A Heart's Crucible

South-East winged Joq, across the snowy Alps. She coursed the Danube to the Black Sea. Then direct to the Bosporus and the fabled realm, Constantinople. Aware she quested alone. The capital of the Byzantines and her goal, The Church of the Holy Wisdom. The basilica dominated the city. Yet to the impatient Joq, a disappointment, a concrete monstrosity, noway a monument to any God.

Upon entering, draped in a grey disguising cloak, pilfered Peri-style from a bazaar, the interior stunned Joq. She experienced her first spiritual moment. The inside opened vast semi-domes rising to the central dome — a space inspiring visions of the divine. The steppe Peri felt the silk’s holy nature suspended from her neck. Joq revelled in light filling the inner shrine, so the highest dome appeared to hover. Joq saw her first angels, static as mosaics.

Her quest task focused as she held the pouch in her hand. The bag buoyed her confidence. Here she determined to find authentic tears of repentance and catch one drop in the silk. A sea of kneeling people spread everywhere on the ornate marble floor. Joq turned her ears as the church’s clergy chanted liturgy in a strange tongue and swayed charcoal-burning censers. An aromatic fragrance of frankincense wafted as Joq sought the contrite.

She noticed a young widow praying on her knees, seeking forgiveness—a long-haired lass lamenting a husband slain in battle whom she cheated on in his absence. Using a discrete flex when the lass’s eyes closed, Joq opened the pouch beneath a hunched head and awaited tears. None fell.

Joq saw a merchant shredding his rich attire. As the priest passed, he shovelled gold in his palm. She sidled, expectant, and the silk bag spread. The man implored Heaven because he bargained away his daughter for financial gain. In loud confessing words, he regretted his sin though his eyes didn’t even well. A public apology aired he hurried away.

The Peri pinned hope on a prostrate sack-clothed couple. The pair prayed Heaven’s forgiveness as they chastised one another for chasing away a wayward son. They shared a prayer, revealing their boy’s destitution, struck down with smallpox in a foreign clime. The pair tore curly hair and splashed water on their faces from a secret vial. Upon rising, they shed fake tears. Joq raised her eyes to the soaring dome.

Eyes wide, “where in heaven’s name were teardrops of sincere repentance.”

Slinging the silk pouch around her neck, Joq fled the basilica and pounded through a market. She sought solace alone in a narrow alley where she shed tears for Zel, Perdy and every Peri. She wet the silk pouch, but none held as a teardrop in the sack. Joq understood she grieved for friends mixed with the wish to live her life prior. But, she mulled, how in God’s name were their gradings of contrition?

She scrunched and creased the silvery pouch, allowing her nails to score and loosen threads of the tight purple weave. Joq lowered her head. The crafted bag seemed outwardly simple.

She questioned; If Heaven was plain, it wasn’t the place to seek!

Around the modest pouch, the embroidery of her red koylek hinted at wild freedom. Joq craved to escape the burden of a frustrating venture — to embrace life without consequence.

Screw the quest. Bugger the Cost! Damn, the forfeit.

The trough of despair won the moment or tired frustration. May-hap the sweets scents wafting from market stalls. Around the corner, hawkers buzzed with late afternoon food offerings. Joq hankered for cheese, sweetmeats, stuff dates. Her nose and feet escorted her to gastronomic heaven—treats of substance, material, believable, known and right before her eyes. With crafty furtive speed, she helped herself to delicacies. Her Peri sleight of hand produced magician-finger fast versus the stall holder’s slow eyes. She stuffed her stomach, unlike in questing days. A salty, fatty sausage dribbled on the pouch. Joq let the smear stain until the splotch resembled a spot of leprosy.

Next, she stole a skin of hardcore mead. The Kazakh gulped the alcohol as she wandered content in her stomach, but her mind pressed a quest which she ignored in the drink. In a trance, actual or a memory, Joq didn’t care; she followed memorable fragrances as her nostrils imbibed her home. She inhaled the grass plains, ripe golden wheat, leather harnesses, wildflowers, mint and simple crumbly earth. The Peri sniffed and savoured her steppe.

Joq’s nose led her into a tavern. The tables were empty. The inn’s interior loomed murkily, caught in the descending minutes as twilight approached. Dead fish, she hated dead fish. She let the mead skin hang loose in her hand, and irritable, she mulled; she hated the stench of dead fish.

Resistance caved as futile. A net entrapped her in the slowest cast. The rest transpired curt — a harsh reality. Joq pushed onto a wooden floor, left insensitive to a roughhouse drubbing. Uncivil mitts stripped her grey cloak, and a green-eyed Dev bound her in the net. A one-eyed ghoul hovered in attendance, waving a spiked mace. A demon lurked behind him in the shadows, whipping an ace of spade’s tail.

Joq whiffed the scents of the steppe again; they overpowered the fish waft. She saw a ghoul holding a blowpipe—a fiend who reminded her of home; wildflowers, sweeping grass and earth. Then, only blankness as the Dev wrapped the coat around the net.

Muffled streetscape sounds carried through the coat as Joq bounced on boney shoulders. Apart from dead fish, she detected the stench of a disused well. She yelped unappreciative as the imp dumped her and squatted atop her. Time drained meaningless to Joq. Finally, for an unknown reason, the weight on her wings and the dead fish pong disappeared, or she became desensitised.

∗ ∗ ∗

Meanwhile, back at the tavern, “Drinks all round,” said Beelzebub.

Unbalanced Soul ignored him and barred the front door. He glanced at the bar where the demon filled a mug of wine for him. He key-locked the side door used by Kashm. Maybe the imp couldn’t catch the twilight portal in time.

The prince of Hell swore as he stumbled over the pile of dead patrons and the owner slaughtered on the floor behind the bar.

“Jugs of wine, for Satan’s sake.”

His one eye roved to a complaining Gasping Wind. A rare snoot lifted his nose as he watched the preoccupied whistler rant an unhappy tune.

“Fack -the sissy perfume of wildflowers, nauseous steppe grass and greasy grainy earth.”

Unbalanced Soul admitted the demon’s plan proved cunning and successful. However, he noted Gasping Wind failed to complain as the prince insisted he smeared his body to lure the Peri.

Beelzebub plonked several jugs of wine from under the counter on the bar. Gasping Wind poured the first two pitchers over his skull — the next carafes cascading along his back—three over his earth-caked chest. He avoided wetting the black pouch containing scorpion poison.

“Any frickin more, I smell like a funeral.”

The prince of Hell pitched a demonic laugh. A cackle reminding Unbalanced Soul of the gurgling sound a cut-throat made in the throes of death.

He heard Beelzebub kick a dead body aside, searching for flagons. He saw them hoisted atop the bar. And for hell’s sake, the demon broke their seals using the point of his tail. Unbalanced Soul held his wine mug. He pretended to drink. He scrutinised Gasping Wind sluice legs, flush pits, and splash his groin. For good measure, he showered under a rain of three more pitchers. Next, he skulled mug after mug of alcohol as he complained his mouth tasted of steppe grass.

He saw Beelzebub bounce over the bar, swish his tail, slapping Gasping Wind on the chops in a stinging farewell. The whistler tried to duck his head, but drink dulled his reaction time. The old ghoul tracked the tail lashing towards his face. He eyeballed Beelzebub as the spade retreated with Slugger’s spikes protecting his cheeks. The demon soft-peddled. He kicked aside a half-full wine skin and swung open the inn door. His black tail whipped and splintered the frame.

“Damn, this tavern smells of flowers, grass and earth; let’s go,” said Gasping Wind gaining Unbalanced Soul’s attention in an unsteady loll.

He waved Slugger in agreement. The old ghoul spat into his undrunk tumbler of wine before thumping the goblet on the hardwood bench.

At the tavern door, he uncharacteristically offered, “You first.”

Gasping Wind clutched his precious ebony blowpipe and slurred, “hurts so good,” as he stepped into the night.

The prick patted his venom pouch. Unbalanced Soul watched him reel in an actual head-splitting moment — Slugger’s whack! Bits of the traitor’s skull flew up, dangled on his shoulder or caved into his brain. He tracked the conspirator’s prone fall. The dart gun rolled along the cobbled street. He let Slugger’s spikes rake across Gasping Wind’s neck, so he heard his own gurgle of death.

“Fack, earth, grass, and flowers, damn, I smell sulphur!”

These were his garbled last words.

Unbalanced Soul kicked the corpse — the dead check. He loped to locate the Dev if he waited at the well. Waving his mace playfully, he indicated Kashm could leave.

His one eye only craved to serve at the side of his Lord. And the time was here—

Mulling, he swung Slugger, a thousand hearts and two thousand wings to scoff; even his Lord faced his first-ever belly ache!

Dawn arrived like life and death. The hyena yes-man of Ahriman chucked the Peri into the portal surge. He followed, hurling himself into the crack, bound for Abandon.