You catch the lilt of her voice while reading deep in the night, and strain to listen even amongst the sacred silence of the library. Knowing you are the last student left you tread softly as you follow sibilant whispers and half-heard phrases in the dark, opening the passage into the Statuary, Luna a coy smile in the night sky faintly lighting a path between lonely statues and ornamental flowers. She stands in the courtyard clouded in diaphanous robe, singing in the tongue of your parents and grandparents spoken furtively in homes and rarely on holidays at the local statuary. They had tried to teach you back when you still lived out in the country, your father the local doctor. There had been a number of farmers who still practiced old customs as an open secret and you had been sent with other children to listen to the old crone speak of lost Sofum and her scattered people. The children stunk of manure and sweat and invariably you stopped going, complaining of the heat, the stench and the increasing senility of the crone. By then your father had gotten the offer to work in the City at the new hospital, and neither of your parents were too worried about teaching you of Sophist culture. Still, you knew enough of the old tongue to know that the woman was singing hymns.
"You know who I am."
You just nod your head, your mouth closed tight because you know exactly who she is. You've seen her all your life, in paintings and carvings and in the Statuary in the library. Standing before you is the goddess Sophia, ruler of knowledge and death in your land and the personal goddess of your people. In this age only the rural folk believed in the physical nature of the gods and goddess, that they came and walked amongst us. Most just followed them out of tradition, or civil excellence, and many didn't even follow them at all, more concerned with scientific-atheism or various semi-legal collectivist philosophies. You yourself found yourself in the former category due to a fairly moderate upbringing by vaguely liberal parents who saw worship of Sophia as a civil and cultural duty, rather than a religious one.
You grew up on tales of her, the myths of lost Sofum, on how one day you'd meet her and she would bless you and the next she'd tear your throat out and leave you for the birds, on her bloody childhood, murdering her father erupting from a headache in his skull, on killing her only true companion in a fit of adolescent rage, on her suicide and eventual resurrection giving her knowledge of the entire universe. You learned the physiology of the body from scripture written by her followers, you learned alchemy and spear-fighting and kinesthetics and surgery and metallurgy. You read from
Telo Sofii,
Razum Sofii, and
Dusha Sofii, have passed four Civil Exams, and achieved rank
Braat-Sofii in the Sophist Mysteries.
[MISSING SECTION CONNECTING THESE TWO PARTS]
Her copper talon slicks through your meat caressing the hard plane of your breastbone, peeling you with uncomfortable ease. Sibilant whispers taste the air as her hand closes around your beating heart, slicing your aorta with a deft twist. Her mouth swells in your vision, all teeth and bright red lips and cold loamy breath and her tongue darts hot and soft lapping your hearts-blood. Seconds or centuries later, your mind stuttering to proc
ess the events, your skin wraps you whole again and her touch leaves welts on your skin softly burning. Your vision refocuses as she sheds her own skin and reaches inside herself, wrenching ribcage and flesh to reveal her own dark fruit shivering in the air. You stumble on creaking rotting legs like stilts or ancient pillars, swaying madly with a fierce hunger lusting out of that secret place inside you, the cold iron stench of blood churning your stomach to fire, bile lancing your throat. She casually offers herself to you, all that she is, and you drink and drink deeply of her hearts-blood, a cloying mix of cinnamon and gravesoil thick and heady. She holds your head softly to her breastbone, crooning a song to the distant star-light,
"So like my heaven to be this cruel and small
a cold night in a fog-lit city
desperate for warmth I walk sudden streets and avenues abounding
like bridges in the desperate shrouded air
your voice a far-off glimpse of things to come
of the fire and the fury
so pure and so deep"
When her voice, beautiful as poisoned honey, fades you feel a talon casually slice your earlobe off, the pain a distant flare on the horizon. You take one last shuddering gulp before releasing her sacred flesh and fall to the ground, ornamental flowers for a pillow and the breeze a blanket. You gaze at her before you, alabaster skin gleaming with old scars, eyes tightly closed and lips curved to smile, amber tresses falling like waterfalls over her shoulders, nipples pale black and hard and in between a massive scar from clavicle to vulva like a saintly corpse or the sloppy work of a medical student. Below her knee grows black feathers flush on stick-thin thighs, the feet just three toes ending in dagger-long claws. Her arms, grown familiar in the last few minutes, are long and whip-like with hands tipped with bloodied copper talons clicking together with satisfaction. Her eyes drift open to glance at you shockingly black and full, her mouth open and too full, and more than anything else this terrifies the animal deep inside you.
