Oleander

X. Messages (part one)

Falling into her bed as the sun rose, Yalira expected to see the destruction of Antalis, to hear the screams of soon-dead children, and to churn over the promises of monsters. After a night of harrowing sleeplessness, it seemed Eheia had taken pity and blessed her with the dreamless sleep of exhaustion.

For the first time in Semyra, Yalira's head was clear. Against the hazy light of the afternoon sun through the airy linen curtains, her mind was focused and certain. Yalira was confident that Andar would not murder her. She had pushed against his pride and carved into his grief, and he still made no move against her.

Like pulling details together from a fuzzy dream, Yalira woke with the clarity that Andar wanted something from her. Wild theories and ideas of what buzzed in her head, but Yalira knew he needed her breathing. No matter her distemper, her thoughtless tongue, he needed her enough to hold tight reins on his brutal nature, to spare the lives of her priestesses, to grant her gifts and wishes.

A thrill of power sang through Yalira, as blistering as the sun, as fierce as lightning. Yalira dao Eheia held power over Andar of Tyr. If she could make it last, then she could restore Antalis, save her people, and redeem the crimes she committed to do it. The possibilities were so tangible, so close.

Consumed with the dreams of her temple-city, Yalira's mind snapped to an image of a sleek chest, hewn from cypress. In Andar's chambers, stifled with wary anxiety, she had not recognized the letters carved into its surface. It hadn't seemed important. Her ability to read was a growing thing, a tender vine. Fresh with sleep, the letters now spoke. They shouted.

Antalis.

Andar possessed a chest marked with the symbols of her temple, as he had promised.

Yalira had ignored the burden of oleander and had refused to believe his words. He had to be mistaken, deceived. For truth was a tenuous thing. Subjectivity, change, time. All three pulled and pushed at perceptions of certainty.

Andar believed he had proof of a written record of Antalis, he believed it with every fiber of his being. It did not matter if that was not the objective fact — humans were bound by their lack of sight. Only Antala knew all and chose when to share her infinite wisdom.

The contradiction twisted through Yalira, writhing snakes in her core. Now that she had seen a hint of evidence, now that Andar had introduced a crack of doubt in her foundation, uncertainty surfaced. A part of her yearned to push away his questions, his claims. It was easier to cling to the secure memories of her upbringing. There was comfort in that.

But it would not erase the mystery. Illiterate priestesses who knew how to write, the reason to conquer Antalis, her unknown importance to Andar of Tyr. They clashed with the secrets in Semyra—power hungry politicos, scheming wives, enemies who wore the faces of allies. Stillborns and monsters. Loose and frayed, each thread was connected in a bigger picture Yalira did not understand.

It chafed.

Through the unknown, however, that sharp certainty stabbed. The cypress chest. The conflict between curiosity and fear—the same battle that had plagued Andar—wrestled within Yalira.

"I need to know," she whispered to the empty room.

Silent sunlight streamed through linen caught in the summer breeze. Though bathed in its warmth, Yalira's skin erupted in gooseflesh.

The goddess's presence had flickered in Semyra, intermittent and faint, but it had flickered. Ashamed after a blatant lie, a hastened death, filled with treasonous questions, Yalira still reached for Antala. No ghost of oleander, no divine presence. For the first time, she was alone.