650 - Behold Arko, Our True Son.

I was cradled in a fiery hand and was not burned. What I’d felt as agony, had been mostly fear. Fear of sexuality.  Fear of passion. Fear of the Father.  I would have slumped in relief except I was held firmly.  I... was uninjured, unimpaled.  I... was not hard any longer.  If... I knew this.  If the God had wished me to come I would have.  But my lesson from Him was the threat of abusive sexuality that I lived with my whole life.

My father only abused me the once, with Chevenga as his surrogate but I realized now that I grew up under constant threat that he would hurt me, since there was no separate ‘me’ to feel anything.  If he’d felt good, that would have been sufficient for him and any sign I showed differently would have been ignored as not real or important.

I was held as if in the God’s own hair, like His Wife’s. It was like being hugged by someone who would forever see you as your own person, with your own feelings. A separate person with feelings and wishes and desires and impulses all my own.

“So You understand.”  His fiery voice is gentle now, as warm and soothing as a fire lit against the cold; the fire that would save you from both cold and death.

I rock in His lap, weeping, with my hands upstretched, shaken with sobbing. The flames wreath around me, clearing away every bit of dead skin, drying tears and mucus from my face with a brisk and firm hand, like a father wielding a linen handkerchief.

“Take a deep breath, let your fear go, child.”  He sounds just like a massive Arkan version of Zinchaer.

“Father, I will.”

The flames died down, leaving me sitting on the lap of the statue of Muunas, looking out at the crowd who were silent one long, long instant.  I slid down to stand between them and the God and the Temple said, in its massive, thunderous, bone-shaking voice. “BEHOLD, ARKO. OUR TRUE SON.”  

It spoke in modern Arkan, as it had before when Chevenga did his first and second Ten Tens.

The Temple choir and instruments sang the final, high, soaring chord and the crowd shrieked. “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, FOREVER!” “Ten of Ten!” “FOREVER!” “Ten of Ten!” “Yesterday!” “...Today! Tomorrow, FOREVER!” The sound of their voices pulled me to my knees and then there was only one thing I could do, my heart full.  I flung myself into a prostration to them all, stretching my hands toward my people.  “Yesterday, Minis!”  “Today, Minis!” “Ten of Ten!” “Forever, Minis!”

For a moment their chanting faltered then someone laughed in the middle of the chanting, singing crowd and someone else shouted “GEHIT, MINIS!” even as the Fenjitzas and Fenjitza on either side raised me up.

The Fenjitza released the circlet of glass that Mikas had put in my hair and I said... “May I be anointed at the doors?  Where everyone may see?”  My heart was so full I wanted to sing and shout and dance for joy, touch every hand that reached out to me.

It took several tries to make my request heard, the sound of drums and bells and the instruments and the crowd noise, but they took me to the doors. I kissed and touched gloves and even bare hands offered me all along the way.  There was nothing profane here in the Temple.

At the door, I raised my hands, Imperial seals shining cleaned by sweat and fire to the crowd outside.  The Fenjitzas raised the vials of sacred oil and finally, finally the crowd quieted.  I smiled at my family to one side and when he could be heard, the Fenjitzas raised the blessed glass circlet over his head.

The touch of oil on my forehead and eyelids and body was cool and sticky, “By the Ten!” the Fenjitzas declaimed. 

The crowd quieted, to hear him. “In the Names of the Ten Gods, I present to you, Minis Kurkas Joras Amitzas Aan, Imperator by Their will!” It was the most glorious, shining moment I had ever, ever hoped to feel, and I raised my voice beginning to sing praise of the Ten, praise of the vote, praise of my people.  I don't remember what I sang precisely.

As they raised the Imperial Robe over my naked, cleansed body I heard a yell of 'Minis, a DART, MOVE!" from Chevenga, off behind me somewhere, saw Idiesas begin to push past the Fenjitzae, felt a shock in my chest where the red vanes  of a lethal dart blooming in the right of my chest, even as I began to move.  

I froze where I stood and the Temple made this awful shrieking noise that I had never heard before, spiking through my suddenly ringing fading ears. I realized that I had, perhaps, a dozen heartbeats to live.