Chapter 24 #3
Resuming his thrusts, he continues railing the other god while mouthing tightly, Get. Out.
Sorrow gets out, though not before tossing Envy an unbridled die-in-a-ditch glare, which falls the second she slams the door behind her, shutting out the crude sounds of fucking. She storms down the pier, saltwater prickling her eyes.
Why the hell is she upset? What’s the matter with her?
On her way, Sorrow trips over a rock. When her quiver overturns, she stoops to collect the arrows. That’s when she notices one is missing.
Panicking, Sorrow races across the boardwalk. Barreling into her house, she chucks her longbow and quiver aside. Then she tears through the lamplit dwelling, rifling amid cupboards and yanking fleece blankets from the linen closet.
Nowhere. The arrow is nowhere to be found. Either she has misplaced it, or someone is playing a trick, or they’ve stolen the weapon from her.
It’s a celestial offense. A measure of disrespect. A slap in the face.
No way. No one is vindictive enough to take another archer’s weapon.
No deity is that selfish.
***
Envy
After Nostalgia leaves, Envy paces. Curse that female for interrupting.
Damn himself for growling at her. He hadn’t meant it.
Not to mention, he’s scarcely certain why he’s keeping the arrow a secret. It had been a retaliation at first, a vindictive need to deprive her of something sacred, the way she’d deprived him of his pride in front of everyone.
He should give it back. He really should give it back.
Claiming a deity’s weapon isn’t just a grave transgression. According to celestial law, it prevents the thief and victim from establishing a bond. Not that Envy takes that part seriously, since becoming mates with Sorrow is as plausible as Anger serenading a lover or taking up romance poetry.
Ultimately, returning the weapon is the right thing to do. No dignified immortal would encourage his actions.
Envy stalks through the house to where he’s mounted the arrow on a wall. Yet the moment his fingers wrap around the ice shaft, an indistinct and uncompromising sensation blitzes through him like lightning. Something akin to desperation and yearning.
Call it curiosity. Call it selfishness.
But whatever Envy does, he’d better not call it obsession.
***
Sorrow
Over the decades, she learns from Echo that every soul experiences three types of suffering. There’s the suffering of oneself, the suffering of strangers, and the suffering of a peer.
Wonder has been caught breaking celestial law. According to The Fate Court, she’s been making clandestine trips to the mortal world, to communicate with a human. Since it’s impossible for mortals to see or hear their kind, the goddess has been writing letters to the man instead.
From what the naysayers report, and from what little their crewmates know, it wasn’t a rousing success. All it did was terrify the mortal into madness and land him in an asylum.
As for Wonder? Right now, she’s screaming. She’s screaming so hard and so brittle, it rattles Sorrow’s bones. Because their crew is responsible for each other, they’ve been tasked with the gruesome chore of exacting Wonder’s punishment.
Within a rotunda of immortal spectators, they’ve tied the goddess to a chair.
Her hands have committed the misdeed, so they’re the focus of retribution.
While Anger, Love, and Sorrow keep Wonder strapped down, Envy slashes the female’s palms with a blade.
As ribbons of red form wildflower shapes across Wonder’s flesh, her howls flood the area.
Each of her cries slices a rift into Sorrow’s chest. She hates this. She hates this so fucking much. And she hates that she’s a coward who’s not stopping it.
Instead, that becomes Love’s job. Unable to take it anymore, the winged goddess flings herself in front of Wonder, shouting for the horror to stop.
“Stop!” Love bellows.
Envy reels back to avoid lashing the wrong female by mistake. The intermission is a welcome relief. Privately, Sorrow exhales.
Love puts up an impressive fight, kicking and screeching as Anger vacates his post and drags her out of the room.
Being the crew leader, it’s clear why he takes action.
If he does nothing, the treasonous outburst will endanger them all.
By celestial law, defying The Court’s orders amounts to deadly consequences.
However, since Love is a rare and precious commodity to their rulers, keeping her in one piece is paramount. Most likely, Love will serve a term in solitary for the disruption, rather than physical torture. Yet she hadn’t cared about that, and good for her.
Shame on the rest of them.
Sorrow bites her tongue until it leaks blood, the rancid taste assaulting her palate.
So this is what it’s like to feel guilt without having to ask Guilt.
This is what it’s like to witness someone else’s pain, to have it slide between the cracks of your conscience.
This is what it’s like to be powerless, unable to help.
As Wonder whimpers from her chair, Sorrow yearns to stroke the female’s cascade of rich, brown curls. Reaching out, she takes the risk. Covertly, her fingers comb through the roots, brushing her friend’s scalp.
Wonder relaxes with each pass of Sorrow’s hand. And this is what it’s like to comfort someone without the magic of an arrow.
Sorrow’s eyes water. She peeks at the assembly, making sure no one notices.
Except her gaze stumbles across a pair of caramel irises. Envy stares, witnessing her on the brink of tears.
Maybe he understands. Because yes, the private flinches she noticed from him while he cut into Wonder hadn’t been from exertion. No, it had been from remorse.
Envy hates this as much as Sorrow does.
That night, she sinks to the floor of her home. Hunching over, she wills the tears from falling. It isn’t fair that Wonder should be broken—her mutilated hands, her anguished soul, her grief over a mortal—and that the Goddess of Sorrow should walk away without a hair out of place.
Sorrow plucks the stitching needle from her bedside drawer. Blowing out a tremulous breath, she presses the tip into the underside of her arm until a pearl of blood surfaces. Then she pushes deeper.
***
Envy
He doesn't know why he goes looking for her. She would rather eat shit than talk to him, and he’s also unsure why this fact causes his molars to gnash.
But he does find her, and he does approach her. She’s home, sitting at the dock extending from her front door, with her legs draped over the ledge, her feet agitating the water.
To his surprise, Sorrow doesn’t object when he lowers himself beside her and submerges his feet into the pool, wetting the hem of his pants. This isn’t a night for arguing. Not after what they just did to Wonder.
Envy deplores the crusts of blood caking his fingernails. It matches the red of Sorrow’s own digits.
Although he appreciates his house, replete with lounging sofas, sewing materials, and barrels containing bolts of cloth, he hadn’t wanted to go there.
His enclave cavern had presented a second option, with its hollows and waterfalls, which he’d discovered on that fateful day when Sorrow first spoke to him. But oddly, he’s come here instead, preferring to face the memory of Wonder’s screams with the female beside him.
“Perhaps deities have no less free will than humans,” Envy murmurs.
Sorrow shrugs. “Guess we’ll find out.”
He nods, then evicts the grim notion from his mind. It’s almost time for their crew’s deployment into the mortal realm. They’ll be stationed apart from one another, in separate areas of the world, wherever their root emotions are needed.
In the near future, Envy shall be targeting humans plagued by fits of jealousy, competition, and vengeance. Perhaps there will be plenty of individuals to distract him from the things he’s seen and done. Or perhaps not.
Envy bumps Sorrow’s shoulder with his own. “Will you miss me, Nymph?”
She snorts and turns to him, as if he’s just that naive. Nevertheless, his breath stalls before she answers, “Get lost, pretty god.”
To which his heart constricts in a frightening way.
***
Sorrow
So he does get lost. As does she.
Sorrow and Envy leave The Dark Fates. In the mortal realm, she serves as she was instructed, targeting the clusterfuck of humans infested by sadness.
Millennia pass. They see each other during trips back home every hundred years, for an intermission of rest. Rarely do they address one another, other than to exchange unpleasantries.
Love, Anger, Wonder, Envy, and Sorrow each have their stories, but none are eager to share them.
Maybe they all have memories they’d like to forget, plus an eternity to try.
Always, they resume their posts. One year on a minefield, a soldier wails for his sister while an ocean of blood pours from his stomach.
Sorrow can’t be everywhere at once. There are too many bodies, so many mouths roaring amid plumes of smoke, spilled entrails, and barbed wire. But her speed can’t oblige.
Sorrow doesn’t reach the male in time. When his eyes glaze over, she kneels beside him, weeping and hacking up bile. She longs to caress his head and apologize for not being there to ease his torment, but her invisible hand only swims through his matted, clumped, lice-infested hair.
So she pretends, brushing his forehead and choking out, “I’m sorry.”
The reek of decay is overwhelming, coupled with a thousand horrible noises, from artillery to whistling grenades. Then finally, she stops crying.
In fact, Sorrow stops for good.
***
Envy
They’re approaching three millennia old. In that time, a million things have happened.
Love has fallen in love with a mortal named Andrew. The forbidden union has caused a ruckus, setting their universe into disarray and pitting The Fate Court against the goddess.
To his surprise, it brings their crew closer together. Questions and doubts about fate versus free will rise to the surface, in addition to their individual experiences among the humans, which has knocked them all off kilter. And so, they band together, rebelling against the laws of their world.
In the end, Love and Andrew find their happy end, but it makes her an enemy of The Dark Gods. Moreover, Anger is banished by The Court for protecting Love’s secret, for failing to report her attempted treason in the first place.
Later, Wonder, Sorrow, and Envy hunt for their exiled crew leader.
Frustrated when they can’t find him, Envy infiltrates Sorrow’s territory, to see if she’s learned anything new.
He finds her taking up residence in a human marshland cluttered with water reeds, forming some type of nature preserve for reptiles.
A deck floats like a raft in the middle of the bayou, its wood planks enabling people to sunbathe. Regardless, it’s eventide. The mortals and resident fauna are sleeping, the area vacant but for the strumming crickets.
Atop the deck, Sorrow has conjured a four-posted bed with gauzy drapes swaying like banners from each corner. Okay, not the customary chamber of a deity while ensconced in this domain. But then, this female has never made average choices.
The goddess in question reclines on the mattress, one bent limb crossed on the opposite knee. She barely twitches when Envy manifests. Picking her teeth with a length of straw, she drawls to the bed ceiling, “Not a thing.”
Envy strides to the footboard and snaps, “How hard have you been looking?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we still have jobs to do.” She rises on her elbows, the motion inflating her tits and widening the slit in her skirt. “We can’t just abandon our posts unless we’d like to piss off The Court even more. And what are you staring at?”
It’s not the breasts or the exposure of flesh that snares his attention most. No, it’s the stitching needle. “What the fuck is that?”
Her fingers drift to the instrument. “An embellishment.”
Repugnant doesn’t begin to describe his scowl. “You consider that an accessory to be proud of? That’s your idea of pretty?”
“Envy, for fuck’s sake. It’s been a long, stressful, debasing few months.
Our crew is demoted, Anger is banished, and the rest of us might get exiled too.
We’ll lose our power if we make one false move, so excuse me if I’m not in the mood to deal with your shallow bullshit.
Do me huge favor and fuck off, then come get me when you’ve made yourself useful and found any clues about our missing rage god.
Oh, and when I say clues, I mean the ones Wonder and I haven’t already dug up. ”
“I’ll leave once you divest yourself of that absurd needle. Where’s your sense of taste?”
“It’s jammed up your asshole.”
Indignant, he bares his teeth, grips the footboard, and leans in. “Well, then. At least some part of you is attached to me.”
Her nostrils flare. She flings her arm toward the swamp. “Go away.”
Excellent thinking. He’d like nothing more than to vacate the toxic premises. Alas, Envy bunches his hands into fists, loathing to impart what his addlepated brain only just realizes now.
Muttering an oath, he grumbles, “I have no more energy to evanesce.”
Foreboding tapers Sorrow’s gaze, as if she’s having a close encounter with an extraterrestrial lifeform. “What does that mean?”
Oh, hell no. She knows exactly what it means.
Deities can travel in seconds, but that doesn’t mean long distances don’t tire them out.
Minutes ago, Envy had been manifesting between cities in another continent.
That sort of migration in a short amount of time tends to have a depleting effect, particularly when combined with urgency.
The price of this hasty visit? Envy needs rest if he wants to flee as quickly as possible. Until then, he’s surrounded by wetlands inhabited by unsanitary amphibians and reptiles who don’t care where they unload their excrement.
There’s only one raft. And one bed.