Love is patient, love is kind (Prologue+Chapter 1)

Prologue:

Vicomte Luçien Ankou squeezed his eyes shut with such force, that tiny spots of colour danced on his retina. It took several heartbeats before he focused well enough to recall the six stages that were necessary to purge a fallen soul.

The accusation.

A thorough examination of the accuser.

Gathering preliminary evidence.

The actual arrest of the accused.

Interrogation.

Sentencing and execution.

With great effort he clenched his hands into fists. “You are a foul and vile creature, Grianán. Simply disgusting. That I keep up with you amazes me.”

There was a new expression in her gaze. Finally, she believed that she was foul. That she was vile.

He had won, but he did not feel victorious. Not even relieved.

Bit by bit, he have betrayed all that Grianán ever believed in, all that she ever wanted. He felt hollow inside.

With a sigh he picked up her withered form and carried her downstairs. How light she was in his arms. How filthy she was. All due to him. She used to smell of wild flowers and sunlight. Now she smelt like an old hag.

Carefully, Vicomte Luçien Ankou draped his travelling cloak around the princess, allowing her head to rest against his chest. Some moments of comfort and warmth could not do any harm. She had been a worthy foe. She could teach anybody a lesson in patience and endurance.

Her gaze brushed him, but she did not seem to recognize him. Had he just detected a tint of yellow in her iris? The witch mark?

Suddenly, a spasm raced through her body. He sat down on the stairs, pressing her against him.

When the seizure was over Vicomte Luçien Ankou started walking again.

An idea flashed into his mind. “Bertha, I need Bertha. If Grianán gives into me, I will need her favourite childhood companion. That toy camel will be helpful when she heals from all the misery I had to put her through.”

He rested Grianán on the floor. “I forgot something essential upstairs,” he told her and rushed back to his room.

Bertha was in the top draw of his night cabinet, which she had inhabited since Grianán had vanished from his life to join the Order of the beanmna feasa, the wise women. He had looked at the toy camel from time to time, remembering its mistress.

Vicomte Luçien Ankou stuffed Bertha into his sash.

To his astonishment, Grianán was on the move when he got back to the basement. She was crawling towards the entrance door of the lodge.

“And where do you think you are going, Grianán?”

She kept on crawling with almost feverish determination. As if she could get away from him. As if he would let her, ill and delusional as she was.

Sighing, Vicomte Luçien Ankou blocked her escape route. He was on his knees to face her directly. Her eyes burnt with pain and fear.

“This is pointless,” he explained to the princess calmly, trying to get some amount of reason back to her. “You can neither use your magic nor your hands to open the door at the moment.”

She stared past him, her jaw jutting out stubbornly under the Mask of Infamy.

“Let us get you into the ship now. I will come back later to clean the mess that you made upstairs, Grianán.”

As he scooped her into his embrace again, she kept struggling to escape. That made him sad and angry alike. Why did she fail to see that he was doing this for her? Grianán had always found ways to complicate his life the past eighteen years.

“Stop wiggling in my arms. You are not an eel. Your fruitless attempts at escape just anger me. Is this how you reward me for saving your soul?”

He dropped her off in the luggage compartment of her father's spaceship. Enough was enough. He needed to get away from her.

“During our flight to Sapuhru you can meditate about your unbelievable incapability to work with me. I try to improve this galaxy. You owe me your help, your obedience and your love.”

Those grey eyes. They tugged at his soul. He needed to leave her alone for a while. She was on the brink of breaking him.

Agitated, Vicomte Luçien Ankou sank down in the pilot chair. To feel the cool leather seat calmed him a bit. “I am cursed,” he muttered.

He had given Grianán too much power over him. Not even for his own family could he consider to defy what was just and true. There were rules. And he, Chief Witch Hunter of the Brotherhood of the Red Dawn had to live up to them.

The witches of Cunabula had made his people suffer terribly in the past. He could not allow Grianán to be one. She had to learn how bare the life of a sinner was. Only then he could lift her up again.

His fists smashed down on the instrument panel.

Something jumped and caught his cat eyes.

Frowning, he took the object into his gloved hands.

It was a leather-bound book.

Hastily, he got rid of his gloves and opened it.

The handwriting was all too familiar.

But it was not a witch's grimoire. It was a diary.

Chapter 1:

I am born dead. It is a matter of the heart. In fact it is broken before it all begins. There is some mixing of oxygenated and de-oxygenated blood. Normally, the Living Matrix helps to overcome the obstacles of the human blood line. In my case it did not. My Ophidea heritage made me die once the umbilical cord was cut.

My mother, god queen Arcānā Tamisra Tjiehenet, cries for me. Lifelessly, my body lies in her arms, while my cheerful spirit remains in the Cycle of Heavens. I like it here. It is a place of great beauty, wisdom and peace. Glittering mist is everywhere. Time and space have no meaning. Serenity reigns.

But Mother knows how to manipulate the Living Matrix for her own goals. The ancestors taught her a long time ago. She listened too long and she listened too much. It corrupted her at the core of her being.

“Tu sei una stella...la mia stella. Tu sei un dono del cielo.” I hear Mother whisper hoarsely. You are a star... my star. You are a gift from the heavens.

Her hands turn into claws while she absorbs cosmic energy and generates several plasma blasts straight into my chest.

Against my own will, the muscles of my heart start working again. My blood stream adjusts. And I, my mother's seventh daughter, am reborn into darkness, blood and dirt.

This is wrong. I belong to the Cycle of Heaven. I am light. I need to go back. But my whimpering is ignored.

Mother presses me against her naked chest. Her kisses rain down on my head. “Come sei bella,” she assures me under her breath. How beautiful you are.

I feel how her body convulses. She is still giving birth.

Not much later a shrill, piercing scream announces the birth of another sibling of mine. Mother does not care. She has what she wants. Me.

“Grianán,” she states to somebody I cannot see, but feel.

“Grianán,” a chorus of women repeats after her.

Mother gets on her feet, reaches out of the stone hollow. Tenderly, she plucks me away from her chest. I am received by a group of snake priestesses immediately. Each of them has to touch me and breathe a kiss against my brow. Blessings are murmured.

“Pax et lux,” one woman hums. Peace and light.

“Sola gratia”, another one states. By grace alone.

“Lumen hilare,” a third priestess cheers. Hail Gladdening Light.

I do not feel so special. The blessings continue though. Tired, I look ahead of me. I long to sleep, but I am carried through the semi-darkness.

It is not Mother who holds me close to her heart. I reckon the woman to be one of the snake priestesses. She has a rather cheerful spirit. Her thoughts are warm and full of humour.

Automatically, I snuggle closer and listen to her steady heartbeat. She laughs out loud and fondles me even more. Her mere touch brings forth a lot of impressions. I try to sort them out to make sense.

Suddenly, I am bathed in light. First it hurts my eyes and I try to blink it away, but then I welcome its embrace. It is familiar. I have seen it before. It was in the Cycle of Heaven. Longingly, I reach out for it. I wish I could press it against me, hold on to it. But I cannot touch those fingers of bright light that stroke my skin. That upsets me, but not for long.

“Ecce, Principessa Grianán Arcānā Tjiehenet,” my guardian booms, cutting through my disappointment. Behold, Principessa Grianán Arcānā Tjiehenet.

Then thousands of voices start cheering. “Sancta Simplicitas!” they shout. Holy innocence!

I am startled, but there are no evil thoughts around me. Just acceptance and love. So I bear the reverence. I bear the cheers.

Someone tucks at my conscience, gentle, but persistent. Then I see her with my own eyes. She pokes her way through the lines of grown-ups with determined elbows. Her blond hair is braided. There are many scars on her naked chest, but she still has the sweetest face imaginable. Her eyes have a dark green shade. So dark that they almost seem black.

“Clementia,” she begs.

The snake priestess laughs and lowers me down to the girl.

“Mi chiamo Aranea. É un piacere conoscerti, mio bellissimo principessa,” the girl says to me. My name is Aranea. Nice to meet you, my beautiful princess.

I do not shriek back when she strokes one of my cheeks. Her touch is pleasant and feather light. I give her my most radiant smile, even though I detect that there is much pain and suffering. Somebody close to her, a family member, is very harsh with her. I would like to make a difference for her in the future. Just love and safety should reign her life.

********************************************************************************

Aranea bounds after us while the snake priestess walks me through the Mother Jungle. The jungle is sticky with heat and moist air, in its depths the light and the darkness collide.

One fine sun day I will play in the thick undergrowth and green shades. There will be much to learn and to see. I will allow it to surround me and to penetrate me. Like the Cycle of Heavens once did. Its echoes are still inside me, I know they will always be. I am more than crude matter.

A soft rain begins to conquer the landscape around us. It tickles nicely on my skin. I like the way the world starts to smell, so fresh and intense. But then a weird stench rises, annoying me.

“Non ti preoccupare!” The snake piestess takes a sudden detour with me. “Do not worry! It seems that you are in need of a nappy, principessa. And I should change into another sari. My house is nearby.”

I like it that she talks to me as if I was of her age already. She knows that I am different. That I saw the light.

With Aranea still dancing around us we enter a small bungalow. It is nice and homely in here. Love and laughter seem to echo back to me from each corner.

“Benvenuta! Ti piace?” The snake priestess beams. Welcome! Do you like it?

I can feel a presence reaching out for me playfully. Its touch is comparable to the tickle of rain that I had experienced earlier on. Curiously, I look around.

“Oh, that is Mora, my only child. She was born last sun week. This is why I always have a lot of nappies in my house But you already know about her, don’t you?”

I try my best to make a blank face, but the panic in my eyes seems to give it away.

“Do not worry, principessa. You will find out soon that a lot of people on this Island have supernatural powers. It is the blessing and the curse of the Ophidiae.”

The snake priestess steps towards a large hammock. I just can see an arm hanging out of it, covered with deep wrinkles. That cannot be Mora.

“My aunt Viola is not a very alert babysitter, but Mora is not very demanding. They get on well. It is also the only arrangement possible for me. Most of my family died in service for your family, principessa.”

It makes me sad hear that, but the snake priestess does not seem utterly occupied with that matter. She is a balanced and cheerful woman, doing funny gestures with her hands while she talks. There seems to be a pattern in it. Her fingers radiate power. She is one with the Living Matrix.

“Death and life belong together, principessa. One cannot exist without the other. It keeps the universe in balance. It is left to each of us though to keep ourselves balanced. That is the blessing and the curse of a free will.”

********************************************************************************

After I am provided with a cotton nappy and the snake priestess has changed her own outfit, she allows Aranea and me to take a closer peek into the hammock.

Clenched to the chest of the sleeping crone is a baby girl like me. It is fully awake and gazes at me with lime green eyes. An adventurous sparkle lies in those eyes.

“Mora, meet Principessa Grianán and Aranea Verbera Djed.”

The snake priestess lowers me towards her daughter and our brows touch.

Delighted thoughts and feelings spill into me. I open my mind to Mora without second thought. She is very pleased about my offer of friendship.

Finding friends seems to be easy in the jungle. First Aranea, now Mora. I wonder what else life in my Mother's world has to offer. To pass over the Cycle of Heavens for all this richness proves to be a wonderful exchange.

********************************************************************************

The royal bedchamber lies high on top of a great pyramid. Delicate and graceful flowers frame the countless stone steps. It is a stairway to heaven. My entire skin prickles. This is a place of power, cleverly linked to the Living Matrix; a bridge between heaven and earth.

“These flowers are called orchids, principessa,” Clementia explains to me. “They represent the love between Ischáh and her children, the Ophidiae. In addition, they stand for luxury, beauty and strength.”

I smile my toothless smile.

“It is better to offer the goddess honey and flowers instead of human skulls. In the old times I would have been forced to walk through a sea of dried blood. Be glad that you are born into an age of enlightenment and peace.”

I am with all my heart.

Mother's bed is positioned where the four elements met with the four cardinal points. It is a large hammock in which my twin siblings already lie. I can feel them all in there. It is comforting when they reach out for me telepathically. They recognise me as kin. We had communicated that wordlessly before in mother's womb.

Somebody else is waiting for me, too.

My mouth waters as I am passed on me to a naked chest.

“Ciao, bella!” Mother speaks aloud to me instead of using telepathy. She knows how much I enjoy the vibration of her chest. How excited I am about sounds. Hello, beauty!

Greedily, I find the source of her milk. I relish every gulp that I take.

“I can see Grianán is wearing a nappy, Clementia.” Mother addresses the snake priestess with great kindness. “How good of you to arrange that. I reckon you have children of your own.”

“Si! Just one daughter. Mora is her name.”

I feel Mother walking around with me, rocking me in her arms. “With Isabeau gone for a while, I need a trustworthy and lovable person around. I wonder if you could be that person to the second serpent-spawn. The older ones can take care of themselves.”

“Certainly, regina devina!” exclaims the snake priestess with joy.

I see Mother smile. It lights up her entire body. A corona of love forms around her head. “Clementia, you can also bring your daughter Mora around. Oh and that insolent girl. What is her name again?”

“I think you refer to Aranea, old Noctura's granddaughter.”

Mother nods to herself. “It will do both girls good to have the company of other children. An Ophidea child should not grow up on her own.”

While they engage themselves in a longer conversation, I keep on sucking in milk.

The prospect to see my new friends so soon is very promising. Life seems to have much in stock for me. Things the Cycle of Heaven can not to offer.

********************************************************************************

Later on, a group of children enthusiastically storms into the airy bedchamber. I had felt their presences before, waiting for my birth impatiently. Their shiny, happy faces fill my blurry view.

I get patted and stroked by many hands.

In the late evening hours, our father, Senator Agathos Aletheia, joins us. “Grianán, hárika!” he greets me in the language of his home world Amnion. Grianán, pleased to meet you!

It feels good to be kissed by his bearded face. There is so much kindness in him. His light balances the darkness of Mother. Due to him, she is whole. He is her conscience, her measurement.

I bury my face against his throat.

There is enough love and compassion in this family left to work with. We are not lost yet. I will do what I can to make sure it stayed this way.

Before I entered this word, the Cycle of Heavens bestowed me with some unusual gift to bring light into the darkest night of every soul. I will make usage of this gift as much as possible. Love is the only answer.

********************************************************************************

Within one sun week I meet my own dark mirror. He sneaks in with the twilight of dusk. My siblings and the Shesha guards black out completely when he hits them with his plasma blast. For some reason he missed me.

I make an unhappy sound that causes the stranger to move closer.“Comment?” he says with a deep voice that is muffled by a black cotton veil. How is that possible?

It is my salvation that he does not know what to make of me. Hesitantly, he reaches out with one finger and strokes over my left cheek. His tough is cool for he wears black leather gloves.

“Tu as des beaux yeux,” he starts muttering in his mother tongue, absolutely puzzled. You have beautiful eyes.

I giggle happily.

With his pleasant, husky voice the stranger muses, “There is a verse in the Holy Scriptures. I wonder...”

I am very excited when he lifts me up to the level of his mesmerizing eyes. They are the brightest blue imaginable. In the low light around us the pupils are wide open.

“The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body is full of light, but when thine eye is evil, thy body is also full of darkness,” he says. “Take heed therefore that the light which is in not be darkness.”

I stare back, diving deep into his soul. It is a startling place, so deep and hollow. The memories that are embedded in his skin are of startling intensity.

“A real prince of light,” our mother muses. “How you shine in the Living Matrix, Luçien. You could make angels weep with your beauty.”

I do not know what an angel is, but I like the picture that I get through. They seem to be creatures of grace and light. Knowing my sister that well it is a description that suits her. I cannot wait to have her out here with me.

Fingers wander over my entire body. I can read from our mother's mind that she is counting my limbs and checks if I am really as perfect as she had hoped me to be. Patiently, I suffer her investigation.

Suddenly our mother freezes in shock. Her muscles tell her that Lisiére, curious from my calls and driven by the laws of nature, is approaching. Soon we will be united again. Just as it should be.

My happiness is flawed. I pick up emotions from our mother that puzzle me. Rejection. Anger. They are directed at my sister. What has she done to deserve this? She is also perfect. There is no reason not to welcome her.

I tear myself away from a past that it not mine. Pity for my would-be assassin fills me. I understand his pain. Mother also did not bid my brother welcome as it should be. I know how it feels to lose a sibling.

“Damn you, Sionnach O'Conghaile!” Luçien mutters under his breath in Basic, the common spoken tongue. “I cannot kill a baby. How could you possibly have known that I would fail?”

Frowning, I look up to him, keen on helping him in his distress. Love seems to be the answer. I have so much of it at my disposal that I do not mind sharing. Life, as far as I have learned by now, is about making sacrifices.

Along with a tiny piece of my soul, I place a bright, burning promise inside Luçien. He is stunned, at first.

“What have you done, you miserable beast?” he presses out. “How dare you! What evil magic is that?”

Calmly, I look up to him.

“For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed,” he barks at me. “Neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in to light. And which ye spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”

There is nothing evil in my deed. There is no need to throw quotations of the Holy Scriptures in my face. I have only taken refuge in the oldest magic in the entire universe. The very one that holds the treads of creation together and makes life possible: love.

I have done Luçien a favour and no harm. My light shines in his chest like a beacon of hope now.

He flees the scene, but I know he will return. We belong to one another like day and night. From now on, his soul will crave for its counterpart. And I have to live with a strain of his darkness, but I can manage that.

********************************************************************************

Around midnight, when the moon stands high above the evergreen roof of the jungle, Mother enters her bed chamber. She stands there gaping at the scene she beholds. Apart from me, everybody else is still paralysed. Her emerald eyes glow in the darkness. She picks me up with shaky hands.

“I will get Isabeau back with us,” Mother says more to herself than to me. “She will keep that murderous step-brother of hers at bay.”

Through telepathy she sends out emergency calls. Soon the place swarms with priestesses of Ischáh, helping my siblings and the female palace guards.

While Mother sinks down on the floor to feed me, she announces, “Tomorrow, you will meet your grandmother Techné and your uncle Kairos. They are quite a nuisance. Your elder siblings are still saying good-night to them. It will take them a while to break free from their grasp.”

So this was the reason for her prolonged absence. She had been hosting relatives from Amnion. I am eager to meet Father's human family.

********************************************************************************

Grandmother Techné Aletheia is loveable no matter what the rest of my siblings think of her. Underneath her stern surface there is a woman who had suffered a great loss. Since the death of Grandfather Xenophobes her only comfort is her religion, which clashes with my culture.

The humans of Amnion believe in the one and true god, Parhelion. He is the center point of their lives. For them he is an indivisible being, the ultimate cause of all existence. His revealed essence, which transcends the universe, also represents his compassion towards his creation. He is incomparable.

I wonder if Parhelion is the overwhelming love that I felt in the Cycle of the Heavens. Grandmother certainly carries some of that love in her heart, but she only shows it to me. Especially, when she holds me in her withered arms. She likes to quote from the prayer book then, that she carries around with her night and day.

“Gaze at the heavens and see, and view the skies, which are higher than you. If you sinned, how do you harm Parhelion, and if your transgressions are many, what do you do to Parhelion? If you are righteous, what do you give Parhelion? Or what does Parhelion take from your hand? Your wickedness affects a person like yourself, and your righteousness a child of humanity.”

I am glad that Grandmother acknowledges my human heritage. Uncle Kairos does not. I agree with my brothers and sisters on him. He is a superficial man who has no love in his heart for any of us. We are dirty reptiles to him, tainted by Mother's blood line. His thoughts about this flaw are horrible.

Each time Uncle Kairos finds me in Grandmothers company, he glares down on me with full of revulsion. He makes no attempt to touch me and for that I am grateful. I could not bare to be touched by him. It would break me apart. Of that I am certain.

His bad attitude makes Father sad. The loveable wrinkles around his eyes are lines of sorrow these days. His olive coloured face has an ivory glance to it. And his deep voice is stained somehow.

Marquise Isabeau Riwalan, the royal nanny, distracts us all with her sudden return to court. Being irritated with Mother for various reasons, she has spent some time away in the Mare Coloris, the Colour Desert at the equator.

I like the Lidérc immediately. Her cat eyes are of a deep yellow tone. She has brown hair, that she tames with a half veil. Her copper skinned face is sharp and triangular, with high cheekbones. It reminds me of the Athame daggers of the Shesha guard. But Nanny needs no steal weapon in combat. Her hands can be dangerous claws and her smiley mouth hides mighty fangs. But I am not afraid of her. I sense her affection for all of us.

All in all, the return of the Marquise makes me whole again. The two of us bond quickly. She is constantly rubbing her head, body, or face against me. I can almost perceive that is a way to mark me as her own with her scent.

I wonder if I could ever get her step-brother Luçien to like me that way. Feline affection seems to be a book with seven seals. The Lidérc are a proud, mysterious race.

Nanny carries the serenity of the desert with her. With all the information and impressions raining down on me since I have been re-born, I need her calmness very much. The majority of her memories is nice.

At daylight, the L' œil du ciel mirrors the caramel coloured sky of my home planet Sapuhru in a very beautiful way. In the weak light of the twin moons Sodalith and Calme, the lake reminds me more of a drop of spilled lamp oil.

With a smile I dip a foot into the warm salt water. “Are you coming?” I ask into the dense night shadows. For many, many heartbeats I wait for a satisfying answer, but only the sound of the wind is to be heard.

I shrug and walk straight into the lake. “Well, as you wish, my brother.”

When Luçien’s elegant body hits the water, I scream out with both joy and surprise.

My whole race is considered unpredictable, but my step-brother is the greatest enigma of all. His moods are as ever-changing as the dune sea itself. To determine his actions is even more difficult. On top of all, he is a big teaser.

“You scoundrel!” I cry out.

“Yes, my beloved desert rose?”

Giggling softly, I try to hit him, but he is too fast for me. He whirls around me with the lightness of a belly dancer. Full of love, pride and admiration I look at him.