Chapter 3

'I can't carry this weight of silence anymore…'

The dream jolts her awake again.

It is the same dream she sees when she goes to sleep. That hideous dream wherein she is screaming in anguish, holding Elijah's dead body, her hands painted with his blood. It's a recurring nightmare that doesn't go away no matter how hard she tries.

He is painted on the insides of her skull and her eyes, every day spent with him, every grisly detail of his demise, it's there in her head like a story that plays over and over again.

She is the reason he is dead.

Her greed is the reason why he isn't alive in some distant corner of the universe.

Had she only refused his request and turned him away after she saved him, he wouldn't have died. A fact that the goddess had taken great pains to reiterate over and over again.

Her punishment was only hers to bear and no one else's.

No one can share her loneliness.

No one is allowed to.

Before Elijah, silence wasn't vicious, but now, the same silence makes her want to die. She misses the sound of his conversations, the stories that he weaved in the dead of night when his breath smelled of peach and frost, the hum of his songs as he stood staring at the stars of the night sky.

She misses the sounds he made more than she misses him.

So, she takes to singing.

She sings about all manner of things, about the birds that seldom take flight in the skies above her palace, the woods that teem with woodland creatures, the humans she spies on when she ventures into the town, the memories of her father that are barely there, the taste of food that has become foreign, and the cold, the cold that is her blood and bones.

Goddess in her kindness extended the boundaries of her prison to include nearby towns, and now she finds all manner of things in the woods that hide her palace. Small tokens of respect, inconvenient sacrifices out of fear to appease her, gifts aimed to please.

She is supposed to be their patron deity, and somehow she didn't get the memo of her promotion.

Days keep passing, seasons change. Another God ascends to the throne of High God and she finds herself invited to the coronation.

She doesn't know who is more surprised, the messenger who comes bearing the invitation, or she who draws her sword on the poor man when he comes into her sight.

The verses are flowery and she gets a sense that this High God is too enamored with his own barely there legend. This one won't stay too long on the throne. A challenger will rise soon enough.

In the end, she declines. She might be sick of silence, but she knows it far better than she does the gods. The note attached with the invite also states that she is free to move as per her pleasure, that nothing binds her to her prison now.

She wants to laugh at the audaciousness, but she doesn't. Some long buried habit whispers in her head that laughing would be a show of poor manners.

She retires to her bedroom when the man departs and sits on the bed thinking about the festival the townsfolk are going to celebrate in her honor. She might be lacking in all the ways, but for humans of these three towns, she is the saviour who repelled the attacks of marauding bandits.

It's nice, she thinks, to be appreciated now and again.

She is not free of this place, will never be free even if a High God decrees it. This High God might think that his words carry a lot more weight than a goddess who doesn't sit on the council, but Elena is not a fool to test mad goddess's goodwill.

She still remembers the pain as the goddess's fingers curled atop her shoulders to hold her steady when she poured her heartache inside Elena and rid herself of the pain.

The mad goddess, Elijah told her, they whisper she is saner now. That her peach groves are open in millenias for immortals to walk through, that she picks the peaches now and makes jam with them, and goes out at night feeding starving, abandoned Likanen verta children.

All at her expense, Elena thinks bitterly. Why couldn't the mad goddess forgive a child's act of plucking her peaches to fill her hungry stomach? What makes these likanan verta younglings any different? What makes them eligible for the goddess's mercy when Elena was shown none?

She sighs as she turns to her side. She is growing jealous of small children. She is truly disturbed.

~TX~

She grows bolder in the absence of restraint. She starts venturing out farther from her prison, returning later than she would have in her early days. She starts visiting the markets, keeping herself in shadows as she peruses their wares.

One stall is selling beautiful shoes. She doesn't need them anymore, but they are pretty to look at. Another boasts vivid fabrics in the colors of sun, sky and woodland she has escaped from.

At a distance is a restaurant.

She watches people come and go and it takes the longest time for her to muster enough courage to step foot inside the establishment.

No one stops to stare at her.

And neither does mad goddess come from behind, sword waving in air to run her through. She takes tentative steps towards a table at back, passing through people eating and gossiping away like magpies.

The aroma of fried food and spicy broth is overwhelming, and yet she smiles when a boy comes to ask her what she would have for her meal.

She feels her lips curving and cheeks stretching. She is aware that the boy is looking at her in annoyance and that the strange turn of her face might stratle him further, but her lips refuse to bid her command.

It feels strange that her mouth is open and her teeth visible, that her cheeks ache.

The boy asks again, and she continues to smile.

"Everything," she croaks and he departs, a spring in his step and her heart feels funny.

She devours the food.

It doesn't matter that she hasn't eaten in millenias, that she doesn't need to. The rich taste sits nicely on her tongue and she feels as if she could take on gods and beasts alike in this moment and win.

She leaves four gold coins and a mountain of animal bones on the table, and presses two on the palm of the boy who has come to clear the dishes.

She could go on wandering from town to town, listening to the tales humans spin of gods, monsters and divine beings, eating their food, looking at beautiful things they craft from their hands.

Maybe, the years have chipped away at her fear, now that Elijah is nothing but a memory, locked in a corner of her mind and seldom visited, now that the mad goddess hasn't paid her a visit in all those years.

Maybe that's the reason why she can trick her head into believing this illusion of freedom.

She is deep in her thoughts, feet marching towards her palace when she stumbles over a bundle.

She pushes against the earth in a huff, grumbling about humans and their habits of leaving things in her forest only to be startled.

Brown eyes are peering at her, set in a fair face, a small rosebud mouth opening and closing slightly.

There is a baby in her woods, a human child, she thinks in bewilderment.

She closes her eyes and pinches her arm, opening them warily. He is still there.

Is she having visions because of the food? Did she eat something that is making her see a small child staring up at her, a child who by the look at his face is about to either poop or cry?