When Doves Cry

“I want this… very, very badly,” the bard said, voice shaking with the strain of the choice she had presented him. Even if he was allowed to keep the lantern, there was still the pledge he had made to Mort’s service. Still, if he could find a way to walk the balance, to serve life and death, Safrin and Mort… he had already been putting life first, seeking to grant souls their longest span among the living so that they could go to Mort’s halls without regrets, with a lifetime of experiences and memories to share. This spun his worldview around dizzyingly, but not so much that he lost sight of why he had come.

“But… not if it is just to spite Ludo of a follower.” Blue eyes filled with fear and longing met starlit ones as his hands clenched on air, tight enough to dig crescents in his palms. He released them slowly as he exhaled, finding the words that would either bless or damn him. “This offer… this… this gift, I want it to be because I’m worthy of it. Because I’ve earned your respect and your blessings. I came here tonight because there has been too much strife between us before this. Because I haven’t shown you enough respect, and I want to change that. Even so… I know it is arrogant and selfish, but I am asking you… please give me the chance to prove myself to you first. That you take me into your service on my own merits, when you can look upon me without disappointment. Or at least… less disappointment. When I live up to the potential you see in me.” He was as much Abandoned as Attuned now, grown comfortable in his magic after the initial heartache and soul searching of its first blossoming in his soul. He would never be what he had been before that day, never quite so unsullied before the Old Gods as he might once have been, but still he used his magic in their name and against their foes.

But though she had met him with tolerance tonight, she had not welcomed him to her shrine with open arms. Tolerated he might be, but he was not embraced, nor had she yet forgiven him. He had a heavy fence to mend before that happened, he thought, until she could give him her smile and her blessings joyfully as she did Amalia. Work he was willing to do, if she would let him.

And a very difficult conversation to have with Ludo, if the masked god would release him from the pledge he had made in simpler days.

safrin

Oh, she heard the oncoming but just as surely as any sailor worth their salt could sense a storm. Her expression grew stern, eyes cold and distant like the galactic hell she'd placed him in for hubris not unlike that which he was about to show.

"To spite Ludo?" She laughed coldly at that. "Here you are again, thinking you know oh so much more than you ever could possibly." None of them fully understood the layers of friction between herself and Ludo. And likely, none ever would. But that she'd call Jigano to her now had much more to do with the winds of change and the role he might play in the future of the world.

"You are as full of yourself as ever Jigano and though I never thought I'd cured you of it, I thought perhaps you'd have learned enough about both you and I to be honest with me, if no one else." There was only a shade of truth to his words, but she saw the fullness of it just the same. "For the second time tonight Sage, let me remind you that once you are gone from this world, there won't be those who lament over the tombs of your life. There will be no one wide-eyed around a fire, hearing tales of how Jigano Silversmith rightfully earned his place amongst the gods, how everything was just so and done in the right and proper order. The lies you've made the narration of your life, fool no one, except perhaps you.

This is no story to be found in my library, nor your halls beneath the Settlement. There is no hero's struggle. No rising action. No cathartic release. There is only what is, and right now, all that there is, is a foolish man crawling after the cloak of a raggedy god he knows precious little about, forgoing the things he wants because they won't sound as noble in a song."

What he might think of as tolerance was much worse than that. It was frosty and thick repudiation. If Jigano wanted to see the goddess rise up one out of spite, he needed only now to wait. The Sage might have been a worthy candidate for her needs, but there were others who would do. Others she would now lavish, quite out of spite, that the heights of her praise for them might cast the bard in shadow forever.

He bowed his head to her spiteful soliloquy, eyes closed as cold fear sweat trickled between his shoulder blades. He had opened his heart to the goddess, spoken honestly and fully what was within, and if she was determined not to see that then there truly was no hope left to him.

She had her own agenda, as she always had. Her favorites… and those far from that favored status.

And there was nothing, nothing at all, that he could do. She was a goddess, her power in this domain absolute, and he was only mortal. Any resistance would be used as an excuse for even harsher punishment. No friend of his would stand for him against her. Could stand against her, not when the power and authority that she wielded was so absolute that all others would be rightfully afraid of being dragged down and punished alongside him - cast from the gods's favor - if they protested.

All this, because he had come to apologize.

She had asked him no questions that he could respond to, nor responded to his own prayer to earn her forgiveness and a place in her court. She lashed him with her tongue but gave him nothing but her disdain. If her mind was already made up, then he could do nothing but bow to the inevitable, and he did so gracefully now, sinking into a deep obeisance at her feet.

safrin

"Get up, Jigano." She spat unhappily, his faux worship and posture of obedience meaning oh so little to her, especially after she already told him once today she'd not see him on his knees. "You asked what you might do to earn my goodwill and I've told you. That you are too proud and too stubborn to accept is your choice." Safrin said, gaze lifted towards the sky, her voice free of venom or hostility. She'd offered the Sage more than she'd ever offered any mortal before, and with his decision made, she'd not waste another breath of energy on him.

"But oh how you'll regret this. When you stand at the gates of places you can not enter without my blessing, when you see others less suited to their tasks than you would be, exalted and lifted high, how you will regret it.

Do not seek me out again, Sage. My memory is long, but my patience is not." So saying, the goddess vanished in a plume of darkened smoke.


~FIN