CHP5 07/10/21

“Tell me another story!” Seneya pleaded to the air.

Between her full night of sleep and the blackberries, she had improved.

Her green eyes gleamed bright and full of life. She was life itself, a breath of delight.

Heat radiated through the train car from an oppressive sun. By the rattling din of the tracks and the way bright flickering motes of light glittered through the gaps, she could tell it still moved. The heat that radiated from the roof felt good on her aching back.

She climbed down from the top of the wood to the empty way below, wriggling around stacks to the door. She needed fresh air, and motes of it whipped in from a crack in flickering tickles. She closed her eyes and bundled against the hot metal. The edges of tightly bound bundles of thinly sliced wood pricked to her side. Crumbled shards of shed wood littered at her feet, crunched beneath as she let the whipping air caress her face and blow her hair back.

She combed fingers through it, stopping as her nails snagged at the ends. She twisted her face in a grimace. Where usually her fingers had slipped through her hair, she still had a few more inches left. She tugged her hand further out, then further still to flick the tangles from her hair. It hung to her mid-back not a few days ago, or so she thought. She grabbed a lock and tugged it down her back, surprised that it now hung down to her buttocks.

“Wow, I’m really due for a trim.” She pulled a lock over her shoulder to stare at it. It went suddenly quiet in her head as she did so, and an image flashed through her mind, no, dozens of images, but all the same thing, this exact moment. Her hair shifted every color of the natural rainbow, flashing in sequence with equally changing skin color and texture.

She released the strand with a sharp gasp and stumbled, her back pressing up against the side of the pallet. She bleated in pain and sank to her knees, gasping in soft, wavering breaths.

“Do you understand me, little star?” The voice spoke in the musical tongue.

She’d heard those words before; she knew she had. They came to her quickly, sharp things, words that kissed her ears. Tears welled in her eyes, not just from the pain but at the beauty of the words.

“Eya,” she whispered, their word for ‘yes.’ An overwhelming sensation of joy bubbled within her, not her own, but a contagious glee shared between her and the voice.

“I do not know how I can speak these words.” They came from her lips in hesitant syllables and stumbling ease.

“Every night that you sleep, I curl up in your mind, and I sing to you those words. There is a song inside of you that I protect.”

Her eyes began to tear up as she spoke the new words and understood them as they came back with clipped precision.

The language, like a song, a tremble of quiet notes from her lips, soothed her in new ways.

“What are you?” Her eyes went wide in amazement, and again the musical words came from her lips, not English… She vowed to never taste English for as long as she could help, to cut the bitterness from her mind.

“A spirit. I’m part of something inside of you. I care for you as much I can and protect you from yourself.”

“I’d never hurt myself.”

“But you were. You were staying where you didn’t belong. You’re broken, little star. Someone has snuffed out your starlight, and I’m taking you to someone that can help you. They stole your song.” Each word the voice spoke in her mind caressed her senses with the tones and motes of the new language.

She held trembling fingers to her lips, tears still welling, now drooling over her cheeks in slow rivulets. She found the beautiful words easy to speak, where English had been hard for her.

Her thoughts came in English, and it hurt to think that way; her mind twisted. The pain only got worse, and she held her head in her hands, curled to the floor in the shredded debris. Desperately, she willed that it go away.

The tears didn’t stop; they just kept coming as she clutched to herself. Finally, she couldn’t move, and darkness crept in at the corners of her vision.

Soft gasps crossed her lips.

“You need to sleep. Have some of your water. Rest again, and when you wake, I’ll tell you more stories.” He promised in the musical tongue, and her mind twisted to it, bent to the words like a feather swaying in the breeze. The imagery haunted Seneya, and she closed her eyes tighter. The breeze at the door danced over her face, and she leaned her head into it while she drifted off and dreamed of flying.

She dreamed of lots of things that night, stolen kisses, teeth on her neck and collarbone, and harsh cries of violent pleasure. Visceral pain that brought her joy threaded through the strands of her memories. Some things were stirring, and others platonically satisfying.

She jolted awake in a cold sweat. Night had fallen again. Darkness shone through the train’s small gaps, and where once summer-warm air flickered in, now it tickled coolly over her forehead, settling her fevered mind.

“Voice?” She called out quietly, looking around. She spoke the language, using its word. A single note of song now lived in her voice.

“I am Soh-ken.” The voice said quietly, and she had to concentrate on listening.

“Sohken. I don’t think I’m okay, am I?”

The voice went silent for a long moment, but instead of fear, it laughed, a beautiful laugh that didn’t befit his candor, short chuckles.

“Yes, Sohken, I like that. But no, you’re not. You will be soon, and I am sorry for the things that are to come, but know you’ll be stronger for them.” A soothing sensation, driven by a note of song, tickled her mind.

“What things? I don’t know what’s happening.”

The voice stayed quiet for a long moment and spoke once more. “Go back up. Get your water, and I’ll tell you another story. I felt your pain and would not wish that on you again so soon if I have to teach you a new thing.”

Seneya followed orders, anything if not obedient. She climbed atop the pallets, drawing herself up with ease to slide into the small space above. She looked over at her hands and brushed them off, surprised that she didn’t have a myriad of splinters. Then, she pulled free one of her bottles of water and took a long draw off the still-warm contents of it. Her stomach cried out for food again, but she had grown accustomed to ignoring it over time. The water didn’t sate it but sleep normally abated the sensation.

She laid out on her front, rested her head on her backpack, and closed her eyes to listen.

“In the beginning, the creator made his children and grew tired of them. This story, you know, but not the story of the Warlord and the Seraph. The creator’s favored seraph and his first created son of Cerraien are the players of this tale. You know them as Sai and Acryan,” Sohken spoke with a mischievous glee in his voice. Seneya wished she could see him, see the smile that she felt in him.

Upon the face of the earth fell the children of the creator, split daughter from son. They fell to earth, injured in both body and pride, sewn in discord and cowering between two forces, Vrahe the void and the warlord Acryan.

The void wanted to be filled, wanted to take, to gain power and destroy that which the creator had made. The warlord wished to own, create in his own image, change, and rule what the creator had made. They were rage and spite warring with one another in equal faction.

When finally Sai, who is the seraph and the melody, the last to fall to this world had come, the sides had split, and war was enduring. She was fragile for the first time, new in a body she had never thought of before.

From humanity came servants that saw the beauty and greatness of her, and they nursed her to health, telling her of all that had befallen her brethren. In empathy, she healed the mortal’s sick and traded among them great wealth to garner power for herself, for as she understood this world, wealth was might. It was a gift of her crown to grant her great knowledge.

She heard of the struggle between her brothers, the warlord, and the void. So she came unto her brother, of the void, Vrahe.

“Brother! Let you and I come together; let us not destroy. Let us heal and make whole what we’ve done,” She declared.

“I shall not heal that which I seek to break!” So said the void, and he turned her away.

She returned not long after. “Let me offer my song to complete your own so that we might come together and go home.” She pleaded.

“I shall not sing the song of creation, for if I do not, it itself is destroyed.” So said the void, and he turned her away.

“Then let us come together. I do not wish to abandon you, for you have been abandoned by many,” she offered in finality.

“And so shall I know loneliness to remind me of why I do not call our sire’s name,” Said the void.

“My brother, of the void, I have come to you and offered myself three times to heal you, three times to make you whole. I have offered you the love of the creator, my own love to heal you, and still, yet you turn me away. I shall bother you no more,” and her word was final.

“But come unto me, sister, and help me wring the ink from these pages,” He pleaded her in kind.

“No. You have thrice spurned me and thrice turned me away. Enjoy that which you have destroyed, at last, our bond.” She said these words in the song, so he could hear the truth of them.

In grief, she went to the warlord with wings of fire. In those days, she was taller than him, blessed with the stature of a seraphim. The Warlord, Acryan, could only look up to her, for he was short-statured. In her image, he saw the creator and turned his head away.

“Let us make a union, you and I, bitter one,” She said unto him.

“I make no unions. On the contrary, I take, for that which I do not take will be taken from me. That which I do not own will abandon me.” He retorted.

“Then let our union be of our souls, treacherous one. Let our union be one that cannot be broken. I will live and die, then live again on this earth. The rest of your people will know death. Will you stay with me to know death as only a friend in passing?” She asked him.

Forever is a long time. It was forever before, but the motes of time that ran like sand through an hourglass in this world showed him a new fear, one that was both loss and grief.

“If I shall give myself to you so freely, you would destroy for us that which is death?” He asked.

“No. We would only create life over and over again. That is your wish, to create? If you give your soul unto me, I promise you a thousand lives to make with me, life over and over again.”

“And you would grant my wish so easily?” He asked.

“Bind yourself to me, come unto me so that you may lead your people at my side, and I shall heal them of their sadness. I shall share with you the fires of the creator and gift you my song,” She pleaded.

He looked up at her once more and stared at the beauty of her form, the brightness of her wings, and the life in her eyes. He saw beauty in her and learned of a passion within himself. All this, for the Cerraien, did not know the desires of the flesh until then.

She offered him within her hand a fire that burned of all the colors, then the green of life, and he responded by offering his own, those of the burning fury.

The two vowed to each other and shared their soul. They marked one another as lovers eternal and from themselves gained the first binding marks, professing their undying union. Yet, as her sigil burned over the warlord’s hip, opposite her hip of his mark, he knew that the one thing he had in this world had been stolen from him, his freedom. Her magic had shackled him, pinned her to himself.

His anger was short-lived as through her, he gave his spite and rage. She adored his temper and fury more than anything as his petulance became lust. His fiery passion was something she treasured and loved.

And in time, the two made their first child, Kaltah, for he was a surprise.

“I have created.” The warlord said, and such is his love that he vows in every life to create and never abandon that which he makes. He was not his father, the creator, for he loved his children.

They lived, they died, and they lived again.

And they lived ever after.

“Isn’t there a happily ever after?” Seneya caught herself asking; the new language played over her tongue as she tried to adjust her mouth and make it her own.

“Not for them. There is only ever after. There is only life, more life, death, and life once more.” Sohken’s words trembled, full of choked emotion. “Only life, my little star.”

Seneya, it called her, she loved that name, little star. It was hers, and in that security, she slept once more.