Livia's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

Livia dared not sleep in the forest again. She returned to the temple instead, where stone serpents watched over the goddess, and she lay down on the cool floor. She meant only to rest her eyes. But her body was spent from the attack, and sleep pulled her under. In the dream she stood inside a wide hall. People filled it, their faces turned toward her. She opened her mouth and began to sing. The song was not hers, but it rose anyway. One by one the people stopped moving. Their skin hardened. Their eyes dulled to gray. She sang, and the whole hall turned to stone around her. Livia woke with a gasp. Her snake tightened once, then eased. The dream still clung to her. She knew whose hall that was. She rose and walked out to the orchard behind the shrine, where one tree bore golden fruit beside rich orange persimmons. She reached up, picked a persimmon, and bit into it. The sweetness spread through her. Her headache loosened. Strength returned to her legs. She breathed easier than she had in two days. "I should pay her another visit," Livia said. She found Medusa among her own stillness, serpents shifting slow through her green hair. Medusa had once served at a temple and been punished for a crime done to her, not by her. Now her gaze turned men to stone, and few sought her out. Livia did. "My rival strikes me when I meditate," Livia said. "She reached into my mind across the whole forest. I cannot shield myself. I will walk into the trial with nothing left." Medusa did not look away. Her serpents went quiet. "She enters through the door you open," Medusa said. "You sit down, you empty yourself, you invite her in." "Then I stop meditating." "No. You stop going alone." Medusa lifted one hand toward the snake at Livia's neck. "That one wakes when danger comes. It woke for me the first time you came. Let it keep the door while your mind works." Livia touched the snake. It held her gaze and did not shrink. "Do not reach outward," Medusa said. "Reach down. Hold one true thing and close your fist on it. She cannot pour into a mind that is already full." She paused. "You already carry the weight she wants to use. Carry it on purpose." Livia understood. She had been meditating with her guard down, emptied and open. She would do it the other way now. She sat beside Medusa and shut her eyes. She did not empty herself. She held her guilt, her tribe, the gate she left open, and she let the snake watch the dark. The pressure came, searching. It found a full mind and no way in. Livia opened her eyes. The exhaustion was gone. For the first time since the attacks began, her thoughts were her own. She could enter the trial rested, and shielded.