Hagintha Woods

I trek through the forest to find the priestess.

The air is thick and balmy, and sweat is plastering my hair to my brow. I can hear the incessant buzz of mosquitos in the humid air around me, and I preemptively wave my hand around me, though I only succeed in swatting waxy leaves.

The soil is soft beneath the tread of my feet. Everything looks the same, and I don’t know where I am. But I know where I am headed.

I just follow the sound of the crying.

My destination reveals itself to be a large, glowing pond before a temple. It shines with such radiance it seems to glow white from within. A small amount, diluted, is enough to heal the sick, rejuvenate withered crops, be the balm of protection placed upon everyone’s forehead every year. This concentrated amount, however, is deadly.

And it is within this pool that she swirls, once dark hair and skin bleached to the same radiant glow, sobbing as she uses the net gripped in her hands to gather the leaf litter in methodical sweeps. A grunt of effort breaks her weeping for a moment as she raises her arms, tossing the leaves on the ground further away. She stares at the pile for a moment, and I see a shining, white tear fall into the pond below.

Even her body fluids are white already.

There will need to be another priestess sent out by the month’s end.

She turns. Stops.

With everything bright and glowing as it is, it’s hard to see her expression, but surprise radiates through her being. She never was very good at hiding her emotions. “You.”

I pause, thinking about what I wanted to say. Running out here on a whim and a sure heart, I assumed that facing her, the words would pour forth. Staring at that countenance, all that familiarity, but all the sameness, however, I find my mouth empty.

Dropping into a small curtsy, she breaks the silence first. “I’m sorry. For what I did at the ceremony.”

A teasing smile. The soft flutter of lips flush against mine. “Something to be remember me by.” She’d whispered, flitting away.

Was it something to be sorry for? “Why did you do it?”

She falters, composure breaking as if I’d skittered a stone across the waters. She collects herself once more. Forever trying to be the picture perfect priestess. Never mind that she’d been sent to die. Never mind that she was crying when no one could see.

Never mind that anyone would be a fool to contest that she was the priestess now, breakdown or not.

However, she doesn’t lie, minimise, or look away. “I didn’t think I’d get selected so quickly. In the time where I was still myself, I- I wanted something, some moment of mine.”

“Then leave.” She gasps, startled. “Forget a moment. Have your entire life. They’d just think you died.” It would be true soon enough, after all.

She draws herself straight, and I can hear the rejection before it even comes. “And send one of my sisters here early?” She scoffs. “You should go.”

Forever measuring herself against standards others set for her and finding herself falling short. Forever noble despite it all, protecting anyone she could, for as long as she could, no matter how she suffered.

And oh, how she suffered. To have raised someone in an environment where she was always surrounded, days of joking and giggling, nights of whispers and mischief, only to toss her out here alone. It was a particular form of torture.

Confident, passionate and kind. She’d stolen my heart the first moment she decided she wanted it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t throw it away just as easily.

“You said you wanted something of your own,” I say, setting my bags on the floor. My fingers nimbly unbutton my shirt. “Take it.”

The air chills, sharpens. As my shirt falls to the floor, goosebumps rise along the surface of my shoulders, the curve of my breasts.

“Are you insane?” She screeches, and for a moment I pause, wondering if I’d mistaken simple teasing for real heat. But then I notice the way the attention is roving over my body, the undercurrent of desperate hunger in her tone.

No, nothing about her want was ever simple.

She steps forward, remembers herself, steps back. “Don’t die here because someone flirted with you once. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

“And I can choose how I want to spend it. Besides,” I tilt my head, give her a meaningful look. “You shouldn’t lecture me on sacrifice.”

As I spend more time with her visage, saturated white as it is, I can roughly make out her features, the sunlight casting shadows across her face. I can see the shades of her brows shift and furrow.

“That’s different!” Even if I did not see her expression, however, had not been staring at her face since I first caught a glimpse of her, the voice that explodes from the glowing girl in front of me was filled with anger. It slashed out her words, with cutting, spiked violence. She freezes at the sound of it, takes a breath, then a step forward.

She stretches her hands before her, palms facing the sky above, and I watch her glowing hands tremble as she continues imploringly. “I’m doing this for everyone.”

I know. The sound of the bugs around us only grow louder, and they are not the ones I wanted to feed with my blood, nourish with my soul. “That is different indeed,” I agree, holding her gaze. “I am doing this for you.”

She stops trembling at that, but when even this doesn’t break her, leaves us both standing there staring at each other, I lose my patience. I step forward to the edge of the pond, dropping to a crouch as I reach for the water.

I won’t turn as white as her with just a tinge, but at this concentration, it would definitely be enough to doom me.

Perhaps she would take me if I were already a lost cause.

A rush of movement, and then I am bowled over- willingly, collecting my weight at my center and folding my limbs- to the side. She is astride me, her fingers gripping my shoulder.

We both turn to look, and as she lets go, the memory of her touch lingers in glowing imprints, the swirl of each fingerprint shining against my skin. The marks glow gently in the light, as if I have a firefly burrowed under the surface, before they slowly fade to a dim shimmer.

Then she is on me, fingers threading themselves through my hair, finding the indents between my ribs. Her lips devour mine, pure white tears trekking down her face to streak down mine. “Foolish.” She scolds, between tastings of my tongue. “Stupid.” She says, teeth and anger nicking my lips.

I trail my fingers along her back, humming gently as I let her take, let her be. “Yours.” I reply, and her grip tightens round me, squeezing the air from my lungs.

Unlike her, I am used to solitude. Like her, I find this wonderfully sweet.

She is everywhere, painting little arcs of white across me, within me. I imagine the inside of my mouth turning white, of the colour swallowing us both till it would be impossible to see where one of us stopped and the other began.

Adrift in that sea of white, I feel myself stretching, reaching, yearning, the emotions I had no word for radiating out of me into the blankness beyond.

“I’m sorry.” She whispers into the folds of my ear, and I absorb it like I do anything that comes from her, pressing a soft kiss unto the curve of her neck.

In that white of sterility and purity, my body finds the shape of hers, and we slot ourselves into each other, warming the colour into the white of fresh snow. We find the white of a blank page, upon which is the promise of a new future, no matter how short, that we would be able to spend, second by second, together.

Within her white lips, inside the cavern of her tongue, I find my salvation.