Heretical Fishing

Book 4: Chapter 13: Lessons

As Maria’s words started flowing, I watched the ocean’s churning waters, their unpredictable movement always a source of relaxation. My vision went unfocused as I listened to what she had to say, intent on giving her my full attention.

“I think the issue I’m having is...” Maria paused a moment to chew her lip. “Is that I don’t feel like I have a purpose.”

My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her she was wrong. To point out how important she was to the rest of her friends, family, and our animal pals. But that would just be invalidating. Instead, I considered my words carefully.

“I’m sorry you’ve been struggling with those feelings,” I eventually said. “I know the feeling, and it’s difficult to go through.”

She nodded, the stack of negativity within her trembling a little but holding firm. “Thank you. I think I’ve been feeling that way for a while, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I worried that you might take it as an insult, or be offended that I wasn’t content with the way things are...” She gave me an apologetic look. “Which I’m just now realizing is me keeping things to myself. Which is exactly what I repeatedly encouraged you not to do. Talk about hypocritical...”

“Don’t be silly,” I replied. “You’re being too rough on yourself. Humans don’t learn that way.”

“What do you mean...?”

“Do you have self-help books on Kallis? Or self-help scrolls, I suppose?”

She shrugged. “Never heard of them.”

She nodded, letting me know she was following so far.

“The point is,” I continued. “Even if you know what the objectively correct course of action is, that doesn’t mean you’ll make that choice. Use me as an example. How many times did I hide truths from myself and others before the lesson stuck? I knew it was the ‘incorrect’ thing to do after the first time, yet I kept defaulting to that behavior.”

“I guess… it still feels silly of me to fall into the trap after seeing you do it so many times.”

“Okay, I have a better analogy. Think of a child and a hot pan. If you tell a child not to touch a pan, and that it will burn them, what will they eventually do?”

She looked down at the fingers of her right hand with a melancholic smile on her lips. “They’ll touch the pan.”

“They will. Maybe they’ll think they can pick a piece of food up with their fingers fast enough to not get burned. Or maybe they’ll think the pan has cooled enough to clean. Regardless, it’s only a matter of time until they get careless. That’s just life. But after they’ve touched the pan? After they’ve experienced the blistering pain that results?”

She ran her thumb along the tips of the fingers she was looking down at. “They won’t do it again.”

“Well, chances are that they’ll do it at least once more, because again, people get careless. That’s just our nature. But each time is another reminder, each incident a more-effective deterrent than any warning their parents could give.”

She nodded, her face still thoughtful.

“Anyway, that was a lot of words to say that you shouldn’t be so self-critical. You’re human. You’re not always going to make the right choice. What matters is whether or not you learn the lesson. Take it from someone who had to make the same mistake a few times before internalizing it.”

“That does make me feel a little better, Fischer—if only because you did it way more times than I did.”

I barked a laugh. “Happy to help in any way I can. I probably should have asked this before instead of going on a tangent about children and cookware, but I guess now is better than never. What would you like from me in this conversation?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, are you looking for someone to listen to your feelings and validate them, or are you looking for solutions?”

She pursed her lips and cocked her head, her hair falling down to one side. “I think you took care of the former, so I guess I’m looking for the latter?”

“Okay. I can work with that. Have you thought of anything that was worth pursuing...?”

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“There is, yeah.” Her core resonated with that statement, encouraging her to continue. “Remember when we first found Cinnamon?”

“Of course. Gods above, that was so long ago.” I tilted my head at the expectant look on her face. “Uhhh... what am I missing?”

“You told me about vets, remember? What your world calls veterinarians...? You said it might be something I’d like pursuing?”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Oh! Right!” I rubbed the back of my head. “Sorry. I should have remembered that.”

“Well, well, well. Looks like your memory might not be so perfect after all. What would Ellis say?” Her accompanying eyebrow-waggle was downright villainous. “Maybe I should let him know.”

“Do that, and he’ll follow us everywhere we go. Just imagine the sound of his pencil scratching away at his notepad, documenting our actions everywhere we go. After all, we can’t trust our memories to be accurate...”

“Okay, please stop. I was only joking. Any more and I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

We shared a smile, and a silence stretched between us, Maria having exhausted every possible distraction from what was actually bothering her. Her core seemed to complain at her lack of progression now that we’d broached the subject, and the longer she denied it, the louder it became. Rather than add to the noise, I rested a hand on her leg and radiated a soothing aura, reminding her that I was there.

The sensations grew worse. Maria bunched her fists intermittently, and her breathing grew heavy. Finally, she let out a weary sigh that released most of her agitation. “So, my fear of offending you isn’t the only reason I haven’t spoken about it yet. There has been something... wrong about the idea of helping animals.”

She let the statement hang, and though I felt the need to ask what she meant, I waited.

“That’s not to say that I don’t want to help animals—I’d love nothing more. It’s just that if I focus on only that end, it doesn’t feel... complete? I thought I’d reached a breakthrough when I realized that I wanted to help humans too. That had to be it. It would explain why I felt so conflicted each time I saw the captured cultivators, right?” She shook her head, her light hair softly whipping the sides of her face. “Nope. It was close to the truth, though. I’d love to be able to heal humans and animals both, but it wasn’t what was making me feel so conflicted.”

Her core oozed dissatisfaction, but with each word she spoke in the right direction, the negative emotions were temporarily mollified. Like a toxic lover, her core was coercing her toward the answer, using both the carrot and the stick to get its way.

“I worried that it had something to... to do with...” Her face scrunched as she trailed off, and I could sense that she was at the precipice of the truth. A truth that was about… us? She looked just as confused, both her face and core reflecting a lack of comprehension. A line slowly formed between her eyes as her forehead bunched. With my attention entirely on her, my breath held and anticipation growing, I saw the exact moment that she realized the answer.

Horror. It dawned on her face, and her thoughts immediately raced down a warren of implications I could only guess at. Her core raged, incensed at her inability to accept the truth.

“Say it!” I demanded in what could have been a whisper or a yell.

Her eyes shot up to meet mine, and the despair held within her stunning orbs could have ripped my heart asunder. My own thoughts immediately spiraled, my traitorous mind imagining a slew of circumstances that could cause such pain.

Did she need to leave? Did she need to sever our relationship? Cut off our engagement before our lives together could even begin? What would even happen if that was the truth and she refused it? I already knew the answer to that question, and it made ice lance from my tailbone to my skull.

Such a thing wasn’t possible; it would ruin her, both physically and spiritually.

Without realizing it, I’d flooded my anguish out into the world, and it slammed into Maria with all the care of a tumbling boulder. Stricken lines formed on her face, her despair deepening as my worries amplified hers. That look of sheer hopelessness on the face of the woman I loved was the final push I needed to control myself. Fighting what was to come was akin to trying to fight a tsunami; no matter how much I raged at the unfairness, all it would do would cause me—and worse, Maria—more distress.

Rather than force my emotions away, I acknowledged them before letting them go. They were slow to pass, their echoes lingering in my core and robbing me of peace. I plastered a grin on my face and wiped a wet patch from my cheek, then gave her the most sincere look I could muster.

“You need to say it. No matter what, we’ll make it work. Please, just...” I pointed down at her abdomen, where her chi was practically boiling. “You need to voice it.”

Tears streamed down her face, but she nodded. Maria opened herself up to me, letting some of her thoughts out. It was a jumble of chaotic information, but one thing was clear: she wasn’t leaving me.

She was concerned about offending me with her words. Terrified of saying something that would hurt me. She’d hardly even considered that I’d leave; the vast majority of her worry—her biggest fear—was the pain her words would cause me. Though it was her experiencing the soul-rending agony of denying her breakthrough, she was stalling the process to reassure me.

What had I done to deserve such care...?

It made my appreciation for her flourish like a verdant forest, and a genuine smile replaced my forced one as affection for her flooded from me. The emotion was so potent that little streams of light flared from my chest in fitful bursts, illuminating Maria’s freckled skin and still-wet eyes.

“You need to say it.” I squeezed both of her hands. “I promise I’ll be okay.”

Her core agreed, humming along with my sentiment. It built swiftly, and though she didn’t speak a word, I could tell she was gathering her strength. “I want to heal, but I don’t want to—” She forced her eyes closed, her lower-lip quivering violently. “I don’t want to...” She turned her face groundward, her fair falling to cover her features. Abruptly, it shot back up, and the words tore free of her throat. “I don’t want to hurt people like you do!”

The moment Maria's words flew into the world, a wave of force exploded from her.