To Speak It Aloud

Featuring Amadán and Amnah

Autumn, Year 767 of the New Age

Oakfern, caverns near the Moonpool

    Fawn  sacrifices were not Amnah’s flavor. That fact had never changed; not  for all the years since she’d witnessed her first one, when the deep  seed of hatred and doubt had rooted itself in her heart; not for all her  attempts to change.

    An  unfortunate opinion, being a shaman -- but to her luck, she’d never  been chosen to participate. Perhaps something of her inner contempt had  shown itself as weakness to the Oracle.

    Nothing deeper, she prayed.

    The  moon was full and bright, but Amnah would not be seeing it; Gealach  demanded Her rites, and as Oakfern tradition fervently dictated, they  would be carried out with diligence. During a time of such high  excitement, Amnah was keeping her distance from the Moonpool, lurking  through the tunnels that had been left utterly vacant for the evening.

    Utterly, but not entirely. Naturally it caught her off guard, when, upon entering a new cavern, she saw the glow of a herdmate.

    It  was a stag, sitting at the edge of a dark pool. His paint was  familiar... A frequent visitor to the Moonpool, she realized. And yet,  on such an important night as theirs, he would be so far from it? The  stag was a father, perhaps, or a teacher; Amnah had never seen him  without younglings at his side. Now he sat alone.

    Fascinated,  she watched him in silence. His body was so uncoordinated, twitching  and jerking even as he sat idle, yet he could guide the shifting shapes  with the same elegance as if leading them in a dance. Unbeknownst to  her, such a difference was very real in his mind; the water was the one  part of him he felt he could move with grace.

    It was beautiful magic. Something so refined could never be made through the haze of herbs.

    “You’re missing the ritual.”

    Her  words made the stag flinch -- so hard, in fact, that his front legs  slipped into the pool. So wrapped up in his magic, he’d hardly heard her  approach, let alone noticed she’d entered the cave. As he composed  himself, he willed his heart to rest; was she a guard?

    “Amadán, was it?” she asked. “The tutor? I would expect one so in touch with Gealach’s gift to want to join her worship.”

    “I…  I-I-I am faint of h-heart, is all,” Amadán replied, picking his words  carefully. “I f-find violence to be, uhm... r-r-rather uns-s-settling.”

    A  pause hung heavily in the air. Thoughts of accusations and hostile  scuffles whirled through Amadán’s mind until he felt dizzy. Yet, all he  could do was hold his breath and wait.

    Amnah  was far less unsettled; she could hardly have been more composed, in  fact. Intrigued brown eyes looked him up and down for a mere heartbeat  before turning to the now-settled depths of the pool.

    “You’d have to be quite disturbed otherwise,” she replied, casually. “Some poor child’s blood is being spilled.”

    Amadán blinked. Poor child, had she said that?

    So easily?

    Though Amnah’s eyes no longer met his, Amadán feared to look away.

    “I-I-I  stand for Gealach w-with nothing but p-p-pure devotion,” insisted the  stag. “Every s-s-sacrifice to Her is of th-the… the utmost  i-i-importance.”

    Amnah  nodded in agreement. She did not turn her head, but rather gave him a  side-eye, prompting him to make his point. So quick to defend himself,  how curious.

    “It  just… d-does not sit w-well with me to watch such y-y-young life be  taken.” Immediately, Amadán shook his head as if scolding himself.  “N-n-not that I forget why, o-or… or where they’ve come from. But…” He  struggled, distressed. “...E-e-every child s-starts innocent. Th-these  ones were born i-i-into crimes they n-never committed. Do they e-e-even  know that? D-do their herds tell them o-o-of our h-history, or h-have  they all f-f-forgotten?”

    The water before him had begun to freeze over, Amnah observed.

    “Perhaps,”  the doe offered lightly, “it is that we punish their kin. We  don’t let them forget. By taking their descendants, we give the original  Oathbreakers a punishment beyond death. We keep their young from  repeating the sins of their blood, and give their lives to a worthy  purpose instead.”

    At that, the stag nodded fervently and tossed his head aside, as if to say, ‘Ah yes, a very good point, how could I miss it.’ So  scattered... so unlike the composure he’d held while alone. It felt  vaguely like he was having the discussion with himself rather than with  her, and Amnah found it incredibly intriguing.

    “Ahh, but the lives they could have...”

    It took a few seconds for Amadán to realize the doe had said it, not him.

    Again a pause hung between them, but not so heavily as before. Instead it felt magnetic, drawing Amadán in.

    Everything  Amnah said and did was deliberate. She knew how to read people, and she  knew exactly what she was pulling from him. Amazing, though, how hard  it was to say something so simple; it was so trained in their minds as  taboo. She could tell he wanted to say more -- the guarded demeanor said  enough, even without his nervous slips of the tongue -- but nothing  more came of him. Maybe he really was devout, and just as conflicted as  he seemed... or maybe he was just afraid of bold words. Maybe both.

    In any case, Amnah was not afraid of bold words.

    She was growing more than a little impatient for them, in fact.

    “It  does little good to slay the ignorant,” she said, suddenly confident;  suddenly solemn. “It is a sick, twisted deed, glorified under the guise  of the Moon Mother’s light.”

    “Do not say that!”

    “They take Her grace and for cold-blooded murder, senselessly and for the benefit of nothing but recycled hatred.”

    “For the j-justice of our herd--”

    “For the justice of names nobody remembers!”

    “It is the d-d-deed we remember, and to th-that we deal justice!”

    “So you agree with it?”

    “I…”

    He  hesitated. His burst of passion had been made purely out of fear, not  conviction. She echoed ideas that had crossed his mind, time and time  again, to be quickly squashed and packed away... Never to be said aloud.

    Slowly  the ice before them was melting; Amnah’s magic willed it so. She found  no resistance in it, not while the stag was silently scrambling with his  thoughts.

    “No,” he murmured at last.

    This  time the doe said nothing, but looked out at the ice as it melted  further. His whole form had sunken, out of... what, defeat? Exhaustion?  Shame? Neither could say. But Amnah knew the feeling well, having had it  crash upon her long ago; only, when she'd risen up again, rage had come  flooding in its wake. What form the stag might take in such time, she  could only imagine.

    A bond was formed, there, between two sinners in silence. The last of the ice vanished, but still they stayed.