Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter 35

~35~

Ten days before the destruction of Emeth'il

Tsu'min found it hard to breathe. White trees spread with blue and turquoise leaves sang around him in the breeze. To the north, the low, bright dwellings of the city of Emeth'il clustered peacefully along the green waters of the I'o'ai Nar'olua. He listened to gulls cry and stood behind a prickly bush full of small red berries.

In front of him was a short Sh'ma with turquoise eyes and long hair of navy blue.

She bent and inspected a patch of red-and-yellow flowers on the side of the hill. He had felt her coming, seen the flowers, put the two together. Young Sh'ma were often given gardens to tend in the forest. It was a part of their lessons that introduced them to both the practicalities of growing plants and the idea that the world around them was bursting with life and that they had a responsibility to maintain it.

Tsu'min's heart filled with a thick, sickening mixture of joy and fear.

Mi'ame.

She lowered her head, sighed, lifted it again, and placed her hands on her hips. Her eyes shot defiantly to the bush.

"I feel you, stranger, whoever you are," she said in Sh'ma.

Stranger. He'd expected the word, but it hurt nonetheless.

Tsu'min fingered the jade bead that hung from his wrist. He hadn't been so afraid in centuries.

He stepped around the bush.

Mi'ame took a small step back. Tsu'min could see her more clearly without the bush between them. She had short legs, a long torso, wide ears, a small nose with one piercing. Her eyes stretched.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

Tsu'min's heart pounded.

It was her.

The flesh had changed, become younger and shorter, broader in the shoulders, softer in the face. But it was so like her to see a half-breed—ostracized and shunned—step from the trees and wonder not why he was there but who he was. So like her to see everyone she met as a person.

His throat closed up and his face flushed.

He had expected this. He had rehearsed a dozen answers.

But still—hearing those words felt like having the rivets he'd so carefully driven his heart together with ripped out one by one.

"I have had many names," he said. Eraic was long dead to him. Tsu'min he couldn't bear to hear her say. "It would honor me if you gave me a new one."

She paused. A flicker of mischief crossed her face.

"Then I will call you Oura," she said. Her hands went back to her hips, which she thrust to one side. The trees rustled. The gulls jeered.

She was young. Very young. Below her bravado, her breath was as rapid as his.

"Oura," he said. Strange one. It was as good a name as any. "Guash'ta'tya." The sea whispered below the hill. A nearby spring trickled over rocks and stones and moss. "And what shall I call you?"

She straightened. She was skinny, he noticed. Like a child who hadn't yet fully grown into her frame. She couldn't have been more than forty.

So young, he thought again. Why have you come back now?

"Tyash," she replied.

Tsu'min's heart leaped.

Tyash. Worthy. A nonsense name that no Sh'ma would give another, but a name that Mi'ame had used long ago. The name she'd given to the part of herself she felt was least worthy.