Soul Tattoo (Ereri)

Negative One

That night, Grisha dreamt, and it was that dream, clear and true as it hadn't been since his youth. He woke with a jolt, hours before dawn, and wondered, how could I not have recognized her?

He threw on a coat over his sleeping clothes, panic racing through him at the knowledge that he might be too late to catch her, too late to mend his mistake even if he did manage to find her by some miracle.

He wandered the streets almost feverishly, half of him wondering what on earth he was thinking, stumbling about in the dark this way, as if there was the slightest chance that he would just happen upon Carla Bauer somehow at an hour when anyone with either sense or decency was sleeping behind locked doors. He couldn't bring himself to turn back though.

The sky was turning pearl gray when he caught a glimpse of her, by sheer chance. She was leaning against the sill of an upper-story room at an inn not too far from his clinic, watching the empty street. Their eyes met, and her face went blank for a moment before the most beautiful smile Grisha had ever seen lit it up. She vanished from the window, and in moments, Grisha found himself standing with her in the middle of the street, clasping her two hands in his and at a total loss for what to say once more. Then it came to him.

"Tell me the legend," he asked her softly. "I want to hear it, one time at least, without doubting it."

She smiled again, very gently, and told it for him as they walked through the slowly waking city, hand in hand.

Of all the gods, none is lonelier than Fate. It never sees the face of any one person more than twice—once at birth, when it sets the shape of a new life, and once again at death, when it bears the lost one's soul away from this world. Forever and ever, never knowing anyone long enough to call them friend or even learn their name.

Fate was never a cruel god—not entirely, not at first—but as time passed and nothing changed, Fate grew more and more bitter and spiteful towards the uncaring humans who wallowed in their small lives while it was forever laboring to lay down their futures. The courses it planned out for new lives became shorter and more broken. Finally, Fate's bitterness grew to such a peak that it inflicted the most broken and painful journey through life it had ever dreamt of on a newborn baby boy.

Even so bitter as it was, Fate was not yet so insensible that it was not at least a little shocked by the agony of the future it had bestowed on the child. And so Fate remembered, when it came to collect the soul of one whose path intersected with the child's, and it would look around for the boy, catching brief glimpses as he grew from child to man. Saw his face in anger and grief and fear. Wondered what it looked like outside of battle and loss.

Soon—too soon—the man's short life was running to a close, and Fate watched him as it collected the souls of those falling on the same battlefield. It had to draw very close to the man to collect the soul of the fresh corpse he was cradling in his arms, shedding tears more freely than Fate had seen him do in years. Fate remembered it's final cruelty, then—this was the man's other half, the soul that made his own whole. Their paths had intersected for the first time long before, but they had only looked and known each other for what they were to one another the day before they were both to lose their lives.

The bitterness in Fate's heart wavered, and it passed a cold hand over the man's eyes, wanting to speak with him before the wound in his belly left him one more dead soul.

"Do you curse me, man?" Fate asked. "You have the right, though you are only human. I have never been so cruel to any as I was to you."

"No," the man said. He never hesitated. "You set the course of my life. Much has been taken away from me, and much has been demanded of me. I have lived in grief and blood and anger. But I was able to meet my beloved, and for that I can't do other than thank you. I only wish we could have known each other sooner," the man said. He died then, holding the husk of his other half as Fate looked on.

Fate reached out at plucked the man's bright soul from his corpse, and, holding the soul in its two hands, it made a promise to the man. "I cannot swear that I will never be so cruel again. I have grown bitter with the long years and they grow only longer. But you were one whose face I saw more than twice, and you did not curse me, in spite of everything. So I will make you a promise. From now on, every human whose fate I set will be granted one hint, one extra chance at finding their beloved. I hope that the next time, you will know each other sooner."

Fate kept its promise to the man, and so it is that those fortunate enough to recognize the signs of the Soul Tattoo are drawn to the side of their beloved.

"Beloved." Grisha repeated the word softly, wonderingly, and Carla smiled.