| Two At Once [Narrative] |
[22 May 2008|09:19pm] |
The palace in India was now safely in the hands of her widows. It had been too easy to slide away. The widows, the children... She would miss them. They would miss her. They would miss... him. But they would be all right without either one of them. Her widows ran the place for long enough with Nanshe to know exactly what needed doing, and when it needed to be done. The funds she'd set up for them would be more than plenty, and many of the widows had turned their grief into industry through the creation of crafts and other sellable wares. She didn't worry for them. Nanshe simply couldn't stay in that palace with Utu's ghost standing everywhere she looked.
At first, Nanshe thought she'd find a nice, quiet place and stay there for a bit. She was only a little ashamed to admit that she wanted a good long sorrow-wallow, and more than a little bit of pity. More than once, she considered going to Harmonia's new island hide-away. More than once, she considered going to her mother's. Both places - both people - would ask her that one question she wanted to avoid: Why?
Too much shame kept her from admitting that she'd lost Utu. She couldn't go to either of them, didn't want to see any of her family, didn't want to see anyone who knew she and Utu had shared a life in India. They would find out eventually, but Nanshe didn't want to be the one to have to say it. Didn't want to be the one to admit that she'd not been enough. That she'd not managed to keep him happy. Then the cries came, all at once, and too numerous for Nanshe to avoid. More death, on a massive scale, created just the type of mortals she protected. Widows. Children. It was too loud to be ignored.
Most of her time in Burma was spent in a dingy, rowing about and pulling survivors into the vessel. There were precious few of those - survivors - but she knew where at least some of them were. Days and nights blurred in that watery grave of a country, and she couldn't have said how many. When there were no more to save from the water, she went ashore. Sometime after that, another mighty cry came again. There was yet too much to do in Burma, so she split herself instead.
And instead of a watery grave, she stood on an earthy one. Side by side - Burma and China - Nanshe couldn't say which was worse. What she knew was that the ones she protected needed her. Even if none of them remembered her name, there were those who still carried remnants of ancient Sumerian blood.... and that made them hers, didn't it?
Nanshe worked.
And secretly, although she could never admit it to anyone else and hardly to herself, she was glad for any reason not to think of him.
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