Staring down the sun, Taiaka felt squinted tears rolls down the flat steppes of his dark cheeks. Iridescent scales were sewn into the skin of his shoulders, forearms, and back; flesh voided of feeling mimicked the indifferent pout on his raw lips. Bony protrusions lifted tribal dreadlocks above his temples, bleached white like the sands his bare feet tread; they twisted into impish horns like those of a goat. Taiaka had not noticed the changes his body subconsciously chose to display; his mind was muddled by the magic of the stars that had been drawn from the parched earth. He was liable, and the scent of dead magic so close to the shrine had brought tangled madness to the shape shifter’s purpose: He watched his own sanity set with the sun.
For all intents and purposes Taiaka was nude, plotting martyred strides carelessly as long as his steps would lead him back to the city proper. He had been too ashamed to pass through the portal he painted in the desert; hind-sighted guilt had shared fettered illusions of righteousness with Taiaka’s deep rooted faith. Only after all was said and done did he truly wish to know the answers, but it was far too late. Whatever plans Taiaka’s faith had for the man were already being put into play; he could feel a harmonic hum from the center of the earth as if rain clouds of steam threatened to boil from the cracks. Taiaka thought he could figure out a way to amend his mistakes, and to repent for his sins, by tempting the wastelands to write him an undeserved eulogy. But death did not want for Taiaka’s ugly soul; it was the property of a higher purpose unfortunately.
Dark wiry hair grew from his belly and thighs, hiding his manhood, curling into terribly silky wool that traveled down the backs of both his legs. His feet had lengthened, joints hinging backwards until he walked just on his toes; awkward as if he was meant to be on all fours. Taiaka let his body adjust for survival, instinct untainted and his blood anxious to hide the form of a man from the shifting sands and the waking eye of night. He was the hallucination, everything else was real, or so it was easier to believe.
As the sun let itself become swallowed by the soft roll of far away foothills, Taiaka saw his own shadow lengthen on the hardpan. Tall and distorted, he saw the slump of his shoulders as the sudden chill of night forced sultry blasts of poised wind through his course hairs. He shivered, but not from the cold, and stopped dead in his tracks when another shadow joined the one he was creating. When he turned, no one was there. When he turned back, the other shadow, lean and feminine, was reaching out to touch his face. He saw the fingers uncurl from the shade’s palms and couldn’t help but lean towards the unexpected caress, pale eyes slowly closing. Familiar tenderness made Taiaka’s heart beat laboriously in his chest, gentle hands not his own smearing the salt from his tears away from his cheeks.
“Momma.” He spoke breathlessly, his mind filled with broken thoughts. She smelled like his memories told him she should: Of fresh cut pond lilies and the spicy curdle of smoked Hinder root. Her hands lifted her son’s head, eyes still closed; she planted a calm kiss on his chapped lips.
“It is a clear night, Akakua.” Taiaka’s mouth went dry when she used his baby name and his legs felt rubbery and weak. She floated as he feel to his knees, her hands careful as they moved to his scaly shoulders as if appraising a delicate piece of ancient pottery.
“Come child, read the stars with me.” She tried coaxing him into opening his eyes, but he just shook his head and wrapped his arms around her waist, burrowing his face in the pleats of her soft cotton kilt. She stroked her son’s dreadlocks that reminded her so much of his father’s and saw how faded the tattoos were on his black skin. She wrapped a handful of his hair in her hand and yanked Taiaka’s head back; instead of asking for his gaze, she demanded it. He opened his eyes to the frozen light from a sky full of angry stars.
“What do they tell you, child?” Her voice was placid, strong and commanding. Taiaka’s pupils dilated at the impossibility of the task, the question unfair, the answer a philosophy.
“Momma,” Taiaka’s voice was a raw squeak, but he kept his stare intent of the heavens, “I don’t know, they don’t speak to me. They don’t trust me.”
“I always know when you are lying, boy, you can hear them calling to you…Now.”
“Now?”
She nodded, though Taiaka did not see her. She was smiling too, but he feared he was dreaming and that she would vanish if he paid her any more attention. “Yes, Akakua, now. Now, that you have woken the magic of the night again.”
“I didn’t mean to…” And his eyes snapped to his mother’s. His chest tightened as if an invisible hand was squeezing the air out of his lungs, she was just as he remembered her to be. Taiaka gazed into eyes that were the same smoky aqua as his own, and her skin was dark and smooth but a shade lighter than his own; a line of midnight freckles streaked like the Milky Way across the bridge of her pert nose and she grinned sympathetically down at her son.
“Your intentions do no matter, they never did. Deny the truth if you must, but from the moment you were born, your destiny was already decided. There is no other consequence for your actions, only the guilt built from a fate out of your control.” Taiaka’s lips quivered as his mother spoke as if he was going to sob, but it was jagged pangs of rage that caused the tremble of his countenance. “So tell me child, what do the stars say tonight?” She guided his eyes back to the heavens and watched as they darted from constellation to constellation.
“They say the weather in Angband will be unusually hot and wet….And I do not believe in destiny, fate, or even coincidence, mother.”
Her laugh was noxious and it made Taiaka’s skin crawl, the hairs on the back of his neck and belly standing on end.
“Your beliefs do not matter, they never did. In your mind you are less than your enemies, and the same as your friends. You are not, in both cases. The stars have gifted you with abilities you reject. Look at you now, Akakua, you are a mixture of a thousand different beasts, and none of them the equal of the child that sprang from my womb.”
“You are dead, it’s your opinion that does not matter, mother.”
She reached back suddenly and sent a stinging slap to Taiaka’s jaw that turned his eyes from the sky. When he looked at her face, he saw only disappointment, and he grit his teeth as she ran the back of her hand over the outline of her fingers rising to a bruise on his cheek.
“Death means nothing for our kind. Of us all, it is you that should know that fact best. But you live with mortals and corrupt souls. You befriend the animals and the dead. You work for the darkness, yet you deny yourself the simple pleasures of your flesh….Why?”
Taiaka’s eyes formed narrow slivers of blue and he drew his lips back from his teeth like a stray dog about to bite the hand that feeds. “The creatures you so curtly speak of have been more of a family to me than any other. If indeed I am led by a destiny I can never change, then the animals I call brothers-“
His mother put the tips of her fingers over his mouth and shook her head to a chorus of copper and turquoise beads, “You were always wont to twist the Prophecy.”
“Screw the Prophecy!” Taiaka shouted, a string of spit dribbling down his stubbly chin, and his mother took hold of him by the horns that grew from his head. He tried to shake himself free, but her grip was otherworldly and intent on garnering rapt attentions.
“You know what the stars are screaming, my son, and I am empathetic to your hesitation. But you have no choice.” Her voice was calm yet zealot; Taiaka always remembered his mother saying to him he had no choice and that rebellion was futile. It caused him to look back up into the diamond crusted canopy of night, anywhere but her face. She was correct however. Taiaka had read the advice of the stars long before he ever took to scavenging the desert. Ignoring them had proven to be useless for his path was clearly laid out before him. The more he fought it, the more he felt as if he was betraying everything he ever stood for. The feeling of losing himself in the Prophecy made his stomach sick and when he returned his gaze to his mother’s face, he found she was of little comfort.
“You have no choice.” She repeated herself to drive her point home and Taiaka bit down on his lower lip to suckle on the metallic taste of his own blood. He nodded slightly, tearing his eyes from hers when he placed his large hand over hers and squeezed.
“And because I have no choice, I become the catalyst for atrocities. I become an instrument to the wills of men whose lives are a cosmic blink. And yet I have no choice. I become a slave to that darkness you wish for me to embrace, mother.”
“You are made from darkness, Akakua of the Empty Hand. You were not born under a bright and shiny constellation, but a patch of naked sky, made from nothingness. If you follow your path, my son, you will find a proverbial army of others who are less unwilling to embrace that darkness, and army that will mark you as their slave. Isn’t that what you always wanted?” His mother’s question caused Taiaka to pull himself from his knees and stand full and tall. She placed a hand over his heart and he looked at the sand between his clawed toes.
“No, I always wished I was born a day later and perhaps have a choice in my own demise.”
She took a deep breath and Taiaka saw her round breasts lift under the creamy garb of a high priestess.
“But out of spite and vengeance I will obey the heavens, if only for you mother, and for the memory of my father.”
Taiaka appreciated his masochistic nature just then, and smiled politely down at his mother. She beamed with purity, radiant hope and truth, and he was overcome by the beauty of the woman that stood before him. He had so many things to say to her, but his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth and he drowned his sorrows in the poignant asperity of his mother’s words. He took what she said to heart; it made him nervous, but it also filled him with a pride he was completely unaccustomed to feeling.
“I understand.” He could not stop staring at her; the tautness of his mother’s belly beneath her clingy dress, her warm hands all the while smoothing the hair down on his stomach, grating over the leathery scales of his biceps and forearms. His eyes welled up with fresh tears, but Taiaka clenched his jaw as tight as possible, abating the wellspring of emotion that threatened to derange his expression. “Momma?” He swallowed as he craned his head back to take one more long look at the stars. “Tell me of my sons?”
When he swung his attention back to his mother, she was gone; her shadow was like that of a blackbird in flight over the sandy dunes, she left him alone with his own question reverberating in his head and a growing anger in his guts slowly coming to a boil.