A Place To Bloom

Was It Real

Father in Heaven, I have sinned.

I shook my head and winced.

Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done...

During the rainy season, the church was dank, moldy, dripping wet, with algae, frogs climbing the walls, and lizards nibbling on ants. But by now we were fully in dry season, and it was hot. Outside, stragglers caught beneath the Terrible Sun were lashed without mercy. Inside, I was developing a golden crust, but the middle of me was still soft.

The vine that had crept through the window and once stood like a branch into the open air now limped over the crumbling stone wall, burrowed tendrils all through the cracks, and sent runners all over. One wall was covered in leaves, and the adjacent walls had long shoots like branches reaching across. A branch of vine wrapped over the wrought-iron four-point-triangle of the Deanma, crushing it, and hiding it beneath dark-green spiky leaves, and on the other side, a small bird flew in and disappeared behind a knot of branches. Across the floor, mold dust and bug droppings mixed with mortar dust.

"Mother forgives you." Ahmi stood at the entrance to the church. She wore her white mini-dress and a severed ear pendant like the one Miyani gave me, only hers was fresh. At her feet, a boy who barely came up past her knee held her hand, and a red, wooden ball in the other.

She wasn't barefoot, either, but wore some kind of canvas wrap over her feet tied up with laces. She put her yellow eyes on me with a warm smile. "I'm simply saying that if your father god does not forgive you, Mother will."

I had to think about that. "And if Mother doesn't, Father will?"

"Exactly!" She giggled lightly, lifted the boy to sit in her arm and tilted her head towards the street. "Come. The xɪðiʃa has already begun, and you are late."

The matter was simple: to give us more time to train, or send us into battle tomorrow morning. Allegedly, Ahmi went to the princess demanding ten more training days, to which the princess laughed at her. She'd negotiated all the way down to one day, still got a 'no', and—I'm not going to repeat unfounded rumors—I understand she got upset. The result of that conversation was the princess agreed to settle the matter in a xɪðiʃa.

"I need you to use your voice tonight." Ahmi walked beside me; the child seated in her arm clung to her shoulder. "They will listen to the Jungle-Tested, I know it!"

Stone buildings three, sometimes four stories high held long, wooden poles out over the narrow street, covering the crowd of bodies bumping into one another with burlap shades, though at that hour only the top floors had direct sunlight. "I don't know what you said to Rosalynd to win the two days we have had..."

Only that I'd retake Praying Mantis, nothing big.

"... but I need you to work your magic. Just don't get distracted; Miyani is there."

The sound of her name sent a tingling through my loins. The thought of holding her hips in my hands, pulling her tiny body into mine while she rested her face in my chest, of feeling her thighs part for me when I thrust into her, of lying down with her, folding her into me, tasting her lips and smelling that sweet, mild, coconut blossom she put in her hair.

I wanted to bend her over and slam my hips into that meaty arse.

"Don't get distracted, Caleb, I am serious."

The day I arrived there was a nook between buildings where a circle of women held a beaten, blindfolded man on his knees. Today, the rubble had been pulled to the side, and there were several barrels of grain and carts with fresh fruits and vegetables. A throng of women crowded around with empty sacks while others scooped out grain from the barrels. As for Carthia's nearly-naked women everywhere, flaps of silk or cotton that hung down front and back leaving their breasts to sweat freely beneath the Terrible Sun, I'd gotten used to it.