Gods & Thieves

28. Heart and Pillowcase

༄༄༄

I'm exhausted and cold when I walk out of the temple again. It's a strange sort of coldness, because my body doesn't feel it under the sun. It only feels empty.

Redundant.

I realize that's almost the same as I felt when Kofi's father died, when I was shocked and frustrated and filled with the sense of injustice, when it seemed something important was ripped out of my life.

I couldn't really formulate what it was back then, when I was small, but now I think it was the lack of meaning itself. The world has to have meaning, right? And what meaning does death have, except for leaving you alone halfway in life? Lacking someone you can never have back. Maybe death is supposed to teach that life is precious? But I didn't feel like my life was precious after that, it felt...empty. Ma said I wasn't talking to anyone for a month after that.

Redundant.

Dispirited, I pause by a babbling fountain, in a small lush grove at the crossroads. It's a real, recently built fountain, with water, not aura, and the air around it is moist and sparking with rainbows in the prism of the sun. Did Loretto feel the same when faer family died? Faer whole family. Faer whole world.

Putting the laundry basket on the marble, I drop to sit next to it, throwing off my boots and turning around to push my feet into the fountain. The chilly water gives me goosebumps. This is not right to feel all this, then. Loretto must be right at pushing everyone away.

Surprisingly, but through this cold numbness, I now feel extremely focused. Empty and focused. Some say feelings are nature's malfunction, and maybe they're right? All the expectations we don't live up to, all the pain and wars--they happen because of our feelings. But learn to conquer them, cage them, tame them like magic, and you become invincible. That's how you survive for two centuries and become the third most powerful shaman in Cabracan. That's how you become an empress and rule for over four centuries. Be apathetically invincible so nobody can hurt you, especially your heart that can trick you into hurting yourself.

Redundant.

But...I almost convince myself of all that, but then another thought enters my mind as I tap my heels against the marble underwater. If you feel nothing, how can you feel the very need to fight and survive at all? Rancor coils in my stomach. They all but lie about redundancy. I must be too far gone, because I can't cage my temper any longer, and instead of staying cold and focused, I shove the basket with all the strength my forearm can manage.

The water splashes my face, startling me. The basket falls into the fountain and Loretto's laundry scatters over the surface, beginning to sink. One of the towels ends up left on the sitting beside me, and I glance at it, I realize it looks suspiciously clean. And there were no Loretto's clothes in the basket, really, let alone underwear; it's but towels and pillowcases, all clean and barely crumpled as though Loretto grabbed the first things fae saw in the closet to throw at me. To drive my face out of faer sight without actually demeaning.

No emotions, Your Cocky Grace? My temper blazes. Why wouldn't you say all the shit you told Ian to me in the face, then? Do you have a feeling you'd fail and say you need me instead?

Jumping to my feet, I stomp on the sinking towels, pinning them to the fountain's bottom. A couple of plainblood servants passing by the fountain give a weird look, but instead of asking where the laundry building--which I still haven't found--is, I show them my middle finger to scare them away.

That's why you shouldn't have a teacher who looks your age, I think as I keep making the mess out of previously clean fabrics, a little more satisfied now as it looks just as worthless as Loretto made me feel. Because such bastards are annoyingly good at making you believe you can understand them and then taking that belief away!