20.
 As the baba fixed their bed, Ramy cleared a pewter jug and some cups from the fruit table by the window.
Ramy opened the bay windows and arched back her back with two pressuring hands while staring into the predawn of Shur.
A red moon hung like a distant lantern over the sea.
Fog swirled like milk far below on the Obayyo, the Lantern Road.
Already, birds twittered and thrashed in the highest tree crowns. Dew dripped like a steady heartbeat on a tin barrel cover out on the stone balconies.
Ramy-baba pulled a mattress from the bench box under the windows, and unrolled it on the table.
Meanwhile, Ramy prettied herself at the mirror near the window. She fluffed her cloud of orange hair, and smoothed fragrances over her glassy skin. How much she looked like a monkey human, Ramy-baba thought enviously. She wondered if there were some interspecies strain, some dark and hidden helix, entwined with Ramy’s Shurian genes.
Who knew what bred under the stars, across so much time and distance? The babas were experts on breeding—it was their function in Oba’s hot-house climate, where the dominant species were trisexual.
Ramy-baba quietly went to the other end of the long room.
Careful lest Ramy see, the baba took a velvet bundle from a secret drawer
She unrolled the bundle, exposing two special knives. Each knife had a long handle of intricately carved ivory, suitable for a woman to hold with both hands and sweep slowly sideways pushing with all the strength of one forearm.
Each blade was extremely pointed for a quick puncture, and very sharp, but wide to pressure the organs and keep them apart.
Engraved on each hilt was a poem from the Ancient Bard, in archaic language, carved in elegant Oba High Period calligraphy—a poem fit for the occasion of a double departure from life.
I must be brave for both of us now, thought the baba to herself as she prepared their bed of love and death.
She hid the two swords of duello where she would find them at the right moment.
That moment would come when Ramy, in her orgasm, would forget life itself while thrashing wildly amid cries of passion.
Despite herself, the baba knew she must sacrifice her own final throes. It was a punishment almost too terrible to bear, but she owed this to her sister.
After that, the rest would be quick, and the eternal rest blissful.
When she was done, she held the two swords in her hands. Before summoning her sister, she contemplated the order of the universe, prayed to her personal gods and baba-deities, and marveled at how the cosmos always restored order to itself, no matter what. That was the wisdom of Rabbit-in-the-Grass, innocent but powerful messenger of the gods. Children came to know him and love him, and he in turn was their guardian messenger throughout life.
Invoking an innocent nursery tale, fit for the beginning of life rather than its end, one sword said the first thing, while the other sword said the last thing, fit for life’s ending.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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