Chapter Text
Being wrenched away from one's nature is a cruel thing, no matter how much one hates the nature in question. It is foreign in a way us humankind don't enjoy. That feeling of wrong rubbed all over, deep into skin, settled into the marrow of bone.
In a way its like being a whole new person, which is difficult, since Zilan doesn't have much practice in being that. Haven't had the chance to, wasn't made to, she supposes. Like this, her body feels… like its hers. She doesn't like that. Too foreign. Too wrong. Because it doesn't fully feel like that either, its hard to explain. Its like something is being held over her head, something she will crush under, just waiting to drop. He is planning something. Zilan is sure because she knows Him. Better than any being ever did. She is Him, and He is her; and Zilan knows something is coming.
Like the week before a huge earthquake, something has shifted. Not in the air or anything like that, but in her. Inside her head.
Zilan can't pinpoint where it started, exactly, but she knows when she noticed. The urge is quiet and the silence is so deafening, that it was impossible not to.
The urge is unpredictable by nature. She, of course, doesn't have any power over it. Quite like how a puppet likely doesn't know what its strings will make it do next, Zilan is clueless until it kicks in and starts bleeding into her mind, parasitic in the way it consumes.
Despite its unpredictable nature, Zilan has lived more than three decades with it and she knows it. Knows its tactics and what it likes, knows when the thirst is nearing a breaking point. Its better for her peace of mind to think of the urge as a sentient being on its own and not an extension of her Father's will, like some wild animal she keeps caged within herself. Enver, quite often, says that its a funny image; a beast keeping watch on another's cage. He's always a little too good at getting on her nerves and this topic is no exception.
She notices the absence by the end of the first month.
Its the dead of night at the edge of town. Zilan is alone, the Outer City quiet at this part of Tumbledown, the night covered in mist and fog. And a sense of unease. It is said ghosts roam these streets and Zilan has every reason to believe it, for death is seeped into every crevice of this place. The scent of it familiar under her nose, as always, standing by her side like a guardian. Watching, always.
Sometimes Zilan has a hard time differentiating between the maze that is Tumbledown and Temples District. They reek of death just the same, Tumbledown is simply quieter.
Zilan watches the sea, hands clasped behind her back. Balduran, in his tall, marble glory, stands right behind her as they face west. She must look more statue than him, honestly, with all her stillness. A long day, it had been, a long one indeed. When is it not, actually? Its hard nowadays, has always been, but lately… Never mind. Its best not to think such things, for it renders her weak. Even weaker than she has become. Zilan hates the feeling but its there regardless; the soft, mushy feel of her body and the organs she has underneath, the weight of her heart that lies beneath. She wishes it was otherwise, yet despite all, she doesn't miss the days where she was more steel than flesh.
At least the hunger never leaves her. Its grounding, familiar, when everything else has become foreign.
Her eyes don't move, stuck on the horizon line, right where the night sky meets sea. She can taste the salt of it on her tongue, the breeze it carries forward licking at her face. That's when she hears it.
A soft crunch and a rustle, a whisper of a sound. Susurrus, she recalls reading from one of Enver's fancy, leather-bound books.
Zilan turns around, fast, agile as a cat. At first, she can't spot anyone or thing behind her- simply this dead, forgotten part of town, the silhouette of Cliffgate not so far away. Then, she looks down and sees him. A boy, likely around twelve years of age and a bit short for it. He's staring at her with big, curious eyes.
But there isn't any fear in them. Silly, silly kid.
"Miss?"
She's almost startled when the kid decides to speak. He sounds curious, in that way little boys are when they're around his age, and friendly too. Zilan suddenly feels out of place despite knowing that the kid himself is likely more so, he shouldn't be out here this time of day, alone nonetheless. Bad, dangerous people, such as Zilan herself, might bring harm his way. He's so young, so vulnerable; in a way Zilan never was even at his age. Zilan can feel the familiar tug of hunger deep inside her stomach, her very being.
"What are you doing here?"
Zilan's response is rough and icy, as if she owns the land they stand on to question his presence here. But the kid simply smiles, mousy brown hair swaying in the breeze as he walks forward towards the statue. Zilan notices then that he's carrying a basket with him, hanged on his arm and seemingly not so full. He appears cheerful despite it, as he sits by the statue of Balduran, some four feet from where Zilan is standing.
He sets the basket down, starts taking out all manners of small, likely stolen snacks from it. Sets them down in a half-moon before himself like they're standing in military formation.
"Having a picnic with my friend," the kid responds back breezily, as if his friend isn't a nearly seven foot tall statue. Zilan frowns, looking between the kid and Balduran's stony face.
"That is a statue," she remarks, eyes once again on the kid as he opens a pack of candied apple slices. His small, dirty hand is shoved inside the torn package as he pulls a couple out. One for him, and apparently, one for Balduran; judging by the way he places it right by the statue's feet. "Where are your parents?"
The kid shrugs. Its as if the question just brushed past him, the way he appears careless. Perhaps Zilan shouldn't have asked that- not that she cares. She doesn't. This boy won't have a long enough life to potentially mope over some strange woman's thoughtless question, if he keeps on this way.
"Dunno. Where are yours?"
This, this moment right then, is where it should've kicked in.
Where red should've started bleeding into her vision until it was all she could see, blood all she could smell and torn flesh all she could feel. The moment she should've started to conjure up a hundred ways to take this little boy's life and tear it into bite-sized pieces fit for her bestial hunger. She knows it, knows herself and how she and it work. What the perfect victim and the perfect opportunity looks like; even though the image changes every time. This time around, this should be it.
Yet it doesn't. And the overwhelming red doesn't come. The hunger merely multiplies until its all she can feel inside her, yet the urge doesn't arrive to make her act.
Instead, she answers him.
"Six feet under in the Lower City graveyard."
"Must be cold down there this time of year, no?" he asks, biting around his slice of candied apple.
"Its always cold down there, kid."
He shrugs, swallowing the whole thing down. He's so careless, so… Something. Zilan doesn't have the word for it. Maybe its because she hasn't talked to any "kid" besides Orin in what could be lifetimes, but he feels alien to her. For a moment, she even wonders whether or not he's a ghost but he clearly isn't. Zilan can see the red splotches on his chubby cheeks and the red tip of his nose, face all pink due to the cold.
The silence stretches on, uncomfortable to Zilan but not to him, apparently. Then he fishes another slice from the pack, holds his hand up and out to Zilan, who stares at him like she just saw something far scarier than a ghost.
"Wan' one?"
The slice of apple is squeezed between his clammy fingers, all sticky. It makes her feel sick to her stomach. Yet the kid keeps staring, hand outstretched to her, that small, innocent smile on his face which paralyzes Zilan to even stare at. And she realizes that in this moment, she's stranger not just to him, but also herself because the sudden flash of red, and the reflexes of a predator that follow right after are still nowhere to be found. She can just catch the slightest whiff of them, that familiar tug of His hand on the back of her neck.
But that's all there is to it.
"No," Zilan snaps, pulls her hood up before she takes off to get the fuck away from this kid, only stopping momentarily when she's right next to him. "Go home. Wherever you call that. Its dangerous out here."
Then she walks away. Starts running, halfway to Cliffgate. She runs the rest of the way down to the sewers, as if she can run away from whatever it is that's wrong with her.
Perhaps she doesn't need it to kick in, she starts thinking at some point. Its not like she can't kill without it. She can, killing is quite literally what she was created to do. And she has killed in the past week or so, has taken life and tried to place it inside herself yet it just doesn't work that way. There's no rational way to explain it. The hunger just isn't sated, and even worse than that, Father isn't rewarding her for any of it.
No matter how much she chases after that feeling of absolute bliss, of fullness and ecstasy, He isn't giving it to her. And its frustrating. Zilan gives him everything, scoops out all that's inside her and more to serve Him, and this is what she gets in return? A feeling of some couple bites of stale bread falling into a starving stomach and a high like a nicotine kick? Its not fair. Not fucking fair.
And Enver tells her as much, without using those exact words. He's always been good at telling her things without actually talking about them.
"Maybe these will do you good? Hm? Quench the thirst, perhaps?" Enver is holding up a handful of berries to her from where he's sitting at his large dining table, which is comically placed inside his bedroom. He likes having a big surface to work on. Zilan scoffs at him, hitting his hand as she paces behind his chair. The berries tumble out of his hand, onto the table and some onto the ground. Zilan steps on one of them, making sure to get it all the way into the small fibers of his expensive carpet just to make a point, the bare sole of her foot now sticky with the juices. "Hey! Manners! That carpet is imported all the way from Calimshan!"
Enver's fucking with her. He's good at it.
"Quit scolding me like you're my father. You are not that." Zilan's voice is all bite, and it makes him laugh. Its infuriatingly melodic to the ears, especially infuriating when she's trying - and failing - to throw a tantrum.
"Evidently. If I were, I would be doing a far better job at it," And wouldn't have a nasty stain on my expensive carpet, is the part that he doesn't say out loud, yet Zilan can still hear it.
"Stop trying to make this about your weird perversion."
"You really are no fun today, darling, aren't you…" he sounds like he's trying his best to sound annoyed, to be fair he probably is. It just doesn't translate to Zilan in this moment and he probably doesn't want it to. He might be an asshole, but Zilan is… well, Zilan. "Sit down a little, you'll end up dizzy."
"I don't get dizzy."
"Well, you'll make me so then. I mean it, sit down," Enver's tone is commanding, even though he should know by now that Zilan doesn't do well with that. She keeps on walking back and forth, crimson hair spilling freely behind her back, with each sharp turn she takes in her limited route of left-right-left-right behind his chair. Enver cranes his neck to look at her, sighing as his eyes take her in. "My Lord- Zilan, love, must I beg you to sit down? Come sit down and I shall distract you, hm? How about that?"
He pushes his chair back a bit, beckoning Zilan to his lap, which does look inviting. His legs spread like that, he always sits as if he's sitting on a throne. Zilan doesn't accept his offer, she's too stubborn and too preoccupied with other matters to do so, but she doesn't fully decline it either. At last she stops pacing, coming to a stop next to his chair to place one thigh on the armrest of his chair. The borrowed robe two sizes too large on her falls open, revealing the milky skin of her thigh and immediately grabs Enver's attention in doing so. A strong hand finds her waist out of habit, and Zilan lets herself lean against him just so.
"You're aiming to get something out of my frustration," she states, like its fact. And it is.
"One must look out for his interests. I am a politician, am I not?" with that, Zilan lightly smacks his left shoulder. He grabs her hand right away, keeps it there with a grin stuck on his face.
"Not in the bedroom, you're not."
"I'd argue that our bedroom is where my political genius truly shines-"
She smacks his shoulder again. Harder. It must hurt, for he lets out an intentionally exaggerated sound of pain.
"Enver!"
"Fine! Gods forbid a man has his needs…" he drawls, in fake protest. Zilan knows he won't give up so easy, not when it must be so fun teasing her. Like she predicted, he nuzzles his face into her chest, pressing a kiss on her left breast over the satin. "And a gorgeous woman by his side to go along with it-"
Zilan makes an effort to act like she's genuinely complaining, when she's only mildly disturbed and half of that isn't even because of him. When she frees her hand from his grasp to grab a handful of his hair, just for the sake of it, she doesn't realize the opportunity she's giving Enver. He takes it to wrap his arm around her waist, pulling her lithe frame into his lap, victorious at last. Zilan can't even find it in herself to actually protest anymore, it is also pretty comfortable against his chest- all soft and malleable under his shirt. So, she merely lets out another frustrated huff.
"You, Enver, are an impossible man."
"Good match for you, aren't I?" he laughs, "Considering how impossible you yourself are to understand this morning. I'm starting to think I need dictionaries yet unwritten to decipher you."
Nothing, absolutely nothing, could decipher her because no one in this realm could even begin to understand her. Perhaps, Enver could; but only the human he understands, which he does so fully and beautifully, to an extent that's scary sometimes. The blade he yearns for, and the beast he stares at in awe. Enver knows the feeling of becoming a pathetic ball of hunger and starvation in the most basal of ways only in a metaphorical sense, and in that way a starved child can when it comes to the physical.
He doesn't know what its like, to yearn to become oneself again, even though you once hated it in ways you couldn't admit to. To lose that purpose - that ecstasy, that fullness, the sensation of being useful to Him - is to lose herself, to lose the reason the beast is alive; and the beast is her, so where does that leave Zilan? She's simply a stomach now. Empty, no matter what she eats. Because He won't tell her what will make her finally full again.
She's spiraling, Enver pulls her out of it.
"I do hope that I one day get to fully unravel the knot that is you, my dear, but I fear I'm not quite there yet," his hand has sneaked under the robe, in between her thighs which are squished together with the way she's sat sideways on his lap, legs dangling from one side of his chair. He doesn't do anything with his hand, simply grabs at her thigh, as gentle as he could manage. "I'm merely offering what I possess to help you, you see."
"That being your body? That does say a lot about you."
"Perhaps. But I'm also offering my company," Enver tips his forehead closer to hers, faces so close together that the tips of their noses almost touch. Zilan can smell the sweet tobacco on his breath. "And, my affection."
"Oh?" that finally gets her playing along, even though she still doesn't feel the least bit of better. It still feels like there's an anvil swinging over her head, about to drop right onto her with its full, crushing weight. "You're telling me you believe your affection to be a privilege?"
"Must be so, considering only one person gets to have it, meaning you. Fits the definition darling, doesn't it?"
Zilan takes in the grin pulling at his lips, the glint in his eyes. He is honest, about his affection towards her, that much is obvious. It has nothing to do with her problem, yet it does ease the sting of uselessness to some minuscule degree.
"Well, Enver, darling," he grins wider at the pet name, rather rare coming from her for she simply likes the feel of his name in her mouth better than any pet name, "In that case, it better stay a privilege."
Enver laughs before he leans in, his kiss is all teeth and spit against her skin as his mouth meets Zilan's jaw. She savors it. The warm wetness of his mouth, the drag of his teeth against her skin, against the jaw bone just underneath the layer of flesh… Perhaps this is where Zilan belongs, even though she chases the thought away from her head before it could even make itself fully known.
"It will, I assure you of that," Enver's voice is a low drawl as his free hand travels to gently run through her hair. Her strands, so striking in color, fully down instead of her usual braids look like a waterfall of blood; seeping from an open wound, right onto his hand. When he smiles against her cheek, Zilan barely keeps herself from doing so as well. "You've taken all my devotion hostage, I fear."
"Is this a complaint I hear?"
"No, darling," he says, with a quiet laugh laced in his voice, "No. Not at all."
In a way she knows that is a lie, for what is Enver if not devoted to Bane? Yet he says it with such casually, with such easy conviction that Zilan almost believes him. He's always had a silver tongue, after all. Sometimes, often too, Zilan has the urge to cut it off, tear it clean from his mouth. Today is not one of those days. Today is one where she's glad she hasn't done it before, for she also loves that tongue and all it is capable of, in multiple areas.
Zilan watches with a keen eye when he leans forward, reaches into the bowl on the table again. A lone raspberry is stuck on his pointer finger when he leans back once again in his chair. He lifts his finger, places it right before her mouth, tipping her lips with the raspberry once.
"In all seriousness though, you needn't worry dear. He, whether I like it or not - which I don't - has much use for you. Surely you realize that this is a test? You will be fine. You can survive some withdrawals," he presses his finger onto her lips, and along with it, the raspberry. There's some softness in his eyes, and Zilan can name what it is, yet doesn't want to. "Maybe its even for the better. Now, eat- you look so pretty doing so from my hands."
The anvil dangling over her head slowly morphs into a ticking time bomb.
Its not easy living with one strapped to your chest- No, its not easy being one. Explosives are more Enver's area anyhow. All they do is confuse Zilan. Though, to be fair, all she ever did her entire life was also to confuse herself. So maybe the sudden likeness isn't recent.
Her chambers reek of rot, blood, some should-be comfort. But it does nothing to ease her mind, as Zilan goes through papers and letters and blood-stained, barely legible reports written by her cultists. The desk is a mess, dried candle wax stuck to the wood surface, papers and quills strewn about, a pouch of gold to the side. Zilan sighs, grabs a bunch of junk penned by Orin and drops them onto the concrete ground. She really ought to stop asking Orin for these, for she clearly isn't cut out for it. Nor is anyone in this gods forsaken temple, other than herself.
This is bullshit. All these reports and bulks of paper full of schizoid scribbles. This place, perhaps. Everything she's holding onto so tightly.
If Enver is right then Father ought to stop testing her soon, for it drags her into one existential crisis after another. Really, the rope is becoming so tightly wound that its bound to snap sooner or later. What happens though, when she's ready to snap, and explode, bite and claw and take; yet Father insists on not letting her?
She truly is bound to live out this life kneeling at His feet, like a hungry, howling beast. Collared so tight its choking her just short of dying.
Her stomach rumbles, not in the physical sense, but Zilan can feel it doing so as a resounding, never-ending echo inside her head. She looks down at her hands, dried blood stuck under her nails, the metallic scent of it lingering; all it does is remind her what pain this is. To take and take and take - as she always has, as is her nature; but never quite feel full. The stolen pieces don't quite slot into place and the reflection in the mirror, perhaps as it always has been in a way Zilan hadn't realized, is painfully incomplete but also mismatched, ugly, ugly to the bone.
The ragged pile of Orin's reports lay on the ground, forgotten as they ought to be. Zilan hears herself sigh but it's a faraway sound, drowned under the noise the wooden, ancient doors make as Orin herself pushes them open. She only opens them until a creak forms where she can seep in, those pale eyes of her set on Zilan from the second she steps inside; quiet as a mouse in motion, yet so awfully loud in her presence.
Zilan regards her, cool as ice, can swear she sees the brightest gleam in Orin's eyes for a moment over being perceived.
"What is it, Orin?" Zilan lowers her gaze back down to the table, to the small mountains of paper and dried candle wax. "Make it quick, I have enough of a headache as it is."
"So mean, sister," Orin seemingly isn't bothered by her rudeness, she's smiling. "I only come to talk."
"You rarely have much to say."
"I do love our talks," she giggles out her words, drags her bare feet across concrete ground. Yet she doesn't dare getting too close. "You're different though. Like someone scooped you out of yourself- Is it truly you in there still?"
She had been avoiding this talk. But, as Orin does… She simply must disturb her very high-maintenance peace.
Orin's nose inevitably ends up everywhere it doesn't belong. It's habit. Zilan thinks Orin loves the swats on the cheeks she receives each time. Getting harsher each time. Less parental, more hostile, as time goes on.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"'Course you don't sister. Bet he does."
It's funny, almost. The way everything changes yet nothing changes at all. Zilan can barely see the difference between the grown woman standing in front of her, bare feet, pale blonde hair dragging across the concrete floor; and the young, neurotic little girl, who used to hug Zilan's legs, grab at her thin limbs with bloodied hands. When she focuses on the face she can make it out. That innocence in her adoration is long gone, replaced instead by something putrid Zilan can't really name.
Perhaps doesn't want to. Trust is something terribly easy to spoil, especially one already so fragile.
"Orin. I'm in no mood-"
"When are you ever?" Orin's eyes are so pale, so white that one can't make it out, but she's rolling her eyes as she halts to a stop right next to her desk. Like this, Orin standing over her, Zilan feels smaller. With exhaustion, hunger; those bags under her eyes, guard almost down - for that is something reserved for only one person on the realm - and her braids unkempt. However, no matter how small she feels in this position, the look in Orin's eyes render it unimportant.
She always looks at her like Zilan committed the first murder, hung Selûne in the night sky herself.
"But fine," she says, a smirk pulling at her lip. Zilan looks down to see that she's stepping all over the papers she just threw down onto the ground. "I shall stop insulting the little lordling, all for your sake, sister."
"How considerate of you."
"Your manacled mind forgets easily sister, but we are your family," Zilan wonders briefly who the 'we' refers to. Orin and whom? Father? That rotten, conniving old fool, Sarevok? This cult, some whatever number of lost, blood-soaked souls under its roof Zilan never bothered to learn the names of in the last couple years? Sceleritas? "Not him. Don't let the likes of some fat, big mouthed pig like him drag you into its dirt-"
"For a pig," Zilan starts, letting herself lean back in her chair. Her back cracks and groans in complaint, "He is exceptionally bright."
Orin seethes under the surface. But Father is silent, still. Gives her no more than a barely-there chill down her spine even as Zilan sits there, internally begging Him for even a boot in the gut. Anything, Father, anything…
Zilan's mismatched eyes find Orin's. There's that petulant child again, just keeping herself from shouting, crying, kicking her feet and screaming for her attention. She doesn't like Enver, no, hates his guts actually. Zilan knows because Orin doesn't spare her from all her unstable, erratic rambling and moaning about. She doesn't like her playmate being stolen, by a pesky boy with showy toys at the sandbox, a twisted grin stuck to his face as he tells Orin "this is where the big kids play".
Orin might have a sharp tongue and all, but she's easy to soothe. Throw a few scraps her way and she's full, sated, her mind wiped blissfully clean until the next outburst. She's under control, under Zilan's palm, and it's easy to keep her there. One cold look or otherwise, an half-hearted compliment from her "sister" is always enough to calm Orin down, get her back in line. So Zilan gives her a long, lingering look, before she moves on to persuade her.
"You know, Orin, I am nothing if not Father's most loyal servant," she starts spinning the tale, watches as Orin watches her in return, "Gortash is useful. Don't you trust my lead?"
"The Banite-"
"My lead is Father's. Don't you trust His lead?"
Orin opens her mouth, gapes for a moment like a fish out of water. She only gets like this for Zilan, before Zilan. Nobody else can see right through her like this; right through the blood-soaked husk. Zilan doesn't give her a chance to babble.
"I won't ask you to put your faith in me. I do all in Father's name. Whatever it is you think you have figured out, Orin, I am at least five steps ahead of you," her voice is eerily calm, almost soft and maternal, like she's consoling a child when she adds, "Don't worry about the lordling. I won't ask you to put your faith in me, for if you haven't already I will put a dagger in your neck. That, is a heretic's share."
The tension hangs heavy in the air. It lingers; like the scent of blood on one's skin and the ghost of a loved one's touch. Like one's name upon memory. It's no threat, what Zilan said, it is the truth. She wouldn't hesitate to spill her sister's crimson, if need was to arise. She wonders, briefly, whether or not Orin's life would finally fill her up proper, satisfy Father's nameless want.
The tension hangs heavy in the air. Orin's inhale of breath, sharp, finally cuts it in two.
"It would be an honor, sister."
Words spill from Orin's lips, black upon pale skin like a bruise. And it's so loaded, with anything and everything, such a confusing bundle of feelings that Zilan can't figure it out. What she hears most clearly in Orin's voice though, is yearning.
That is the part cut out for her, in this world. Reject it as she may.
The thought of sticking a sharp, jagged dagger into Orin's neck, right into her artery, twisting it around as if digging for treasure; then moving onto Sarevok, the old, conniving pig, a right family homicide— it has the familiar red, even a singular, tiny speck of it bleeding into her mind. And her hand flexes, her mouth waters, it tingles between her legs. She almost, almost, reaches for the dagger. Like reaching for the fork to dig into a feast laid out for her, after fasting for a week or perhaps more.
But it doesn't come. And the speck disappears, like it was never there at all. A trick of light and shadow, a daydream. Trompe l'œil.
So she doesn't reach for the dagger. Leaves them both yearning; Orin smirking, herself sunk into that damned chair like her body is cast out of iron.
"Did you handle the work at Candulhallow's?"
Zilan changes the subject eventually for having both Father's ever-present gaze pinned on the back of her neck and the weight of Orin's childish judgment on her shoulders proves too much. She listens to an easily distracted Orin instead, as she boasts about a job well done, who bends over backwards to perhaps catch a single droplet of praise spill from Zilan's pursed lips. She talks of bodies maimed, blood spilled and lungs dug out of chest cavities.
Zilan's stomach churns. Even after Orin leaves, the ghost of her presence lurks inside the chambers.
Deep down in the sewers one has scarce ways of knowing but Zilan does know that the sun has set outside. Even a temple sleeps after all. Only then, after hours of sitting at her desk, head between her hands and a worm in her brain whispering to her all kinds of scenarios does she take to praying.
She was meant to meet Enver. At his townhouse, as always. They had things to discuss, they always have; matters about the Guild and the Parliament, their countless plans halfway in motion and even more of them, piled up in their minds. So much to do. So much to have. To make. To destroy, and make anew. Created to destroy, she is, yet there is so much to make and make still.
She wipes her mind clear of Enver, instead. Scrubs every crevice clean of his dirt and the visions of his grinning face, the taste of his spit.
Stripped bare before the altar, knees bruised raw, collapsed on all fours; she must look miserable. Like a cowering, pathetic creature. A lost little girl, too caught up in play that she doesn't know where she ended up. She keeps praying. Scrubbing. This is a test. The skin on her elbows and knees thins and then opens into wounds. The blood pooled on the floor, from her sacrifice in the morning, seeps into them. She keeps praying. This is a test. She scrubs, the intention isn't to hurt herself, she can't hurt willingly what He has gifted. But she must become clean again. She keeps praying. This is a test.
Father please sate my hunger. I must be yours again. What am I, if not yours?
No matter how hard she scrubs some stain of Enver remains.