Hera - By Chrystalla Thoma Page 0,1

the water in a V line, dark wings spread wide.

“Hera, have you heard a word I’ve said so far?” Sacmis snapped.

Hera didn’t bother turning to her – she knew her friend’s eyes, gray as the sea cliffs, would be fastened on the sea ahead and her task, not hunting for a reaction.

A grin pulled Hera’s lips and she worked to school her face into blankness, just in case. “No, as a matter of fact, I have not. You mean it was something important?”

Sacmis growled. “Sobek’s balls, are you trying to be funny?” She huffed and nudged Hera with her elbow. “Something’s on your mind, huh? Spit it out, hatha.”

Would Sacmis keep the secret? Would she not feel it her sacred duty to denounce Tefnut – and Hera – to the police? Did Sacmis have her doubts about the system, like her?

Hera decided she could not take that chance, not even with a friend she’d known for so long. “Nothing’s on my mind,” she muttered.

“I’ll get it out of you, hatha, sooner or later,” Sacmis threatened, an audible smirk in her voice.

Sacmis was not hatha, not one of the Echo princesses’ line. Hera was an elite, a pure-line Gultur, carrying the original strain of Regina. Sacmis carried a newer strain with its own multiple mutations – a strategy the parasite Regina used to ensure its survival against its many foes – other parasites and viruses.

They were usually paired like that, elite with non elite. The idea was to train them to command, Hera supposed, although Sacmis had never been good at taking orders; at least not from Hera.

One of the reasons Hera liked her. She finally turned to peer at her friend. Sacmis’ eyebrows were drawn together and she scowled at the sea as if she could flatten the waves through sheer will.

So far it wasn’t working, much to Hera’s amusement.

Silence wrapped around them, punctuated by the smash of the waves against the prow and the cries of seabirds.

“Do you think blessed Nunet is looking at us right now?” Sacmis muttered.

Hera blinked, caught by surprise. “Huh?”

“Blessed Nunet of the deep. Maybe she’s just sitting there, the great Siren, whipping her silvery tail in the water, watching us. Judging us. Weighing us.”

“Stop it.” Hera snorted and looked back to the cliffs. “We did the libations, poured the oil and prayed to her. Just follow the map and avoid those reefs. We do not want to crash the wavebreaker on our first unsupervised outing.”

“Yes, hatha,” Sacmis grumbled. Her friend drove well, Hera had to admit, but the turn of the conversation raised the fine hairs on her arms. The gods, watching, judging, separating the good from the bad people, deciding on their fates.

Were the Gultur the good ones? Was Hera on the right side?

Oh shut up.

She’d never wavered about her objectives when she was younger. She would protect the Gultur from the mortals, do her duty and produce offspring, and then, when she was older, she would serve the temple and learn its secrets.

But two years back or so, it all began to bother her – the single-minded faith in the purpose of the Gultur, their supposed pre-destined authority over other races, their open dismissal of questions and contradictions, and their black-and-white perspective on gray areas in history, politics and religion. So many things made no sense. And the biggest issue of them all, one that bothered Hera so much it had become impossible to ignore, was the one concerning the mortals.

If these puny mortals were intelligent enough to almost beat the Gultur a few hundred years back, if they came so close to emerging victorious from the accursed Great War, how come they had been branded as mindless animals by the scriptures? And, worse still, how come the Gultur believed this to be true? Hera had never had immediate contact with mortals, not yet being of age, but she’d seen them from afar, laboring in their algae fields, driving aircars, bartering and counting money and talking with the guards. Surely animals could not do that – at least not the animals Hera had observed and studied so far; the cats, dogs, rats, birds and all the sea animals. They did not look so different from the Gultur, either. Less intelligent they might be, cruel perhaps, but animals without a conscience?

And now this...worm in her heart, twisting and boring deeper, echoing words from an old parchment meant for anybody and nobody, and certainly not for her.

She should not have let that damn message