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(Apocalypse) Rite of passage
Sep. 5th, 2011 10:23 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
akonken.livejournal.com"So, um, am I allowed to ask you about the rite of passage stuff? I mean I know it varies a bit from place to place, den parent to den parent, but is it nasty?"
If he'd lived, I might not remember his face so well.
I'd never run my hands through his curly black hair – he was prematurely balding, the widow's peak calling attention to his hypnotic pale blue eyes. Sometimes I wondered if it was soft or coarse, or what it had smelled like.
I'd never kissed his lips either, although I'd dreamt of it hundreds and thousands of times, always more perfect than my fumbling, wet, real first kiss. His mouth had brushed the back of my hand as his body slid to the ground, and that death kiss was all we would have.
It was my true rite of passage. The storytelling contest with the spirit, the puzzle I'd had to work through – they'd been difficult, there was no doubt.
But the most difficult thing – possibly the most difficult thing in the world – was punishing him for tempting me to break the first law of the Litany.
Any other way wouldn't have been a rite of passage. If they'd punished me for considering it, or yelled at us – together or separately – the lesson wouldn't have been learned.
Not lesson. Several lessons.
In the span of a few minutes, I learned:
* The reason it was against the rules, a hundred times better than if I'd merely been told.
* How to kill.
* That I could kill.
* That I would kill.
* That I would do anything for my people.
And that was it. A rite of passage in every way.
It left me changed.
How would hers change her?
If he'd lived, I might not remember his face so well.
I'd never run my hands through his curly black hair – he was prematurely balding, the widow's peak calling attention to his hypnotic pale blue eyes. Sometimes I wondered if it was soft or coarse, or what it had smelled like.
I'd never kissed his lips either, although I'd dreamt of it hundreds and thousands of times, always more perfect than my fumbling, wet, real first kiss. His mouth had brushed the back of my hand as his body slid to the ground, and that death kiss was all we would have.
It was my true rite of passage. The storytelling contest with the spirit, the puzzle I'd had to work through – they'd been difficult, there was no doubt.
But the most difficult thing – possibly the most difficult thing in the world – was punishing him for tempting me to break the first law of the Litany.
Any other way wouldn't have been a rite of passage. If they'd punished me for considering it, or yelled at us – together or separately – the lesson wouldn't have been learned.
Not lesson. Several lessons.
In the span of a few minutes, I learned:
* The reason it was against the rules, a hundred times better than if I'd merely been told.
* How to kill.
* That I could kill.
* That I would kill.
* That I would do anything for my people.
And that was it. A rite of passage in every way.
It left me changed.
How would hers change her?
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