Mara - The Lady Grief (Completed)

2 My Name is Mara

2652 B.C.E. City of Tmari-on-the-Euphrates

Spring, Month of Ajaru

Patriarch Rimon

I am the one to leap next to the sacred pool, on creaking, ancient knees no less, and catch the nude, unconscious girl in my arms before she can slip under again. I pull her to the side of the pool and see the water, tinged a dark pink, run off of her skin back into the pool, leaving her clean and dry as if the divine god Death wishes his daughter to not catch cold.

We do not touch the sacred waters. They are toxic, filled with acids that are meant to strip the flesh from the bones of corpses during the year of mourning.

I feel nothing from the water that must be on my skin, but my robes already have holes from the water burning through the cloth.

She is a miracle.

Never did I believe I would live to see the day that Nateos gives a daughter to the temple. I am near the end of my own earthly life. I do the calculations in my head, wracking my brain for any historical reference to a daughter. I know, without any shadow of doubt, that there has never been a female priest, a priestess, at the temple. And, of our holy servants, only three have been female in the last sixty years of my own service.

This young female will not be changing sheets and preparing bread. She is more than any of us.

I glance down at the miracle in my arms. How stunning, to enter the temple for my morning salutations and see a beautiful child bathing in the pool. Her red hair pools over my arm. Her eyes, dusky pools of deep brown, almost black, may be closed now, but I saw the burning of death in their depths. Nothing hollow, not the absence of life that death is for all other living souls, but a living, passionate death. Truly, she is a gift of fire for our dark temple.

I come to my senses when I feel the weighty stare of Nateos on me. The ill feeling of Death stalking you, disapproving. She needs to be taken to a bed to rest and recuperate and her father is becoming impatient.

"Antin, Farso, carry her, please."

The younger, far more strapping males step up, both blinking at the girl as if she is entirely of another species. Antin picks her up carefully, shaking his head at Farso. "She's light enough for me," he murmurs. Wide eyes look all around except at the female in his arms. We are used to nudity, but of the dead, not the living. I wrap my own robes around her, shielding her nudity, and see Antin relax a touch.

"Where are you taking it?" Postite Salbin glares at the girl.

"To her room, postite," I say it mildly instead of smacking him upside the head. She is light, the female, too skinny by half. I will have to make certain that she eats more. Though the miracle we all just witnessed healed the most grievous of her wounds, it did not magically make her gain weight and I imagine that she will still need to heal, both spiritually and physically, from whatever brought her to the temple of the death god.

"Her room?!" Postite Salbin exclaims, hurrying after the me. "We should be finding out what House this.., this creature, belongs to and return her, perhaps with a hefty fine for dirtying the sacred pool!"

I can barely contain the urge to sigh outloud in aggravation. Barely. Only the knowledge that I'm too old for such a childish gesture, and of course the fact that the postite can hear me, stops me.

"Did you not recognize the miracle, Postite?" I open a door to the private hallways that the novices and postites live in and stand back so that Antin can carry her inside. "She spoke with the god, did you not see that? His sacred waters do not burn her skin. He has blessed her as he blessed each of us."