Stonefish

There weren't always dragons in the valley, but the greenness of the land was owed to dragon activity. Their scorching breath caused huge fires that revived the soil. Fire on the plain, forest in the rain. That was the saying.

It was green, and vast, and sprawling. The meadow, tufted grasses of various heights, tall stalks kneeling south as a breeze from the north glided over like a drape being dragged across the majestic undulating green dunes.

Her eyes passed right over the small stone hovel, also green and overgrown with grass that was even starting to pry the shingles from the roof in bursts of grassy fur. Weeds had completely matted down over the large gray stones that comprised the walls. She started to move towards what once had been her childhood home.

* * *

He held up his lantern into the cloud, and swishes of fog peeled apart like wet silk sliding open to reveal skin. The gnarled limbs of barren old trees twisted skeletal, engulfed by fog that stirred in sighs. The mists were getting worse. The humidity was suffocating. How strange, to breathe air so moist, yet its aroma was all ash. The scent of something both burnt and wet. These misty marshes in the Silvery Fog were steam coming up from the magma rivers underneath. Occasionally in the darkness, a glow would flare up, and a vein of lava would hiss, hinting at the heat just beneath the surface. A gray land of blue mists, tattooed with glowing lava flows that burned a brilliant gold to punctuate the dark white woods.

"C'mon Percival, you've got this," he muttered to himself as he continued down the muddy path towards Golem Glen. His phone chimed, and he retrieved it from the leather sheath across his chest. It was Tantaric.

"Yooo, how's the quest going?" Tantaric asked, and in the screen, Percy could see T's shit-eating grin while his obviously visible sword hilt gleamed as it rattled around behind him in-frame. T was such a show-off.

"It's fucked," Percy whined, "Silvery Fog is a boggy wasteland pretty much. I'm over it."

"Awww cowboy don't give up so fast," Tantaric grinned. "Dea said that you were destined to find the holy grail there, and we need it bro."

"Since when does the Shabbat Bride speak prophecies?" Percy wondered. They're not supposed to have that ability.

"I know huh? I was thinking about that too, dude," Tantaric yawned, holding his phone out far enough that his stacked chest and crackle of abs glistened in-frame. Percy smiled. T was a good looking guy, and he knew it. And he showed it.

"If she's right," Percy mused, "it means that she should not be in that temple."

"Nah nah none of that end-times shit," said Tantaric. "You're such a conspiracy theory-chomping wierdo. I swear, if you didn't look as good as you do, no one would fuck with you."

"Gee thanks," Percy chuckled. But hear me out, he thought. When the false bride sits at the throne, the stonefish shall atone. That was the saying.

It was possible that the wrong woman was anointed.

It was possible that the delicate balance that kept the world together, had at last started to unravel.

Eschatology is not exactly taboo academia, and Percy knew his prophecies. Current condition were perfect for a low-key apocalypse.

* * *

There was a familiar wave of landscape underfoot; somehow her ankles anticipated the exact incline of the valley as she descended into the little basin where the stone house was. When she arrived at the gate, there was the old iron door, with the glyph of a cross with a loop on the top and bottom of the vertical line.

When she was young, she only knew it as Istra, the sign of the fish. But now, at twenty one, she also knew it was a crucible that fused the firmament above and the firmament below. Underneath the earth was a rumbling, dark, and endless sea, the sea of potential from which the world arose. And above the world, in the blue heaven, were the celestial waters above, ten atmospheres up in the sephirot, where the divine resided. Those were the two globes of the glyph. She know also knew that the cross between the two waters was Istra, the fish, the prophet. Her.

The iron door had no knob, but when she pressed her hand onto it, it opened inward and revealed an empty room. No stone on the ground, just dirt. Dirt and stone walls that were moist, a dripping ceiling, and a dotting of lights where the sun was pouring through the cracks in the roof being pulled apart by the ever engulfing green.

She dug with her hands in the center of the room. In no time at all, she found the burlap sack that she had buried long ago. Inside, the skeleton and feathers of her dead bird Ocuna. And around her neck, the charm. The emerald prism, glowing gold at her touch. Just a bracelet from her childhood that she used as a pet necklace. But in actuality, the seeing stone. The Istra stone.

She pulled on the slipknot of the bracelet, slackening it into a necklace. The Istra stone hung heavily on her neck, and for being buried in the cold dirt of this earthen shelter, it was warm, pulsing. Her consciousness seemed to be flaring out from the middle of her brow, the third eye opening.

Now, nothing dark would be obscure to her. It was like her vision settled into the dark mound she was in, and it was as well-lit to her perception as if the moon was suddenly hung in the room and cast its soft glow into every corner. She was told that this would happen. That she would be able to start seeing everything without the veil of shadow.

When she got her bearings in the room, she went to the northern wall and, as she expected, she was able to move aside the loose stones of the fake wall. Stone by stone she cleared the wall, revealing a deep cupboard and shelving, full of various objects she grew up with. The one in easiest reach was the dolly her mother gave her. Rabitha was her name.

She ran her fingers through Rabitha’s coarse hair and played with the pearelscant buttons down the back of Rabitha’s tunic. With the Istra stone now, she could see the knife in Rabitha’s back.

She blinked and became aware of her bitter tears, realizing that her mother had meant to kill her.

All those years of living together in that oppressive solitude, feeding off the bitter herbs in the meadow and baking the dusty bread, those quiet childhood years and her mother’s distance and coldness – her mother had hidden the ritual knife in her own doll.

With the years, Rabitha had grown threadbare and it was easy to pull her toy sternum apart. There was the stone dagger, its runes telling a story of a fish that had tricked a fox and became human, and the fox became a demon. Of course, now she knew the fox was Dea, her mentor and now the false Shabbat Bride of Eden City.

And now she also knew she was the fish, the one meant to be slain by the dagger. She was the Shekhina, the wisdom of Sophia incarnated in this age. Sobbing now, the final revelation settled in.

Her mother, by default, must be Lilith. And therefore, not her biological mother, but the crone that was stationed here in this endless meadow to do the deed of murdering her on her sixteenth birthday. Lilith had failed because she had run away the night before. It also meant she had no biological mother, nor father. She was deposited to the world by Sophia, through the final Sephiroth of Yetzirah, the door of creation.

She was not real. She was not mortal.

She was simply a weapon to assassinate Dea, given a human form and consciousness.

The sacrificial fish.

She was Istra.