thirty-five #2
Even Lerenan Estate wasn’t this wet. Hot, but not wet. “Everyone loves my mother.”
She lit her pipe and stared at the life-size statue of Joiya Lerenan before her. For while she was legally considered married to Nerilis Dunsman, she had been canonized under her maiden name—making it even more difficult for Mira to fly by any radar clocking her as someone of note.
“Why do you look so much like the High Priestess?”
Yes, it was uncanny, wasn’t it? Yet it simply gave Mira more cover as she went by the name Mira Lerenan, claiming to be a distant cousin of the High Priestess who had never met her.
Here on Cerilyn, a place she was assigned to both humble her and to dissuade any accusations of nepotism, anyone who figured her out respected her privacy.
Mira had a respectable relationship with Second Tribe’s current chief, Olma, who was reasonable but still ruled with the usual iron fist.
If she said not to bother the priestess under pain of punishment, she was usually listened to.
It also helped that Mira had kicked a few asses when the locals tested her.
Proving to be a powerful sorceress tends to quell the humans.
And when she helped some of the higher-ups in the fortress with a big problem with their former chief…
well, most respected her. And she was in no hurry to leave when she had discovered a wonderful woman on this hunk of rock.
Sometimes, when Mira stared at her mother’s effigy gazing back down at her, she was reminded of that other life.
I had a mother. When I was found guilty of murder, she helped me get a private, commuted sentence. We went on pilgrimage as penance. We ended up on Arrah, where I met Sulim, who was married, but it didn’t stop us. Then the mercenaries returned and…
Mira nearly dropped her pipe. Why were there such invasive images of Sulim slaughtered on the floor? Not only had she confirmed her beloved’s health the day before, but there was no reason for her to be on Arrah! She wasn’t even from there!
She was soon distracted again. One of the courtesans from the biggest brothel in town needed guidance about how she had been sold into sexual slavery and, despite making peace with it as an adult, didn’t know how to go about getting out now that she had some money and her freedom.
It was easier to stay on Cerilyn and continue selling her services until she was too old to bother anymore.
But what if she wanted a family? What if she wanted to leave?
Later, as she cleaned up the altar and had the magnanimous opportunity to wash her mother’s stone feet, Mira dropped her cloth to remember what had happened right before she woke up the other night.
“I want you to know… that I loved nothing more than being your mother.”
The Void had closed in on Mira. On her mother. She was sucked into some faraway place that mortal minds were not meant to see until their time had come. Until they went Home.
Now Mira was here. She couldn’t make sense of it. On one hand, it had been a dream, and on the other, it was as real as the statue she touched with her own fingers.
Ma… Mira’s hand encircled the ankle anchoring the stonework to the altar. Were you real? You were really my mother?
The Ascension had changed the Temple from the inside-out.
Gone was the voya-yantrak. Women no longer pined to see themselves represented in everyday worship.
Mira’s birth mother may have taken her soul back to the Void, but she was now mother to all.
Entire cults had sprung up, claiming things that weren’t possible in any universe. Right?
Mira went to bed early. She had a video meeting right after breakfast and wanted to ensure that the Premier overseeing her assignment didn’t think she hadn’t gotten enough sleep.
“There you are.”
Mira was barely deep into her first sleep cycle when that feminine voice called to her. Yet while this was Rahara’s first time traveling to this universe, Mira instantly knew who she was. A comfort. A friend. A terrible omen.
“You.”
Mira faced those beady blue eyes that offered her both pity and understanding. As she extended a gentle hand, Mira’s knees buckled, bringing her down to the dark ground with this woman’s translucent skirt fluttering right before her face. Rahara bent forward, placing that hand on Mira’s head.
“Do you know how hard it is to travel between parallel worlds, let alone through time?”
It was the aggressive teasing of a motherly figure.
Yet when those soft, icicle-kissed fingers tilted up Mira’s chin, she didn’t see the tough and determined sorceress who had focused most of her concentration on crossing time.
She saw someone who had grown to love her through these simple interactions in this empty dream world.
If nothing else, Rahara was the only one who understood Mira’s plight.
“What happened?” she asked. “Who even am I right now?”
“Your mother Ascended, finally.” Those fingers drew away from Mira, but Rahara’s presence remained kneeling beside her. “Unfortunately, it was not enough to save your tainted world. But she knew that. The best she could hope for was to save you. To give you a mother’s ultimate sacrificial love.
“So, she’s gone?”
“In the body you inhabit now, you know she’s been absent from the mortal realm.”
“But I remember…”
“You are a survivor of that world, the one I was also born into. But it was always doomed to transpire, and even the avatar of my time envisioned it. That’s why I’m here. It’s why I’ve spent so many nights searching for you across time—and now, even, across worlds.”
“My mother sent you. From another time.”
“It was the last thing She asked of me. After we founded our Houses, we were separated in isolation—although, only a mountain range separated us. ‘Rahara,’ She said, ‘I weep for what I have done to you, but I must ask for one last favor.’ That was how it began.”
“What am I doing here? Is it the same, just different?”
“Your mother had little choice over where to send your soul and your consciousness. This was the closest world that resembled much of your own… although it too is in peril. Peril, but not tainted. Your mother denied the call so she could get married and have you,
but she did so knowing that her penance would be to Ascend the moment you were born. It is a universe not too different from many others, yet your existence as Mira means it is still not a true universe. But… perhaps it can still be saved. That’s why I’m here.”
“You were sent to help me. This whole time…”
“Your mother attacked me because she hated what I represented—her selfishness. Every time the avatar incarnates, she becomes a bit more mortal. Your mother was not born with the innate sense of who or what she was. That came to her later. She was in great denial.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because it was foretold. Her former self knew this would come to pass. The tainting began even in my time, but your mother’s refusal to answer the call to Ascend sealed your fate.”
“So… what do we do? How do I even reconcile losing my mother, whom I never had?”
“I am but one of many sent to help you. The High Priestess of this world knows that you are her cherished daughter, and that you are an interloper. She will send aid, I am sure of it.”
“But she won’t interfere with you here?”
“No. The High Priestess of this world Ascended out of love. Your other mother… she Ascended out of shame.”
“Ma…”
“Both of those realities are fixed. Both of them are a part of Her, the great one. She will always make mortal mistakes. It is Her purpose, so She may better understand humanity, including all of our foibles”
“When I wake up, I will be both Miras, won’t I?”
“Don’t let the name ‘Mira’ solely define you. You are living a divine life in every iteration of our mortal world, even the ones where you were not born. Your soul was sent by the Void for this task, but it was created at the same time as all of ours—She created your soul Herself,
just like the others. Believe in Her vision.”
That particular word brought back the terrifying memory of the eye bearing down upon her, the entire Void’s sight claiming the ceiling of the Sanctuary. Even in her dream world, Mira shuddered as if her soul rejected the knowledge of something deeper, more esoteric than she was ever meant to behold.
“Right before Ma Ascended… there was an eye… it saw everything. It saw right through my skin and judged my soul. It pulled me right into its awful gravity. It went beyond love, or even light. It was like every emotion I had ever felt in my life collided into a black hole of nihilistic despondency,
but I also wasn’t afraid. My very being was…”
Rahara placed a finger on Mira’s lips. “If any mortal soul could have borne it for that long, it was you. Take heart. Even I would have lost part of my soul to behold Her true essence.”
Mira pursed her lips, pushing that finger away. “You can’t answer any more questions beyond that, can you?”
Ribbony hair slowly waved before her as Rahara shook her head.
“I am powerful. I am marked for Her purpose. My soul will one day be born again, one of the only of its kind. Yet I am still mortal. Even I cannot ascertain that kind of cosmic knowledge. We call Her the unknown creator, without pomp or preamble, because She is undefined.
We cannot know where She came from. All we can know is what She has created—us.”
“And she sent her avatar—my mother—to guide us.”
“She sent her humanity, her gift of life, to us. To be our mother.” Rahara stood. “For even the first of our kind needed a mother.”
“I don’t…” It was too much, yet too little to go on. Mira wrapped her arms around her knees and stared into the intricate constellations of sewn stars that made up Rahara’s incomprehensible skirt. “Stay with me. Until I wake up. Please.”
Saying nothing, Rahara sat, her dress billowing around her as she closed her eyes and prayed. Mira stared ahead, into the darkness, making peace with who—and what—she was.
There is no peace. She learned that, eventually. There is only acceptance.
She had a job to do. But she had been given one of the greatest gifts of a mother’s love, and Mira was not about to squander it.