06-21-2013, 09:32 PM
No one has to ask her how she will serve the tribe with her plans. No one, in fact, asks her to serve the tribe any longer at all. They all know what she has given, and what it has meant to her. It is in her own prayers: she has offered their goddesses a maiden, untouched and consecrated. She has given Gaia the taste of sweet, long vengeance instead of a quick, bloody execution, and she has done it again and again. The tribe gave her a home, and she gave them her life, and together they offered up her heart to Gaia, Luna, Hera, Demeter, Athena, Artemis.
Now they stand, prepared to let her go, to smooth her way, to let her belong once again to herself, and
it breaks her heart.
There's paperwork to sort out, and favors to ask and others to call in and exchanges that must be paid for one way or another, but through it all, Melantha keeps wanting to ask: what was it all for?
and
why is it so easy for you to let go of me?
--
Of course she doesn't complain. Complaints, tears, begging for succor -- these are the things one leaves behind in childhood. They are initiated into womanhood by blood, every last one of them. Pain is heritage. Strength, too.
There are, however, embraces. Tight ones, close and firm and warm and lingering. Damaris holds her for a long time, but not at the sept. Not until they are at the airport, two olive-skinned women with dark hair and very different eyes. But they know the myths and the truths of those myths: when mother holds maiden too jealousy, death steals the maiden. The seasons stop. Time ceases. An endless summer is as dangerous as an endless winter.
Still. She holds her a long time, before she lets her go.
Melantha wishes, for a moment, that she wouldn't.
--
The conspiracy theorists claim that DIA has lizard-people living underground, that the demonic-looking bronco sculpture guarding the road in and out of the airport really is possessed, that artwork inside is Masonic, Illumnati, what-have-you, but really, Melantha is just disturbed by the volunteer ambassadors in their cowboy hats and vests. She worries that she's just left the middle of nowhere to come to a cowtown that hasn't changed in forty years. Still: she can find her way around well enough without asking them for help. It's larger than the small airport she just came from, but it's not too confusing.
No one is there to pick her up. She has no one waiting for her as she makes her way out, dragging her carry-on wheeled suitcase with her. It doesn't have much in it. Most of it is new; they bought her some changes of clothes and luxuries that most of the country considers necessities before going to the airport. She opts for a cab; the buses from here into town don't take cards, and that's all she has so far.
The entire way into Denver, she rolls the pigeon-shaped bead tied to her wrist between her fingers. Sometimes she gets the urge to exert pressure, to crush it, but she wants help. She has a message to send with its spirit.
--
At the Sept of the Cold Crescent, they're surprised to see her. Not many Black Furies opt to stay in the city. There are apparently several of her kind at the actual caern. They ask her a few questions. They ask her for a phone number, an address, contact information, none of which she has yet. They ask her where she's going to stay, then. And her crest falls a bit, her eyes and her voice wavering. It isn't false. Not this time.
That is how she ends up on the floor that has been converted into living spaces. And on that floor is where she meets the Theurge cub. And that is where she asks that cub to help her send a message.
--
It is the middle of June, trending towards the solstice. The days are growing so long the sun seems to ache in the sky. Melantha feels alone, even though she knows the Theurge is just on the other side of the gauntlet, waiting for the little pigeon-spirit that has been kept against Melantha's skin all this time. She unwinds the leather from her wrist and leans over, setting the bright-eyed clay bead on the ground. She realizes she'll be sad to see it gone.
All the same, or perhaps with that sadness, she brings her heel down quickly, sharply, and crushes it to powder against the hard floor.
--
Charlotte feels its cooing, more than hears it. It remembers her, and it remembers its promises. But it remembers this, too: months spent held against Melantha's skin, months of dreams of closeness, months of her heart, her spirit, the spirits of her ancestors all wrapping around this fragile bound spirit. The pigeon perches on Erich's shoulder, nuzzling a transparent, very soft feathered head against him, cooing all the while in words only the Theurge understands.
The message is muddled, more the fault of the cub wrestling with spirit speech than anything else, but a few pieces are clear enough: moonbridge. fast. come. longing.
Wherever she is, there's a moonbridge there, too. And as it turns out, it's a moonbridge that reaches very, very far. Erich's own pigeon will have no trouble finding it, following the spirit-trail back the way its twin came, leading them to back to her.
Now they stand, prepared to let her go, to smooth her way, to let her belong once again to herself, and
it breaks her heart.
There's paperwork to sort out, and favors to ask and others to call in and exchanges that must be paid for one way or another, but through it all, Melantha keeps wanting to ask: what was it all for?
and
why is it so easy for you to let go of me?
--
Of course she doesn't complain. Complaints, tears, begging for succor -- these are the things one leaves behind in childhood. They are initiated into womanhood by blood, every last one of them. Pain is heritage. Strength, too.
There are, however, embraces. Tight ones, close and firm and warm and lingering. Damaris holds her for a long time, but not at the sept. Not until they are at the airport, two olive-skinned women with dark hair and very different eyes. But they know the myths and the truths of those myths: when mother holds maiden too jealousy, death steals the maiden. The seasons stop. Time ceases. An endless summer is as dangerous as an endless winter.
Still. She holds her a long time, before she lets her go.
Melantha wishes, for a moment, that she wouldn't.
--
The conspiracy theorists claim that DIA has lizard-people living underground, that the demonic-looking bronco sculpture guarding the road in and out of the airport really is possessed, that artwork inside is Masonic, Illumnati, what-have-you, but really, Melantha is just disturbed by the volunteer ambassadors in their cowboy hats and vests. She worries that she's just left the middle of nowhere to come to a cowtown that hasn't changed in forty years. Still: she can find her way around well enough without asking them for help. It's larger than the small airport she just came from, but it's not too confusing.
No one is there to pick her up. She has no one waiting for her as she makes her way out, dragging her carry-on wheeled suitcase with her. It doesn't have much in it. Most of it is new; they bought her some changes of clothes and luxuries that most of the country considers necessities before going to the airport. She opts for a cab; the buses from here into town don't take cards, and that's all she has so far.
The entire way into Denver, she rolls the pigeon-shaped bead tied to her wrist between her fingers. Sometimes she gets the urge to exert pressure, to crush it, but she wants help. She has a message to send with its spirit.
--
At the Sept of the Cold Crescent, they're surprised to see her. Not many Black Furies opt to stay in the city. There are apparently several of her kind at the actual caern. They ask her a few questions. They ask her for a phone number, an address, contact information, none of which she has yet. They ask her where she's going to stay, then. And her crest falls a bit, her eyes and her voice wavering. It isn't false. Not this time.
That is how she ends up on the floor that has been converted into living spaces. And on that floor is where she meets the Theurge cub. And that is where she asks that cub to help her send a message.
--
It is the middle of June, trending towards the solstice. The days are growing so long the sun seems to ache in the sky. Melantha feels alone, even though she knows the Theurge is just on the other side of the gauntlet, waiting for the little pigeon-spirit that has been kept against Melantha's skin all this time. She unwinds the leather from her wrist and leans over, setting the bright-eyed clay bead on the ground. She realizes she'll be sad to see it gone.
All the same, or perhaps with that sadness, she brings her heel down quickly, sharply, and crushes it to powder against the hard floor.
--
Charlotte feels its cooing, more than hears it. It remembers her, and it remembers its promises. But it remembers this, too: months spent held against Melantha's skin, months of dreams of closeness, months of her heart, her spirit, the spirits of her ancestors all wrapping around this fragile bound spirit. The pigeon perches on Erich's shoulder, nuzzling a transparent, very soft feathered head against him, cooing all the while in words only the Theurge understands.
The message is muddled, more the fault of the cub wrestling with spirit speech than anything else, but a few pieces are clear enough: moonbridge. fast. come. longing.
Wherever she is, there's a moonbridge there, too. And as it turns out, it's a moonbridge that reaches very, very far. Erich's own pigeon will have no trouble finding it, following the spirit-trail back the way its twin came, leading them to back to her.
my whole life is thunder.