El and Onine

by Ambroziak, K. P.

  “I’m glad we met out here,” he said.

  I refrained from joining their meeting at first, waiting in the shadows for the right moment to enter the fire starter. I envied his ability to touch her when he reached for her hand and held it in his. He led her deeper into the darkness and away from the glow of her shanty. I skulked behind them, floating above the soil and carried on the breeze. When they stopped at a tarnished plot of gold, I made my entry. I reached for him in the darkness and slipped beneath his skin with barely a disturbance. He was used to our synthesis and evinced my arrival with only the slightest change in breath.

  “Sit with me,” we said as one.

  Since Tal’s eyes were duller than mine, the field sank into darkness and it took me some time to see her as more than a blurry halo. Until then, I let the fire starter tell her what he had come to say. He and I had rehearsed this part, my telling him only what Saturnia’s sister wanted El to know.

  “He can tell her about the experiment,” Saturnia’s sister had said. “He can speak of the past, but only in shades of gray. He must refrain from speaking about Mara and you, and he is forbidden from mentioning the youngling.”

  “I understand,” I had said. “But can we reassure her somehow? Tell her something that will keep her from fearing Tiro?”

  “He may speak about the preparation, though in vague detail.”

  “Can she know my goddess chose the two of us, Mara and I?”

  “Yes,” she had said. “She cannot know it was you though.” My Kyprian sibling knew I was anxious to share everything with my youngling. “That will alter things and her choice will be enchained.”

  “And if she asks the fire starter how he knows,” I had said. “How does he explain his part in all of it?”

  “He should deny any part,” she had said. “He must use the water reader as his source of knowledge.” I understood what she wanted and explained it to Tal.

  As I burned within him, listening to the exchange I thought he handled El’s questions well, but she wavered, unwilling to trust his commitment to her.

  “Why would Minosh tell you this?” She asked him in the darkness. The halo was getting clearer and I could see the lines of her face but when the fire starter finally brushed the hair from his eyes, my sight sharpened. I saw her as she was—fire and clay.

  “She wanted me to protect you,” we said as one.

  “From what?”

  “Minosh knew—”

  “I’d be selected.”

  “Yes.” Until then we stuck to the rehearsed script but when I felt the urge to speak on my own, I changed the course of his speech. “She came to see me before she left and begged me to watch over you, to keep you from them. She told me to take you away if I had to. That’s when she told me everything.” El was skeptical and questioned her creator’s intentions. “She thought you’d be frightened by the prospect of being with a Kyprian and she was worried it would delay your—well, she said it was important for you to reach full sapience before taking you away.” I improvised as I went along, the fire starter at the mercy of my mind now.

  “I’m staying,” she said.

  “I assume you’ve had the change—”

  “I won’t discuss this with you.”

  Tal kicked the dirt at his feet, trying to release the hold I had on his mind. I continued to plead with her to accept my help until the fire starter reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. I lost control then, no longer capable of driving his speech. The pleasure of feeling her sapient skin numbed me and I reveled in the bliss of our first touch.

  “Terra belongs to no creature.” The mention of my goddess’s name for their planet pulled me from the rapture and I was with him again. He had slipped into a shade of gray he was supposed to avoid. I could see her processing the name, as though she recognized it.

  When Tal touched her again, this time wrapping his arms about her, I became drunk with pleasure. When he threaded his fingers with hers, I was lost, and when he held her soft cheeks in his hands, I thought I could live there forever. It was only when she spoke my name that I returned to their sphere.

  “It can’t be Tiro—no, it’s Onine.”

  My sweet youngling had believed she was mine all along. And so you shall be clay-born goddess, so you shall be.

  “Onine is gone,” we said into the darkness together.

  When El returned to her shanty, I released the fire starter.

  “Will it always be like this?” He was able to feel me in him, if only the slightest bit.

  “The discomfort will fade with time,” I said. “I cannot tell you what it is like for me.”

  “Painful?”

  “Yes, but when you touch my goddess, I am reborn into fire and driven to bouts of euphoria.”

  “Your goddess? El’s—”

  “No.” I cannot be sure what he pieced together on his own.

  “Why don’t we share the pleasure?” He said.

  “Shall we share the pain too?”

  He tossed the hair from his brow. “When will you stay for good?”

  “The time is almost here,” I said. “Before then we must sever ties with the other.”

  “Em,” he said. “Why were we forced together in the first place?”

  I knew the answer but was forbidden to tell him. Saturnia’s sister had explained it to me along with other matters of sapient biology. “The fire starter must purge himself of his sapient seed before yours may take its place. The only way for him to do so is in the womb of another.”

  “What if a youngling is produced?” I had asked.

  “The seed must take but the life will be choked from it shortly after inception.”

  Indifferent to the sapient cultivator we had chosen for the task, I saw her as any other, a sacrifice for a greater purpose.

  I told Tal to avoid such trivial matters. “The plan is greater than us and all we can do is play our parts.”

  “I don’t love Em, you know? I never wanted to be with—”

  “I know,” I said. “She is unworthy of you.”

  When Em found us in the wheat field after she had met with the council, I avoided contact, but her mention of keeping the youngling angered me. She had disobeyed the council.

  “You didn’t take the emetic?”

  “I only pretended to and when I vomited, it was merely grains and milk.”

  “They didn’t know the difference?” I was sure my sibling would know the sapient held onto her youngling and expected Saturnia’s sister to take it out of her.

  Em’s tears, her insipid emotion, had no effect on us. The fire starter was oblivious to his power with me inside of him and could have never known what would happen. I kept him away as best I could but when she rushed toward us I spoke for him. “Don’t touch me. You mustn’t.”

  I shouted, as she reached for his hand, but her touch surprised me and I was too slow to escape. She burned down to ash almost instantly. I felt the fire starter’s horror at seeing what he had done and I forced him to run deep into the field away from the site. When we had gone far enough, I leapt out and stood beside him in the cold.

  “We must leave here,” I said. “We must make our escape. It is almost time.”

  “But—but—I couldn’t have done that.”

  “It was me.”

  “How? How did you—”

  His shock was understandable and I explained everything, as he followed me back to the hall of stones. Our final preparations were awaiting us there, as was Saturnia’s sister.

  ***

  When I told the fire starter I was to become a part of him, I was dishonest. He would remain the same, it was true, but would also change. I struggled with my deceit but Saturnia’s sister warned me against telling him the truth.

  “It is unfair to him,” she said. “It should be enough that he will be more than he is now, and his body the vessel for an entire generation of beings.”

  “He will not actually propagate the future race, though.”
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  “Our goddess is the true progenitor,” she said. “But the new breed will take his physical form and part of his essence.” The sapient soul was a mystery to us, though Kypria vouched for its existence.

  “Will my goddess recognize only him?” I tried to mask my jealousy but my sibling knew me too well.

  “She knows all her creatures—past, present and future,” she said. “She may sense the depths of his loyalty and recall you, but the fire starter is the one El loves.”

  My heart sank at the destiny I had created for myself. Giving up my goddess was the only way I could be with her. “I still feel I should tell him I am taking more than his body.”

  “He cannot be aware you are making it your own. You know what you must do, Onine.”

  I lost my argument with Saturnia’s sister since she made these decisions, and various others, with our salvation alone in mind. I had to obey.

  “What good can come of his knowing? If your bonding is going as well as you say, telling him will only stall the process. Let him live in ignorance and enjoy the union with our goddess.” Tal would share his body with me, unaware that his essence—his soul—would eventually blend with Venusian fire. “As it is written,” Saturnia’s sister said, “fire and clay.”

  When I told Tal he was going to witness my Kyprian demise, he showed sincere fear. “Where will you go?”

  “My body will join the soil but my flame will tie itself to yours for a time.”

  “Your flame?”

  “My core,” I said. “My soul, if you will. The thing that makes me Venusian.”

  His dark eyes revealed his concern. He had grown attached to me since our bond was now inevitable. “Why only for a time?”

  “I cannot live with sapient essence forever.”

  “Why not if I let you.”

  I smiled. “You are not free to choose. You do not control your spirit.”

  I could tell my explanation confused him. He thought for a moment and swept the hair from his eyes. “Will I see you again?”

  I reflected his emotion despite my resistance to it. “No. Once the change comes, my form as you know it will disappear.”

  “Will I know when you’re gone?”

  The logistics of our fusion were difficult to explain and the sapient tongue seemed too simple for a conversation as complicated as ours. “Perhaps you will know me through El and the memory of our union will live in your offspring.”

  “My offspring—with El?”

  It was a shade of gray I was to avoid and I regretted it the instant I said it. “Never mind. We have greater matters to attend to.”

  The fire starter was brave. I was certain if he knew the truth he would back out. I was glad I followed my Kyprian sibling in her wisdom and kept him in the dark about the most significant events—those that would affect him forever.

  When we entered the hall of stones, Saturnia’s sister blinded him with her brightness and spoke to him in hushed tones, putting him in a trance so he was oblivious to my transformation. She wanted to hide our secrets—a habit she clung to until the end.

  “You may speak to him,” Saturnia’s sister said. “He can hear but is unable to see.”

  “I am with you,” I said to the sapient. He looked smaller than I remembered, weaker, and I hesitated, knowing this was the form I would take forever. I worried this vulnerable frame was too delicate to save my goddess.

  Saturnia’s sister read my mind. “You must be brave.”

  I regained my courage and reached for my sibling in earnest, ashamed I had doubted our plan. She nodded and called me to her. “The thorn has pierced his side and the blood runs out of him,” she said. “When he is overcome, you must take to the tree.”

  I stepped forward to the small bush of wax flowers at the center of the hall of stones. The jade pieces in the corners of the hall shone with the eye’s brightness and showered my goddess’s tree with their light. The flowers were in full bloom, ripe for the picking.

  “The time is now,” my sibling said. “Take to the tree.”

  I bent down to the shrub and plucked the first flower and placed it in my mouth. I took the second and did the same, and the third and so forth until I had consumed every single one of the blooms on my goddess’s tree. I ate the flowers despite their bitter taste and frigid texture. They burned my throat and froze my core. I tried to remain standing, as I waited for my release, but the pain brought me to my knees. Saturnia’s sister floated to my side and soothed me with prayers to my goddess.

  “You are almost there,” she said. “Your reunion with her will be sweet, my sibling. She will choose you, I know it. This is as it should be. Be brave, sweet Onine, be brave.”

  The blood of the sapient continued to drip on the glass beneath him, as he floated in the atmosphere of the hall. He was overcome by the thorn’s magic and hovered in stillness but his blood seeped across the glass and into the soil of the tree. The newly bloomless shrub softened with the blood’s touch and bent toward the soil in which it stood.

  “You may release yourself,” Saturnia’s sister said to me. “It is done.”

  I heard her, as I floated out of my terrestrial form, Onine’s form, and into the air above me. I love you, my sibling. I thank you for your sacrifice. Her words carried me through the painful transformation and soon I was the fire starter, my flame embedded deep inside his core.

  “Go,” Saturnia’s sister said. “Go save her.”

  The next time I looked at the Kyprian healer, it was through the eyes of the fire starter. I held out my hands and admired the soot under the fingernails. I brought them up to my nose and smelled the smoky brine from the fires I had made long ago. I left the hall of stones desperate to make the eye’s cycle move faster. On the third moonscape, I would be with her again.

  ***

  El weighed nothing in my arms, as I carried her past the wheat field and across the lake of solid gold. When we had arrived on Terra, my goddess had set fire to the water, unaware of its significance to the planet. The sea crystallized beneath its gold surface and the outer sands were born. Rumors of their desolation were enough to keep sapients from attempting to cross them. They would stay within the limits of the compound they knew, especially since they feared for their survival if abandoned.

  But many thó had passed since then and Terra proved resilient to change. The planet’s nature germinated beneath its surface, just waiting to be set free again. I saw the cracks in the gold lake before I noticed the saplings squeezing up through its surface. The roots were desperate for the eye and stretched up to meet it. The liquid beneath had survived my goddess’s flame, and would soon creep through the element to flood the planet again with its freshness. Lava and acid were submissive here and if my goddess chose Venusian, she would have to return to our fiery home. Terra could never house the species we once were.

  I felt at peace with the youngling in my arms. Tal’s body was strong enough to carry her for long stretches without tiring and I was happy to learn the limits of my newfound ability. My frame was compact and rigid and I struggled to recall certain Kyprian phrases, but the fusion was successful otherwise. Once I reached the cavern and built the fire to keep her warm, I discovered more about my new form. I could touch fire as if I were still Venusian, but my talent for levitation was gone and I was forced to abide by Terra’s pull with the weight of a true sapient core. I could handle darkness better than before, however, and coldness was a newfound friend.

  “Welcome back,” I said when I saw her open her eyes. Disoriented, she struggled to sit up. “Let me help you.” I reached through the fire and lifted her, placing her gently against the wall.

  She looked at me as though a stranger. I leaned in closer, wanting her to see my new body.

  “You felt cold,” I said. “The fire’s to warm you up.”

  She finally smiled at me and I thought she knew me. But how could she? I looked like the fire starter.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re safe
,” I said.

  I stirred the fire for want of something to do. I was afraid to touch her again. “The outer sands. We’re in a cavern on their edge. You’re safe.” I sounded foolish but I wanted to reassure her. When she asked if she would see her creator, I had no answer.

  “How’d I get here?” She asked.

  When I told her I had carried her she looked confused.

  “But how’d you get here?”

  “I walked.” I should have tempered my response but was beyond lies since the end drew near.

  “But what about the wall of fire and rings of lava and acidic rains and chasms—”

  “El.” I said her name but wanted desperately to say the name of another. My goddess felt so near, living between us. “You should rest.”

  She became hysterical without warning, fearful of our predicament. She feared for her pet, recalling the goat in the garden. The sight of her bloody animal confused her and I wanted so desperately to tell her why we left Bendo as we did. When I had come upon her between the cabbages with the pet, she had dissolved into tears and asked me about the other sapient as though she had seen her burn to ash in the wheat.

  I crossed the fire to sit beside her, putting my arm around her and pulling her to me. She fell into my embrace and I could barely resist squeezing her. “It won’t be long now,” I said. “You are strong.” When she asked me what she was to do, my answer slipped out. “Choose.”

  “The blood,” she said.

  “A sacrifice.” She missed my meaning, as I meant something more than the goat. “Be strong.”

  “Will Tiro come for me?”

  Yes, I wanted to say. My silence moved her in ways I cannot explain. She pulled herself from my embrace and looked into my eyes. I could see her eagerness, her desire, her need to be close. I wanted to kiss her as I had seen the sapients do, but I was too afraid to sway her. Instead, I offered her the serum that would save her. “You need to eat.”

  “Was it Tiro?” she asked. “Who killed my goat?”

  I leaned forward to stir the ashes with a rod, though I could have used my hands.

  “Did Tiro come and ki—”