"That... that isn't fair! I did what I was supposed to!" Blood leaks from the carving on my hand, turning the sand beneath me a rusty brown. Tears refuse to fall as the fading summer sun reflects in Ennam's eyes, wide and empty like a dried-up well. I should feel something, shouldn't I? That's what happens when someone you love dies.
The spirit laughed, a little surprised. "Dear, I said she could be saved. Not that I would save her once you followed my orders."
"What do you mean? You saw me do it! I gave my soul, just like you asked! You promised." It wasn't fair. This wasn't justice. All that blood, all that pain, all that terrible hope- just for this facade of a deity to play tricks with me. It didn't make sense. In the end, that was what flipped on the feeling; it was wrong, it was unbalanced. My stomach turned, the tightness in my throat slamming into my gut, boiling away into something new. Rage surged through my skin, warmth returning to me. "Filthy immortal," I hissed.
She blinked, then laughed in my face. "You are the one who came to me! One moment you're groveling on your knees like the insect you are, the next, this! Look at that, Rella, they've decided to grow a backbone." She shifted. The next thing I knew I was on the floor, my face stinging from the force of her blow. She snarled, her dainty sandaled foot pressing into my cheek.
The figure standing beside her cocked its head, pushing back a purple hood to reveal another woman. I could tell she was looking down at me with nothing in her face from my position on the ground. A shapely face it was, but it kept changing. One moment I saw a dark-skinned beauty with endlessly starry eyes, the next the battle-worn face of an experienced warrior. Always with the same expression. Curiosity at Ennam's stillness, sympathy for my situation, and the indifferent understanding of a predator. Hrex twisted her foot sharply into my cheekbone.
"The little cockroach thinks they've got the right to speak to a goddess that way. Well, cockroach, speak all you want! In a century or so, you'll be dead, and I'll be drinking mead with Teia up in Rellforge. You're nothing! Replaceable a million times over. Fodder for our entertainment. A bug that makes a pretty color when smashed." She ground my head against the gravel before stepping off.
My face was glowing red, embarrassment and fury coloring my cheeks. The paralyzing feeling of helplessness crept up my spine once more. I wanted to scream, an awful, human sound that would wake some old hero to enact vengeance and justice on these unfeeling immortals, and send a shock of fear through them. But I just stared, arms hanging uselessly at my sides. I was a fool and an insect to them, and I hated that it was true. I hated that I was too weak to have let go of Ennam all those years before, that I was naive enough to trust Hrex, too hopeful to think that immortals could ever remember what it was like to care.
I couldn't hate them. They didn't understand. Or perhaps I didn't. I'm tired. It's been so long, such a long life, full of fighting and loving and screaming with all my might. When was the last time that I had looked at my life and felt content? I couldn't remember. I still felt so young, but the years had taken their toll on me. Ennam had long since been lost to the Farrow, and I had been alone for far too long. Hrex chuckled at my despair, her black eyes glittering like cruel dark gemstones.
"I can't just let you get away with that, can I?" She asked, excitement coloring her voice an ugly crimson. She lifted her arm to the skies and spoke in her strange divine tongue, calling a shaft of black lightning from the storm brewing above us. The world slowed as I watched it arch through the sky towards me. I understood the meaning. I just wasn't sure if I cared enough to try and dodge it. Not that it would make a difference. An old warrior against the endless vigor of youth immortalized. It wouldn't go well. So I closed my eyes, waiting for the moment when I could join my sweet Ennam again.
The moment never came. As the black lightning struck me down, I could feel the unnatural energy changing every piece of my being. It was horrific. My veins crackled and snapped, breaking like beetles' legs from so much of Hrex's magic and I screamed. My bones ripped through muscle and sinew, shrinking faster than my nerves could keep up with and hardening into armor within me. It was like breathing so much air I thought I'd explode and drowning in the very same instant. Like being stabbed everywhere by poisoned blunt blades and liquified in molten lead, flesh-ripping like tissue paper and spine cracking like the ground if tectonic plates decided to move at light speed. I didn't have a mouth to scream from anymore, and my eyes felt so horridly wrong. And then, it all stopped. Like it had never happened.
I found myself staring up at the towering goddess. The world had grown! The sun beat down on my back, a thousand times bigger and hotter. The ground stretched in all directions, a merciless and empty desert. My bones had become my skin, and my insides swam and swirled like soup within me. I scuttled across the ground, but before I could find shelter, a gargantuan hand plucked me from my predicament. A gleeful Hrex stared at me with eyes as big as planets. "That's my little cockroach. Now you live in your truest form for the rest of eternity." She threw back her head and cackled before shoving my squirming, tiny body into her pocket. Whatever organ was throbbing in place of my heart sank deep into my insect abdomen. I would never see Ennam again. Not even in death.
I then discovered the answer to a question I had asked many times as a child when my brothers would pull the legs off unsuspecting insects and I would cry for the poor fellows. "Can the crawlies hurt too, Ma? Do they cry for their legs?" And Ma would sigh, and say, "I don't know, sweet, but I wish they'd leave the dears alone."
The crawlies can indeed cry, Ma. And I found out in the worst way possible.
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