"Don't be ashamed to weep;
'tis right to grieve.
Tears are only water,
And flowers,
And trees,
And fruit,
Cannot grow without water.
But there must be sunlight also.
A wounded heart will heal in time,
And when it does,
The memory and love of our lost ones is sealed
Inside to comfort us."
― Brian Jacques
Toamn called every hearth home. It was his right and his domain, in that ethereal way that one could lay claim to a divine duty as property, his in a way that could little be expressed in any human tongue. So his entrance to the Valennon tower was not, in his mind, any kind of a trespass against rights but merely a homecoming, the arrival of a long-wandering soul. He found his way into the tower as his granddaughter might, the press and pull at every crack in the wall, the gap between window and frame, but where Ilargi was a bitter winter's wind, Toamn was all the warmth in the universe, leaching through the brick to coalesce into human form in front of the fire, one moment a slight haze of heat not entirely justified by the pitiful spitting of coals in the grate and the next his human shape, bent-backed and bow-legged.
The poor Valennon girl knew little what to make of the stranger when she spotted him, of course.
What a surprise it must be, Toamn thought, for rapunzels rarely expected casual visitors in their seclusion - especially when that visitor had set up a loom before the fire and brewed two mugs of sweet-smelling tea in the sparse time it had taken the Valennon girl to glance briefly towards the window.
"Ah, my little anemone," the dark-skinned god murmured when he felt her surprised - frightened - eyes upon him. "Worry not. I am not the wanderer." He gestured the girl closer, and rewarded her with a smile when she did so. "Your time will not come for a while yet - at least, I have heard nothing from my compatriots to indicate otherwise."
The wheel in front of him spun on, the threads vanishing from his weathered hands as it did so, and Toamn indicated the chair in front of him. "Won't you...?"
She sat. He had known she might. The fire liked her - it bathed her generously in gold and amber, and Toamn was surprised little by what that light revealed.
She was beautiful, of course. Toamn had expected as much from any girl who would draw the clever eye of Arvoh. Her skin was sard, her lips plumb, her long hair dark mahoghany. And that smile, oh, that smile, hesitant though it was, gave off all the warmth of a thousand hearths. It was a smile that felt like coming home, Toamn thought, and regardless of the rest - Ilargi and her machinations, Arvoh and his skulduggery, Lysha and the murder which lay at the heart of the pantheon - Toamn rather thought that he would always have chosen Annora anyway.
Annora's eyes - wide, rich, brown - searched Toamn's stoic visage for any indication of his motives. She recognised him, of course; a priest's daughter would.
Not many of the other gods made house calls, of course. Other girls would awaken after dreams, would be singled out by their local priest or oracle, would be given signs and signal and sigils in the most ancient habits of the gods. But Toamn had always liked the personal touch. He had always liked to sit in the home of his Selected, look them in the eye, speak to them as though he were their own grandfather and they were discussing something as mundane as the weather.
Toamn smiled peacably. "Won't you drink?"
The scent emitted by the teacup at her arm was fragrant, bouquets of wildflowers distilled into a few mouthfuls of sweet liquid, their perfume drifting gently across the room as Annora hesitantly lifted the cup. With a god sitting opposite you, it would be all but impossible to deny such a direct request, although there were of course those old maid's tales of what occurred to the poor souls who ate of a god's food or drink.
But this was Toamn. There were no such stories about Toamn. Spite was more his granddaughter's hobby.
"I thank you," she said, and Toamn batted the words away as might another a moth.
"Ah! for what? It is only tea, little oxeye, and hardly worth thanks."
He took a sip of his own cup, as though to settle her nerves and reassure her that no venom lurked within its pale recesses, and returned his attention to his spinning, the loom twisting with a speed and ferocity more suited to brutal business. "I know," he said softly, not looking away from the threads in his hands. "How poorly these past days have treated you."
The Valennon girl's fingers curled tightly around her cup. "Oh," she said. "That's life, isn't it?" Her brown eyes remained on Toamn. "I've suffered worse before. I suppose I will again." She took a careful sip from her cup, and her eyes fluttered shut at the sheer sensation of serenity and calm that overtook her nerves the second the tea touched the tip of her tongue. It was unlike anything she had ever felt - with one exception, she thought, but the effect of the tea and its fragrant aroma was such that she could not even muster much hurt or pain as she considered that matter. It tasted, she thought, of a certain future, of freedom in a beautiful world, of reciprocated love. "Gods willing," she said, as an afterthought. "I will suffer so again. It is part of being human."
"It is," Toamn agreed. "We do not suffer so."
She eyed him cautiously.
"I wonder then," Toamn said, and watched the threads sway. "Why you would plead so ardently a place in the Selection if you... value your humanity so. It is not," he added, "a weakness. But it is an oddity."
"He told you..."
"He told me nothing. I know every child in this kingdom as though they were my own, and that means I know your heartaches too." He twisted the threads in his hands, enjoying the way they writhed to correct themselves as he did so, and shrugged lightly. "The broad strokes of them, at the very very least."
"I believe in humanity," the girl said softly. The firelight rippled on her hair like so much sunlight. "In mortality." There was, Toamn thought, steel behind her silk, strength behind the sweet charm she presented to the world. "In our capability for... great things."
"But." Toamn said. "There is a but harboured on your tongue, and they tend to bite when caged."
"But," the girl said softly. "My sentiments are not shared by... by all."
"By your father."
He had, after all, locked her away. Imprisoned her in a tower, far from the sky and far from the god she had so... admired? Loved, even?
"Divine supremacy is his guiding principle."
Toamn smiled. "I don't disagree."
The girl showed a hint of unhappiness at that - a curled lip, her eyes sharp, and yet she knew, Toamn knew that she knew, that Toamn was offering her something she could only have dreamed of, something Arvoh had denied her, something she craved more than anything else, and not even her humanist tendencies permitted her to argue with such a benevolent genie.
"And your guiding principle," Toamn continued. "The... hunger, isn't it? Overwhelming, for love, for approval."
Her eyes met his. He liked that. Toamn liked that a lot.
"You know why I am here," Toamn said.
"I do," she said. It was a mere breath, the suggestion of the word in the warm air.
"Then allow me to do this by rights. Annora Valennon, I appoint thee my vassal and thrall. Be thou deiform in thine own right - the sublunary is lost to you. Arise a crusader, in the most ancient Selection, in the empire of the empyrean, in the name of King Adam."
And it was so.
There came days when choices had to be made.
There came days when the choices were made and consequences had to be dealt with.
This was the odd nature of the duties of the god, when the choices were taken away from you. Jedan wasn't used to that. His was a tiresome job, one with little scope for compromise or mercy. He accompanied the souls of the dead to Yla; he did not kill them, could not sway the time or circumstances of their death. He was a messenger, the wanderer was, merely a bad omen.
And yet when he had arrived to the coast all those months ago, maybe a little more than a year ago, Jedan had wanted more than anything to be able to make a choice.
Two little children sat by the water, a boy with piercing blues eyes with an arm around a tiny red-haired girl. They clung to one another, as the drowning might cling to whatever detritus they could find on the surface of the water. Their clothes dripped briny water, but never grew any drier; their hair hung in bedraggled strands around pale faces, but did not stir in the wind. And they were sightless, utterly blind and staring without comprehension across the dark surface of the water, their expressions unchanging, their fingers frozen knotted in the fabric of one another's coats.
The choppy gray surface of the water stirred and Arvoh rose from its depths, carrying a girl in his arms. "You took your time," he said, noting Jedan's still presence on the bank. Dressed as he was in sturdy boots, a tired flannel shirt, threadbare jeans, Jedan could have been any weary traveller paused on the road for a moment by the ocean; he was unremarkable, indistinguishable from a mortal. The same could not be said for his compatriot - Arvoh's wet hair dried even as it settled around his pale face. "There was a fire," he said. "In the east. A hundred souls to lead home."
Arvoh said nothing, but set the drowned girl down at the side of the water. Jedan stepped towards her and knelt, and was surprised when, at the merest touch of his fingers, the drowned girl gasped a breath and began to shake with the cold.
"A survivor," Jedan murmured. "Not entirely part of the plan."
He looked sharply at Arvoh. Arvoh appointed the dead, Jedan accompanied them, and Yla sheltered them, so where an ought-to-be-dead girl became a not-entirely-dead girl, Jedan was right to look to his shadow-wrought compatriot for an answer.
"Not entirely," Arvoh said softly, malignantly. "My choice."
Jedan's gaze did not waver. It was utterly resolute. "If you persist in using mortals as play-things -"
"She lives, does she not?" Arvoh gestured to the drowned girl, whose curly brown hair, threaded with aureate highlights, splayed around her head like a lopsided halo. "Is that not a kind of mercy? Question not the motives but the ramifications."
"You spared her," Jedan said darkly. "Can you not spare the children?"
"I cannot." Arvoh cocked his head, and in that moment Jedan saw that despite his protestations to the contrary, long years with Ilargi had rubbed off on him for sure - it was such an Ilargi expression, that movement of the head, that narrowing of the eyes, that for a moment Jedan was tempted to reach out and rip his skin away, certain that Ilargi's black eyes would wink at him from beneath. "It is their time."
Their Time.
"It is her time also."
"No."
"You changed the rules for one and not the others -"
"The times," Arvoh said. "They change. It was her time, and now it is not. The children are dead already, Jedan. Unformed souls are lost quickly."
Jedan set his jaw. "I cannot convince you otherwise."
"I doubt it."
Jedan touched the drowned girl's hair again, very lightly. Arvoh was silent beside him as the girl's lids fluttered open, revealing pellucid blue eyes the colour of hydrangea. In that moment, looking in her eyes, the god of wanderers could perceive much - her passion, her independence, her generosity, her loyalty, her kindness, her deep capacity for love. It was a concise snapshot of a human being which could nevertheless hardly dream of capturing every element of a girl with only half a life lived.
She moved her lips as though to speak, but could express nothing until Jedan said, not unkindly, "What is your name?"
"Marzanna," the girl said in the voice of one who is still trapped beneath the water, in mind and soul if not in body. "Petrova."
"Marzanna." Jedan stroked a few damp strands out of the teenager's pale face. "Sleep dreamlessly in the name of Yla."
There was movement by the water, he could see now, some local men dredging the water to pull up a body identical to the one Jedan knelt beside, Marzanna's doppelganger identical in all aspects, from the wet curlicues of hair sticking to the nape of her neck to the bruises along her cheekbones and chin. Not her doppelganger - her corporeal self, distinct from the soul Jedan knelt beside.
The soul's eyes fluttered closed and sank into the soil. The local men began to shout for help as the body in their arms awoke abruptly. Even from this distance, Jedan could hear Marzanna calling for her brother and sister.
They could not hear her. They were gone, half-way between the two worlds. It was Jedan's duty to bring them the rest of the way.
He held out his hands to them, and the children, trusting, took them without question, as though he was the only thing in this world to which they were not blind. It was near enough the truth. Jedan took their cold, dead hands and turned towards the path. Arvoh, silent, turned back towards the ocean to disappear in his own way. There was something hard and bitter under Jedan's ribs where his heart had one been, something that eased only minutely when he looked towards the horizon and caught sight of the first stars flickering into light high above as Lysha went about her usual duty of igniting the skies. There was something lovely, he thought, about the world going on even as little children died and young women drowned and the path to the underworld was treaded again and again and again.
There came days when choices had to be made.
And one year later, after Jedan had walked that same path with Lysha for the very last time, and the time came to make a very important choice for a very important Selection, Jedan knew a name and he knew a face and he knew that if he wanted to choose a worthy candidate then Marzanna Petrova might be his best option.
Hi, everyone! I really am so sorry for the long delay to this story, and I totally understand if people have lost interest! Unfortunately I was hospitalised for a long time last May and then started university so I was absolutely drowned with work and didn't get any chance to get any writing done! However, I am dedicated to seeing this story through. If anyone has any concerns or thoughts about their OCs, the story direction, or the writing quality, then please drop me a review or PM ASAP!
Here we will see two more Selection girls introduced. The applications are still open for a little while, but nearly all slots have been filled! Please do review if you like or don't like the chapter, they are what motivate me and what really inspired me to come back to this story.