I feel disconnected from the rabble of the streets, from the rough men hawking their wares and the bustling women carrying baskets on their shoulders and the children weaving through the crowd, laughing like the whole world is nothing worse than the sweets melting on the tips of their tongues.

Maybe it's because no one pays me any mind, just another anonymous body moving through the town center. A few eyes linger on my face, a few people bump into me, or push me aside, but no one truly sees me.

And I'm thankful for it. The feeling of anonymity envelopes me, wraps me in a cold sort of comfort as tears leak from my red, raw eyes. I pull my hair loose from its bindings so it falls forward over my shoulders, partially obscuring my face.

I should be ashamed of myself, to be falling apart so publically, but I have no room left to feel shame. All seems a fog, people and buildings and half-understood feelings bleeding together, obscured by teary, downcast eyes. I don't want to be seen, and I don't want to see.

I'm already seeing too much. I'm seeing a show trial, a jeering crowd, her name being swallowed by the swelling tide of a madman's lies. Lies seeping under doors, noxious plumes of smoke invading righteous minds, warping them. Twisted logic, twisted words, twisting the memory of my Izsaiki into something unbearable.

And I see her eyes. Eyes so light green they appeared translucent in certain lights, flecked here and there with blue or soft grey. They seem so real for a moment I shut my eyes, only to realize the image is held in my own mind.

I walk mindlessly, aimlessly, unable to stand the thought of going back to the council building. I'm dimly aware that I risk getting hopelessly lost, that the Ambassador will most likely kill me, that I'm behaving like a child, but still I walk on. Forward seems the only option with the force of the past pushing me from behind

I pass a few hours this way, maybe less, maybe more. Time seems to happen around me, not to me. The rest of the world seems too fast, my own mind and body too hopelessly slow to ever catch up.

I snap out of my stupor for a moment when the ground beneath my feet seems buoyant. I stop and look down, surprised to see a patch of grass. I've wondered off the main road. I consider turning back, but again my feet make the decision for me, carrying me forward, towards a field of green.

When I look up, I see the trees, their leaves still summer green, sun streaming through the gaps in the foliage to cast strange shadows on the grass below. I notice rhaversi bushes and jannonweeds, marspurs and long stalks of Asterra. I even see a Vetivera vine climbing the bark of an old, moss-covered Colyan tree.

And then I see O'otani holding the flower out to me and laughing, her green eyes inviting, saying, 'see, Shira, I brought you the first of the season. It's almost as beautiful as you, cousin, almost but not quite. Nothing in all of Shikkah will ever be as beautiful as you are.'

I hear the ghost of my laugh, my hand accepting the flower and tucking it into my hair. 'You should tell me I'm brave and strong, Oé, that I'm one you want to follow. Save the flowery words for Alya, you know she fills up on them.'

'You are brave and strong, Amshira,' she murmurs, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. 'I would follow you anywhere, do anything for you, you know that.'

'I would follow you to Imgyonstarn, and scale the ice cliffs to stand beside you.

'I would follow you to Kalko, and climb the ladders in their library for three stories, to find you hidden amongst volumes of pressed velum.

'I would follow you to Seramich, through the foreign balmy jungle, and fight off Oxgrove cats to keep you safe.

I would follow you across the Karithian channel...

I would follow you into a room of bullets and screaming, into the mouth of death itself...

"I'm sorry," I say, my voice cracking. "I'm so sorry, O'otani. I left you. I shouldn't have left you. I was a coward; I am a coward. And I- I don't know what to do to make it right. I don't know, goddess, I've never known, have I?" I sit down, unable to support my own weight, the weight pressing down above me. It's been there for a month, growing heavier each day, and today I am not strong enough to bear it.

"All my life I've had my mother by my side, you by my side. What do I have now? No country, no real allies, no plan that doesn't sound like a fairy story dreamed up by a lost little boy. Goddess, were they all right? All of the older uncles and aunts who looked at me like a changeling, whispered I was too small, too pretty, too soft to be a proper Deme? A real leader? Am I really- is this really who I am?"

"How did you love me so much?" I sob, collapsing in on myself, my back scraping against the bark of the tree behind me.

"I did nothing to earn it," I whisper through the tears. "And when the goddess gave me a chance to prove myself, to die with my family, with you, I took my mother's hand and ran. You died alone. Or now you're alive, a puppet to that madman, and I'm an ocean away, and powerless. Goddess help me, goddess take this pain. I can't- I'm not strong enough. I'm not. She was the strong one, she was the warrior, the soldier, the steel. I- I was just a child. I'm still just a child. Lost, useless, useless!"
I dig my fingers into my temples. Damn it! Damn me for being so damn afraid. She was brave. She was my bravery, and now she's gone.

Even if those populist curs told the truth and she's still alive, she won't be for long. The new regime won't let the protector of the most powerful Dimaraste live. The full pardon Idera Onra suggested was nothing more than a lie, a way to suggest Sholu Verlaina has the capacity for mercy and the Izsaiki herself the capacity for ultimate betrayal. To live a life given to her by her family's murderer.

I know her. She would sooner die.

Will there even be a trial, I wonder, or just an accident? A fall down the stairs? A sudden incurable illness? Or just an unexplained disappearance, one life swallowed up by the chaos of a country in warlike transition?

I need a ship, I think. I need to go to the Grand Council, I need to cross the Karithian channel, I need to save her... If there's even the remote possibility she's still alive, I have to try, she would have tried...

The council would jail me as an illegal immigrant with forged papers until they could grant me a trial for political asylum. They might even hand me over to the populists, if they accept this trade proposal.

The Karithian channel takes at the very least a week to cross. Idera said her trial is happening now, if it hasn't happened already. It would take days to get a ship, and I have no money to pay for one.

And even if I got to Shikkah, what would I do? Storm the palace, fight off the guards with my army of ghosts, and take her away with me?

It's another fairy story. Maybe if I was Aramizsa, or truly the blessed of the Goddess Zsavina, I'd find a way. But I'm not. I'm just a broken doll, pretty and useless.

Powerless.

I don't even know if she's still alive.

I don't even know if I'm still alive. I feel the rising and falling of my chest, taste the salt leaking from my eyes, but inside I feel hollowed out, gutted. That juvenile hope I nursed was filling me up, I realize, and now that the delegates burned it like the paper it was there's nothing but a void.

I lean back against the tree, pulling my knees into myself. The roots rise and fall around me, living mountains and valleys traversing the earth. I try to imagine them as a cradle, a comfort. The bark against my back is a caress, I tell myself, from the arms of a friend.

Nature has always held me. I'm never happier than when I'm in the garden, surrounded by green and leaf and loam. But when I look up at the canopy above me, seeking out some comfort, I can only see it as the grass above a grave.

I look out, then, at the stately trees around me, but a thin black cloth obscures my vision, changing the vibrant greens into grey. And across this cloth I see shades dancing. Three cousins arm-in-arm, turning rapid circles. One more watching, smiling, a baby resting on her hip. One aunt sits on a stump; another stands by a randeshani bush.

I see Uncle Haim climbing a tree, laughing drunkenly, his wife calling him down. Nather sits with children gathered around him, telling a story. O'otani holds out a Vetivera flower, the petals blowing off as she exhales.

She laughs. At first a gentle sound, barely above a whisper. But then the laughing grows louder, until it turns into sobbing, and then screaming. I push my hands against my ears, trying to block out the noise, but it only grows louder. A grinding of gears, the cracking of glass, the slice of gunshots through still, stagnant air-

It's me, I realize, making the inhuman sound. My own voice screaming, my own sobs wracking my body. Is this my future, I wonder? To always be haunted by ghosts? To carry the weight of their lives along with the weight of my own, which has never felt heavier than it does in this moment?

I cry until there's no tears left, and then I sit in silence, curled up against the tree, watching the light shift from the gold of twilight to the soft grey of dusk.

That's how the Ambassador finds me.

___

Only one more chapter before the end of part one! And please, if you liked this chapter, vote and comment. I live off of comments. It's an addiction ;)

- Swpoet