Free El and Onine by K. P. Ambroziak Page B

lost
altogether. When I found mineral beds beneath the golden landscape, I made my
plans to erect Kypria’s hall of jade.
    We worked alongside the sapients we enslaved. The
younglings were easy to ensnare, most of them starving from my goddess’s
immolation of their planet. Saturnia’s sister was assigned to appease their
anguish and discomfort with matter she transformed into sweet
substances—anise root and serum, she called them. We soon realized certain
things should be kept from my goddess’s immolation, and had to leave some of
the organic matter alive to nourish the sapients, and ourselves—wheat,
milk and grains were our new staple.
    When Mara
returned, as my goddess said she would, she was made an honorary Kyprian. She
was a funny creature and eventually I grew to like her, but I was hesitant at
first, when my goddess brought her through the smoke to meet me, as I marked
the lava temperatures in the Bathing Temple.
    “Onine,” my goddess said.
    I paid no attention, forgetting the name she had
given me. She called me a third time before I answered. When I looked at both beings,
I saw them as one. The sapient basked in Kypria’s flame and my goddess was more
beautiful because of it. Each one reflected the other, a visual trick that made
me lose sapient speech for a brief moment and I responded with a Venusian shriek.
My goddess’s glare put me back in my place.
    “This is Mara,” she said. “She is to begin work in
the Bathing Temple. She will need to be trained and you shall be her keeper.”
    I
nodded my approval and accompanied her through the cedar door into the steam of
the baths. When Kypria left us, the change in the sapient’s reflection struck
me at once.
    “We will begin with the chains,” I said.
    She remained quiet but bowed her head and followed
me through the Temple. I worked with Mara for a full lunar cycle, whenever the
eye lit the landscape, and she barely spoke to me in that time. I would give her
direction and she would simply obey with a nod. I often saw her looking into
the baths dreamily, as though willing herself somewhere else. I thought we were
gentle masters but the sapient suffered despite our innocuous nature. At times,
I longed to remove her veil of silk, to see her thoughts written on her cheeks.
Her dark eyes revealed little to me, but I remembered the expression on her face
at our first encounter. Her fear, her disdain, her anger were evident in the
coloring of her sapient flesh. To see her face would have told me the things I
wanted to know.
    Saturnia’s sister learned of my desire. “Your
curiosity is fitting. Be patient. You will know the chosen one soon enough.”
    “For what is she chosen?”
    “I cannot say yet, Onine.” She teased me with my new
name, knowing I disliked it. “But you have a greater task on Venus before the
one on Terra. The goddess prepares for our return.”
    I had forgotten about our return. Our work had been
instantaneous but we had to face Midan, unable to evade him much longer. Though
we did not speak of the Venusian rebellion, Kypria’s role in the war was
inevitable. Thoughts of the voyage back made me uneasy, though not for the
reasons I suspected.
    Shortly before our return to Venus, Kypria summoned
me to the hall of stones. The crystal shrine was as beautiful as the one on our
home planet since terrestrial jade was as rich as the stones from Menaleck. My goddess’s
presence amplified the energy the jade emitted and I was soon drunk with
Kyprian sublimity. I could barely dim my flame to greet her with the reverence
she deserved.
    “Your admiration warms me,” she said. “I will know
it always.”
    “I hope so, goddess. I exist to please you.”
    She looked around the glass hall. “Even here.”
    “Anywhere.”
    Our new forms had changed us in subtle ways but we
felt the burden of the one thing sapients possess that we do not. They are
connected to their soil, inundated with the weight of their planet’s core and
bound to it