A Queen Among Tempests

Sibling's Quarrel - Orenda

I want you to think back to those nights when you were a child, lying in your bed as branches began to scratch at your window and the wind howled outside. Do you remember looking at the shadows in your room, only to realise that the longer you looked at them the more dangerous they appeared? Those branches suddenly began to look like the claws of a monster, scratching at your window looking for a way in. The shadows would begin to turn into ominous figures that looked as if they were moving closer. You’d lay there frozen, shutting your eyes tight as your heart pounded away, your body cold with dread as you felt danger all around. What if I told you that feeling was more than just a feeling?

There are beings in this world – beings we call eyti, who were once human like you – corrupted and deformed by their own malice to the point they became the thing you feared as a child. They became the darkness; shadows that move, preying on everyone around them. Getting close to them is something you’ll never forget. That cold, empty feeling that sinks deeper than your bones. It pierces your very soul, leaving a haunting memory of their presence, and forever reminding you of how close you came to eternal torment.

To encounter the eyti is to experience true purgatory, but despite what scriptures and tales from the Inferno would have you believe, it is not a stepping stone to heaven. It is not where we cleanse our souls before ascending to a higher place. It is true, unending torment. Trapped as a bodiless being bound by your own misery, forced to spread it like a plague. These beings exist, and I am the being tasked with protecting you from them. I may be immune to their influence, but I am not unaffected.

For thirty-thousand years I have saved humankind time and time again from the dark forces of the eyti. I have been touched by darkness more times than I can count, and each time I feel it cling to me just a little longer. I feel the coldness moving through my bones, and that heavy, inescapable feeling of loneliness surrounding me. It feels like the walls are moving in and I’m powerless to move against them.

As I land in the vast backyard of my private home, enclosed by the beautiful ponderosa pines and Douglas firs that make up so much of the Helena, Montana landscape, I feel the presence of the eyti still with me. Though my body feels electrified as my grand bird form is replaced by my human one, it does not erase the frigid sensation that lingers within me. I rub my arms in a futile attempt to erase the chill of the eyti with friction, even though I know you can’t erase a feeling like this. Just ask Nietzsche.

Not many people know this, but Nietzsche was almost the victim of an eyti but was fortunately saved in time by my brother. It led him to write that famous quote of his, “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

For thirty-thousand years I’ve gazed into that abyss. An abyss of shadow with piercing purple eyes of doom, and I have felt it gaze back at me. Even I wonder how long before I too become the very monsters I fight.

I do my best, as usual, to shake off this indescribable cold, pushing it to the back of my mind as I have done many times before. I look up at the glowing warm light emanating through the glass windows of my private residence and I feel comfort quickly replace the empty void that clung to my being like a noxious weed, sucking the very joy from my essram. I walk up the steps of the front patio, dimly lit lights shining through all three stories of the mostly glass walls connecting that allow us to remain connected to the natural beauty around us. I keep telling Ayawamat that we don’t need every light in the house on, but he never listens to me.

I walk up to the front door and as I place my hand on the handle I hear moans and grunts that have an entirely different – though still unpleasant – sensation moving through my stomach. I debate just turning around and leaving, but I desperately want to go inside and shower. I can confidently stand down an army of eyti, but my brother’s s****l escapades…that’s when I wave my white flag.

Bracing myself, I swing open the glass door and step inside. The sounds of s*x increase in volume as I step inside, my face crumpling in disgust as I shut the door. I walk down the foyer into the vast living room only to wish I’d had the forethought to walk in with my eyes shut. There in the living room is some blonde woman I’ve never seen before, spread-eagled on the sofa with my brother kneeled on the floor pounding away, but as if that weren’t enough to make me want to pry my eyes from their sockets, it’s all made worse by the somewhat plus-size man with ebony skin who is kneeled behind my brother going to town on him.

Just f*****g fantastic. It’s every sister’s desire to come home from a long day of saving humankind to find their brother is the filling in a multi-racial sandwich. I avert my eyes as quickly as I can and make a beeline for the stairs, racing to the third floor. Thankfully I don’t think they noticed me as the three of them seemed far more preoccupied. I head straight for the bathroom and proceed to lock the door. I suck in a deep breath, grateful to no longer hear the sounds of my brother’s extracurricular activities. I walk across the champagne marble floors of our grand bathroom, the light of the moon shining through the windows that line the walls, bouncing off every marble surface and illuminating the room with an ethereal glow. I slip out of my shoes, discard my dress and panties and step into the vast glass shower. When I say ‘vast’ I mean it. This shower could easily fit thirty people, though I dare not put the idea in my brother’s head. I do not need to come home to a shower orgy.

When our creator and father figure, the God Jartre, was generous enough to conjure a home for my brother and me, we both requested a ridiculously large bathroom and shower. We did this because we both liked the idea of being able to bathe in our bird forms. Think of it like birds enjoying a bird bath, except the birds in this scenario are fifteen feet tall at full height.

I walk over to the marble column at the far end and turn one of the handles, prompting water to spout from the shower head. I lay my hands against the column and lean my head back, allowing the heat of the water to sink deep into my skin, washing away the crawling sensation that lingers on my flesh. How it feels to encounter the eyti is difficult to explain. It’s like feeling something sticky latched to your skin, but simultaneously, it crawls against your skin as it attempts to burrow into your flesh. It almost makes you want to tear your flesh off or burn the frigid chill away. I wish I could tell you that after thousands of years on this Earth that I’ve gotten used to it, but that’s not the case. You just learn to live with it. But I can truthfully say, it became much easier to live with when hot showers were invented.

I continue to let the scalding water ease the tension in my muscles and warm up my body, and after enough time passes I turn off the water and wring out my hair. Stepping out of the shower I grab my bathrobe from off the wall and put it on, wrapping it tightly around myself. I grab my towel and wrap my hair up in it, then gather my clothes off the floor and make my way across the hall, entering my bedroom. I hit the dial on the wall, turning on one set of lights by the window in the far corner of my room and dimming them down. I walk over to my bed and seeing the clock on the nightstand, realise it’s just after 3 am. Ugh, I really hope this doesn’t mean Ayawamat’s friends are staying over.

I toss my clothes on the bed then free my fair from the towel and give my long locks a final rub of the towel before tossing it with my clothes. I collect a hair tie from beside the bed and walk over to my sitting area. I step up onto the low platform and plop down on the long floor sofa, stretching my legs out. I reach over, picking up my brush and brushing through my hair as I stare out the window, begging my thoughts not to run away with me. Lately, I’ve thrown myself into my duties more than ever just in an attempt to stop my mind from wandering and focusing on the one person I don’t want to think about right now, but it’s hard not to think about that which your soul yearns for.

I plait my fair and sit back, picking up one of my books from the low coffee table and allow myself to focus on the words written on the page. I don’t get a chance to do that for very long when there’s a tapping at my door.

“Come in,” I call out as I turn the page.

I hear my bedroom door open and glance over as Ayawamat pads across the timber floors. At least he’s wearing sweatpants. He lowers himself, sitting opposite me on the floor sofa, stretching out his legs until his feet touch mine. He brushes his toes against the soles of my feet, tickling me. With a smile on my face and my eyes on my book, I smack his foot with mine.

“So, what were their names this time?” I ask absentmindedly.

“Um…well her name was Charlotte…or was it Carlotta? Colette?” I peer up from my book to see the deep look of concentration and confusion on my brother’s face, his rainbow irises shine bright like prisms in the dark of my room while the light of the room illuminates the sweat coating his copper skin. He runs his fingers through his long, dark brown hair, a dishevelled mess from his debauch activities. “And his name was…Darren? Dan? Daniel?”

“You’re pathetic,” I remark incredulously, placing my book down in front of me. “It’s bad enough I have to come home to your little ménage à trois and see my brother in positions I don’t ever wish to see him in and have yet seen him in far more times than I’d like to count, but you bring these humans to our home and can’t even give them the courtesy of remembering their names.”

“It’s not that deep, Orenda…well, I was pretty deep,” he says with a cocky smirk. I instantly gag at the innuendo. f*****g gross. He chuckles at my revulsion and kicks my foot, “Lighten up, sis. Might do you some good to see some action. And why did you put emphasis on them being human?”

“Because I don’t think it’s wise that all your hookups are human. You’re not human, Aya,” I remind him.

“Neither are you,” he retorts. “Look, humans don’t come with animais, at least not the majority anyway, and I don’t like feeling vulnerable around other supernaturals,” he huffs, crossing his bulging biceps over his muscular chest.

“So that’s what it’s about? You feel fragile around other supernaturals? Even though you have the ability to strike them down with lightning.”

“Hey, I don’t need to be getting railed by some sanguidae only for him to snap my spine in the process or lose control and drain me dry and eat my heart. Maybe if Jartre hadn’t decided to make our human forms so human, I would feel differently,” he shrugs.

I stare at him in disbelief, the unpleasant image he painted of him getting “railed” by a sanguidae to the point of being broken and drained leaving an unpleasant taste in my mouth. “What it must be like to live inside your head,” I mutter, shaking my head.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he smirks.

“I really wouldn’t.”

“Anyway, enough about me. How did patrols go?”

“I took care of some eyti in Indonesia and then some in Australia.”

“And I’m guessing you didn’t kill them,” he says in an almost accusatory tone.

“I’m not going to kill them when now more than ever there is a chance to save them. Zarseti and Gabriella have a plan, and I don’t want to interfere with it. If there is a way to restore the eyti, I’m going to give them every chance to do so,” I say sternly.

Ayawamat lets out a breath of frustration, again running his fingers through his hair. “Would be so much easier if we could just kill Azadou and be done with the eyti altogether,” he mutters, but I heard him clear as day.

I stare at him, my face no doubt displaying all the hurt and disgust I feel for him right now. How the f**k can he say that to me so callously?

“In case you’ve forgotten, killing Azadou would kill Jartre which in turn would kill us too. There’s also the fact that…what was it again? Oh yeah, Azadou’s my animai you insensitive ass!” I exclaim, throwing my book at his head, successfully hitting my target.

“Ow!” he cries, clutching his head. “Orenda, I say this because I love you, but you have to find a way to reject him.”

His words pierce me like fiery hot daggers. Sure, we bicker like any other siblings would, but never has he said anything so hurtful. Reject my animai? A gift given to me by Zarseti herself.

“If you really loved me you won’t ever say that to me again,” I say icily. “Zarseti chose me as his animai.”

“Then Zarseti f****d up! We were created to destroy the very beings he plagued the Earth with, now suddenly you’re meant to be his true love? He’s the God of Malice, Orenda, he can’t even feel love!”

“How the f**k would you know?! We’d never even met him before. Zarseti wouldn’t pair us if she believed he was incapable of love or kindness. I’m not rejecting him just because you don’t like the situation.”

“He’s dangerous, Orenda. Even the other Gods fear him.”

“Or maybe they fear him because they don’t understand him. He wasn’t born the way they were, and if you’re just going to sit there and demand I tear my own essram apart for the sake of your comfortability then you can get the f**k out,” I spit harshly, pointing my finger to the door.

He sighs rubbing his face, “I swear I’m not trying to be cruel, I’m only thinking of what’s best for you,” he says softly.

“And how is destroying part of my very being what’s best for me?” I snap contemptuously.

I get to my feet and storm out of my room since he has no intention of leaving. I make my way downstairs, grateful to see no sign of Ayawamat’s f**k buddies and step out onto the front patio. I close my eyes, lifting my face to the sky and breathe in the fresh air. I admit I was shocked to learn that the God of Malice was my animai, and yes, I’ve questioned it, but from the moment that bond awoke between us I can’t deny the yearning I feel every minute of the day to be with him. To protect him, cherish him and get to know him. I want more than anything for him to give me that chance, but he continues to evade me. He never responds to my calls or pleas, and I have no way of finding him on my own. I feel like I’ve been set adrift with no oars, and I just keep being pulled further and further out to sea.

Once again, in a last-ditch effort to seek answers and guidance, I call out the name of another who evades me.

“Merlos…please, I know you can hear me. Please speak to me. I desperately need your help. I need your wisdom and guidance…please just grant me a few minutes of your time,” I pray. I open my eyes and wait patiently, but as time presses forward, she doesn’t show herself.

For weeks I have called to the Goddess of the Void, pleading for her help, but she refuses to answer my prayers. I don’t know what I’m expected to do. I’ve been given an animai who shows no interest in me, my creator was disgusted at the very thought of the pairing and my own brother wants me to throw it away like it means nothing. I just wish there was someone who could tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do.