A True Daughter

Atia's son Julius was delicate. Almost from the moment of his birth he was sickly and fragile. Had he been born under the Legion's banner he would have been exposed, left to die in the open. The Legion had no compassion for the feeble nor the capacity to care for them.

Atia thought she would be relieved, even happy at her son's birth. She had defied the Legion, the elements, and a Goddess to give birth to her child; yet once he was born she wanted nothing to do with him. In her mind he became a tumor, a sickness that had been removed surgically and precisely, and once removed requiring little more than quick disposal. In many ways he was a physical manifestation of her time among the Legion, much like her periodic nightmares were the mental reminders of her slavery, dreams from which she could not escape.

She hated the Legion, she wanted to deny the Legion part of her as much as possible, and yet there it was with ten fingers and ten toes staring into her eyes with the eyes of the men who abused her for a decade. Every time she stared into his eyes, those innocent gray eyes she wanted to throw up. It was a great relief to her when Julius began to have seizures just a few days after his birth. The Daughters assured her that he would be alright, preemptively tried to calm her down, but in truth she was relieved that he was being taken away from her to be placed under intensive care. She secretly wished he'd never come back.

He was gone for two weeks. In those two weeks she tried to distract herself as much as possible. She pledged herself to the Goddess Hecate, smoking the ritual bufo, drinking ritual alcohol, and given her face paint pattern. She was given the rank of Sibyl and with it the job of record-keeping. It was not unlike her old responsibilities with the Legion, organizing and storing data, although unlike the Legion occasionally she was required to file information on a computer. Among the Legion computers were ripped apart so their gold could be harvested and melted down to coins. Although she was slightly uncomfortable working at a computer, she found comfort among the many rows of old binders and log-books. Once again she found herself inside the heart of a powerful society, and it was as though the books and binders that rested within this heart pulsed with the beat of her own organ. She felt at peace.

At the end of the two weeks Atia was informed that her son needed more care, and would be retained by the intensive care ward for at least another two weeks. She was ashamed at how relieved she felt. She retreated further into the culture of hedonism which pervaded Ouroboros. Two weeks went by, then another two weeks. The Daughters came to Atia again and again, delaying the return of her son, citing medical reasons. She slipped away, stopped thinking about Julius except on those rare occasions when a very serious and stentorian Daughter would visit her and update her on his progress.

Near the end of one night of hedonism, while they reclined in the baths and shared a hookah, Julia confronted Atia about her son.

"Y'know they aren't going to give him back to you unless you want him back," she said after blowing out a billowing cloud of smoke, "He probably isn't even in the ICU anymore," she said to the intricately tiled walls of the beautiful temple baths.

Atia was taken aback, but she was too high to feel the shock for long. Julia handed her the hose of the hookah and she bit down on the mouthpiece as she inhaled. By then it had been four months since her son was born. Her son was four months old and she hadn't even bothered to visit him. She blew out the pangs of guilt with the smoke. She remained silent, staring at the tiles and trying to form cohesive thoughts.

Julia reclined on the edge of the bath. "That's the way they do things around here," she lazily drawled, soporific from the night's excesses, "If you were a true Daughter you'd be conditioned to just let him go," she said mockingly, "If you were a true Daughter you wouldn't have had him at all."

"The Goddess doesn't want anything so petty as family ties to drag her perfect army down," Julia continued bitterly, swirling the warm water with her hand, "Fealty to the family only impedes fealty to the Goddess. Love for the family only obstructs love for the Goddess. And then there's the practical element, that your basic worshippers aren't as equipped to educate and train the children as the priestesses chosen by the Goddess. It's a more efficient system, I see that."

Atia listened to Julia's drunken soliloquy with a growing sense of unease. What beast had she sacrificed her son to? What world had she immersed herself in? She felt something grow in her, something that had never before been a part of her. She had chosen this place, she had decided to come to Ouroboros and worship Hecate. She had never had agency over her own life, had never had the privilege to make choices for herself before. Something was growing inside her, a sense of responsibility. Her life was her own now, and the duty to make the right choices was her's and her's alone. She thought of her son, a life that she had brought into the world, a life completely helpless and without the authority of independence that was still new to Atia herself.

In the morning she forgot her conversation with Julia, but a sick feeling sat in her stomach. It stuck with her through the entire day, a nagging tug which pulled her towards something she feared more than anything else. After she was done tending to the Hall of Records, she visited her son for the first time in the ICU.

He looked small. She hadn't seen him in so long, she assumed he would be bigger. He smiled at her. The doctors assured her he was a healthy weight, despite his health. They informed Atia that Julius was having breathing problems, and although they were treatable they didn't have the resources to treat them outside the medical center.

Julia also woke up feeling sick. Unlike Atia she remembered their conversation the night before, and felt awful about the things she'd said. They had been candid and true, admittedly, but also insensitive and cruel. She had betrayed her own bitter hubris in a moment of inebriation. She didn't know what she would say to Atia the next time she saw her. Fortunately for Julia, Atia began talking to her as soon as they met again.

Atia admitted to visiting her son. Julius was still infirm, only now the seizures had receded and were replaced by sputtering choking breathing fits, the sound of which nearly drove Atia into grieving hysterics.

"He sounded so awful, wheezing like that," Atia cried to Julia, "I didn't know what to do. I don't know what to do."

After Atia left Julia visited Julius in the ICU. She was filled in by the doctors on what was wrong. They admitted that the Goddess likely had the resources to allow Julius to leave the ICU, but considering his status as a blasphemous birth and his mother's apparent disdain for him they hadn't bothered to petition the Goddess for the supplies.

"Personally, we've considered just letting it die," confessed Gillian, back at Ouroboros from assignment with Bella and the other Maenads. Although Julia had relinquished command of her old team in favor of her position as Hecate's' high priestess, she still talked with her old team whenever they were in town, "I mean, it's clearly inferior to the proper children of the Goddess."

Julia was taken aback, not just by the callousness of her long-time ally, but also how Gillian's casual lack of compassion reflected her own. She had long been convinced that the Daughters were the only hope for the southwest wasteland, but she had to admit that when encountering anything that didn't fit their dogma the Daughters could be extremely ruthless.

Atia took a night to sober up, taking her first steps towards maturity when she was visited by Julia.

"I want you to take your son out of the ICU," she told Atia conspiratorially, "and the next time he has breathing difficulty, give him this," she handed Atia a small cylindrical device that looked not unlike a jet dispenser but which Julia assured her was medicine to help with Julius' breathing, "If you run out, come find me."

Atia didn't know what to say. She felt a lump well in her throat and tears well in her eyes. She asked Julia how she could repay her.

"Just take care of your son," Julia answered.