ׁ ׅ 000 / hurry up tomorrow ׅ .
.⋆♱ trigger warnings : death , grief , witchcraft, religion
.⋆♱ babylonian jewish aramaic in italics — translation
Damaris does not know the woman who appears to her in her dream.
At the same time, she knows her.
It is a strange thing. They call it raza, the secretive mystery that creates and unmakes all things ; or kishpa, when they don't understand it and fear it. It flows in the veins of countless men and women ; it binds them.
It flows in Damaris' veins, it binds her to her mother, and her mother's mother before, and then again, and again, and again, until the start of the world and beyond.
She feels it in every thing : in the river, in the warmth of the morning sun, in the blood of the bird, in the salt in the fish, in the flowers freshly cut, in the laugh of her mistress, your mother ; she feels it in you.
And she knows you can't feel it. It is locked away, as if behind a barred door. It lives in you, it made you, in a certain way, in all the ways. But you can't reach it, or use it, or even see it. And all of Damaris' incantations would not bring it to your eyes.
Of the woman in her dream, she can not see the hands. Damaris wonders from which place she comes, for her clothes, and her face itself, and her words, are all different from everything she knows, or thought she knew.
All the same, Damaris knows the woman is to be trusted. She feels like raza, and kishpa, and something else that is exclusively Damaris, her mother, and her mother's mother, and all the women who came before, and all the women who would come after.
"Man at?" Damaris asks, in her dream. She can see it all as it was, as it still is.
Aramaic spills from her tongue like honey, like an incantation, like the raza Damaris' mother used to whisper in her ear at night.
"I know no Nura," Damaris says. "I know no Yoḥanah."
The woman smiles. "You do not know me because I do not exist." Then, with humor, "Yet."
"Later," Damaris repeats, "How much later?"
Nura's smile widens. "Very much later. Centuries later."
"I will be dead in centuries."
The dream changes. They are standing over you, sleeping soundly in your wide, empty bed, your dogs sprawled on the floor beside you. Damaris reaches out, but her hand goes through you.
"You must do something for me," Nura says, wistfully. "Something you will regret."
"What is it?" Damaris asks.
Nura seems surprised. "You do not ask why?"
"'Tis not the first time a malakha asks of me something I will regret."
"I am no malakha," Nura says. "Ana min zarʿa d'beit Mariamne."
Damaris shakes her head, "Mariamne is my mother."
"Precisely," Nura says, with that same mysterious smile.
"Who are you?" Damaris asks again.
"Nura." She repeats. She tilts her head, thoughtful. "It means light."
"I know," Damaris frowns. "You bleed my blood."
"Hen," Nura says. "Now, will you do what I say?"
"Hen," Damaris echoes. "Tell me."
Hours later, when Damaris wakes, she goes to your room. You are still sleeping. It is still night. Your dogs are still unconscious on the floor. The moonlight falls in long ribbons of silver on your bronze-like skin.
You are dreaming. Damaris traces the shape of your cheek with her eyes ; then the pout of your lips, the straight line of your nose, the thick fringe of your eyebrows, the fan of your hair on your pillows.
"Peace to you," Damaris whispers, "ḥavivti. . ."
She opens her hand. In the center of her palm, she holds a small pinch of powder. It will kill you, but only for a few centuries. She made it with love. She made it for Nura, for her family's raza. She made it because it was meant to be. Or rather, it is meant to be. And it will be, because of her.
Damaris blows the powder on your lips.
In the morning, your servant comes to wake you, and finds you breathless. Damaris cries and pleads with your family, as she would have cried if you'd been killed by anything else than her. She cries because you are not really dead, but you truly are to her and to everything and everyone you ever loved, and for all the world around her that you will be lost to.
They bury you in a tomb near Babylon a few days later, where your father was born. Damaris and her mother write incantations on the sides of your coffin. They paint your name and sigils around your face replicated on the lid, and tie to it qamiʿa they made all night and all day. The amulets will protect you from decay, Mariamne says. Damaris told her everything. She could not keep it to herself. Her mother understands, because she always understands. She is wise, Mariamne. She knows all that was and all that is.
Days pass. Then, moons. Your family mourns you. They think Elaha, their god, took you away. They don't know Damaris is guilty. She can never tell them. She mourns you with them.
Damaris gets married. She has children - a boy, and a girl she calls Melaina ; dark-haired. Her daughter is taught the ways of raza and the kishpa everyone else fears. Damaris dies old, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her descendants move away, to the west, where the world is young and old both, across the great sea.
One of them lives next to a young woman who grows up to have your face. Damaris sees her from the Other Side — Tatia, so different from you, playful where you were calm like a lake. She dies, as you once did, by the hands of another.
Centuries pass, behind a veil of waves—like blue.
Eventually, Nura is born, in that new, strange world. Damaris watches over her from the Other Side.
Nura grows up away from her family, but in the ways of kishpa still. They don't call it kishpa, and they don't fear it anymore, but they keep it as secret as they used to. They write down their incantations, in books so thick they lose pages like leaves from a tree.
One day, Nura meets a sheda - a dead demon with your face - that saves her life. Her name is Aikaterinē, and it means pure, but she's the less pure creation of the world that Damaris has seen. Tatia was innocent, at least, if a little playful. You could be mean, when you wanted. But Aikaterinē is simply cruel.
Aikaterinē is jealous, vindicative, and manipulative. From the Other Side, Damaris wants to scream at Nura : "Dont' listen to her, fool! Can't you see she lies more than she breathes?" But Nura never listens.
Aikaterinē has your face, like Tatia had, but that is the only thing of you she copied. Where you were kind and nurturing, she is jealous and destructive. Where you were patient, she is restless. Where you were pleasing, she is frightful.
Nura is visited by Aikaterinē one night and the sheda asks — orders — for her help. She needs Nura's raza.
Aikaterinē and Nura dig you out, bring you back, make you anew.
It is as if you are born again. A child in a strange place.
Damaris stays and watches over you.