Round 5 of the January Game

[dagas_isa]

Redemption should come from a brighter place.

The underworld is too dark for Zomi's eyes, with only the living lights surrounding her lighting the way. They sniff at her bare and bleeding feet, her dust-covered lips. She's positive, she's never felt the weakness that overwhelms her right now.

If not for the voice, Zomi could just stretch in the shallow water, face down, and breathe in. But that voice drives her forward, in her fevered frenzied state, and she does not even stop to scoop some of the much needed water in her hands and put it to her lips.

Every muscle aches, from the back of her thighs to the inside of her shoulder blades, and even more muscles that she never knew existed. Each step she takes, causes her body to shake. Yet, she cannot rest for more than a minute before the voice draws her forward again.

She set aside all her rational thoughts. What good do those do, if they abandoned her long before she ever sinned. So when they tell her to return to her world. To stop this before she kills herself, she pushes those thoughts behind her. She mindlessly carries on.

Zomi stops when the voice stops. In the haze of her fever, she swears she sees a figure, sometimes male, sometimes female. The lights stop too, to witness this scene before them.

"I know what you seek, child. More than that, I know what you need." The ancient voice rasps against her ears, the same primal one that guided her to this underground world.

Zomi's legs buckle beneath her. She kneels in the water, and only the soft sand below supports her body. "I just want to know...did I...are they... you know...?" She couldn't ask the question.

"They are alive." The figure reaches out to touch her, pleasurable, like a shoulder rub, but painful as they hit nerves and leave Zomi helpless. "They are alive indeed. You, though, are in danger."

She wanted to say, in her weakness, that she could die for all she cared. But her dry lips could not move to say the words.

"I can save you. I can forgive you." She felt the figure touching her shaking arms and hands, her empty stomach. "I can redeem you. I can reunite you with those you love. And all I ask..."

If Zomi had the strength, she would stand and run. Into the arms of this figure who promised her more than she could imagine, or as far away as her body could carry her. She did not have that strength though, and the fever's veil never went away, no matter how much she pushed against it.

"What do you ask?"

The hands touched her head now, passing through the bone, and into her mind. Zomi cried out. It hurt, though it left no mark. "I ask only for what you are willing to give."

Anything to make this pain stop, to make the past day never happen. "Anything!"



Working in the Steward's office had it's advantages.

Sure they worked the longest hours of any of the Paper Army, longer even than the infamous Seneschal's office and without the generous bonus she provided at the end of Reflection festival every year. Nor did they ever get the excitement of working Security, where even the ground-level bruisers had stories of amazing fistfights and daring escapes. Nor did they have the advantages of buying surplus imports at a discount, like those in the Commerce office, or the inside stories on vacancies from New Residents.
What the Steward's office had over every other place in Utame were the ripe and tempting rumors. For Kozan Kakkatou worked here.

No rumor about him spread that did not originate from this office, either from the lips of the Tou himself, or the hungry gossips that worked around the table formulating the orders that would change his vision to action.
Not to mention, all the rumors that spread about the women in the office and their connection to the Tou. Now, the Tou did not choose all his lovers from his office, but a good percentage did.

The important thing though...was that they had a view of the Kakkatou rarely afforded to anyone outside the office.

Sure he had the same look, tall frame, long black hair tied into a queue, and silver spectacles. He even usually carried the same expression in the office that he wore to the world, that loose, lazy grin.

But those times that mask slipped...

The man caught embezzling from the tower funds. Some claimed he recieved those missing teeth from brawls in the row where they sent them afterwards. Others said the Kakkatou attended to the business more personally, but no one mistook the pure fury that crossed his brow for a lazy grin. Nor did anyone fail to hear the yelling and banging behind the Kakkatou's closed door. Not even the Seneschal could be so protective of the tower and its funds.

The night after a significant part of Utame burned. They said, when he disappeared into the office, he held a full bottle of good plum wine in his hand and tears in his eyes. Sure he emerged, as sober and put together as if he spent the night sleeping, but still some claim to have heard him sing raunchy ballads with a slur to his voice.

And then, a recent development, there's his pet Terc. A few romantics say that when he's sure no one is looking at him, especially the object of his distant affections, his face softens into a mimicry of the a Lover's face. She's also one of the few privileged to see into his inner sanctum, though she always emerges with nary a crooked fold of her collar or a stray blond hair. But the great gossip mongers lie in wait.

Those stories lasted a lifetime, and no one else could or would ever see them.



To Natalia, the sounds of the Chentin language wafting in the air had the same signficance as the bubbling of the stew on the stove or the calling of the crows outside. Unlike the other tribal languages she'd heard in Sadir, she caught no familiar words as Mier's three older brothers filled the large house with their noise.

Mier sat next to her at the dining table, gradually shrinking into a little ball. His pale skin grew pinker with his brothers' every words.

She elbowed him. "What are they saying?"

The pink around his neck crept up to his face. "They are amazed that little brother is the first to take a wife. And..." He averted his eyes, "all that taking a wife implies."

The three older brothers stopped their flow of chatter. Natalia felt their gazes on her, half-inquisitive, half-lecherous. Then the words started again, accompanied by loud guffaws that reached to the wooden rafters above.

Natalia felt the heat rising from her collarbone to her cheeks.
She grabbed Mier's arm. "Correct them. Whatever they're saying about us, correct them."

Her obedient second looked ready to resist. He shook his head.

Natalia had no patience for his rebellion, not when his family stared, laughed, and talked around her in a language she had no hope of understanding. "Tell them, the truth, now!"

And Mier spoke. Unlike his brothers, he spoke in a soft and steady tone. The sounds rolled off his tongue slowly enough that Natalia started to hear individual words. When Mier stopped, his brothers looked at her again, and this time the assault on her ears did not start up again.

The third brother, the one Mier called a priest, took Mier's hand. He spoke in the same deliberate tone as Mier. His head turned to Natalia, then to Mier. And then he lifted up his right and wagged his fingers.

Mier turned to interpret, though his eyes remained fixed on the empty clay dish in front of him. "He says we should visit the Oracle tomorrow." Then he said something else, but his accent grew heavier than Natalia had ever heard it.

"What was that last bit?" She asked.

"He says we need to get rings, if we are going to be travelling here."

She didn't understand. "What? Why?"

The full blush of his cheeks would have amused her if not for her own connection to his embarassment. "Men and women do not travel alone together on this side of the mountain range without a marriage connection. That is why we need rings."

Natalia shook her head. "Absolutely not! Tell them that we're not that kind of partnership."

Mier repeated her request. The three brothers stared at her, and then talked among themselves.

Mier translated: "They say our type of partnership does not matter. Even if we gave vows of chastity to the One, we would still need rings."

Natalia did not believe that translation, and she would learn Chentin to prove it wrong.