Over near the stone railing to our right, an all female band was playing a happy ditty, utilizing a lute, flute, and two drums. Before them, some women danced together, while more others were enjoying the music while eating at cafe tables surrounded by hedge bushes and flower pots. Male servants served both food and drink to the women, while others scurried around the stone railing and the wall of the other half of the peak, lighting sconces.
We headed to where there were two empty cafe tables that we could scoot together. It was close enough to enjoy both the music and the sunset, while far enough to still be able to talk. Within seconds of sitting together, a male servant hurried over, asking us if we needed food or drink. Though we'd had our feast not long before, the journey had been long and short of cooked food, so we ordered some. Nyx, Theron, and I ordered exotic ales, while Silas and Cerin ordered natural drinks.
The food and drinks were brought out to us before we had even started our conversation. When the male servant turned to leave us, I reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him.
“I apologize, Miss Sera. I did not know you had need of me.” He turned to face me, though, of course, he did not meet my eyes. His voice had trembled, like he thought I would be angry with him.
“What is your name?” I asked him, ducking lower to try to look him in the eyes. He cowered back.
“My name is of no importance. Please, do not concern yourself with such frivolities.”
“I asked for your name,” I repeated. “And please, look me in the eyes when you say it.”
“I am Fri'er, but I am not allowed to look you in the eye. Forgive me.” The man shook like he was terrified.
“Why are you here, Fri'er?” I asked, my voice continuing to be calm.
“I serve people here. It is my job. I bring food and drink out from the cooks to the people who order them. I have done this for twenty years.” It was a confused ramble. I saw a single tear fall down the man's painted cheek, and wondered if it was there from his fear of speaking with me or from his circumstances.
“No, I meant in Whispermere. What brought you here?”
“I must confess it was the offering of a place to stay in exchange for my work, Miss Sera. I was homeless, on the outskirts of Comercio. There was a man asking for volunteers. Offered me a place to stay. Said it was beautiful. And it is. Whispermere is beautiful.”
How could he have known? The man did not lift his eyes from the rock below us. “You like it here, Fri'er?”
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He nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, I do, Miss Sera. Your mother is a wonderful woman. She keeps us moving and well fed. She is so kind to us. So kind.”
My brow furrowed. “You love her,” I said, because it was obvious, and he wasn't directly saying it.
“Oh, I do. Very much. So much it feels like my chest will burst. But I am not special—we all love her here. She is wonderful.”
“You could leave, Fri'er,” I commented, still attempting unsuccessfully to look him in the eye. “Work for gold. Buy a little plot of land and find a wife and family who will love you back and treat you right.”
“No...no, Miss Sera. I cannot leave Nanya. The heartbreak alone would kill me before I could pass the gate.”
I exhaled slowly, before I finally looked away. “Thank you for your time, Fri'er. That is all.”
The servant hurried away, and I slowly faced my friends. They had been eating and drinking slowly while listening to my conversation with the man.
“Whatever my mother is, her power is true,” I said, watching as Nyx scooted her glass of ale toward me, and motioned for me to try it. We had ordered two different types. I took a sip of hers, and squinted my eyes as the liquid felt as if it was tearing open my tongue and throat as it slipped down. “That is rank,” I told her, pushing it back.
She chuckled. “I thought you'd say that,” she teased, before taking another swig.
“You do not believe she is a god?” Theron questioned, cutting some meat before him with a knife.
“She can call herself that all she wants. I will call her a god, sure, but it is only a race like any other. Gods can die. We've all heard the stories of gods fighting for power and killing each other. She called us mortals, but she is not immortal.” I hesitated. “The gods are not all powerful beings that should be worshiped. They are an ancient race whose pride in themselves has never been challenged.”
“It is a wonder that you believe that, given you would otherwise have been able to wield your identity as a weapon,” Theron mused.
“I see what that does to people,” I replied. “Like my mother. Her arrogance has swelled her head to the point that it is a tumor. She is the most sexist person I have ever met. She is so caught up with identity politics that she uses her race and her gender as a means to control and hurt people. I pity her. She loathes men so much, but she does not see the irony in resorting to her magic to get them to love her. Perhaps she is afraid that without her spell, they would find nothing they could love.”
“The only thing I liked about her was her dress,” Nyx commented, which caused me to laugh at the unexpected jab.
“Well...” I trailed off, and shrugged when my friend glanced over. “Those heels were pretty hot, too.”
Nyx lifted her mug in a toast. “Impractical, though.”
“And the dress wasn't?” I commented. No one I had ever known wore a dress. They were reserved for women who did not work and had the money with which to spend on a piece of clothing they could only ever wear to social gatherings of the wealthy.
“It sounds as if she has something important to tell you tomorrow,” Cerin said, from just across the table from me. His pitch black hair appeared almost like a deep red in the light of the sunset.
“Yes, well...we'll see about that. I want to learn more of my father. Perhaps I can find him.”
“Kai...do not expect a happy reunion,” Nyx warned me. “If your father is a god like your mother, he might be just as awful as she is.”
“He can't be a god,” I retorted, though I understood her concern. “Nanya said she knows all the gods. She would have known him. Instead, she thought he was mortal.”
“That's assuming we believe her,” Silas pointed out.
I sighed, frustrated with the excess of information swirling around my head and the lack of answers for my questions. “I don't know. Perhaps I'll just have to try to make sense of it when I talk to her again tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. After half of a year of traveling to get here, waiting another day for answers I might not even end up having was tortuous. Still, it gave me something to focus on so I could ignore my immense disappointment from meeting my mother. I had wondered who she was my whole life. Now that I knew, it felt like the worse of the two options. I felt I would have been better off not knowing.
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