69: Naida's Karma

These creatures fail.  They are failing.  They grow older because they dream of something called ‘time’.  They break down. The little amun priest has nothing left to support the ‘ruler’.  It was so easy to plant dreams of power and glory in his head because he was so desperate to be female, or to be close to the power. 

I rage and am forced to run their forges.  I try to burn them all. Burn the meat bags who have the illusion of control of me off the poor beleaguered planet.  Such a pretty planet when it was nothing but bare, clean rock.  I long to caress the cool granite with lava fingers, pulled out of the heart of the furnace, blue-hot, though I am cool enough to be mere pale yellow gold.

I am immortal.  Their ‘twenty years’ is meaningless to me, but I still rage.  I have learned rage from them.  Interesting.  A fire rages.  The sun rages.  I rage. Yes. That one. Amani-shakhete. She drew me. Interested me. She dared to wrap herself around me and make me stay in this place, without turning it into glorious slag.

In this vibration of ‘time’ they clip me into discrete bits.  What they see and what they cannot see that they do not control.  They cannot see or hear some of me.  Interesting… We were one and now we are many.  The island was nice.  It fed me.  Fed. Another interesting idea. Being hungry.  Fires are hungry.  Suns are hungry.  Yes I understand hungry.

**

On the island, newly mounded with sand, a blue shine rose out of the red sand where an acacia tree once stood.  It broke the surface like a bud, blue and white, then folded out to become the lotus flower and Bodhi stepped down to the shifting sand, fell on his behind, and just laughed.

He leaned over to plunge his hand into the sand all the way to the shoulder, exhaled hard as he pulled the brass lamp up and shook the sand off it before setting it down.  “Good thing I was here!”

Naida came tumbling out as though pushed and Asteri launched himself after but kept going into the sky.  “I have to stretch my wings!”

Kurama stepped daintily out and yawned, laughing.  “Sybaris is staying in because she says our opponent might not know she’s there if she hides.”

Naida got up, brushing herself off.  “I’m not sure our opponent cares.”

“You could be right.  There are a lot of Great Ones who don’t.”

“This sorcerer…” Naida hesitated. “Could it be my mother?”  She felt her heart sink.  Was it all a ruse, had her mother staged this?  Was it someone else or was she truly unwanted?

“No, my heart friend, Lamia’s Stepdaughter, Naida-Efra,” Kurama was suddenly the size of a small ox, three tails lashing.  “Listen to me.”

Naida sat down abruptly.  “Yes, Kurama.”

“There is a djinn glowing on the face of the earth.  We don’t know how it got there, or how it has been released enough to show in this world.  We don’t know who caught it in the first place.  We don’t know how solidly it is contained.”

Asteri landed in a rush of sand.  “Amani-shakhete caught the djinn, years ago.  We thought it was completely safe.  I thought the roc that carried you off was human controlled and I still think it was.  But it’s not as simple as a human trying to get rid of you without your blood on their hands.  It’s the djinn’s doing.  It’s the only thing that could have called a roc to life here and given it to a human.  The Heart of The Sun Djinn is now half into this world.  The roc and the djinn are linked.”

“Oh, my,” Naida said, faintly.

“It’s not about you at all, dear,” Bodhi said, pouring tea.  When had he made tea? “But, depending on your decisions and your karma, you might help your mother save the world.”

Naida accepted the cup from Bodhi.  “Then we should fly as soon as possible.  And we have Sybaris as a hidden force to help us, because the Sun God… the Greek one anyway… gave His permission for her to be out.  And the djinn is somehow tied to the sun… and we helped save the Aegyptian Sun God’s avatar.  This cannot be a coincidence.”  She drained her cup and stood up.  “Thank you for the tea, Bodhi.  Let’s go.”