Mara - The Lady Grief (Completed)

15 My Warmth in the Cold

A/N - Some of you should enjoy this... some questions answered!

2651 B.C.E., City of Tmari-on-the-Euphrates

Late Summer, Month of Abu, One Year and Five Months after Mara's Rebirth

Mara

My tears roll down my cheek, one by one, drip, drip, drip onto the sandstone below. I watch them fall, one after another, a small pool forming in the indent in the stone.

"Tafia and Sera are here to see you, child," Postite Antin bends his creaking knees to crouch down next to my head. He gently smooths my hair back from my face. "Have you bathed today, Mara?"

I could take offense with his gentle question... if he meant that I smell. Unfortunately, Antin is hoping that this depressed state I am in will fade if I swim in my father's pool.

"I have," I answer him.

I have tried to shake this fugue, but I can't seem to drag myself up out of this terrible mood. Hearing that Tafia and Sera are here to visit me doesn't help. The shouting match between them as I lay in agony in the sacred chamber rings through my head a full month later.

"It's your fault! My House is suffering right alongside the First!"

"How can you blame me? You rejected me, remember?!"

"And now I am scarred and you are without your cat, Tafia!"

"At least I am alive."

"For now. Wait until my House realizes what is happening here. She's dangerous, Tafia. Open your eyes."

"They are open, Sera. Finally."

I thought they were going to hate each other... and me. They don't, but I'm still not comfortable with them. Sera knows who I am... not who I was, just who I am now. She thinks that I am dangerous.

My father's birthday present could have been better, that's all I'm saying. He could have gotten me a nice necklace or a plant. 

"A nice flowering bush would have been great."

You have an entire temple with gardens filled with flowers

"Not the same," I mutter. I sigh despondently. "The gods are at war and I am a weapon of my father's," I say quietly.

Not true

"It is true. I am dangerous. I can slice apart mate bonds set by Fate itself."

Not Fate... Love

"How can I tell? Who really determines who we end up Fated with?" I ask my father softly.

Postite Antin is quiet, stroking my hair and letting me speak with my father. He knows, by now, what is happening when I appear to be talking to myself. That is just another consequence of my mistakes, I no longer hide my oddities.

Your soul

"But then why, in the name of all the gods and everything holy and mundane, would my soul choose to be paired with Thane? Am I an idiot?" I ask in frustration.

You are a frustrating child, Daughter

"Yes, I know. I'm frustrating and frustrated, father."

My Mara

He sighs.

Patience

I'm patient. Look at me, just lying on this hard stone bench, making holes in rocks, outside in one of the mourning gardens. It takes a long time to form holes in stone. I haven't been able to move for hours to make my little pool.