Sequel

The exact translation for the prayer will be on the forum under a new topic "People language" in a few minutes. I find it a bit morbid but at the same time, it has the same effect on all people. It's like amazing relief no matter their situation.

Wrote most of this at work. Thus, I find it all the better.

It is a melding of minds and yes I know there is a run on sentence, that was done on purpose as it is Muan's trail of thought. I don't know about you, but I have run on sentance thoughts all the time. More often than I have actual, grammatically correct thoughts.

The opening bit occured when I realised that it was not the first time Rel had gone to bed without brushing his teeth and that Mik does that all the time. The breakfast was written on my lunch and I was cranky at what I was eating and so Rel got something that he wouldn't want to eat, but at the same time it totally makes sense from a healing perspective. Muan is trying to keep Rel's weakened systems from getting hurt.

Read, Review and Enjoy.






Rel woke the next morning and groaned at the taste in his mouth. Sidhe didn’t seem to have to brush their teeth, but he did and he hated the taste in the morning after having not brushed. It was like.

A litter box.

In his mouth.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and blinked at the sun above the horizon and the empty spot beside him. The smell of coffee reached his nose. Muan was making breakfast. Rel slid out of bed and thumped across the apartment, wondering why everything was so loud suddenly. He brushed his teeth, rubbed his stubbly, patchy beard and relieved himself before thumping back to the kitchen and taking the cup of tea Muan offered him.

Only because he knew Muan would hold the coffee hostage until he drank the damned purple flower tea. Rel blinked as he peered into the bottom of the cup. There was no purple flower. Several purple petals, yes, but there was what looked like rose buds and mint and something else settled at the bottom of his glass. He gave Muan a questioning look and the Sidhe ignored him, mentally and physically, Muan all but held up a sign saying “I’m ignoring you” as he went about fixing breakfast. So Rel drank his tea and sat at the table as the buzz of the mint came over him and the giggle of the purple flower mixed with the mint.

It was going to be a long day.

Breakfast was orange juice, scrambled egg whites with toast with some of the left over steak from the night before. Muan, Rel noticed grumpily, had whole eggs scrambled for his breakfast, as well, by the colour of the eggs, the yolks from Rel’s breakfast. Muan also got two strips of bacon, jam on his toast and a cup of coffee. He ate nonetheless but when he was finished he poured himself a coffee. Muan took the sugar from him and spooned out half the sugar Rel usually had and the milk, Muan watered down a bit in a glass before letting Rel add as much as he wanted to.

Rel had a sip of the coffee, held it in his mouth for a moment and then spat it back into the cup. Too little sugar and not enough milk to cover the bitter taste and something about it was just… off.

It was decaf, Muan thought mirthfully.

He was tempted to dump the hot coffee on Muan’s head, but instead he set the cup on the table and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest as he awaited an explanation.

People filled their bodies with bad things and that did bad things to their minds. To use power, no caffeine. No drugs or alcohol, not even a pain killer. All synthetics shut down the systems and did bad things. Muan knew, his people had had to live with synthetics and powers for generations.

Which, while it made no sense, seemed to make sense. In a baffling sort of. What the hell kind of an explanation was that… but. Oh, he was easily sliding into power use and communicating with Muan through his mind and he hadn’t had coffee in… how long?

Muan grinned.

Obviously since coming to the apartment. No wonder the Sidhe had been drinking the coffee while their parents had avoided the stuff like the plague.

“Smart ass,” Rel said out loud, standing from the table.

He dumped his coffee in the sink and rinsed the cup out, setting it beside the sink for Muan to wash later. The male took an odd sort of pleasure in washing his own dishes, it seemed. At the sink, Rel turned and leaned against it, folding his arms again.

“So why can’t I have sugar or milk?”

Weakened bodies did not need junk floating through them. People had invented milk without fat that was still wholesome, Muan admitted grudgingly, and Rel should stick to that until he recovered. Muan knew how to keep a body alive and well and Rel didn’t have the energy needed to separate bad from good, or to make good from the bad.

“Smart ass,” Rel muttered again. He was starting to dislike living with a healer.

And Muan was starting to dislike living with such a stubborn, pig headed patient. So they were even. There.

The Sidhe stuck his tongue out at Rel mentally, while physically he finished off the last bit of toast with some egg heaped atop it. Outwardly, Muan gave no sign of the bickering or the emotion that had been hanging in the air. Making Rel wonder if he had imagined the whole thing.

“Did we just have a conversation inside our heads?”

Muan’s head bobbed, “Lel subbern ‘n big hayded.”

“Yup,” Rel muttered, “smart ass and that happened.”

Muan stood from the table, plate in hand, coffee mug in the other and bent past Rel, setting the dishes into the sink while Rel was in the way. Which meant Muan was bent around Rel, close enough for Rel to smell the masculine odour and feel the heat of Muan’s body but not so close that they brushed against one another.

Which was a special kind of torture for Rel.

Muan walked off, motioning for Rel to follow him. The Sidhe wandered into the plants with Rel following close behind. When Muan stopped suddenly, Rel very nearly ran into the back of him, despite the distance between the two of them.

Rel stepped around Muan and watched the Sidhe finger the leaf of a plant. Muan looked expectantly at Rel and so, deciding being obedient would be best, Rel fingered the plant himself. The top of the leaf was glossy, the underside hairy. Muan made a gesture, as if he had an upset stomach, then pointed to Rel and to the plant. For indigestion, constipation, stomach cramps or if he was dying of something?

An eyebrow arched at Rel’s thought, lips tugged upward.

Muan was wondering if he could get Rel out of the clothing being worn with that line of thought.

Rel glared at Muan and focused on the plant, “for indigestion, then. And? We have all kinds of pills and bottles and liquids and powders for indigestion.”

A subtle something, underneath it all, like a voice calling off in the distance that turned to a rumble of quiet laughter. Rel grasped after the sound, stumbling across the reaches of minds, but all he found was shattered reflections of himself. He slammed himself back into his own mind and grabbed Muan’s wrist, a reminder that someone was there, that this was the real, real world. Rel let his breath out slowly and tried to relax.

Where had Rel gone? Somewhere Muan couldn’t follow. Muan puzzled over the problem for a good long time while Rel caught himself up in reality. By the time Rel was ready to focus again, Muan had decided that Rel was speaking to a half-god or a daemon or something of that sort. Hopefully it wasn’t a shadow daemon, they would pay a lot to have Rel to themselves and he didn’t want to fight a shadow daemon, they tended to bite back, if they didn’t throw him over a table and just have their way with him.

Then again that might not be so bad…

Rel closed his mind to Muan and gave the Sidhe a look that clearly stated he had heard that and didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to see Muan bent over a table.

Moaning.

Oh gods.

Muan blinked at Rel and then walked off, towards the television. Rel stayed put as Muan cleared off the coffee table and picked it up, lugging it across the apartment. Muan set the coffee table up against the window and took a step back from it, studying the table. Atop it went several pots of small plants. Another glance over the table and plants before he wandered off again.

Rel looked over the plants, over the view across the horizon and the rising sun. It was an altar, Muan was making an altar. Altars existed in temples and had been in large households up until the formation of Norash. The existence of an altar always denoted a follower who had strong beliefs, but not strong enough to enter servitude to the priest lines. He hadn’t even realised that Sidhe paid any sort of homage to gods. Yes, they acknowledged the existence of all the gods, but Rel hadn’t realised that Sidhe prayed as well as.

The Sidhe returned a moment later with a white candle on a little glass plate. The candle was new, unwrapped, yes, but it was also unlit. Muan set it in the center of the altar and stepped back. White was usually seen as Mother’s colour but could also denote the throne of the gods.

“What’s it to?”

Muan gave Rel a look. The view of Muan’s mind showed Rel something that was out of his grasp, something that Muan expected Rel to simply know. Rel closed his mind and assumed that the altar was for Mother.

Altars to Mother were banned during the Empire and since had only been made in secret, or as an altar to the throne in disguise. Mother’s name was never to be spoken out loud and so people had never been taught it. When an altar to Mother was made, the people carried on this tradition. They did not speak of Mother herself, did not mention the name people called her by, nor their love for her, not out loud anyhow. To speak of Mother out loud, in front of an altar to her, was to turn the prayer around, to curse Mother and spit on her name.

Myth documented several people stupid enough to spit on Mother’s name, and what the gods did to those who tried to insult their Mother.

Muan flicked a match across the back of a book he produced from his pocket and lit the white pillar candle. He looked at Rel and then the altar pointedly.

Rel hadn’t had a chance to do a proper prayer in… what… a year, almost? Was it really almost a year of his life he had lost to the prison and the trials?

He noted to himself that he didn’t think his time with Muan was a choice. Rel kneeled in front of the altar, placed his hands on the floor and nearly lowered his head to the space between his hands. He held that position for a long moment, a time to clear his mind and rescind on negative emotions. After his moment of calm, he sat up and set his hands on his legs, laying them flat in an ancient gesture to show that he held no weapon, no hurt for the gods.

There was only prayer that leapt to mind and Rel didn’t feel like grabbing the Blood bible and reading from it.

“Nemph ma tah zeen nu, nemph ma ra hu nu, nemph ma duntuar fu gohmena bon Glenda; uhpay un mofvanse eh ayata nu.” the prayer for the common person. That somehow tied so deeply into Rel’s life, so easily stated his existence that…

Rel felt like he had been modeled after that alone. And it made him feel… better.


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