The Twelfth Sun

iii♦ The Second Sun♦

"Keyon is insane", that's what they all said. Even bloody handed butchers and hard hearted thieves whispered about him on the streets as he passed. Raising his lashes to heaven when the rooster sung its screaming song, he was the only one with ichor in his veins awake at the yawn of day.

"No man of his stature rubs shoulders with ours without waiting to strike up a bargain," the bearded men riled up their debates- later handing him the pipe, throwing each other glances. "He's committed a crime," the women gossiped as he left the crowd lines slinking into the cold alleys. "His brothers must have shut him out."

It was Keyon who snaked through the roads, inching further away from the whispers. It is only by seeking out silence, he found who he was looking for.

 "Imam Riyad" Keyon wore his voice like a crown. 

With his hands behind his back and his sandals inching nonchalantly, the old holy man sat, rubbing sleep from his eyes with the fountain water dappling around his pooling ankles. Both feet in the water, waiting to be washed. The air was a hush lavender nudging his heart to his morning conversation with God. And morning was merciful, for it dragged both its feet lazily now, to bring ease in time to a man about to pray. 

He turned his white wool beard, "Huh? Keyon, is that you, my boy? I have not seen you here for many moons. Welcome, come, come, I'll make space." 

It hardened Keyon's heart to say it and he said it with such briskness that the holy man understood, "I'm here for the girl." 

"And do you not think you are here for God, aswell? How did you know she was here?" 

Keyon ignored his question, flicking his eyes around in search for her. "I do not believe in coincidences." 

"Yet all roads lead to God, especially the ones you do not aim to take. But I will not expel her, she is my guest." 

"I am king." 

"And God is King of all kings." 

He scoffed like a unruly youth though he was a man, a thick bearded, wrinkly souled man."And you wonder why I stopped coming." 

"For you do not look beyond-" 

"What my ego?" He'd heard enough about himself from his critical eyed brothers. No more, but the old man clamped his mouth shut. 

"Your pain. To be able to accept it." 

A silence. Hesitation. "Accept?" And he chuckled. "Accept what?" A cruel sneer which didnt befit his beautiful features.

"That there is someone bigger than you, and you know, the day you admit to it, it terrifies you."

 "I have not come for your holy talk. I have not come for God, I said. Where is she?" 

But the holy man is ancient and though he knows nothing about eternity, he has sensed a shift in Kabaru now that Keyon has returned to him. His favorite student. Once. "For you will have to give over the responsibility of yourself to someone else and after what you have been through, you believe it will crush you- It wont. It will free you- from yourself. Yes, yes- it is so." 

"I am king, she will come." 

"She is a girl. She follows her husband and fathers orders if that is what will keep her safe in this world, and she will forsake it, if they guide her badly, she is a girl, and between her and God, no man crosses. She is my guest. Will you not reason, my boy-"

"Do not call me boy- I should not have come-" He said it more to himself than to him. "Where is she? Girl!" 

"It will take you an eternity to heal what broke you that night if you do not forgive yourself."

And Keyon mumbled, scoffing, "You have no idea."

"Man is not invincible-"

 "But i am no man." And Keyon gritted his teeth as he beat back dust with the soles of his sandals, not taking them off as he entered God's house.

"Girl?" And Keyon's voice echoed like hundreds of him scattered around the empty praying room, toying back to him, the way it so often did in his dreams. In his darkest nightmares he always found himself answering ghosts of all that he was, all that he had been, all that he never became. 

His nothingness in the face of existence wore the mask of a monster, and staring back at him, was himself. Cruel and twisted invisible, only made real by a disoriented, chaotic mind conjuring up images from non existence. 

The hopelessness.

 The self which speaks to the self and repeats the self into the dark oblivion his own mind had become. A prison. He did not see the sun fawn her iris yellow breath across the room, he did not feel the peace of God as the silence reflected back to him, his darkness. 

"Yes?" Another voice. 

A girl 

Her 

He whipped his head up to the second story balcony, the womens section. He composed himself just enough, running a shaky hand through his ruffled oily hair. "I am here to take you." He said it simply, expecting a fight.

He expected many things. But recieved none of them. 

She vanished behind the curtain, padded barefeet slipping down the stairs, emerging in front of him, a wine red shawl around her head, downcast eyes, a hay woven bag with her sandals, the only thing she owned inside of it. 

She shrugged, blushing as he continued looking down at her with a pointed brow, inquistive. "I expected you'd come." 

"And hows that?" For the brothers had decided just last evening. No one else had been informed, how could they- No one else but them knew about the curse, this brought a strange, concetrated room of secrets only shared among them, though they loathed one another at times, the secrets was all they had still connecting them to one another. 

She lifted her fluttering lashes, her thick black brows sculpted like paint, knotting his heart in hers she said as he choked, "Induti told me." A voice, slithering and licking his ear spoke now, and it was not his own. I told her. The holy man entered as Keyon whipped his fearful eyes to meet his. The holy man shook his head, sadly as they left. If the girl said anything, he didn't hear. A reason, a name; tell Surrayah- where to find me- Peace be with you. 

They rode off to the palace as the second sun rose.