27. Drowning

  The people of Resh Fali loved parades, and used every chance they could to throw one. Two of the Peach Blossoms getting married was viewed as good of a reason as any, and so the day of the marriage began with a parade, with the bride and groom being picked up on two different floats and paraded around the city in concentric patterns, getting steadily closer to each other but never quite coming into sight of the other.

  The people turned out to cheer at them, and Polkluk and Taimei both nervously waved back at the happy crowd. Thousands of people were using this as a reason to celebrate, and the couple themselves were beside themselves with joy.

  And nervousness.

  For my part, I wasn’t worried. I was proud of both of them and happy for them for choosing each other and deciding to make a family together. Although ‘choosing to make a family together’ sounded like it was sort of an accident. As much as such things are ever an accident, at least.

  Not that I could judge.

  As a head of state, I wasn’t expected to marry Mai Mai, as my first wife was expected to secure a strong political alliance for my house. Mai Mai didn’t fit that bill, and while I would have broken the expectation and married her anyway, she herself thought that she’d make a better second wife than a first wife, and was reluctant to bind herself into such a stressful position where the expectations upon her political acumen would be so high.

  “I serve tea, Little Bug,” she told me. “I don’t know anything about ruling. But I love you.”

  It was needlessly complicating things, in my opinion, but the fact that I intended to take her as a wife, even if it was as a second wife, was widely known through the public. Even if I only held her as a concubine, that would have legitimized the inheritance of our children, so long as I recognized them. But with my intention to marry her once a suitable first wife was found, suddenly women were approaching her in an attempt to befriend her in order to worm their way into our relationship.

  It was much simpler for them to approach the matter that way than come at me directly, and since I only had eyes for Mai Mai, I was somewhat relieved at the pressure that it took off of me to select a bride.

  I had simply made it known that “If you wish to be my first wife, Mai Mai must approve of you.” It was perhaps a little selfish, but Mai Mai was enjoying weeding down the applicants as she sorted the wheat from the chaff, the common from the rare, and the precious from the selfish. Several of the women she befriended along the way withdrew from consideration on their own yet vowed to remain friends with her regardless.

  With these thoughts in my head, I sat at the head of the temple of the ancestors while the procession finally arrived. Atla was dancing about in her dress, throwing flowers into the air that swirled about and never quite seemed to hit the ground. For that matter, her basket never ran empty of petals to throw either.

  Atla continued to dance and throw petals throughout the entire ceremony, which I kept short and sweet, speaking of love appearing in unexpected locations and the joy of walking down a path with a life partner. I gave them my blessing, then allowed them to exchange vows while they exchanged rings.

  Polkluk was nervous, but stumble through his traditional lines. Taimei rushed hers so that she could finally kiss her husband, and I led the procession outside to present the married couple to the masses.

  Which is when it happened.

  Atla gave a few seconds notice.

  “Father, you’re coming back!” She announced. Then her face grew with concern, and then fear. She discorporiated, her eidolon body vanishing and leaving her dress behind.

  I could feel her as she suddenly manifested in a new way, and I didn’t have time to figure out what she was doing before the lightning struck me and I--

  ~~~~~~

  I was drowning.

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  I struggled in the sea of memories, split in twain. The part of me that I had sent away had come back, and it had grown stronger than me. So very, very strong. It was driven in a way that I was not, powerful in a way that I was not. Ruthless in a way that I was not.

  It could take everything from me. I knew that if I fought back against it, I would lose. Even as it tore at me, battling to become dominant, I struggled back against it, trying to prove that I was real, I was the true Little Bug .

  I saw myself through the others eyes. Weak. Stagnant. I had been idle for weeks, and what had I done? I had pushed papers and planned weddings. The world itself was at stake, and I had been quietly waiting for the war to come to me so that the enemy would find me unprepared and my people unprotected.

  It was not wrong.

  Even as I saw myself through its eyes, it saw itself through mine.

  Empty. Devoid of meaning. Strong, but to what purpose? What purpose did its strength serve? Who did I seek to dominate to have driven myself to such lengths?

  We were both drowning, tangled and twisted as we were fused together in a tangled mass of memories.

  “We must reach the surface,” I said. “Help me.”

  “Help me,” he said.

  “I will. We go together. I accept you as you are,” I said.

  He was silent. “You are the reason I fight.”

  “You are what I need to protect those I love,” I said to him.

  I embraced myself.

  He pulled me towards the surface.

  And I dragged him above the water.

  Even as my own head burst through the surface, I came to a realization.

  I was alone in the sea.

  My enemy that was myself had been defeated.

  But I did not know which half of me had emerged victorious.

  And I never would find out, because there was no way of telling. I didn’t remember which half I had been.

  No, that’s wrong. I had been both.

  While I had been bleeding and fighting and ruthlessly climbing the tower, I had also been laughing and feeding Mai Mai dumplings while she closed her eyes to let me. I had been listening to Atla talk about dolphins while securing the world I had claimed as my own.

  I was both the man who had so much to protect,

  And the man who had the strength to protect it.

  I closed my eyes in the sea of memories,

  And I opened them once more on the steps of the temple of the ancestors, where I found myself alone.

  The city was deserted. I looked down at my hand, studying the veins of power that now glowed golden beneath my skin, and I understood.

  The weight of my presence had pushed them away. I hoped that I had not accidentally crushed anyone with my power, and that Atla had managed to shield them. That was what she had done, I knew, the reason she had abandoned her eidolon at that moment.

  The tribulation had come, and I was far from the only one who had been affected. I stood now on the platinum realm, and I had only a marginal grasp upon my own power. It leaked out of me, roiling and dangerous to anyone who had not formed their own identity core. If someone below the golden realm were to come to close to me, they would be swept up in my waters and lose their own significance in mine.

  Floating into the air, I considered what I needed to do for a moment, before flying off to the other side of the world. I split off an avatar to leave behind, a humble thing with but the power of and significance of a mortal, and fled to the island with the tea plantation to regain my mastery over myself.

  ?