thirty-nine #2
There were monetary penalties for all non-contracted people a mercenary killed, but thanks to Sulim, Sonall’s money went far enough to not matter.
I could never marry that man now. And the Void knew he thought about it, based on him inviting Sulim to retire with him to Arrah when they were released from Cerilynian bondage.
She eschewed her usual nightly bath and went straight to bed. Thinking about Mira’s strange and esoteric confessions left her too exhausted to do anything else.
Maybe if I get some sleep, I’ll think more clearly in the morning.
The saving grace was that at this point in her mercenary career, she had her own room.
And because she was successful and respected, it was nice enough to contain a functional air conditioner and a renovated attached bathroom—but no windows, because while they would tell her it was to keep cooling costs down,
Sulim had long figured out that nobody wanted to risk young recruits escaping or jumping to end their misery.
So she crawled beneath her feathery-down blanket—purchased with pay for stealing someone’s plans to infiltrate the Federation Forces—and fell asleep faster than she anticipated, considering the anxiety percolating beneath her brain.
What should have been a deep, rejuvenating sleep soon reversed course.
“Wake up.”
Sulim turned over, both in her bed and in her dream.
“Please, wake up.”
The warmth spreading through her body and sealing her eyes shut reminded her of what it must have been like to be embraced by her mother, who had died when Sulim was an infant.
She had never met the woman who placed her in the care of a wetnurse before jetting off with her husband for a career-defining art show on another planet.
By the time Sulim was old enough to recognize anyone and be self-aware, she was transferred to the wardship of her Aunt Caramine, who was as warm as the pantry freezer.
But this? Effervescent arms encircled her, reminding her of what it was like to be in the mortal womb of her mother, and the cosmic womb of the Void long before she was born.
Long before she was her. The atoms and metaphysical matter that made up Sulim’s soul had been many people before.
Dozens. Thousands. Every time they died, they returned to the Void, where they were washed of their memories and sieved of their very selves, transformed into someone new on the other side of the mortal womb to where they flew for another life.
Sulim didn’t remember herself. She was a blank slate. Somewhere, she had a name; a gender; a personality; a grander sense of self. But here, in the warm ensconce of the Void, she was a simple soul in search of a Mother.
A hand reached for her.
“A human soul is a fragile thing.” When she turned around, the source of the voice moved, pivoting Sulim on feet that did not exist and forcing her to look over her invisible shoulder with eyes that had not yet formed.
All she detected was a hint of gold as it traveled between her and the Void.
“Created from my energy. Bodies that were once stiff and lifeless. Fragile, but passionate. Fragile, but beautiful.”
The hand appeared before her face. Sulim reached for it, fingers forming as they entwined with the High Priestess’s.
Suddenly, she was Sulim again. A woman whose soul had been washed and sieved through the Void in such a way that she was her.
She was this consciousness that had come screaming and crying into the mortal world, to do it all again.
She was the same Sulim who had lived across endless worlds and universes.
The Sulim of “here” could be “anywhere.”
For that one night, she was detached from a singular mortal form and brought to be “herself.”
With that golden touch, she beheld “Sulim” from a hundred different angles.
She saw a girl who met her soulmate in a humble Qahrainian Temple.
She saw the woman dragged from the safety of her farm and thrust into a mercenary life by a woman who soon taught her the meaning of love and loyalty.
She was a lost and lonely orphan who stowed away to Terra III and met a priestess who took her in and gave her a home and purpose.
She was a scholar who was heavily embedded in her psychology research when her office was ransacked by the very same mercenaries who threatened her life.
She was the daughter of a successful artist who made her his model for so long that her visage reached Yahzen, enchanting the High Priest’s daughter.
She was a young bride on Arrah, navigating an increasingly unhappy marriage when a troublemaking julah appeared on her new family’s doorstep.
Each image slipped through her fingers as soon as they arrived. But that last one stuck with her, and for a moment, Sulim saw the Void through the eyes of the woman slain in her mother-in-law’s salon.
“What’s happening?”
Fear gripped her as she regained consciousness in the Void itself. Only a moment ago, she had been shot by a mercenary, her final thoughts before death being of Mira. Her face. She would be so upset to know I died!
Those arms tightened around her. As the Mother’s embrace gently chastised her for falling for a human’s inclination toward panic, Sulim caught her breath, slipping deeper into this dream world colored in holy white and gold.
“You must help her.”
Sulim spun around, beholding the unfathomable face of forever.
There she was, the High Priestess, come to her in this place.
Sulim, of any timeline, would know that face anywhere.
It was the fa?ade of the Temple, upon which entire cults had sprung, and holy texts had been rewritten.