COMING HOME_NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE

It is time for another Friday ROMANTIC CHALLENGE given by the always fascinating Francine Howarth and Denise Covey.

Today's theme is COMING HOME.

My 400 word entry is from the sequel to my CREOLE KNIGHTS : NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE (in the process of being written.)

The cosmic conjunctions have aligned. The Nameless Ones strain at the unraveling barrier between them and our world.

After 7 years, Maija has released her sister, Meilori, from the bubble of frozen time in which she encased her in a trap of deceit.

Why?

To see her face when she tells Meilori that her beloved Samuel McCord lies dead by the tentacles of an exiled Nameless One he killed before dying.

The undead rabbi, Ben Teradion, is comforting the devastated Ningyo. He is Death’s measure to stop the invasion of The Nameless Ones.

Maija turns to mock the rabbi with the truth of his role, not realizing you simply cannot kill a man whom Death will not take. Shrouded in the Threads of Night, Samuel McCord, bleeding and battered, stands invisible beside her :



Maija laughed. “Death saved you for tonight, rabbi, to speak the name God gave Himself, that when uttered outside the Holy Temple would rend the very universe.”

Ben Teradion said, “No!”

Meilori whispered, “Death has come to revel in the end of life. For her, the death of the entire universe would be ecstasy.”

Ben Teradion husked, “But then --”

Maija nodded. “Nothing stands in the way of the Ningyo Empire to re-enter our home plane.”

The rabbi cried, “No! The Nameless Ones would return to our world!”

“Who cares?”

Meilori gestured, black energy hissing at the ends of her fingertips. “Samuel would have cared.”

The other Ningyo’s circled her as Maija husked, “Now, you die.”

I dropped the Threads of Night. “Don’t make me spank you.”

Maija yelped, “McCord!”

Meilori took a half-step back. “Samuel!”

“Do I know you?”

She looked as if I’d knifed her, and I regretted my joke. “For seven years, the hope of seeing you again got me up each morning.”

She mewed like a kitten and rushed into my arms, her lips hungrily seeking mine. An electric connection completed deep inside me. The world made sense again.

I was home.

A trilling vibrated around us. Maija’s portal was opening.

I heard feet. The Ningyo’s were about to jump us.

“Padre, trust me. Say God’s name!”

Maija leapt forward. The rabbi bellowed.

His lips worked as if he shouted one word, but I heard the sentence he said two thousand years before as he burned before the Roman emperor.

“The parchment burns, but the words fly free!”

The sound flowed into nothing human --

as if Life had come to know itself by the simple act of hearing it.

It came from all directions. The lower notes rumbled as if from the depths of the earth. Higher vibrations trilled as if from the stars in heaven.

I was a human tuning fork, the marrow of my bones trembling. The vibrations cascaded around me and Meilori in a waterfall of sound.

Her jade eyes, first wild with fear, soon grew as deep as the love I felt for her and she for me. A sunburst exploded with us in its burning honey center.

For the first time in two hundred years, I felt warm. Meilori smiled, then kissed me.

The universe might be ending. I didn’t mind. In her arms, I was finally home.
***