The TwiceBorn

The Soft Invitation Of Madness

"...a cloud in the darkness, our bodies finally falling together like rain..."--Emma Rollins

 Alora paused.  Outside thunder grumbled and struck a low rolling note.

“You can turn around…or I can turn you around.  Which is it?” 

Alora’s voice remained calm but Islinn detected an undercurrent of steel beginning to work its way to the top.  Still, she hesitated.  It was the thought of The Twiceborn touching her—and that ever-eager-to-please servility—that finally caused her to turn, a half-sob escaping through her lips.

“Ssshhh…” Alora whispered as she took a step back so she could get a better look.  She drew in an unsteady breath.  Long discolored weals ran the length of the girl’s back.  There were deep indentations in some areas near her spine where Alora could only assume the skin and muscle had been torn away and the rest of the flesh had tried to compensate in its attempt to heal. 

Islinn’s back was like a trade road map, paths running in every direction, circling and scattering over dips and valleys of ruined skin.  Raised flesh crisscrossed in a haphazard track, reminding Alora of the tunnels earthworms made just beneath the surface of the soil.

 Her eyes moved lower. The gentle curve of the girl’s back leading down to her buttocks was permanently discolored, an odd reddish blue tint as though the area had been so badly abused the blood was permanently  trapped just beneath the surface of the skin.

Alora felt sick. A deep anger pulsed below the surface. She raised one hand and wiped it raggedly across her mouth.  She genuinely regretted not going back up the road and running JoHan through with her sword.   And even that—the smooth inward thrust of the blade slicing through skin and organ like so much butcher’s meat—would have been kinder than what she was looking at now. Paupers tithing their hard-earned money, the desperate prayers to right some wrong, the cut of a whip to erase a sin—all of these enraged Alora but none of it enraged her more than knowing how Islinn had been so misled.   

 A puppet master.  Alora’s lip curled at the thought. She tried to look away from Islinn’s back but found she simply couldn't tear her eyes away for long.  With each glance, she saw a new weal or crevasse.  Brede was nothing but a puppet master.  Dancing people about on string to satisfy his whims.

Alora reached out one trembling hand and rested it against Islinn’s back. She didn't hear the girl’s sudden hiss of in-drawn breath. Images exploded across Alora's mind, flashing by, like a velvet sky where every star was shooting. She saw the dirt of countless roads and town squares, blood splattering like rain, and heard the words, “Come unto me now, bring benevolence, from dark to light…from dark to light…

An eerie whistle escaped through Alora’s lips as she dragged in breath across her clenched teeth.  Her legs trembled.

(the stealthy whistle of the whip as it sliced air and flesh and that light, that elusive light was there, coating everything in a sickly wash of white and Islinn, young, untouched, a broken Crusader’s daughter filled with misplaced love, the first scar was on the inside and bore her father’s hand and now…and now…more towns, I will bare my back from dark to light, and the child, the seed of a drunken farmer and a worn-out whore crying its presence out to the world clothed in that cloying light, that fucking light, light and life and Islinn kneeling in the wet ,red dirt…)

The images roiled and shifted through Alora’s mind faster and faster and she suppressed a moan brought on by the dizzying rate at which they passed.

( Dark to light…dark to light, hear my prayers, grant me mercy, grant me shrift, the meaty thud of the whip brought down and Islinn…Islinn…a galaxy of pain enveloped in light and a small festering whisper, as fleeting as a ghost… why can’t you love me?)