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Azu is… somewhere. Somewhere warm – there’s sunlight puddling on her skin, washing red where her eyelids are closed – and quiet, and safe. How she knows she’s safe here, wherever here is, she couldn’t say, but the sense of it is undeniable.
For a moment, she considers fighting against the peace stealing over her. A few months ago, she’d have relaxed into it without fear, but that was before meeting the LOLOMG. Before her life was full of so much danger, so many things that wanted to hurt her. Now, she doesn’t know if she can trust the calm easing through her, if its just another trap for her to blunder into.
A sudden wash of coolness over the ground at her back, and Azu starts, jerking up and gasping. When she plants her hands to steady herself, they sink into cool, yielding… sand?
Eyes open now, Azu can see she’s lying on a beach, pale sand stretching out to either side of where she’s sitting, and a crystalline blue ocean in front of her, reaching off to the burnished, cloudless horizon. Despite the sun high and heavy as honey on Azu’s back, the sky above her glitters with tiny points of light, like diamonds scattered across azure cloth. She blinks up at them, and notices a subtle, opaline sheen to the heavens.
The faint, shifting colour tickles at something in the back of her head, and Azu is suddenly struck by the feeling that she’s been here before. Except she’s sure she hasn’t ever been to a beach as lovely as this one –
Oh. Of course she hasn’t, not in the waking world.
Now she concentrates, Azu can remember going to sleep – faint and far-away, like the memory isn’t important – so it seems reasonable to assume she’s dreaming. She shrugs and pulls her legs up out of the surf, wrapping her arms around them and staring out to sea. She’s wearing white linen, she notices, wrapped around her like a kanga – the plainest kanga she’s ever seen. Most of it is soaked through with seawater now, clinging to her, and Azu finds she quite likes the feeling. The water is pleasantly cool where it washes through the sand beneath her, keeping the bone-deep heat of the tropical sun bearable.
Ears full of the soft sigh of waves onto the beach and the gentle ruffle of the tires behind her, snatches of bright birdsong and her own steady heartbeat, Azu feels the tension bleed out of her arms and legs, shoulders sinking like melting ice. She sucks in massive lungfuls of warm, salty air, imagines smoke pouring from her nose with each exhale; for a moment, she’s sure she can see it, heavy grey clouds dissipating on the breeze.
Before she knows it, the sun is flirting with the horizon, splashing yellowing light over the waves, and Azu tries to figure out what time it is. She hasn’t been sitting on the soft, cool sand for a whole day, she’s sure of it – does time even exist, here?
Even as she watches, the sun dips lower, and the sky around it catches, yellows and oranges and the beginning blush of pink. Azu’s seen plenty of sunrises and sunsets in her life, but watching one bloom from nothing, spreading fast enough for her to see the colours smearing and shifting and rolling off across the horizon… there’s a special sort of beauty in watching something be born before her eyes. Watching the orange-pinks and soft purples, the melting ombre of blues, the deep gold glow of the dying sun, spilling across their monumental canvas and melting into and through one another.
Azu props her chin on her knees and watches like she’s a child again, curled into a tree branch and drinking in something bigger and brighter than she could ever be. The waves keep sighing around her, washing over her feet, glinting orange and gold and vivid fuchsia. Gilded seafoam kisses her ankles.
As fast as it burst into existence, the sunset melts away, leaving the sky a rich midnight blue. The dark soothes Azu’s eyes, after so long – how long? – in the tropical sun, but as she adjusts she realises the night is illuminated, an impossibly huge golden moon and thousands upon thousands of stars shining down on the beach. Their light paints the sand a soft white, and it and the kanga Azu’s wearing seem to glow against the shadows.
She glances around, relaxed and ready to move again, and something at the edge of the treeline catches her eye, a glowing speck in the sand. Curious, Azu gets to her feet, mildly surprised that sitting so still for so long hasn’t caused any muscle cramps. Her body responds to her easier than it does in the waking world; every step feels like gliding.
Nestled at the feet of a tall palm tree is a little ball of rose quartz, the kind they use for lighting at the temple. Azu had encountered spelled rocks before arriving for her training, but the quartzes she’d seen used had always been see-through and colourless, their light pale and cool. The light cast by a spelled ball of rose quartz is a soft, gorgeous pink that still delights her even after plenty of exposure.
Azu scoops it up, and smiles to feel its warmth in her cupped hands. The moon is bright enough, and with her eyes she could see perfectly fine with the starlight, but it’s nice, to have this little bit of pink light.
Everything is nice, here.
Aphrodite hasn’t given her a dream in… a while, now. And it’s not that Azu’s been bitter, never bitter, she knows that everything her goddess gives her is an honour, a privilege, not something she’s entitled to.
She’d wondered, was all.
“The thing about serving a god,” Imamu, one of her favourite tutors at the seminary, had told her once, “is that you are not a god. You’re nowhere near that powerful, that strong, that steadfast. Our Lady is made of love, made to love, and all you have is the love in your mortal heart – more than most, for sure, else She wouldn’t have called you to Her service, but it’s only so much. Even the gods make mistakes, sometimes, and you are so much less than a god. You’re going to fail, Azu, and when you do it won’t necessarily be because you made a mistake, or should have tried harder, or given more, and it won’t be because Aphrodite shouldn’t have chosen you. It’ll be because you’re mortal.”
Younger, less worldly, Azu had nodded earnestly – she’d respected all her tutors, especially Imamu, and never would have dared to contradict him – but in her heart, she’d been certain he was wrong. How could she ever fail, with her goddess by her side, doing Her work? If she truly fought in Aphrodite’s name, who could she lose?
In the week she and Hamid had spent in quarantine, Azu had thought about those words a lot. She’s still not entirely sure she can believe them. Still, if Aphrodite has brought her here…
Azu won’t assume she knows her Lady’s mind, but surely that’s a good sign? A reason to hope.
She brings the warm ball of light up and presses her lips against it, smiling helplessly. A dark, sick little knot that she hadn’t even noticed she’d been carrying in her chest unravels, smooths out.
With the ball cupped gently in her hands, she slips into the forest. The sand blends into soft, loamy soil, warm like the skin of some great beast. Azu takes care to step carefully, following a clear trail worn through the undergrowth.
Everything here is so full of life, it seems to pulse with it. Every plant she passes is either flowering or fruiting, the air lush and thick with their fragrances. Birdsong dances past her ears, the calls familiar and unfamiliar, overlapping like a choir.
Azu’s footsteps slow to a meander, her mind full of nothing but the brush of her toes through the soft earth, the gentle eddies of air skimming over her drying skin. She trails her hands through the plants around her, brushing against glossy leaves and wrinkled bark and the delicate velvet of flower petals. There’s no need to be cautious; she knows there won’t be any thorns to scratch her, any poison to burn and irritate.
Her path takes her out of the undergrowth and into a small clearing, a gap in the foliage illuminated by streaming, golden moonlight. The trees lining the little grove are achingly familiar to her, with their long tapering leaves and curving branches heavy with glossy, orange fruits. Mangoes, so ripe Azu can smell them from here.
A little dazed by the scent thick in every breath she draws, she picks one, and it comes away easily, still sun-warm in her hand. She has no knife to cut the skin with, not that that ever stopped her as a child, but she’s suddenly self-conscious about pulping it and slurping it out of its skin, the way she used to. It wouldn’t feel… proper, to do that here.
Her eyes skip away, across the shadow-and-gold-dappled foliage, and she spots a glint of silver. A small knife nestled into the moss crawling up a tree root, the sort of thing Sasha might make big doe eyes at. The blade is short, a little impractical for anything Azu’s friend would have used it for, but so finely crafted, its dark wooden handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Thinking about Sasha doesn’t hurt, here. It’s strange, but very welcome.
She scoops up the beautiful little weapon, the handle settling perfectly into her palm, somehow already warm against her skin. It catches the light from the rose quartz ball that’s hanging off her hip in a string cradle. Azu can’t remember when it left her hand, but there’s no fear in that uncertainty.
The blade slides through the ripe fruit with barely any resistance, warm juice pooling in Azu’s hand and starting to run down her wrist. She licks it up quickly before it can drip further, and the taste makes her sigh – just as sweet as she remembers from home. She carves off a slice and raises it to her mouth, revelling in the heady scent before slipping it between her lips.
The mango’s flesh is meltingly tender, practically falling off the skin and into her mouth, slipping down her throat. Azu hadn’t realised she was parched until that moment, but suddenly she’s ravenous. It doesn’t hurt, nothing here has hurt; her hunger is that satisfying ache that lets you know you’re really going to enjoy the food in front of you. The hunger you feel just before satiation.
It’s delicious, like every first ripe mango of the season she can remember, rolled into one perfect fruit. Azu’s finished in no time at all, left licking her sticky fingers clean of juice, feeling heavy and wonderfully sated. One fruit shouldn’t have been enough to quench that desperate hunger, but she feels like she could never eat again and be utterly satisfied.
As she sucks the stickiness from the soft crevice between her thumb and index finger, a breeze sighs past, bringing the sweet babble of flowing water. Smiling to herself, Azu follows it out of the mango grove, wandering through the trees until the soft loam under her feet is replaced by silvery stone covered in thick moss.
She’s in another clearing, standing in front of a basin of rock worn smooth by the dark river spilling down an elegant tumble of stone. Carefully, Azu picks her way across the slick, cushiony greenery until she’s standing close enough to feel the fine mist kiss her cheeks.
When she slips her hand into the flow, she finds the water cool as shade on a summer day, silken-soft as it runs off her fingers. Feeling light and free as a child, Azu plunks down at the pool’s edge, onto the mossy stone, and slips her feet in with a shiver of pleasure.
Suddenly, the forest air is too hot, too close. Azu unwraps the kanga and tosses the linen aside, before lowering herself into the pool. The water is even cooler the further she slides into it, and she can’t bite back her gasp as it closes round her. For a moment she hangs there, feet just brushing the smooth basin, shivering and adjusting.
It doesn’t take long for the water to become pleasantly cool again, and Azu relaxes into its embrace, pushing off from the bottom and tilting her hips so that she’s floating on her back. Above her, the stars still glitter, silver specks against the velvety black. They weave together, rivers of light that almost seem to flow, and she could swear she can see soft clouds of colour spilling around them, luminous blues and purples shimmering in the heavens. Closer to her than that infinite array of light hangs the moon, golden and opalescent and obviously not the sharp, silver disc that Artemis would rule. This moon, in this place, is larger and softer, almost heavier.
Aphrodite Ourania. The spiritual, heavenly aspect of Aphrodite, embodying celestial love, distinct from Aphrodite Pandemos, Her earthly aspect. When Azu had first learned about this dual aspect of her goddess, she’d felt a little thrill of fear. Aphrodite had seemed so close to her, ever since She’d first come to her, and now there was a part of Her that Azu couldn’t feel, couldn’t touch.
She’d gotten over it, but it had scared her.
And now here it is, here She is, stretched out for Azu to see. She’s not quite sure that’s a message, but it brings hot tears to Azu’s eyes all the same.
She’s staring into the face of her goddess, and Aphrodite is beautiful. Impossibly, transcendently glorious.
Slow as the tide coming in, a heady warmth pools inside Azu’s heart and overflows, filling her chest, blooming through her organs and bones and muscle, slipping like molten rock through her arteries, pulsing heady and wet between her thighs. Every inch of her skin feels as if it’s blooming, as if she’s only just grown nerves and they’re still raw and dancing at every swirl of cool water, every gentle night breeze. She physically cannot close her eyes, cannot bear to look away.
It’s like the first dream all over again, that shattering, re-forming tidal wave of revelation. She can’t speak, can’t move, can barely breathe – just floats, so achingly present in her skin that every inhale, every exhale, moves her like a tectonic plate
Azu cries gently, and for a long time; this doesn’t feel like an emotion that needs to be hurried. The water laps away her tears, cooling her heated skin, and the stars keep burning above her, pouring their light down onto her like the softest rainfall, like a caress to every inch of her new and shivering skin.
When her eyes finally slip closed, stinging in the sweetest way, she could swear she feels lips brush against one eyelid, then the other, feather-light. Azu tilts her face up into the contact, and warm breath brushes her cheek as someone laughs above her.
Then those lips brush hers, meltingly soft, and Azu gasps. The contact spills through her like honey pouring down her throat, wiping out sense and time and thought. Swept away on a wave of translucent gold.
She hangs there, suspended, loved until there’s nothing in her but love, shimmering and aching and burning her clean.
It ends – it has to, any more of this and Azu is sure she’d die – the overwhelming battering of her heart fading to a warm stream curling through her veins. She doesn’t feel cold, or empty, in the aftermath; just… loved. Loved, and held, and at peace. However much she might doubt herself in the waking world, here, in this moment, she is totally assured of her goddess’ faith in her. The relief is monumental.
Aphrodite is with her. Aphrodite will always be with her.