The Illuminated Maiden

Chapter IX

"Lady Liwangin," a voice called to her as she was half-asleep, while she twisted and turned in her bed. "Lady Liwangin, wake up. It is time!" But Liwangin could not open her eyes. They were closed shut, taking hold of her, and forcing her to continue her dream, the reason she was shaking. Her head whipped from left to right and back. She perspired, that sweat soaked her bed of silk.

Then, gasping, she sat up, opening her eyes wide. Her heart raced and sweat dampened her robes. She continued perspiring beads flowing through her ebony hair, dripping down her neck and her collarbone, moisturizing her olive skin that had a faint glow, and also dampening her non-existent philtrum. The sight of her chambers, with pearl-colored arches, columns, and windows wrapped in vines and flowers, soothed her.

She turned to her left outside the window, to the view of low-lying clouds below the white void, and spires piercing through the clouds. She covered and rubbed her deep-set eyes, reddening the corneas surrounding dark-brown pupils. In an instant, her corneas turned white again. Unraveling the blanket she wrapped herself in, she smiled at her bride, her chambermaid, with her thin, rose-colored lips.

"I had a bad dream again," said Liwangin in a gentle, yet imposing tone, "but I cannot remember what it was about. I apologize, Maagin. I know I was supposed to wake up early. I had forgotten that today was the meeting with the Council of Diwatas. Am I late?"

The bride, in a pearl tunic, shook her head. "I am sorry, Lady Liwangin. I thought I should wake you earlier that what was set. The meeting is still for much later, which will give you more than enough time to prepare. I was worried about you. You were thrashing in your bed. You would wake up with violent coughing, and then you would go back to sleep. I had not had much sleep myself since I learned that you were acting up again."

Liwangin sighed and placed her palm against her forehead. "I am getting worse, am I not?"

"Lady Liwangin, please do not speak of such things, especially now that the council is in dire need of your wisdom."

Liwangin chuckled. "I told you not to get involved in our own political matters, Maagin, not even the most trivial of issues. You would not want the burden I carry. Ah, why am I tarrying? Maagin, do prepare my bath and some clothes for the council, among other things. Get dressed as well, for I will need you near me."

She then bathed herself with the help of Maagin, who also helped her get dressed. Liwangin donned robes made of silk and organza, blue as the sky, with cuffs flowing down and dangling from her wrists. Maagin placed a wreath of vines and flowers on her head, matching her garments. Her bride then led her outside her room, where she escorted Liwangin through a corridor that was actually a bridge linking her chambers within the Councilhouse to the tower, where the Great Council Hall was. Overgrown vegetation covered its walls.

There were stone buttresses shooting from the low-lying clouds, supporting the bridge, aged by thousands of years, and darkened by moss. Light from the sky gleamed down on the buttresses and seeped through the windows with vines serving as frames. As she neared the doors to the Great Hall, the sight of a gold-and pearl-colored carpet that led to the doorway, featuring carvings of strangler fig trees and diwatas that circled around it, greeted her.

The Deva, who manifested himself in such tree, she thought. Nothing but legends. There were two diwata servants in white tunics bowing down as they noticed her approaching. They then pushed the doorway open, revealing to Liwangin a circular chamber with a domed ceiling. The walls, made of polished stone, had colored frescoes of diwata leaders from ten-thousand years ago, who were influential in the establishment of Araw, the city-state of the diwatas within Sriurvana, hidden from the sight of humans.