She's a Mean Old H4 Bus, Cpt 2

Chapter Two: The Quiet, Angry-Faced Girl

The girl with the quiet, angry face did not, of course, call herself ‘girl with the quiet, angry face.’ She was Charlotta Phelps, but Charlotta was the kind of young woman who did realize strangers must call her ‘quiet, angry-faced girl’ and she relished having a quiet, menacing demeanor that kept people unseated with her—she was able to project her frustration, sharpen it, and then strangers didn’t approach. A little girl, she looked like one, but she set it up so that men on the street must have been frightened of her. Who needs mace in this city? She was really very good at scaring the men on the METRO, and that was her best defense, and also her favorite game. She reasoned that she had better like doing it to them. Her offense.
 
There were more than the homeless-looking men who stared to play the game with. She played the ‘don’t you dare touch me’ silent treatment with the business-looking men who stared at the way she wore her coat, her purse, her body. Leaning on the silver pole on the METRO train with hips cocked, as if she had had enough. All those business-looking men could not have been from DC, almost no one living in her city was anyways, but Charlotta had learned that these men could hurt her with their misunderstanding, shame her by making obvious the distance she (knew she feared she) saw between them, if she ever allowed them to get near and take her, and tap her number down, and text her later,
 
Ur so beautiful. Nice finally talking to someone on the bus. Wanna get coffee later?

Her Hand, 2

Her Hand, 2: Toes, Stripes, Claws

Maera knew that her husband believed she was ugly.

But she did not.  Maera had gained weight and her bust slackened over decades, and she always had crooked toes and stretch marks.  But, she did not feel repulsed by her aged body.  Maera was comfortable with the tiger’s stripes along her hips.  Those almost orange stains against her dark skin had been there since college.  She loved them.  Secretly, she was glad to have them, and when she became pregnant, they darkened and spread, which made them better.  Now they were a beautiful bruised carmine where she was most womanly.  But how did it all look together?

If it were up to nature, Maera would not be capable of seeing her entire body.  She was unable to see past her breasts and stomach.  She was also able to see her hand on her leg when she was walking, her feet flashing in and out beneath the hem of her skirt as she moved about the house doing chores.  Left up to God, Maera only knew her elder form from perspectives when she was working and providing for her husband.  But, with the help of a mirror, Maera saw things that were rippled or puffy.  Those parts of herself made her feel frightened and worry about her husband’s aging, particular heart.  But, then, those tigress stripes were still loud and consistent. 

Also, ever since Maera could remember, her small toes had always curled up on flip flops and the nails would point out.  Now, her toes were larger and could appear ashen even when it wasn’t summertime.  But, she loved her crooked toes as well.  Maera accepted that her body would always be raw or misshapen no matter how she shaved or paid someone to tame it all down for her.  Long ago, she had been this fond of her great parts.  The firm and the flush had empowered her to try seducing a man who’d she’d seen walking on the wrong side of 16th Street.  Every day she saw him, and on one day, she removed her shawl, stood with her skirt in a wind, and he came at her through traffic. 

Years later, when Maera had their baby, those good parts of her body frightened her.  They’d started to sag and change.  They threatened to repulse her beautiful husband and never come back again if she didn’t work hard to appease them and right away.  But the clawed toes and the tiger stripes, they were powerful in that they refused to leave her.  These eventually defined her.  Maera was amazed at how these must have loved her, to make her still seem unique as she aged. 

Maera was once a weird, intense pubescent girl.  Now she was a powerful, unusual-looking woman.  Strangers thought twice about taking a seat from her on the bus if she wanted it.  Then she could rest and feel refreshed for her husband.  She could bully into the grocery line first, get her husband’s dinner home and done the fastest.  They backed out of the way, ushered their children far from the crazy, unhealthy looking, tough old lady—the one who shouldn’t still be living the way she weaved and leaned as she walked.  It was as if she’d grown a bull’s wide horns.  Once, Siuta had called her a cow.  But she’d kept these markings and methods just him. Was that what he was also seeing, of the woman he loved? 

Who was Siuta?

Tonight,

Maera sat alone at the table with her paw upturned.  It had been dissected.  Her mate, Siuta, must have wanted to see where her claws had always come from.  Were they retractable?  How was she able to get to him when he was well off on his own, eating his own dinner, changing his own television, and should have been safely out of nagging’s reach?  How was his wife able to latch on when he was a grown man and wanted to get away?

Maera loved her husband as she watched him pace and fret around the loud living room.  She realized that she always missed him when he should have been nearby.  Siuta didn’t look at her in the right way anymore.  Always from the side of his eyes.  Nor would he speak to her directly. Always from beneath his breath.  So, she tugged when he showed an opening and got his tongue going, pawed at it until he might admit something meaningful to her.  She’d say anything to keep Siuta going when he got started.  But Maera did not ever hear her chiding words, she was truly purring in her mind.  Yes, she would annoy him, tease him, do the things he precisely did not like.  Because she liked his angry energy.  She wanted to see him struggle and exhaust himself.  Maera wanted Siuta to admit to defeat on some evenings, and allow her to draw him near to herself again, curl him up, surround him with her warm, beating stripes and then point toes to the world to defend them.

Siuta was on the phone now, with an ambulance.

“She’s bleeding out, she’s cut something.  We were fighting--arguing over the sugar, the sugar in my tea, so simple, and now her hand is split wide open…”

Siuta’s tan pants were up to his true waist and the brown belt was neatly fixed where it should be.  His free hand was shaking.  He hooked fingers in a belt loop to try re-adjusting it, but his waistline was still perfect.  He had always been that sort of man.

Was she in any pain?  Maera decided that her head was filled with only purring and loving him, as she watched her husband’s slender back turned.  And Siuta was sweating.  The yellow kitchen lights did it, and the hot water in a screaming kettle on the stove, ready for more controversial tea was doing it.  But it was Siuta’s worry for her also, making him exhausted tonight.  Such a bad man.  Such a good man. 

A man who left a knife on the table alongside her cut palm, and a toothpick.  There was a ballpoint pen pointing in the blood too.  So white.  So loud, wide and silent in the orange room.  Maera wanted to lay her head down.  She also wanted to lift it back up, but this was too difficult.  That involved awakening.

Maera, when she did try well enough, was able to see all the things her husband had removed surgically from her hand.  These were things they had not seen together in years.

That nasty poster of over-the-desk Jessie.  Their first remote control.  His half of the bedsheet, now soaking up most of the blood, lay over one side of the table.  His pair of socks that she decided she was going to wear anyway.  An old picture of them in swimsuits from back when she could convince him to wear that, and run toward her through traffic.  In this photograph, they were on one of those vacations on television.  Everyone else was their age and perfectly tight beautiful, playing in the green water on the horizon, but she floated out of her bikini a little.  One could see all of her stripes and all her teeth in this old, red-stained picture.  Siuta was foolish back then.  He was busy looking behind himself, for the sharks.

This commercial she loved, because Siuta claimed he hated it, now returned to the television.  He leaned out of the kitchen, a coil of their old telephone chord tensed against the doorpost where it snagged.  They listened to the terrible thing together. 

“…an affordable romantic package that includes a wedding on the beach for just the two of you.  Perfect for lovers who want to get away and just obey their sweetest instinct.” 

Call 1-800-FOR-LOVE.

Doorbell and confident knocking.  Before he let the paramedics in, Siuta wrapped all of his things in the bloodied sheet and rushed the bundle back into their bedroom.  Their absent daughter warned, a thousand times, that she was moving out so as not to seem them finally do something like this.

Maera saw the whites of her husband’s eyes, at last.  She swore that she could smell his fear aso, it was like the taste of copper.  Maera also felt herself smiling, though she knew she was angry.

“I love you, I’m afraid for your life.  Now will you stop baiting me, you crazy woman?”

“I drive you crazy, Siuta?”

“Yes, we’re even!  Now, what are you going to tell them for me?”

“Good then, Siuta.  I drive you crazy.” Her fingers spread through the pain, reaching for the door that was not as loud as the television set, asking to open.

Siuta did not have to go and do it.  He could have maimed her, turned his back, waited through critical moments, then have them in and ended it.  His wife had ugly toes.  She had these nasty stretch marks he begged her to do something about.  But, in a way that he did not understand, Siuta felt he should open the door so that his wife would not lose her strange and powerful hand. 

He was worried that the paramedics would cuss right away and be disgusted by her claws when they bandaged them.  But they went at her with cool focus and worked swiftly, as if Maera only had a woman’s fingers.

-fin-

Coming next week: I'm not really sure... maybe a little Steam Punk?  We'll see.

Randitty-o-Meter = 8

PRINT: Cause I really wrestled with that last line. Came out good, though.

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Chapters
1 The Shark Wife :: 2 Toes, Stripes, Claws

Her Hand, 1

Part One: The Shark Wife

Siuta uncurled his wife’s fingers from around the sugar packet.

“No, you don’t get to decide.”

“But it’s too much!”

“This is only sugar, this is only what I want to drink, what is wrong with you?”

She now used these swollen, worked hands to make fists against her skull.  Maera began to cry and cry that she didn’t know any longer.

“It’s bullying, that is what this is.  You always ask me what more do I want, you make me go and get bread from the refrigerator with my dinner when I couldn’t want that.  You ask me if I want a knife when I don’t need it, you tell me to go back and put gravy when I don’t always need gravy on my chicken!”

“Siuta, it’s our dinner, it’s supposed to have everything.”

He calmed his voice.  Siuta scratched white stubble along his jaw.  “And this is only tea.”
Maera shook out her hands, leaned over and turned up the television set.

“Hey, you didn’t ask me.  You’re doing it again—”

“I am not.  You said that I always asked you and so now I’m not asking you and now you don’t want that.  You can’t do that, Siuta.”

They were fine.  Their walls were orange.  The smaller fold-out table their daughter had left for them after she graduated college had a red cloth over it, edged in many balls of fuzzy decoration.  When it wasn’t hot outside, it felt hot inside, because of Maera’s colors.  And, when it was hot outside, it was hell in here.

Siuta sipped his disgusting lukewarm tea and relaxed.  He wasn’t wrong to have complained.  She wasn’t wrong to have misunderstood.  But then, during a commercial for taking a dream vacation, with young couples chasing each other on the beach, and tanned young arms hugging over the pale waistline of a bikini as underwater flashed on the camera, Maera threw her arm, knocked the tea, and clawed into his palm.  Siuta shouted.  His wife set her teeth as the camera raised and panned over a vast, green ocean that promised paradise.

Siuta was aware that he had been doing this since boyhood, and was still doing it—he’d react to the sight of a beach, or any stretch of clear water, by first scanning its surface for the thrill of a shark’s fin piercing it.  Maera, digging nails into the clear skin of his hand, was the shark coming up.  She knew that he’d been looking for her.  It was his fault, for taunting her to come these last twenty-five years.  Cruel, savage sea-monster.  For her seduce him once upon a time ago, with sweat and the waggle of her body, back when her skin wasn’t so rough.  Before she’d gone so gray.  He’d fallen right in, ended his bachelorhood and believed her fast, salty lies.

“A woman can love a man, Siuta, and it’d be simply fun, a relief.  Look at me, feel all over me and know that I would relieve you.” Catch and stay by her, wade a little as she circles.  She needs you, even to eat you.  That is just a man and a woman, then a wedding, the natural way of things.  Then, she said, “I’d tell you to grow some balls and ask me it already, but I can feel, now, that you’re partway there…” Maera laid down for him, but she was not really under him.

Siuta shouted at his wife today, “Well! We are not playing around now, anymore, are we?” And then, he simply overpowered her.  There was the thrill of sex again, after so long—finally, it felt he was the true alpha between them.  Fara had been conceived out of her mother's demand for a child, they both understood that.  And Maera wouldn't have a son for him, either.

Siuta was not in love with his wife anymore, no.  His clothes were on, and hers had to stay on now too.  But, the hot, freeing rage was back.  They had been armwrestling the sugar vessel, and Siuta reversed Maera’s grip.  He forced her down at the shoulder, like a cow—it was how she was built—and then he used his other hand to spread out his wife’s fingers.

Maera licked her teeth with the edge of her tongue, submissive, or in too much pain?  Tentative to the scream that would get the neighbors through their walls and make him angriest.  Enough to break her fingers before anyone could get by her side.  It felt as if he were already doing it.

Siuta took the sugar out of Maera’s hand.  “Look at it, look what you are always taking from me.” He scratched the thick, clear skin of her hand with his dull fingernail.  “And it’s still all there, since I was twenty-two.”  Siuta was convinced of it, Maera grunted and snuffed like a beast, exactly as he imagined she would.  He took the toothpick from behind his ear and began to test the thick, clear skin of Maera’s own palm.  He began to peel it up.  No blood came, yet.  And then he could see it, he could see what she’d taken from his apartment back then, after he first promised.  She’d gorged on him and then turned in that beautiful space he rented with his own good money.  She crashed through his blinking, shining silver things and ingested the most precious charm, the totem round which his young soul had been fixed.

Siuta began to pry the tear in the skin further open, scratching with his dull fingernail.  Maera threw her other arm out, kicked him under the table.

“My old Playboy fold-out is still in there with you, isn’t she?  Jess Dane, over-my-desk Jessie, the first thing you demanded be thrown out…” And Siuta was serious. His wife’s hand began to bleed…

Coming next week:  Her Hand, part 2 of 2.

Randitty-o-Meter = 7

PRINT: Can you tell I'm not a man, writing?

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Chapters
1 The Shark Wife :: 2 Toes, Stripes, Claws

Paperclip Safari, 5 The Blackest Friday

Randiddles
by J. Ingram

 Five:  The Blackest Friday, part 1

And so, the mighty Silverback Titan emerged from the frozen earth, looking for his lost pack (of paperclips).  Titan missed his mate Strawberry the most.  And the cub, little Pipa.  The two juveniles he could leave--and Titan grated silvery metal jaw as he hopped along, enjoying the thought of finally being able to put out the irrascible twins.  Joba and Boba were not his own, he sensed, but Strawberry insisted on keeping them along...

Titan had been following his pack's scent trail for many long months.  Through summer and fall, over forest trail, in street gutters, and also through an elementary school cupboard... Titan hadn't figured that part out yet.  Had Strawberry gone to hibernate someplace around people?  How desperate of a situation were they in?

It would be necessary to get to them before true winter set in, because DC winters can be mild and had been for some time before the big blizzard last year.  Among paperclips it was called Clipageddon Three.  The first had been a hundred years ago, when there was a tornado in DC that blew apart any manner of survival chains they had formed to hold onto trees, car antennae, or so very many government buildings.

The second devastating Clipageddon was during the formative years of the Nation's most popular Office Supply Chain, which is having ALL KINDS OF SALES TODAY--BLACK FRIDAY, ALL YELLOW LEGAL PADS 50% OFF, STAPLES 500 FOR $1, AND PAPERCLIPS, WE'LL SHOWER YOU WITH THE HUSKS OF THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF SPIRIT-BROKEN PAPERCLIPS: MOTHERS, BABY CLIPS, WHATEVER YOU WANT, AS SOON AS YOU WALK IN OUR DOORS!!!

And so, you see how terrible it was.

As Titan recalled the old stories (mostly, they were the shiny gesticulations of his grandsire's upper fang), the gray clouds parted over a field in Rock Creek Park and the steely silverback saw what he'd been hunting for.

Strawberry and the cub Pipa were nearby, their scents were unmistakeable.  But if he did not see them, then they were upwind somewhere, perhaps very upwind, hiding out in the safety of treetops.  No sign of her majestic red, oblong curve...

In the winter clearing, two full grown males stood with fangs fully unfolded and bared, each on his own hindleg (clips have but two ends, when you unfold them).  Joba and Boba had grown from juveniles to full silverbacks. 

A dramatic DC winter sky.  So dramatic!

Titan did not like their aggression, he approached from the side, going two-dimensional and less intimidating.  They did not heed.  The foolishness of youth, to approach him like this, with no respect for what he had done for them!  Protecting them, raising them as his own, even if they were vastly annoying and constantly hungry, and launching onto the loose shoestrings of passerby with no regard for the safety of the family pack... and even if Titan didn't enjoy their company... well, he was planning to confront them anyways.  But not so dishonorably!

Strawberry had been right to hide.  These rogue youths had cruel intent, indeed. Titan only hoped that the cub Pipa was safe, as he began to unwind and refold himself, into something that was all fang.

Titan is all fang, baby.  And, some clear tape.

 There had been three Clipageddons in paperclip history.  Titan intended to make sure, for Joba and Boba's ruthlessness and complete disregard for the safety of the pack, this would feel like Clipageddon Number Four:  The Blackest Friday.

...

Next:  Teeny, tiny, tinny battle of the Stripey Link Clan!

(Randitty-o-Meter:  10.  Those paperclips are so adorable.)

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Chapters
1 Paperclip Wisdom :: 2 The Mighty Silverback Paperclip :: 3 The Stripey Link Clan :: 4 The Origin of Office Supplies Species :: 5 Paperclip Savers are Environmentalists Too :: 6 The Blackest Friday

Mi'Raah,12

Mi'Raah
by J. Ingram

Twelve:  A Choice Between Two Lovers

When Arudelle received word of Mi'Raah's demise, he was at cards with the only two Captains still wealthy enough to stand the Pirate King's cheating.

"Come now, woman.  Calm down and you're dripping on my good hand."

Mi'Raah, soaking wet from head to toe in her once silver priestess robes, waggled the gold message bottle in Arudelle's face.

"'Dear Sir,' it reads, 'I am bound to meet my doom, down here,' I wrote days ago, '...imprisoned as I am.  Desperate for reprieve.  My only comfort is a Trystian slave who pities me and tells me stories about all the wonders of falling in love with his shackle-mate so near to the end of his miserable life.  I'm not bitter, I am truly glad for Syramon.  But what about me?  All I can contemplate while Syramon divulges the aching of his heart, is that the man I need schemed to put me here on purpose, and is probably laughing his lily-white, never-pirated-a-real-day-under-the-sea-sun arse off--while PLAYING AT CARDS!"

Arudelle then replied to her, without raising his eyes from red and black sets of conch shells, mermaids and north-stars painted next to numbers, "I so love when you read to me..."

Mi'Raah pursed lips and snatched a second message from her golden bottle.  "Dear Unsupportable Sir.  Now I learn that the Queen of Jyst, herself, has been executed.  Is this some lesson for me?  Syramon says he overheard that it started when the Queen shouted at the King, because he planned all along to take me from the dungeon as his mistress. Then, he erupted at her on the following night, with fresh knowledge of all her secret extra-maritals... How did you know that was my secondary plan?  Even I believed it couldn't work between Baeltheon and myself--"

"I told you we had got back together, Mi'Raah.  I wasn't going to let someone else take you.  King Baeltheon held out for as long as he could, but nobody can resist you, sweet, I know that.  It's why you weren't executed right away for treason, if you were wondering.  So, I paid a few people to ensure the Queen would hear about Baeltheon's scheme to keep you alive first, and then, second, incense Baeltheon to take it too far.  But the whole rumor about the fight being over the Queen's silver hair color--well that was news.  I didn't start that.  Aha!  Here's a High Tide everyone, my hand winds."

Mi'Raah almost ripped a final letter from the bottle and then slammed it on the table, in the middle of candle-lit treasures Arudelle was presently raking with hands over to his side.

"Dear Sir.  It depresses me that this bottle still finds its way via shuttled chamberpots and I am forced to retrieve, read and write back as is your enforced proscription against the deaths of my sisters, but after days of struggling for you with no response, I am at my mind's end.  HOW DARE YOU FORCE ME TO WRITE YOU AS THIS FETID KINGDOM FALLS APART.  I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO KILL YOU, ARUDELLE, BUT I DO HOPE YOU DIE, I DREAM OF YOU DYING, AND I WISH VERY HARD FOR SOME MORTAL ACCIDENT TO BEFALL YOU AT EVERY OTHER BREATH.  Kindest Regards..."

Arudelle raised up from the table and tugged Mi'Raah into a kiss.  Captains Jherpolis and Minthene were clearly holding their breaths.

"Mi'Raah," Arudelle said gently, "You're here now, safe, and that's all that matters."

"Bastard.  You set me up.  I was helping you, I was converting mortals to our cause just fine, and then you ordered me to directly involve Rider Koriandra.  Why?  Why did you do that, when you must have known she assassinated Prince Bonnis, and craved killing Odentalis too?  You knew that Odentalis was the god-horse Odeon already, didn't you!  Why didn't you warn me first, that she was due to learn the truth about Odeon and become homicidal--say anything about everyone, even turn against me, to do as she pleased?"

Arudelle smoothed a hand down her wet hair, and ended bringing a loose end close to his gaze, inspecting it.  "This is split I think... And you're not as heavy as I like you, either."

"Can you really be serious, Arudelle!  I threw myself off a cliff only hours ago, to escape Odeon himself.  Though, I don't really know what I hoped would happen whenever and wherever I landed.  Damned tide..."

"I found out that Odeon and the man Odentalis were the same, after hearing too many strange stories about the High Priest from these two." He nodded at Jherpolis and red-bearded Minthene.

Mi'Raah turned to glare at them, but Arudelle seized her back around.  "Mi'Raah, their two names were even similar--"

"But Odentalis was a holy name to match a holy animal, Odeon.  The High Priest took rites to change it, which made sense."

"And that was so with every High Priest before him... High Priest Odeno, High Priest Nodeon, and there-forth... It was always the same creature.  Odentalis was his best effort at manhood yet.  I was startled to learn a horse could ever figure how to turn into a person, but then I doubly realized that, here you are--an impossible, beautiful woman--and also so tangible.  An angel in colors."

Mi'Raah swatted Arudelle's roving arms away.  He grabbed her.   She yelled and put both hands around his throat.  The veins in his neck all turned blue, with her powers.  "Sir!  I am done, playing with you.  My life is not a game."

Captains Jherpolis and Minthene stood, drew their swords.

Arudelle looked only at Mi'Raah.  He managed angrily, "It follows... that I don't trust you."

"You own me, you do whatever you want with me, and expect everything in turn from me, but you don't trust me?  If that is so, then, I am a slave.  I am not your wife.  And certainly not when, you already have a wife.  I remember, clearly, that her constant name is Euginnia, always in my guilty head."

"You don't wish me... to be kind to my slave?"

Mi'Raah wanted to squeeze and crack his spine, or make ice-crystals of the whites of Arudelle's eyes.  If his henchmen did get to her sisters... perhaps it would be a mercy.  For her sisters, and for the world.  To prevent anyone being used like this.  Belief was just belief.  Suffering would always be suffering.  Like choosing between two miserable lovers.

And then, something made Mi'Raah let Arudelle go.  She turned gaze just over her shoulder, licked silvery blood as it came to the edge of her mouth, and observed the same steely glint cut through her back and rend through her stomach, on the other side.  A man's hand gripped the sword that stabbed her by its elegant, wire-coiled pommel.

Red-bearded Minthene had done it.  He then gently set Mi'Raah down while withdrawing sword, as if there was a kindly way to un-stab a lady.  Jherpolis helped to get her by the arms and place her dress neatly while she lay bleeding.

When it was done, Arudelle stood over her.  "I put you away in that dungeon because I did not want you to get hurt when I knew what was coming, on their streets, and in their palace with the Queen fated for beheading.  But, it seems I wasted my time with you, Mi'Raah.  When it came to this anyway."  then, Arudelle stepped heavy boots by her ear and down the wooden floorboards, to call directions for the ships to be put this way and that before the morning's attack, as if she no longer existed.

Mi'Raah had not been mortally cut before.  For so long, she and her sisters had always been too clever for it.  Made themselves into goddesses with guarded temples before any one wild person might dare try it.  Now, as she waited for death to come--that it had been her second time helping it along amused Mi'Raah a cruel little--she learned that her fear of it was worse than a what a sword-wound actually could do to her immortal body.  Curious. 

Or, was it like so many games mortals liked to play?  Three of a kind, or worse, a third strike, and her long life would finally snuff out.  The First Ones were mortals, after all.  Noble people with a grand, vast vision for their world.  Suppose they were still fallible, for making people who could only live as toys?

So then, what was her real purpose?  To go on being used, then hide from use on a glittering shelf, only to re-emerge and offer herself to users like this again, forever? 

Arudelle returned in the night, mewing in worse distress than she recalled doing earlier, for her own wounds.  Her silvery blood had gone.  He was able to put a blanket around both their warm bodies, and apologize.  "It's just that, you made me look weak in front of the men.  And they are all real pirates, do you understand?"

Mi'Raah curled fingers into a fist, then gave it up and swallowed.

"Tomorrow will be better, sweet.  Tomorrow, we take Jyst for ourselves.  After, you can pick out the very Queen's bed and sleep in it.  I'll hold you again and say sweeter things to you, when we have more time.  Better than this salty old floor.  I know you must agree with me.  Say anything, love, please."

"Goodbye, Arudelle." Mi'Raah closed her eyes and wished she could mean it for more than one night.  The toy-woman pretended to die, if only she might enjoy hearing Arudelle panic and believe in it.  Then, he might give up on torturing her, for a moment.

But then, just as the golden bottle never ceased coming back, her damned heart beat one more time.

...

Next:  The Conclusion.

(Randitty-O-Meter:  I would have rathered he play some fantasy version of Uno--but it was tricky to figure.  I so love Uno.)

Mi'Raah,11

Mi'Raah

by J. Ingram

Eleven:  Believing is Seeing

Mi'Raah heard about it from her prison cell.

"And then...?"

A manumitted Trystian paced on the right side of her bars in a fine red robe.  Syramon crossed his arms.  "It boils down to want.  Women want to dance, men want to watch them--no matter their ranks.  Usually, it would offend these high-brow ladies, but now they are being told they cannot silver their hair after you did it, High Priestess.  The women had a fit-and-a-half, as they say in Tryst... It was another way of street-dancing when they were too good for it, that is clear.  Changing their hair color started the riot you heard guards talking about."

Mi'Raah nodded.

Syramon continued, "Free and wide and clear like the Seas.  Everyone wants a right to be like this now."

"I'm sure the Queen wants it the worst, her silver head's in desperate need of putting back on."

"But you are a High Priestess.  Can you not raise the dead?"

Mi'Raah winked, no batted an eyelash, as if there was a gnat. "Syramon, my friend, that depends on what sort of death it is.  A woman is forced b'neath a guillotine because she wants to steal my hair-style, well then, that's not worth fixing..."

"Haha!"

"But if a man's blood is spilt, and it's got a silver sheen to it--that's a whole new style, I think.  I need to see just how he does it.  So, go on and tell me the other tidbit... how is that Odentalis faring?  I know King Baeltheon wouldn't spare expense to save his life now that he's also mortally short a Queen.   Before the hair-riot you described, the guards here also said that old and young and all their mommas too watched an axe-man fix the queen."

The sinewy Trystian dancer advised Mi'Raah that the High Horse Priest Odentalis had last been seen fleeing in his bandages to the Royal Stables.   The physicians tried but couldn't find Odentalis, which was strange in his condition.  Who knew if the High Priest even lived?

"I know a place Odentalis might have gone... Well, here's your piece of music, Syramon.  In exchange, I happen to know that Prince Bonnis seduced a Holy Rider while he lived.  That should be enough to buy your lover's freedom.  Oh!  How romantic, look at all the people I'm helping..."

"Mi'Raah.  Your closest worshiper was sent to jail for stabbing the High Horse Priest, who may be dead.  The waif-Queen of Jyst who made the mistake of admiring you after all that had her head chopped off as a reward.  The King of Jyst, Baeltheon himself, is deeply regretting ever giving you a chance in the first place because his kingdom is presently in violent upheaval over it.  And now, the only person who really likes you, Mi'Raah, is myself--because I was recently a slave and have no other choice.  Oh yes, and then there's the talk about Arudelle the Pirate King being your friend."

She fidgeted.  "...So?"

This Syramon person shook his head.  "Nevermind it.  If I am going to stand up to Bonnis' heirs, without money enough to purchase my love's freedom, then I need something more damaging than a mere rumor about their father.  If I can have an actual name from you, Mi'Raah, and a when...?"

"Understand, I was holding out on you for the same reason that King Baeltheon has kept me alive in here--who knows when the enemy will come or what he may want next?  I can only tell you the name, once I'm freed.  Did you bring the keys, Syramon?"

"When they were dragging you down to the dungeons, we passed for but a moment and you whispered few precious words, a generous telling that enabled me to buy my freedom.  Now, because of another valuable hint you gave when I properly visited here and paid my homage, mere days ago--my lady, of course I have swiped the keys."

"Then escort me to the fields tonight.  Once I find Odentalis, I'll scream out the name you need to save your man and start a new life."

Syramon knelt by the bars and undid the lock.  He whispered, as if this were the worst part of their conversation, "Thank you.  I've prayed before, many times, but the Trystian goddess was never so merciful--"

Mi'Raah prevented him from opening the gate.  "What if... you can't have quit your faith in exchange for what I've been dealing up and down the island this past month?"

Syramon leaned on the bars.  "I understand what you've done.  Truly powerful, immortal creatures couldn't be so humbled, could they?  So, you are doing a little of both--maybe even as much as you can.  But, no matter what, people need something to believe in.  I don't feel betrayed, Mi'Raah.  How can I?  I do like you, for trying, which means we are friends."

"Maybe I gambled well by picking you out of the crowd in a hurry, lifting up a man who was obviously in an impossible situation?  He might feel beholden to me, forever.  Visit me in the dungeon for as long as it took, tell me anything I needed to know, no matter the risk.  Had you considered it?"

Syramon used strong muscles to wrench the gate from her soft grasp.  "I have a question for you as well.  What are you so afraid of, Mi'Raah, that you would rather be locked down here?  The world is not going to end, simply because you opposed the royal order.  Some of us will go to Tryst, have a light drink, and then wait for Arudelle to finish scattering these arrogant horses, no?"

Mi'Raah took one tentative step through the bars.  "You wouldn't happen to know anything damning about the Pirate King Arudelle that he hasn't already used to become so disgustingly successful at conquest, would you?"

Syramon did not understand, so he laughed.  "High Priestess, I like your style of miracles.  They involve scandalizing all that won't shake its tail, otherwise!  Come, come, let's go find Odentalis..."

"No, I work miracles more out of naked spite.  You'll see when I shout out her bald-headed, betrayer's name..."

Later, behind the Royal Stables, at the Sacred Field...

Mi'Raah warned Syramon to stay back, but the Trystian hugged her when he knew they might never see one another again.

"In three days, come to Leeaire's Bodega in the Trystian high district.  There will be an extra seat near Thom and myself and a glass of wine waiting for you.  Please, Mi'Raah, consider it.  As I said, no matter if I was once a royal slave, you will always be my friend."

She hugged tighter, promised nothing, then went off into the tall grass.  It did not take long.  To Mi'Raah, the air had colors, kinder things lifted.  Heart beats expanded in bright pulses that rivaled fireflies.  The flow never ended.  Impossible not to know if there was disharmony.  Mi'Raah followed an ink-deep ripple of power now, hand flat out, reaching...

"Ah.  There he is..."

Only, the dark form laid out at her feet was not some wounded memory of an obnoxious man.  It was a large horse with the exact blade-wound Koriandra had given, but across its flank.  Mi'Raah clicked her tongue gently, knickering to the stalllion as she knelt down.  Odeon lashed a foreleg and tried to rise, but only rough snorts passed through his nostrils and over large, white teeth.  The blood shone silver, where it pooled beneath the animal.

"Odeontalis?!"

"...Meh."

Well, that confirmed it.  "Look at me." She pricked herself, "This proves we are the same.  Though, I admit, I did not realize it meant you were truly a horse."

"Blast."

Now that he spoke with a horse's mouth, Mi'Raah found the anger trivialized, somewhat.  The whole of the hallowed creature became apparent then.  His Odentalis was never reasonable, nor accessible enough because the horse did not how to be human.  Then, Mi'Raah inhaled sharp laughter when she realized the real male, Odeon never cared enough about mortals to be so convincing.  So this was his greatest, secret flaw.  The horse was lazy and unimpressed with life, in general.  Odeon just cared to eat what he liked from one day to the next, that was the goal of the feed-tithes, that was the point of the entire deception.

"All this, to gain the power to feed yourself while captive?"

Odeon snorted forcefully and wilted grass, "If I can't get off this damned island, then I'll be damned if some stupid mortal decides to give me stale hay, and just short of sunrise, for three weeks' straight--"

"And now I go, Hahaha!"

"It isn't funny.  You aren't funny, Naah Maah Mi'Raah.  I wish that I had recognized your name, but you were only just crafted back in our time, correct?"

"Beyond the fact that none of the First Ones shared political doings with you, a very able horse." she petted him.  "Poor animal.  You weren't made for this life."

"Are you angry that I took advantage of people?"

"Why do you suddenly care what I think?  I can't train you out of it, I don't know horses.  Though, it's sweet that you still long to take orders."

"Only from the First Ones.  Our world was good, back then.  Before the first time it was wrecked.  This is another apocalypse coming on, I can feel it.  I must have sensed that, then spooked."

More giggling.  "Here, now.  Don't you go being angry at me, Odeon.  Stay still, lend your energy to living... I've learned, in the worst way, that it does no good to be better than other creatures.  Even if mortal lives are smaller, those are still lives, those are still hearts and minds driving flesh to build your temples and age your wines.  What hurts one of us, when we share this world, will eventually hurt all of us.  I had the power to stop it, back home.  At my command, I could have overwhelmed Arudelle with a united army on first sight of him.  I could have got close, I could have boiled the blood in his body with a thought.  One breath of my own, and he would have never been a threat to any of us.  I can't even imagine... how stupid I was, to miss that chance.  I never believed it could happen to me, because I could not die easily.  The world would go on and on, my sisters and I could shut up in our fortress again, to come out once things were nicer and the green had come back."  She raised hands and dropped them empty, with a soft pum in the grass at her sides, "But it turned out Arudelle was as good as I was, just as worthy of life.  Just as capable of torturing me.  What a strange person... Arudelle grew up watching pirates burn his city, but he came to admire their cruelty.  And then, at the apex of his youth, he observed an immortal creature, named Mi'Raah, wield people's hearts together in a grand mechanism... sacrificing their virgins, pouring out their blood in libation, calling herself a goddess.  No, he was not some sheep to be bowed by it too.  Arudelle marveled at the destruction.  He wanted a turn."

"And now he likes the pure-breed of horses who helped settle the Known Seas according to Jyst's favor."

"No, Arudelle just wants you, Odeon.  It's actually lucky I never met you this way, as an animal.  Arudelle would have ordered me steal you off, at once.  And that would have been a grand mess of us tearing one another with our immortal teeth while the kingdom flew apart, wouldn't it?"

Odeon's breath startled through flared nostrils, when his pain surged, and Mi'Raah quickly apologized that she hadn't tried to heal him sooner.  She continued speaking, with hands placed on his swollen stomach.  "Once Arudelle captured me in his homeland, and studied me long enough, he reasoned that the mighty Jystians and their barbarous pirates were never worshipping a real horse god, just an ancient, well-bred warhorse capable of stamping excellent traits on any animal.  Arudelle is keeping Sirenian horses on one of those ships out there--that is what you are fated for, Odeon.  To purify the Sirenian horse breed.  Arudelle is convinced it will lead to a creature with explosive advantage over any other. Then, after, he will go on to conquer another island.  Each one has got a treasure, I imagine."

"You admire Arudelle."

"I do not!"

"Then why isn't he dead?  Why, with all your power, haven't you at least tried?"

Mi'Raah had no answer at first.  "If you remember what I said at court, when this all began... it's what terror does to a person--to a woman.  He hurt me and destroyed me.  No one else was witness.  This... I am, today... the consequence of so much fighting... after willing myself to die... but I stand again.  I know where the lines are, that I cannot cross.  I'm still terrified, I don't know what else to do--you could never understand it."

Odeon relented.  "Perhaps that is true.  Maybe I should not have pressed."

A time passed.

He tried again, "Mi'Raah, this is what I believe.  Mortals like to see a difference between themselves and the animals, don't they?  Yes, they are right to.  It is just like that with immortal creatures and mortal creatures.  Immortals and mortals are not the same.  We don't even occupy the same space... what happens to them does not happen to us.  Maybe some of them need religion but we don't need it.  We are aware of the absolutes of this life.  There are no gods--"

"Yes there are."

"I suppose you, fallen you, are one of them?"

"Life is liquid and vast, what do we know?  There is, at least, a balance.  I'm being punished for once pretending to be a goddess across the Sea, that's certain."

Odeon lashed a tail, the blue energy Mi'Raah willed into him began to do its work.  "We were among the First Ones.  We, if anything in this life, have the full right to say what there is and what there isn't, when we saw it first being made and broken.  There are no gods."

"Then there are no kings."

"What?!"

"What is a king?  He is someone whom everyone else agrees is bigger--and he physically isn't.  And he's supposed to have more money--which he just took from others, more land--it's not his land.  Whose name is really stamped forever and finally, down beneath the earth..."

"Mi'Raah, it doesn't have to be written down.  People live like it, that is the way they have to think about it, they have to work along what is--what is effected, made to be, in order to survive."

"Exactly.  Things are, as you see them." She lifted a finger to his objections, "Yes, you're right, I can't close my eyes, decide that King Baeltheon doesn't exist and expect that he hasn't sent some prison guard to fetch me, and violently, right now... but, evenso, some things are a matter of interpretation, when nothing, like kings or gods, are ever absolute.  Like goodness, like a promise to make things better... if I say I will make things better, and then I try, and I succeed!" she smiled brightly, "...then it is more likely to happen.  If I pray, and something wonderful comes into my life, then perhaps something or someone up there did listen."

"I suppose now, you'll say that there's a good energy floating around and some people have bad energy and are damned and all that nonsense."

"Whatever it is, I can see it.  I don't know who it came from.  But, it flows into me, through the top of my silver head, I theorize, and then conducts down through these fingers to knit your flesh and feed your blood so that it heals muscle faster."

He flitted spade ear at something.  "Why did I think you would have actual evidence.  Still, though, whether there's a benign, undefinable multiplicity motivating us, or a personality, we don't have its real, hallowed name, even if it is an--it."

"Which reminds me... KORIANDRAAAAA!"

Odeon fought to get up and perhaps dash away.  He kept rolling himself to get upright.  Mi'Raah shushed him.  "No, that was just a part of our deal.  Giving that woman's name over to the authorities.  Well, a slave who will eventually deliver the information to the authorities--such soldiers are not around us now.  Woah, Odeon."

"I hate that word, don't say that word!   And how perfectly your theory falls apart when I recall that Koriandra woman has suddenly fallen out of your plan for saving the world--which, you aren't, if you are going to put a bloodthirsty, twisted scoundrel like Arudelle on the Jystian throne."

"No, on the Sirenian throne, and also the Jystian one."

"Don't play with me."

"Is that why Kori stabbed you?  Because she discovered that you were a horse at the Yearling Festival, and that it meant you never offered her a better life, you only took her mares and ruined her life--"

"I transformed it.

"You took her best friends in this world and abused them, then simply forgot about it, didn't you?  Selfish animal."

"Well, Mi'Raah, if we are going by your rules, that state belief might as well go as we'd have it when nobody knows anything, anyways--you should accept that Koriandra came to believe in you, and that you had the power to defy the King of Jyst or at least destroy me on her behalf, but you just let her down."

"Kori told me once, that she knew neither of us was right.  She believes in a Great Hunter god."

"Rider Koriandra was our pawn, flitting from one to the other of us, desperately angry about improving her situation.  I was a false idol.  You were not a real friend."

"I didn't..." Mi'Raah took a hand off his surging black-hided horse belly, to consider it, then apologized again, and returned to healing him.  "But I can't be Koriandra's friend.  She should not have assumed that an immortal creature could be her friend, her life is so brief.  Just like Syramon, the slave, who invited me to wine after Arudelle's apocalypse.  What's wrong with mortals thinking on such small terms!  What comfort could we ever bring one another?"

"And that is what I always believed, Mi'Raah.  Why try?  You should have heard Koriandra's deranged speech at the Yearling Festival, about us being able to resolve all the ills of mankind, on a whim."

"You're right on that, at least.  It's too large a task."  Mi'Raah shut her eyes.  "No.  Odeon, we are perceiving this wrong.  It is not too large, not in our terms.  What is a thousand years of serving Arudelle and his greedy heirs?  I'd already thought of that.  But, suppose the world is better when my enslavement is done?  It doesn't have to be a misery."

"You're enslaved?  I don't see any shackles."

"If Arudelle dies, or I fail here, then my sisters will be slain... but listen to what I am saying.  What happens if I make Koriandra's life better?  My life will be better.  This whole time, I've been terrified of playing goddess again, but this would be different..."

"Yes, you could help, but not by much.  It's like letting that mosquito on your shoulder live."

Mi'Raah squeaked and swatted it.

"Now, get back to healing me."

"But it's not just Koriandra's little life.  Possibly thousands... my good deed could last for generations."

"Ugh, we already tried playing god, as you said..."

"I am talking about love, about friendship.  Big creatures like us need faith too.  We all need to participate.  It's not them believing, and us trying to either benefit or hide from all the attention... my life is a misery unless I'm truly a part of the whole.  And it's no good to do it with words.  No matter our size, must give back.  Please, help me Odeon--"

"Help you do what?"

"We'll team up and aid Arudelle."

"WHAT?!"

"I thought this conversation was leading to you grabbing a saddle and me galloping across the waves, with your powers, away from this mess."

"But I already explained about my sisters--Arudelle is too powerful, now that I've been thinking of Koriandra and Syramon, so many others like them... there is still something I can do."

"Oh.  You can't make people or horses walk on water?  How about a pretty canter?  I might could still do those..."

Mi'Raah continued to beg him.  Odeon was finally well enough to get up on four legs and nudge her over with his horse head. 

"Ow, that hurt!  And I'm being serious, Odeon.  We have work to do.  We can save the world."

"You don't think I can see that?  I'm a little out of shape now, but regularly, I'm a horse bred for war over thousands of years and that was back when I was birthed about a thousand years more ago... and I never did explain how I learned to change myself into a person."

"Alright, fine, how?"

"I ate one."

"Ugh!  Wind and fury take it, I can't speak to you anymore, Odentalis, Odeon, whatever you want to be!"

"Mi'Raah, this is simple.  You and I will fight Arudelle.  He is a bug.  We will squash him.  And then, we will both live happily ever after on a better island, with sweeter grass and all your sisters and my mares dancing in a happy circle along the field.  And, we will be surrounded by an impenetrable wall of constant tidal waves to keep all the smelly mortals out." he stamped his hoof.  "I feel better and I know where the rest of my tackle is.  Climb on up."

Mi'Raah wiped silver hair from her face and chewed her fingernails.  "I can't."

"Why not?  If you think about it, what we really need to do is destroy a certain gold bottle that keeps showing up every single time something goes wrong in my kingdom.  Without it, Arudelle has no power over any of us.  I've been thinking, he needs to send it to you again, eventually, doesn't he?"

Mi'Raah hugged her knees.  "I don't know, I don't know..." she whimpered over and over, then made fists, raged and sobbed.  "He is Arudelle.  He is the strongest and the smartest.  One like him isn't born every day, maybe only once every thousand years... I must obey the order.  Besides, tidal waves would just create earthquakes and destroy the world in a worse way... "

"No, you only think you must obey him.  You've been seduced and lied to, Mi'Raah, by the enemy.  Whatever twisted sense of comfort he gives you, because you miss daddy or you never kissed a boy before he showed up, let that go."

She screamed it out.  "The world ended before.  I saw it happen, we were there.  My real father died... the seal closed on him but we could still hear it.  I can't lose my sisters too.  I can't let another child lose their father... I sinned once across the Sea with the Wild Tribes, but now I have another chance.  I can prevent death, this time.  Odeon, I won't go through any of it again, can't you get that through your thick equine skull?  This time, I must obey the balance."

Odeon came nearer, snuffed onto her shoulder, "Is this something near to me not being able to go against the orders of the First Ones, like not biting the same hand that gives me a carrot?"

Mi'Raah looked up at the black horse.  "Without me, Arudelle is solely a force of destruction.  He would have come here anyways.  It was his plan all along.  Conquer the Wild Tribes, take wood from their hallowed black forests, build a fleet of ships to rival Jyst... I made it happen faster.  And then, there is the feel of the world I can't ignore.  There is a vortex around Arudelle.  It prefers him, it follows him.  It all must pass through him.  Things are going to end, again.  I can't look away.  My sisters and I can't allow life to end again, en masse, nor in miniature.  He was right, 'she cannot be saved, who can never be redeemed.'  I am made to respect the flow of things, I have to protect it all, I can't get away from everything that I've done, right and wrong, most of all, the very evil things, to stay alive and keep the world alive."

"I don't understand.  After everything, Arudelle is some hero, to you?"

"No.  He is a villain.  He is like the winter before spring comes.  He is needed."

"A thosuand lonely years have gone by, you've never been in love before, and you're obsessed with a man and his abuse.  But, you won't admit it.   That is what I think.  You and your faith--did you really ever think such fine things about life or were you trying to convince me help you and Arudelle?  Because, if you really believed immortals need to have faith, then you would be able to see your way out of this, away from a man who only means to use and destroy you.  Mi'Raah, if this insanity is really what you want, I will not help you.  My own immortal life would be endangered--I'll not go to such a master.  And what of my favorite mares?  I would be forced to defend my herd and fight against you."

She stood and faced him.  "Truly then, horse-kin?  You care so little, not for mortals, nor righteousness, not even for yourself or your future?  The future of life?   Arudelle and his Black Armada will be here tomorrow, in that case.  And, we aren't just going to fight, Odeon.  To prevent total oblivion, I am going to put divine anger to work and ignite all the horror and sear of war directly over that narrow head of yours!"

Odeon charged at her.  Mi'Raah slashed an arm across herself, and the air chilled to shards of sharp ice. 

"What happened to ending me with a mere thought?" he whinnied proud laughter, "You can't have that advantage when there's somebody else with silver blood, now can you!"

The black stallion reared up, but Mi'Raah had gone.  She had a head start, and her tricks with the air and water helped, but Odeon was as he said, an animal trained for war.  He avoided obstacles with growing ease, had the speed to pursue her at length and trample her.  Mi'Raah used arms to push the tall grass aside, and throw more beads of ice up from their dewey tendrils.  She raced to keep one foot sure in front of the other.  The night sky was quiet as she ran for her life. 

Mi'Raah came to the cliff-edge of those Sacred Fields.  White surf crashed onto rocks, far below.  She recognized it as the place where she had summoned up a wall of water-horse at the solstice, to embarrass Odeon in front of the King.  Now, the real animal was snorting hard, riding fast, and it was surely worse. 

Do it again, Mi'Raah.  Smash him. 

But then also, you take the whole plateau with it, and crush the fortress Arudelle needs.

Hooves thundered harder.  Mi'Raah knew that she'd made a terrible mistake.  Odeon was not a fat slob with no real passion.  He was harnessed violence, which never made a move before, because he was his own master.  Only now, had the warhorse found a reason to fight.

Mi'Raah cried, reached for raging Odeon in her daze.  She realized that with her sisters entrapped, a horse was her only kin.  Mortals with tiny lives, like Koriandra and Syramon, had been her only friends.  And she'd been a wife to Arudelle in every single way except without the blessing of real vows.  Who would ever sanctify their coming together to destroy the world?  Unholy bond.  Mortal to immortal.  The real cruelty was in the hope itself:  they were the same.  Even if she tried, it would not matter.  Belief was only belief.  Suffering would always be suffering.

Mi'Raah jumped.

...
And then, a final visit with Mi'Raah's Virtue...

(Randitty-O-Meter:  9, Odentalis always sounded like some kind of tooth decay, didn't it?  But at least you get the image of teeth, then maybe big teeth, and then maybe horse teeth?  Oh, I don't know, horses always have such strange names, anyway.)