Aithne's story part 53 - Our Little Secret (Don't worry, it's not an April Fools prank)
Entry posted by jfraser in Aithne's story
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“Hmm. You’re not supposed to be here. This is a tricky one. What to do, what to do...”
The voice came from nowhere. Or everywhere. It was deep and rich and sounded faintly alarmed. Aithne blinked, although there was nothing to blink at – all around her was darkness. She felt nothing, saw nothing. She wasn't sure if she had actually blinked or had just imagined it as a sort of habitual response.
But she smelled something - the sweet scent of roses. She inhaled it even though she wasn’t breathing – as far as she could tell, she didn’t have a body that could breathe – and the scent kicked a low feeling where her loins would be, if she still had some.
The voice returned. “Luckily, it doesn’t look like anyone else is paying attention. Thank you, midyear celebrations! I think we’ll just put you back where you came from and hope no one notices. If anyone asks, you were never here and we never met. Ta!”
A rush like wind and the darkness evaporated, replaced by blurred colors that grew brighter and brighter until Aithne found herself all at once on her hands and knees gasping for breath on a rough cave-like floor.
She was dimly aware of yelling in the near vicinity but none of it registered – everything was subsumed by the sensation of the stone.
It was hot to the touch, uncomfortably so, but it was solid, real. She pressed her hands into it, moved her fingers over it. Her fingers brushed through a pile of ash, still fresh, still warm to the touch. A fire had been set here recently. She shook her head, trying to make sense of things, when her attention was taken up by someone shouting her name.
She looked to her left and was immediately overwhelmed by a feeling of dizziness. The room looked strange, blurry, as if someone had interposed a second copy of the room on top of the original. Eight figures - or, rather, four figures and their copies – moved, some toward her, some away. She blinked and rubbed her head, then switched from hands and knees to sitting on her butt; then hurriedly scootched to the side as the stone reminded her cheeks that it was still hot.
Then she was surrounded, overwhelmed by faces familiar enough to bring her back to herself fully. Brelyna, J’zargo, and Onmund knelt around her, all of them talking at once in excited and, to Aithne’s ears, much too loud voices. She could not get her eye to focus on any of them. The dizziness redoubled and she closed her eyelids and placed her hands on her face to try to quell the feeling.
The voices wavered, the volumes lowered, and then there was a moment of silence before Brelyna let out a hesitant, “Aithne?”
“I’m fine. My vision is just blurry. It’s making me dizzy.”
Onmund’s voice, from her left. “How are you still alive?”
“I…” She blinked her already-closed eyelids as her memories rushed back. Merks, fire. She had died. She was sure of it. So what had happened? She tried to think, but she remembered nothing else. “…I don’t know. I…died. I think. Then…I was here.” She caught a brief and incongruent whiff of roses; it was gone so fast, she assumed she had imagined it.
A low whistle from her right. “J’zargo doesn’t know what happened but…J’zargo thinks an Aedra was involved.”
Low gasps, from Aithne and the others in the room, and Aithne uncovered her face to peer at her friend. And his weird duplicate. “What do you mean?”
The cat was staring at her naked back. “Your scars. They are gone.”
“What?” Aithne twisted her head, knowing the motion futile. All she saw was her blurry shoulder. “How?”
“The same way you are…oh…”
“What? What now?” J’zargo was staring at her face and she met his eyes with a wild stare of her own. “What’s wrong?”
“J’zargo thinks he knows why you are having trouble seeing.”
“What? What’s wrong?!” Aithne lifted a hand and poked her face with it. Her remaining eye was still there. Of course, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to see at all. But…
“Let me…” Brelyna took Aithne’s chin and turned her face and then gasped as her hands covered her mouth. “Aithne! Your eye! It’s….”
“What?! Stop stopping and tell me!”
Brelyna spoke through her hands in a voice that squeaked. “It’s back!”
“WHAT?!” Aithne lifted her hands and felt her face again. Sure enough, her fingers were met with the unmistakable feeling of an eyeball in her left socket.
Impossible. How could this be? The world seemed to spin and she clenched her fingers - including the one that was sitting on the eye that shouldn't have been there.
“Ow!”
J’zargo laughed. “Only you would poke your own eye the moment you got it back.”
Aithne turned in his general direction and stuck out her tongue. “I bet everyone who has ever got an eye back did the same.”
Onmund hmmmmed. “I don’t think anyone else ever has.”
“Then I’m right – everyone who has ever managed to regain a lost eye has immediately poked it.”
J’zargo laughed. “J’zargo cannot find fault with your logic. Can you stand?”
“Stand? Yes. Walk? I might need some help with that until I remember how to use two eyes.”
Multiple hands helped her to wobbly feet and then Onmund rushed away, only to return a moment later with cloth in his hands.
“Here are your clothes. Do you need…”
“I’ll help her,” Brelyna interrupted. “You two have done enough ogoling. Go make sure Merks isn’t causing more trouble.”
Onmund flushed bright red and began to protest his innocence (presumably), but J’zargo just laughed and pulled the Nord away while Aithne squinted, trying to get her eyes to focus as Brelyna helped her dress.
By the time she was clothed, she had recovered most of her ability to see properly. It was all a matter of not trying to see and letting her brain figure it out naturally. Which didn’t stop her from going accidentally cross eyed from time to time.
Merks sat on the same smoothed boulder Aithne had used and his expression could be best described as dazed. He looked up as they approached and blanched.
“Who...what are you?” His voice had become a husky near-whisper, as if he dared not speak any louder in her presence.
“I am Aithne gro-Shub.” It gave her both a spike of pride and a spike of pain to say her name but, strangely, that was all – the dark pit she had grown accustomed to seemed to be gone. The all-consuming dread and despair were nowhere to be found. Aithne took a deep breath. “No more, no less.”
Merks shook his head, his face ashen. “No. You are touched by the gods. A literal phoenix.” He motioned around to the others. “We all saw it. You burned away to nothing. The ash of your body is still there! And now you are back.”
“I don’t know what happened. Maybe Aedra or Daedra were involved, maybe there’s just something magical about this place. Although I don’t think I want to test that theory.” Aithne laughed, and it was easy – she felt no fear, no anger, no hate toward her longtime nemesis. She looked at him and felt pity. “I’m sorry I caused you so much pain.”
He shook his head and fervor returned to his eyes. He snapped to his feet, but though he regained his habitual aggressive demeanor, it was now turned toward a different path. “No! You are god-touched and you owe me no apologies!”
He moved again…in the most unexpected way – he knelt at her feet. Aithne had a brief and disorienting feeling of Deja-vu; Urag has knelt in almost the same way when he proposed. She felt a pang of sorrow at the memory but, once again, there was no all-consuming pit to follow it up, to threaten to drag her under.
Merks had resumed talking, and Aithne forced herself to focus on his new, odd behavior.
“I pledge myself to you, god-touched, in front of all gods, Aedra, and Daedra, for eternity.”
A vague feeling of concern begin to waft over Aithne. “Um. Merks…”
“I can never make up for all I have done to you in my ignorance but I swear, for as long as I still breathe, your will shall be my will.”
“Um…”
“Whatever you wish, including my life, is yours for the asking. No, not the asking – the commanding.”
“I…”
“But first, I must atone. If you will pardon me for now, your servant is unworthy to serve you. I must go to the temple and be cleansed. Fear not, though – I shall return and be your sword or shield or whatever you require.”
“But…”
Without another word, Merks stood, bowed deep, and strode out of the midden. The four tongue-tied friends stared after him for a moment, then Onmund spoke in the stunned silence.
“That can’t be good.”
Edited by jfraser
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