Goddess Fish Party Pavilion

Fate is a fickle thing...

 

One moment I was gripping the rail in front of me in the gallery, the next I was looking up from the floor beneath where I had stood, my disbelief and quiet ‘No’ echoing in my mind.

As I and everyone in the room around me had watched, the six brothers had moved to stand as a solid wall behind Rigor and the portal that had flared to life between them. It had grown ominously, like a bad dream in slow motion to the horror of all who saw it. Their faces had all gone still and determined as the crowd watched them leap and surround Rigor as he fell backwards from a position in front where he had stood frozen in mid-speech to Amaranos when he had been struck dumb. Mandre had collapsed in his seat and Jonet had jumped up screaming for her sons, though no sound had passed her lips. The shock of the events had stilled their sister as if she too had been struck dumb by the god with her brother. The scene would forever be frozen in my mind.

In the twinkle of time between when the six leapt and when they connected with Rigor and fell through the portal, I had watched as Tynan’s immortal form was revealed to me though he had not changed. It was a lightning strike that lanced me open. He was mine. He was gone. It was that simple and that fast. His eyes met mine for less than a moment and I believe he had seen me as well. Our match-mating would never be.

I was lost to a whirlwind of emotion, and then I found myself on the floor with my skirts in disarray about me. My hair was disheveled and my face wet with tears I didn’t remember crying. I was a heaped mess where only my feet had been. The future that I had always known as a lady-in-waiting to Amarine was a secondary thought now to the one I would never know as Tynan’s mate. I did not know I would ever want a match-mating. Now that it was lost to me, I found I wanted it more than anything.

 

     Rising from where I had landed and looking around, the gallery had cleared and Amaranos had retired from the court floor. Mandre and Jonet sat consoling one another with Jondre looking on wearing the same face of stunned disbelief she had been wearing before her brothers were gone. The room felt hollow. The floor of the court below revealed no difference now, or that anything had happened, much less that a portal to somewhere unknown had appeared and taken the seven warriors in the time it takes to sneeze.

 

~Through the Oracle's Mist, Aedan Byrnes

 

 

 

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