The Justiceers - Part Two: Chapter Four
the next chapter in my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two: Wave of Mutilation
2.4
Miriam wasn’t talking to Arthur.
She’d sat at her writing table to create something for just herself tonight.
Arthur was acting in ways which reminded her of when they’d met, and even worse, all that time afterwards he’d left her floating in the void. Now, she was finding her integration with spirit to seemingly cause insecurity about his power in the relationship. Control had always been such an important factor to internal concepts of safety for Arthur.
That girl she’d been not long ago was hopeless for the man, flying to the ends of The Periphery in betrayal of self to please him. The goddess she’d become was beyond manipulation, and ready for the god in Arthur.
The unfettered spirit of this man’s soul would see Miriam’s newfound strength as a boon to his own, recognizing that a woman of such splendor, offering herself to him so holistically, in itself represented the deepest levels of respect from her spirit.
For him to treat her poorly again, ignore her like he did so long ago, it took Miriam right back. Now embodying her connection to love and the beyond, along with the god that was this man’s soul, she found herself expecting better of him, as well as for herself.
Still, she only had one Judge.
Before she’d met Arthur, and in that time they were separated long ago, Miriam played the game of pretending. Convincing herself that others might be the one.
She’d get angry at him back then, hate him for it, say terrible things to try and spur him to action, but it would feel like hating herself. Any effort made to tear him from her heart just shredded it to pieces.
He was in there whether she liked it or not.
She’d not told Arthur since she’d been back, but Miriam felt him most all the time now, he was always there inside her. His emotions would connect and flow at no control of her own. To feel what he felt, and then see him act in such discordance with it, endlessly disappointed her heart.
The old Miriam had felt this too up close, always an empath, but her self worth back then was so much lower than it should have been for a Scribe of The Justiceers.
Finding herself freed of those cruelest swirling thoughts, and traumas from childhood, which required her to write her emotions constantly, blessed her with a fortified belief in the truth of spirit. She was now beyond his power to hold her back from what she deserved. Miriam saw how she’d willing lowered herself for this man constantly in the past, and it was pissing her off.
Ever still, Arthur remained all she thought he was. A soul of pristine brilliance, fearless righteousness, born with the most rare and powerful heart existing. He was Miriam’s heaven and he always would be while she was on this plane.
Miriam had been writing to Arthur for these past days of solitude. Sending them through. She could feel him reading as she’d write.
When it hurt him, it hurt her.
She’d actually feel his pains, distinctively from her own, often without understanding what the combination of words and feelings really added up to for his gut, but enough to tell that it was incredibly heavy for both of them. To be feeling both sides of it, was often too much.
Tonight, she’d decided to write a piece solely for herself, not to think of Arthur at all, something she hadn’t done in more time than she could remember.
Yeah, that didn’t happen. Everything Miriam wrote ended up being to or about her Judge.
Writing was a flow for Miriam — she received — and tonight she was discovering tonight the truth of this was even more complicated than shexl imagined on her journey to death’s ocean.
Her words had never been just her own.
They’d often been so charged and frightening to, not things she’d ever choose to say, or would believe had come from herself. It caused her to worry of unseen darkness within. It made her feel really bad to execute the role of Scribe when such dark tidings were embedded within her words.
To finally know it hadn’t always been Miriam saying this awful shit healed her heart. A voice of spirit so very close to her heart had said it clearly.
’Stop pretending you’re mean Miriam, and this doesn’t hurt your feelings.’
She’d cried to that truth, learning sometimes that family up there was grabbing the mic and screaming right through, oftentimes, she was pretty sure it’d be Arthur’s soul itself. Now, ever more integrated, those other voices were becoming effortless to differentiate from her own, she hoped to pick them apart from each other eventually.
This knowledge helped when the words felt unnecessarily viscous and painful to her and Arthur’s hearts, it helped her trust the divinity of what they said.
Still, what she’d written for him tonight. What she sent. It had felt too dark to deliver, notions within scary for Miriam to think even about.
A most familiar voice came through then, some god she knew. He told her something that would help her hit that send button. He’d said to read the words herself and see what might happen if she didn’t.
Miriam decided she always would from now on. That if these were the words her Judge needed to hear, she’d suffer with him. She just hoped he’d really hear them too. It was more than just Miriam who would need Arthur to embody his godhood soon, it was The Periphery itself — time was running short.
Arthur wasn’t talking to Miriam.
She’d been pretending she wasn’t talking to him either, but still. wouldn’t leave him be for a second. This whole last week she’d been channeling writings and sending them even though they weren’t speaking, and it was all of the heaviest shit he’d ever read in his life.
It would swing from the sweetest love letter to his heart and soul, into some brutal reflection of himself he’d doubt seriously if Miriam had any inclination was true or not.
There were even parts which seemed like they were coming for his character. Nothing hurt worse to Arthur than the idea of this woman who saw the best in him, and loved him most intensely, might turn on him. Even if she’d say it wasn’t her, that didn’t matter to his feelings.
The worst part was his gut agreed with a lot of it. Even now, Arthur was reading a new piece she’d sent trying to make up for the last crazy thing that came through, and she was telling him how he felt about it all.
What fucking right did she have tell him how he felt?
He didn’t even know, she hadn’t given him a second to breathe between this cascade of most intense channelings imaginable. Some of the language she used was absurd.
Miriam had been trying to explain in her own writings that it wasn’t her speaking, but he had trouble understanding why she couldn’t just choose different words when they sounded so ape shit.
He couldn’t hear what his gut was saying about it all. There was still so much happening on Grammaton, so much data coming in, countless people to coordinate rescue of.
It didn’t matter to Arthur that Miriam only wanted to help and be near him. Right now, he just wanted to be alone.
This had been the first moment in weeks they’d stood in the same room.
Miriam hadn’t stopped writing and Arthur knew she never would. So he’d just let her come into the room and sit next to him while she did. It was amazing how much that fixed everything. They didn’t even have to talk, she was just humming away at the writing desk she’d dragged into the room.
They’d taken their joint office space to the next level a few ship-cycles back by integrating technologies which allowed its longest side-wall to appear as a thinnest pane of glass, sporting photo realistic depictions of highest clarity, reflecting exactly where they were in the cosmos.
Right now they were overlooking Grammaton’s most chaotic new form.
Each emergence turned spotlight was like a polka dot on the planet. They now covered it entirely. Vein-like cracks in the surface had begun to form between these bizarre heart-lights. What would be next, no one could guess.
Its what Arthur’s gut couldn’t let go of, why he’d been up so late each night.
What was going to happen here?
The corpse of Oliath was still quite visible. Its signature solar-farm still drawing the eye and making it easy to trace the way to Learo’s statue in The Grand Bizarre, which was miraculously still standing. Arthur’s gut wondered what the lower structures might which could hold it so steady in the face of all this destruction.
Miriam stopped writing and stood up, stepping closer to their viewing screen, peering out towards the planet. Arthur’s gut felt something too, just after. Being used to feel things first, it had bothered him a little. Whatever was coming, it was big. It felt like something dreadful was about to happen.
There was a cosmically bright flash — a most unknowable energetic vibration — and a mushroom cloud was growing into space from where the ruins of Oliath had been.
“This is a Hydrogen bomb.” Miriam told him plainly.
The look on her face when she’d turned had told a story to Arthur’s gut — Miriam came back knowing this would happen, and she was right. This planet was going to need him.
