“Trust us. Join with us.”
I have joined with them, I do trust Love. Why are they doing this to me? What more could they want? I try to remember more of that first as I roll to my side. Twisting and turning, my braids wrap around my body like tentacles until I am cocooned.
“STOP.”Love’s bellow rips through the ether. My bones ache, my teeth threaten to fall from my mouth with fear just as my tears do. I stop twisting, stop breathing, stop thinking.
My mind fractures, pink shards of light splintering across my vision until I see something new.
Orthia swimming, her body a mass of tentacles that moves with grace and destruction. Bubbles explode from her mouth, but she keeps going. She’s chasing something, but I can’t see what. There is nothing I can do to save her, to stop her. More tears slip down my face. I can’t blink them away as I watch my soulmate’s pink glow slip further and further away from the darkness.
“Please, Love, please, tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it.” My words echo and reverberate around the abyss until I am drowning in the sound of it. There is no escape from the desperation in my voice, the tragedy of my new life ending so soon.
“We wait, sweet one, we wait for our heart.”Love whispers, the hope in their voice chilling me to my soul. Hope is supposed to be a positive emotion, yet our patron, our Love has only ever been sure, all knowing. Why do they need hope when they simply are?
Orthia screams. Bubbles erupt around her and the tentacles that make up her body suddenly recede. She floats in the dark waters, lifeless. Her body is mangled now, limbs not where they should be. I choke on a sob at the vision before me. The tentacles that are etched into her skin glow faintly, her soul still fighting, still chasing. But her body has given up.
“Please,” I whisper, “Come to us, Orthia, find me and we can fix this together.”
“Her destiny has split,” Love echoes the same words they spoke to me months ago. “She must choose her new path now that she has done what she set out to do centuries ago.”
“I don’t understand,” I cry. “We have a path. It’s to bring you to our world, Love. So we can be together, rule together.”
“Yes, sweet one,”they purr.“We three shall rule the tides and seas, but as you have given us your body, we have given our heart to another. As you have evolved so must she now.”
It’s not dread that unravels my braids coiling around me, though it isn’t relief either. A sense of understanding and finality, anticipation as I wait for my wife, my love, my captain to make the choice I know she will make. My limbs move with ease now, as if recognition has released me from whatever was mentally blocking me.
A movement in the corner catches my eyes and I float towards it. A glimmering pink light, barely strong enough to break through the darkness, settles around a curled-up form. Tentacles wrap and twist around it, cocooning it just like I was moments ago. I fold myself over it, and something comes over me. I have to know who or what this is. I pull at the tentacles until I see what’s actually there. A body takes shape, a monster I haven’t seen before or heard the crew talk about. It’s soft, angelic even, with teal skin and tentacles that form at odd places before fading back into the dark.
“Love?” I whisper, unsure how this could be our patron, our god. I know it is, though, in the same way that I knew Orthia was my soulmate after that first vision; something about this creature tells me this is who Love used to be.
Six eyes open at once and look at me. There is something innocent and destructive in them that calls to me.“Would you still choose a god who used to cower?”
The question stops me. Imagining our Love, scared and alone in this dark place cracks my open. More tears fall streak my face as I look at them anew. I cup their cheek, feeling the scars and groves under my palm. And I know the truth.
Their story has been locked away in the depths of the abyss just as they have. Mistreated and abused by primordial gods the world has forgotten, Love was locked away and forgotten, cast aside just like those they have spent eons trying to help heal. Love has given so much to the rest of us, but it is time now that she sees the light again.
“It’s your turn to evolve, Love.” My voice cracks as I speak to them. “You know Orthia will make the right choice just like you knew I was the one.”
They lean into my touch, tentacles wrapping around my hand and slowly wrapping around my arm.“We will be forever grateful for your trust in us, sweet one.”
I lean down further until my forehead is pressed to theirs. My body sinks into theirs, tentacles warming my skin and soothing my racing heart. There is a flash of pink light.
“We have a captain to save,” I murmur, my nose brushing against their face.
Love kisses my lips for the first and last time.“She has always been a reckless heart.”
Chapter twenty-eight
Epilogue - Orthia
0 Days
Islapmyhandacross my face when something tickles me. The joints in my fingers crack with the impact of my jaw and that is how I know I am alive. I can still see the explosion, wood splintering, the choppy waters bursting as their tentacle ripped through the yacht.
Behind my eyelids, there is no pink glow, just a dark orange. I am warm and dry, except for the spot that touched my face. A part of me doesn’t want to open my eyes. I don’t want to return toThe Despairwith a crew who will see that I am back, but she isn’t. I can’t bear the emptiness that will come with it. The lightness she brings to our life will be replaced with the weight of my failure.
I don’t know how, but I have failed myomphalosand my Love.
A tear slips from the corner of my eye, cooling my heated skin. Their words echo in my thoughts:to forge a path unknown, you must relinquish that which isn’t yours.
