To Surrender Way

But still it was not enough for a man with only one son. But for a man with two sons - they could get by. Tendil took the same salary as a deck hand. My father moved in with his parents. If it weren't for these two sacrifices Zeefarohs would have lost everything.

The next part I've heard from many different sources. It varies a little - but it is the most important part because it is the moment I begin. After five years the business was profitable, and my grandfather was on his deathbed. According to Tietre law, his first son was entitled to all of his holdings. But in his eyes he had two sons, and also a debt was owed.

My grandfather called my father to him and asked him what he should do. My father also had been troubled with how to repay Tendil so he agreed to sign over half the business if my grandfather should pass, which he did.

Imagine all of them in mourning, and Tendil is grief stricken. To comfort him, my father assures him that he will sign over half of the business, and that they will be brothers forever. But Tendil refuses the offer, claiming he only repaid my grandfather's original act of kindness. My father, overwhelmed with grief, his own mortality, and the importance of family took off his father's wedding ring and passed it to Tendil.

"Brother, you are brother. You will wear my father's ring always - to indicate his claim on you. A business split between two families is no business at all. So we must become one. All my children will marry your children, and our grandchildren will be of the same blood. And when those grandchildren come, I hope you can believe me when I say we are brothers."

My father is soft spoken, and logical - he rumbles through facts and figures like a cat purring through a belly rub. I can't imagine him in this moment. I wonder if he ever regretted it. My engagement to Benthar and Kastil's engagement to Paloma was supposed to heal Tendil and make him whole.

I have been thinking a lot about how I am not going to fulfill my debt of honor, and make little Corinthias babes with Zeefaroh blood. After every beating, I go through the reasons of why I need to live. Lately, I just float in the darkness without them, none of them seem important.

But now I see the end of the story. Tendil and Ephesus are together. Tendil, like an old pirate - gnarled by his years on the ocean, my father, soft and warn and deeply tired. They are sitting beside one another worrying for their children. They don't care about engagements or debts being paid. Both men would give their lives to save the other's child. And then I see it... My father brings up the debt, and reminds Tendil that no matter what they are brothers.

And then it happens. Their eyes meet, and Tendil, who has seen more violence than my father realizes that their dreams of one family will never come true, and that my father will be racked with guilt for the unpaid debt, and so he does what any brother would do.

"Brother," he covers my father's hands with his, "after all this time, I know we are brothers."

And that's how it ends - with them realizing they don't need blood to uphold honor, they don't need me. And if Benthar and Kasil live they will be brothers as well, for the same reason. And it will be a beautiful peace. There are no debts between those that are equal.

Part 6: My lips close around her nipple - sweet little rosebud

"Maleena, wake up! Wake up. You need to wake up." Hands are touching me, they emanate pain and fire. Something inside of me is screaming. Screaming in a way that it never screamed before.

"Don't touch me, don't touch me." The words break and I can feel them roll over my cracked lips like they are pleading for water. I open my eyes just a sliver, and there is Paloma. Her plum colored lips are split in two places, a bruise around her eye - leaning in close. "You shouldn't..." I try to finish, but my mouth is so dry, I can't form the words.

"Oh thank Seta. Here," she tilts a cup up to my lips, and I choke on the cool liquid and spit it out. It's too much, my throat seems to be swollen shut, although, I have no idea why.

I push the cup away, and with great effort roll away from her. In life, she never really liked me, I was one that was going to take her place, and she mine. We were rivals, not friends or sisters. And now it's time for me to die. "Leave me alone."

Paloma, pulls me back around. "Let me help you. I should've known, you've been strangled, and you are dehydrated."

I lift my hand to my neck and wince. Paloma looks frantically around, and then comes back to me. "It's okay." She dips her finger into the water and then holds it to my lips.

The drops of water run down my parched throat, and I relax in her arms, still unable to speak. I couldn't help it. It felt so good. "Better?" she asks.

I nod. Paloma dips her finger in the water again, and this time my lips part, and I can't help but suck the liquid off her finger. She gasps. It's the first time I have touched another person in months without pain.

"So...rry," I choke.

"No. You have nothing to be sorry for." She brings her wet fingers to my lips again. She looks me as if I am island and she is adrift. I close my eyes and am surrounded with the sensation of the water and skin. Touch. How long have I been without kindness? I can feel all the little lines, the thin callous, cuticles, the edge of a fingernail.

After a few minutes, she dips the corner of her shift into the cup and I suckle the cloth like a wounded bengati.

Paloma pulls the cloth from my mouth and I reach up it towards it, not wanting the contact to be broken.

And then something strange happens. My lips find Paloma's breast and beneath the thread bare material my lips close around her nipple - sweet little rosebud. She gasps in surprise as my lips close and suck hard. They blossom in my lips. It feels primal, and instantly I feel safe and warm - as if I have found a way to remember an ancient oneness.

The cold nothingness presses in around us, with all it's brutality, and I feel the dampness of our cell. Without thought, I lift my burning arm and place my hand on her covered shoulder, and pull her her nipple deep into my mouth.

The rosebud stiffens, and Paloma shifts beneath me with a low and guttural groan. The sound slices through my consciousness, and I pull away, filled with loneliness and the ache of my arms and body.

"No.no.no" Paloma yanks the shoulder of her shift down so her breast is exposed. She is olive and maroon and pink, and surprising ublemished, and alive, so much more alive than I am. "It's okay, " she continues, slowly tipping the cup over her breast. As the water slides downward, I cover her nipple with my mouth and suck.

She is not Paloma, but the goddess Antite, goddess of love, and I am as free in it as I have ever been. Antite runs through me. "You're okay. It's going to be okay." Love fluttered through my tongue, along the ridges of her aereola. "You've been here six months. How could you still be here. They've being doing this to you for six months." She is right, I have been forsaken, abandoned. There is no pride left in me but my wants.

She moans. Her belly arches into my head, and I drink from her, and she quiets in my mouth. Goddess. Goddess all around me.