Lygeia’s heart raced and her fur bristled as she stood outside of Mycroft’s, her claws extending and retracting to the pulse of her anger. She had no thoughts for where the anger came from. None for why she no longer heard the sweet music of her friends voices. ‘I will kill him! Kill him!’ The staccato rhythm of blind hate hammered at the backs of her eyes and her glance stabbed in quick succession at the furres walking by. Gambitt waved with a smile and Lygeia glared at him but she did not recognize him - did not remember the friendship they shared - and she quickly looked away. He did not wear the hated one’s face and she cared for nothing else.
Lygeia stalked away, her boots ringing on the cobblestones. But the hated one was nowhere to be found and Lygeia’s wrath twisted in her mind like a worm gnawing at a fresh leaf, bloating itself at beauty’s expense. And when there was nothing left to consume, when even the wild and imagined scenes of vengeance could not fill the void left by Lygeia’s despair, she ran. Ran to forsaken corners of Meovanni, ran to the abandoned shores beyond Allegria, and ran until she found herself shivering in the emptiness of a warehouse in Theriopolis. Blackness all around, and cold - oh, so very cold. For the first time since she had arrived, Lygeia was alone.
She felt nothing. She had nothing. Unable to delight in another’s smile and without another’s warmth to quicken her heart, she was nothing. Her rage had driven it all away.
Lygeia stared blankly at the paws in her lap. They would move when she willed them, like the distant floats would dig into the waves when she hauled in the net, attached but too remote to seem a part of her. She extended the claws of her right paw and then jabbed them into her forearm, slowly dragging them through her unfeeling flesh. The blood welled up and spilled onto the floor. ‘By my heart’s blood, I vow to be true to myself...’ she thought distantly, understanding at last the true meaning of that long ago oath. ‘Too late... I no longer have my self.’ The emptiness was complete, and Lygeia could think of only one place where her despair could find fitting company.
Lygeia pulled the silver pin from her vest and stared at the Vinca sigil with which she had sought peace... at the twisting paths of the Dreaming on which she briefly found a home. Hoping the furre who gave her the pin will forgive her, Lygeia pinched and bit the pin until it was reformed into its original shape of a simple cross. She then stuck the pin in the prow of her dory and rowed out onto the sea to embrace the siren's call. And the siren was waiting.
Lygeia hauled the dory up onto the rocks where the wrack of past dreams littered the shore. Among the debris, the figurehead of Nikor’s ship lay face down, now crusted with barnacles and seaweed rotting in the heat. Lygeia smiled grimly as she righted it. ‘A monument to love,’ she thought and made her way to the siren’s temple, stepping over the bones scattered everywhere. Just so much more flotsam.
Like Lygeia herself, the temple was empty - no seating for guests, no tapestries for warmth. Just a bare stone floor and a raised dais where the siren watched with a bemused smile. Still, Lygeia’s breath was taken away as she entered. Even in silence, the siren’s song was heard and the emptiness no longer mattered. And then the siren sang.
“Welcome home, child. I knew you would return, ready to assume my mantle, and so it was that I chose you.”
The full beauty of the siren’s voice washed through Lygeia, soaking into her like waves receding on the sand. How had she ever walked away from such beauty? Lygeia had touched the grace of a single soul before, but this! This was beyond measure - an eternity of bliss.
“And you are ready now, aren’t you? Ready to receive me. Come, child. I am the Soulsinger and you are to become me. I am your heart’s desire and you are my salvation. Come, child. Come to me.”
As she stepped into the siren’s arms, Lygeia looked into the siren’s eyes and was jolted out of her rapture. With the clarity of a vision, the words of a sage she once met came back to her: ‘Have you not ever wondered why, when you look straight through into the pupil of a furre’s eye, you see a perfect reflection of yourself? And, looking into that same eye when the furre is dead, you see nothing?’ There was no reflection in the siren’s eye. The siren wasn’t dead. No, Lygeia felt the warmth of the siren’s flesh against hers. But she had no soul! With all the thousand legions of souls she held, the siren had none of her own.
“No!” Lygeia recoiled in horror and her dagger flashed from its sheath before the thought formed in her mind. The siren reached out toward Lygeia. It was as if abomination incarnate was seizing her and Lygeia slashed at the siren’s paw. Pain erupted in Lygeia’s and she screamed in surprise and horror.
“Fool!” chimed the siren with a sneer. “Even now you do not understand. By hurting me you only hurt yourself. Did you think a name was all I gave you? Or that a name was all I took?”
Cradling her gashed paw, Lygeia shook her head, and smiled to feel the pain and the tears welling up from her heart. “No, but a name was all I wanted! A name that was my own so I could say, ‘This is me.’ I see now that didn’t need that name. Any name will do, and so I will claim yours as my own. As you freely gave that name to me, so I now freely take it in full, Lygeia Soulsinger. All that was yours is now mine, I claim it by the name which we share.”
The siren stumbled, clutching her throat as a banshee wail rent the air with explosive pain. A swirling light began to dance around the siren, increasing in brightness as the siren’s howl was drawn out. Glittering, whirling, the light grew, all the while the siren shrank. Her beauty fell away so that it was an ancient crone which briefly stood before Lygeia. Then that too fell away until it was dust which the coruscating light picked up and flung into the wind.
Lygeia was mesmerized by the light, realizing that is was the escaped souls of the siren’s song, and unable to resist, she reached out to touch them. Instantly, the light swarmed about her. Every bit of her body glowed with its warmth as the souls enveloped her... caressed and filled her being....
The ecstasy was so great that Lygeia floated near unconsciousness in a fugue of joy. It didn’t matter that all the souls cried in utter anguish or moaned with absolute loneliness. Lygeia was lost to their wondrous touch. For how long she was caught in their beauty, Lygeia could never say. Eventually they settled into her chest, though, and sank to her navel.
Lygeia knew what she had to do, but the thought of that joy kept holding her from it; and the thought raised up the song of the souls once more to call ‘Freedom... Peace.’ She wanted to keep that joy for herself. Cherish that treasure and hide it where it could always be hers like the sweet remembered pain a love never to be seen again. It was days before she steeled herself to face the loss. Then with a desperate rush in which she did not allow herself to think, she flung wide the gates of her heart and emptied her self of desires. “Fly away!” she cried. “Fly away!”
The souls soared out in a flush of exultation and Lygeia sobbed. The desolation was without end and a bitter wind nipped at her exposed heart. That was to be her fate, she realized, ever to feel those icy fingers as they probed the open wound. But only if she was strong enough. Already, the hunger was clawing at her gut.
Quietly, Lygeia climbed back into her dory and drifted with the current until the oily stench of Theriopolis’ docks reached out to her. She pulled on the oars and laughed as the sweat of her exertions dribbled down her ribs, tickling her fur.
Gambitt was there in Meovanni with a hug and news of his upcoming wedding to Donde. To Donde! Was there no end to the joy? Lygeia bit her lip, fighting the urge to steal that joy for herself and feed her hunger. Then Gambitt chuckled in pleasure as he placed his paw on Lygeia’s shoulder, his eyes smiling and open. Tears and laughter bubbled up from Lygeia’s navel with such giddy power that all she could do was shake her head, and laugh and laugh and cry. ‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘for this I will endure the hunger. For this I would gladly bare my soul.’
Many, many thanks and hugs to Dnaya who created the beautiful picture