A/N: This idea has been rolling around in my head for a little while. I hope you have as much fun reading as I had writing. Enjoy yourselves!
Prologue: Eyes and Ears
All around me, there is nothing.
A vast sea of darkness and black swirls like mist against more of itself, veiling the past and future. I have no past. I have no future. If there are stars, I see none. My eyes are closed. I do not want to open them. I am at peace with the cold and the pitch. I am safe. When I see nothing, they ask none of me.
It is agony to open my eyes. I see nothing save for fire and death and pain, but also hope. Hope is a blaze. Hope is fear. Hope is torture. I have no hope, I have never had hope, I never will have hope.
Slowly, very slowly, the veil of nothing lifts, but only slightly. My arm jerks, as if by habit, reaching out to touch the dense smoke. My fingers do not touch the mists, for my arm has not moved from my side. There is incense in my nose as the outside world becomes more known to me. The perfume is thick and smells of jasmine. The priests burn it like wood in the hearth, I smell it often, but I do not see it.
The flames of the fire they toss the sacred leaves into, I do feel, however. They lick my feet, cleansing me as they burn a path up my legs to my torso, past my chest to my face where my skin melts away to reveal bleached bones and singed hair. The invisible fire makes me beautiful, the priests tell me so. They whisper in my ear that I am lovely, that I am fair.
I know not how they look, but their voices are raspy from prayer, their skin is clammy against my own. Their transparent hands grip my shoulders, touch my face. They disappear when words that are not my own fly off my tongue. I bear the pain and agony for the few moments that I am not praised.
I frighten them when I am not beautiful, and when the Gods choose to use my voice, their virtue scalds me to nothing. I am ugly with their power, for I am mortal. When my lips fall silent and the solid, yet unseen ground welcomes me as I fall, they return.
"Speaker for the Gods." One rasps in my ear.
"Beautiful and chosen." Comes the hoarse voice of another. I am beautiful. I am chosen. They tell me so, they never stop.
I want to ask them to remove their hands from me. Their touch is like maggots in rotten meat. I would feel a chill if I were not so used to the cold that engulfs me always. I open my mouth to speak and they draw away. They soon return when I find that I have no words of my own to say. I am speaker for the Gods, but never for myself. My thoughts deserve no tongue, they are impure, a stark contrast to the great truths that I was born to deliver unto the Holy Men.
I have lived for many days, but I cannot ask the correct number. I assume that I am eighteen summers, for there are times that my cold prison becomes warmer. Whether that is the sun, a shining beacon in the sky, or so I am told, I do not know. Perhaps it is a blanket that a kind, lowly serving girl had put around me instead.
I hear them sometimes, whispering their own stories, telling their own fears. One says that they fear the harsh stone walls that form a cage-like prison around her. One girl was kind enough to let me touch one of the barriers that seals them in, many years ago. I heard her screams as she was beaten. I am not allowed to feel as a mortal would. I must not be tainted.
One brave girl said that she feared the High Priest most of all. I did not hear her scream. I did not hear her voice again.
If I had allowed myself to feel the mortal fear, I would have been frightened of the High Priest as well. His hands were not confined to my shoulders and face. He told me that I was his alone. I wanted to unleash the power of the Gods upon him but my mouth remained shut and my arms bound to my sides by invisible chains. I did not feel the fear of him. He would pay a heavy price when he died swiftly, as I was sure he would.
I did allow myself to fear one thing. I feared the Gods, as all should.
They made the ground quake and the sky weep. I heard the rolling sound of thunder above me. Where I stayed had no roof and I felt the rain cleanse me that day instead of fire. It was cool and wet. I was told that the Goddesses were weeping that day for a fallen king. I never learned his name.
When I first felt the ground beneath me shake, I was certain that a giant had come to tear the temple and my home to shreds. I could not hide. I could not be moved. The serving girls ran in fright as deafening cracks split the chiseled stone of the courtyard. The High Priest shouted prayers in a lost language from his balcony where I knew that he was looking at me.
I opened my mouth then, and was entangled with fire. The shaking stopped.
I have not opened my mouth for many years. I hear talk of how I am a shell now, one who barely breathes and is dead inside. I feel this way. I hear that I have been abandoned by the Gods for the High Priest's spoiling hands. Still, I brush them aside and drink in the praise while I pretend that the hands are gone.
They whisper new things at me now.
"Flower of Heaven..." Hisses one, close to my ear.
"Herald of truth, we mourn you..." This voice is further away. I wonder what it means.
"Deep beneath the temple, safe with the life of the soil..." I cannot gasp in surprise as I am lifted.
"Always our flower, you shall grow again..." I cannot scream. I am being carried from the courtyard. I know that I cannot leave. It is forbidden. I am speaker for the Gods, my place is in the temple.
"Sleep now, sleep long, you will be like the sun..." Their voices are monotone, I hear no sobs. I cannot fight them, I cannot return to the place that has been my home.
"The darkness is your savoir, move on..." I have lived my life in darkness, I need not move very far.
"Goodbye..." I hear from one lowly priest whose hands I have come to know as my own.
"Goodbye, my flower..." Hisses another.
"Goodbye, my chosen..." I do not know who says this, the veil is being lowered. The dark is beginning to fade, the feeling of floating is becoming less and less.
"Goodbye, my..." I do not hear the parting of the High Priest, I fall into darkness. It is not very long that I spend in the ill-fated nothing that is so different from what I know. In the short span of time, I feel nothing, I have no sense of self. It is one word that draws me from it.
"Oracle." A voice says in my ear that is not like any I have ever heard.
My eyes fly open and I see no fire.