i came and sat in your pew

KIADA

You think I'll be the night sky,
so that you can be the star?

Has she talked to the Voice about it? No. What good would it do? She’d been burned time and time again by gods, by promises that they were different, and in the end they were all the same. And what would she have to bring becoming newly Ascended? She was new, unseen aside from when she stepped back through the veil with the rest of them. She wouldn’t be listened to. The Voice could promise her time and time again that it would be different this time, but it was Kiada’s trust that was hard to capture. No longer was she the fiery girl that broke through the crowd to face Kisamoa and scream her pain and anger to him.

Instead, she has become ash. Floating on the winds of change without any idea where she was headed.

“I haven’t. Who knows if she’ll even answer me.” She says simply, the tone of her voice flat enough that she can hear Auni trot in to settle by her feet — the Luxere having outgrown its wariness of her return, even if the creature wasn’t bonded to her any longer. Just another reason to feel alone and like the world had moved on. Absentmindedly, she reaches down to scratch between his ears.

She takes a breath she doesn’t need, letting her gaze lift again to Wessex. “How many of us that have come back want to fight, though? How many people’s minds may have changed? I don’t know when you held the last vote but I do know that I’m still trying to get used to this body and this Ascension, let alone mentally. What about us?”

i'll swallow you whole.