18. Lois
Lois
Going from the bright ivory marble of the atrium into the quiet dim of this chapel room quite literally feels like stepping out of the midday sun into a blanket of night.
It takes a little while for my eyes to adjust, and in that time, my other senses catch up with me.
I can hear the soft trickling of water and smell the warm, woodsy scent of something similar to incense.
The lighting is so incredibly low in here, but there is lighting – warm spotlights on dark wood carved into statues and tableaus.
There are plants in here, and a small waterfall.
It feels… almost tropical. Like some kind of retreat for the ultra wealthy – certainly unlike any place I’ve ever stepped foot inside.
There are various tall Xaviann women, all carved from wood, soft uplighting drawing me closer.
“Which Goddess’ room is this?” I whisper to Az, wincing when my voice carries a little further than I’d have liked it to.
“San,” he supplies, reaching into a nearby alcove in the wall.
What he pulls out are two tiny floating spheres like DJ, but small enough to fit in your palm and transparent, like glass soap bubbles that never land on your skin and pop.
As he hands one to me, they both light up like someone struck a match inside.
“The Goddess who gifted me my venom,” he bends to whisper so close, his warm breath tickles my ear.
I try not to shiver at that, but… well, it’s dark in here, so I can only hope Az doesn’t witness the effect he has on me. “What are these for?” I ask, raising my cupped palms, making the floating sphere of flame rise with my movement.
“You decide which of San’s blessings you wish to honor today,” he says, pointing to each of the dimly lit statues of the deity.
“Health, nature, or motherhood.” The first statue depicts San mopping the brow of a sickly male; in the second, she is standing proud, surrounded by all kinds of creatures, from ones that look like deer to what looks like the Xaviann version of a giant tiger with wings.
It’s the third one, though, that catches my eye.
San is flanked by two small children, clinging to her robes, a third just a swaddled babe in arms – pretty standard for a statue depicting motherhood.
Except, her free arm is raised, and grasped tightly in her fist is a pretty wicked-looking warrior’s axe.
I make a beeline for her, my little lit-up bubble just about keeping pace with me.
When I get to the foot of the motherhood statue, I have to crane my neck to see her face.
And, from where I’m standing, it looks like she’s shrieking a battle cry just before she launches that axe right at me.
At her feet, there are dozens and dozens of the little flame-in-a-bubble spheres, gently bobbing up and down like floating candles at this altar of motherhood.
“Whoa,” is all I manage to say as I keep staring up at her.
“Aunt Zalora always loved this depiction,” Az supplies in a low voice as he looks up at her, too. “And I can’t help but think she sees herself a bit like this version of San… except… you know, swap the battleaxe out for her cane.”
I then watch as he holds his palm out flat, blowing gently on his bubble-candle.
The strange flame inside flickers, but then the little sphere slowly drifts toward the foot of this particular statue to be with its kin.
I follow suit and do the same. “She stepped in to raise you when you lost your mom, right?”
“Mm-hm,” he affirms, still looking up at the statue.
He doesn’t say anything else, so I decide not to push.
“She looks fierce,” I comment, swallowing. I can feel the goosebumps prickling up my arms just looking at her here in the dark.
“Of course,” Az supplies, leaning sideways toward me as if murmuring a secret. “Mothers are the ultimate protectors.”
And it’s just then that I get hit by a wave of the most devastating feeling. Like a deep chasm of longing just cracked wide open in the pit of my stomach.
I do that thing – I don’t mean to do it – that jolty little inhale you usually do between sobs.
Except I’m not sobbing – not on the outside.
“Lois?” Az says, and his voice is so low and warm and rich – it’s like falling into a mug of hot cocoa with whipped cream.
And before I know it, I feel the gentle brush of his finger as he wipes away a tear I hadn’t meant to let roll down my cheek.
“Lois, what is it? Do you wish to go?”
“No,” I state as plainly as I can manage with my wobbly voice, my nose trying to sniff up all that extra emotion to keep it locked inside.
“No, I want to be here, I just-” I start, furiously wiping at my cheeks.
When I look back up to Az, I can see the soft expression of concern on his features, even in the dimly lit chapel.
“I… I just really miss my mom,” I admit, turning back to the statue.
“You wouldn’t think it, to look at all of five-foot-one of her, but she was fiercely protective when it came to me. She had to be.”
Az is quiet for a time, and all I can hear is the soft trickle of the little waterfall they have in the dark of one of the chapel corners. He shifts closer, though, and asks, “Why did she have to be, Lois?”
Oh, God. Do I really want to tell him this?
I sigh and look back up to ‘Mother San’ in all her axe-wielding glory.
“My biological dad didn’t stick around,” I start, finding courage in the alien deity before me. “Not even until the end of my mom’s pregnancy. It was just her and me until I was about six. Things were really tough. We didn’t have a lot of money. Then, along came my step-dad, Jerry-”
When I glance at Az, he looks a little confused.
“Um… when a single parent marries someone who isn’t a biological parent to their child, that parent becomes a ‘step-parent’.”
His brow clears of confusion as he nods, encouraging me to continue.
“Things were great with Jerry at first,” I say, deciding I can’t stay still while recounting this whole chapter of my life.
I start to walk, keeping my eyes on the low-lit statues, tableaus, plants, and bubbling waterfall.
“He promised my mom he would always look after us both. He had a good job and moved us into the house he inherited from his parents. It was like that for about ten years. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad.
He was good to me – good to my mom. They loved each other.
But then his job let him go, and he struggled to find something else.
And Jerry…” I pause, watching as some of those little magical candle spheres cascade down the small waterfall like it was their own personal waterpark.
“Jerry…” Az prompts, bringing me back to myself.
I bite my lip and swallow. “Jerry seemed like a completely different man once times got tough. Where he had been kind, he turned sour. Where he had been patient, he snapped everyone’s head off.
And-” I pause to take a breath and continue, “I understand the pressures of having no money – I’ve lived it myself – but what he asked my mom to do, I-”
Shaking my head, I can barely get the words out.
Az stays standing at my side, tall and solid, and so oddly comforting.
There’s no nice way to say this, so I just-
“Jerry asked my mom to have sex with men for money.”
Az is quiet beside me. When I finally do look at him again, I can see his jaw ticking and his hand balling into a fist at his side, only to flex out again.
“But he-” he starts, visibly swallowing down some kind of very difficult emotion.
“He was bonded with your mother,” he manages to grit out, the words slow and raspy.
I do this weird little head wobble that I hope he can see means ‘yeah, but… not how that works back on Earth, big guy’. We don’t have bonding venom. Just promises at the end of the aisle. And, in my experience, promises are easily broken.
“That… that wasn’t the worst of it.”
Az blinks at me with the most incredulous look; it was almost amusing.
I nod my head and continue. “My mom later told me she only did what he asked of her twice. She said she’d do anything to keep food on our table and a roof over my head.
But then Jerry started dropping hints that he was going to ask something else.
That’s when she grabbed me and my baby photo album, and we ran to the other side of the country with just the clothes on our backs. ”
“What was he going to ask?” I hear as I stare at the babbling water feature.
I turn to look up at Az. “He was going to ask Mom to convince me to start sleeping with men for money, too. I wasn’t even seventeen yet, and was still a virgin. He said a friend of his wanted to pay him a lot of money to be my first, and that they shouldn’t dismiss the idea.”
Az. Looks. Horrified.
He clenches his jaw so tight, I think he might actually crack a tooth.
“I didn’t understand why we were running from my step-dad at first, but after a while, my mom told me the whole story.
What she’d done. What she’d allowed him to talk her into.
And what she refused to ever happen to me.
She said it was the wake-up call she needed about what kind of man Jerry really was. ”
Az looks like he’s about to throw up.
I put a gentle hand on his very tense forearm. “That was a long time ago now. And we never saw Jerry again.”
“He promised to protect and care for you and your mother,” he states, almost growling.
“And he didn’t,” I reply, folding my arms over my chest. “People can never hide their true character forever, Az. There’s nothing you or I can do about what a shitbag Jerry turned out to be.”
I stare at him for a moment or two – all seven-foot-something of him is still absolutely seething. It really is quite a sight to behold. Who would have thought such a sweet guy could seem so formidable and menacing? I can almost see the promise of murder in his eyes.
For some strange reason, that makes me soften toward him, and I place my hand on his arm again. “It’s not Jerry, or what he did, that got me upset. It’s the fact that I miss my mom so, so much.”
His anger simmers, and his shoulders relax just the slightest. “I know what it is to miss a mother, little Lois,” he says, that deep, rumbling tone gently vibrating in my chest. “My mother is no longer, but yours-” Az straightens slowly, his gaze fixed ahead of him.
“Yours… maybe there could be a way-” he looks over his shoulder at the double doors that led us into this chapel before grabbing my hand and tugging me out of there. “We need to get DJ.”