962. Wolny i okrutny, 9
(Selya)
I was feeling fine lately. All the turmoil preceding and following my ascension feeling like slightly distant memories.
I’ve been feeling fine in this peaceful journey beginning with Temee. She’s kind. And manly in some ways, such as her height to start with, but that’s a different story.
I liked beyond what I could describe properly, living without a looming doom or time pressure over me.
Sometimes I just said I liked a place, and she didn’t mind us staying for another day or night there. There’s no hurry.
Turning stones around for looking at weird bugs scattering and living underneath. Looking through more buried rooms of older and damaged buildings. Feeling a little like a child again...
Some of Rose’s words of caution and lessons for me eventually make sense. Hearing, listening, accepting, understanding and really getting it are completely different things.
And Temee’s pace adjusted to mine is fine. She’s good company.
S - I’m lucky you wanted to travel too.
T - For different reasons, yes. I wanted too. It’s a good meeting of, what’s the word? Converging interests, for me too. To help you.
S - I’m glad you do.
I don’t know what my smile looks like now that my face is green and my brain only gradually recalling how to be mostly a human me. But Temee’s weirder face smiles back kindly.
I peer deeper inside her eye and inside her brain. It’s like a hollow nail from my stare is opening her head wide, to read inside the language of the electric activities. Except she doesn’t feel a thing.
As we stare aside in silence for this moment of rest, I improperly have a look at her deeper thoughts and feelings.
It always makes me feel slightly guilty, to be reassured that way on what she things. She’s telling the truth, even if she doesn’t expand on every detail or things she doesn’t like.
She felt lonely.
And I fill something familiar to her.
I should definitely not be the one to blame her for that.
But all children of our time probably must feel that way. Growing without mother. Losing our father. Being orphans...
Which makes it even more of a shame that I...
Pascal and Mathieu don’t fade from me.
I am guilty, and I feel as much. I should have seen. I should have listened. I should have done something different.
But...
I peer deeper now, a little reckless. Temee has a shiver, feeling something.
She looks back at me suddenly, wondering.
I’m startled and lower my head in shame, feeling down.
S - Sorry...
T - Hm... Please don’t do that... Is there something you were feeling too shy to ask?
S - No I just... Well... Feeling insecure still.
T - I know what to do then I think.
S - Yes?
She stood up, picking up her bag, and then offering me her open hand to grab.
T - Let’s walk another ten kilometres or so?
I smiled and accepted her gift. Yes please...
~
We walk across a weird landscape of sharp mountains and varied rivers to cross. Crumbling cities are sprinkled across like salt on a dish. It takes a day to walk two valleys over.
I breathe heavily, sweating more and more.
S - There’s still so many wounds... I’d like to touch...
T - What do you mean? I don’t get that expression.
S - Painful topics, to share... Melenna... Mathieu... Daevn, and Ioms...
Temee looks colder as I said their names.
S - ... And. Ukhtukht. That means sister, I think?
T - ... Yes. She was... a lot of things.
The sights I had before through her were making me think she was some sort of little sister she had to care for. Someone I would have kind of replaced. But now that she thinks back about it, or her, I realise how much my peering was biased.
Her colours have really shifted. First it was far darker. And afterward, Temee is thinking about something much brighter and inspiring but older.
T - I guess for you... She was someone akin to the Aïsshea. She saved me, before I could be born. She foresaw with frightening clairvoyance my future, and planned the best route for me, as best she could in advance. I...
I still admire Gamya for what she were; she wanted to say.
But the words were stuck somewhere deep inside her throat, unable to go out, overshadowed by what the future had become for her. The words didn’t come out. Only sweat and early swelling of tears.
She can’t speak anymore, paining me.
I reach sympathetically Temee’s hand and stopped asking painful questions.
We all have deep wounds and I’m still acting juvenile at times... I hate myself for that.
S - I’m sorry. Please, let’s walk some more.
She nodded, holding her tears.
She was the one saying we’ll have the time to discuss all these things as we go, and I didn’t listen.
I apologize through the hand I hold. She’s too tall for me to give a hug to her head.
S - I’ll cook something good tonight if you forgive me.
T - Ah. Alright.
I tried my best that night... And we ended up laughing somewhat at the bitter results.
The irony grew on us and we ended up with a higher laughter in the end.
~
We were likely not far from the sea when these things occurred.
My peaceful journey of self discovery and confidence building, which I wasn’t planning to pause, was interrupted suddenly.
Thunder ran through the ground, and some weird quiver dispersed through the air. I opened my eyes in stupor what words a part of my new brain translated from them. What I felt and heard suddenly were shocking me.
For a moment it felt like waking up from a dream a little too suddenly.
Wait, this is real? No it cannot be... But it sounded serious... And this approaching dire chime in the air...
I was tensing up madly, which means some of the effects from my emotions transpired even beyond my body.
Temee felt it and looked at me with visible concern. I was looking afraid she thought.
I’m afraid?
That array of signs... I should be afraid?
Things were crackling around me.
S - I... I can’t believe it’s true, but it seems a monster, a dragon, is coming after me.
A dragon she couldn’t quite relate to what that meant, but the main idea of a monster after us, it sadly sounded very relatable to her. Temee unpacked her axe and swords in a calm fashion.
I felt my blood slightly accelerating its flow in my hands and fingers.
So we’re going to fight... For our lives. For my life, again?
It seems that sadly this is also the world we live in. And Temee was groomed on that.
I feel sad, but I’m not going to lay down and wait to die.
I have my own anger to manage, so if that dragon is looking for a fight, it will have it.
I crouch and touch the earth. I release a blob of power and shape it in the ground like if it was a part of my body.
I extract a muddy sword that looks like it’s made of clay, and slowly turn it into something else. The minerals fuse, sharpen and realign. As this occurs the sculpture shrinks, loses the impurities, and becomes as sharp and solid as one would expect. I wave it clean in front of me and then turn my head toward her.
S - Show me what to do please.
She nods. I’ll be ready.
~
