Love and Mercy (Storybit)
She sat out in the Courtyard, beneath the light of the full moon and the stars, nothing else offering to chase the darkness away. It was quiet, here, like a sanctuary for Surayya in such a strange place. At her side was a small pouch of sand, something never kept far from her, for one never knows when the need to employ such tactics might come. The basin in front of her had belonged to Surayya since she was thirteen, when the moon took claim of her and she was dedicated into Umm's service, and the gift was bestowed upon her. It had belonged to Basira, the High Priestess of Umm that was nearly as old as the desert sands and was her mentor. Its history, and the futures of so many, had been seen within its depths.
Right now, it held nothing but water, and the reflections of the stars upon its surface. The smile that came to the Priestess' lips was something bittersweet, and it matched the aching of her heart.
They were lovers once. Happy and entangled, bright and bound together.
When they were torn apart, they wailed in protest.
Tears still fall from one, and the other still reaches for what was lost.
The words played in her head, the whole of the story that she knew, and something twisted within her, further. "No one should know so much pain," Surayya whispered to the night air. "Not forever. Nothing should stand in the way of true love. Not even worlds." It tugged at her in a way it would no other. This was the burden of a daughter of Umm, what it meant to be a scion of mercy, devoted to a goddess that wept for an endless night at the loss she and her people had felt. It was pain, and it was love, and it was suffering. But it was also hope, and mercy. Always.
The thought of pain, of suffering, brought her mind elsewhere. For a moment, an image flickered across the water, a man in browns with a familiar jaw. Surayya hesitated, the span of several heartbeats, before she ran her fingertips across the water and the image rippled away. She had offered him what she could. His fate was his own. Words spilled from her lips, chants that had belonged to others before her, would belong to others after her. One endless song in praise of Umm, in remembrance of Ab, of love and mercy. It lasted until the first rays of dawn, when finally the priestess' voice was no more, and the water was blessed. Grains of sand marked the place she had knelt, memories of a desert left far behind, but would always be with her.