A Place To Bloom

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After leaving the vita'o yard, I headed for the church. I should have returned to the training grounds, but what Ahmi said to me weighed heavily on my heart, and I needed some time alone with my thoughts.

Was she right?

I passed through the market. One woman, a native, held an infant in one arm as he suckled her breast; her yellow eyes looked me up and down and she smirked. Other women looked my way, but I couldn't look back.

Not now.

Outside the church, I had a passing thought to pick one of the guavas from the overgrown tree in the grounds, but the thought of food made me want to throw up.

I noticed that the money I'd left for the tithe was gone, but the book of Scripture remained unmoved, with the same black mold spots creeping up along the white pages as before. I thought to perhaps pick it up and turn to the passage that reminded me that lust was the deadliest of sins, that told me to run away from temptation, and further flagellate myself in penitence for my disgusting conduct.

I didn't need to; Father had made me memorize that verse.

So I found a spot on the floor that didn't have a pool of water from the rain earlier and sat, leaning my back against the crumbling wall.

Alone.

Overhead, the vine that crept through the opening high up on the far wall sent out thin, yellow tendrils to grasp at the empty air, and I wondered how such a fitting example of my mind could have found itself here with me.

So cluttered were my thoughts that I could scarcely tell which ones to ignore.

Was she right?

She was right, wasn't she?

It was that night over dinner at the Lake of Doom. Miyani had joined us. Her eyes followed the banter. Her cheeks, her nose, her broad mouth ensnared me. Her beautiful neck. Her muscled, chiseled shoulders. Her cropped, white, pixie-cut hair, her cute ears, her soft lips enchanted me. Her smile felt so natural, so pure. I remember thinking, here was a girl... a woman... in the heart of death's grasp and yet so full of life, and I obsessed over her.

I'd thought it was what I said to her the moment we'd arrived at Carthia, but it wasn't words at all. It was my gaze. My look offended her.

Never in my life had I considered that my eyes alone could be so offensive. The simple matter of where I put them was the problem. And, thinking back, it wasn't just Carthia. Oasis saw me looking at her. Anyanna saw me looking at Oasis. Sarina saw me looking at Guenevieve, and Mebibi saw me looking at Alys. How many more? Saewi saw me looking, and that put her off such that she preferred to spend the night talking with Geraln over me.

How many more?

Miyani caught me looking at her. I hadn't looked away. At first she looked away. At someone else. Then she looked to the other side, only to bring her eyes back on me. She met my eyes with her own for what felt like an eternal moment frozen in time, then turned around to look behind her only to check me once again. At length she lowered her gaze to somewhere in her lap, wiped her brow, fixed a lock of hair behind her ear, and glanced back up at me and I swore I saw her give me a sheepish smile before I finally broke my gaze.

And now with everything Ahmi said to me, I saw it all for what was truly going on.

She saw me staring and felt uncomfortable, and I kept staring. I should have picked up on that. She didn't have the words to tell me to leave her alone; she shouldn't have needed to. I should have seen how uneasy I'd made her feel and looked away. Instead...