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Bright pink petals drift across their robes, the spring breeze White Hands, Keita, and I have summoned showering them with flowers from the nearby trees. Nature in its entirety is rejoicing at this moment.
As am I.
Were I mortal, tears would be falling down my cheeks. But all I do is intertwine my hand with Keita’s as we loom over the ceremony, silent, shimmering guardians, raining every blessing we can upon the pair.
You’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen, Britta, I whisper—words only she can hear as she stops in front of Li.
Oh, Deka, she whispers back, tears falling down her cheeks.
They cause little stains on the beautiful red dress she’s worn for the occasion, but I refrain from removing them: Britta wants to treasure each and every part of her matrimonial rites—even her tears. After all, it took her and Li so many years to get here, what with the chaos that overtook Otera after White Hands, Keita, and I ascended.
The jatu, alaki, and priests could not believe that the gods they had devoted their lives to were gone. They rebelled for years, skirmishing against each other. Then the first deathshriek reverted, changing back to her alaki form.
I watched, hand in hand with Keita, as, over a period of days, Sayuri’s body shrank back to a more humanlike one and her claws transformed back into nails. She even became mortal, as so many alaki are choosing to be. While those children of the gods who wish to can remain immortal as long as they like, immortality is lonely and twists the mind, so many decide otherwise.
The days of the immortals are nearly at an end now.
As are all the lingering divine wars—which is why Britta and Li are finally making their vows official. They’ve even worn robes that reflect Otera’s newfound unity. While Britta’s red dress is in the Eastern style, Li’s is white to celebrate her Northern heritage. Both, however, wear the delicate golden half masks Belcalis crafted for the occasion, their blood intermingled in the two to symbolize their union.
How the empress of the One Kingdom found time to create them while also administering the realm, I cannot comprehend, but there’s a reason Belcalis ascended to her position in the short time that has passed since I destroyed the old pantheon.
There she is now, sitting at the very front of the pavilion, beside her most trusted advisors, Acalan and Lord and Lady Kamanda, and her generals, our former karmokos. A few Maiwurian dignitaries even accompany them.
Now that both the Maiwurian pantheon and White Hands, Keita, and I have destroyed the barrier between our two empires, the two sides of Kamabai, this beautiful world, are once again connected.
I ponder the glory of this as Britta and Li clasp hands tightly and turn to Belcalis. The empress gestures, and the blood in their masks flows down, wrapping into matching golden bracelets around their wrists—a promise and an acknowledgment.
Britta and Li are equal partners, and they will remain so for as long as they live. There is no superior, no inferior. No reigning husband and lesser wife. There’s just them. Together.
And as they kiss, sealing the vows that bind their souls for eternity, Ixa explodes out of the water in his enormous true form alongside a few of the other younger ebiki, a display meant to show his affection and love for them. My affection and love for them.
That love sings through me as I follow Britta and Li and Adwapa through Golma market a few days later, Ixa riding invisibly on my shoulder. After spending so much time with me and the others, Ixa has become something decidedly more than an ebiki, what with his newfound ability to open doors and to travel invisibly all across the world.
The Divine Serpent, he is now called. It is a title that brings him much pride and strokes his ever-expanding ego.
It’s the same with Braima and Masaima, now known as the Divine Horse Lords. As usual, they accompany White Hands, who has decided to walk with us today. As we stroll, a little girl suddenly darts over to Britta and Li, never noticing us as she stares at the pair, still in the colors of their wedding finery. They’ll be wearing red and white clothes for weeks on end so that everyone who sees them knows they’re married now.
I turn my attention to the little girl. She’s a tiny speck of a thing, warm brown in color, with long, curly hair and tilted-up eyes. She offers Britta a flower, an ascendance flame, which is what the small pink flowers that sprang in the wake of my ascendance to divinity are called.
“Yer the one who got married, yes?” the girl asks in the lilting accent of the Northern provinces.
“Yes,” Britta says, taking it. “Thank ye for the flower.”
“I wish ye blessings an’ fortune in the name of the Three Divinities,” the child intones solemnly, calling out the title the mortals have given us.
They think there’s only three of us. Little do they know there are countless gods, an untold number of deities waiting to be born in response to their wishes, their desires.
As Keita, White Hands, and I look at each other, amused, a harried woman rushes after her. “Asha!” She cries. “Asha, ye’ll be late for lessons.” She scoops the girl up before glancing at my friends. “My deepest apologies,” she offers respectfully. “I hope me daughter was not bothering you.”
Britta shakes her head. “No, she was sweet. Gave me a flower.”
But Adwapa’s eyes are fixed on the girl and glazed with something that suspiciously resembles tears. “What did you say your daughter’s name was?”
The girl idly scratches her side. “Asha. Me name is Asha, an’ I’m goin’ to be a warrior,” she announces.
“Not a scholar?” Li prompts, amused.
The girl’s nose wrinkles. “Got no interest in books, like me twin has. Spends his whole day with his head in the books. So I have to watch out for him. Easily bullied,” she adds in an overly loud whisper. She nods at a scrawny little boy a few steps down the road, who’s poring over some scrolls at a bookseller’s tent.
