Mya looked around. His ship was not anything like she had expected. Although she was not sure what she had even expected. It was not though the big shiny metal disk about which her father had told her stories as a small child. It was much smaller, could perhaps manage only a dozen people. Its shape too more closely resembled a boat from which its name derived. It was dark, as black as the night sky. They would have walked right past it had it not been for him.
Being practically raised in the temple, the very idea of traveling to the stars boggled her mind. Seemed almost wrong somehow. Were not the stars and moons homes of the gods and goddesses? What right did mere mortals have to such aspirations?
She leaned against a wall, one that seemed barren of the lights and buttons with which the giant was playing at the moment. When they had emerged from the temple into the deepest darkness that happened when only one of Tavia's moon was visible in the sky just before the first of its suns, the red giant, rose over Rata's waters, the group was tired and bedraggled. Even she, who had endured far less than her sisters, felt the strain of the battle. But he had pushed them, moved them forward. Tam, he had a name too, she reminded herself. Some part of her wanted still to hate the man, who was after all one of them, the Morians, their destroyers. Yet he had fought so hard to save them, was so attentive to Soji.
She worried for her sisters. Soji was so quiet and withdrawn, and in the light of his ship Mya could see dried blood around her breasts and a nasty dark purple bruise upon her cheek. Rata wore a matching mark upon her cheek as well, but it was the deathly stillness that worried Mya the most. Her sister of the water had not moved at all since he had taken her down from the altar. She simply lay limply in his arms.
The boy clung to her, refusing to put her down even now that they had reached the ship. Aved had found lead them to a bench against another wall. Had run about finding medical supplies, asking Tam for what he needed and even sneaking out into the darkness for fresh water that might cleanse and soothe her wounds.
Mya felt useless at the moment. She smiled, but she had not been useless to them this evening. She had been the High Priestess of the air. For that moment, she had felt as powerful and gifted as Aved, Lano and her sisters had always said she was. It was her winds and clouds that had hidden them. Her winds combined with Soji's quakes that had toppled the altar.
Oh sweet goddess, it was they, who destroyed her temple. Not the Morians, but her High Priestesses that had torn it all down. A soft cry escaped her parched throat as she dropped her head in self-loathing.
She felt the gentle embrace of Soji's arms about her then, but they brought small comfort. The altar was destroyed, the temple likely to be as well by the time that the red giant raised its head on the rising. Their way of life was no more. The great chasm of uncertainty stretched out before her. She no longer even knew who she was. How could she be the High Priestess of the air without an altar or a temple?
"Tam says he is almost ready, little sister. He will send Leamus and Rata through the transporter first. Then you and Aved. He and I will take the ship to meet up with his friends from the Morian resistance force," she smiled but Mya noticed the hollow almost blank expression in her eyes.
She nodded, "Will Rata be all right?"
Soji shook her head, "I do not know. Tam says he is not sure. She endured far from than most people could take. But Tam says that she is strong willed, that perhaps the goddess can over time undo with their technology did. He is sending them to some place he calls Earth. Over three-quarters of it is her water."
"We should go with her then. Perhaps together we can heal her, bring her back from the edge as we did before," Mya pleaded.
Soji shook her head, "No, it is not safe. We cannot remain together. If we were all captured, fell into the Morian hands." She stopped and sighed heavily, "I am sorry this is all my fault."
"No, no, it is not."
"I was his counselor. He even told me of his plans. Of the treaty with the Morians. If I had listened with my heart to the goddess, if I had seen Versil as he truly was," her sister looked down at her hands. Mya realized that her nails still bore dark blue stains beneath them. Her lover's blood. Soji had taken his life herself. Mya felt her stomach roll. If she were forced to... If she ever had to face the choice to end his life, she doubted she could. No matter what.
She inhaled a cleansing breath forced her troubled mind back from that line of thought. Her sisters needed her now. While Rata might lie unconscious in the boy's arms, Mya feared that the wounds to Soji's spirit were far more threatening than the ones to her body.
"Listen to me, none of this is your fault," but her sister merely pulled away at her protests. She had never pulled away before, never denied them the comfort and solace they needed. And for the first time, Mya truly realized how very much their world had changed. The bonds that they shared as sisters were gone. As shattered as the altar to the goddess that they had served their whole lives.
She trembled as that uncertainty once more swallowed her very soul. Then she felt another set of arms about her shoulders. Stronger arms, wider shoulders to bear this new burden, a comforting chest upon which she had so often rested her head when she was troubled. Like her sisters, he had always been there. And if what Soji said was true, he would be the only one upon which she could rely in whatever lay ahead.
As she remembered the other dream that she had as she suckled at Rata's breast, just the previous rising, such a brief moment that seemed like a life time ago, she was both comforted by his familiar presence and frightened of how even this might change. But change seemed the only thing that was certain in her world at the moment.
She could shrink away from it, in doubt or self-pity as it seemed her sister was, or she could step forward and embrace it, confident that the woman, whose winds and fog could blind and army long enough to get them to safety could ride those same winds of changes into whatever the future held for them, confident in her goddess and herself. Looking back and forth between her sisters, one of them must embrace this new day. It might as well be her.
She nodded her head and wrapped her arms about her protector. "I am ready."
***
