#timidkoala

Is there something you want to tell me. The woman, leathered with age and sun, had asked. And Itr had the nerve to tell her ‘no’. The words could have come easily. The four of them–not that Zumurrd would admit it–snuck into the ritual pool long after the sun had set. They had enjoyed the cool, non-alligator infested waters, taken refuge in the privacy granted by the sanctuary, and in their revelry had accidentally knocked the offering urn from its altar, cracking it. It was a simple explanation, so easy, and yet Itr decided that things would be much better if she’d just… not tell S’ehs’eh Razeen?

Her knees tingled with oncoming numbness, pressed into the stone tiled floor as she knelt, the carving in front of her lit only by the dull flickering group of candles she’d brought. She couldn’t ask for forgiveness here–forgiveness ran through the blood of those you had wronged, and Bẹjẹ had spread their blood among all of them. But she could take responsibility.

From within the bronze bowl sat beneath the carving, she retrieved a dagger, sharpened to the point where even a reflection felt as though it may slice through skin. It felt right, the weight in her hands. She raised it, eyes shut in thought, and then…

“Wait!”

The familiar voice echoed off the rounded walls, granting it more presence than was perhaps intended. Mixed in with it was Itr’s unintentional yelp of surprise, creating something akin to a cacophony.

She swiveled around, not knowing exactly what to feel when her guess was proven to be right. “Aubrey?!” Smile and scolding fought for dominance on her face, leaving her with an awkward half-grimace. “What are you doing here,” she whispered, fully aware that the acoustics of the room ruined any chance of the whispers actually being anything close to ‘quiet’ or ‘subtle’. “You should be in bed.”

He seemed to deflate a little under the puncturing of her question, but took a moment to straighten himself back up. “I’m not going back without you.”  The line was entirely too over-dramatic for the situation from where Itr stood, but there was something about it… Suddenly, she was thankful for the low lighting and how it was unable to show off the color rising to her cheeks. Was this her punishment for doing this so late at night? When her emotions weren’t so easily controlled? “And it’s not like I can…” he paused, reframing his words. “What are you doing with that knife, anyway?”

She remained silent while he walked closer, his footsteps light, but still purposeful. “It’s not a knife, it’s a dagger.” As he took a seat next to her, Itr looked him over, letting out a puff of air. “This is entirely unfair. You don’t look cold at all.”

Aubrey let out a chuckle, nerves still hanging on, then tugged at the hem of his outerwear, offering it to her.

“Ah,” she declined, “it is probably better if… I don’t.”

More intrigued by her comment then worried Itr watched as he began to take in his surroundings. While his eyes swept across the intricately carved stonework and the paraphernalia, Itr couldn’t help but wonder where his thoughts were taking him. They’d never really spoken about the spiritual beliefs of her people outside of short, off-handed comments of oh, that’s just a religious thing. Was he interested? Was he scared? She’d heard some tales of what others thought of their practices, and hoped that Aubrey didn’t think they were quite so barbaric. After a moment, he seemed to comment to himself. “It’s cleaner than I’d thought…”

Itr squinted, looking down into the bowl that had had his attention last. “Why would it be dirty?”

He seemed to realize he’d actually said that out loud to another person. “Oh, uh, you know.” He fumbled, bashfulness spreading through his entire body as he realized that she didn’t ‘know’. “The… blood, and all that.”

“The… blood…” she repeated, keeping her eyes on him. Then, it hit her. “Aubrey. You realize we don’t do blood offerings, right?”

The progression of emotion that journeyed across his face made his intrusion worth it. From shock, to embarrassment, to a stiff look that threatened to tell her about the customs of her own people, Aubrey eventually settled on confusion as his eyes remained focused on the dagger in her hand. “That’s… it’s what the “Bloodless One” wants, though. Isn’t it?”

Itr couldn’t help it, a laugh exploded out of her. “You read too many stories!” At that, he seemed to take offense, but she couldn’t help that it was true. “It would be a pretty stupid name, then. Why wouldn’t they be called the Bloody One, or the Bloodseeker if that’s all they wanted?” Consternation set deeper into his expression causing her to tone down her jabs. It was obvious to her, of course, but Banteve was… ignorant? They were very set in their ways, in any case. And if Aubrey were to become her husband in the future, it wouldn’t do either of them any good if she laughed him out of a desire to understand.  

“I am not sure what exactly you have been told, but blood isn’t really a part–” She could feel him keeping his eyes from looking back at the space where the cracked urn was, the image of blood and the scent of the rotting meat within still fresh in both their minds. That would have to wait; she needed to keep it simple for the time being. “There’s only two times when blood is important in our lives,” she counted them out on her fingers, “When we are born and when we die.”

“It is a cycle: Bẹjẹ reclaims the blood that is lost when we die and gives it to us when we are born. That is why some of us can remember our past lives.” Not that she, herself, was entirely convinced that was something that could legitimately happen, or something to be happy about, but she couldn’t discount the swarths of her people who believed in it. “To spill blood frivolously at other times is an insult.” She backpedaled, “Well, it’s not like Bẹjẹ is going to be angry if you get a cut or something like that, but you know what I mean.”

Itr swallowed back the compulsion to keep rambling, letting a quiet fall between them as Aubrey nodded along. Was it a process, she wondered. Was him nodding a subtle act of accepting that what the scholars and such of his land had been wrong? Or was he just processing the information that she’d admittedly forced on him?

“So,” he began again in a tone she couldn’t immediately place, “what’s the knife, er, dagger for, then?”

A fair question that she’d been avoiding, and somehow she figured he knew she’d been avoiding, too. “Um, I suppose you were not entirely wrong about the sacrifice part. Good job.” She wanted more time to think about how to explain it without sacrificing any more of her pride, but the alarm that filled him pressed her to continue with no plan. “It’s not– I’m not going to be hurt,” she tried to calm him, but the words only seemed to concern him further.

Without a conscious thought, her free hand found a way to his leg, resting there as if it always belonged there holding back his anxieties. “Okay, so.” But why couldn’t she sound cool and in control when she wanted to the most? “Yes, as you probably guessed breaking that thing was… bad. I do not want your family, “ to be cursed? That was a bad way to put that, right? That would just make him more nervous. “To be looked upon poorly by the, uh, seers. And I, too, need to take responsibility for what I have done.”

“You weren’t the one who knocked it over,” Aubrey argued, knowing that Jocelyn had taken that clandestined stumble.

“But I was the one who brought you all here. I should have been more careful.” Itr smiled gently at him, “And it serves no one to force the blame onto someone else when I am here to accept it openly.” She sighed, removing her hand from him and picking up the blade once more. “I will miss it…”

“Wait!” He called out again the moment she slipped the blade behind her head. She paused, stilling the what now that rested behind her lips. “You’re… you’re just cutting off your hair, then?”

She didn’t understand why he sounded so perplexed. Him, the one that was expecting her to carve her own flesh as if that was a normal thing people did. “Yes?”

“Let me do it, then.” He offered, resolute. “Please.”

Slowly, she removed the blade from beneath her waves of dark brown hair. Her eyes focused on him, pressing the no longer chilled metal into his palm. “Why?”

He held her gaze; a reminder that soon they would no longer be children and the leniency of youth would be beyond their reach. “I bear responsibility, too, for what happened. So I can’t stand for you to shoulder this burden alone.”

Curse him.

Curse him for sounding like the king he should be. The king he would be one day if Itr had anything to say about it, even if she wasn’t the queen he chose.

Caging the butterflies fluttering around in her chest, she smirked. “Is this your way of saying you like my hair long?” He faltered, sputtering at her cheekiness which even after all this time he never seemed prepared for. She patted his cheek. “Don’t worry. It will grow back soon.”

Letting her fingers linger as she drew them from his face Itr turned around, facing the carving once more. There was probably some rule that defined this as another sacreligious action, but as a more purposeful silence fell around them once more she couldn’t find this anything less than a holy experience. His fingers were gentle, making sure not to pull at the unexplored curls as he gathered them in his hand. One by one, strands of hair separated from her head. Each severing serving not to prove the weight of what had been done, but freeing her from the weight of her own judgment. Like her hair, she could grow. She could learn. She could be better. She could restart the process as many times as it took. And as she clasped Aubrey’s hands in her own, leading them over to the copper bowl to deposit the hair into, she knew she wanted to have no one but him see how it was done. Only he could cut her hair, and then they could watch together as it burned as they both started the next step on their journey.

With the dagger back in its proper place and the candles extinguished, the embers of her hair were all that remained to light their way back into the city. “If it is all the same to you, I would appreciate it if we did not break anymore religious items while you were here.” Itr wrinkled her nose, the scent of burning hair much more unpleasant than what she was expecting.