Vessels of the Stain

To Do What is Needed

They were wound around each other, hidden in the closet.  Tristan and Lilah, curled into the corner like kittens.  Long limbs and pointed toes, skin scarred into whorls and tattooed with words in secret languages. Foreheads together, they whispered together.  Their lips moving each inches from the other.  Dusty light filtered in through the cracked and crumbling wall to gild their faces.  The room was filled only the the natural grime of an overlooked space.  Only with dust and fallen insects.  It smelled only of rotting floorboards.  The two figures within seemed to glow with their purity.  In that small space, at least, there was no hint of the stain.

Lee's eyes began to fill up with tears.  Her back was aching as she bent to peer through the keyhole and the hallway was freezing.  The tableau in that broken down little room wore at her heart.  Quietly she sank to her knees before them, closing her eyes and rubbing her face clean.   When she could keep her face from crumpling, she looked up at Emory.

"I thought you were going to show me something forbidden," she whispered.

Instead of answering, he turned to go, gestured her after him.  Lee followed him down the dark hallway, watching as he toe-walked, picking his way around splintered boards and the raised heads of nails.  He rounded a corner and stopped.

"That is forbidden.  That cozy little dependent knot they have."

"But they were doing it!  The stain was washed away around them.  You saw that room, same as I did."

"They are managing now.  While they are together.  But they will be sent away, to other villages.  Can they manage it then?"

"Couldn't they stay together?"

Emory's face, split wide with pink scars against his brown skin, was solemn as he stared down at her.

"There are too few of us, Lee."

Emory turned and walked away again, taking long strides on his toes.  He had lost the heels from his feet a year before.  He had described it to Lee, waking in pain.  It was the first thing he had lost.  He said it refined his focus.

Lee remained where she was and watched him go.  She sniffed and then wiped her nose.  Exemena House was not what she had expected.  She had lived in its shadow all her life, known she was meant for an Oblate.  It was freedom from the stain.  It was useful work. In her mothers house, they had scrubbed the floors together.  Tried to beat back the stain with water and soap and lye.   Washed it out from under their fingernails, and watched the skin between their fingers blacken with it anyway.  They scrubbed with cracked hands and whispered charms to acheive what the Angels did here by their very presence.

Lee straightened her shoulders, turning her back more firmly on the closet behind her.  Lilah and Tristan whispered there still, but Lee blotted them from her heart.  She would walk always upon her toes, would scar her skin, would do whatever was asked of her.  Where she walked there would be no stain, and the horizon would open before her.  Her sacrifices would allow new villages to grow and flower.

And she would be loved.

Just, not as Lilah and Tristan were loved.  Not as they loved each other.

It was worth it.  It had to be.

Lee Voclain followed Emory away down the hall.  She went to join the others, to read poetry together, to change bandages.  To do what was needed.