kind of fish bowl. I don’t know what it will become. I don’t plan to reach out to it just yet. And it might just suddenly lose what’s left of its cohesion and die.
But should it become more, and reasonable, I will let it become alive outside.
T - But, why a breat? Not the womb? Or outside?
S - I’m not ready to be a mother. At all... And I still wanted to keep it safe with me. As much as I could.
I can.
Because I’m not human anymore.
It’s weird. Temee is weirded out. It sounded like a good idea to me when I did it.
S - You want to know how it feels like swimming inside?
T - Uh... I don’t know?
S - Close your eyes.
I open a weird link. I poke her forehead.
For a second, I give her all the illusory sensations of what it might be. Hopefully it feels like a maternal embrace.
She has shivers. She blushes. It was weird.
But it lightens the mood and I can smile.
~
