The Restitution Of Idolatry

[Philomena]

Minnie looked to the young woman, and smiled, a sad sort of smile. Then she went forward across the portico, and reaching on tip-toes kissed the girl's cheek very softly.

"I am well, right well. I am... I am well. I... need a little quiet, and a space to work, for just... just a little time. Have y'a little side chamber with a door? It dunny need be much."

x

[Liminal]

Krindre looked solemnly at Minnie. "For thee, certainly." She flitted back inside and across the main room. A wooden door was there -- oddly shaped, both taller and wider than it would be anywhere in Zeltiva, but a door nonetheless. Krindre pushed it open, revealing a small alcove lined with shelves, which were filled with linens, pillows, and other household goods. She did not ask what Minnie wanted, and quickly flew back to another part of the room, leaving the Zeltivan woman to her own tasks.

[Philomena]

Minnie thanked Krindre as she shut the door, and the breathed deep and slow for a moment. She then turned, removed her glove, and brushed off a section of the floor with her palm, wiping her hand on her skirts and replacing the glove afterward. She took one of the pillows down - it smelled faintly like Krindre, a mix of clean skin and the oil of a desert herb Minnie could not recognize. She sat upon it on the clean spot, then half stood again, hitching her skirts to her knees and removing her boots, so she could comfortably sit cross-legged, then sat agin.

She double checked the cleanliness of her gloves: they were clean, but she took them off again, anyway, pulling a spare pair from her bag. She breathed again, trying (unsuccessfully) to slow her heart. Then, very gently she took the box up and went to open it - then stopped, and closed her eyes, setting the box back down.

She reached into her bag again, removing her book of notes, and uncapping a bottle of ink. She set the book in her lap, and began to write.

She wrote the Eversinger first, long and slow and flowing, and then she wrote Krindre, wrote the delicacy of her vulnerability, and in the writing, she exited herself enough to realize the real affection in that vulnerability, an affection that was NOT condescending, and she wrote how she felt honored and a little frightened at it. And then she wrote the box, she wrote the outside of it, the form of its hinges, the texture of its lacquer. She wrote the inlays and engraving, she wrote the clean joins at its corners, and the workmanship of its lid, she wrote the whorls of the wood's grain, and the faint yellowing of the finish with age, of its heft and weight. And then she wrote, finally to her mistress.

"Mother Qalaya,

I do not know what will come of the opening of this box, but I open it for you, and my love for you. I have recorded all that I can say of it, for if you cannot remember it yet, then someone must. And in sure hope of your love, I open it now.

Sister Bethany,

Care for mother first, if there is any pain in the opening of this, for I don't know what it will hold. But if she is well, dharopan, please come to me, for I will need your wisdom.

Lanie-la,

If this is the end of things for me, know that I am sorry I could not keep my promises. I have not, even now, forgotten."

Then she signed her name, signed it small and careful, and sanded the ink, blotting it and setting it carefully aside to dry.

Finally, she brushed the few grains of sand from her fingers, took up the box, and with a tremble and whispered prayer, opened the lid.
x

[Liminal]

The key, the one from the box that Charm Wright had entrusted to her, fit easily into the lock in this second box. It also turned easily, with nothing to indicate that this was, in fact, the first time that the lock had been activated in however many decades or centuries or millennia had passed since Qalaya had sealed it. The lid opened soundlessly. Minnie might have braced herself for this event, but there was no noise or light, no wave of magic or shriek of the damned or anything else to mark the moment. The box simply opened, as if there were nothing special about it at all. Upon examining the contents, there were two main things that Minnie would notice. The first was that the box contained only one item. It was another key, laid carefully on a layer of red velvet. This key, however, was very much unlike the one that Minnie had used to open the box. This one was larger, and made out of a heavy, black metal. It was plain and undecorated, and in some way that Minnie would immediately understand, though perhaps not be able to fully process, it was ugly. In all of the encounters Philomena Lefting had had with Qalaya and her servants, there would be no immediate point of comparison. Minnie had seen the obsessive desperation of Kenabelle's coded journals, the intricacy of Imtapptendosin's carvings, the sadness in Sister Bethany's eyes, and even the terrible flash of the blade as Qalaya herself tore Minnie's diseased flesh away from her body, only to replace it with something alien and sacred. But in none of these was there the feeling of ugliness, of senselessness, even of cruelty, which this black key somehow conveyed. The second thing that Minnie would notice was the interior of the box's lid. It was painted, the image having been executed with an almost supernatural level of skill. The image depicted a woman with light brown skin, dressed in a glittering white robe. From her back sprouted a pair of wings, which were the same color as her skin. She was unutterably beautiful, and she seemed to hover over a city of white stone. There was no text, and nothing to identify the woman or the place. As Minnie had examined the box, the familiar light had begun to shine. After several minutes, Bethany appeared, standing beside her with an expression of quiet sadness on her youthful face. "You found it, Minnie-dharopan."

[Philomena]

Minnie looked up from the box, and met Bethany's eyes. Her own eyes were tired, very tired. There was so much, in a single day! Love and misery and hope and hate, all at once, it felt. And this key at the center of it, hard and smug and wrong.

"Hello, dharopan," for a moment, she said nothing more, her gloved fingers stroking the painting inside the lid. Her hands were steady now, that at least was a comfort.

"Yes, here it is, I suppose. I dunny like it. I dunny think it's an item that will bring anyone joy."

She sighed, heavily, and pushed her hair off her brow, then rested it on her book. The fingertips stroked the leather cover, and she closed her eyes for a moment. She wanted, so very much, to simply give the key away - she had done her bit! She had found it, and now... now there were other works calling to her. Lanie, above all - she had been here, had stepped on the stones of this very city! How? Why? Where had she stayed, whom had she spoken to, that Minnie had not heard it? That Semiyr had not heard of it, for she would have told Minnie, she was sure of it? Where had she gone, and where come from? It pained her, even around the hope, for the hope pulled the wound raw again, made it fresh and real. And now she spoke to the messenger of a goddess, a goddess who was ever so much stronger than Minnie. Why did she not just take the key from Minnie, and finish whatever work there was around it?

But, she knew, the work would be asked of her. And that, even, filled her for a moment with a crabbed, selfish frustration.

If, after all, mother loved you, gutterslut, then she would simply tell you where Lanie has gone. She remembers it after all, wouldn't she? Either she's not interested, or Lanie's better off without your finding her.

The voice came to her of a sudden, and Minnie shivered beneath it, and a misery set upon her, too heavy even for tears.

Whatever my merits be, mother has asked this of me. And Bethany, who has been so kind to me.

It was not comforting, the thought (if anything, it made her feel quite sure she'd let Mother Qalaya and Bethany down), but it was motivating, at least. She closed her eyes again, and her mind went back to the old ghost at the top of the spire, of all she had done, and said and seen.

And that too, Mother Qalaya carries. And the memory of Lanie leaving Gypa in my room, and the memory of Hannah breathing her last, and of me, too, sitting exhausted on this floor.

"Here it is. And here I am. What is it? What must be done with it?"

x

[Liminal]

Bethany did not immediately say anything. Instead, she reached out one hand to take the box from Minnie. However, something happened that Minnie would almost certainly not have expected. Bethany's hand stopped two inches away from the box. It wasn't as if Bethany had suddenly stopped the motion; rather, it was as if an invisible barrier completely prevented the Alvina from touching it. She tried twice more, with the same result. Finally, she attempted to simply take the key, but this was no more successful. At this point, the obvious might begin to sink in. Bethany couldn't take the box or its contents away. "Montfyr elwes ukkrs. En ye nu du wye?" she whispered. The woman dropped her head momentarily. When she looked up again, she was wearing the expression that a Sailors' Guild representative might show when informing a family member that a loved one had been lost at sea. "I had hoped this wouldn't happen. I know some of the history of that box and that key, but not all of it, and I wanted to be able to just take it away. However, it seems this is not to be." Bethany visibly swallowed. One finger toyed with a strand of her hair. Whatever it was that she had to say, she clearly didn't want to say it. Her free hand smoothed out her robe. "I can't take it -- you can see that. Mother can't take it. But in order for anything, hadhanaq to be whole again, it has to be returned to its place. Which means that I need, mother needs, we all need for you to bring it to that place. To mother's place, her home, her retreat, her sanctuary and fortress." Again, the hesitation. For a moment, Bethany looked less like the divine being that she was, and more like the woman scarcely out of childhood who had sailed with Kenabelle and died in Falyndar. "This isn't going to be easy. If I could do it for you, I would. I'll be there to help you when you arrive. But I need you to take it..." A deep, deep breath. "...to Darva."

[Philomena]

Darva!

Darva was a land of nursery tales more than reality - a place that bogeys might take an unruly child to gobble her up, or that a Syliran knight might ride of too to save her beloved from monsters. Which is to say, it was a place to which fancy flew and from which wisdom fled. No one returned from Darva. Darva was a story's ending place, and one from which the tale did not return it's ending to the chronicler.

And, it was where Charm Wright's tale had ended. The memory made her finger absently finger at the neckline of her dress, seeking the mica she had carried their until she'd given it back to Charm for good luck.

"Do you... I dunny want to ask Mother, or you Dharopan, to solve all my problems, but if... if Mother keeps her refuge, there, I dunny know who she would want me to bring along. I... I can try the land there, if you will meet me on the shores. But I canny walk across the sea."

x

[Liminal]

An exhausted half-smile flickered across Bethany's face. She looked tired; it was as if, wherever she was in the time when she wasn't visiting Minnie, there was something that was weighing deeply on her -- even wearing her down. "How to get there? Czhorisk." She said the unfamiliar word under her breath, and it nearly sounded like an expletive. "I have no vessel to bear you thence." Bethany shook her head. "Perhaps Raisa would help you? No mishap has ever befallen any who stayed on their ship." If Minnie were paying careful attention, she might notice that Bethany was using the familiar version of Teresa's name, the one that was largely reserved for family and close friends. "I suppose you'll have to bring whoever can get you there. I'm sorry I can't help more, Minnie-dharopan-qalihaya. I have...well, I have a lot of power, and a lot of things I can do. But I can't whisk a mortal away with me, and I can't carry the box. I wish I could, Minnie. I feel like I've already asked so much of you, more than I, or mother, or anyone else would have wanted you to bear. I wish it were not so." The sad, sad brown eyes looked into Minnie's own. "But it is so."

[Philomena]

The fatigue in her Dharopan's eyes brings Minnie out of her own bleakness, at least a bit. She shut the box again and settled it into her bag. Then with just a little bit of awkwardness she moves to embrace her.

"Shhh... I'll figure a way there. Sometimes there's things to be done, and you have to do them," she lets go of the younger-older woman and smiles with wet eyes, "I canny but imagine you already know that far better 'n I do, Qalihaya. We've come 'long s'far, non? A lot more 'n I would've guessed when we spoke first!"

The joke leaves her voice now, and she speaks softly, "Be gentle with yourself, Dharopan. And mother, too, if she can. I'll find my way somehow or another."

x

[Liminal]

Bethany returned the embrace, perhaps a bit more emphatically than Minnie might have expected. "I believe in you, Minnie-dharopan. I will try, and you will try, and we'll see if our journey all this way hasn't been for nothing." And then she was gone.

So lovely, as always!

+2 Persuasion
Lore: The Secret History of Fathi the Eversinger
Lore: History of the Liebsang

And of course, the box ^_^