except of Part 4: Confession and Acceptance of Demons of Their Heart

Reinagaurd slept as Laileah kept her eyes on the beams of light. She had been looking at them for hours. Pink, green, red, blue, all of them glimmering and shifting on the approaching coast. She would have to wake her soon, but she stayed silent for now, peering out on baited breath.

It was the coldest night it had been in months. She had never felt such a freeze on the tips of her fingers and the whole of her feet. It swallowed her. Not even the presence of the other woman’s head and chest and the sliver of exposed skin on her stomach was enough to give her an inkling of warmth. She slid her fingers on her right hand into her scalp and buried them beneath thousands of thickening threads of hair. She was still growing. She was to keep her safe, even just for this silly reason. 

It was time. “Reina,” she whispered, massaging her scalp with deepening motions. “I’ll have to fire my rifle soon. I don’t want to frighten you.”

“G’morn.”

She smiled. “You’re a little early.”

“Mmmm.” She lifted herself up and groaned a little more. “MMMM.”

Laileah shushed her. “Look, don’t you see them?”

“Them?”

“The beasts.”

Her frizzy hair and her eyes filled with broken sleep made her look so peaceful and sweet. “I don’t see anything. You’re going to shoot them?” 

She nodded. 

Reinagaurd blinked a few dozen times. “Is that them over there? Oh, God.” The dread in her voice rose like a brewing storm. “Yes, that is them. How horrible is it that such beautiful colors arouse such a feeling in me…”

She straightened her shoulders and breathed deeply into her nose, eyes closed. Laileah observed how winded her hands were into each other, how deeply she pressed them into her chest. She stayed that way for a long while. 

“I’m praying,” she said in a small voice. “I feel so weak.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stress you.”

“It’s not your place to forgive,” she said as she sealed her eyes tighter shut. Her words came out on a shaky exhale that made her whole body shutter. “I will do better.”

“Reinagaurd.”

“I have to. If I don’t do better now, I’ll die. And I’ll be leaving you here.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.”

“I never feared dying. This world had nothing for me. If we’re not together…”

“Reinagaurd. You have to be quiet now.”

“Yes, I do. Before I say something silly.”

Laileah grabbed her rifle with as much coolness she could muster, but the joy that surged through her being was undeniable, and she felt a shift in her thoughts. 

All anxiety turned to excitement; all fear turned into opportunity; all grudges and grievances turned to forgiveness. It was just for a few moments she felt this, but even so it was an undeniable and truly powerful force that edified her very core and swathed her in the coats of only the purest benevolent divine. It was a perfect blend of purpose and love and peace and clarity, and there was no other sensation that rivaled it, not even the stirring of excited, lustful flesh. This was what she was put on this earth to do. How much of a gift she felt, even just for a moment, just for a moment, long enough to fire a great distance away at each of the leering colors until they rose into milky spheres in the dark sky and dissipated. What a gift she was, what a gift she held, what a gift she loved. There would be no satisfaction in death for either of them, she thought, if they did not complete what they were tasked to do.

~Sammicakes