Mara Sov + Sjur Eido Lore Snippets
Sjur Eido's fury and grief whetted themselves against Mara's thoughtless grace and ancient beauty, until at last her heart unseamed itself and spilled its hot blood in a shout. "Mara Sov!" she cried, throwing down her maltech matter laser between them. "I cannot live while you live, but I cannot bear to kill you. I challenge you to a duel to the agony. I will fight your most beloved companion to the death and leave you forever maimed or else die in the attempt." -Imponent II
Before they began, Sjur Eido tore away the sheer curtain over the gardener's nook and looked in on Mara Sov. "Are you afraid?" she whispered, half in hatred, half in admiration, all in awe. "Do you sweat? Does your breath come short?"
Mara pressed her hand to Sjur's faceplate and left no stain. She held Sjur's gauntlet to her heart so Sjur could feel her steady pulse and even breath.
She smiles as she helps her bodyguard up the ramp, Sjur indulgently pretending that she needs Mara's hand. - Imponent V
The ship's turbines keen up to speed and then settle into whisper-quiet cruise. Sjur reaches to strap herself in across from Mara. Impulsively, hard-faced, denying she needs what she is asking for, Mara scoots aside to make room on her bench. Sjur raises an eyebrow at her.
"Don't say anything," Mara warns her. "Not a word." And so they pass the flight in silence, but not alone. - Imponent V
Mara collapses the projected images between her hands. She stayed up late wrestling with this dilemma, which kept her from wrestling with Sjur.-Revanche II
"I know," Sjur says, heavily. "That's when I'm going to die."
The most horrible thing about the words is that they slap down on Mara's consciousness like face-up cards, like truth revealed. "Unacceptable!" she barks, and then both she and Sjur begin laughing, and then, at last, Mara shakes her head and growls. "You can't know that, Sjur. No one can know that."
For her part, Sjur Eido wandered about in a daze, filled with joy to be alive and grief that she no longer knew the day when she would die. "In you, all things are possible," she told Mara. "I live because of you." When Mara saw her string her mighty bow, the limbs coiled behind her leg and around her opposite arm, she was glad beyond telling that Sjur had survived. - Telic I
"Sjur," Mara said, falling to her knees, clutching her beloved's face between shaking hands, "Sjur, on the day you worship me, you cannot love me anymore, for to worship is to yield all power, and I cannot love what has no power over me." - Telic II
Mara and Sjur Eido go out into space and kick off the hull, wearing Corsair skin-pressure suits and slim tethers. The stars circle them like hard-focus candles, like the diadems of a trillion dancers. Sjur Eido pulls herself close and touches helmets with Mara.
"Having had some long experience hating you, and then having given it up, I think it would be hard for me to go back." Sjur's strong hand settles at the small of Mara's back. They twirl on upward, rotating around a point between them, their thousand-kilometer tethers slowly unfurling. "Do you want to tell me?"
Sjur Eido looks at her in expressionless silence. Sjur Eido's hands stroke the seam between Mara's skinsuit and the glassy petals of her helmet.
She leans forward and very gently kisses the inside of her helmet, where it meets Mara's: in her mind, in that place that is bound to all other Awoken, Mara feels the touch of gentle lips. - Tyrannocide III