Chereads / Strings of Jade / Chapter 2 - Ichora's POV

Chapter 2 - Ichora's POV

My whole life I just wanted one thing- mention. Not power, not fame or any of that. Just a mention. A mention that she can do what you cannot, a mention that she knows more than anyone around her. But my long hair and raised chest were enough to wash the fresh paint of my knowledge to reveal the ugly rust of my identity underneath. 

I never chose to be this way. This what Fate had in store for me. 

I needed a medium, to show my worth. Is that too much to ask for? Yes, yes it is Ichora. The one we worship is a goddess. Not a god. They say that she can grant you anything if you pray hard enough. So they all fall at her feet and pray day and night, like fools, not really certain if their actions will bear any fruit. They don't know.

I know.

But no one dares to mention that, for it is impure.

They are all on their knees for a stone statue of a being they don't even know exists, but for a woman who does, they look down on her for she is 'illegitimate'. 

No one, except him.

I felt that stone statue call out to me, like a utopian dream, it whispered things I could not understand, that day. My feet had got wings, somehow. Barking orders, I marched to the dungeons, when I saw him. Bloody and small, trembling next to the one who gave birth to him. Take him, I said. 

If someone could get me my mention, it was that boy, 6 years younger, messenger of the goddess herself. I think.

His large blue eyes looked uncertainly at me, as thought I would eat them raw. I could do nothing, but smile. Uncertain myself, I had snatched his rights, his last moments with his mother, me, a stranger. 

They dipped him in a pool, because I said so. By the grace of the goddess, the deed is done. My words came back to me. What deed? Him taking his mother's own life? The priest pulled him back, a bit too harsh. Then it struck me- he was illegitimate, too. The priest was trying to kill him. Suffocate him.

I pulled him back and it was then that I realized that he was human, too. That he could die, too. That he was not a weapon, or a tool. Just an eight year old boy who just lost his mother. It was then that I began to care. For the first time in my life. 

He did not look at me like the other's did. Not because he was special, but because he did not know who I was.

I tried to be kind, but he backed away. I am not his mother, I will never be. But I am not a monster, too.

It will be okay, I said. Everything will be alright, I said. He believed me, and slept.

What a load of lies. It was not okay. It will never be, for him, or for me.

It never was.

It was then that I realized I never got his name.