2 Part 2

Outside the knowledge of my parents, I spent much of my time with Victorie. The reason I got away with it for the most part was that my father had duties at the Great Temple.

All this time, we avoided anyone who would notice us together. Because my father had the habit of putting the fear of Oru into the populace, all people tended to notice me ... and want to gain favor with my father—even if it meant telling him about Victorie.

Eventually, Victorie had gotten used to my continued presence, and I got to know more about her personal convictions. In some ways, it was as though I had befriended a wild animal by giving it space, and moving around it slowly.

At one point, she asked me what it was like to be the son of a high-ranking Priest of Oru. I did more than tell her. I managed to smuggle my schoolbooks out of my house, and I tried to explain to her how the whole system worked.

"That is no life," she stated flatly to me. "Basically, you do what you're told, and if you don't agree, you get punished by being ... excom ... what does that bloody word mean?"

"Excommunicated," I specified for her. "It means that you are banished from the religion you once belonged to, and you no longer have its benefits."

"What 'benefits'? Wouldn't you want to get out of that hell-hole?!" she exclaimed. I didn't meet her eyes. Then we spent an hour going over another chapter. "What is this about Blooded Ones?"

"They are talking about females. Oru made men in his image and woman as the means to continue them. The reason they are called Blooded Ones is because they go through ... um ... cycles of menstruation ..."

"Thank you, I know what it is," she answered smoothly, "but why are we the inferior ones?"

"I don't know ... because they," notice how I did not say 'I', "believe that to give women power is to allow blood to spill again ..."

The defiance behind her voice said more than even her words. "That is such garbage ... garbage! And then ... look at this, 'In order for a woman to be allowed to associate with a Son of Oru, she must go through a cycle of purification. She must do so in order to fulfill her ultimate and only purpose—to bear male heirs to continue the Blessed Race?" she ended off with incredulity.

I realized then that there were some things I could not justify. The force that drove me to know her lacked the power to explain the actions of my own culture.

"Well, I will never let a man control me. Ever." She regarded me for a long while, assessing my eyes as I did hers when I first met her. "You don't believe in this either, do you?"

It was that very realization that brought me further away from my theological imprisonment and closer to understanding her. Victorie wanted to tell me her views on existence. Instead of telling me, though, I encouraged her to write these ideas down. As time progressed, her rudimentary writing skills became stronger, and she started writing small poems and short polemics.

When her main work was done, she handed it to me, "I don't know if I did this properly, but can you look over it?"

Once I agreed, I took the papers from her. It read: It is said that Oru created Nature and then He made us. But if He made men to be superior, and if He were All-Knowing, then why did He give women or the 'Blooded Ones' the potential to do the same if it is forbidden? Why give us these desires and deny us the satisfaction? Why forbid any of us to indulge in happiness?

I read onward, I believe that Nature made us first, and that some among us created Oru to enslave the rest of us, to rob us of our simple delights, and to enforce unnaturalness upon us. I still believe that we have freedom, if not paradise—the freedom to survive and the freedom to die. I want to be free, her material confided, we were born from Nature, and we will go back to it when we die. I want to go back while I still live, her words created an odd pang inside of me, what do you want?

"To be free like you," I whispered softly to myself.

She also told me about her family, "We were exiled from our Realm of Arema when some raiders came and destroyed our home. It was a beautiful place, our Realm—a place of vast and ancient trees. You could sense the life flowing there ... Not like this Realm—filled with cities, and rigid boundaries."

So she and her parents moved to this Realm, where the Theocracy would not accept them due to their 'outsider heathen' origins, and it left them in the poorer and more squalid districts of the City of Light. In the end, her parents couldn't support her, and they abandoned her to fend for herself. She had to steal for sustenance in order to survive. The word 'sustenance' had a broad definition in her mind. Not only was it nourishment for her body, but for her mind as well.

As time went on, we became close as I confided my secrets to her about my life, about how I was dissatisfied with the existence my father wanted for me and how I got sick sometimes with migraines that seemed to get worse as I got older.

Once, I cried convulsively in her arms when the pain inside me was too intense to bear, suffocating me, choking me. "I'm so sick of this ..." I sobbed. She would merely sit there and rock me gently, whispering, "It's all right. Shush. It's all right ..."

It escapes me when Victorie realized that I was more than just a friend. Perhaps it had been one of the many stories I read to her ... I cannot recall.

"I loved that story," she breathed, after I had read it out to her, "I felt like I could almost touch the worlds and beings you wrote about," and just as I was going to look away from her bashfully, she kissed me. Then, I returned the gesture until we both expressed the passion that had been hiding just above the surface of our relationship.

Our first kiss had been sweet and innocent. How could anyone have had the sheer gall to say that what we had was wrong or unholy?

It wasn't fair. No, you don't understand. I was a man, and she was a woman. Or if we were too young to be given those roles, I suppose you could say I was a young boy, and she, a girl. Better yet, let us just say that we were male and female—two genders whose relations with each other were supposed to be natural. So how could it have been wrong? Of course, every contradiction has its scapegoat, does it not? This one's excuse had been religion. For, after all, did not the spirit transcend the flesh?

Oru ruled the All in wisdom and compassion. But if He created the All—would He have not also created the simple joys between men and women? Would He have not accepted all beings that He created as His children? But why then did His Priests—His thrice-damned Priests—condemn our association? If the spirit really did transcend the flesh like the Priests had preached, then did it really matter where the souls came from?

"I love you," she said one day when our young blood ran hot and we lay expended in each other's arms.

From that moment onward, I stopped praying to that god—that unseen, removed, inhuman god of a Light that hurt my eyes and invaded my privacy. I always felt guilty—guilty for existing, for displeasing my parents, and for writing of things that did not exist by Oru's creed and only for my own selfishness. Most of all, I felt guilty for having Victorie love me—loving me and being unable to return the favor. But no more ... Ever since I was born, I accepted my abuse in silence and without question until I realized that the philosophy I was forced to serve would rob me of the woman I loved.

They said that it was profane for a son of Oru to touch a heathen Bleeding One? They said that Victorie was a Bleeding One? I loved her for that, too ... I wanted her to bleed all over me, all over my soul—to allow her fierceness of spirit, her simple, raw passion for life to eat away the dead, sterile whiteness of my spirit and invigorate both my body and my mind. I wanted to live .. to live without fear, or resentment ...

She would become my Victorie ... against all the years of suppression and isolation ... against the guilt as unnatural and artificial as the sterilized pristine womb that nurtured it ... In her dark brown eyes, I lost myself to the natural beauty within her ... Then, one day, things changed.

Somewhere along the line, I found out that Victorie had known how to read and write all along. The reason I knew was that she told me that another had taught her before I did. She told her friend all about me, and apparently her friend wanted to see me as well. At first, I was unsure. But then I knew that Victorie would never betray me.

"She tells me she knows how to cure your headaches," she explained to me.

That notion did intrigue me. They were very painful indeed. My fingers would spasm when they

came to me, and writing only relieved them for a time. When we found Victorie's friend, she was hiding in the shadows of an alleyway. Once I saw her, I marveled at the contrast between Victorie and the woman I saw before me.

She was pale skinned—her flesh as alabaster as the walls of the Holy City itself. The woman had long, and luxurious strands of black hair that served as a halo framing her faintly cherubic, fragile visage. Her face was impassive, but there was life behind her dark gray eyes—a gaze that seemed to devour the details of everything directly in its sight.

"So," her voice had a lilting tone to it, almost making it musical, "He is your friend, Victorie?"

"Yes, Master," and I saw my beloved bow slightly toward her.

"Pardon me," I questioned the woman, "But might I inquire as to who you might be?" I learned my etiquette ages ago after my father beat it into me several times.

"Hmm, polite too, I see. Quite the way with words," she gave me a smile. "There is no need for such formalities. We are all friends here—you to Victorie, and myself to her as well. But you do seem curious about my title, dear boy," her smile quirked. "Not many women here have such titles, do they?"

"As far as I know, only that of Handmaiden," I admitted.

"Ah, yes. Well, obviously I am not from around here. Neither is Victorie. In the Realm I come from, my title is given toward those who have students. My name, at the moment, is not mine to give. Perhaps some other day I will tell you. However, you may call me Master if ..." her voice fluidly trailed off as she reached over and touched my brow, "You say you have headaches, young sir?"

I tried to answer, but a faint whispering sound in my ears had momentarily distracted me. It might

have just been my imagination, but the woman traced some kind of shape on my forehead.

"Do not worry, my dear," she said gently, "I believe that your headaches will ease somewhat. Yes, Victorie here did not exaggerate. You are just the person I have been looking for. Do come in, I have something to show you if you are interested," she pointed at a doorway which I had not noticed before, and went inside.

"C'mon," Victorie pulled me closer to her, her eyes radiant, "You know those worlds you tell me about all the time? She can help you find them, or even make them," the tone of her voice was urgent. "I know I lied to you before, but I couldn't let anyone know about her. I had to trust you. Now I do. Do you trust me?"

I had to. There was something about the woman that intrigued me ... So we followed her through the doorway I hadn't seen earlier and found ourselves in a dimly lit chamber composed of simple wooden floor boards with a desk, sleeping pallet, and a fireplace.

"'Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly'," laughed the woman, gesturing at some chairs near her own, "Just a little literary humor among equals. Please sit down. Do not worry my dear boy. Neither your Priest father nor his cronies will find you in here."

"How did you know?" I asked in what might have been a combination of shock and horror.

"I have my sources. Besides, would not one have heard mention of one of the rulers of the Theocracy?" she replied. "I sent Victorie to find you."

"Who are you?" I repeated again.

"You could say that I am a missionary from another Order, sent here to find those who have the potential to be something greater than what they already are. I already found Victorie. Now it seems I am fortunate to have found another."

"It's true," Victorie told me, "I didn't completely lie to you. I had trouble with this Realm's language, and you did help me with that. My parents did have to abandon me so that they could survive," her eyes flared briefly with old pain, "But they knew that I would have certainly died if I stayed with them. I live with my Master. She has shown me such wonderful things, beautiful things ..."

"She now lives with me, as I teach her," said the woman. "Sometimes I send her out to scout for others like you. I see that you are still unaware of what to think of me. Fair enough. Perhaps Victorie can better illustrate my position than I. Victorie, show him what you can do." Victorie's Master pushed some paper across the desk.

Victorie folded back the sleeve of her dress, and I saw that there was something attached to her wrist—a small pouch of some kind. She bent her hand back, palm first, and used the other to extract a writing utensil from the pouch. I had never known her to posses such a thing. The pen she had was made of a rich brown grainy substance, with a sprout of something green on its top. It was almost like a twig, or some piece of a tree that was molded and shaped into a pen. Somehow, it seemed appropriate for Victorie. She always seemed more akin to something feral and wild than what many people deemed 'civilized'.

Victorie began to write on the parchment. It was a script I had never seen before—a series of symbols in forest-emerald ink. The words, if that was what they were, were as curved as Victorie's body. When I saw the symbols, something inside me stirred, stronger than even the greatest physical lust I had ever experienced. She leaned forward, her copper curls falling over her one eye. Her face was intent, her brown eyes alight with a joy I had neither seen nor experienced before—even when we lay in each other's arms.

What happened next took me completely off-guard. The surface of the brown desk became fluid and a large bump rose from it. It grew arms ... many, many arms, and foliage of green, red, orange, and violet began to sprout from its upraised limbs. As Victorie kept writing, I saw a small tree form itself. But as I looked closer, I saw a face appear on it—a visage similar to Victorie's own smiling at me. Then, Victorie stopped writing, and the thing became liquid and shapeless again, retreating back into the surface of the wood from whence it came.

I wasn't scared, or even shocked. Instead of running, I asked, "How ... how did you do that?"

She put her pen back into her wrist-pouch, a small, mischievous smile on her face. "What I did was I wrote of the living energy that was once in the wood before it became a desk. Then, I ... expanded on it ... and it began to live again. Then I allowed it to grow for a while, and added a few ... new characteristics."

"Now Victorie," her Master chided. "That hardly even begins to explain what had happened. I shall have to do my best to explain. My Order is called the Scrybal Guild. We represent a small few among the Realms that understand the difference between writing," and she took out her pen and scribbled something down, "And this word—wryting."

"What," I breathed, "But how did you do this?"

In the near beginning of my tale, I'm afraid I didn't do justice to my definition of wryting. Perhaps the person who was to be my Master could have outlined it best when she first introduced it to me.

"There are writers, and then there are wryters," she explained, "We belong to the latter category. The difference is that while a writer can have a grasp of the form of a word, and perhaps some basic essence, wryters understand and can grasp both the form and the essence of the Words that make our reality what it is. With it, we can manipulate certain aspects of Creation itself. And you can do so as well. You have the Gift."

"It's true," said Victorie. "You are a much better wryter than even I. There is so much my Master can teach you. When you taught me the basics of this Realm's language, it helped me create more descriptive sentences. You have a gift for words in that language. But once you learn Runic, there will be no boundaries for you. None at all."

"Runic?"

"Yes," said her Master, "Do you want to know? Do you want the skill? I can make it happen. Think of it, my dear. Endless worlds at your beck and call ... and the limitlessness of imagination made incarnate ... There will be risk in this, but the rewards far outweigh them. I know what you want, that you love to write. So tell me what you want to say."

I remembered all the days I sat in my home, the endless days of indoctrination, of abuse, of being enslaved, of watching others be enslaved ... of writing and never being satisfied because I knew that I could do better. I wanted to see my visions come alive, to make me happy, to make me feel more wonder than even Victorie's wryting. I wanted my soul to soar in the ultimate glory of Creation unfettered.

"Yes," I replied. "Master ..."

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