Page 20 of The Demon God's Desire
She seems to be devoted to her plants, constantly checking on the ones in her home and outside of it. She’s got a cache of weapons underneath her bed that I stumble upon nearly by accident.
And she feeds the stray desert ipyns that come by her house every so often. I learn that last one when I walk into the room to find a large iypin sitting on the back stone patio, meowling at the door.
“Oh, sorry I’ve been so busy, I didn’t mean to forget to feed you, Ivan,” Bridget glides into the room and walks over to the back door. She takes out some raw, chopped capra meat and throws it out to him one piece at a time.
“Be careful!” I scold her. “That’s a wild animal!”
“Nooo,” she drawls out, throwing another piece of meat to the beast, who snaps it up in his jaws. “He’s just a baby!” she says, in a cooing voice.
I can’t believe how thick-headed this woman is, feeding stray beasts. As if they wouldn’t devour her the second she showed any sign of weakness.
When I go to bed that night, I dream of a huge, wild iypin attacking Bridget and tearing her limb from limb. I wake up in a cold sweat and breathe in and out.
The Hearthkeeper sent me that dream. I know it. I don’t know why but I can feel it just as instinctively as the sensation I get over my body when I pray to her that tells me she’s heard me.
I ignore it though, not sure what to make of it. A few more days pass and suddenly it’s been a week here. I’m finally allowed to walk through the village with her. Some of the villagers are outright hostile and when I point it out, she tells me to pay them no mind. She says that I’m just different from them and reminds me that dark elves aren’t necessarily kind either—they view humans the same way the humans are seeing me.
I’m struck by this. “But they want to hurt me because they see me as a threat, even though I’ve done nothing to them,” I tell her as we stroll through the village together.
“True but there’s a possibility you could be a threat,” she points out. “And by that logic, your people attacking humans is just as bad.”
“But we have a sense of honor in our fighting,” I argue back. “The highest honor for us is being able to fight for goddess and people. A soldier should have a code of ethics if he wants to be seen as a good soldier.”
“Humans have their own ethics,” Bridget argues back. “You don’t see us going around hurting innocent people.”
“But your people want to hurt me,” I say, feeling as though I’ve made my point. “A good soldier would never hurt those unable to defend themselves, like women and children.”
“But that’s exactly what the dark elf army does to humans,” she says quietly. I can see I’ve struck a nerve somehow and I go quiet, considering her words.
We return to her home and have dinner together and I’m still thinking about what she’s said to me.
I’ve always seen humans as inferior—as little more than animals. They were a threat to be eliminated or something to ignore, or pity for their lack of magic and abilities.
But as I spend more time with some of the villagers in my second week, as I venture out more on my own, I’m starting to see I was wrong. Humans aren’t really all that different from elves. Not in the ways that matter.
This makes me feel uncomfortable and anxious. I’ve always prided myself on being an honorable man. But Bridget pointed out that a lot of what the miou do is less than honorable. I’ve seen it myself firsthand.
The villagers for the most part, just go about their day, same as the dark elves. People work and children play, they love and laugh and find joy in things...and everyone works together to make the village run smoothly.
It’s puzzling.
Spending more time with Bridget herself is just as confusing. I keep finding reasons to follow her to work for the day, such as complaining that my injured ribs are acting up, or that I need her to check that my wounds are healing nicely.
I prefer to spend as much time with her as possible as well. I like how fiery and spirited she is. How much alike we are. Is this friendship? I’ve never had friends before.
My strange dreams keep coming back as well. I think they’re warnings from the Hearthkeeper to stay away from Bridget. I don’t know what danger she could possibly pose to me but it’s clear that she’s not pleased I’m here and wants me to leave and rejoin my men on our mission.
By the third week of being here, I feel stranger and more unsettled than ever. Things are confusing and I feel as though my world has been turned upside down and shaken up. I don’t know how to process it all. It’s confusing and a little frustrating.
I try to hold back, try to work things out in my own head but I can’t keep quiet any longer and one day during a quiet dinner I speak up. “How could you do it?” I blurt out, fidgeting in my seat.
She looks up, confusion in her honey eyes. “Do what?”
“How could you heal me, forgive me, show me kindness and mercy after everything my people have done to you?”
She shrugs, holding my gaze. “I’m not sure,” she says. “But the world is cruel. Adding to that cruelty seems wrong, somehow. I hate the idea of it on a deep level. And despite what your people have done to mine, you’ve never hurt me. You’ve never tried to harm me except for that first meeting when you reacted out of instinct.”
I consider her words, trying to figure out what else I want to ask.