The Endless Solvent

Five years later

Her mother was dying. Every day her breaths get shorter, her face gets more ashen. Whatever boon she was given from that cursed enchantment long wore off and now she was clearly suffering from another illness.

Rakel sold the pair of Sekrelli made glasses Doran had left behind and found it was worth a small fortune - equivalent to numerous valuable heirlooms her mother had reserved for emergencies. She never once felt guilty about selling the damn thing. It allowed her to seek medical help - real medical help.

Despite that, her mother never regained control of her body and now none of the doctors are able to help her. “We are simply mortals, my lady,” one of the doctors said to her. “And your mother has lived many years.”

They prescribed the most nutritional food, simple exercises and limb-movements for her unresponsive mother and that was the best advice the remaining money could buy. The rest was left to the Parts, although Rakel had long thought the Parts had abandoned them. They were simply mortals and they lived day by day with no knowledge beyond what they saw right before their eyes.

Every morning, Rakel would wipe down Lady Lokah, change her sanitary cloth, feed her (she was thankfully still able to swallow watery food on reflex) and read to her from a book. She also made a habit of combing out her mother’s long gray hair, occasionally braiding it while having a one sided conversation to fill the silence.

That was the hardest thing to get used to. Rakel thought that she would be grateful never to hear the screaming and the coughing ever again but she was wrong. The silence was deafening, it filled every corner of her life and muffled her mind like cotton. Once she dreamed her mother awoke, fully lucid and in control of her body. In the dream, Lady Lokah sat up in bed and called for her.

My little lady.

Rakel woke up with tears gumming up her eyes having fallen asleep by her mother’s bedside. Her mother was awake, eyes open, but the gaze was vacant. It was just a dream. It felt like she had lost her mother all over again.

For a whole year, Rakel wanted to be angry at the strange man that did this to her mother. She wanted to be angry at herself for having such selfish thoughts back then. But then one year quickly turned to five and now her mother was dying. Anger did nothing for herself or her mother.

After realizing her mother was on the cusp of death, her anger dissolved almost completely. She had to find a doctor skilled enough to save her mother. She had to do everything to the best of ability to keep her alive. She had to - it was her duty. Her punishment for those horrible thoughts in the past.

One day she did her weekly groceries - she was limited to the markets closest to the Lokah residence as she didn’t want to leave her mother alone for too long. The vegetable merchant there was kind enough not to overprice their stock and was willing to sell the less fresh items at a discount - Rakel could still use it for soup and broth. She rarely made anything else.

That day she was late since seasonal storms had blown in and she was waiting for the right time to run out. The angry clouds took a brief respite and she hurried out, only to be caught in another bout of heavy rain and crashing thunder. Scared, she ran for cover in a nearby doorway while clutching her basket of food close to her. Winds whipped the rain onto her, soaking her. She critically studied the purple clouds, wondering how dangerous it would be to run the whole way back home.

Then down the street she saw a figure. Rakel thought it was another poor soul caught in the rain, shadowed by the dark clouds. Lightning streaked across the skies and Rakel frowned, realizing she couldn’t see the shape of the person clearly except for its long cloak. Thunder screamed overhead along with the realization the figure was approaching and she still could not see the shape of the head or hands.

She squinted and saw that the figure’s head and hands looked black and blurry as if drawn of smudged charcoal at a distance. Then it moved closer; Rakel then thought in movement, it looked like smoke. Rain thundered down around it, the incorporeal substance it was made of stuttered with the rain. It shifted again and she was shocked to see two glowing green orbs appear where the eyes would be on its smoky face.

They were the exact green color Doran’s liquid eyes were.

Before she could fully poise the question in her mind, the mysterious smoky figure reached out, hand made of swirling darkness. She recoiled.

“Woman,” a voice croaked out, barely audible over the sound of rain.

Then the figure collapsed.

—

It was him.

Her suspicions were confirmed when Doran, now strangely made of smoke, curled up in the same position as he had years ago. There was zero chance her mother would be walking around the house and discover him this time, but still she designated the pantry floor to him - she could give him a spare room, but she didn’t. It was a matter of principle.

It felt strange carrying him. He weighed almost nothing as if he really was made of smoke, but when she touched the smoke-body it felt like regular flesh. It was like she was carrying a hazy memory of a body. She prayed that the storm was severe enough and nobody spotted them.

She kept a fire burning at the stove she learned to keep clean over the years in case he wanted to dry off. But she changed in her own, freezing room, then tended to her mother. It was only later that evening while boiling yet another soup for dinner did she sit by the pantry door and look at him.

After a while, two green gemstones appeared gradually from slits in the ‘face’ and she stared at the alien features. The smoke around seemed to crest slightly, as if they were moved by a smile.

The little quirk of a smile he used to do. Doran was doing it again.

“Woman,” he said. No mouth appeared but the sound came from him. He never used her name before either. She doesn't recall ever telling him her name

“What happened to you?” she asked, despite herself.

The gemstone eyes appeared to look down as Doran studied his own body. “I cast a spell that cost me my own body,” he said. “This form is… the most comprehensive I can muster. It’s taken a lot out of me, it’s why I collapsed.”

“Why are you back here?”

“I don’t really know myself,” Doran moved his hand as if to scratch his face, but then looked surprised at his shadowy hand. “Perhaps I teleported myself accidentally? Corporeal exchange in a spell is tricky.”

Rakel balled her hands into fists, unable to process the thoughts going through her mind. Five years worth of things she wanted to say to him now eluded her. All she felt was frustration.

“Spells,” she spat. “The chantry was right. We are not meant to use magic.”

“Runes are just tools,” Doran said, shrugging. “As is magic.”

“Can you honestly say that when you look like that? And after what you did to my mother?”

“I helped her,” he said evenly.

“You turned her into an invalid.”

“She was actively hurting you,” he retorted. “She tried to take your eyes out. I was making your life more bearable.”

“I never asked for you to turn her into that! You didn’t give me the choice!”

“You had a choice. You always had a choice. You didn’t take it.” Doran rose from the floor of the pantry, smoke form seemingly expanding to fill the small space. Tendrils of smoke swirled to halo his gemstone eyed face like a mane. “Why is it my fault when I am trying to help? I control what I can to give the best result. I have seen the possibilities. Your mother being in that state is the best result because then you’ll realize you can and should live your own life.”

“I do live my own life,” Rakel said. “I chose to stay by her side. But you decided it wasn’t the right decision.”

“It isn’t!” he exclaimed. “You had every opportunity to succeed but you ignored it!”

“Are you listening to yourself?” she said angrily. “If you are deciding for me, how do I have a choice?”

“You would scorn the hand that gives you opportunity and riches?”

“Is that what that was?” Rakel shook her head. “You leaving your tinted glasses was your way of handing me riches? Turning my mother into a corpse that can eat and defecate is giving me an opportunity? Am I supposed to thank you?”

He seemed to shrink, smoke form gathering to form a rough head shape again. Before, his eyes looked liquid but now they looked completely solid, like smooth, opaque jewels that glow. They dimmed now, as if contemplative. Strange that a face had so few features yet she knew exactly what expression he had.

“I thought we were similar,” he finally admitted. She remembered he said something similar long ago. “We are both stuck in a position where we should be able to leave but we don’t. I thought if I gave you an excuse you would take it.”

“I thought you could see ‘many things.’ Couldn’t you see that I would have refused you?”

“No,” he said after a long pause. “It’s one of the things I can’t see: what you’re going to do. I can see what you are doing, I can see your emotions, but other than that…” his voice trailed, eyes wandering over her shoulder again.

“You thought that if I chose to leave, you could too?” Rakel finally asked.

“Yes.”

“Was my mother’s life worth it?” she asked bitterly. “Did it prove my resolve?”

“Some people would argue it was worth it,” Doran shrugged.

“You’re such a bastard.”

“I apologize,” he said. His form diminished even further then, as if to show sincerity.

“If you’re sorry, you’ll fix her,” Rakel said. “You return her to the way she used to be. You’ll give me back my mother.”

“She’s dying,” Doran said. “And that isn’t my doing. She was going to die soon regardless of my spells.”

“I don’t care. She deserves to be able to move and speak until the very end.” Rakel was surprised at how easily she came to that conclusion. It was the one thing she was sure of. It felt right.

“Will you forgive me if I do this?”

Rakel suddenly remembered the first time she met him back in the markets while he was trapped in that cage. A strange wild man with liquid eyes with strange, blasphemous power. Perhaps she should have never helped him. Perhaps helping him was the most important decision of someone else’s life. She wasn’t sure what role she had to play in this. “Will your aid be contingent on my answer to that?” she asked, lifting her chin to him.

He recognized his own words to her and his gemstone eyes crested again in a smile.

—

Doran, or Heel as his siblings know him as, took a visit to the in-between. He hated it there, it was simultaneously too large and too small, too crowded and too sparse. It was the kind of paradoxical existence his brother Body enjoyed.

It took him a day or two to ‘recover’ back in that pantry of House Lokah, suffering the wrath of the woman he never learned the name of. Usually he could read something from the Solute of the person (as is his ability), but the young Lady Lokah’s fate was a mystery to him. His special sight didn’t even deign to give him a name and they had conversed far too long so it would be awkward to ask at that point.

Also, he did something terrible to her mother. It was a test he probably didn’t have the right to give her. But then again, what rights to Parts have to begin with?

He also lied about not knowing why he appeared before her after acquiring his smoke form. The scrying spell had distressed his form so much that he lost it and in his time of need he only thought about wanting to see her again. The woman who helped him for no reason. She helped him again even after all he’d done to her. Because of her, Heel knew what he needed to do. Informing Body was a part of it. Perhaps it was an instinct left over from when they were whole, but all the siblings always had to inform Body what they were going to do.

Perhaps he should just be grateful he had full control over his actions, unlike long ago.

“I mean, that is quite a change in style,” Body snickered the moment he set eyes on him. Heel ignored the comment.

“I’m going to make things right again,” Heel said. “I’m going to make sure neither you nor Mind get what you want.”

Body narrowed his liquid black eyes at him. “And what exactly do you think I want?”

“You’ve always answered to Mind, don’t deny you’re on her side.”

Body rolled his eyes. “I’m on the side of the one who will finally bring me some peace and quiet.”

“Peace and quiet? We will always have more to do while Mind tries to destroy every single child of Gaia, you should stand with us. You’re the Body, dammit, why do you refuse to do anything?”

“Why are you so desperate? The sin committed by the Children of Gaia is why this shit is happening in the first place. Let them pay for it,” Body’s eyes swirled angrily. Heel was almost jealous, his own eyes had solidified with the side effect of his scrying spell.

“Just because a handful of them call us gods doesn’t make us actual gods,” Heel said disdainfully. “And just because they’ve forgotten about us doesn’t mean we just abandon them.”

“This again,” Body spat. “If Mind awakening can put a stop to this ridiculous moralizing, then I'll peel her eyes open myself.”

Heel shook his smoky head. “Hand is right, you’ve changed, brother,” he finally said. “You used to be the best of us. You used to care.”

“Maybe I’ve realized along with Mind that the Children of Gaia aren’t worth our time.”

“We have endless time,” Heel said.

“And they are but a blip in that endlessness and they have already caused so much trouble,” Body agreed. “Tell me why you even care.”

Heel took a deep breath and looked upwards, westward. He closed his gemstone eyes and could see the woman in her mourning shroud while standing next to an elaborate gravestone. She had looked after her mother until the very end, holding the frail hand as her mother took her last breath, even able to exchange a few words after Heel ‘fixed’ the elder Lady Lokah on her deathbed.

He saw the muscles on her face relaxed in relief when the old woman finally passed, then tensed again in guilt. Even then, even as her mother’s solute dissolved into the Great Solvent, the young Lady Lokah did not want to hurt her.

He realized he thought the same of every cursed Child of Gaia he had the misfortune to come across. Even if the day of their demise actually arrived to take them, even if they deserved their demise, Heel wanted to do the right thing.

“I want to be a good person,” Heel said finally, opening his gemstone eyes to look at his brother.

“You aren’t even a ‘person’,” Body snorted.

“Then… then I simply want to be good.”