𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐓𝐎 𝐈𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐘

Chapter-9

Arlane was seventeen when she'd committed the gravest sin in the twenty-four years of her life.

She killed a six-year-old girl because of her utter foolishness.

No knowledge is better than less knowledge, her Pare used to reiterate. She beheld the meaning of those words till the date as she recalled how her incompetence as a scientist and healer failed her. Arlane had miscalculated that day. The ratio of herbs and alcohol was far greater than it should've been for a child that small. Yet, in haste, she administered the needle to the girl's soft wrist.

Arlane saw her writhing in pain. Saw the white gurgling liquid flowing from the lips that smiled so large it lit up their small medic center. She saw her anguish and could do nothing about it. It was the first time she considered discarding her dreams in the sewers of South Zaharbrun. She did almost proceed. Two months, she was in a haze. Never uttering a syllable of science. Never leaving the comfort of her sheets where she spent cursing herself inside out.

Until Nuan had made her Pare break the excuse for a door of her room, with her Moteh carrying her favorite dishes in row. As much of an old hag her grandmother was, she had little difficulty dragging Arlane from her ears and stuffing warm and sweet dishes in her mouth.

Lousa had said that day, "You are murdering people even when you lay like this," when Arlane had asserted her reasoning for giving up and stormed out of the door. Guilt was heavy in her heart and those words had slapped Arlane like a storm because a part of her knew. She had been serving as a scientist in making when she turned fourteen, and a healer when sixteen. In one year, thirty-two patients had fully recovered in her care.

"One mistake and you are already on your knees. We didn't raise a daughter this weak," Lousa had exclaimed. In the two months she was withering away, she could've saved another life.

Lennox took Arlane out for a walk to the Northern lands that day, where Hejaz's father reigned. The clattering of armor and her brothers at patrol on nights that dark and cold had even trembled her.

"In life, we always lose something. I think of the blood tainting my hands when I touch my family, and it consumes me bit by bit every day. But I dare not regret it," Lennox had told her the tale of his fights in the Western legion that day for the first time.

"How?" Seventeen-year-old Arlane whispered softly.

"Because I wake up in my bed to my wife snoring soundly, and my house full of your laughter," He continued looking at Arlane lovingly.

His features were pained but his voice was gentle as a feather floating with the wind, "Their deaths are eternal in my memory. I can never escape it, and neither do I want to. But I'm serving a larger goal. We all are. I've made mistakes too. I was impulsive and it had cost me my sanity. But if you let the guilt devour you, your knowledge and talent for keeping others secure are in vain."

Teenage Arlane had cried in her father's embrace on that chilly night but his words were perpetually engraved in her soul, "Remember her mieu Knonko. Remember her and get up tomorrow for the ones who still need you to protect them."

So when the light was snatched away before Arlane's eyes as she stood in Hejaz's memory reliving his biggest regret, she didn't have to ponder on her decision. Hejaz too was paying with his sanity for the demise of that innocent male if after all this time this memory had occupied so clearly in his mind.

Yeelen, Goddess Yeelen, how many souls did she rob to protect herself? And yet she was offered a chance at love. Because when the dawn pulls away, it is the realization of our oversights that prove we are still human at heart.