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Elīya looks at Tamar, still trying not to look into her eyes, still failing utterly. And Tamar—well, she’s sort of trying not to read Elīya’s mind. But neither succeed. Neither manage to not make what would be full eye contact if it weren’t for the fact that Tamar’s eyes are filled only with God.
But all Elīya can really think about is: this is Tamar, Tamar is here. She’s staring more than she’s processing, and because Tamar’s head is pointed in her direction, Tamar can feel it.
It’s not a situation that makes much room for either of them to back off or even move at all. Or say anything.
After all, what could there possibly be to say?
Somewhere behind Elīya the other two dismount, and there’s footsteps, but all of that means nothing compared to the flame in Tamar’s eyes, the symbol of a horribly shattered promise. Or maybe it’s an even worse symbol than that; maybe it’s a symbol of whatever Elīya did so wrong as to make Tamar want to break that promise. Or perhaps Tamar just never cared at all.
Tamar can’t catch all those thoughts; they’re too complicated, too specific. It’s easier to pick up feelings and general mental states. So the confusion itself is what really gets her notice. Just as she notices, much more than Elīya does, how closely Yenatru’s approaching.
It really is her, Yenatru thinks. There’s a heaviness in his heart, but he can’t tell if he really is sad, or exactly why.
But what he does know is that it’s strange to see her after all these years.
It’s strange how, except for the fire, she’s exactly the same. She’s short, standing just as firmly on the ground as Elīya tends to, as Elīya’s standing now, both of them staring each other down despite the low number of working eyes between them.
He should say something.
“Hi. How”—his voice catches on the two years between when he last saw Tamar and now—“how are you?”
Elīya startles at the sudden sound at a voice, though she doesn’t visibly jump. And Tamar can’t help but laugh at that: flames, that girl is focused on her.
And Yenatru’s wondering: why is she laughing, why is she laughing, oh God, what did I do. There’s panic on his face, but Tamar can’t see it, and Elīya doesn’t lose focus on Tamar for the half second it’d take to notice.
Everything pauses for the space of one of Yenatru’s shaky breaths before Tamar finally responds.
“I’m doing quite well, thank you.”
Elīya bites her lip. It should have been she who asked.
“Elīya, calm down.” Tamar’s voice is confident and sure and halfway to amusement.
“I don’t believe you have the right to say that to me.” Elīya’s arm trembles.
Yenatru steps back closer to Lucifer, meeting her eyes. She’s just shaking her head, a vaguely amused smile on her face.
“I know what you mean,” Tamar says matter-of-factly. “I broke a promise to you.”
“Yes.” Elīya’s hands are clenched so tightly it almost hurts.
Tamar tosses her head. “I’m sure you’d like to hear that I regret it, but I don’t. And you like honesty too, so I’m not gonna say I do if I don’t.”
Elīya’s mouth twitches. What she wants to say is flame you, but she knows well as fire that this might actually be her fault. So instead she just takes a breath through clenched teeth.
Yenatru’s eyes widen a little; he shifts his weight, trying to look anywhere but at his two old friends.
“Why did you do it?” Elīya finally asks.
“Because I wanted to,” Tamar says in a voice so low it could almost be mistaken for sad or regretful—but it isn’t, and Elīya knows it. “I wanted to badly.”
“Which would not have in any way prevented you from saying something beforehand.”
“Wouldn’t it?” Tamar tilts her head. “I had to do it, Elīya. Before there was any chance of the impulse fading.”
“You became one of the Holy on an impulse?” Elīya’s eye is outright twitching now. How could anyone—flames, she can’t even believe this.
“It wasn’t exactly a quiet or subtle impulse, if that’s what you’re thinking. And I’ve never regretted it once, so I wasn’t wrong.”
“You were wrong not to tell us. The whole point of a promise is that it is wrong to break.”
Yenatru rubs his arm a little.
“Sure,” Tamar says with another flick of her head and a small shrug. “But it would’ve been worse to not do it.”
Elīya tries to restrain the rage shaking in her before realizing that Tamar can’t see, so maybe it’s okay if she shakes her arms wildly in front of her. “Alternatively,” she says in rhythm with one of the shakes, “you could have retained contact with us in some way at all in the slightest afterward!”
“And then we’d have had this argument then.”
“Um,” Yenatru says.
Tamar turns her head toward Yenatru, noting the way he’s pointing out his existence. “Ah. Well.”
“What, are you going to admit you just apparently did not care about us at all, and even worse, felt no responsibility to tell us of those feelings, or lack thereof?” Elīya asks.
Tamar takes a deep breath and sighs. This is the complicated part. “I hesitated. Until it was so long of a hesitation, I couldn’t break it.”
“I’d have been okay if you contacted me,” Yenatru says quietly. “Even if it was sudden, or a year after you became one of the Holy, or something like that.”
“And that’s where you can blame me, Elīya.” Tamar spreads her arms to either side, way wider than can possibly be safe, tilting her head downward. It’s a gesture of surrender, executed even more pridefully than Elīya remembers Tamar being.
“And here I believed that those who are close to God were somehow humble,” Elīya mutters.
Tamar laughs, at first a small thing, and then loud enough that she has to retreat one of her hands from her gesture to cover her mouth. “Have you ever even talked to God?”
“No.”
Tamar shakes her head and sighs. “Not to say that all the Holy are like me, definitely not, but. If you’d been around Them, you might understand a little more.”
Yenatru blinks. If she’s that prideful, and God’s that prideful… he kind of wonders how her body doesn’t just explode from it all.
Elīya draws back from Tamar, confused, unsure how Tamar’s getting this much out of another person’s power.
And somewhere behind Tamar, Lucifer coughs. “You know, I was actually planning on leading us to a campsite, like, today? We might want to get going.”
“Right,” Elīya says.
Yenatru touches his hand to his mouth, trying to calm himself. He kind of hopes he doesn’t have to be the one to drive Tamar.
Elīya takes a deep breath. She has a plan, and it’s not right to hide it. “I was thinking that you’d ride with me,” she says to Tamar.
“I see.”
Elīya gestures to her motorcycle, letting Tamar follow her onto it. She never rode with Tamar back in high school; back then, Tamar could drive her own motorcycle. And she did so far more often than Elīya, going on trip after trip alone, though sometimes with Yenatru, or even all three of them. Elīya finds herself shaking to think about it; everything in her is screaming at the strangeness of this situation. What in all the names of God has she gotten herself into? And for that matter, she adds to herself wryly, does Tamar know some of the names of God now?
Yenatru catches Lucifer’s eyes as he walks to his bike, thankfully solo. He sighs; Lucifer shrugs in response.
They all agreed to this, he reminds himself. But now, there’s no going back.
As Elīya starts the engine, Tamar wraps her arms around her. In an incredible display of the virtues of fairness and consideration, Elīya manages not to wince.
And, nearly all at once, Elīya and Tamar and Yenatru think: Well, this is going to be weird.
Elīya doesn’t get far down the road before letting out the sigh she’s been trying to restrain, her hair whipping in false wind. “I am sorry for abandoning you, just to let you know,” she says, more quietly than she’d intended.
“Mmmm.” Tamar pauses. “Wait, what? You abandoning me? Did that come out wrong?”
“Of course it didn’t. If I had just forgiven you and reached out—that would have worked. So this is my fault.” She’s known that for a long time now; it’s the only thing that makes sense.
“Eh, it’s not like I was hurt or anything.”
Elīya tries not to wince; she needs to focus on the road. She’s starting to get glimpses of the Ehinots as she looks down the street. It’s not too much farther north, before they’ll leave the city behind for desert and dry mountains.
“Well, something was hurt, I’m pretty sure,” she finally responds.
“What,” Tamar says dismissively, “group cohesion? The existence of this group at all?"
“It’s pretty obvious that you leaving and not telling anyone about it, and me not doing anything about it, would have that effect.” Elīya lets each syllable ring out clear and sharp.
“And I’m assuming you have some great moral argument for why that’s so important?”
“Well, for one, we made a decision when we made that promise, and one we ought to have stuck to.”
There’s a strangely long pause.
“Is that really all?”
“That was one reason.”
“But you’re not continuing to another. You are not up to your own caliber here, Elīya. I was expecting a much longer monologue from you.”
“I don’t always have so much to say, for any given subject.”
“No, you do. Unless you’ve changed a whole lot lately. Have you?”
Elīya has nothing to say to that, so she just glances at the edge of the rooftops, rushing by too fast to focus on any single one. But most of them meet the sky in the same place.
“Seriously,” Tamar continues. “Is that all you’ve got? That a promise is a decision that should be stuck to? That’s enough reason for you to somehow rope Lucifer into inviting me here?”
Elīya sighs between her teeth. “It’s kind of hard to quantify this one. The reason for the importance.”
“It’s also not your style to admit defeat.”
“I’m not admitting defeat.” Elīya has to resist the urge to turn around and stare Tamar down as she says it.
“Whatever you say,” Tamar says, her voice carrying a full shrug’s worth of dismissal.
As if it helps for her to dismiss Elīya even more. Tamar left, flame it, she left them all behind without a second glance. After years of having lunch together and talking and going on walks…
Elīya takes a deep breath. “So, what are you even doing in Eden?”
“Wow, that was the exact opposite of subtle. I know you just said that in order to say something, because see, otherwise, being silent, that would totally mean defeat, which you’re claiming not to be admitting. But guess what? Changing the subject isn’t helping your case either.”
“Isn’t reading my mind something of a violation of privacy and respect?”
“I’m not reading it. Much. I mean, I’m kind of looking at you, so I’m getting a little bit even though I’m not trying. But that’s just telling me you’re frustrated, which anyone could tell. Besides, your mistake is assuming I care about morality in that way.”
Elīya grimaces so hard that she almost wishes she were falling off the motorcycle. “Oh, so you’re saying that you’re actually horribly immoral? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Sure,” Tamar says, sarcasm clearly evident. “Of course. I’m admitting utter immorality, but you’re not admitting defeat. That makes perfect sense.”
“Flame you,” Elīya can’t help but mutter.
Tamar just laughs. “If you’re referring to my eyes…” She trails off, as if expecting Elīya to guess at what she means.
Which Elīya does, deciding in a split second that what Tamar means is probably a condemnation of her. A failure of ethics. How dare she say flame you to a Holy, perhaps. Or maybe Tamar was just joking?
“I’d forgotten you were this hard to figure out,” Elīya comments.
“I find that hard to believe. It sounds to me like everything you’ve done lately—finding an excuse to talk to me, using Lucifer instead of a phone call—well, it all suggests that you’ve been trying to figure me out, nonstop, for the past two years.” There’s a smugness in Tamar’s voice, clear as day, clear as the flames of God.
But what isn’t clear to Elīya is how to respond.
She bites her lip, clenching her hands on the motorcycle handles. After so long of trying to understand what happened with Tamar, she gets rewarded with this? She’s sure of one thing: if she stays silent now, she really will be admitting defeat. But what to say? She’s passing trees and houses, her hair almost definitely hitting Tamar in the face, moving forward with each second even though her thoughts can’t move forward, she can’t figure out what to say—
“Let me give you a hint, about me,” Tamar says.
Elīya’s heart sinks. There it is, defeat. It’s not one of her more rational reactions, and she knows it, but somehow, Tamar taking back control of the conversation before Elīya manages to respond signifies that she’s indeed lost.
“All I’ve done,” Tamar continues, “is do what’s important for me to do. Nothing’s ever stopped you from doing the same. Nothing’s stopping you now.”
“Who’s to say I’m not doing important things?” Elīya counters. “I’m a philosophy major. That means I’m interacting with and learning to use ethical principles, which is obviously important.”
“Riiiiiight.”
“It’s true.” This argument is as solid as the shadows on the road, and even less good at keeping her body temperature low.
“So,” Tamar says. Elīya catches in her rear-view mirror the way she tilts her head to go along with her words, her eyes unmovingly wreathed in fire. “What great, important, moral arguments have you made, then, with all these philosophy classes?”
Elīya sighs, clenching her teeth, trying not to close her eyes too long against it all. The mere fact that she’s still driving straight is almost a miracle. “Well… my classes aren’t that good,” she admits.
“Can’t say I’m surprised. You’ve got standards and all, after all those years of researching ethics all the flaming time. I was there, I heard your lectures. And yet, here you are, still doing this same old thing, even if it’s not actually helping you or teaching you anything at all. So tell me, Elīya. What’s so ethical, so moral, about living your life like this, following this one path just because you think you should?”
“That path is ethics,” Elīya says through gritted teeth.
“And you’re the one who admitted you weren’t learning anything. So again I ask, what is ethical about this situation.”
“Perhaps it is teaching me focus.” Maybe.
“Perhaps,” Tamar echoes. “But I believe you’re more than this. More than this one thing, more than the constant chorus of ethics, ethics, ethics through your mind.”
Elīya’s eye is twitching now, but she’s got to keep focusing on the road, on the hilly almost-horizon on the outskirts of town. She needs to not crash.
But flames, her jaw is twitching too, her hands tensing on the handles. Air rushes by her, but it’s still not wind, not really. The sun reflecting on the light cobblestone is hurting her eyes, which she figures Tamar doesn’t have to deal with, Tamar who abandoned them all in favor of exchanging her eyes for fire—
Before she growls in frustration, she snaps. “How does this benefit you?” She’s speeding up now, as the buildings thin out. She can barely see the blue of the sky anymore through her anger.
“You’re attempting,” she continues, “near as I can see, to explain to me everything you see wrong in my life, but you of course never considered it too much of a priority to be in my life, which is clear from the fact that you were not in it, at all, for two years, which in fairness I fully understand may have been partially my fault for the predictability with which I would have been upset at you, and of course for the fact that I did not reach out myself.” She takes a breath. “But still, Tamar, what are you doing?”
The roadside rocks zoom by, the sun heats Elīya’s face, and Tamar doesn’t even flaming respond.
Elīya almost wants to ask again and get a flaming answer from her, but part of her prefers this silence, likes the lack of distraction that lets her stay safe while driving.
Although she still grips the handles hard, biting her lip. She is not bothered by what Tamar’s said. She is not.
Or, at least, that’s what she’d tell herself if she didn’t value honesty quite so much.
And Tamar says nothing more, letting Elīya have her silence, letting her have her defeat. She suspects she may need it.