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Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 7 months ago
Siona towered over him, growing like a storm tossed wave and darkening like a thunder cloud, her gentle face twisted with fury that made Ty’s pale in comparison.

 

“SO YOU WANT THE TRUTH!” she thundered at him, her words echoing in the vast chamber. “YES! I lied to you! I lied about EVERYTHING!”

 

She swatted at a neighboring balcony, picking it off like a dry leaf.

 

“I don’t need semen or fruit of any other food! I eat EMOTION, Ty! That’s what gives me power, what gives me SELF IMAGE! So when I saw you fall out of that cave and crack your head wide open I kept you alive so I could EAT YOU! How do you like that? And you know what else?”

 

Ty was scrambling to absorb these things. A distant part of his mind reminded him not to wet himself.

 

“There were never any other Ballenta! I’m the only one! Ballenta is my name!”

 

Ty was flabbergasted. “B-but… the pictures in the book… there were hundreds of couples…”

 

“THEY WERE ALL ME! EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!” She swept the severed balcony in a wide gesture. “I’m a tool, Ty! A weapon! Humans lived in this place, humans created me to build it. I designed the walls around you and carved them from my own flesh! I even built your stupid cities!”

 

Ty could only shake his head.

 

“When they needed me for war, they had the ultimate weapon! They had a sword and armor that was also the soldier’s lover! Clever, eh? Their warriors would fight to the death to protect me out of love, and I would fight as well because I LOVED THEM BACK!” She crushed the severed balcony into a hair thin sliver and dropped it to the pool below.

 

Her storm passed, her rage subsided, and it left behind a look of immeasurable sorrow.

 

“Can you even imagine what it’s like… to sustain and love and care for four thousand two hundred and sixty two men… and have every last one leave you? Leave you after a thousand years of love for human wives who could bear them children and stayed solid all the time?”

 

She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Her voice became wet and labored, tears streamed around her hands. “Have them cover your blue tattoos with black ones and forget all about you?”

 

Ty listened to her sob a moment. “Where did they all go?” he asked, unable to say anything else.

 

Siona sighed heavily and let down her hands. “They found some new technology. I don’t know. For whatever reason they didn’t need me, so they… they locked me in here. I sat there.” She gestured at the central crystal. “Just like this, with my chin in my hands, for two thousand more years, remembering the past thousand years over and over again.”

 

Her eyes flashed with hatred, her hands elongated into claws and she screamed “I COULD HAVE KILLED THEM!” She subsided just as quickly. “but I didn’t. It was Taka.”

 

“It was… a living part of me. It was pure hatred. I live on emotion, but they had not counted on my emotions. I didn’t even know it was happening, but I must have fed all that pain and rejection into myself and… created something. It escaped somehow and just started killing. The people called it Taka.”

 

“Taka wiped out almost an entire civilization. Countless millions of people. Taka destroyed everything. Their weapons were useless against it. If any of them remembered me, they didn’t even bother asking me for help. I guess they figured… that I was taka. I don’t know.”

 

“You didn’t offer any help?” Ty asked, being hurtful.

 

“I had no idea it was happening! I was locked in here, remember? I’d just shut myself down after the first MILLENIUM.” She glared at Ty.

 

“When I woke up, it was too late. What I saw was the last of the destruction. I helped the last handfuls of people escape. They had no idea who I was. They called me an angel… like you did once.”

 

Ty felt the ice around his heart beginning to melt, and he braced himself against it. He wasn’t quite ready to abandon anger.

 

“When I tried to leave, I found I couldn’t. Taka was a part of my body, separate from me, but alive. When everyone was gone, Taka came to me and tried to… kill me, or absorb me, or just hurt me. I don’t know. I hid from it in light – Taka can’t tolerate light.”

Ty thought back to all the times she had parked him in a sunbeam being cast down from the ceiling. “So that’s why… where is this Taka now?”

 

“Sleeping, trapped, I don’t know. I haven’t heard from it in centuries. All I know is that I still can’t leave.”

 

Ty’s mind raced. Everything was explained now, but one detail bothered him. “So why go through all the trouble of bringing me here? You’re stuck here, but you had what you wanted, you had all the emotion and love you could stand, so why the elaborate scheme just to bring me here and try to trap me?”

 

Siona sat in her handmaiden position, hands folded in her lap. The look of distant pain on her face was new to Ty. “Because I fell in love with you.”

 

“Oh, so that part wasn’t a lie, eh? Don’t you mean you were programmed to fall in love with me?”

 

Siona shook her head in disbelief. “N-no! It doesn’t work like that… Ty, please…”

 

“I need time alone. I need to think about this. I’m going.” Ty got to his feet, dusting himself off, and headed toward a smaller, unobstructed tunnel that emptied onto their balcony.

 

“If I’m not back in a couple hours, assume I’ll never be back. I won’t be caged again.” He said, not looking back.

 

New tears came to Siona. “No! I’m sorry! Come back! I’m not a cage!!” she screamed, but he didn’t listen.

 

She had been honest with every other human in her life, brutally honest at times, so she’d tried something totally different this time and here she was, watching him leave just as she’d watched thousands of others leave her.

 

She was certain he would not be back. She tried to call out Goodbye to him, but the words stuck in her throat and came out a whisper. He did not hear them.

 

When he’d gone, she waited for the old, familiar pain to set in, but it didn’t. She sat thinking of what Ty might do once he left… he had her gift in him, he’d be strong and fast and handsome and healthy, the envy of all his friends.

 

Siona thought about Ty living his life without her, of what his children would look like, the sort of girl he would be with. He would be happy without her. The thought didn’t hurt, as hit had thousands of times before. Through the familiar haze of rejection was a sensation entirely new to her: she was happy for him.

 

Siona sighed and let Ty go, wishing there were a way she could keep this feeling forever. An idea came to her that would allow her to do just that, and she darted off down the tunnel she had blocked, squeezing through the crystals like a sieve.

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