Chapter 10: Reification
The first dawn, the first sun, the first noon.
A yellow sky gives way to cyan
and fades through purple to orange to black.
My love, my sister, my family to whom I ran.
Together, and not turning back.
Dissemblance
My hands were on the sabres. Someone's arms were around my waist, someone else's were around my legs. Before that moment, I was staring into the eyes of a forlorn goddess, gasping for air after pushing too hard.
I had been running, desperate, for reasons I couldn't articulate at the time, and certainly couldn't when I arrived. The crowd had thinned and given me a clear path to the Violet Cathedral. Before the thinning, I was overrun with panicked people wrongly desperate to escape something they didn't understand.
That's why I had been moving the other way. I needed to know. When the first tower collapsed, I was worried for someone, something. The swords were on my waist in a flash, and I was off. I'd been working when the crowd began to stampede away from the centre of the city.
Stable work was stable work. It kept my mind occupied, and it gave me access to all manner of fascinating soul. I met people working with the Sisters and the Daughters. I met nobles and not-bles. I even met a goddess. Amber eyes and silver hair. Kind, if a little bit rushed for time. I feel like we had been friends at one point.
A goddess who fell in love. Not with me, of course. With a sapphire-haired waif with the spark of a heroine in her, even if she was convinced she was no one. A girl. A woman. A sister.
Roisin.
That's the thing about a joke that's never told, Roisin. No one laughs if you're not around to share the punchline.
The waif was reading the card I'd been told to deliver. She was taking a terribly long time, just as Jasmin had said she would. I giggled at the knowledge they loved each other so very well that one could anticipate every step of the other. Two dancers intertwined in a tango that would lead to their end if no one stopped them.
"Roisin," I whispered the name, uncertain what part of me it bubbled up from, and she met my eyes. "Roisin. Please, if you are going to the Violet Cathedral this sun, please protect your heart."
"Jasmin says I should leave the sabres with you," she replied, smiling as she unhooked her belt to follow the goddess's orders. "As for my heart," she continued with a friendly smirk, "don't worry over that detail." She pulled at the leather armour she wore and revealed some manner of metal plate attached to the spot a blade would need to pierce. "If this doesn't protect me, then nothing could have. Have a lovely sun, Miss."
And she was gone. Hours later, she and that wife of hers would stand before me. One dead, one broken. And both would need love or understanding.
She was there, the amber-eyed goddess, still quintessentially human, but something far more terrifying, far more impossible. A goddess who had lost everything in the span of a breath, everything except herself. In her arms, my sister, lifeless but smiling.
I looked down at myself, arms tense with a rage I couldn't explain, hands gripping swords they had no right to wield against a broken soul. That's when I saw them. Tenebra's arms wrapped around my waist, dark as night, holding me as tightly as she could. How I hadn't felt the woman's breath on my ear was astounding. But further down, wrapped about my legs, were two more pairs of arms. Children. My little Asha and Sage.
One of them held a dolly. Asha's doll. Linna.
I felt tears running down my face. Where had any of these people come from?
"Delia," the voice was Em's. It was filled with hesitation. She wasn't ready to break the silence. "I think this might belong to you."
In their hand was a small black box. Obsidian and onyx. I'd seen them fiddling with it a hundred times in the year since I came to Violet's Repose. But it was open. That was new. And inside was a brilliant blue glass bead, a perfect match for the ones Davian had used for the doll's eyes.
The doll that was now missing an eye after a long life of being loved.
"You're safe, Delia," Tenebra whispered to me. "This is going to hurt a lot. But you have people here. Friends like me and Micah and Nyx and Tal. Family like Asha and Sage and even Davian. And new family. The woman there," she pointed at the goddess, "who loved your sister so much she tried to give up everything for her. As you can see, Roisin was too bullheaded to let that happen."
"It's you," the goddess's voice was a brilliant song, mournful but whole, "Delia. Your sister told me a lot about you. I'm sorry. So very dreadfully sorry we had to meet like this. My name is Jasmin."
Assembly
Night began to fall far sooner than we could have expected. A half-mile of unwalkable ground separated us on all sides from the rest of Violet's Repose. It wasn't that the ground was particularly dangerous or laden with traps so much as that the whole area surrounding what was once the Violet Cathedral was itself so imposing that the only souls who dared come any closer were probably already damned before they arrived at the decision.
It was a blessed reprieve from the gaze of each person walking past, that they wouldn't dare turn their eyes that direction, despite the carnage of the destroyed palace.
Nyx, Kovar, and Em left at one point and returned with food and camping gear. Did all of us long for a bed? Definitely. Were any of us prepared to leave the site of that terrifying calamity to reach the comfort of those beds? Not even a little.
I could see in the others that they hadn't experienced it. They hadn't felt the weight of infinite cycles pressing down on them, trapping them in an inevitable moment of tragic loss too grand for one woman's mind to contain.
Jasmin seemed to have a sense of it. As did Vaelis and Tenebra. Even Nyx seemed somewhat shaken. Tal and Em seemed to shiver with an understanding of something beyond them. Davian, Asha, and Sage seemed untouched by that horror, a freedom I couldn't begin to thank the goddesses enough for. Tovar and Nico were changed, but I couldn't place how or why or just what the depth of it was.
When the darkness joined us, someone lit a fire. Or multiple someones. It was difficult to say as I stood back and did my best to accept that something was finally different.
Asha and Sage were constantly demanding attention. I couldn't blame either one. I missed them as strongly as they missed me. Davian at some point took over, finding the kids a nice place to sleep and helping them get down. That's when I was finally able to take in the whole scene.
Nyx and Tal were sitting, watching the fire, hand-in-hand. I'd never seen them so intimate in a public setting. It warmed my heart. Em and Tenebra were holding each other far too close, but no one seemed to mind terribly. They'd been through a lot in six moons, and we could grant them a moment of impropriety.
Kovar and Nico tended the fire, calmly and diligently watching for any sign of weakness. It was good to have them there, my anchors to the past that never should have been. They reminded me of what we might have lost if —
Somehow I had wandered my way to Jasmin's side. Roisin was laid beside her, still smiling against the cruelty of her self-inflicted fate.
"Well," I mumbled as I sat beside her, "seems we have a lot to discuss, sister-in-law."
"Top of the list: we never married," she said softly. "We were going to. The moment we got back to The Stone. And then, well," she looked to her wife, "this happened."
"I don't blame you," I placed a hand on her back, "for all that's worth. If I know her, she knew a moon ago that she was ready and willing to die in your place." The impossible sapphire hair gleamed in the firelight. "Did you know our mother was Lady of Blue Stone when this all started?"
"Pieced it together long before she did." A weak smile brightened her expression. "You should have seen her face when your mother's cousin called her Lady Thornleaf." Jasmin laughed for the first time. My own tears fought their way forward. "What I didn't know is that your father was supposed to have been the next Lord Primrose. Makes my own alias a bit gross, to be honest."
"You called yourself a Primrose?" It was my turn to laugh. My sister followed in our mother's footsteps a little too closely. "That is honestly the funniest thing I've heard in a while." After a long silence between us, I moved my arm around her shoulder. "Well, you have literally tiny shoes to fill, Jasmin Thornleaf, but I think you'll make a fine sister for Delia Primrose."
"Thank you."
A final squeezed hug passed between us and I stood to check in with the others. That was the goal, but I was immediately drawn to Tenebra's side. It was an excellent opportunity to get her alone, since Em had joined Nyx and Tal at some point.
Just as with Jasmin, I took up a seat beside her, but I let Tenebra have a moment of silence with me.
"How did you know it would work?" She was doing just what she always did: staring at the stars, counting them meticulously.
"I didn't," I admitted, "but I was hopeful that some version of me would appreciate the knowledge that she wasn't alone."
"Well, it's not the Black Lakes, but I owe you a night under the sky and an explanation." She looked at me, for once her deep black in black eyes didn't seem empty or lonesome. "Care for a chat, Lady Primrose?"
I leaned against her just as I had a few times before. "You know, Tenebra," my smile was wide as I considered it, "if neither of us were married, and if I had a thing for beautiful women, you would be incredibly charming. Roisin might've fallen for you instead of Jasmin if she'd been at the house when you arrived."
"How incredibly fortunate for everyone, then," her head rested on my shoulder, "that none of those things are true."
We laughed together weakly. Her words weren't quite true.
"You know, I saw a lot in all those cycles," I let myself recall the first moment she'd met Aurelin, blushing, "and in all that time I found one thing quite peculiar."
She didn't move from her spot. Instead, Tenebra put an arm around my waist. "You remember then. All of it?"
"Unfortunately," I sighed softly for a forgotten loss, "but above all else, I noticed something special about you. In every instance, in every place, in every cycle. You always spent so much time with your eyes to the heavens."
I hadn't noticed until she emerged, but Vaelis had been notably absent from my initial roll call, and she was suddenly sitting a lot closer to us. Just out of range of 'companionable', her eyes were lit in a beautiful violet.
"So of all the marvellous things you could've noticed," she gestured to her body with her free hand, "that was the thing that caught your eye so well you needed to say something? Can't blame you. That's what Micah fell in love with originally. Before our daughter was born."
"Huh. I didn't know you were a mother, too." I let my own head rest on hers. "Explains a lot about you."
"Indeed." She raised a hand and pointed across the camp to Jasmin. "That one there is my twenty-one times great granddaughter. The first Jasmin Liatris was ours. Stolen by the queen, brainwashed to become the next. Sadly unrecoverable."
Jasmin went stiff at her name before facing our direction and tilting her head. Her eyes seemed to be searching for any part of herself in Tenebra. She seemed satisfied in her investigation eventually and smiled. Nico and Kovar also turned our direction, curious but silent.
"That's terrifying. If someone did that to Asha or Sage, I'd probably have —"
"Killed the queen. Destroyed everything. Unmade existence?" She pushed against me softly. A joke. "Yes, exactly. I did just that in one of the loops. Same as you. The Devouring I survived. The second loop among them all. The first was Linna." Others seemed to be moving closer as Tenebra talked. Nyx, Tal, and Em had moved nearer, opposite where Vaelis was sitting. "Somehow, we both avoided doing it again after that, even though she didn't remember what she'd done."
"Who knew. Even the goddesses are vaguely human."
Tenebra sat up straight, nearly causing me to fall in her lap. "Hush you." Everyone around chuckled softly.
"So. Tell me." I smiled as we looked properly at each other. "Why do you do it," I pointed upward, "stare at the stars like that?"
A long, deep breath separated me from the answer for a few more seconds. "A long time ago," she said airily, "before any of this started. There were five guiding lights in the heavens. Deim," she pointed to the bright lilac star near the horizon before sweeping her hand to the yellow one on the opposite side of the sky, "Phob, the sun, the moon," at last she pointed somewhere off in the distance where only darkness lay, "and one right there called Mara."
Vaelis's eyes had tracked every movement like a child learning an important lesson from her mother. At the last movement, everyone was looking to that dark spot.
"Mara completed the constellation of the huntress and pointed lost wanderers to a small city deep deep deep in the desert. It was my home before the Fiend, before the time of peace, before everything. Even before the first raindrop fell."
Davian wandered over and sat on the other side of me, whispering softly, "The kids are asleep, love." He kissed my neck, which warmed me more than a campfire could.
"We welcomed everyone from everywhere in that city. Just like Powell's Square, it was a city that delighted in diversity, built by people from every walk. And the Fiend couldn't comprehend its value, so she destroyed it. But the people did what people do: they rebuilt. So she did it again. And so on.
"Something like five hundred years ago, she figured it out." Tenebra stood and stepped forward a bit. "People kept going to the city, kept rebuilding, because the stars spoke it into the hearts. So what do you suppose she did? What can you do when even the stars offend you?"
I shook my head. "Surely, she wasn't that powerful?"
"You've felt that power yourself, Delia," she said as her shoulders dropped, "what do you think?"
I traced my hand across the sky from Deim to Phob and then back to that dark spot. "It's funny. If there was a star right there, it would be about where an arrow was nocked on the draw." I couldn't be certain, but it felt like the atmosphere around me changed a moment, like I was a breath from a foundational truth.
"When the star was gone," Tenebra continued, coming back to my side, "I had to remind people over and again the city existed. The lost, the broken, the misfits, and the self-outcasts. They all needed to know someone was there, waiting for them."
"At the tip of the huntress's arrow," I whispered softly. "You know that's too big a burden for one woman."
"It's fine," Tenebra smiled brightly enough to light the whole gathering, despite her black cold-flames. "I have a family to help. Tal, Em, and Nyx. And now you and Jasmin. Even Vaelis came back. Family. And anyone can join."
"What if I'm not ready?"
"Honestly? I don't think anyone is truly ready. But if you ever are," she winked, "well, Micah isn't a jealous wife."
When Em had gotten to the other side of Tenebra, I couldn't be sure, but they slapped their wife's shoulder. "Delia, don't listen to her. I'm incredibly jealous." They hugged Tenebra close. "And if you're ever ready, it's entirely your choice. I mean, look at me and Nyx."
Nyx raised a hand. "Not a good example, Em. We chose to give in." Several of the divine souls laughed at that.
Em stuck out their tongue at Nyx. "And I wouldn't trade our friendship for the entire universe. But Delia has a family. A real one. We made this choice specifically to become family." They looked back to me. "And whatever choice you make, I'll defend it against every threat in all Lafleur." They shook their wife slightly. "Even if it's her."