The Eye of The Storm

Epilogue

The rain continued for many days, washing away the blood from the battlefield in crimson streams. It seemed that for miles in every direction the land was bleeding from its cracks. Aella thought back to when the battle ended.

Those that had once followed Sutekh blindly stared up at the sky as though they were seeing the sun for the first time. The weapons they held dropped to the ground. Most had fled, and others had repent, declaring that they could hardly remember what Sutekh had made them do- murder women and children, raid villages, and other horrible, unspeakable things. Medea had taken those that repented, along with any of the injured, back to her fortress. Aella did not know if they deserved forgiveness or not. She did not know how to feel about anything. 

The journey back had made Aella numb. It had taken much longer than the journey to. It seemed that with each mile they traveled, they found more people wandering and seeking shelter. Medea had explained to her that Sutekh's wrath had been wide reaching. Those under his tyranny were now lost and needy. It was up to them to make it right.

The storm, of course, had died with Sutekh. Aella had cried silently in the misty rain, thinking of touching her mother's face. She dreamed every night of this meeting, her sore body leaning against her horse.

"Aella," her mother would say, and it would sound like the first time she had ever heard her name. "My daughter..."

She could feel how her bare feet would pound against the dirt as she ran towards her mother and buried her head in her arms. Her mother's had stroking her wet, greasy hair. But beyond this, the visions fell short.

It was during these times that she felt Medea's hand slowly move towards hers in the darkness of the night. And Aella found herself moving closer to her aunt too, until she was sure that they had always known each other. She sobbed into the warmth of her aunt's chest until the tears no longer came. She hardly knew why she was crying. Perhaps for Thoren, for the years lost, for those that had died helping her to fulfill her cause.

Medea's chin rested on top of her head. "There comes a time in your life, when you are met with great pain and given a choice."

She kept her eyelids clenched shut, the voice clear and strong.

"You can have this pain destroy you, or you can accept it."

"H-how," Aella sputtered, still shaking. "How do I know which one this is?"

"You don't." 

This had not been the answer she was expecting. She lifted her head to look up at her aunt.

"You don't and that can be terrifying. But you must remember who you are, and where you have come from, or else the pain will always win, because what you are will become lost in it."

After that, she still cried during the night and had nightmares were she woke up drenched in sweat, but she no longer felt fear. She accepted this as part of what was to come, and saw the people they met on the road not as burden's but as people like her. They had lost everything- their homes, those that they loved, and were beaten to the bone from lack of food and sleep. She thought that every human pain must have a single source, and as such, whenever a heart hurts, another person can always understand. 

One day they had come across a small group of women travelling through the muck. A girl was screaming and trying to drag her elderly grandmother, who has collapsed from fatigue.

The girl spoke quickly in a language that Aella had never heard before, but she did not need to know it. The girls voice was quick and angry, like a knife slicing through a cold wind.

She had taken the woman's hand in hers and using the strength she could, lifted her onto her own horse. The frail woman had fallen asleep almost immediately, and stayed asleep for many hours as Aella led the horse by the reigns, following the rest of the fleet.

She began to realize that when you are in a storm, there is no thought of the future. It was like her aunt had told her- there is just you, and the pain you are feeling. Eventually, you make this storm your home. You find comfort- solace, even, in the fate that you have been given, hardly realizing that it is always up to you to change it. It is true that each person has a destiny written for them. These are the roads that have been laid down for us to walk on, but for each person there is more than one road. It is up to us to decide which path to travel down, and our destination is always a result of the previous choices we have made. Once we view our decisions as a journey, our own life as a process, we can never truly become lost, because where we were going was not written in stone to begin with.

Aella nursed the woman back to health slowly over the coming weeks. She allowed her to ride her own horse for many more days, she fed her warm broth and covered her shivering body with blankets during the night. She taught the woman how to read the constellations, and staring at the stars she knew that she could survive anything. Perhaps she already had.