Aĉaĵego

V: Blaspheme

Floreca thought Aĉaĵego's pride might be hurt if she brought up the story of how it became the Aĉaĵego. It denied ever having met Terdiino, after all. It must have been a sensitive subject. And Floreca couldn't blame it for feeling that way. She had assumed Terdiino regularly corresponded with the Aĉaĵego, but now it seemed she had left it alone since making it an angel. The poor Aĉaĵego was an outcast; no wonder its behavior was so... so... well, she didn't know the word for it, but it wasn't what one would expect of an angel. Floreca recounted another story of the time the Aĉaĵego had saved the village from a fire by filling its belly from water from the mountain spring and then regurgitating on the flames. It was one of Floreca's favorite stories, because it introduced her to the idea that even a terrifying creature like Aĉaĵego could have kindness in it.

Aĉaĵego liked the story, too. "I remember that day. That was so long ago that none of you humans could have been alive to remember. You must have told it many times. Tell another."

"I will," said Floreca with a playful smile, "but you promised to tell me stories as well. Let's take turns."

So the Aĉaĵego told her about the days before it decided to settle down in the mountain by her village. It used to fly through the clouds, swim through the seas, and walk the lands all over the planet. It told Floreca what things were like before she was born, and about things that were probably still happening in places Floreca had never heard of.

Karesema woke up a couple hours later, but her head was in a lot of pain from the fall. She rested on the ground and didn't seem to want to talk much. Eventually she fell asleep again, and Floreca stayed with her. By then, Floreca was also rather tired and hungry. She was just starting to fall asleep again, when she felt something shaking her. After she startled awake, she realized the Aĉaĵego had nudged her with its tail.

"Tell unto me another story," it demanded.

So she told it the story about the first time a sacrifice, a young man whose original crime varied in each telling, escaped from the offering spot. The Aĉaĵego had gone on a rampage through the town and killed everyone in sight to punish the people for breaking their promise. The criminal was never found, but finally the criminal's mother went to the offering spot of her own volition and waited for the Aĉaĵego there for it to take her, and the Aĉaĵego finally calmed down and left the townspeople alone. No one knew what happened to the criminal; some suspected he took a boat and sailed away, but no matter where he had gone, he was certainly dead now, and chained to the bottom of the ocean forever. That wasn't a story Floreca would normally tell; it wasn't a nice story to think about, and her mother hadn't told it very often, so she didn't know it very well, but that was how the tradition of allowing a family member to be sacrificed in a criminal's place had started, so it had been on her mind.

"That story pleased me not," said the Aĉaĵego, when she was done. "Thy voice when thou spokedst was not pleasing."

"I'm sorry," said Floreca, "I'm tired, and a little hungry, too... I'll probably be able to sound more energetic if you let me sleep for a bit."

"Then sleep," said the Aĉaĵego.

She slept, but not well. She could not sleep deeply enough to block out the hunger, or the cold, or the soreness from laying on hard ground, and she wouldn't have even known she had slept at all if it weren't for the lack of light coming from above when she opened her eyes, marking the passage of much more time than she would have thought. The only thing she could make out in the meager amount of moonlight were two sets of reflective gray eyes, pointed towards her.

"Hello..." she said, a little startled. She moved to get up, but Karesema was still asleep with her head on Floreca's abdomen, so she could only sit up half-way.