Frozen Lotus

Saerie paused, her arm stretched high, hand hovering right under the warm brass handle, contemplating the enormity of this simple act. The space between her fingers and the door was smaller than a plum, if ripe, ready to burst under her grip at the slightest pressure, and leak its nectar into her mouth. All she had to do was reach a bit higher, and squeeze. 

But it wasn’t yet ripe. It was dense, and green, and simply not ready.

She dropped her hand, and turned to Chail, his reaction exactly as she anticipated. 100 years journeying together, and Saerie could read him like a tome.

His mouth the slightest bit agape, with the corners of downturned, revealing that his awe was complicated, deepened by disappointment. Nostrils pointed, sharpened in anger, the vapor of his sharp exhale made visible in the cold, like a dragon’s smoky exhale, a precursor to flames. His eyes, the most telling of all. Flat, dull, boring into her soul and unimpressed with what he found there. A part of him expected this. He knew her as well as she knew him.

His body was tense, muscles coiled, and prepared to draw his sword if she made him.

“You know. You must know. This isn’t right.” Saerie pleaded. If they were to cross blades, she would not be the one to initiate.

“You’re wrong.”

“You know what will happen,” she moved slowly, raising her hands up, open palms in a show of faith. Chail remained wound, coiled like a snake holding still the moment before striking.

Chail was quite serpentine, Saerie had initially observed in their second year of the journey. Stirring the stew over the fire, in perfect circles, and scooping it into their bowls without spilling a drop. His movements were fluid, smooth, and constant, like a snake in the grass, an eel in the river, a dragon in the sky. She later learned that her observation was accurate in more ways than this.

The years progressed, growing in number as did the violence of their quest. Conversely, their numbers dwindled, from 30 to 12 to 6 to 4 to 3 and now, only 2. More fighting and fewer companions exposed that Chail was also scaly, sinuous, and cold-blooded. He fought with the wrath of a dragon, forceful, viscous, and unyielding. Not thick-skinned - for Melia knew how to get under his scales easily, prying them apart with her quips - but leathery, flexible yet tough. Rub it the wrong way, and it would grate against your fingertips. Maybe you would get bitten, two sharp, poisoned teeth penetrating your skin.

Saerie, naively - and aware of this naivete - believed that Chail’s ability to make brutally pragmatic decisions was not inherent to his character. Instead, it was an external skill that he could summon as needed. And it was needed. Many times, more than she could recall, it had saved their lives or the lives of innocents. It was a skill that, over centuries of being a warrior, had honed itself into an invisible sword that he carried. She believed the sword was a tool he used - not that he was that sword himself.

It was unclear to Saerie whether Chail was born with this coldness - if it grew with him, while still in his mother’s womb, along with organs and fingers and eyes and nails - or, if this was something that has consumed him over the years, infecting him, fusing with his true being. Whichever was truth, it did not matter.

Because, at this moment, they needed to choose. He was choosing to open the door. And that was the coldest thing Saerie has ever felt. Colder than the peak they stood atop of, at the highest point of their world, where they were level with the lowest point of the next.

Saerie could see why he believed they should open it. It would achieve their goal, what they set off to do so many years ago, back when they had so many companions by their side. This would cleanse the world, rid it of the calamity, forever. 

But not just that.

They did not know. No one did - not until they found the ancient tome under the rocks, 30 years before. Brea had found it, and kept the secret to herself until it ate up her insides like acid, melting her from within. She took it to Saerie, the youngest but wisest of the remaining troupe. Saerie wanted to tell the others. Brea did not, until they found another way. This would break them, melt everyone else’s spirit like it had already melted hers. For what was the point of it all? Their sacrifice, leaving their kingdoms, their communities, their families, their children to embark on this quest, to save them all. What was the point, when it really would doom them? Yes, opening the door to the next world would quash the calamity. It would achieve their goal. But, it would do so much more.

You can open a door, but you cannot choose who uses it. And their world, in its current state - weakened, and struggling to breathe, like it had just been punched in the throat by an underhanded opponent - would succumb to the powers on the other side.

The door that hovered above Saeri’s head was not a door, but a floodgate. 

And all that they knew, all that made this world theirs, what they committed their lives to save, would effectively be lost. Calamity gone, but also their culture, their beliefs, their practices, their art, their people. They would be overrun - cured, but smothered, suffocated in the process.

But Brea was killed, along with Niamh and Florian. So Saerie told the remaining two. And they did not know what to do, but their feet, conditioned over the years, not knowing how else to move, trudged onwards and upwards. They shared the weight of amongst the three of them, along with the weight of 27 fallen companions along the way. Including Chail’s wife.

“What would Melia think?” Saerie whispered, grasping at the one thread of warmth Chail may still have within him. She hoped that thread had not frozen over yet, like the rest of him, and prayed it would not shatter at her plucking it. “Would she open it? Knowing what we know now.”

Chail drew his sword, in one fluid movement. Blood still coated the blade, fresh from the last wave of enemies they felled. A drop formed at the tip, growing plump and red like a berry, but not yet falling - it had frozen, clinging to the blade, unwilling to drop.

But then, it did fall. It crashed into the snow below; a red splotch, indenting the smooth surface. Chail’s sword was trembling. This was, for the first time in a very long time, something Saerie had never seen Chail do before. Something new.

Drawing his blade on a comrade - killing a comrade - was not new.

“Don’t make me do this, Saerie,” he said, in a lower whisper than her own. “Please. I haven’t slept peacefully since I had to… to Viros.”

Saerie softened at this. More discoveries, layers to Chail that she had failed to capture in their history together, more to amend to the definition she held of him in her mind. This was not a snake shedding its scaly skin. This was a lotus, blooming to reveal its delicate innards.

In the 37th year of their journey, Viros - kind, jolly Viros - had fallen ill while they were traversing the depths of the Desert Braun. They had to move quickly, to flee the oncoming sandstorm, lest it rip their bodies to ribbons with its razor sharp sand. Viros could not run, could barely stay conscious, and no one could carry him. Melia, along with a few other healers, encircled him, trying to grant him strength without depleting their own. 

Chail was near. And Viros, in a brief moment of lucidness, had seen the husband look between his focused, sweating wife - the oncoming sandstorm carrying death - and himself, the dead weight that was, decidedly, better off dead. He asked Chail to do it. The others protested. He asked again, and Chail - brutal, pragmatic Chail - quietly plunged his sword into Viros’s heart, undoing hours of effort by his wife and her similars.

Saerie had recited a quick prayer for the fallen, and they ran for their lives.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Saerie said steadily, and raised her voice, competing with the loudening winds. Again, she felt naive for never considering this part of him. For assuming it was coldness, that allowed him the strength to kill Viros. Not a softness. “I never kn-”

“Of course! Of course you never knew, Saerie! You think I’m just some monster,” Chail exclaimed, moving his hands as he always did when he spoke out of passion. But still holding the sword, which swiped dangerously in the air between them, slicing the wind into broken pieces. “You think I don’t replay that moment, over and over in my head, wishing I had refused. Melia never looked at me the same. Even now, I can see it in your eyes. You think I would just open this door without feeling, but I do feel, Saerie. I feel it all! But what I feel, what you feel, it doesn’t matter. There’s no going back now. What matters is doing what we set off to do. We made an oath.”

The wind grew louder, stronger now. Saerie looked down to see that the drop of blood in the snow was gone - buried under new flakes that had amassed on top of it. Smoothed out and pure, once again. The violence hidden beneath it. 

She stepped on the spot, disturbing it again. 

Saeri looked him in the eyes. With fresh eyes, really looked at him for who he was, rather than who she believed him to be. He was not a dragon, or a snake, or an eel. How callous of her to ever equate them. He was her brother. 

“Chail,” she addressed him, and grabbed the edge of his sword, ignoring the sting as her palm was sliced open. She pushed the blade towards the ground, and he let her. “I have always admired you. You do the hard tasks that must be done, that no one else wishes to do. And you carry that alone. I could never have made it this far without you. And our companions, though they have now passed, made it as far as they did because of you. Because you care, so deeply about each and every one of us. Remember the Tiria Witch?”

Chail cracked a pained smile at this memory, a smoky exhale that was almost a laugh. He uncoiled - no, unfurled - dropping his sword, letting Saerie hold the weight by the blade, and melted into the snow. Buried his face in his hands, then looked up at his companion, his sister.

“I forgive you, Sarie, if you cannot open is. I will do it for you. It must be done. What is one more burden to bear?”

“I will not let you. And I will not do it myself, either.”

“Then, what? We cannot abandon our quest. 100 years, Saerie. Why come this far, why finally reach our destination to simply abandon it?”

Saerie let go of the blade, and crouched to meet her brother. She held his cheek, her blood warm against his skin, cold and frostbitten and weathered by endless hardship. A frozen petal that threatened to crack, if not held with gentle care.

“We will not abandon it. This is not the destination - it is a false exit. The journey has not ended,” Saerie stood, lifting her brother to stand with her. She turned him to face the world that they were tasked to save. “This is merely the close of a disappointing chapter. To pretend that this door is, in fact, the end, is to dash all hope we have, all faith in our world.”

“So what do we do?”

“We turn the page. We continue the journey and we find another way.” Saerie looked up at the door, tempted for the briefest moment, to pull it open, releasing herself and her brother from the responsibility, the pain, the heartbreak and horror. As soon as the thought passed through her, her resolve hardened.

This was not the end.

“Maybe we’ll come back, one day. Maybe this door is the answer. But not yet,” Saerie looked to him, his face marked with her blood. A beautiful streak of pigment. “For now, we keep going. We find another way. We build strength, maybe build our numbers as well. We keep walking, and Chail, I will happily walk alongside you for another 100 years. Whatever it takes.”

He nodded, with the grace and fluidity that Saerie loved about him.

And they continued their quest.