It was something her grandmother would have done and something her father would have scorned, most likely.
Visiting the gods.
What did she hope to find? Answers, perhaps, because she couldn't find anything in this desolate darkness—not her King of Thieves, not her summer-eyed Torasin, and not even that damnable white tiger. She searched feebly in the darkness ahead, scanning for the venomous flash of violet eyes, but only blackness and a certain sense of despair swamped her senses. Itzal had cut his connection with her, and she knew better than to press him. If he wanted to be alone, so be it.
She hated it. Hated it more than anything, this darkness. She was a desert flower that flourished beneath the intensity of the sun's scorching rays and blistering touch, and relished the feel of hot, dry wind running through her silver-gold hair like a man's loving caress. Where have you gone, my King of Thieves? She even missed the hiss of scorpions streaking through burning golden sand and the deep, thunderous thrum of a rattlesnake's buzzing tail rattling in the sparse shade of sagebrush and cacti. The sky was always a bright cornflower blue, and her tough skin was nearly scrubbed raw by sand, wind, and sun. She could go without water for days, survive suffocating sandstorms, and navigate by the stars, but what good were those skills when Helovia was clad in eternal winter and a plain cloak of immortal darkness that lacked the luster of decorative diamond stars?
She was lost even in the darkness now, with no stars to guide her. She hard never felt so alone, nor so useless. Perhaps that was what lured her to the shrines of the Gods. Didn't all desperate souls seek sanctuary beneath the eyes of gods that may or may not even care? She passed over veins of shimmering blue magma that reminded her of Zjarri's hair—glowing, scorching, and treacherously beautiful. The raw, hot stench of sulfur and ash scorched the back of her throat and filled her lungs. The heat that shimmered from the simmering magma caused a light sheen of sweat to glisten on her neck, and breathing in the hot air was like a healing salve applied to her heart. Even her leg, crippled by wolves nearly a year ago, didn't throb so fiercely and ache from the cold. The heat of fire and magma made her feel close to her ancestors, to the Firelord and his Firebird. She immediately felt more alive than she had been since Torasin's death.
But just thinking of those summer eyes made her heart wilt, and she sighed softly. Torasin only made her think of World's Edge...of Mirage, Thor, and Lace, that kingdom by the sea—of all she had left behind in the hopes that she would find her purpose. Despite all that World's Edge had done for her, she was slowly letting go of them one bye one. Thor, Mirage, Lace, Torasin.
She missed them, yes, Jackal perhaps most of all. Her Jack with wild red hair and cool silver eyes. She held him in her heart like a secret, alongside the terrible stains of her father's death. Yseulte was fierce, to be sure, but she did, after all, possess the passionate heart of a woman no matter how she strove to suppress it, and she desperately longed to love and be loved in return, however foolish it might be. When she thought Itzal was deep in sleep, she would lay awake every night (or was it day?) and whisper to herself: Forget him, forget him, forget him.
How else could she hope to move on with her life? There was precious little space as it was in her heart, and she knew that in order to make room for future relationships, she had to let past ones slip between the barbed wire wrapped around her heart. Even the King of Thieves.
Itzal brushed her conscience, strangely tentative at first, as if he didn't wish to disturb her, which was highly unusual. As if he, too, noticed how bizarrely polite he was being, he took hold of her mind by force, his conscience cold and unyielding as steel trap laced with poison. The familiar flavor of Itzal's mind flooded her conscious like a sea of bitterness, writhing with anger and tearing things apart destructively. She sighed. Her young ward mentally exhausted her more often than not. But he urged her on anyhow, traces of excitement leaking into the pool of consciousness shared between them.
Company ahead then, surely. When he wasn't busy tearing wings off of robins and sparrows, Itzal loved nothing more than sneering and tormenting the companions of strangers. Perhaps she ought to toss him in the magma and boil the bad boy out of him. His snide laughter echoed in her mind, and she caught glimpses of the shrines. She followed the path winding alongside the magma, anticipating whom she might find waiting for her, if the gods had truly not forsaken them. How long had it been since the Earth God had received her in this very place? A year or more. Even Hototo, the boy she'd met in the mountains, seemed to think the god would answer if he ever truly had need of his father.
She desperately hoped the boy was right.
But it was not a god in all of his divine glory she found on that perilous ledge.
"Lace," she said, surprise and uncertainty mingled in her voice. His sad eyes were the same as always--ancient as time, as if he had lived a thousand lives and none of them happy. They glittered like pirate treasure, bright and round as golden coins in the darkness and his hair was a shock of fluid silver in the stark blackness. His pale dragon stretched languidly along her former mentor's back, rippling and glittering like a cloak fashioned from ivory dragon scales. Itzal was by her side, suddenly, staring at the white she-dragon curiously. Oddly enough, his gaze was neither venomous nor did it hold spiteful contempt. Only powerful curiosity. But then again, curiosity killed the cat, more often than not. She gave him a stern look that promised to toss him into the volcano if he did anything foolish. He ignored her, but did not jest or taunt the dragon. Only stared with those unwavering violet eyes.
She could not find her tongue after that. The words stuck in her throat, painful and sharp, like the tiny bird bones Itzal so often cracked between his fangs. She could not remember when she had last spoken with the silver glazier alone. Was it that night, so long ago, when he fashioned armor from naught but swirling black water? She wanted to rush to Lace, wanted to embrace him like the long lost friend he was, but she did not. Aside from fearing her crippled leg would give way beneath her, she was Vasílissa, now, not Yseulte the Crafter or Glazier's apprentice. However badly she yearned to reach out to her former mentor, she could not. It was not the Valkyrie way. But that did not stop her from respecting him. Aside from her father, Lace had been the first man in her life, along with Torasin and Thor. Did he hate her for leaving? Leaving without a warning, or even goodbye? Did he even care at all?
She thought she could handle scorn and hate.
It was indifference that would break her heart. |
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[O] A sound of Silence
