#veasna

Moa

Her love would not be coming back.

Moa knew that with everything she was. Her love was gone, and she was left alone in their small hut. She didn’t know what had happened to him, but she did know that he was gone, and that she was alone.

Well, not entirely alone.

There, not two feet from her bed, was a cradle made of red oak. Within it, her son rested. He was only two months old, and he had yet to smile at her. He had no name. That was something Moa had dreamed of doing with her love, but he was gone.

She couldn’t bear to name their child alone, without him. She feared she would pick the wrong one, and would doom her baby to a life of pain. She would not curse her son with a name of death, and she was terrified of naming him too ambitiously and the gods causing him suffering for her over ambition.

Her love would’ve known what to name him, but her love was gone.

The other’s in her village looked at her with pity, a sick form of sympathy born out of her anguish from losing the one she loved most, and being left to raise her son herself. It was not very uncommon within the Aradhana people, Avlyrra was a harsh land, no matter the small kindnesses the Spirits granted them. That was without counting the Therapon, whose relationship with the Aradhana flipped between friends and allies to enemies, seemingly at random. Even still, those left to raise a child alone were looked upon with great pity, despite the village’s attempts to help. The pain caused by the looks in the eyes of those around her was more than enough shame for Moa, let alone accepting help.

The hut was very dark, the new moon casting no light in from the window by Moa’s bed on which she sat. She had been unable to sleep that night in particular. Since her love had gone, her bed had been far too big, and, despite the crying infant, her hut was too quiet. That night, however, Moa was unable to fall into even a restless sleep. Instead, she curled up on her bed, her back against the wall, and watched her son sleep within his crib.

Her eyes were only glitters in the dark as she watched, counting the breaths of her child. Moa sat like that for a time, and her son did not awaken nor cry. She would have been concerned, if not for the fact her eyes were trained on his chest as it rose and fell.

He was beautiful, she knew. His hair was as silver as Spirit Purnama’s full moon, a white blond none in Moa’s Aradhana village had seen before, so unlike Moa’s own black, and her loves deep brown. Her son was destined to be beautiful. Perhaps she should name him a name of beauty? Spirit Lavanya was not one to be vain, or covet beauty. She had roamed with her brother for years, not just in Avlyrra, but throughout the entirety of Milomir, spreading beauty and music to the lands. She felt it was something for all. She would not scorn Moa’s son for a name of beauty.

Where beauty treads, death silently follows, Moa thought, and her idea was promptly abandoned. Spirit Lavanya’s husband, Athanasius, death, was not only her lover, but her protector. A silent follower that watched from the shadows. A name of life was also pushed aside; Spirit Taiwo was as closely connected to Athanasius as Lavanya was.

A man of music would bring war, Zimri and Guiomar connected not just in word, but in soul. A name of water would bring a sturdy stone to care for him, but it would also draw the sands, and their cruelty. A name of the moon would not suffice, as her son had no father. Winter brought cold and death, and it had claimed Moa’s love; she would not name him a winter name, despite his birth happening in the cold months. A name of thunder would make him mute, and a name of lightning would make him mad.

No, there was no name that would not doom her son.

As she sat and pondered, her hut’s little wooden door opened slowly, unnoticed by her. Through the opening crept the careful steps of one cloaked in black, a skeletal face hidden within a dark mist that always followed, no matter where its steps tread. It carried no weapon, and it brought no fire. Purnama’s new moon hid it in darkness, where it was born from, and where it would bring all others.

From underneath the cloaks hood, it say the red oak cradle where a child lay, content in peaceful slumber. It noticed the mother, too, for no shadow could hide anything from the Spirit, but paid her no mind.

No mortal could stop Athanasius, the Spirit of death, from claiming those meant to be his.

The figure had taken but a few steps into Moa’s hut when she noticed it, and fear gripped her, digging it’s icy fingers into her heart. She had never seen the Spirit, but she knew that the shape before her was Athanasius, and that someone was going to meet their end. None could escape his grasp, not without his love Lavanya there to free them.

The Spirit of beauty was not in Moa’s hut.

Moa sat still on her bed, gripped and frozen by the icy fear, and watched as Athanasius came farther and farther into her home. Shock kept her still until Athanasius’s bony hand brushed the red oak crib, causing it to rock her baby.

Her baby.

Her baby.

Moa’s baby.

The fire’s of anger burned away the cold grip of fear and drove her from her bed, though she could not stand. She collapsed to her knees, her dark hair falling from her shoulders to hang around her face and neck. Her eyes and throat burned, and she could feel anguish already clawing its way through her. If she lost her son, if she lost the last thing she had in her life, her life would be no more. She would pray and plead for Athanasius to take her, too, if he must, and if he refused, Moa would walk to Ananta Ocean and never stop. She wouldn’t have to, though, because her son wouldn’t be taken from her. She would not allow it.

Athanasius slowly turned his head from the sleeping babe to the woman collapsed and gazed at her with empty eyes. His face had no skin, nor did the rest of him have any, either. He was a skeleton, a walking embodiment of what would become of every creature, large or small.

“No!” Moa cried, her voice thick with too many emotions to name, “No! You will not take my son! You will not!”

Athanasius gave no reply; he simply tilted his head, like a cat wondering why its master smelled differently.

Moa heaved through breaths on the floor, her chest and back falling and rising violently and sporadically. She swallowed audibly, her thoughts racing a mile a minute.

Her love was dead, and her son would be dead soon, too, if she didn’t do anything to stop it. Her son had a whole life to live. He hadn’t smiled yet. He didn’t even have a name. Moa, however, Moa had lived a good life, short as it was. She had loved and been loved in return. Her death would not be a waste. . .

“Leave my son, and let him live! Claim my life as yours instead!”

The deep and dark voice of Athanasius replied, “you would do such a thing? Give up your own life for another?”

“If you took him from me, claimed him as yours, you might as well hand me a blade,” Moa’s heart raced as Athanasius studied her, his unseeing eyes somehow piercing her soul with the sharpness of a warriors blade. His gaze made every part of her uneasy, but she met his eyes without hesitation, and refused to back down. After a long moment, he glided towards her, his cloak hiding each step he took.

As Moa knelt in her hut, Athanasius reaching out her touch her face with one cold, bony hand, she watched her son as he breathed evenly, deep in sleep. He would never know his mother, Moa knew. He would never know her face, perhaps not even her name.

That was all right, Moa thought. At least he will live, and I will live on, too, through him.

That was Moa’s last thought, that night, and forever.

❂

The woman lay slumped and dead, her dark hair an unholy halo and pillow. The child slept on, though not in the red oak cradle. No, it slept in the arms of winter, the arms of Amihan.

Amihan was a tall woman, with hair a piercing blue same as her eyes, and great antlers emerging from her head. Crystals and icicles dangled and hung from the bone. The child looked exceptionally small in her pale arms.

“Veasna wishes for him. Speaks of a destiny he is to fulfil,” Amihan stated with the emotionlessness all Avlyrra mortals had come to associate with winter.

“Does she wish to see all of us?” Athanasius asked, her voice the sound of an underwater volcano erupting. Amihan walked back towards the barren trees that surrounded the Aradhana village, where her great moose waited. With both arms still supporting the child, she mounted the great beast.

“Yes, she does. She wishes to explain his destiny, to my understanding. Oh, and a last thing,” Amihan said, as she directed the animal to turn and prepare to venture through the wood.

“Yes?”

Veasna

The feeling of pure, absolute nothing is one Veasna would not forget for the entirety of her existence, no matter how deeply she wished to.

Perhaps feeling was an incorrect word. Feeling implies there was something to feel, and that Veasna was capable of feeling at the time. She wasn’t. In fact, Veasna wasn’t even Veasna, then. Veasna simply existed within an unending, infinite expanse of nonexistence, a fractured, crude consciousness.

She spent an eternity waiting for something to occur, though she had no idea as to what. Only, somewhere within her basic awareness, she knew that there was something else. There was more than just blankness. She knew there was some purpose to her, but she had no idea what. Veasna knew only that whatever she waited for would help her with that, would provide her a stage to fulfil her duties on.

She spent an eternity in nonexistence, before something real began to form.

A land, Milomir, it’s name was, was formed. After an eternity with nothing, the sudden surplus of existence was shocking, if shock had been a feeling at the time, which it wasn’t.

Veasna never knew what formed Milomir, nor what made her, or her love. Lestari had also spent an eternity in the suffering nothing, though she handled it much better than Veasna had. Despair hadn’t existed in the nothing, but all within Avlyrra, whether Theropan or Aradhana, agreed Veasna had crafted it. They also agreed Lestari had cured it, and that the two were the first to feel love.

Whatever all-mighty had created the two and Milomir, they also thought to send the two down to the newly formed world, and so two bright lights fell to the soil.

The two knew only their own names. They didn’t know their purpose, not yet. That was for Milomir to teach them. The two found each other quickly in the grand scheme of their first time on Milomir, though even that took years.

They met in the heart of what would become Avlyrra, once humans came and placed borders and names to the soil. Veasna had been in awe of the pinkish skin of Lestari, and her hair that was a purer aquamarine than even the clearest of ocean, her eyes the same colour as her hair. Veasna had felt very plain compared to the other, but that feeling faded quickly once she learned Lestari had too been knocked breathless by the sight of the other.

The two had simply watched the other in silence before Veasna had the sudden and inexplicable desire to stoop down and cup the lands soil into her palms.

“It whispers, does it not? It’s name, it’s purpose?” Veasna asked, watching as Lestari too took soil in her hands. The brown dirt looked strange on her pink skin, but Lestari paid it no mind.

“Yes, it does. I could make it out, if it’s whispers were but a breath stronger,” Lestari said, her gaze somewhere far off as she tried to make out what the land was saying.

It had a name, that much the two knew in that moment, yet it was many hours of sitting in the dirt before the two could understand it. Once they were able to, the whispers became cries of jubilation.

Milomir, Milomir! the soil cried to Veasna, Milomir, Milomir!

Veasna gasped sharply, and was about to tell the other what she had heard, but when she looked over, Lestari’s face told her that she had heard as well.

“Gracious world,” Veasna whispered softly, “that is this lands name. Milomir.”

“Milomir, yes. Let us hope this world is as kind as it’s name.” Lestari had no need for such worries, however, as the two would discover.

The world was barren, despite it’s soil. There were not yet animals, nor even grass or water, but the two did not need any of that. They required no food, nor shelter, nor water. They would not die, not when they had much still to do.

It was a time later when another important revelation was brought to light.

“You knew of Milomir’s cries before I,” Lestari began one day, though there was no real passage of days, without a sun or moon cycle, “and you heard their name before I, as well. I wonder, why?”

“The nothing did not phase you like it did me. It did not drain you, nor make you wait with anticipation for something you didn’t understand. Why, I wonder? Why did the nothing make me suffer so, while you withstood it perfectly fine?” Veasna countered, a small upturn to her lips.

The two would not know the answers for a long time, but eventually they would; Veasna knew of Milomir’s calls because she was Fate, knowledgeable of everything, constantly pulling strings for her plans, and Lestari was not phased by the time spent in the nothing, for she was Eternity in it’s entirety, unending and unyielding.

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