The Justiceers - Part Three: Chapter Four
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
by Daphne Garrido
Part Three: The Will to Choose
3.4
Miriam wasn’t doing very well.
Arthur felt it all, her most hidden and precious secrets of spirit emerging inside himself without control, having paid witness to that experience upon Omirion in whole — some divine strangeness casting him as passenger within her.
He’d seen through her eyes, felt her emotions, known what she had come to know, and he wasn’t doing so great either.
On high after time spent in remembrance of his life upon Peidirò, to soar the skies of bliss at realization of Miriam getting to experience that for herself, then having that rug ripped from beneath them both, had been a most vicious experience to their hearts.
Yet, clarifying.
For Arthur to know Peidirò was there and holding him through its strength of spirit was a blessing he’d taken for granted until then.
Miriam had just seemed lost in her grief. There was no truer thing to her heart than Omirion, no greater pleasure than to see and touch it — remembering at last that way she’d been, of which her soul had spoken such muted and beguiling tales — then having it all come back, horror to slander her joy, that trauma which was always there.
It had in itself been one of the most deeply traumatic experiences of her life.
He’d found her the next day, thinking she was meditating. Arthur intended there to give her a kiss on the head, knowing she’d needed it — to find her amidst a gaping mouth sob, silently screaming with her soul.
There was nothing it seemed she could do to shake the sorrow which had been dug up. She was trying to make jokes about having got what she asked for, so begging so to see, but there was a desert in place of her seas of humor.
Her spirit was dried up.
When he’d tried to talk about — itself a strangest happenstance — Miriam only said one thing.
“I don’t know how to make that better.”
Temeath and Omirion; their loss was a wound she’d carried always. To see what it’d been there beneath it all along, made nothing more than the highest levels of most unfortunate sense. It brought so much into focus for Miriam, more than how strongly she’d sometimes feel that victim inside, but the ways in which her heart was always seeking for what had been lost there, and why her soul was so attached to the conceptualizations and realization of justice in the universe.
It also taught her why she so reached into the beyond — that only place she’d find her soul’s celestial home.
There was one thing Arthur heard her say amongst his time within Miriam upon Omirion. It would shatter his heart to most intricate pieces when he’d catch her whispering it to herself over those next few days, hidden beneath the sobs, a secret mantra she’d clearly been trying to hide.
“I wanna go back.”
When Arthur had gone to her there, finally grasping what she’d been saying to herself, Miriam had gripped him so tightly, soaked through his shirt with her tears, and not let go until he’d eventually had to peel himself away and sit her down.
That’s all she’d been doing around him for the last days, apart from pretending to do yoga and crying, speaking those words he’d start pretending not to hear, and getting viscous towards their neighbors when they’d do their staring.
All Arthur was doing to cope had been getting himself lost in a project he’d started on The Beast.
Then she’d gone missing.
It was almost ready now at longest last — Miriam had undertaken such preparations. There had been bargains to make, deals to break, ‘procurements to be obtained’. The distraction had been most necessary, but it was more than just that.
Miriam could tell Arthur hadn’t been doing well with the whole Omirion thing.
She certainly wasn’t either.
It was as if there were a song she’d heard while there that was chosen divinely — first appearing of such beauty, before finding hidden layers emerge in tune with the horror of her realizations; haunting themes resolving to focus — and it was now stuck playing within her head and heart, that soul’s song of sorrow.
This wasn’t something she knew how to move, it was a brick of trauma she’d had for lifetimes, more than any weight Miriam had ever uncovered to bring towards alchemical healing.
She just wanted to go back.
Miriam could see Arthur had been trying his best to put on a brave face about it, and make her feel cared for, but that had been his home which was destroyed there too, his life. She was determined to find her answers.
Firstly, however, Miriam felt it important to address what had been brought forward by Arthur about his gender.
This was a less overwhelming proposition to her, finding malleability in her spiritual understating of the universe is what had gotten her here.
Her process was to know what she knew and know what she didn’t — believing what she believed, hoping what she hoped, trusting her guidance — finding that more wisdom would be shown on that path it led her down, and clearer depictions of spirit would come forward naturally.
Miriam’s answers emerged quite effortlessly.
Arthur was right — there was one light.
This reflected the truth which had come through her as he’d read those pages of her sister’s soul so stowed by that devil, the light of Arthur’s heart was the same she felt so innately able to yield in her healing endeavors.
She’d always projected ideas of gender onto that light.
Yet this didn’t make her wrong, nor him. Miriam found the truth is what lives in your heart; nothing else. She saw the creative energies of the universe in black and white, masculine and feminine, God and Goddess. That was beautiful and to be cherished, her myths her own to hold dear. The grace of a god is that to bestow tolerance and understanding for other’s perceptions of the great light.
Another blessing had come to her then.
One of the long unseen reason why Arthur had always called to her so thoroughly upon their first meeting, which had surely seemed strange and unappealing to him; how it almost felt as if she’d wanted to become him.
Miriam Halafax had forsaken masculine energies her whole life; rejected them out of hand. At least, what it was she considered that part of the universe’s creative structures to be. She’d done this because of how and where she was born, the examples of masculinity she’d had, and the way people saw her.
It was how Arthur held his own which had brought something out of her. He’d stowed within his grace all of the healthiest masculine ideals she could imagine, his presence so comforting and of most enormous strength, she’d sought them everywhere in her life before; he was her prince.
Arthur activated within her a call to embody her own earnest wholeness for the first time in her life, showing a way she might do it while still feeling the woman she was.
All of this insight had brought her to one final conclusion, perhaps, the most healing of them all. Especially in consideration of all that had been discovered upon Omirion.
Miriam was realizing she just might have a prince in her too, and he was coming out for her Arthur today.
Miriam brought Arthur from their ‘little rattrap’ to a shuttle which would see them fall off Orbit with Zeus and its ‘infestation’ of most confined dwellings. She was beaming the whole way and he’d not known how to take it in the slightest.
Even a blindfold had now become involved, causing the need for Miriam to push The Beast through what was clearly an airlock, responding in most devious nature throughout the journey upon his many questions asked.
Arthur was excited.
When the blindfold had actually come off — it had only been tears.
“I call it — The Nebberath Two,” Miriam had first told him.
There was so much to show, a whole new beautiful ship to design their home anew, a greatest time of joy for them both now ahead.
Miriam had sat on his lap upon The Beast in their new observation bubble.
She’d been building up to it an awfully long time, letting Arthur soak it in, playing with his hair as he’d looked out towards raging suns many millions of light years in the distance.
Then she’d told him, “I want to show you something.”
“How’d you do this?”
Arthur had asked it with his mouth hanging.
“I have my ways,” was all Miriam told him as she’d triggered it.
The pearlescent carbon-chrome coating was simply divine, the rise on those doors was so smooth, halogen hood lamps on the front-stripe were blasting the far wall of their new docking hangar, it might have been the sexiest thing Arthur Katrinus had ever seen.
“Is this what I think it is?”
Miriam had been pacing around it, just soaking in the view.
“You fucking bet your ass it is,” she’d asserted.
“Lithos Miranos Infinity — at your service.”
“How’d you get this?” he’d asked with no hesitation.
“I stole it.”
Miriam gleamed as she’d shown him towards the custom built, extra-wide entry doorway she had modified specially for The Beast’s smoothest entries.
Arthur noticed but was too stunned to speak.
“What the fuck,” he couldn’t help but let out when he’d seen the next treat.
Miriam had the cockpit chair — always and forever a singular and most centrally placed object in Lithos Miranos design — moved to the left of its viewing portal.
The Beast could sit next to her.
Miriam literally had to push Arthur forward into place. When she’d glanced over while sitting into the pilot’s chair beside him, his eyes had asked the question.
She’d answered, “I did some shit to it.”
The bitch had winked as she opened the docking hangar’s drop-hatch below.
With the plethora of distractions; The Nebberath II, ‘this fucking ride’, and his girl Miriam just being such a goddess-witch in her weirdest ways. Arthur was stunned; obsessed. Who was this Miriam, and what had she done with Miriam? This is the crazy bad ass he’d come to this life for. Just trying to process it all, Arthur hadn’t had time to think a moment until right then, when it finally dawned on him.
He’d said it just to make sure she knew.
“We’re in space.”
Miriam was failing miserably to suppress her widest grin.
“I know,” she’d tried to say so coolly.
Firing up the tri-com hyper manifold, charging the Mos Ikalos aftermarket fuel injectors, flipping open a panel for the afterburner triggers; Miriam put on her song.
This plummet had made Arthur feel sick at first, such an unbelievable ride, these most insane speeds he found himself moving at. It triggered those oldest urges to control so tightly, tell Miriam to slow the hell down, just wanting to reach out and take the proverbial wheel himself.
Arthur knew it though — his Miriam had him covered.
She swept the floor of Grammaton in most wild fashion, his palms so tight on The Beast’s side grips, he fucking loved it.
Miriam was heading straight for Learo.
Not the decimated statue of Oliath’s late Grand Bizarre, the sunlight.
Before he’d been able to speak, protest, tell her to slow down — she’d reached and flipped an unmarked switch now so obviously standing out amongst the rest — a darkened panel beginning to lower over the viewing portal.
Arthur could hear it happening all around the craft.
“How much shit did you do to this thing?”
Miriam hit the afterburners, neglecting to acknowledge Arthur’s question, their surging throttle flooring him. He’d not ever thought he would move this quickly.
The greatness within Arthur was surging.
She had straddled him then, and a biggest smirk emerged on his face.
He’d pressed his own secret button, The Beast’s arms to lower, a recently added feature; Arthur had done his own shit.
Miriam moaned at the sight in a way he would never forget.
She’d let her thighs enjoy that newfound space afforded, pressing her breasts into his, and just as Learo’s light began to reverberate within the structures of the hull itself, she’d kissed him like a god.
