Aylem at the Healing Shrine of Mugash

Mugash turned the chair in front of the crystal around and sat down facing me. I could still see anger in her eyes but frustration too. "I hoped that you would have made more progress by now. Emily is almost to the place where she needs to be but you are not."

She sighed and studied me with her indigo eyes. "We made you too well. You are the one person in 10,000 who can bear the pain of gravel chewing your knees to shreds because you are such a perfect physical specimen. What about experiencing someone else's pain?"

I was gagging and my lungs burned. Something was moving in my windpipe that seared as it made a grotesque sucking sound. I could not see. I was blind. I kept trying to breathe but I when tried to exhale, something was pushing air back into me and my lungs were burning as I gagged some more. In the distance, a beeping noise began incessantly.

"Blood oxygen 62!"

"Can we increase flow?"

"Maxed out."

"We're losing her."

Then there was the cessation of pain as the world faded away.

I gasped for breath as the Well of Mugash reappeared in my sight and discovered that I could breathe just fine. I was alive. I was well. I wasn't dying with my lungs burning from lack of air. My relief was profound. It has been so real.

"It was real," Mugash said. "It was someone else's death."

It wasn't here. That had to have been on Earth.

"Yes, it was. That was Emily's death at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana. It took her six days to die like that. Six days, Aylem. Emily tried not to fight her caretakers because she understood they were trying to save her but she was scared and in terrible pain. Do you think you could endure six days of that? Perhaps you should."

Then I was struggling once again as my throat gagged and my lungs burned.

---

Lisaykos, Healing Shrine of Mugash

It was after the sixth bell when I heard a commotion out in the atrium. Annoyed, I got up to see what the noise was about. I didn't approve of disturbances in a place where people were being healed or recuperating from healing.

What greeted me as I entered the corridor was not what I expected. The crystal in the Well of Mugash was brilliantly lit and flooding the atrium in painfully bright light. I ran for the stairs. On the first floor, I had to wade my way through the crowd gaping at the Well. Ignoring the pain of the light on my eyes, I approached the door.

The door opened in front of me. Knowing an invitation when I saw one, I stepped inside. There was no painful light inside the Well. Just Mugash sitting in the Chair of Judgement in front of the crystal and Aylem, unconscious, face down on the cruel sharp gravel.

I immediately kneeled in reverence in front of my deity.

"Oh, please, do get up, dear one," Mugash said kindly. So I did.

I looked at the wreck of Aylem on the floor in front of me and then looked up at Mugash in question.

"We made her too well and she has lost sight of empathy. I am teaching her how to regain it."

I brushed the gravel out of the way of my knees and knelt next to Aylem, who was still out. I extended my hand to touch her face and gasped when I saw what was in her mind.

"What?" I took in a breath just to reassure myself I could still breathe.

"Aylem is living through the six days it took Emily to die in her previous life, as all the marvelous and miraculous machines of her amazing world failed to save her," Mugash explained in a sorrowful voice.

"Six days of that? Does Emily remember it?"

"Yes."

I swore quietly.

"I am done for today, dear one. You may put her to bed now." Then she was gone. The light in the crystal went out and Aylem made a screaming, panting noise and tried to stand. She slipped on the gravel and fell, cutting herself in numerous places. Her eyes looked outward and tried to make sense of what was around her. I stood, picked her up by the waist, and placed her on her feet.

I didn't let go, "are you able to stand?"

She nodded, put a foot forward for position, and promptly fell again.

I rolled her on her back and picked her up in my arms, "put your arm around my neck." I had to maneuver sideways to exit. "Now ware the door," I carried her out into the atrium. "Galpahkos, get these people back to their business," I snapped at one of my three deputies who I spotted at the back of the assembled crowd.

I carried Aylem down a side corridor of patient rooms to the small room we had placed her in. After I put her down on the floor, I went out to a closet in the hallway, grabbed a pile of blankets and a pillow, and returned. She was trembling, flat on her back with wild eyes and her hands clutching her head. I placed two blankets on the floor, picked her up and put her on them, then covered her with the other four. I placed the pillow under her head and held her hand as she started to sob uncontrollably. I healed all her cuts while I waited for her to calm down.

Krukallos, the healer in charge of this wing of the first floor, and in charge of the crew delegated to herd Aylem between her room and the Well of Mugash, was in the hallway, patiently standing outside the door. I waited until Aylem was just quietly sniveling.

"I am going to put you into a light sleep for now, Aylem. You will likely feel better---well, physically at least---when you wake up, which should be in a few hours. You'll probably need to use the necessary by then. Keep the blankets for now. You'll make yourself sick otherwise."

I put her to sleep, got up, and walked out. "Leave her some food and a light tonight," I told Krukallos, a steady sturdy practical healer in her late forties. "Take her to the Well in the morning as usual. Be warned that this may happen again tomorrow."

"Great One," she said softly but urgently, "what happened?"

"If people do things well but gods can do them perfectly..."

"Yes?"

"Well," I struggled myself to wrap myself around this thought, "if people can punish well, then gods can punish perfectly."

"Surd save us," she whispered in horror.

"Yes," I nodded. "Mugash is taking an active hand in the Queen's fate."

"Mugash was...?"

"Yes, Mugash was here and she spoke to me," I exhaled and let the tension relax out of my shoulders. "And now, I think I want to retreat to my safe place and think about all that has happened this evening."

"Are you alright, Lisaykos?" She grabbed my hand and searched my eyes. She's known me for many years.

"I just need to have a hot cup of tea and my dinner and I'll be fine," I patted her on the shoulder and returned to my study. There, Emily was encamped in her usual spot on the lounge along the south wall.

She was in a red plaid housecoat that Twessera had made for her, belted over an undertunic and leggings, which I suspect Thuorfosi dressed her in this morning. Her hair was braided in an overplait, which looked quite attractive on her now that her hair had grown out. Thank the gods, her cheeks were no longer caved in from being dangerously underweight, though I could still feel her ribs.

She studied me from her perch on the lounge with those penetrating eyes of hers, looking like she wanted an explanation.

"The crystal lit up, y...you w...went in, the light w...went out, and you came out carrying Aylem loo...king like some...thing had stepped on her." She was still having trouble with Y, W, and OO sounds involving both the tongue and lips but was speaking better all the time. Her voice was soft but one could hear her now clearly across a small room.

"We are going to have this conversation in my chair," I said referring to my big comfortable padded armchair with the view of the mountains.

"We are?" Emily gave me a dubious sideways look. She knew what was coming next.

"Ha!" I scooped her up, walked into my bedroom, and flumped into my chair, putting my feet up on the window sill. I pulled the throw blanket off the back of the chair and wrapped it around the disgruntled Emily. I cradled her against me and wrapped my arms around her. She sighed with just a hint of exasperation, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back against me. I could feel no fear whatsoever in her and that made me happy. It had taken more than half a year to get to this point and it felt well worth the effort.

I caved in to the impulse to wrap Emily up and comfort her like this two rotations ago. It was a day when she was pushing too hard again, trying to walk down the corridor. She had fallen and her elbow had taken the brunt of the fall. Asgotl had come stumbling into the study in a panic when she fell. I found her curled up doing her valiant best to not give in to the pain, which is a bad habit of hers.

My maternal instincts got the better of me so I picked her up, wrapped her up, and cradled her in my lap while sitting in my big bedroom chair. Instead of being so damn stalwart all the time, she caved in and had a thoroughly good cry, which was a good thing. She needed the catharsis. She doesn't allow herself to show weakness, even in front of those she lives with. I know that what's inside her head is older than I am, but she needs to learn that she doesn't have to be such a fortress of inner strength all the time.

"W..well," a relaxed Emily said, "wah...wah...what did Mugash do and say?"

"I love the way the sun backlights the snow-covered tops of the mountains in golden light at this time of day," I remarked.

"Avoid...ding the subjek?"

"I know you can do this," I said patiently. "Sub...jec..t. Come on, try it."

"Sub...je..c...t! Answer the quest...ion." Emily is nothing if not persistent.

"When you died, it took six days as you lost the battle to breathe," I stated. I felt her stiffen, never a good sign with Emily.

"It... it...it..." She took a breath and let it out. "It was frighten...ning. I w...was very scared. It took so long. I lost count of the days and then it...it hurt so bad. It is not easy to die."

I picked up a kerchief off my side table and gave it to her so she could wipe away the tears. I found it interesting that she never sobbed when she wept. The tears would just show up quietly with no audible announcement.

"Mugash judged that Aylem would profit from experiencing your death," I told her, a little wary of how she would react. She sat up and went completely stiff and still, every muscle tense, not even breathing.

"Relax, dear heart," I pulled her back against me, "and don't forget to breathe."

She let out a ragged breath, "at least it wasn't six days worth of that experience."

"Mugash is a god, Emily. She can manipulate time if she wants. Aylem, in the space of less than an hour, lived all six days of your death."

Emily made an exquisite grimace, "I'm not sure I approve. That's just cruel."

I wasn't as shocked as I would have been half a year ago. I was becoming accustomed to Emily's occasional critiques of the gods.

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