Two Eyes Cenote beryllium

"you aren't ever coming back, are you?"

her body ached when she woke now, not for pain nor rigour, but for touch. tavina had retreated to the very recesses of muat-riya as of late, glimpsed most often at evening when she strode out to gather more herbs than the palace could possibly need.

sprigs to bind her soul, twigs to wall the pain, newblooms to mute the crying body which wept in loneliness.

"no. you're not," tavina murmured to herself, voice breaking only once.

There were many things unspoken between them, but none so consuming as the nameless wrap of grief. Such a master at hiding it, Eset had even fooled herself, carrying on in the ways she always had.  But Tavina’s isolation was unusual, an ever increasing concern in the hebsut’s mind, so much so she found it difficult to focus on much of anything else. The sesh is trailed that evening as she forages among the dusk-blooming ornamentals.

Eset approaches carefully, almost tentatively, as if reluctant to steal Tavina away from herself. With the utmost care, she places a limb of flowers at the sesh’s feet. The petals are a deep violet, and when she lifts her chin to look into her face, they are a perfect complement of Tavina’s eyes.

“Look what I’ve found,”  she whispers.

<3

one evening, at her lowest, tavina had thought of summoning a fellahin. she knew that their companionship was no longer expected, and she rather felt that her presence as trusted sesh might invite intimacies of their own. but the initial thought had made her feel so pathetic that revulsion had followed, and she had sought to quell the yawning hungers of her forgotten body.

but then eset was beside her, a nightfall shape of lithe beauty, scorpion weed falling from her pretty palm. the matching gaze warmed then misted; a muscle played along her jaw; she could not speak as she found the marigold eyes, laid bare by what she wanted so dearly to be both true and untrue.

“Tavina?” Her name comes from her lips in the softest whisper, the wet flicker in her sesh’s eyes sending a chill down her spine. It is a look she knows, one she’s seen before, and still it robs her lungs of breath.

To never have answers- abandoned to wonder. That was fate worse than death, Eset believed then.

“I’m here,” her voice cracks, temper seething with anxiety. She swiftly draws her arms over Tavina’s back, gathering her close into the space of her chest. She sought to be everything Tavina was to her, the constant she so hopelessly needed. A kiss is pressed to her shoulder as she melds them together, but into the velvet wisps of her neck a voice quivers.

“I- I’m scared for you.”

eset's worry struck through tavina as if it were a lance; the gentle whisper of worry along the back of her shoulder sent a tremour through her. for a moment the sesh almost broke away, almost pushed those satin arms aside.

she was still, and then the first sob came, a racking soundless thing that jerked her entire form against the embrace of eset. and then another, and another, oh, she was losing it. the self-made bridle slipping from errant face, the too-tight bit falling from a bruised mouth;

tavina was not certain she had ever wept so hard before, or if muat-riya's gleaming halls of blue had ever heard the wrenching misery of a broken woman as clearly as her hoarse cries echoed now.

When the sobs shook through the sesh, they shook them both. When she threatened to fall, Eset’s arm wound tighter. Her sorrow listed high through the old acacias, invisible tendrils of grief that tore through tangles of leaves and out into the shivering face of the stars. The weight of it rose, climbed, spiraled. But when it fell back, it descended upon them both. She was not alone.

“I do not see a broken woman, Tavina,” Eset cradles into her cheek, “you do not need fixing. You are deeply hurt, in need of care.” She does not release her.

She cannot see it now, but the hebsut believed that she would find a way- because Tavina is the kind of woman who taught her that for every hurt there is a leaf to cure it.

"i need — to let her go." tavina did not pull away from eset, but she swiped furiously at the betraying moisture of her cheeks, and when the tears continued, she let her limbs fall in despair and sagged back against the hebsut.

"i must," she insisted with a shaking breath, "surely i must find some way to release myself. release us both, but oh, eset, it is like a — patch of thorns, and i haven't the strength to till them away. the hurt goes on, and now, oh, now i've started to be angry at her, eset, angry at nala for — for nothing. and i so very much do not want to be — angry."

the stream of words ran dry.

her breath came in small slowing sobs as she stilled herself.

Because it was Tavina- because it was her stoic figure, the woman who had all the answers, who could augur the ills of the world and heal with only a touch-  it hurts much more deeply. Eset catches her despair, pliable in her hands, the midnight silks of hebsut and sesh blending.

If she had the wisdom to conjure the words that could stop the past from breaking out into their hearts- would it all go away? She closes her eyes into Tavina’s bent shoulder, listening, narrow jaw clinching only to release again.

“I’ve never- truly been able to control how I feel. We can lie to ourselves. I think it works, for a time,” the coywolf quivers. Grief, and anger. These were the things she felt in the hours before waking, as essential to her identity as the desert and the Gods who preside over it. Resentment, coming to claim her.

“Your wife is gone, Tavina. It is a loss. It’s a death,” she wounds her arms tightly over the woman’s back, “it is alright to feel anger- anger can sometimes be a powerful motivator.” Eset releases a breath into Tavina’s nape and slowly pulls her chin back to look into her face.

“May I show you something?”

your wife is gone.

she could almost hate for that. almost.

the truth of it crushed her belly into fracturing stonework. her eyes reached for those of the hebsut.

"nala was pregnant when she disappeared." more pain to be said, framed in her tyrian-purple eyes. "i can't stop feeling like i lost the middle of my life when nala just —"

she stood, her spine glinting with pain and the shame of having dumped more stained papyri into the arms of eset. "please. show me. show me anything, eset."

“Pregnant,” her voice catches, and she cannot force any calmness into it. Pregnant; pregnant.

“Oh, Tavina,” she bursts with agony, like a vicious bite to the throat. Now her own posture falls and if Tavina weeps no attempt is made to pacify her tears, only to catch each warm bead with the back of her paw-tips. “I’m so sorry- gods, I’m so sorry,” she cradles her, the woman who should have been a mother. Whose arms should have been full with a wife, and children.

Eset blinks her tears and they make a mess of her cheeks. She clasps Tavina’s raven hand in her own and softly leads her along the garden path, returning to their home in the hearth of the twin cenotes. They slip through tapering walls of stone to where the water’s rippling wanes into the cadence of footfalls. Into a wide, empty, time-stained hall they emerge. A portal opens to the sky; a breeze passes over them, stirring the floor’s old leaf-litter. It's dark, and it's somber. Eset gently releases the sesh’s hand and slowly steps towards one side.

“Imagine… there are herbs here,” she gestures with an arm, her voice cracking, “and bones, placed here.” She passes now over to the left side of the room. “A table for demonstrations can go here, and rows of pupils sitting- there.” The coywolf spins, walking imaginary pews.

“And you are: here. At the front…” the girl sweeps towards the anterior, standing in place. “Anatomy. Medicine. Manners. It’s… a classroom. A school- if you want it to be.”

She turns to face Tavina now, her heart pounding in her ears. How hollow it must all seem, compared to what she’d had- what she was so close to having.

a classroom.

a school, the one she and nala had wanted. 

for a long moment she stood still and nunlike beneath the soft tapering light, her eyes taking in the vision that eset sought so gracefully to spin. yes. she could see it, and her brow sharply furrowed with the effort of the emotion. she could see them, pupils and students, acolytes.

and when her breath was finally released, it was with another effort: the recognition of hope.

the tearstained purple of her eyes turned softly shrewd, and she crossed the room to eset once more.

"i have always believed a school needs two teachers."

nothing would replace nala. nothing would bring back what they might have had.

tavina did not want her replaced nor replenished with endless reminders; she let herself exist in the very, very present, and took eset's left paw into her own beneath the light of the open ceiling.

She watches Tavina cross the room until together they stand at the prow, looking out over what might one day be banks of eager faces. There is relief in the clasp of their hands, in the way the seshs’ eyes infuse slowly with something more than pain. But the coywoman hesitates-

Eset was not educated as Tavina was. She knew only such drudgery; scrubbing walls of stones, erecting shrines, grubbing herbs from the dirt and the tedium of service. She understood the fine fettle that her mind lacked; that she would have been someone else entirely had she been born in another time, in another place.

“I may have to be your first student,” the hebsut confesses. Though she’d been an apprentice of the sesh since her arrival the year prior, it would not be so different. She quiets, considering, face steady in the dark. Finally, her eyes again find the deep lavender touch of Tavina’s gaze.

“Two teachers,” she agrees, mouth dimpling into a grin in spite of her doubts. She squeezes Tavina's hand in her own.