It had been more than an hour since Onyx had left to send her old trainee, Katsa, the message she and Rachael had decided on. It was an unflinchingly honest account of how Surin had treated Onyx in the past—the ways in which he'd used and manipulated her. (They'd written it together, with Rachael holding her hand during the painful parts.) None of this had gone anywhere through proper military channels. But they'd told Katsa how to blast it to the colonies, and she'd agreed. Either by public shame or drastic overreaction, Surin—and perhaps even his father, who presided over Xind's home planet—would fall from grace. (Onyx hardly came off as blameless herself, but that no longer mattered.) The Xind military would be too busy dealing with the fallout from that to interfere with Onyx's plans. Rachael was proud that she had helped.
When Rachael finally emerged from Leaf, seeking dinner, she saw a small flame on the sidewalk. Worried -- had the war begun? -- the Ruby Seraph unfolded her wings and raced at superhuman speed down the street, but soon slowed, as her keen eyes made out more details. By the time she arrived, she was walking, and bowed respectfully.
Onyx was before her, a shirt aflame. It was the one she'd worn when she'd first arrived. The one that had seemed custom-designed to attract Rachael's attention. The one that said, "The ladder is always there."
Rachael's copy of the poetry collection from which that quotation came sat beside it on the ground, but the flames did not yet reach it.
Onyx stood, silent, watching the flames. Her night-black hair whipped in the wind. She looked at Rachael, distantly, and nodded.
Rachael stood, stunned, her own fiery mane whipping back into her face, as she looked at the sight, trying and failing to understand. But -- as with her day of ignorance about her own Seraph-conversion -- there had to be a vital clue she was missing.
In a small voice, she asked, "Why?"
Onyx... looked away. She couldn't meet Rachael's gaze. Rachael's goddess couldn't meet her gaze. It felt like the whole world had gone badly wrong. But Rachael had her duty; she must try to make it right.
"You... can tell me. I won't be upset, or mourn this. I simply want to know what has..." She couldn't say caused you pain, not out loud, not until Onyx had admitted it. "...what has led you to this moment."
Onyx nodded, slowly, turning her face back to Rachael's with difficulty. The huge domme-angel's body still moved with grace, but there was an uncertainty to her movements, almost an unsteadiness, that Rachael had never before seen. Not even before they had shared minds, before they had gotten that message to Katsa, exploiting Onyx's previously set-up sabotage and saving the Queen's plan. This wasn't nervousness about her task, but something much more profound, and Onyx's movements reflected that.
"Rachael... you know poetry well. You know who wrote those words, I'm sure."
"The late Adrienne Rich, yes. I was... so delighted to see another fan of her work, I almost noticed it more than your body." Almost.
Another long pause. Both angels' eyes drifted back to the flames -- that shirt was done for, by now -- and back to each other.
"Do you... do you know what she thought about people like me? The ones who were not born -- they say in Xind -- on this side of the mountain?"
"Honestly, I didn't... but I can guess from your face, Goddess, and I'm sorry."
Onyx nodded. "When I found out... I don't know. I'd dared to hope for the better. Surely someone who saw such beauty in self and in self-determination, who propounded such a creative and active spirit in her works -- with even some hints of gender fluidity, of playfulness in pronouns -- would have understood. And yet she stood, stone-faced, and turned her back while my earth-kindred suffered."
Rachael could so clearly see the pain and hurt and utter devastation on Onyx's face, reliving that terrible revelation, that the Ruby Seraph couldn't wait for instruction, couldn't want to be summoned. She flew, taking off and soaring over the flames that separated them, over the book that by now was a charred husk -- but that hardly mattered because Rachael knew every word and she had no doubt Onyx did too.
The Seraph landed just short of a stunned Onyx, and hugged her tightly. Rachael's Goddess was on the verge of tears. The hug seemed to keep them at bay for the moment, but Onyx's expression didn't much improve. She looked, if anything, ashamed to be seen like this, ashamed, a bit, to need comfort, yet knowing she did, and only wishing there was a solution.
A solution. There had to be one, didn't there? Rachael knew, intuitively, that whatever the author had done it was wrong for that book to be burning. What could she say to Onyx that would help her in this abyss of pain? But she was good at solutions, and had to try.
Poetry replayed in Rachael's head, lines once memorized and perhaps -- at first -- not really understood, except for their deep, beautiful imagery. But as they cycled in her head she hit upon something, something that perhaps she herself was bringing in, but which nevertheless meant the world.
Sudden fire lit the Ruby Seraph's eyes.
"That poem. Diving into the Wreck. Use it against her." Her voice was uncontrolled, carried away by her passion.
"...what? What do you mean?" But, caught off guard by Rachael's vituperation, Onyx was really listening.
Rachael took a breath, slowed down, calmed her voice. "It can... be read recursively, as if it's about itself. 'First having read the book of myths' -- that's us, reading this work from a time before I was here, at a time before you arrived. And I can see that you've gone down into it, making it a symbol."
"It spoke to me. There was truth."
"There is. You were not wrong to do that. To dive straight in, and surround yourself with its water. Yet...in the poem, the dive itself is not the point, right?"
"I... obviously she's going to explore the ship. Right."
"Now read it recursively."
"...Fuck. Of course. I get your point, she literally says she's seeking 'the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth.' She'd spent years reading these 'classic' works with outmoded ideas, and... I thought she meant just taking what she can from them, and discarding the rest. But that's not it, is it? Or it's more specific."
"Right. 'The words are maps.'"
"A guide to the deeper truth, then. What both of us had spent our lives seeking, from our own positions—but where she was standing doesn't matter. Who built the signpost doesn't matter. It's where it's pointing."
Onyx held her head, maybe dramatically, maybe actually dizzy. Clearly this was about more than a poem. "I have to sit down."
"Go ahead." And Onyx did, folding those huge legs, and Rachael came back around and enfolded her Goddess with her own pretty wings, basking in the glow of this, of some fresh part of their own liberation.
After another long moment, she was nodding. "I like this," Onyx said. "I really do. And there's even the warning there -- 'it is easy to forget / what I came for.' For Kinrah's sake, I wish I'd remembered that when I first got to this planet." She paused. "You know I'm not new to this poem, nor new to analysis. How I could have missed this for so long..."
"Well... I did, too, Goddess -- until I saw you, and needed to see it."
Onyx pulled Rachael in for a hug, and a kiss that had a difference from every other kiss they'd shared. More careful, yet less abstract. Less raw passion, but more... existing in the moment. Rachael had a sudden sense that Onyx had not felt fully present in her own body until just that moment.
She had a sense that the moment, and the conversation that preceded it, had changed the world for the better. A cheap hardback book, Rachael thought, was a small price to pay.
Onyx pulled back, giving a smile of childlike eagerness that differed from all of Onyx's previous smiles, heart-poundingly gorgeous as they'd been. There was something like hope in her eyes, now. That someone omnipotent should have lacked hope... but now Rachael knew better. And she had helped to fix it.
"We're going to restore the backups from all the merges," said Onyx. "My old colleagues named me Ladder-Builder, not Ladder-Destroyer. No more killing, either—we don't have to kill to do this. Just to save. To help them all ascend, at whatever pace feels right."
She paused, looked Rachael right in the eyes. The flame-haired Seraph, so desperately in love, was stunned, shuddering, but giddy at all of her dearest hopes for her Goddess coming true at once.
"Because I know why I came here. You are why. All my Seraphs are wonderful. But you taught me ways of thinking I had never even considered. It's made me realize that many more hidden gems must exist on this planet, waiting to be uncovered. Rachael, you shone so brightly, you lit my path forward, just by being your brilliant, amazing self. And that...that is something beyond wonderful, love."
Love. Had Onyx really called Rachael that? She was almost delirious now, so full of her own devoted passion. But she had to keep it together. Even with Onyx looking straight at her, those piercing eyes, that tender smile just destroying her inside in the best possible way, she wouldn't interrupt the Goddess. Not now. Not when there was, still, one more thing she was hoping against hope that Onyx would say. It had seemed unimaginably selfish. But she hoped.
"So." Onyx spoke quietly, now, but if anything, the Goddess was smiling more. "I want you, my love, by my side. For Earth, for everything. You're the artist. Help me create, Rachael."
Rachel's face was already filled with the hugest grin she'd ever had. Somehow it got even bigger.
"Goddess," said Rachael through tears of joy, "I would be honored."
They stayed so close like that, two Seraphs grinning, their minds beautifully linked. New possibilities unfolded like flowers in their hearts.
"We both know how the poem ends," said Onyx. "With 'a book of myths / in which / our names do not appear.'"
"Are you thinking..."
"Yeah. Let's write them in. Together."