“Shake, and they notice.”
Into the walk that all women learn, the ideal form of womanhood rarely mastered wiggles her bottom. A smooth indifference to having it stared at makes everyone want to.
“Float, and they follow.”
Long legs assure she’ll arrive whenever, for whatever reason, because the destination doesn’t matter.
“Hmmmmm~?” She stops in this strut, a finger to her mask as her shoulder lifts to muse. The break turns her to look behind herself. “Hum, and they salivate.”
Eyes turn back toward the imagined prize ahead.
A practiced target knows how to softly approach this unseen body, then allow herself to be curled toward it by rough arms without bothering to look at who is holding her.
“Be sweet,” Up the cheek of this invisible anchor she wraps around, Still stares out at the distance while stroking it. “Honey is rare for most.” A mercurial smile painted on her mask questions whether this is even the end of her walk when she rips away suddenly from this theatrical entwine. “Natural as can be, hard to reach so they have to try, but rich as the wilds always feel.
What am I, that ma—?”
“Wild… that’s the word! Do people like ‘wild’ things?”
“… makes people happy by visiting every flower, but never staying at just one, Ave?”
“Ah?”
A tutor that deserves a much better student slowly struts back to take in how this slouching derelict can appear both pathetic…?
“You’re a bee?”
“Astounding!”
… and worthy of a second glance, maybe even a third, by managing to keep a crystal teacup from falling off her head while trying to mimic these movements herself while standing still.
Even though it’s tipping half way to tumbling as it circles its saucer the whole time.
“For all the wrong and right reasons.”
“Thank… you?”
Rather than accept that thanks, Still’s mesh fingers curl several times.
“Me? I? Doing?”
“Slender, but…?”
“Hah!?”
The waist that’s thin thickens at her “hips”, and the meaty twist there by Still’s fingers over the scales of this exhibitionist student sets her strutting!
“Big, if you want to shake.”
“Would I!?” Stiff arms scythe around as she tries to coolly shake a snake tail. “Should I…?”
Doubt makes her weaselly, even as Ave manages to settle into a groove that copies the trail Still took by swishing.
Dramatic affectations like rubbing her cheek are ruined by the overt eye-lashes batting at the ideal target this child imagines.
“… wouldn’t I just be strange like Neesiette became if I did this…? Moving like I’m thinking of something bad, if Adris sees me, I’ll…?
AH!?”
Blushing at her own attempt to seduce cancels the entire trip when Still creeps from behind to push on this snake’s spine.
“Skulk, because you don’t give anything good.”
“I’m sorry!?” Ave squeals when standing upright for once. “I, just, Neesiette, what she did, how she looked, and acted, I’m…?”
“Buzz, loudly and without care.”
Her “butt” wiggles harder when each side is poked to hurry it up. She almost gets sexy enough when swishing to escape them.
“When!?”
“Sting.”
Ave’s grimace turns meek when Still taps the girl’s chin after jumping ahead of her.
“Fiercely, with ignorance.” Still fixes how Ave’s stiff arms move by placing her own over them to move more firmly, gracefully. “Because someone mistook a maker of sweet dreams for a screeching pest that can’t be calm…” Still draws back when the snake finally gets it… and wiggles her fingers before Ave’s face with a musing question.
“My, what are we talking about now?”
“… So, I’m… a wasp, huh…?”
All the corrections to this girl’s stance made her quite cuter, so it’s vexing when misery makes the heights she reaches only knee-high.
“Have you tried ‘bee-ing’?”
Trying to “bee” goes on for quite a time between the swaying trees out on a great limb.
A thousand years could be used for it, and what would happen is a thousand years passing. Only the flimsiest framework for how a proper woman behaves before others can be forcibly passed on through pinches and tugs.
The rest? It’s like a breeze going by!
“Words change the flavor with each line.”
“But…?”
Finally freed of all the annoying distractions, bit by bit the disconnect between hopes and fears dissects for Still’s study of Ave’s lamentable issues.
“But nothing. They’re just words.” From every inarticulate movement Ave makes when allowed to speak ever more her mind, Still makes adjustments to dig deeper. “People always talk. When do you ever hear anything you like?” On the moss two strange companions circle each other while letting Ave’s body speak everything. “It’s the last face she made that you were waiting for while watching an image of her, Ave, not the rest, wasn’t it?”
“How could Neesiette… say she doesn’t want anything like touching, then do so much of it willingly! Even if she denied it, they did the same at that bird man’s manse, too, didn’t they? Do you think she also looked, then, so… sooooo…!?”
“Delighted?”
“… explosive?”
Quick feet stay ahead of the serpent’s coils that also spin. The timid girl’s eyes shake with the memory, but Ave stays queerly agile despite that.
“Can you not even imagine it and keep the conversation going at the same time?” Tapping as she glides, hopping the emerald that will trip her, Still earns a quick negative shake of Ave’s head.
“The higher the pretense…”
Their hands touch fingertips often, then change to drag between them when Still’s whims lead elsewhere into a different rotation. Still tips into a one-legged standing plunge!
“… the wickeder the plummet!”
“Neesiette was supposed to be…!?”
“Incorruptible, maybe? Ave, Ave!”
Pushing against this mighty creature when rising, Still pushes the immovable one to dip her back lower to mimic Still’s movement in the opposite direction.
“Don’t you like her better when fallen to earth with us?” Still teases from a man’s vantage when craning. “I’m glad she’s not demanding we reach her moon anymore.”
“It feels like things are changing too fast!?”
Still speeds up their merry spins to milk that fear, finding displeasure from another to be a stupendous catharsis.
“What she did, what we all did, aren’t you, with us…!?” The boring girl’s ponytail whips around with her when Still drags Ave with a hand sliding to her slender lower back. “Disgusted?” Ave whispers that, as if Still’s revulsion might kill Neesiette too.
“You say that, but don’t you feel like I once did? As if: ‘why am I not disgusted’?”
“I…?” Again this wastrel blushes like she hasn’t already been deflowered. It’s more annoying when she’s cradled by the woman this “elf” seems created to mock as if Still should also blush in turn for this basic dance.
“I…!?”
“Can dance passably well once you get out of the way of your own scales.”
“Dance? Ah!?”
To the mossy carpet Ave is gently dropped so that Still can stretch, then recount their movements with her own dance continuing with an invisible Ave in arms.
“We were dancing…?”
“Only the steps you take matter, Ave.”
This familiar courtly dance, its name long rotted in memory, seems just as important even if she can’t remember the song for it…?
“Listen to the music, not the song. If you’re thinking, you’re not feeling. And if you’re feeling, you’re not thinking. Doesn’t that feel bad?” Still whirls in the part of the man’s role in continuance, until seamlessly shifting into the one that is led by her invisible perfect choice to leap together over Ave’s limp tail. “Any governesses would’ve gone mad if hired for a solution, so you can hardly blame these elves. Although, maybe you should? You do blame them, a bit, don’t you?”
When Ave looks away with shame, Still can’t help but tease.
“On second thought, hate them a lot!”
“… If I’m not thinking, things go wrong. I keep proving that.” Up from the moss Ave rises to ignore the chance to talk bad about them. Instead, she’s stone-faced with nausea biting. “If I feel even once… I can’t stop feeling anymore, so it seems wrong to…?”
“Never hide.” Still’s dance stops, and the sneak crushes her shoulders against Ave’s to goadingly pester her further. “You weren’t disgusted because you’ve also fantasized.”
“About what!?”
“About how Neesiette can deny wanting pleasures she always vilifies. But! Then, she gets to make the face that – you’d – like – to – make, too~.”
“Doing what…!?”
“Whatever you ‘fancy’ to do. If you said you didn’t fantasize, others would call you a liar. In their own ways.” Letting up on the pressure, Still whispers her real dig into this fool. “Those thoughts feel great, yeah? Just for the instant that Neesiette broke down, you had a hundred questions that only ‘that’ could answer right then. Didn’t you?” Referring to the discussed, but never described, temptation…
“… How can it possibly go inside. She’s small, but it’s huge…!? Why would she!?”
“The elf, or Neesiette?” Asking that while Ave hides her face makes it a lost question, though, so Still waits for Ave to peek before continuing. “Small, huge, thick, thin, life is about variety. Don’t you like choices in your day? Everyone is different about how they want that variety. Like…
‘Father, oh Father, don’t you know that they say a stallion is an investment, not simply a toy!’” Mimicking the usual argument of a spoiled daughter with unnatural cravings, Still lets her bratty hand waving widen Ave’s eyes before dropping the act.
“You do, too…?” Ave asks with trepidation.
“Me? Dedicate an entire library for my fantasies, one day, please~! Well,” Brushing at her hood with her hand, Still insinuates.
“Even I have…?”
“You have!? With a kelpie!? So, Hessalian wasn’t… too strange!?” Ave’s scream would deafen if Still had working ears, but it only makes Ave seem like the gods revealed a new religion when the would-be elf starts waving her hands like an excited kid! “Elves are normal? Even humans do…? No, no, a human would never meet a kelpie, so… you,
WITH A HORSE, YOU’VE CROSSED BRA—!?”
“… ‘associates’ who have invited me to some very private parties. I have observed some fun spectacles. You simply can’t refuse some people’s invitations, you know?” Contrary to the mutating narrative, Still calmly finishes what she was saying.
“Spectacle…?”
“So!” Being stared at with something like awe for such a feat an idiot fantasizes over makes Still clap her hands loudly to break Ave’s dazed look. “That’s the sort of real impression you’ve always had, is it?”
“About?”
“That if someone would let a dirty horse overfill her, it’d be me, is that it? I don’t even rank a kelpie? How supportive.”
“No, I wouldn’t think you… would, but, you’re so cultured! Cultured people seem to do all the… strangely daring things in life!? And, if someone was going to do something… very naughty, but do it in a daring way, one that makes everyone think she’s WIND, it would be…?”
“Miss Wasp, words are comforts not meant for ourselves.”
“… I don’t understand.”
Clearly embarrassed enough to die with how Ave folds her arms over her breasts and tries to ball up with her tail, the girl meekly pays attention while Still lets her boil over.
“Do you think me like the Castillo’s creatures?”
“Of course not! You’re only a good person! But, you aren’t like humans, since you, with Adris…?”
“Did what?”
When Ave clams up, goes white with shame and looks away, Still can only guess.
“Perhaps you should ask if you may watch before your voyeuristic habits make someone hate you?” When Ave jolts at this, it can only be the truth. “True, I’ve enjoyed plenty of ‘depraved’ activities by the standards of these boring, enslaved ‘modern’ humans.” A painted tongue pokes out on Still’s mask to mock them when she passes her hand over it. “Worrying about not disgusting or disappointing someone is a lost cause. Shame has no meaning, and never has upon Zennia. Humility is… a vice, actually, for nobody strong practices it. They just hide their ‘virtues’ well.”
The sureness of her convictions firms with every truth she states making her giddier and bubblier! Even if only for Ave’s improvement, to be able to speak plainly feels so good…!
“I don’t begrudge the Castillo scum their hobbies, only their incredibly poor choice of a lord. The difference, the only important one, between we who acknowledge ‘the beast’ within ourselves…”
“‘The beast’?”
The trees rustle with a rush of windless currents at that word.
Even using it makes a tingle like her spine vibrating wake Still up with an effervescent reality.
“… and those who’re devoured by it, but can’t admit it, is that when you remember to give it a small treat every now and then…” The thought of sating the desires within makes…
Still giddier than she should probably reveal.
Discussing a philosophical topic before the machinations of their enemy by using her own title, how fun to let her hands tap Ave’s shoulders and enjoy how she flinches!
Dramatically, Still leans in to whisper. “It’s more like a loyal puppy than a monster.”
“Inside us… we have…?”
“The name is sophistry. As if there’s a part of us that ISN’T a wolf… or pig, beneath the lamb skins we shelter how we truly feel.” Rubbing her fingers together, Still rolls her shoulders as if bored, even though she pulses with satisfaction she can’t explain except by being naturally brilliant. “From the greatest to the simplest, we crave much and more. When others want to talk to you, don’t you know why beyond the small talk? That sublime… validation they experience.” Still swishes her hand with the sign for ‘validation’, enjoying with a disturbing viscerality how her own external voice sharpens to lick the word! “What makes the cravings beautiful or ugly, Ave? I think it’s refinement. If this age is lacking, it’s that everyone is too… candid. There’s no real anticipation?”
Ave hangs on every word with wide eyes reflecting Still’s broadly dramatic strokes as a stormy woman rages now!
“They declare war, then commit! By force? How dull. Where’s the real chase!? Wouldn’t the best be born of ‘love’, whichever moment calls itself that? Given, willingly, exuberantly, as if the world itself will end without…?”
Ave doesn’t nod, even if she wants to when she almost claps!
“Maybe that’s why they wait.” Still feels it, for sure. A tremendous explanation that claws its way up into her thoughts as also agreeing with her own private tastes, a rush of feelings related to wanting to have “the best”.
“Oh, how tragic…? These sad elves might prefer only the ultimate experience, too?”
Naming it that tickles Still inside! It’s wonderful that she never has to define it.
Makes the effort of teasing Ave worth all the lackluster reward elsewise…
“That might be what I’ve been unable to name? ‘Experiences’, I don’t have many, so each one is so sharp…” Still’s whisper makes Ave’s head try to shake yes. “But…” At the last moment before succumbing, Ave shakes no. “Pellaeon dances to express his own joy! Not for anyone else. It’s just… what he does, because he is with the ‘wind’! And… it doesn’t have to even be a special experience for him to dance, since it’s just something he does because it’s…?”
Invoking the name of a misbegotten primeval god of idiots, Ave brings up an interesting idea.
“Ave, how canny of you, to lure me into the main topic of our little conversation so quickly?”
“… That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Desires are loyal to us if we honor them. Why shouldn’t they be, for they are a divine gift enshrined within our smaller selves.”
Calling them divine makes the many dark colors of the thicket that surrounds these two chatting ladies glow just a bit brighter!
“They… are our raw animus which motivates all actions of worth.”
So joyous it feels now, when darkly devoid of hope this world tree has been…?
“Made in the gods’ image is woman.” Still reverently sweeps her hands wide, then pats Ave’s forearms when the girl seems daunted. “Just less perfectly, of course. Divine desire unites us with them in longings for what we’ve never known.”
“The gods instilled it? That sounds like greed if it’s…?” Doubt makes Ave dark, but Still enlightens further.
“Greed is wanting so much that it CAN’T be sated. The gods gave us wonderful, boundless passions that can be. Oh, back then it was better because we understood to enjoy with sophistication that our creators will applaud. There were mystery cults, philosophical sophistries, ‘returning to nature and throwing off our trappings, etcetera, etcetera…”
Passion is unusual for Still, but her voice drips with it when remembering the past.
As if it is sleeping all around her and ready to wake up if Still screams, she pats her chest to suppress that desire to have that lost time again…
“… Isn’t… desire without end dangerous, even if you’re not greedy…? Wait, kin do that in a way…?”
“Why bother asking if you already know? The gods gave us another gift to resolve this, though: divine ambition. By letting that be what desires hound, all of what we want can be rationalized, contextualized, and, with effort… realized.”
That’s the part that truly makes Still grin within!
To comprehend the dark thoughts that aren’t allowed to be had; then, deify them as natural.
“But… the gods didn’t make us…?”
“Of course they did, Ave.”
Still lifts her chin with the fervor that has sprung from nowhere, then glares down at the shrinking violet that dared to interrupt.
An overwhelming dislike from all around reminds Still that…!
“There is only one true sin, and that is [hubris]. Ave, precious Ave.” A measured voice of a lady crackles a bit when Still strokes Ave’s cheek! “Gifted desire, ambition, AND so much more. How useless to deny, when…?”
“Sorry…!” Ave’s collapse from certainty wakes Still from her rant early.
“… Don’t defy their wills. I needed to be a bit… well, just don’t get caught up in their wrath.”
When Ave doesn’t, just meekly stares with confusion when Still calms, the sneak resumes their conversation.
“Beastly needs, godly ambitions? Maybe, Neesiette simply… ah, she’s made of the same materials as Zennia, so eventually their gift permeates. We’ve had a lot of ‘fun’ lately, so it was bound to happen. Hmmm, she is actually cuter the more human she tries NOT to be~.” Still nods approvingly at this epiphany which explains Neesiettes eccentricities, and contradictions, regarding love and lust. “The truth of this world that… someone keeps hinting at is as ‘simple’ as its messenger, Ave.”
“Adris is… simple?” Ave narrows her eyes with unusual dislike.
“It’s not an insult, be brave.” Still almost laughs when continuing, for Ave is so blank inside about things other women intrinsically joke about. “One side is complicatedly simple, while the other is singularly… intricate. Life is full of complements, as the gods intended. We, before their perfection, are ALL lacking. We all seem to sink into their prescribed purposes, though. So long as we fulfill…?”
A word long forgotten, one that explains even the gods and the cosmos, turns on her flower’s tongue like the wheel of fortune that has ever defined Still’s existence.
What hungers also to hear it is her own soul’s bottomless depths…!
“Our dharma.” Still snaps her mesh-covered finger, making no noise but enjoying the punctuation.
“Dharma? You mean, karma?”
“Words catch you up when they don’t matter.” Still brushes off the difference while strutting around, remembering her own lessons that she mastered and then reinvented for would-be ladies like…?
“Still? What brought up that word?” Curious, but also concerned for some reason, this strange twiggy-thin girl sneaks closer when Still’s hand invites her.
“Words, words, always words. Ave… aren’t you dying from pretending you’re not enjoying yourself? How would you like to be an apple in others’ eyes to show a lesson?”
“I don’t know…?” Fear is far away, but disappointment tries to bend the etiquette lessons on proper posture that Still has been secretly drilling into Ave when this girl feels shy when she should be excellent.
“Wasting good vibes is better than enjoying them?”
“No, but… If I… express happiness, and they don’t feel… mmm!?”
Still cups the girl’s head as Ave mumbles. From a shell vessel Still produces in her palm, a pretty red gloss is patted onto Ave’s lips to stop them flapping for a blessed moment.
“Despite how kin should always be, then… ugh, very bitter…!”
“Beauty often hurts the most.”
“… Aren’t I also hurting them… if I enjoy what they possibly can’t?”
A bit smudges on Ave’s chin when she moves, so Still whips out a bit of cloth, also from seemingly nowhere, to clear it. This cloth has seen much work in recent memory. Every time it cleans something, the grime vanishes into it as if never existing.
“Guilt is a dirty handkerchief.”
Into the clearing mists ahead Still seeks the village that she hates.
Not to feel bad, but to make others feel worse.
That Ave has only temporarily wilted, but not died, is shown when after falling in behind Still’s own strut, Ave’s guileless tail manages to shake a bit enticingly even when the girl keeps her back straighter than normal.
To the side, a lipstick-soiled cloth is tossed because it finally has absorbed too much. The magic is exhausted.
The swaying brushes around them rustle like insect legs within fallen leaves when accepting it; yet, no thorns or stiff branches accost them anymore.
How does she know where to go? Still can’t place the surety that nudges her.
A very desirable woman is simply too wanted to not find her way back it seems!
“What perfect word paints this whole scene in a single stroke?”
The finest cut stone from the cliff side gleams white when carved into the tall columns of the baths and placed as its precision-set bricks. Beyond the baths which are this new city’s pride, the craggy climb up the cliff resists civilization to spite this glory.
Poor mountain soil defies the builders’ knowledge by eating the foundations that men attempted to raise. More a swamp, it reeks of rotten eggs when unbalancing the leaning piled stone residences erected by the less wealthy upon those incomplete foundations.
Gathered out of the light of sunrise or set, the shadows of ancient warriors carved into the bramble-blocked cliff-rise road judge all unworthy of ascent.
“… A tragedy.”
The lady that takes in this cursed place turns with a smile at that answer. “I’m apologetic for misleading you, but that’s the process, not the result.” Her index finger taps her blue-painted lips that smile lightly at that thought. This destitution is a first for her company, but not for this lady who calls even this “home”.
Home must accept the existence of men where they are not welcome even by divines. While these strange folk have taken to standing upon their rooftops to escape the stink of the dead soil, the glimmer of despise in all of their yellow, sullen gazes punctuates how even the stone here has begun to slough like skin peeling and the roof tiles slide off like dead leaves.
“This is… inevitability.”
One word is the truth, and that truth sets the tone for this conversation in a way that rings like pleasure down this lady’s back. What she teaches, they live every day.
“Fate locked them here? They can’t ever leave?” Eager, but sour, the sweet voice from behind detests that idea while also foolishly believing it exists.
“What a strange priestess you are! Do you fall in with stranger people who claim a man can be forced to never stop walking east if the universe would will it, even when the gods have themselves made farce of such fools’ claims?”
“But…?”
Wheat-haired with a green shine in the strong light, this wisp of a girl who wears naught by the sheer white virginal chiton of a gods’ chosen follows behind at a slower pace. She seems averse to coming closer to the cursed people whom she shall interpret for and need the most for her to understand their plights.
“You said this was inevitable?”
“But you heard ‘predestined’, a loathsome foreign concept. All that we see, hear, say, and do is not predetermined, but rather inevitable when carried by the…”
Blankness upon this young daughter’s thinly angled face is a sign of limited potential. Beauty though is its own tool as the lady returns to stroke her cheek, and this one has enough not to be wasted by not fixing her now.
A limited mind calls for an analogy!
“Think of a cart that is pulled not by stinky donkeys, but rather by every person who would claim it, all at once. You’re also always bound to it. Can’t leave it. Why, even the road seems to drag it forward. What would happen as you ride?”
“You’re trapped? Even when you aren’t doing anything, you’re going along with others’ pulling?”
“Wise of you.” How nice, the lady feels to be proved a bit inaccurate about this girl’s intellect. The religious caste usually produces submissives that forfeit the ability to reason, yet this one…? “Then, this place below the ruins cursed by the gods is merely their destination. They must’ve sought it, or they wouldn’t have arrived. Nobody else would suffer to live here but them.”
“They… wanted this…?”
Ah, how electrifying!
Her horrified gaze at meeting the simplest reality found all around her is a pleasure only matched by the intensification of the revulsion from above.
The lady slowly turns to take in this “vista” separate from the rest, making sure to accept all of their uselessly emotional strikes while making sure that they comprehend she does not even notice.
“Idyllic types love the lakeside, because they don’t need to think there.” When speaking of the city’s lake which fills from the same heights that the overgrown ruins lurk within, she turns to stare at how in the distance the playful waters lap at the broad, flat shoreline. “Ambitious souls come from all over for the cliff wall, though. The most beautiful white stone comes only from its shavings. They stake their lives upon liberating with their minds the exquisite works from within that might garner the gods’ notices.”
It’s at this point that the lady’s attention wanders, turning toward the unusual haze which somewhat hides those scoured walls where men daily break away huge chunks. Around this treasure, the city’s center bustles with the money made from serving “the arts”.
“I quite like the lonely hill beside the lake, though.” The last place gazed upon is where she often keeps watch over the rest of the city. “From sweetest flowers that grow way up at the top of the mountain, one day, the honey made by the bees who choose that hill will be…”
“Will be what?”
An interruption during a long thought is annoying, but the lady doesn’t snap when relaxing out of the strange somber thought she was having.
“… much the same as the inevitability that explains why they refuse to leave this place, though none would bind them here but themselves.”
Even if their gazes are murderous, the lady can only smirk at those who cannot rebuke her either by logic or authority.
“‘Inertia’ is a name given to one aspect of this universal force. It rules over all objects, if you’ll believe the scholars! It keeps us where we are at all times, moves us still where we were originally going.”
This universal force which explains all castes and claims and commonalities in life cannot be constrained by only the “physical”, as this lady placatingly offers both of her hands for the priestess to take them up.
“Don’t blame them, then, if it makes you feel better. They’re here because… ‘no one in particular willed it’!” After physical touches reassure, she lets go. “You came to me to help them, right, so you must comprehend their ‘dharma’. The prelates who taught you would’ve been boring types who don’t understand what’s futile or not.”
“… ‘Dharma’ needs sins, doesn’t it? What… possible sins could they have committed to belong here, to lock them up!? Why is leaving futile!?” Haunted now, but studious and refusing to shrink, the strangely composed priestess with obvious agoraphobia keeps getting stuck on the parts rather than the problem.
“Well, how could anyone leave if they don’t actually want to?”
The simplest explanation is always the wisest, most astute. And, it also receives no rebuttal when those fools on the rooftops sink upon their last resorts. They almost look like they, like the hovels they’ve erected, are melting!
“How… that makes no sense…?”
“What makes no sense is ‘sin’. That’s a foreign word! A priestess of our gods should not sound like she’s not of Minos.”
“I… you? Not of…!?” Confusion about this can’t be permitted when the fetching sacrifice thrown to a city in the sky twists her head like a struck chicken.
“The idea of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that those abroad entertain is meant only to fool the young. As I said earlier, only hubris is antithetical to the gods. If you want a true ‘sin’, that’s it.”
“But, good confronts evil! Defeats it!” Again, this sorry prelate’s scion forgets her own teachings. “Monsters and…! The heroes that defeat them!”
“Surely you don’t believe in such simplistic excuses. I know you’re too old to be kept up by unseen bumps in the night. Pretending they’re monsters, instead of the same cruel men you might meet during the day?” Refraining from laughing is hard, but it’s a practiced response when she has so many young, impassioned, and utterly reality-blind noble daughters to consort with on a daily basis. “Where did you grow up, I’m curious now! Not even the purest souls from Minos’ capitol would hope for a ‘hero’!”
Openly insulting the idea is necessary, else this little girl won’t suffer the social shame required to cleanse her mind. All such girls comprehend only stigma. It’s the uniting shame and torment that women obey…
But, there’s usually less nausea when doing her diligent work?
A throbbing displeasure rakes over a lady’s skin that makes it seem like she’s said something in error, despite the gathered crowd correctly cowering at the truth that nobody is coming to “save” them!?
“Were… were you…!?
Ah, kept in a box until now?”
She recovers from the strange tremors. A lady cannot panic, even if a pain very deep, but spread all around, flexes her limbs with torment as if to despise the light insult given…!?
Very green, very pure eyes go wide with shaking horror; then, they turn to stare at anywhere other than the lady that has agreed to mentor her.
“…
… Where I… was kept,
forever and ever,
it was… about the same size as that tower room.”
“Absur—”
A fast retort at how impossible it is for a prelate to mistreat a priestess of the gods as such, how they all live in total paradise from womb to adulthood, dies on the lady’s lips.
Because, she stares ahead at where the cart might be turning.
The uncomfortable priestess who buries her face into her hands to hide how she wants to vomit; those cursed by the gods who throw off their own misery for once to stare with naked sympathy and outrage; and the very way the lady’s heart seems seized with…
“… If the gods put you there…”
Sympathy has no place within, especially not when it will ruin the life teaching by succumbing to it.
“… then you endured inevitability’s descent.” The lady huffs after that, her hard eyes softening when staring at this abused wreck who will prove her point for her. “Who else but the gods could bind a soul to one small place?”
“The… goddess… did like me there.” It doesn’t take long, either, when the priestess admits it! “But… I didn’t want to be!”
Another niggling stab of unusual pity, confusion, and sympathy tries to worm its way up; but…!
“And? What of it?”
Sympathy about what has been done by the divine is one area that the lady will not tread, and taking up her charge’s hand, she pulls her loose of her own self-imposed isolation to stare at those gathered before her again.
“If the gods bid you to be there, then, little one, what if that was ‘just’ simply because they wanted it?”
And gawk this naive girl does once someone is willing to tell her the truth.
“How could… any god be just who has no compassion…!?”
“Did you learn nothing from your scrolls? Just? Compassionate!? My, you’ll find that even the gods have been punished for compassion! Gifting knowledge to us mortals is a crime among the gods, after all.”
“What…?”
“Yes! And as that was ‘evil’ at one time, it was also ‘good’ when done later when Dorat, god of craftsman, sent his daughter to the sculptors so that they could comprehend the human form. Every female sculpture now has her features to prove his pride. Men always change their minds about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ later. But, don’t think that only what we’d think would be good would be bad, for what if even ‘bad’ things may be viewed as good?”
“A wrong can’t be good! When others torment others, when they use them like that, how can that be…!?”
“You are feisty for someone only chatting. Unless, we’re talking about you?”
At the thought that this is only a chat, predictably the priestess’ features grow comically uncertain.
It’s so easy to strike down the momentum of others. All it would take is a little backbone, but never do these daughters, especially of the nobility, try to have a —?
“… Yes… to me.” Nodding once, an admission of being used is something you can never allow. “… What… they did to me, making me stand in for HER, trying to get… ‘favors’ by… hurting me…”
“Yes, it’s always like that. Especially when the gods are involved. More than enjoying something going wrong, people will attempt anything to get ‘right’.”
Trying another path when the currents shift violently, the lady pats this wretch’s cheek, then her head.
Amazement at the kindness easily shifts another’s thoughts while cooling the tension. When the priestess smiles weakly, the lady continues.
“But we don’t ever protest if the gods have set their hearts ablaze. After all, Teradoc, the Bull of Battle and god of war, bid that all of Minos should wipe out the Gardens of Askelon. Do you know why they’re now dust?”
“… There were… many reason? She, Aeferis, the ruler of it, was trying to…?” As if recalling some ancient lesson, the priestess with an overactive mind avoids the easy answer.
“Avoid being his consort. He came for her, she refused. Even amongst the gods, it is allowed for one to murder the living goddess Aeferis simply for ‘reason’ agreeing with ‘desire’. Teradoc believed that ‘no lesser being shall deny me’. May I tell you why… I believe it was his ‘justice’ even if it was petty, can I?”
With a look of disbelief at being asked for permission, the entire scene between them smoothly becomes personal when turning their backs on those that watch from above.
After this priestess nods, they whisper like sisters.
“What Teradoc desired was also what Minos desired, too.
The raw passions of a god met the equally strong wants of a nation and its allies. Think it not one-sided either, for those Askelonians in their high gardens would’ve been very happy with dead Minosians as fertilizer!”
“Everyone wanted war…?”
“Like calls to like, and each answers the ‘dharma’ they have fallen into when pulled along. A war of extermination has so many that don’t want it… but there’s many more sitting in the cart or shoving toward that destination, I sadly admit. What I said earlier about ‘beastly desires’ meeting ‘godly ambition’ never meant to imply that such ambitions would be ‘good’ or ‘evil’. They merely are: reflections of ourselves in action, the events that we set in motion we come upon later.”
Setting herself up as consoling rather than exalting, the lady completes her navigation of this young girl’s trauma by nodding when some pained expression asks
Is that why I also suffered?
“‘Nobody in particular is at fault’, because… everyone is at fault. Our dharma usually isn’t well-defined, but demands we obey it when we find ourselves swept into it. For, the gods expect no less. They always behave as they should, for they are bound to their own unchanging dharma. Everyone must honor their examples.” Tactfully leaving a lesson for another time about the ubiquity of “everyone”, the lady shivers with having successfully taught this valuable wisdom. “Even if we are judged by the gods to become fools, then we shall be the most grandiose jesters imaginable. If how we rule be judged a tyranny despite our intent and efforts, then we must become the cruelest. Life’s ‘heaviness’ enables and excuses this. But, let’s not be crushed by it, shall we? There are always ways of surviving, and even prospering, don’t you think? I may have mentioned earlier that ‘comedy’ and ‘tragedy’ are not opposites, nor are they separable.
Do you know why?”
When this mute girl shakes her head quickly, that comical ponytail of hers dancing in the dark light of what must be sunset for the mountaintop that the lady loves, it’s time to share some hard, lovely truths.
“For these poor souls that find themselves ‘locked’ here, this is a tragedy.
But, for us? It’s purely a comedy~.”
The lady positively orgasms, for some reason, when naming the distinction between perspectives! This rush of euphoria that praises the gods without praising them is her private tactic, but it rarely feels so self-affirming!
All about is light and fluffy, as if a revelation about life itself has thrown off all weights she’s ever felt!
“How can this be funny!?” A fast shout, some pure indignation mars the prettiness of a girl who behaves and learns; but, the lady is suddenly energetic when shifting tones after recovering.
“Comedy… isn’t just humor, now is it? It’s a function of absurdity meeting…? Ah, ‘human cognition’ is what he…?” Without naming the source, because thats lip was almost too much, the lady has a summary now! “Comedy and tragedy are both recognitions of how absurd life is to begin with. Oh, recognition?” Plopping her hand to her lips, the lady laughs! “My mistake. Even a worm ‘recognizes’ what it’s enduring! Comedy and tragedy are two outcomes of the trials the gods ‘gift’ us with, when we aren’t seeking them ourselves. Be sure that when we do not provide our own trials they will have some planned.”
“Trials? How can this be a trial when there’s no crime, or rules!?”
“Who says a trial has to be fair? How grandiose you are, to dictate terms to a god even if you interpret for them! A fair god wouldn’t be a god. The louder you howl, the harder the sea god’s waves will crash upon you, yes? It’s his enjoyment, after all!”
Even if the priestess protests, the named terms are so juicy that the lady feels ecstatic to hurry up with her explanation that has never been so cogent even before now!
“We are bound by others, just as we are destined to meet more bondage. They, to us. Dharma is a meeting of all matters. The ultimate placement of oneself within the world where you eventually settle. The gods simply sit upon the highest point of where we all sink. They are the example of how not to settle at the bottom.”
“But… if they’re cursed, then I’ll… uncurse them, or this place!”
“Ah, my dear, this lot found their cursed land because they wanted it. Doesn’t the land also need them because it needs someone to live here? To free them deprives it, and to free it deprives them.”
“Then I’ll uncurse them both!”
“How adorable! Even if you could change their ‘ambition’ to be cursed, or for the land to curse them, you cannot change their desires that brought them here… can you?”
When asked this question… the priestess stares at the cursed ones above like a pigeon would when facing ten cats circled around it and choosing who has a dinner tonight.
“It’s hubris to believe that you can change what the gods, and mortals, have desired… simply because you want it to be differently.”
This is the final and ultimate lesson, and whether she can comprehend it or not will decide whether this girl can “save” anyone, but especially herself.
For down the path she imagines in ignorance, there awaits only disappointment that rankles the lady’s soul deep within.
“This is a comedy to me not because I’m laughing, but because it is absurd. The more you resist your dharma, the heavier you will fall with it. If I do laugh, and I have, and will…!?”
Because what isn’t funny about the people who deserve this sort of torment finding it?
The lady’s hands clench when thinking about all those who have embraced ruin by trying to hurt her! Even when she extended the same hand in earnest potential to work together, even just stay amicable, too often they were secretly begging to be slapped down…!
Those strong emotions she subdues again beneath her greater reason. Never to speak of them.
“… it’s because… wouldn’t crying be the only other escape if you do not laugh at your dharma? Even if I make this city a jewel of gems, every last gem has at least one flaw that will drive you mad if you obsess. Wouldn’t being like the gods free me from such doubts?”
“How?” Despondent, but interested, the priestess’ one word sets off another rush of thought, then brilliant words!
“Why, how else? By living exactly as they do. Embrace every situation. Face every tribulation as if nothing else matters! Enjoy the misery, the sudden transitions, and most of all… the spectacle! Everyone loves spectacle the most. What they live through themselves, they wish more than for salvation that others should enjoy the same troubles…”
The elation from earlier has become all that exists as a feeling for the lady, making it hard to whisper that part!
When arriving at the crux of what “proper existence” should look like, the ideas bubble up!
“Living isn’t complicated, my dear! Nothing of life truly is. What people want, what they’ll ALWAYS get… its materialization is usually the difficulty. The divine and mundane were made to deliver us to circumstances aplenty! The gods are replete with ‘vices and virtues’, but in practice, the only vices are the ones that steal their certainty and tell them to be weak?”
“Don’t be weak…?”
“Think of what motivates you, then recognize that all others have the same. They’re just… insufficient motivators for some in order to succeed.” Slyly singing that condemnation, the lady feels as if she’s getting closer to the glory of truly being alive when dismissing so many others! “To live according to our dharma means chances to excel in our tribulations. The more trials we endure, the more comedies we put on for the gods, the more they will notice us…”
Becoming noticed is the key to success, after all.
It’s how this lady has always lived, and her life is owed to its fruits!
“You want trials? Bad tidings? Tragedy?”
“What a narrow view of life. If you accept being a loser, then you’ll never be a winner. If you succumb, only THEN is living truly a tragedy. Even the gods that die will always return in our myths because EVERYONE demands it. Dharma is the great motion of all.”
“Why not live like a hero, then!? Earn the notice of many by…!”
“Heroes!? Haha, they are a peculiar theater all unto themselves. Tell me a single hero who had a happy ending! Even Calador Venaii, greatest warrior of Minos’ pre-history, was pricked by poison and died leagues from his home in a foreign land!”
“But… he died at the forests of…?”
“Some far-flung place that no one remembers. Think of the veterans of the Immortal Host that come back from warring with the barbarians. They are old, drunk, always pining for a return to their dharma that asked them to die gloriously in battle instead of decaying.” The lady snickers, then shakes her head gaily! “Yes, don’t have that stricken look! Soldiers who are smart know that they should die gloriously, not become old, sour men. Our dharma isn’t a prison like your face imagines now, it’s an escape, even if the destination isn’t perfect! If the cart isn’t going where you’d like to, then whisper a better one, or offer a nicer reason to go! If you don’t like a passenger riding with you, there are… plenty of stops for them along the way.”
At her dark smile, the priestess blanches.
“Timidity is attractive, but you’re far from a man’s touch! We must live by any means, using any skill we can grasp. Hmm? Think, have you ever learned to swim?”
When this pale flower gently nods, the lady expounds upon that example!
“Well, then you remember the most important part of it! It’s that you…
Never
fight
the currents.”
Tapping the girl’s shoulders on both sides with each word makes sure that she remembers this. “If you’re dragged out by them, swim for the other shoreline.”
“… I don’t… think…?”
“Why worry then, if the thoughts don’t come? Enjoy what is now. After all, you should be laughing too. Don’t you notice the way they’re jealous for what you have, and they don’t?”
“Jealous? No… child of the wind would be…”
“Tragedies like these always bring out the truths of others, that’s why the gods can’t get enough of watching! Children of the wind? If you’re not amused by how they’re children of self-loathing, then, be careful, it might be that you’ve been dragged into the joke by them.”
“Gods… shouldn’t get pleasure from wrong things…”
“That’s hubris! The gods are perfect because they are gods!”
The miasma of this cursed land swells around the lady with that assertion.
It proves their correctness by its curse that distorts sight even more than the evening haze!
“There are plenty to replace them with equal woes throughout the known world. No mortal can stop the Great Wheel from turning even if crushed by it, nor hoist the struggles of mankind upon her shoulders! If you want to change the world, then change something small… build a city like this!”
From the enormous ruin way up at the top of the cliff, a damned place that scholars swore should keep this lady and her family from coming here to found a shining city of civilization, the demarcation of its ruinous territory is right at the city’s edge!
“By the place, the time, and according to the will of all do we prove our faith by action. By your faith, eventually, maybe even the gods shall look down one day upon your struggle to hear their words. And, perhaps, they might see something of themselves in YOU. If so, they could one day think,
‘Ah, how could I have not recognized what great acts I have in store for you?’” The lady breathes out the next godly lines with a need she never, ever voices.
“‘Come here, come to me. There are games to be had…’”
“You want to be a god?”
It’s the minutest give away imaginable, hardly worthy of the lady at the height of instruction; but, this sharp-eyed priestess gasps a question that brings a slight chill.
“I didn’t say that.”
So bluntly that the whispering priestess jolts, the lady has nothing but brusqueness to deflect this perceptive question with. “It’s arrogance to claim to be more than you are, hubris to seek more than you can be. If you discover you are more, though, then it is simply your dharma to be that, isn’t it?” Naked hubris must be avoided, even if it requires this curtness. “If the gods should look upon me, then I can only appreciate their interest… but my story had you as their ‘hero’, for isn’t it you who can be even more?”
“Me!?”
“If anyone has the power to act, such a wreathe of victory laurels would look prettiest sitting upon your head.”
The priestess gapes at this salient point, but the lady’s knife is already pressed further when the lady whispers with misgivings.
“Your dharma from birth has been to hear the gods’ voices. Brought here by ‘fate’, currents, or a donkey-less cart, why won’t you simply be what you can and should be when meeting those you might have been brought to… save?”
It’s minutes in silence with the priestess staring at the cursed ground that hurt the worst.
So much anticipation!
The lady’s heart is beating with the hope that this conversation has cured her. That maybe this priestess will finally ascend to the trial that will make this dawdling a comedy.
“… But… what if the gods aren’t perfect…? Hypothetically speaking! What if their interest, no, the interest of the one who WILL listen… is purely… bad?”
“Are you hearing some insane ramblings from the sky now, oh priestess~?”
Laughing about the sudden “divine intrusion” into the conversation, it’s how this naive girl firms up with a haunted look to her that ruins the lady’s mirth.
“If… calling out would help them, even if I promised not to, I…? But, at least one… goddess, at least, is very imperfect. She’s always been alone. So alone, since the very beginning of everything, that before she was a goddess…”
“Before a goddess?” The lady’s moan wonders at how one can shift from such a low state to something so high.
“… A goddess of loneliness is what she became, even after thinking she found a friend.” The thrumming feeling of beauty is far gone. “She never learns. Never changes… Doesn’t recognize any other person except this ‘friend’ she desperately wanted after learning to talk…?” Only a revolting anarchy spreads now through the lady when the divine sounds lacking. “Jealous, because she has nothing, but wants something. Nobody is allowed to reach out to her, only the one she chose. Even if that one is gone, she only wants… that ‘possession’.” She listens to this girl’s strange monologue with the rapture of an audience watching a mother and child being devoured by wolves. “A trapped existence, who traps another…”
But there’s no terror for the one voicing a terrible, and personal-sounding, tale. An absence of any emotion is what the priestess exudes. As if they were someone else’s thoughts and not her own… there is a lacking taste when the fear is not there.
“… If you called out to such a… person, but knew their response would be…”
With a dramatic flair that wasn’t expected, this girl’s eyes go sharper than daggers when she lifts her long-nailed hands up high like a bear would when enraged!
“‘You don’t need any more slaves, SO LET DEATH BE THEIR SALVATION…!!!’”
A scream of the depths issues from a mouth that seems to have sharp fangs now when stretched wide!
“‘But, come home now, my dearest Marashah’!” A wheedling, disgusting tone replaces the death sentence when this creepy priestess bends low and tugs on the lady’s skirt.
“‘We don’t need the light!’”
Dragged down, the grip impossible to shake, the lady shakes with an unknown fear that resonates so strongly from even the city itself!
“‘Please, stay with me forever, and ever, and ever,
or I’ll have to…
DEVOUR THEM ALL TO PROTECT YOU!’”
After that desperate plea with its pathetic mania uglifying her face…!
“Like that… that’s… what ‘auntie’ would definitely say.” The priestess who should’ve been born for the stage lets all of the alien insanity drop off. No longer ugly when rolling her shoulders, only revived exasperation makes her tired as she sighs.
“What… if that would happen, would you do, ▓▓▓▓▓?”