thirty-three #2
Rahara was a subtle blue hue as she retreated into the darkness. Before Mira knew it, she gasped, waking up in the mortal world while clutching at the tendrils now wrapped around her throat. Above her face, the two beady red orbs warned her to keep dreaming.
“What…” Yet Mira could say no more, for she was choking, kicking back the covers of her bed, and gradually realizing that she was in her old room in Garlahza.
As sweat poured down her forehead and stuck her back to her bed, the heaviness on her diminished, until the sleep paralysis visitor backed away, the red dots now a dull, pinkish presence. “Ma?”
Joiya stared at her daughter for a long while, her eyes vacant and red, and the walls closing in on them a little more with every minute.
First thing in the morning, when she knew her mind and body were her own again, Mira rushed to get dressed and searched for her parents.
Her father was busy in a meeting, and her mother was nowhere to be found.
After a quick call on her communicator, she teleported one time zone away and abandoned the ancient cityscape of turrets and cobblestone streets for the Great Forest and views of a tremendous mountain range.
Most julah visiting another estate paid a courtesy call to whoever was at the door, if only to announce themselves and to not make the gauche mistake of interrupting the Head of the House.
In Mira’s case, she had visited Marlow Estate so much over the centuries that the steward didn’t think twice about pointing Mira up the grand staircase.
She instantly teleported up to the hallway leading to Ramaron’s apartment and gave him the single civility of knocking on his door before helping herself inside—any wards he had erected on his personal place of residence were no match for Mira,
who knew the scent of his sorcery like she knew her own mother’s.
The cool atmosphere in Ramaron Marlow’s parlor, the first room to announce itself off the foyer, invited Mira inside, but she did not calm down. Her dress, the same one she had worn the day before because she couldn’t find anything quicker to put on, matched his aesthetic.
“What is going on?” He pocketed his reading glasses when she barged in on him in the next room, adjacent to the parlor, where he must have heard her come barging into his home. “Mira? What’s happened?”
The brief chill of panic in his voice was serious enough to make Mira assuage his worries that something had happened to her parents.
Well, in a way… Mira clasped his arms and began babbling about everything her father and the Dreamwalker Rahara had told her, never mind how Joiya had reacted.
When she got to the part about the red, beady eyes standing over her in her sleep, Ramaron clasped her arms in turn and urged her to sit on his sofa.
“Slow down.” He got her to sit, but he was still on his feet, grabbing a carafe of tesatah-infused water that he offered to her. Mira did not want a drink, but she took it. “Start from the beginning. What did your father do?”
When she retold her crazy tale, Ramaron nodded along, occasionally knitting his brows and setting his jaw as if the things Mira said were truthful but far-fetched.
I know, I know… A Dreamwalker was one thing.
Her father talking about what happened the morning of his wedding was quite another.
Especially since Mira knew that Ramaron was there for the latter.
“Did it really happen like that?” Mira asked when Ramaron let there be silence in the end. “Did my mother… almost Ascend?”
His sigh had barely mustered the strength he needed to sit beside her. “You’ve learned a lot these past two days. All while dealing with… things.”
That was a light way to put it.
“The Dreamwalker, though… and your mother… you know it was her this morning? Banishing the Dreamwalker from your mind?”
“Yes. It had to be her. But it was like… she was possessed.”
“Mira.” He put a hand on her shoulder again.
Anyone else, and she would have shrugged him off in a fit of frustration, but if there was one man outside of her family she could trust, it was Ramaron, the only soul to perfectly penetrate the bond between Mira’s parents.
“A Dreamwalker. Do you hear yourself? Nobody in recent history has claimed to be one, let alone been visited by one.”
“Once could have been a hallucination in my sleep, Ram, but not three times. And the things she told me lined up with everything that’s been happening and what Ba said…”
“Yes. Your father. I’m surprised. He even took you into the Sanctuary.”
Mira’s lips clipped shut as she changed her stream of thought. “What am I? If Ma is…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Even now, it was too insane to broach the subject of her mother’s potential divinity.
“What are you? Mira, you’re a julah. The whole time I’ve known you, even known your parents, there has been no assumption that you were anything but a talented woman with a penchant for trouble. If anything, you’re your father in your mother’s body.
Even though you don’t look like your father hardly at all, nobody has ever challenged your parentage, because five minutes with you proves that you’re your father’s daughter.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
“But your mother is something else, yes. You don’t even know a quarter of the things I’ve seen around her. It’s not just her immense talent and her love for everyone she meets. There has always been a divinely motherly aspect to her. Despite her many mortal flaws,
it’s hard for even the sorriest bastard not to feel around her. Take your father, for instance…”
“I’d rather not.”
“I’m not privy to any conversations they’ve privately had without me,” Ramaron continued. “But your mother is someone I was born to serve. I’ve never questioned it.”
Mira stiffened beneath his touch.
“What is it? Mira?”
She shook him off. “You… serve her?”
‘Well, perhaps that’s a strange way—”
That’s what she said. Rahara. That though the avatar of the unknown creator had stolen her soulmate from her, Rahara had been created to serve that avatar, and she did so…
gladly. Mira had never had time to ask for more information, especially since it was such a throwaway detail, but now?
She looked into Ramaron’s clear blue eyes and almost swallowed her tongue.
“My dad’s your soulmate, isn’t he?”
“Mira—”
“And Ma stole him from you, didn’t she?”
“What—”
Mira launched off the sofa, hands clutching her chest as she almost stumbled into the low table between seating. As she swung in a circle, tripping over her own feet and getting caught up in her own skirt, she caught sight of the portrait hanging on the wall behind Ramaron.
No way…
She had seen that portrait hundreds of times.
It was an elaborate oil painting of the late Lady Rea Marlow, Ramaron’s mother, who had died from the julah plague long before Mira was born.
The woman’s high cheekbones and sleek, black hair were her trademarks, alongside her love for all shades of medium and deep blue, a color she had later passed on to her son, who, despite his own renovations, kept as the undercurrent all other colors worked with.
Even now, in that portrait, the flirtatious Lady Rea poked a foot out from beneath her layers of blue and white skirts as she posed for the painter.
Rea… Rahara…
It didn’t make any sense. Rea had been married into the family—even Mira knew that. Yet she looked every bit like the woman who had Dreamwalked into Mira’s sleep.
“What is it?” Ramaron asked again.
“I don’t know what’s happening…” Mira took a step back. “My mom… you… her.”
The room darkened as clouds covered the sky outside the window. When Mira blinked, she swore someone stood between the portrait and the sofa, her eyes glowing bright blue as she read Mira’s aura and saw her for the child of destiny she was.
“You’ve been through a lot lately.” Ramaron stood, blocking the woman behind him—the one he did not notice at all. “You don’t have to go, but you should get some rest. I can discreetly summon a healer to look you over.”
She knew what that meant. A psychological healer. Probably a woman. Probably another soul-seer who would gasp to see that Mira Dunsman’s aura was tainted. Before or after she goes blind, trying to see my mother’s?
“Behind you…”
Of course, the moment Mira brought attention to her, Rahara disappeared with the sun poking through the window again.
“Fuck.” Mira gave up. Whatever knowledge bubbled up in her brain now, it was meant for her—and her only. Ramaron could not help her. Her parents could not help her. If anything, she didn’t even trust her mother right now.
And deep down beneath it all, her heart still ached after what had transpired on Arrah. Her soulmate had been stolen from her. Quite possibly by the same entity that had commandeered the Void for Her own amusement.
Several hours later, Mira was finally roused from the couch upon which she rested, driven by hunger. She hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before—and, well, considering everything that had happened since then, she shouldn’t be surprised to find herself a bit peckish.
God… how long was I out? The afternoon sun hit that corner of Marlow Estate harder than it had that morning.