Love touches all.
Regret, contrition, absolution—these things captivated the Clerics, but not just them. Even Page, Kalender, and Jyn were clutching their chests and fighting back the tears as Minimine’s magic went uncontrolled, broadcasting her emotions all the way until Clarinets.
Page sniffled and threw herself against Kalender, who simply let her smudge her head against his shoulder, hiding whatever tears may have come out. For Jyn, who had been standing off to the side out of respect, there was no longer any need to hold back. She briskly walked to Kalender’s side, pulling a seat right up beside him and quickly sitting down, snug against his side.
Everywhere else in the temple, Clerics and Heroes held each other in all the same mutual assurance. Some had taken to bawling their hearts out, making like a choir of tears.
But the sun still shone.
***
Sherry, after bringing her groceries back to the classy inn she had been staying in, now confronted a man at a dead end. He brandished a knife, and she, a coil of rope.
Trading the usual “G-get away from me!”s and “After such an unsightly display?”s—Sherry never got a chance to show off the new knots she’d just learned for an occasion such as this. The man screamed as a puddle of shadow spread around his feet, and he sank through, leaving nothing behind.
Sherry pouted. “He was my lead.”
“He is mine,” the shadow replied. She balanced herself on a clothesline, but it wasn’t sagging, as if the clothesline wasn’t even feeling her weight. She hopped down. “What will you do about it?”
Sherry frowned. Most likely, Kalender’s party would venture first to Northwell before coming to Harmony. Although she risked the ire of her sister for doing these things in her operating area, the mission came first.
They stared each other down. They stared for a long time. Just when it looked nigh time to fight for the right of interrogating the captured agent, a wall of emotive magic passed through both of them.
Both Maid and Shadow were brought to their knees. They gasped for breath, wiping their eyes before they looked at each other. They both knew, by circumstance, exactly what sort of being could have produced this powerful a magic. This powerful … so powerful …
… What are these thoughts? Sherry looked upon Osellia. She had no idea why the girl had struck out on her own so early. She was even nice to her! Perhaps, if only she were more understanding …
Osellia looked upon Sherry. What have I done? Why did she strike out on her own? To prove that she could? The Maid in front of her didn’t leave the Inquisition’s orphanage until she was 18, and yet, look at how powerful she had become. She might not have needed to sacrifice the remaining years of her childhood, after all—and to what, become shadow?
They crawled and stood, with ropes and knives—dropped to their feet, just a step away, before they, themselves, dropped to their knees in each other’s arms.
… ensuring the displeasure of the captured agent, who was soon to face not one, but two, interrogators.
***
Everywhere across Clarinets, the same scenes of people confessing to their heart’s crimes and judging the same with mercy and love happened in their homes, streets, and most chaotic of all, any inn that served alcohol, which meant all of them.
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***
Minimine pulled away from Tak. She gasped as she realized her folly and pulled back her magic. The look in Tak’s eyes was … ascended.
“I’m … satisfied with this life…” Tak said.
Great. Now Minimine had one more thing to regret. Everyone in the temple had been affected. O-oh no, this is my fault!
“I-I’m so sorry!” she said. No one heard her small voice. Refusing to use an amplified voice for something that was supposed to be a personal apology, she set about approaching each of the Clerics, one by one, giving each of them a consolatory hug.
In a sense, her apologies did defuse the chaos—if silencing someone with the shock of being hugged by a goddess, of all things, counted as effective defusal.
One Cleric started humming, one by one joined by others, until there was a choir of Clerics, all still sprawled across the floor, singing a beautiful, haunting tune of the cycle of death and rebirth.
They were feeling reborn, alright.
As Minimine hugged the last Cleric, she turned and met eyes with Kalender, who’d remained flanked by a curled-up Page on one side, and a stiff Jyn on the other, with zero distance between them.
She started towards him. Kalender felt it weird to be the one seated, so he got up, eliciting Page’s complaint. He walked some paces, meeting with Minimine in the middle.
“I …” Minimine paused. “Am I forgiven?”
Kalender frowned. Emotional outbursts, just as happened a moment ago, didn’t quite fix things in the long term. They did, however, open someone’s heart for a time. “You still think it’s your fault?”
“The cause and effect is there.”
“But not the intent,” Kalender replied. “I’m sure you had some assumptions, right? You just have to change your assumptions and move on. There’s nothing to blame you for.”
“Is that so?” Minimine frowned. “I thought Tak would understand.”
Kalender knelt down and brought her close, comforting her with a hug. She didn’t reciprocate it, however, and her arms remained at her sides. Kalender frowned. He pulled away, a hand still resting on her shoulder.
“She does,” he said, “but she chose you over it, didn’t she?”
“She did. I don’t understand why.”
“You surprisingly don’t know a lot about how people think, huh?”
“It seems I don’t.” Despite talking to tens of thousands of them—hundreds of thousands, across millennia—she still didn’t understand. It frustrated her to no end. Breadth of data, on its own, never spoke with depth.
“Then, do you wanna learn about it?” Kalender asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Come with us.” He smiled. “I can’t show you what I mean if you don’t, y’know?”
After all of that?
“I do forgive you, you know,” he continued. “What you did was a mistake, but a mistake in hindsight, okay? That’s why it’s easy to forgive you.”
“How did you do that?”
“Huh?”
“Mortals shouldn’t be able to read divine minds…”
Kalender chuckled. “I just guessed.”
“Guessed?”
“You surprisingly think and act a lot like a human, y’know?”
“I have a human heart, after all…”
Kalender paused, eyes wide. “Is that okay for me to know?”
“… What do you mean?”
“That sounded like important information just now.” Because, well, why would they have a human heart? Goddesses were supposed to be made of different stuff.
“Do not think much of it,” Minimine replied. “But—I will agree.”
“To?”
“I will come with you.” Minimine smiled, but only while she looked at the ground.
“I’m glad to have you onboard.”
Minimine looked up to him and his smile. For a moment, she asked, Why? She’d been asking that question for a while now, hadn’t she? She didn’t know why. She didn’t even have a suspicion why. She knew too little.
Kalender watched her, with some budding affection, twitch and play with her fingers, evidently unsure of what to do nor what to think. He smirked. He couldn’t help but think that he’d just gone ahead and got another one again—he hated Jyn’s bad acting for implanting that dumb voice in his head. Of course, he liked the source of the voice, herself. Jyn was calming, somehow, and Minimine here was like a miniature version of that. Though, the goddess was an irony of maturity—speaking as if she’s seen everything, and compared to him, she might as well have, but at the same time, she didn’t know about the little things of a person’s mind.
What was a goddess? What gave them a human heart?
What’s this feeling? Minimine asked herself once more. There was a strange kind of pull, drawing her to Kalender. Why does it feel this way? Why was both the question and the answer … a hug?
She picked up Kalender’s hands, and guided them over her shoulders, as she, herself, squished her cheek against his chest, where the beating of a human heart, one she had grown well-acquainted with in just the past few hours, drummed deeply, slow and familiar.
There, between her cheek and his chest, there was little space left to ask why. For the sake of the good things that come without reason,
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”
[+1 Gratitude]