7. Raia
RAIA
“Adevoted mother and friend to our community, Evelya Vale will be missed greatly, but her soul’s journey continues beyond the veil, beyond this realm.
May Mors’ benevolent hand gently guide her soul to healing and restoration in Avernus.
May Akash bless Evelya Vale in the next life, and all her lives to come—until the final reunion with the Mother of All Creation for eternity when the last stars die out and Time consumes all.
Let us remember that while every creature in existence is destined to feel death’s whisper upon their flesh, every soul is destined for eternity. ”
Eternity? I wouldn’t wish an eternity of this on even my cruellest adversary.
I envy my mother’s corpse floating out to sea.
My body trembles from the effort to restrain the emotion coursing through me.
Mother Jamila’s heavy hand rests on my shoulder as the high priest—a fae male I’ve never seen in my life—proceeds to sing a prayer to Akash in a language I don’t understand.
The scent of rose, benzoin, and myrrh muddies the ocean air as the priest’s swinging thurible sends smoke rising like prayers to the heavens as he blesses my mother’s corpse, and the sea to which it will return.
She was a syrith. Her body should be returning to the soil, to the forest with the sentient trees—the aersyans.
Not to him.
There are only a handful of people here.
My mother had no known family. None that I knew of.
The only people attending her ascension ceremony—the term that syrith-kind, my mother’s kind, uses to refer to a funeral—are the kind guardians from the orphanage in which I will spend the next few years, until I’m an adult and have procured my own means to survive.
There is only one person I had secretly, foolishly hoped would be here.
My father.
To honor her, his own soulbound.
And to rescue me.
Though I cannot say with any modicum of certainty that he even knows about her death. I have no idea to what degree they communicated, outside of his coming to visit briefly whenever he was in Narudi, the capital city of Selcarim, with his army.
No one knows who my father is—The Nameless King and god who rules his city beneath the sea—and my mother always impressed upon me the importance of keeping his identity secret.
For my safety.
Something about kings having too many enemies.
The coroner said she died of a broken heart. I was the one who found her, unmoving and cold, in bed—a memory that will surely haunt me for the rest of my days. Clasped tightly in her hand was the conch shell necklace he gave me when I was little.
It is now draped around my neck. I know it’s enchanted, but I don’t know for what purpose. I’ve tried every which way to discern it; I hoped that perhaps my father would somehow hear my cries through it.
If he can, they remain unanswered.
My mother’s body is carried out on a small driftwood raft over placid water that is a mirror to the numbness spreading through me.
The only movement upon the water is the raft on which she lies, cutting across like a knife through flesh, parting the deathly, motionless tide that will soon welcome her into its slumbering depths—and take a part of my soul, my heart with it.
I can’t help but wonder if he feels her returning to him. I have no idea why she chose for her Ascension to take place here, and not in the mountains where we belong. Maybe she’d hoped that if she returned to the sea, he would know, and return for me.
I utter a desperate, silent plea.
Please, Father. Please find me.
Show me you love me.
With each passing, unanswered moment, numbness bleeds away to despair.
As if in tune with my emotion, the wind picks up, as if attempting to stir the Nemurū Qǐzhì Sea from its slumber.
Where are you?
Bitterness and disappointment coil around me, tightening like a hungry vine sinking its thorns into my bleeding heart.
The waves and the wind increase, whipping my hair around my face as the now bobbing wooden raft disappears on the horizon. Something inside me snaps, and I find myself rushing towards the shore, ripping off this blasted fucking conch shell that hangs from my throat like a noose.
An ever-enduring reminder that my mother was not enough.
That I was not enough.
Arching my arm backwards and pouring all my heartbreak into the action, I launch the necklace into the sea as far as I can.
“I hate you!”
In that moment, the tide awakens with a roar. A wave rises and surges forward, knocks me off my feet, drags me beneath its undertow, and slams me against the sand.
Is that you, Father?
Can you hear me?
Can you feel the fury bleeding from me because of you?
My mer form presses against my skin, begging to be released.
Instead, I crawl to my feet as the water recedes. Another wave surges, pummelling me directly in the face, forcing brine and sand into my mouth as my wings and tail are again crushed beneath me. My instinct to shift into my mer form turns desperate, painful.
The form that I always suppress because it only ever reminds me of him.
Scrambling to my feet, I spit sand and brine into the riptide trying to suck me back out to sea. “I fucking hate you!”
Rough, unfamiliar hands grip my arms and yank me backwards towards the shore.
The high priest’s vestments are drenched, and a scowl carves his sharp features.
They have no idea who my hatred is really for. If they knew, they’d probably let me drown.
“You’ll anger the sea god with this foul behavior, girl. This is no way to mourn your mother.”
If only. I would take his anger. At least it would show me he cared. Fuck, I would even take his hatred, because hatred is not the opposite of love.
Apathy is.
A spiteful cackle bursts out of me.
“Fuck the sea god.”
The priest gasps, face paling. Murmuring admonishments under his breath, he releases my arm and stomps away.
Something tickles my shin, drawing my gaze.
As another wave flees the shore, it reveals the sand at my feet—and a delicate gold chain draped across my ankle.
The baby conch shell decorating it somehow glitters in the overcast light.
Scowling down at it, I wait and brace myself against the next wave, hungry to devour the shore, and swelling so high it makes my dress swirl around my hips.
As the sea calls back the tide, my gaze returns to my ankle. Sure enough, the gold chain remains.
The impulse to throw it away again, purely out of spite, is strong, but before I can think any further on it, I’m angrily snatching it out of the water.
When I finally look back up, the priest is gone.
The house mothers from the orphanage pepper the shore at a distance, all watching me with pity in their eyes as a familiar deep voice calls to me from above.
“Horus, here. Horus, here.”
My eyes lift to the sky to see Horus descending. Seagulls screech, flying in every direction to get away.
My vision blurs with tears as relief suffuses me.
At last.
My one true friend.
Raising my arm, he swoops to land just below the crook of my elbow. His wings smack me in the face repeatedly as he settles, and his sharp claws scratch at my skin—I couldn’t care less. I’m just grateful for my friend to be here with me.
I never thought syriths had familiars—at least my mother never had one, and from what little I’ve read about syrith culture, I’ve never seen it mentioned—but Horus is without a doubt connected to me by my very soul.
Anytime I’m ever in distress, Horus appears, like somehow he knows I need him.
I pull him close, wrapping my other arm beneath him to cradle him like a baby.
He coos softly, nuzzling me as he gives me one of those slow blinks with that nictitating membrane to communicate affection.
My voice is a wet, tremulous whisper. “I love you more.”
He slow-blinks again before repeating the words. “Love you more.”
I bury my face in his feathers as catharsis takes hold of me, and I weep.
When I lift my head, the sea has calmed once more.
“Love you more,” Horus repeats. His oddly resonant voice is a balm to my fractured soul.
Still sniffling, my reddened, tear-streaked gaze briefly rises from him to the house mothers watching me with cinched, concerned brows; like they’re looking at something morbid and fascinating in equal measure.
Horus and I must look like a ridiculous pair.
The sadness on Mother Jamila’s face—the guardian who’s been charged with my care at the orphanage since I arrived a little over a week ago—has a prickle of guilt winding through me.
Wholly unconcerned for her clothes, she wades through the water, guiding me to rejoin them.
Thankfully, she doesn’t complain about the enormous raven I’m clutching to my chest like it’s a life raft.
She briefly glances down at him before lifting her gaze to mine.
“I was wondering if he would show up.”
I train my features to look neutral.
Apparently my efforts to hide Horus were in vain.
When I don’t reply, Mother Jamila smirks appreciatively.
“That bird is nearly as big as you are, and he sounds like a fully grown orc. No matter how clever you are, there’s nothing you could do to hide him.”
I dip my head, hiding the smile threatening to break free. My gaze connects with Horus’s, and I swear he’s grinning too. As if he understands her words, he suddenly says, “Peek-a-boo.”
Just one of many phrases I taught him.
Mother Jamila’s gaze snaps to his, from where he still lies cradled in my arms.
He croaks and clicks.
Mother Jamila’s eyes narrow before she shakes her head in wonder.
As we walk away from the Nemurū Qǐzhì Sea, I vow to never put my heart in the hands of a male.
Well, except Horus, obviously.
Use them.
Manipulate them.
Enjoy them, even.
Hopefully, succeed where my mother failed in rescuing us from poverty, independent of everyone and everything. If my mother’s own soulbound wouldn’t do it, I have no such hope.
No one will save you but you, Raia.