This Tales of the Navel: The Shadow Forest freebie story was the result. I'm thinking of revising and working it into A Godling for Your Thoughts?
A single beam of sunlight was captured in the locket. Once Melyssa opened it, Danyel held up a hand to block his vision, stopping in front of Tayel. His twin’s sight was far keener than his own, making the beam’s glare far more painful for him.
“They say shadows are driven away by light. I say that’s a lot of nonsense.” Melyssa spoke in a sharp tone that pierced the ear. “Light casts shadows. They cannot exist without it. And this light belonged to the brightest soul that ever peered out of a pair of wise eyes, my Master’s.” She wrapped her lips around the word “Master” with a possessive reverence that sent shivers down Danyel’s spine.
“What happened to your master?” Tayel shook his head slightly, warning him to be quiet, and yes, he was probably right. Danyel didn’t want to know the answer, but he had a feeling he needed to know.
“I couldn’t remember until I found this locket.” Melyssa frowned, cupping the object in question with her hand, dimming the light. “She ran from me, ran from all of the Sisters of Seraphix and we, we were chasing her.”
“Why were you chasing her?” Danyel took a step forward. The cries from beyond the Door, memories of another time and place rang in his head, as if they belonged to him.
“Freak! Halfling!”
“She…changed.” Melyssa furrowed her brow, wrinkles appearing in them. The expression was so like Map’s, it was troubling. “She allowed herself to embrace a monster, letting it become part of her, invading the temple. We…we couldn’t allow her to continue doing that.” She fumbled for the words, uncertain of them. “We chased her out.”
“Chased her out?” Something bitter spread across Danyel’s tongue. “Or were you trying to kill her?”
“Danyel!” Tayel hissed, sending him a warning glare.
“Why were you trying to kill her?” Danyel ignored the warning. He crossed his arms and glared at Melyssa, remembering the fearful stomach flutterings, the rage he’d felt in that brief moment in the Shadow Forest when he’d been Map, when he’d relived one of her worst memories. What should have been dreamlike and vague returned to him with the sharpness of a blow to his cheek.
“Abomination!”
“Why was she an abomination?” Danyel glared at Melyssa. “Because her skin changed? Because she no longer looked human, she stopped being the person you loved?” He advanced on Melyssa. “What’s wrong with you?”
“We were afraid!” Melyssa backed up a step and raised her arms, not quite looking at Danyel. She dropped the locket, letting it fall against her breast. “We’d never seen anything like the creature our master became and I…I was trying to escape from monsters myself. I thought they’d followed me to the temple. The fear I felt when I saw our master, my master in that shape, well, I thought she’d betrayed me to my enemies.”
She buried her face in her hands.
“Instead you betrayed her.” Danyel would not feel sorry for this girl. He would not. She’d hurt his family, scarred her with a fear that infected not only Map, but Tayel and perhaps Leiwell, leaving them terrified of other people, anyone outside their little family. Only it was hard not to pity her, watching her tremble so. She looked just as afraid as Map or Tayel at that moment. “You turned on her and attacked her.”
“How do you know all this?” Melyssa looked up with a tear-stained face. “I’ve only just remembered it!”
“After casting aside your memory in the Shadow Forest when you strayed from the path.” Tayel gazed at his twin with grim intensity. “Leaving that piece of yourself for innocent fools to pick up.”
Danyel flushed at this. “It wasn’t Melyssa’s memory I picked up. It was M..the master’s.” He caught himself from saying Map’s name just in time. That wasn’t his secret to tell. “I felt her fear as she ran from her former sisters.”
He bit his lower lips, balling his hand into a fist. It wasn’t his memory either to have or hold on, but the ghost of it haunted him. Why did it haunt him?
“You shouldn’t go picking up other people’s memories, not that I believe in such a thing.” Melyssa scowled, not seeming to believe or like her own words. “A memory is an important part of a person. It makes her whom she is.”
“If that’s so, why do people throw them away?” Danyel heard a slight intake of breath beside him, felt Tayel withdraw from him. “Why are people so eager to cast away who and what they are?”
Melyssa recoiled, almost as if Danyel had struck her. She dropped the locket, letting it fall against her tunic, to lodge itself against the leather ties at her breast.
He wasn’t sure if she’d answer or if she wanted to. He could feel Tayel’s stillness, a frozen state which was somehow worse than his anger.
“You know the answer to that.” She raised her head, looking at him with vivid, rose-purple eyes, filled with blood and sorrow. “Because we don’t like whom we are. Not at all.”
She turned her back on him and stalked away.
“That was brutal,” Tayel uttered the accusation in a low voice. “Cruelty from you is an unexpected as the earth swaying under my feet, shattering every goblet our mothers ever sipped from.”
“Do you have any idea what she did?” Danyel turned on his twin with a savage rage that took him by surprise. “You’re the one who’s always saying or hinting that our family matters and these new neighbors of ours don’t.”
Tayel flinched at that. “It matters when they bring cruelty out of you.” This was as direct a statement as his twin ever made. “It matters when that cruelty exposes you in a way that puts you and our whole family at risk.”
Danyel stiffened at this. “She already knew or suspected something.”
“Now she’s certain.” Tayel crossed his arms and gazed straight at his brother with glittering eyes, filled with sharp, silver angles. “Now we must face the storm of her certainty.”
“The storm was already coming,” Danyel started to argue, only to sigh and shrug. “All right. Maybe I was cruel. She brought back some cruel memories.”
“Sometimes our memories are too cruel to carry.” Tayel shook his head, let it droop, golden hair falling forward to hide his expression. “That cruelty, however, may be a vital part of our being, what shapes our being.”
“What are you saying?” Danyel peered at his brother, trying to see past the veil of curls and waves.
Tayel didn’t answer. He simply swayed, taking a step back.
Danyel swallowed, considering his twin’s words. There was something particularly ominous about this particular riddle, perhaps more ominous than Tayel himself guessed.
He had an awful feeling they’d find out why.
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