Private When The Lotus Flower Blooms

[Imoten]

Ife​

Three low tsks fell from Imoten's mouth as he looked over the document placed before him. Since his awakening he had decided to undertake a great task, a task that would take him to a hundred worlds and past a thousand stars. The Relics of Ardu were powerful items that had been empowered by the gods. Before he was sealed away by the ancient monstrosities he had worked tirelessly to see these relics scattered into the stars. There was only one problem with his scheme to ensure the relics did not fall into the wrong hands.

He had no idea where they were. How could he? When they came for him to seal him away they sought to rip the information from his body. Although in the end the torture had been the same, although Imoten's memory could not correctly recall it the pain was engraved deep within him. He let out an exhale, tossing one of the papers back on the wooden desk with a tired expression. "You simply must find a way to word this that does not imply military force in the event it is denied." He turned his eyes to a man wearing a pristine white uniform. His pale blue skin and petite stature marked him as one of the Azurans, the natives to the world that Imoten had traveled to. The Azurans were a once-peaceful race of humanoids who abhorred bloodshed, yet now there were many factions on the planet who sought to feud with one another.

Imoten had not traveled to this world to lend aid to their strife. However, he believed the Azurans may be able to help him. For the past few months he had been offering them classes in the ancient medicines, teaching astronomy, and lending his advice from a diplomatic standpoint.

All of these things were easier when connected to the great magics.

"Lord Imoten. We simply cannot let the Amarn Faction believe we are weak. The High General has stated we must remain firm in our verbiage." The soldier's words were accented as he tightened his fist in a meaningful expression of strength. It seemed entirely too exhausting for Imoten to immediately respond to, yet eventually he set the paper on the desk, shaking his head at the man's words. "You've already told me that the Amarn Faction cannot beat your military, right? So using it as a bargaining point serves no purpose. They're not going to try and match you might for might, it would mean their extinction. If you want a proper trade treaty you need to remove all mentions of your soldiers. They have nothing to do with it." Imoten's hand came up to scratch behind his neck as he walked to the end of his tent. There was a hammock hung at the back of the large living tent and Imoten climbed into it with a sigh of relief. The soldier held an uncertain expression before taking a step forward. "But the High General-"

"The High General will do as he wishes, of course. He asked for my opinion and that's what it is. You can leave now." Imoten was not overly curt, however he stretched out as if poised to take a nap. With his arms behind his head the Priest closed his eyes as the soldier nodded uncertainly before collecting the papers and leaving Imoten's tent. Imoten yawned before shuffling around in the hammock, pulling out a small book with odd blue runes embedded on the cover. He began to speak aloud in a low tone as he read through the works of his people.

 

[Ife]

T A G | Imoten

It had been a year.

A year without word. A year without family. A year without comfort and familiarity by any definition of the word. Ife was growing tired, and lonely.

When she tried hard enough, she could recall her past life. The days before her sacrifice and the days that had made them necessary. The high priestesses of Ardu had never once failed in their task. Not once, until the day Imoten was stolen. Until the day the artefacts they had given their titles, lands, and lives to protect were cast to the wind. Lost. Forever. Ife had been the only one who had not taken Imoten’s disappearance as leave to abandon her task. Time and time again she had been begged not to follow him. Time and time again, she had refused to acknowledge it.

She would not fail him a second time. The gods worked in mysterious and unpredictable ways. The trials and tasks they bestowed on their believers were made to challenge them, to strengthen their resolve and their devotion. Ife had accepted Imoten’s disappearance as such and followed him dutifully as she had promised she would.

Waking from her sleep had been disorientating, to say the least. She knew nothing. He could still be asleep, or he could be lost, or dead, but that mattered little. She adapted using the only motivation and determination she could think to muster. She had to find him. Whispers and tales were all she had to go on, but she followed each one as if they were a clue handed down from the gods themselves. Each one had been a disappointment, another failure to add to the ever-growing list she carried with her every day. Yet, she refused to give up. She refused to abandon him.

A few weeks had gone by without a lead, but Ife was patient. When word of a man with great knowledge reached her ears, slim though it was, Ife grasped it. The world he supposedly taught on was not too far from where she was. If nothing else, it would simply be another mark on the ever-growing list of places he was not.

The internal affairs of planets meant little to her, so she strode up to the camp with nothing short of confidence. A man in white, a colour that reflected her own attire, stood hunched over a desk pilled with papers. He looked important enough, so she approached him.

“I am looking for Lord Imoten.” Ife rapped her nails on the wood as she spoke in heavily accented basic, but her words were audible enough for the soldier to understand. He looked up from the map stretched out across the table, only to stare at her intensely. “And you are?” Ife’s jaw tensed as she turned her gaze away from him toward the rest of the camp. A few tents caught her eye, but none as much as a large one situated a little further from the rest. The cream coloured material was lined with gold trim and emblazoned with a half-moon cradling a lotus flower. “Who are you?” The soldier asked again, but Ife was not listening.

From inside the tent, away from all the clamour of a camp, came a voice. It was soft, low, sultry, and it spoke in a foreign tongue. Ife closed her eyes and focused on it. It was her tongue. She had slept for so long she had forgotten the sound of it. Somehow it lost its beauty when all you could do was speak it to yourself. She recognised the verses too. They were as familiar to her as the beating of her own heart. Her lips moved wordlessly in sync with the voice, to taste the language on her tongue for the first time in twelve long, painful months.

Ife turned back to the soldier to flash him a brief smile ladened with superiority before she began to walk away.

“Wait.” The soldier was hot on her heels. “WAIT! Miss! You can’t jus-…” Throwing open the tent flap with her forearm, Ife ignored his irking pleas. He knew nothing of the road she had travelled to get here today. He knew nothing of the journey and its trials. If he thought to stop her now, when her goal was quite literally in earshot, he would not live to regret the mistake.

A bright beam of sunlight rushed into the tent, illuminating it in a soft orange glow. It crept endlessly across the floor until it eventually came to rest on a hammock stretched between two pillars of wood. Ife was wordless, and motionless, for more than a minute. There he was. Stretched out across the taut material, head buried in a book. Like nothing had changed. She swallowed the lump in her throat and narrowed her eyes at him. As if she almost believed he was nothing but a mirage that the gods had created to torment her further, but how could he be?

In her dreams, he had been looking for her too. In her dreams, they had met as they once did. In a field of yellow corn just as the sun had begun to slip behind the mountains, but this Imoten looked as though he had not lifted a finger. Just as it should have been.

Finally, she walked forward. Though her step was light, her boots crunched gently against the reed mat lining the floor. “I found you…” She whispered breathlessly into the air as her golden gaze finally rested upon his face. It was entirely unchanged, as though time had forgotten him entirely. Suddenly, Ife remembered herself. Remembered who he was. Sinking to her knees, she hit the floor with a thud and a heavy sigh of what could only be relief.

It had been a year.

Even longer if you counted the days she had spent frozen in time.

A whole year.

 

[Imoten]

TAG | Ife

Some clamor outside caused Imoten to let out a soft sigh. It sounded as if the soldiers around him were quite energetic today. He truly wished they would hold silence close to their hearts, but he did not expect such from men such as these. He exhaled, letting his book fall down over his eyes as he closed them without a second thought. However in the next moment he heard the flaps to his tent fly open, causing an even louder commotion outside. Imoten was prepared to ask what he believed was a soldier to depart the tent so he may rest, however when a voice of milk and honey carried to his ear he could not help but smile.

"Finally." The words came from his lips in the same confident, knowing manner that the High Priest had always held. Imoten, from a very young age, was bred and trained to believe his powers were imparted to him directly from the God Ardu. His entire life whole civilizations had devoted themselves to pleasing him in exchange for his skills and foresight.

Before. The thought was a sour one.

Had it been his jovial disposition towards his skills that caused the Gods to pull their favor from him? He'd searched the stars a thousand times but they never offered an answer. Pulling his legs from the hammock, Imoten tossed his book to the side as he looked to Ife. The poor woman had never stopped her search, had she? Of all Imoten's Priests, she was the most talented and the one he favored the most. It was his intent to grant her his heir before he was frozen, however that plan had been interrupted by the Ancient Ones.

"If any of my Priests could travel the stars and time to find me, it would be you Ife." He said with a warm smile coming to his lips.

"A child of Ardu." He said softly, rising from the hammock to walk over to the woman. His hand came down as he placed a single finger on her shoulder, muttering an incantation in their ancient, long lost tongue. As he spoke the language the powers that were wrapped around him stretched over her, as if bringing her into a warm embrace.

Her powers were in tact.

A pang of jealousy sat in the man's gut but he quickly dismissed it. Instead he took hold of her shoulders, bringing her to her feet so he could pull the woman into his arms. "I am so proud of you Ife." He told her in a low tone, before pressing his lips to her cheek for a warm kiss. He turned from the Priest, drawing his arms into a tight stretch as he spoke out to her. "I believe you are the last of the Medjaraya. The rest were lost to the sands of time." He said with a rise of his fall in an accepting gesture. "I will look to you to preserve my being and attend my needs." He turned back to the woman. "As always." he said with a smile. "But for now I would hear your story. Tell me of the days after I was locked away." He said with a happy anticipation as he sat in the hammock, patting the spot beside him for the woman.

 

[Ife]

T A G | Imoten

Finally, he said.

It felt like an understatement to Ife.

Staying silent as he moved, with her eyes cast down to the floor where her knees met the mat, Ife felt a wave of overwhelming relief. She allowed herself a rare but subtle smile at his next words. If there was anything she had not doubted, it was her devotion to him. When she had left their home to chase him through the stars, many had considered it a foolish endeavour. They had laughed at her devotion. Told her it was a waste of her life. How good it was to hear Imoten praise her for her efforts. How good it was to have her efforts recognised and appreciated by the one person who mattered most.

The single finger he placed on her shoulder shrugged the weight of an entire year of loneliness from her mind. It was the key that unlocked a chest Ife had not known was closed. She breathed out a heavy sigh at the words that trickled from his mouth, and at the warm embrace that wrapped around her aching muscles to soothe her pain.

Proud.

A word that echoed in her mind as his arms came to wrap around her slender form. She returned the embrace, with a little more vigour than she had intended, but it had been so long since she had contact like this. When he began to step away, Ife was almost loathed to let him go, but she did. “Yes… I am the last. I tried to find survivors but I was unsuccessful.” She said simply in response. Overall, she had searched for them far less than she had searched for Imoten. However, at some point in her journey, her mind had directed her to attempting to find help. In the form of ancestors generations away from the faces she had once known, but she found the galaxy empty.

Ife pulled her tired feet up onto the hammock, crossing them one over the other. For the first time since she had woken, they could truly rest. To begin answering his question, she punctuated the silence with a stiff sigh that pulled her back straight. “They were not good days.” Her thick accent spoke softly, devoid of its usual sharpness. In its place was something akin to sorrow, but Ife was not ordinarily the type for such an open display of emotion. “We panicked. Even I could not keep order in the temple during the first days of your disappearance. Some took it as a sign that Ardu had abandoned us, and so too must they abandon their promise to him. Those that remained did so out of fear they would not be accepted back into their homes.” All except Ife. Her family was prominent nobility during their time, and Ife was their firstborn child. They were loathed to give her up to the temple in the first place, and would have been more than willing to accept her back into the family should she have wished it. She had stayed to find him.

Pressing her lips together, she furrowed her snow-white brows until soft creases formed between them. “The other high priests spoke at length of what could be done. As you well know, your title is passed down from father to son, and you sired no sons before your disappearance. With the relics gone too, they could see no reason to keep us tethered to them, or to you, or to the temple.” At this point, she turned her golden eyes to face him properly. “They almost stopped me from following you. There were so many unknowns. We could not know how far you had been sent, or when you would wake up. They feared that the timing would be not correct. I woke up a year ago, and I thought for a while that they had been right.”

A flicker of a smile pulled her lips up slightly. “But I am pleased to see they were not.”