22 [Amaya Before]

There's a shade of blue that only comes in Spanish skies. It was Amaya's favorite color in the world. You could only see it framed by dry yellow grasses and low shrubs. By mountains of sandstone, worn smooth by the hand of time brushing across its face. A secret enjoyed by generations.

It was the color that matched the feeling of soft arms wrapping around her. The feeling of Mirabella's breast through the loose cotton press against her. The color of the hot Spanish sun giving way to crisp cool nights.

It was the hope of seeing that color again that helped Amaya through the early days, through the red and the rot. The flare of temper, indignation, went cold so quickly but hope... hope endured.

Mirabella had told her it was ok.

That they would be ok when she went into the night. Amaya had held her, griping as tight as she could in the end- which wasn't tight at all. She should have hugged their daughter. There should have been more time. She had been so tired, and Mirabella had promised her that she could sleep. Amaya had held on so long, for them, but Mirabella had given her permission to leave the pain. Her last thought was of flowers.

Instead there was this, a red and dirty world. A Hell.

Something had gone wrong.

In this world of monsters, she fought. If she couldn't recall more than dreams, she recalled a reason to live. To hold her wife and daughter she could do anything. She could crawl through the tunnels like an animal. She could kill like an animal. She could eat like an animal. Amaya made herself of nothing if not defiance against whatever trial had placed here to test her.

She was small, smaller than the other souls on trial.

Small is not the same as weak. What Amaya could not make up for in reach or speed she would make up for with ingenuity. If her arms did not reach she would build longer arms. If her feet were not swift she would be cunning in their placement. Her daggers had served her well, when she fought the other lost souls. Better still when the fallen angels descended upon them, separating the weak for the fire.

Nothing had prepared her for the true angel, descending from the light.

As terrible as the oldest stories, singing out lamentation and triumph. Great eyes turned to the lord and for a brief, terrible moment on her. Amaya had passed the first trial, but not through her judgement.

Through it all, there was a guide. Words from an unspoken host, written in a familiar hand.

At careful steps, the guide called on her to make choices. Her burden became easier, each small choice changing her trial. What awaited her, she often thought, when her soul had finished forming. Were all human souls, so frail and ugly, destined to join the host? Were they hammered in these fires into instruments suited for their true and final tasks?

Often she would trail these thoughts into her dreams.

In the dreams Mirabella waited, and they were good. Blue skies waited and they were good. The air would be clean, and she would rejoice. But she would wake again.

Amaya was content only in that she was not alone in her trials.

Other souls wandered the tunnels. Other souls wandered the chasm to gorge on the ferns that made you forget. Wandered the tunnels to drink into madness on the nectar that made you remember. It was hard to tell, in those early days, what souls still had light in them. Which were monsters and which, ever unfinished, working towards a more perfect being.

She had kept watch, when she could.

She watched while the weakest souls fell to great lizards, spiders, and nightmares. Some chose to be afraid, and she pitied those. Fear was an appropriate response. She felt a kind of love to those that looked like her, warped and melted and twisted. This wasn't what the book promised for the eternal soul. Not in the hymn and sermon.

But they weren't eternal. Battle and hunger extinguished the weak, snapped up and made parts of something new. Amaya too gathered. She would hunt the hunters as she grew stronger. Those that made a sport of cruelty, she sought to hunt most.

That was how time had passed. She had carved out a place to hide and the word had made it a home. Knowledge of the new world flowed like honey, sweet and well guarded. It was determination that drove Amaya to waste nothing. A soul was too fragile a thing to discard to rot.

This was how she grew her collection. Bones for daggers, knives, and skinning. Hide for gathering, storing, moving. Web for binding.

In this way it all would go on, soul unmoved, if not for the Jabali.

Amaya has seen how the boars tortured pigmen into existence. How the boars crushed and warped until the spirit broke, or the mind. If both held they traded something else away instead. They made anger, and madness. Grew it out of flesh like a farmer planting on soil salted and barren.

She'd grown arrogant as she grew stronger and fate punishes the arrogant with pain and sorrow.

Madness could not be mistaken for stupidity. Rage was not always blind. Amaya had gone looking for the fight, mind and daggers ready to reclaim what the boars had taken. Fate had given fair judgement, which was a different form of kindness. She would never forget the lesson. Her path was the right one, taken too soon, and fate had sent her another soul on the same journey as her own.

She knew him, had seen him feasting on the ledge. In the tunnels. Across the open chasm.

He, too, was growing powerful. The deep curse he cast into the boar had made her fear that he had chosen a madness of his own. He had taken great pain at the cost of his own blood to warn her of its spread. The words spoke of him. His curse meant death to others, but he gave it as a blessing to herself.

It was a long time healing from her pride. Wounds which had knit themselves before now lay open and weeping. She had a final punishment awaiting for her before she could enjoy the grace of swift scars. The knives were dull, knapped as best as she was able but her hide was thick. The break was deep.

She screamed as she popped the joint and dug out the cartilage. It was all she could do to close the wound with the healthy skin that remained.

When she awoke, she labored on her hubris. First she stripped the flesh, dried it and worked it supple. Then she cleaned the bone and separated the greater from the lesser. The small bones she had no use for, and those she kept aside. A reminder she would keep with her of what she had lost. It was as if by divine plan that this should be her punishment.

She had arms to spare.

The bone was difficult to work, but the break was sharp and deadly. It served her well, as she recovered. Lesser demons fell to it one after another and her strength came not only restored but grew. It remained, in this new way, an extension of herself. If she sometimes felt the lack, the open space of what she lost, it was a small price for the lesson.

The sword of Amaya.

It was with peace that she embraced the change when the words guided her to her new form. The slumber was deep, and when she awoke the world parted on a domain reformed.

As she changed, so did the land and her sword.

When the boars had begun to kill in earnest, bodies wasted and left for warning, it was this that made her choice. She would seek out the others of her kind, those growing and fighting to return to the light.

Where had that got her, but dragging herself in pain across a foreign threshold.

Even through the pain, the surprise of finding the white marble of her domain renewed her focus. All her tools, her bones, lay where she had set them. The space too had grown. Shelves existed where none had before. A wide deep slab, worktable and alter rose up to be of service.

It was the gossamer of the hammock that sang to her as she pulled herself up. The light of her domain dimmed and sleep came like a blanket. And with sleep, dreams.

"You're sure," Mirabella said, "you never wanted children before."

"But you do," said Amaya.

"Not alone! And you know I can't..."

She held Mirabella close. "I love you, Mira. I love you like I love air and the sea and watching the sunset on the hill where we first kissed. Our child would be a part of you, and I'll love them the same."

"For me?" said Mirabella.

"You're too hot to not have babies."

Amaya would choose to dream forever, but the Domain began to shake.