Chapter 27: 27. Fate - 2

“Where are we going?” She stretched her awareness as far as the barrier, but saw nothing to justify the trek.

Achi was still silent. She caught up with him and found him staring pensively ahead, lost in thought. Suddenly, he came to a halt. They were in a clearing. Brush still grew underfoot, but there was a wide space between the trees.

It appeared suddenly and all at once. Columns rose from the ground, reaching three stories high and bearing up a silver roof. The dirt and grass below them disappeared, turning into golden tiles. They were standing on the porch of a grand building, every inch of wall gleaming in the light.

“Don’t touch anything.” While she stared, Achi walked between the columns and pushed open a pair of silver doors. They opened with barely a whisper and stopped long before they would have collided with the golden walls beside them.

Aria followed when she had seen her fill of gold and silver. But there was more of the same inside. “You built this just now?”

“No,” Achi said. “I made it visible.”

“And what is it? What does it have to do with the truth?”

He ignored her and walked instead across the room, confident that she would follow. The silence was growing irritating, but she endured it, knowing that a discovery was close.

Except for the columns holding up the ceiling, the room was empty. It was simply one large hall with gold walls, silver ceilings, and a headache-inducing sparkle. Three walls - the three without the door - were covered with white cloth suspended from the ceiling. With her spirit vision, she could sense art on those walls, but she could see no reason to cover them.

Achi led her until they were standing in the center of the room and then, with a gesture, he detached the sheets and let them drop to the ground.

Aria stared at the revealed carvings in silence, one at a time, slowly turning in a circle. They told a disjointed story, frame by frame, a young girl, growing, playing, and growing some more until she was a woman. Then the same woman in different clothing, at different times. Finally, they depicted that woman dying on a stone altar, surrounded by roses.

“Is this a joke?”

There was no humor on Achi’s face and that was fitting, because there was no humor on hers.

He shook his head, walked up to one of the panels, and stroked the carving there. “Not at all, Aria. Meet my treasured love, Ovi, Goddess of Time and Fate.”

Aria took another glance at the female feature, anger fighting with her confusion and winning. “Why does she look like me?”

“Actually,” Achi raised a finger. “You look like her.”

There was a taste of sadness in his voice. It drew her attention for a moment, but her anger was becoming fury. She was no goddess, but it was no excuse to taunt her.

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“Explain yourself.” She turned her face from the carvings, because the sight of herself as a mural made solely out of precious stones was too much to take in.

He stroked the first mural, the one with the youngest girl. “I did this one first, when I was nine. It was on paper then, with a brush and paint. It took a month.” He stared at the artwork as his voice carried grief back to her. “I couldn’t find the right colors. I could see her in my mind, but each time I put a brush on paper or on wood or on stone, I created a monstrosity.”

The girl looked to be about ten years old, still in that awkward stage where she was neither child nor woman. Her eyes were too large, her hair fought its braids. She looked exactly like Aria in the years before her trials.

“I did this one next.” He had walked to the next mural and sighed with joy. “I got her exactly right.”

This was a full-grown woman, still young, but no child. She wore clothing Aria had never worn, a green gown with gold embroidery and a hem that fluttered in the wind. Her face was full of pleasure at the sun on her skin. She seemed to be tasting something sweet - perhaps the wind. Aria had never looked like that, but the woman also had her face.

“I don’t have time for your life story,” she said.

“This one,” he approached another work. “This one is recent. I didn’t touch a brush for centuries. Papa would not say where she was, when she would be born, if she was already dead. He wouldn’t say anything at all. And waiting was torture, so I locked everything up.” His voice had grown somber. “I found other things to do. The day I painted this, he told me that he had found her.”

He moved on. “He wouldn’t let me see her for two more years. I painted every day, but none of them were worth displaying. This one,” he indicated a painting that Aria knew for certain to be her, “I made the day after our first meeting. Everything else came from my imagination but this one is real.”

The setting was familiar. It was a street in Nehyer, her last posting before she left for the middle realm. She wore a plain brown dress, just down to her knees. There was no smile on her face; there was little smiling in those days.

“And this one,” Achi approached the only painting that was not a full figure. It was only a face. “I painted this on the day you rejected me.”

Aria sighed. “Is it possible that you have a mental illness?” She had never seen him before the feast. “Or did you erase my memories?”

Achi laughed, loudly, mirthlessly, and maniacally. “You see?! You can’t even recall it. That is how little I meant. Two months is not the longest time, but one would think that it would make an impression.”

She backed away from him.

His expression sobered. “I won’t hurt you Aria. I know you’re not her.”

He ignored the remaining two paintings. One showed her waving goodbye, dressed with all the opulence of a goddess and smiling sadly. The last was the one of her death.

The images were terrifying and confusing, but Achi’s expression was more disturbing. He seemed lost, starved, and in actual agony. It seemed as if an undercurrent of grief suddenly bubbled, completely transforming the man she had known before. There was no trace of his usual lightness.

“You said her name is -”

“Ovi,” Achi dropped to sit on the pristine floor. “That’s what I named her. I can see her face, not her name.”

“Why can you see her face?”

He flashed a sad smile. “You’re remarkably dense when you wish to be. My father is a god of love, Aria. We are different in many ways, but I share that affliction with him. We are the only deities who were not previously human. He, he claims, was created ‘The Power’. I don’t know who that is, but I think he’s another god. I was created by my father, just like you were created by yours. The same, but different, because I don’t have a mother. He knew me from his first moment, knew me as the thing most precious to him. I had no form, none more than one of these paintings when they were still in my mind,” he tapped his skull “but I occupied every moment of his life.”