Lifelight: Calypso Returns

17.

This was what everyone talked about from the moment she got here. How did it not occur to them to tell her that she would relive the genocide of her aunt's people? This was mud brown tentacles all over again.She would not pass out, they were about to get a piece of her mind.

Mika was still standing with her. The music had stopped, everyone was staring at her. Fear hung over the hall. She wiped the tears off her face and stared right back. Gelife stood with Iso behind him. She knew why he had been angry and afraid, why Diira hated Iso, why Ardan wanted her.

"This is what you do on Memorial Day. They died, so many, so many. And you come here to dance and drink and kiss each other's butts. Has it been so long? It can't be, I feel it all. Why did you bring me here? Why?"

Hera noticed that everyone took a step back as she spoke. Ardhan and the Ghaizur were wrapped in shadow in what she now noticed was the lantern-lit hall. She was exhausted, the flood gates were open and there was no stopping them.

"Shakturs,you held my hand, made promises... But you still hold lands in Northern shores. My lands, ripped away from the bloody and mangled hands of the Ntu clans. The Rashilo, Burrdins, Likarshia, The Matridanmes. Your betrayal is not forgotten."

"And just what will a half-human, weak little Kathir like you do?" One of the Ghaizur asked.

She felt rage rise like bile up her throat. Her lungs were on fire.Calypso knew exactly what she wanted to do. Hera could let her. The goddess deserved to get revenge. She could drown the capital and cleanse Saira of the demon hoard.

"Mika,we should go. Now." Hera said.

The fountains on the outside of the hall that had been charming were spraying water in a high noisy arch when they left. They got soaked on their way to the cars.

Hera sat in her room for the next three days. Khatya came to her constantly. The day her aunt died Hera's world had caved in. All that was good and happy was gone. She had cried it out then, cried until she had nothing left.

Azmythica would never settle back into memories of the good times. She would only ever see it in a bloody haze and smell fire and smoke. That was all Calypso had for her, death and destruction.

Do you see now?

"You were going to kill them. After all you have seen, how can you want that?"

The blood lust was not mine. I have waited for the Ghaizur, I will wait still.

"What do you mean? I felt it. I even saw the water surge into his lungs by my hand and drown him."

The grief would have driven any other person mad. You did well to stay your hand.

Hera just grasped what Calypso was saying. That revelation was stowed away for another time.

They will want to separate us soon.

"Of course, now that we went ahead and threatened every powerful noble in the world."

Will you miss me?

"Will it hurt?"

I do not know. It has never been done before.

"I've been meaning to ask, all the swim trophies I have, were they all you?"

Never,you earned those honors.

"I will miss you and I'm sorry that you lost everyone you loved."

When Hera left her room after going through denial, bargaining and depression, she went straight to the kitchen and scarfed down rum cake. A few people nodded her way, others managed to say hello but she was largely avoided. It appeared that being the lamp that held the genie was not as glamorous as she had thought.