[ They walk next to each other in a companionable quiet that isn’t total silence, the way total silence eats and devours and disrupts, but filled with the sounds of life. Breathing, his, hers. The gentle thud of his cane and their uneven strides, hers slow by default, his keeping up by willpower alone. She thinks, he isn’t the type to back down, even if given the chance. It might be so, the chance is no opportunity to him, but mockery. She watches him out the corner of her eye, the dark palette of his clothes making him blend into the Edonian night easily, while her dark grey robes do the same, only the lighter hem of her undergarments drawing pale lines near the ground, around her sandal-clad feet. No one else in the whole empire are allowed to wear these particular shades of grey. They’re sacred. They sanctify the person wearing them.
Protection, in a way. Recognition, in another.
Darker hues are strongly associated with the mythological darkness in her faith, it is associated with permanent death, with destruction and with evil, though evil is a many-nuanced thing. When he wears it, however, she thinks – the darkness has found a star and the star wears it, so that it must submit. It must bow down. It must be backdrop, not foreground.
Ara Vana likes that. She likes him, and while she feels with many people, since Gharan – few have resonated. In that, the silence has been a lonely place. Something different from the homes he is talking about, the places where one is not just at ease and safe, but not alone and that is what sets it apart from the larger world.
It makes Ara Vana wonder whether she has made the larger world her home for too long, her duties and her role in her community, at the temple and in the streets, but carved out no real safe space for herself. The Mountain Mother is supposed to fulfil that role, but the Mountain Mother let people have each other.
And for a while, Ara Vana had. But as with everything, having is a temporary notion. She swallows hard once and looks at him as he asks his question, meets his raised eyebrow with a twist of her mouth that shows her displeasure. How much she can tell him, she isn’t sure, but since they won’t listen to her within the temple institution, maybe she must look out. Maybe she must look to the stars. Looking straight ahead again, she says, slowly, the darkness of her own voice matching his: ]
It used to be steady like the drum. One beat always expecting the next, following certain patterns and rhythms. Recognisable, even when the melody changed. The past few years…. [ She can’t make herself talk about the Companion priestess behind her back, even as she knows what she is doing is wrong and against the Goddess’ wishes. She is still too faithful to the only home she knows. ] The only problem with our beliefs is that they are dictated by human hands and human hands err.
[ She knows this intimately as a scribe to the temple, chronicling the myths and legends, the laws. She knows that one mistake in the writing can change the meaning of a paragraph, a whole piece. She knows additions can say more about the scribe making them than about the Mountain Mother’s history.
As she knows that removing a whole sacred ritual from the book is a woman’s doing, not the Goddess’. Ara Vana may not have joined the priestesses’ ranks with the ambition of becoming Companion herself, though with time, she decided she would see it as an honour to be chosen, but neither is she the petty girl who simply wanted to own herself, at whatever cost.
She believes now. To see someone who does not… To see her control the very direction they’re steering in? It belittles and belies everything Ara Vana believes in. ]
no subject
Protection, in a way. Recognition, in another.
Darker hues are strongly associated with the mythological darkness in her faith, it is associated with permanent death, with destruction and with evil, though evil is a many-nuanced thing. When he wears it, however, she thinks – the darkness has found a star and the star wears it, so that it must submit. It must bow down. It must be backdrop, not foreground.
Ara Vana likes that. She likes him, and while she feels with many people, since Gharan – few have resonated. In that, the silence has been a lonely place. Something different from the homes he is talking about, the places where one is not just at ease and safe, but not alone and that is what sets it apart from the larger world.
It makes Ara Vana wonder whether she has made the larger world her home for too long, her duties and her role in her community, at the temple and in the streets, but carved out no real safe space for herself. The Mountain Mother is supposed to fulfil that role, but the Mountain Mother let people have each other.
And for a while, Ara Vana had. But as with everything, having is a temporary notion. She swallows hard once and looks at him as he asks his question, meets his raised eyebrow with a twist of her mouth that shows her displeasure. How much she can tell him, she isn’t sure, but since they won’t listen to her within the temple institution, maybe she must look out. Maybe she must look to the stars. Looking straight ahead again, she says, slowly, the darkness of her own voice matching his: ]
It used to be steady like the drum. One beat always expecting the next, following certain patterns and rhythms. Recognisable, even when the melody changed. The past few years…. [ She can’t make herself talk about the Companion priestess behind her back, even as she knows what she is doing is wrong and against the Goddess’ wishes. She is still too faithful to the only home she knows. ] The only problem with our beliefs is that they are dictated by human hands and human hands err.
[ She knows this intimately as a scribe to the temple, chronicling the myths and legends, the laws. She knows that one mistake in the writing can change the meaning of a paragraph, a whole piece. She knows additions can say more about the scribe making them than about the Mountain Mother’s history.
As she knows that removing a whole sacred ritual from the book is a woman’s doing, not the Goddess’. Ara Vana may not have joined the priestesses’ ranks with the ambition of becoming Companion herself, though with time, she decided she would see it as an honour to be chosen, but neither is she the petty girl who simply wanted to own herself, at whatever cost.
She believes now. To see someone who does not… To see her control the very direction they’re steering in? It belittles and belies everything Ara Vana believes in. ]