12th of Gnielm, 334 EA
Peyr Myarsa
Mepka had draped herself at the edge of the temple stoop, one arm crooked over closed eyes and the other hanging limply off the side. It was a languorous pose, one that her body formed to readily. She used it to sift her thoughts for inspiration.
Nothing came quickly, and so she rolled over to watch her fingers dance just at the brim of the bog. The water here had a stagnancy to it, as did the air, and the trees, and the muck and the moss, and the whole of Peyr Myarsa, and her swallowed up in it.
Her head lolled to gaze into the temple behind her, framed by the great misty wall of aether looming in the distance. The temple was severely overgrown, crumbling more on one side than the other in a way that unbalanced anyone walking around inside. She felt the odd little structure to be pathetic, when she felt anything about it at all.
A splashing sound broke Mepka from her lament. Scrabbling to her feet, she could see the jowled figure of her mother approaching. The woman was moving tediously through the calf-deep swamp, making her way from the outlying cabins towards the temple proper. Mepka took the moment before she came into earshot to groan.
When Estrid finally reached Mepka, she did so in a huff. She released her clutch on the bunches of stained frock that she had been holding away from the mud. “What’s this then? Lazing about?”
“I wasn’t lazing, I was thinking.” Mepka backpedaled, putting herself right beneath the arched entryway of the temple.
“I don’t want your excuses,” Estrid brushed past her. “I want you to get in here and do your damnable duty.”
The arch that Mepka stood under had been taken by a gnarling tree trunk, one large enough and in an inconvenient enough location that none of the other penitents had set themselves to its task. Mepka allowed herself another exasperated breath, climbing up hand over hand to start the slow process of undoing the swamp’s hold on the architecture.
The work took her hands for hours, hacking at wood and peeling away bark.
When Estrid reentered the main chamber, she dropped the bundle of branches she was carrying. “What are you doing up there? They’re near already, you had to know that damned thing would never come down in time.”
Mepka surveyed the product of her work, a modest dent in the otherwise unbroken behemoth.
“How will this look?” Estrid kept her voice to a low hiss, “You, with nothing to show for your time! You make our family look shameless, you-“
Mepka kicked at a small branch, nearly cut through already, snapping it and sending to fall just shy of hitting her mother. “I’m not the reason we’re in this place.”
Estrid jumped out of the way of the clattering limb, and when she looked back up her face had taken the roil that the ponds had when a storm pulled across the horizon.
Just before she could begin to rip into her daughter, a procession of figures laden down in mud-caked robes began to filter through the opposite end of the temple. Estrid swelled in a rigid silence as Mepka scrabbled her way down from the arch and collected her pile of wood chips.
The Peyric worshipers continued their lockstep, moving around Mepka, Estrid, and the other templekeep penitents. Mepka stumbled through the motions she was meant to take. Those in her wake were thrown off by her blunders, though most corrected in their final moments of motion. Estrid stuck to Mepka throughout, taking her drifts in stride and forcing a precision onto them. Finally, the room came to its standstill position.
A man stepped forwards, clad in rusting plate and a severe demeanor. “We stand here, necessary, as the conservators of old Myarsa.”
As the high abbot began his allocution, Mepka’s eyes wandered the outskirts of the line. She placed Irec, figure of stone that he was, across an uncovered plinth. Her father’s vision scanned much in the same way as his daughter’s had, and she tried to lock eyes with him. When his inspection did eventually turn to Mepka and Estrid, it slid across them without catching.
Mepka felt the rejection as a tightening of her throat. She leaned into her mother, feeling out the tension of their weight against each other. Estrid gave a surprised look, but didn’t push away. The two stood, touching vacantly under the hum of the priest’s words.
Mepka went about the remainder of the service with a despondence that could pass itself for acquiescence. Finally, the priests called for the penitents. Mepka made her way up with the rest of them, depositing her meager clippings amongst the pile of swamp-stuff that had been collectively detached from the temple that day.
A sallow woman in bilious teal robes stood over them all, tracing outstretched fingers across the unlighting pyre. Mepka felt the words of the high abbess’ spell reverberate through the temple, crawling across her skin and worming into her gut. She swallowed hard to keep herself from vomiting at the intonation as the scrapped wood curled away from the priestess’s reach and rotted into near nothing.
When all that remained was a foul taste to the air, the congregation broke and began to flow out of the temple. Mepka kept with them to the temple stoop, where they struck west and she split north. Estrid followed a pace behind her, quiet. The swamp seeped into their boots with a steady persistence.
Estrid broke their silence as they approached the raised hovel that the two of them had come to share. “You’re a lucky girl.”
Mepka drug herself up the ladder and onto the platform, giving a vague grunt in response.
When Estrid crested the slatted platform to the cabin’s porch, her eyes were critically appraising. “You’ve been given a second chance to reenter society.” She broke up her thought with a flinty pause. “Not one that you deserve, I might add.”
“Yes, okay. I understand.” Mepka’s tone held hollow.
“You’d do better to be this agreeable all the time.” Estrid pushed, “If you’d only do what I say, people wouldn’t find you so grating.”
Mepka pulled fingers back through a tangle of hair. “I don’t care about that. And what if I don’t want to reenter society? I hate being in Peyr, the people there are awful.”
Estrid made a sour face. “You don’t hate it. What else is there? What are you going to do instead, become a savage? Wander the swamps, shamed for the rest of your life?”
“Maybe I will,” Mepka fumed, snatching her quarterstaff off of the wall. She crossed the porch in two long bounds, dropping down to the swamp floor and stalking away.
“Don’t be daft, Mepka.” When no response came, Estrid called out again. “Get back here this instant.”
Mepka flipped a hand up to her mother, and the cabin behind her, and the temple behind it.
Estrid’s shouting continued, but Mepka didn’t deign to suffer it. She pushed out of earshot, trudging until all that was left around her was the water, and the air, and the trees, and the muck and the moss. The only company she had never managed to shake.
The Etra Anthology 