Written Wonderland

Perhaps her imagination was betraying her, but Jaz could swear she felt prickliness in the quality of Ren's silence. She felt tempted to look behind her, ready for some kind of sharp tool at her back like he had threatened her with when she had first transformed into smoke. Despite her fear, the sensation also stoked her anger. How was she supposed to know what would push Ren past comfort? Had he not invited her to ask questions?

About Baer, she told herself, chagrined. She had changed the subject.

What now, then? Would he stay silent forever to punish her for the curiosity?

Jaz refocused her attention on the flowers and trees around her, on the path that was subtler and harder to see the farther they walked along it, almost disappearing into the thick brush. This wasn't a well-travelled path at all, and trepidation began to well up in Jaz's chest as they walked through thicker, thornier underbrush.

She tried to breathe through it all--her anger, her fear, her discomfort at everything still being so new--but ultimately, it was the thought of singing to Ren while she brushed his hair that calmed her. He didn't wish her ill. He had let her sleep inside his cabin the night before and trusted her at least that much. She was going to get on his nerves sometimes--that much seemed inevitable--but he was trying to do right by her.

Ren sighed, maybe also coming to his own similar conclusion.

"In truth, many people of this land do not revere any gods or goddesses," he said slowly, and a pang shot through Jaz's chest. What a lonely existence, she thought. As though in response, Ren continued, "There's... an arrogance in humanity. A desire to believe that we are completely in control, can utterly understand all that is." Jaz's brow furrowed, hearing an undercurrent of frustration in Ren's voice. It reminded her of when he warned her that some people were parasites. Again, she realized there were many factions to the humans--they hardly seemed unified in their beliefs, mannerisms, or culture at all, at least from what Ren had told her. Jaz thought about how different Jarrett had been from Monica, for instance, and shivered.

"It is unsettling to look at the possibility of beings who are more than we could ever understand, more than we could possibly control. Ti'la is already an outlier in looking with humility into those unknowns, and the goddesses of Ti'la provide a great deal of wisdom, comfort, and serenity in return. I do not know much of the goddess Dehaljadrun, but what lore I have heard would promise little better than hedonistic pleasure, humility being the least of its cost."

The urge to laugh bubbled up in Jaz, but if she had worried about her question landing poorly, that reaction surely wouldn't go over well. She wasn't sure she could have explained the absurdity of having her goddess so plainly and abruptly dismissed, and maybe she didn't need to. Jaz wasn't trying to convince Ren out of what he thought, although she was curious about the conflicting human lore.

Jaz thought about her relationship to her goddess, aloof though she was. There was a warmth and a potential in the magic of the realm as it had coursed through Jaz's being, an undeniable sign of the goddess' love and presence. The elders always spoke highly of when the goddess used to visit their mountain, sometimes telling tales about a mountain cave she would retreat to for years on end in her sacred dragon form.

Having not met the goddess directly, Jaz clung to the stories she heard from others, promising herself that, one day, surely, she would meet the goddess.

But then, having left on her sorala, maybe she never would. The thought was unbearable, and she banished it quickly.

Still, having been silent for a long while, Jaz figured she owed Ren some kind of response. Finally, after taking a deep, heavy breath, she asked, "Would you like to know more about her?"

Jaz was quiet for another long stretch. Ren clenched his jaw against the continued tension between his genuine discomfort with what he'd heard of Dehaljadrun and a sense of empathy for Jaz listening to her goddess spoken of in such a way. He was glad she was taking her time to reply.

Finally, after taking a deep, heavy breath, she asked, "Would you like to know more about her?"

Ren let yet another stretch of silence stand. He felt deeply conflicted, in ways he wasn't even quite sure he could put words to. He certainly didn't want to receive such knowledge through touch right now, of that much he was certain, but that wasn't necessarily what Jaz was offering--or asking--to do. It would be somewhat contrarian of him to simply say no--and maybe it wouldn't even be honest. He would like to understand enough to reconcile some of his tension, but he was also scared, nervous about entering territory he and Jaz might not be ready to navigate safely together. Still... there was an openness, in the end.

"I'd... happily listen to something you'd like to share." He said at last, his words slow and cautious, but with a subtle warmth.

Gently pushing a thorny stalk out of the way and careful to put it back in the gap between her and Ren lest it snap on him, Jaz waited. She refused to work herself up in the heavy silence, looking up instead at the canopy and the way the leaves of the trees looked like they were reaching for one another, almost touching in the mild breeze.

"I'd... happily listen to something you'd like to share," Ren finally said. Jaz took a much lighter breath, this one full of excitement, and the corners of her mouth lifted. She hadn't had cause to tell her own stories of the goddess, even secondhand. With a stomach full of sparks, Jaz thought through what she wanted to tell Ren of the goddess.

She could talk about the long nights of worship the djinn held twice a year, offering the goddess their most sacred pleasure as the whole village came together in smoke and fire. She could talk of the dances and rituals one underwent to ask the goddess' blessing when a person entered into a new group relationship. She could tell Ren of the static electricity Jaz felt in her hands when she closed her eyes and thought of magic itself, bursting excitedly within her.

Or she could tell of the storms, the lightning, the slow dying of the trees, the place none of the djinn ever dared to go...

But what did she want to tell Ren?

"She is the goddess of pleasure, yes, but also the goddess of dreams," Jaz began, settling into a rhythm and feeling more and more like an elder herself as she spoke. "And one night, after a long ritual to thank her for our mountain and for the abundant beauty of the season, I fell asleep, and she visited me." Jaz took a breath, allowing the pause to generate some anticipation, and realized she had picked up some of Tigre's mannerisms.

"I had been young, only just old enough to enter a relationship, and I felt nervous. What if the group I chose rejected me? What if there wasn't a family who would take me in? It hadn't happened before that I knew of, but the fear persisted. In the dream, she gently touched my face and then held each of my hands. The dream was wordless, but I understood what she was telling me. 'Whenever you are lonely, I am with you. You carry my magic wherever you go.' " Jaz paused then, more out of contemplation than storytelling cadence. It was good to remember the goddess' words, and they felt more applicable now than she had first realized. Jaz looked at her hands, wondering if she could still bring up the goddess' magic somehow, even so distant from her realm.

Uncertain, Jaz continued, "She invited me into her palace, then, and onto a great sprawling bed. She took her time coaxing me into smoke and fire, undoing me with one slow touch of her fingertip after the other. Once she had touched every part of me and I was only a billow, she blew into me with warm breath that felt like life itself, and I coalesced again back into my solid form, loved and lit from within."

Jaz paused again, blinking into the brightness of the yellow sun as a ray caught her, reminding her of where she actually was. Idly, Jaz continued, her voice airy and maybe a little unsure. "I've never actually... shared the details of the dream before. Not like that, at least." She was quiet for another moment before she dared to add, "Being with her didn't feel... empty, if that's what you mean by hedonistic. It felt... alive. I don't know that I've ever felt so whole before or since."

Yet another stretch of silence passed, but this one felt much lighter. Jaz seemed happily contemplative, Ren thought, and he relaxed into the hope that he had settled on a good reply to her question.

"She is the goddess of pleasure, yes, but also the goddess of dreams," Jaz began, in a novel cadence that piqued Ren's interest. "And one night, after a long ritual to thank her for our mountain and for the abundant beauty of the season, I fell asleep, and she visited me."

There Jaz paused, and Ren swallowed down some unease. For Dehaljadrun to visit someone in their sleep was not novel, from what he understood, and often went directions he didn't care to think about. He trusted that Jaz wasn't headed in those directions--or she wouldn't be confused about why her goddess was not revered--but it was difficult to imagine what direction she was headed instead.

"I had been young," she continued, "only just old enough to enter a relationship, and I felt nervous. What if the group I chose rejected me?" Ren quirked an eyebrow, but Jaz went on without pausing, "What if there wasn't a family who would take me in? It hadn't happened before that I knew of, but the fear persisted. In the dream, she gently touched my face and then held each of my hands. The dream was wordless, but I understood what she was telling me. 'Whenever you are lonely, I am with you. You carry my magic wherever you go.' "

Ren felt unnerved by a surprisingly strong sense of deja vu. Jaz let stand another pause, during which Ren couldn't help turning his mind to his own fitful sleep as of late, the dreams that eluded his waking memory. He didn't like the juxtaposition of all this together one bit.

"She invited me into her palace, then," Jaz went on, "and onto a great sprawling bed. She took her time coaxing me into smoke and fire, undoing me with one slow touch of her fingertip after the other. Once she had touched every part of me and I was only a billow, she blew into me with warm breath that felt like life itself, and I coalesced again back into my solid form, loved and lit from within."

Ren felt queasy. He knew that Jaz's words were not entirely the cause. He could tell that the way she had spoken had been beautiful, that she felt only positively about the experience she described. He knew it was his own shadows flickering in, shrouding what she was trying to share from what he was able to imagine. He worried it had been a mistake to invite even this.

"I've never actually... shared the details of the dream before," Jaz said after a moment, her voice more airy--the story complete, and her contemplations now returned to the present. "Not like that, at least." She was quiet for another moment before she added, "Being with her didn't feel... empty, if that's what you mean by hedonistic. It felt... alive. I don't know that I've ever felt so whole before or since."

Ren breathed deep and slow, grounding himself in his footsteps, the plants around them, the friend they were going to see. He even had some relevant memories with Baer, which he tried to pull up over the miasma of his past. He wasn't necessarily sure he'd felt whole with her--had he ever felt 'whole' at all?--but alive, at least, he thought he could ground in. Perhaps a mixture of that primal comfort he and Baer sometimes shared in these woods with the warmth and acceptance that Monica had shown him. And, when he framed it all like that, then it sounded enticing indeed--perhaps even too good to be true.

But, Jaz wasn't trying to sell him on anything. She was simply sharing what was true for her. Ren tried to shake off the weight of experiences that had nothing to do with Jaz, and to just hear her. She had been afraid of rejection by her village, and her goddess had comforted her. Was that not, at least in some ways, precisely what Sankera was to him?

“Thank you,” he said, his voice slow and careful not to let bitterness seep through where it didn’t belong. “For sharing.”

A temptation lingered to add something else - some explanation for the tension that Jaz almost certainly would sense - but everything else that came to mind to say was defensive, and would only entrench the tension further. And so he simply let another silence stand, hoping that moving his attention into the forest around him might help to dissipate at least some of the shadows that didn’t really belong here.

For a brief while after Jaz had spoken of her goddess, the path became easier again, the grasses and shrubs on either side becoming sparser. Not having to push underbrush aside to move through, Jaz felt the silence more acutely, glancing up toward the ball of yellow fire in the sky and what she could see of the blue expanse around it.

Behind her, Ren's breath was deep and steady, but Jaz could not guess his mood, and she wasn't prepared to look behind herself to find out. It was enough that she could hear that he was still following behind her.

Eventually, he said, "thank you," with the slowness of calculation. "For sharing."

Confused, Jaz furrowed her eyebrows, her steps slowing as she stared at the ground just ahead of her feet. She thought through what she understood of the humans' relationship with touch. Monica had certainly erred on the side of touch as comfort right from the beginning, brave enough to reach out to touch Jaz's cheek when she was nothing more than a stranger, but humans didn't need touch in the same way as djinn.

Surely some of the comfort the goddess had offered Jaz had come through in her retelling, although Ren seemed skeptical and hesitant about any way she--or anyone, really--might show affection, and Jaz finally had cause to wonder why.

She wanted to ask, but those were the kind of questions she might have to save for when Ren accidentally commanded her--she doubted he would give those answers for anything less than a trade, somehow.

In the drawn-out silence, Jaz thought over her story, and though its significance to her had not dimmed, it felt distant in this far-away place, and it was easier to believe it had simply been a dream and not a vision directly from the goddess herself.

Jaz wondered if all her memories would begin to feel that way after prolonged distance from home, and she shivered with her whole body at the thought.

She couldn't think of anything more worthwhile to fill the silence with, though, so she carried on with a deep breath, allowing the plants around them both to pull more of her attention. From the thin grasses to the wide leaves of plants as tall as she was, Jaz did feel welcomed in this wild place, beckoned, even.

Sneaking a glance back at Ren with a wide smile, Jaz started to run for a short stint, enjoying the flat earth and loam underneath her feet. But, before she had gotten out of Ren's sight, she saw another structure, similar in shape to Ren's but older, more weathered, with moss and vines growing up the shaded side nearest a tree with one of the largest trunks Jaz had ever seen. She spent a moment staring up at its canopy as though looking up the face of a mountain.

Sobering, Jaz looked back to Ren, deciding it was probably best to follow his lead as they approached his friend and her isolated home.