Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
“Watch the dance.”
He had been. “Why this one?” he persisted.
“The fruit of the sowing,” she whispered, her eyes on the ripening field of
grains. “Watch the dance.”
He still had been, through it all. Did Ulanda know this dance? “I told her that
we were one soul,” he whispered over the song of the dried stalks. Reeds and
drums in the wind, and shivers of sound like a multitude of rattles.
“A pairing. What do you expect in a love story.”
“Except you had to invent me.”
“So you said.”
So she had. “And the Wa'tic, the ti'Linn and Spann?”
He thought the wind howled. “Isn't this enough for you?”
He thought of Sarkalt and Poss a'ltic and their parts in shaping this. En'talac
and Quin'tat and how she had all the courage for the two of them. Garm. Empire,
Simic and Altasimic. The Zimmer, Clan and freeborn. Questions asked and
answered. Promises. He still held the allipalli stem and blossom in one hand.
He turned his head to look at her. Cloud shadows and sun. He stood in a
garden of sand, the golden light above him breaking. He held both beads in one
hand. Oimit's body was gone; at his feet was plain sand. No pattern of rings or
waves and his were the only footprints. No shattered stones that had been Tu'pin.
He looked around. Kori and Silassic, Peecit, the twins... they were all gone.
Alicia stood at the entrance to the ruined pavilion, the light casting shifting
runs of dark and gold over her. Bolda was beside her. She took one step down
towards him then stopped, her eyes on Mirwin and Ulanda. “Both beads,” he said
to Alicia and saw her eyes return to him. “I won't say good-bye. She said it was a
love story. I think it's just beginning.”
“Yours or hers?”
One small hand crossed her waist; he didn't think she realized it. Twins. A
pairing... again. He laughed - thinking of growing ears and eyes and how the
pairing of male and female could be a difficult concept for a god to master, but
once done, repeated over and over much as a child pats sand into a pail to make
the same shape over and over without tiring of it. A simple joy, a simple love
story. His laughter died when the golden shadows moving across Alicia's face
darkened into a frown. He told her. “The Simic created her - or the awareness
that is her - but it was both too static and too small a part of what she was...
what she is.” What Garm had of her. The words he wanted didn't exist. “What will
be created now won't have the same limits. Your choices, the Spann...”
Bolda snorted.
One of the moving shadows behind Bolda had a form. Hic'lic. “Go, stay,” it said
in plain-tongue. “Petals in snow. Fly.”
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca