Phoenix’s Fire (The Ruins Of Men #2)

Chapter 74

Seventy-Four

Meri

T he sewing machine made a soft clicking sound as I rocked the foot pedal to keep it moving. In my hands, the two colors of bright fabric were coming together to create a man's shirt. Brown and turquoise, cut diagonally - it was nothing like I'd ever imagined before.

Lessa had stepped out a while ago. A customer, she'd said, but that was okay. I knew how to put the pieces together. Now, deciding on which fasteners would go with this bold fabric was not something I was comfortable with, but I was learning. It felt good, almost like I was finding myself.

Then Lessa returned. "Okay!" she said, heading straight for me. "This is your cut."

I let the machine slow to a stop. "What?"

She reached over, took my hand, and placed a collection of paper in it. "Pay, Meri. Those are bills, and they represent a value. You can use it to buy things."

"What things?"

"Everything," she said, claiming her chair so she could face me. "Food, clothes, jewelry, games, or anything else you can imagine."

I looked down at the "bills" and smiled. "I don't know what I'd spend it on."

"You can save it too," she explained. "Keep it for when you need it. Oh, you can also pay people for services, like having laundry done for you. So you get to do the things you like, and someone else gets paid to do the things you don't."

Okay, this was a brilliant idea. I quickly wrapped the paper up and stuck it in my pocket, thinking of all the things I didn't like doing. Then again, I didn't really do those things up here. Mostly, my life was pretty easy.

"Or," Lessa said slyly, "you could use that to have a meal with Ayla and let someone else cook. We call it going out."

I probably should do that. I hadn't spent a lot of time with Ayla in a while, and she'd been so kind to me when I'd arrived. She still checked in too - or at least Jeera said she did. But ever since she'd gotten the dog, we hadn't spent as much time together.

But it wasn't really her dog. It was me.

"What if I don't want to do that?" I asked, looking up at Lessa.

She tilted her head, leaning so she could see me. "Why not? I thought Ayla was your friend. Has she changed too much?"

"No!" I hurried to say. "It's not that."

"Then what?" she asked.

I turned a bit to face her. "Ayla's always trying to reassure me about how things with the baby will be okay. I don't think she even knows about all the options - or that I even have them. She just keeps saying I'll survive, and while that's scary, all the rest of it is terrifying too!"

"I can talk to her if you want," Lessa offered.

I bit my lips together and shook my head. "No."

But that wasn't enough for Lessa. Shifting her chair closer, she reached in to take my hand. "Meri, what's going on? It's okay. We talk about all things, right? Even the stuff we shouldn't?"

But that wasn't an easy question to answer. There weren't words for why I'd been avoiding Ayla. It was just this feeling - and not her fault at all. It was me, and how could I say things when I didn't have the words?

According to Lessa, I simply tried, so I said, "I don't feel like I'm the person she wants me to be. Ayla's so strong, and brave, and so sure of everything she wants! She decided she didn't want to be married, so she attacked her husband, Lessa. I tried to make mine like me. And now I'm pregnant, and I don't know what I want to do, and there's all these options, but she'd ask me what I was planning, and I don't know what I'm planning!"

"That makes sense," she said.

"It does?"

Lessa nodded sagely. "Yep. I'm sure there's a little shame in there, right? You're not doing things the way you were told you should. Even if you don't agree, there's a little part that sticks with you, making you think you'll be judged for it."

"Yeah," I mumbled in admission.

She bobbed her head again. "And probably some resentment, hm? Here's Ayla, speaking our language like it's no big deal. She yells at men bigger than her, and runs around everywhere with her dog. Never mind her guys! Zasen, Rymar, and Kanik are always with her, which makes it even harder to have a private conversation, and half the time she's oblivious to the idea that things might be a bit personal."

"Yes!" I gasped. "And she gets to have her second chance without anything holding her back. I have this!" I gestured at my belly. "No matter what I do, this changes everything. I'll either be raising a baby - which would mean I can't just do what I want. Or I'd adopt it." I paused. "Did I say that right?"

"Give it up for adoption," she corrected .

"That!" I said. "Even if I do that, I'm still going to have a baby. I'm going to be weak, and changed, and not an untouched girl with all her options like Ayla is!"

Lessa hummed at that. "Well, I can promise you those options aren't like down there. Most people won't judge you for being a single mother or giving up your child. It's not some taint that makes you..." She paused. "What's the word for someone shunned?"

"The Righteous - er, Moles - called them possessed or banished."

"No, there's a word," Lessa said. "It's like disgusting? Pariah!" she said, finally figuring it out. "See, people up here have sex when we want to, so sometimes babies happen. It's normal, and there's no lasting stigma on you because of it. Mostly that's because tailed women can't have children, so women who can? You're always seen as a bit of a treasure to our society."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Mhm," she agreed. "Waiting until marriage to have sex would be weird for us. People would be shocked by that. But all of this is a lot to handle without trying to explain it to someone else, especially when you're struggling with it yourself." She reached out to clasp my forearm. "All I'm saying is that you don't have to see Ayla if you don't want to."

"I don't not want to," I admitted.

"And that's fine too," she promised. "I mean, her sister Saveah? We've been friends since we were little. I might see her once a month if I'm lucky, but that time apart doesn't make us less friends. It just means we have different things in our lives, and we sometimes need space to deal with them."

"So I'm not being a bad friend by avoiding her?" I asked.

She shook her head. "You're figuring it out and learning yourself."

"And it's harder to do that with her," I admitted. "When I'm around Ayla, it's like being back there. Not that she makes me act like that or anything, but that was what we knew for so long. I was good, she was bad, and Callah was smart. But I'm trying to be me, and that's hard to do when I'm always thinking I should be the good girl or the good wife."

"Detox," she said.

Which made me give her a confused look. "I don't know what that is."

"It's when you have to get something out of your system so it stops affecting you," she explained. "For some people, it's a drink or a drug. For others, it's a bad habit or a bad person. Maybe a good one from a bad time - which sounds like Ayla. You just need the time to find your own center, and then have your own fresh start. Ayla got hers before you arrived."

"Yeah," I breathed. "And don't tell her, but I do resent her a bit. It's not fair, and it's not her fault, but it's still there, and I don't want to mess up our friendship because of it."

"Pregnancy hormones are probably a part of it," she told me. "They make a lot of emotions even more intense than they should be."

Which made me giggle. "That's kinda how I feel. I mean, every time I see Ayla, I feel like it should be a year ago. It should be us, young and eager and trying to figure it all out. But now, I know what 'it' is, and she's found a different 'it,' and my version can never be hers."

"And hers can't be yours."

I hummed, thinking about that. "But hers is what she wanted. Mine isn't. Mine is what I was given. Mine is what Gideon decided for me, and that's not fair! It's not right, and it makes me so angry sometimes."

"Rightfully so."

"And sad," I added. "And scared."

"I know, sweetie," she breathed, sliding her hand down the back of my head to smooth my hair back. "I want to reassure you that I'm going to be here for you, but it doesn't really help, does it?"

"No, not really," I admitted. "In the compound, women die giving birth. I've been told it's different up here, but I've seen it down there. My mother died like that! It's just how things are, so being told everything is so perfect?" I paused, scrunching up my face as I thought about that. "I feel like I don't deserve it, or maybe it's a lie, and even like it could be a trick of some kind. None of those make sense, but it's what I feel, and Ayla can't even imagine it. She never had to deal with a husband, so she doesn't understand how horrible it is!"

Lessa pulled her hands into her lap, then tilted her head a bit to look in my eyes. "But you know she loves you, right?"

"Yeah," I said, feeling a little smile find its way to my lips. "Sometimes, I think about how she just ran in there, yelling at that big man and forcing him back. She was so brave ! And she did it for me."

"Mhm," Lessa agreed. "But I think she might not know how to help you or what to say."

"Ayla always knows what to say," I grumbled.

"No, she pretends like she does," Lessa assured me. "Trust me, I'm a master of doing that. But when someone you care about is scared and confused, words don't fix it. Sadly, words are all Ayla has for you, and I bet it makes her feel pretty helpless."

"I don't mean to!"

"No, it's not a thing you're doing wrong," Lessa promised. "It's just how life is. And it's perfectly fine to be jealous of Ayla for not being pregnant, or not having been married, or anything else. You know what's not fine?"

"No, what?"

"Hating her for it," Lessa said. "See, jealousy happens. How you handle that jealousy? That's what makes you a good person or a bad one. So you know, I'm not good at handling it."

"Yes, you are!" I insisted.

She laughed. "No, I was pretty mean to Ayla when I first met her. I blamed her for what the Moles did to my family. I hated her because I thought Zasen should end up with me. I was so sure that if I could just convince him to pick me, then all my problems would go away. Sometimes, I still think that."

"Why?" I asked .

"Because he kills Moles, and Moles killed my family. Because when I was young and scared, he was the friend who helped me figure out how to be strong - even when it was often just being mean." She hummed at that. "Yeah, and because I get lonely sometimes, Meri. I have a lot of friends, but none of them are like you and Ayla. My friends have fun with me. They don't cry with me, or scream with me, or make clothes with me."

"I do," I said.

Which made her smile, but her eyes were shining a bit too much. "Yeah, I know. The irony of that is not lost on me."

"I don't understand what that means," I mumbled.

"I hated Moles and wanted to destroy all of them. There was no excuse or reason that could make anyone from down there acceptable to me. And now, I'm sitting here with an amazingly beautiful and courageous woman who I really like spending time with - and she used to be a Mole."

I giggled at that. "God works in mysterious ways?"

"Fuck God," she told me. "I prefer to think we all forge our own destiny. Yours and mine just happened to converge, and for once, I wasn't being so much of a bitch that I pushed it away."

"Yeah," I said, thinking about her words. "God's not very nice, huh?"

"Not from what I've seen," she admitted. "I also haven't seen a whole lot."

"Ayla said the God up here is different."

"Oh, there are a lot of gods up here, Meri. And none. Different people believe different things."

"How?" I asked.

She shrugged. "We just do. We think about what feels right and embrace it."

Which made me rub my stomach. "Like finding myself?"

"Like life," she said. "Because here's the thing. No one can live your life for you, so all you can do is try to pick a path that makes you happy. Fuck anyone who doesn't like it. Because if they would rather have you miserable and agreeing with them than happy and making up your own mind? Well, then they aren't worth your time, so fuck 'em."

"Huh." I smoothed down my dress, then turned back for the machine. "That actually helped, Lessa."

"It did?"

I nodded. "If they only like me when I'm not myself, then they aren't someone I should care about."

"Exactly," she agreed. "And so you know, I like everything I've seen so far."

I reached for the fabric, but I was smiling - a lot. "I like you too, Lessa. You make me feel like it's okay to be me."