The Lives that Argue for Us: Šehhinah Trilogy, #3

By Ivana Skye

Teśena, a nonverbal weaver's apprentice and failed Theurgist, is still reeling from a breakup with the person ae expected to build a life with. So ae is hardly prepared for stumbling upon a cryogenically frozen Theurgist from thousands of years ago.

 

Nam'ir has a secret that not even God can know: that Gods who are not God exist. And that she is one of these hidden Gods herself. That's why she froze herself. But now that she's awoken, it turns out that her secret still needs to be kept.

 

Kjorel is a continent away from his childhood home, glad to start building a life without his ex, Teśena. The streets of Eden hold promise for him… promise such as a beautiful boy named Yenatru.

 

But Yenatru comes with friends, including the fallen angel Lucifer themself, who knew Nam'ir long ago, and soon hears news of her revival.

 

It may be that the very complexity Kjorel broke up with Teśena to avoid will follow him anyway.

 

And it may be that the secret Nam'ir keeps so desperately is exactly what Teśena needs to hear.

 

THE LIVES THAT ARGUE FOR US is the third and final book in Ivana Skye's Šehhinah trilogy, an Abrahamic fantasy series where everyone's personal life is of cosmic importance—if they aren't too distracted by essay deadlines or coffee.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivana Skye
• Release date: Dec 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215098813

Book preview

Prologue

4822 years ago

---

Don’t do this.

That’s exactly what Nam’ir expected he would say. The air too thick with humidity for her already-heavy heart, she looks at Lucifer, her only friend.

Please, he continues.

Nam’ir just shakes her head. So heavy but so light, this feeling—like she could step off all the world and leave it behind. Because she can. Kind of.

I’ll miss you, Lucifer says again, his voice so soft in that large, muscular body of his, the one with the strange, star-white face. Every person he talks to gets a different appearance, a different gender, but this one is hers.

The only face she’s actually cared about looking at for… it feels like years, but maybe it’s just months.

How long has it been, since she lost hope for this era of the world?

So cold. So light. Like she’s stepping out into a sky over nothing at all.

You have so many more years to live, he pleads again.

After which you’d miss me still, she counters. She moves her hand, wanting to fidget with something, to hold something sharp and new and get to know it. But she can’t, because she already knows this place. It’s where she was born, which means there’s nothing new left for her to hold at all.

Why the flames did she bother coming back here?

She sighs. She knows exactly why. Because it’s symbolic, to return to her beginning. But when has she ever done that before? So perhaps this was a terrible way to make the decision of where to… store herself, like dried meat over the winter that this annoying tropical landscape doesn’t even have.

Too late now, though.

It doesn’t have to be, she can almost hear Lucifer say, even though he’s right here.

Doing this, she says, hoping to shut up all Lucifers both real and imagined, means I’ll be able to spend my adulthood in a world I don’t ruin.

"You won’t ruin the world, Lucifer says as he’s said a million times. Not if I didn’t."

But the first angel to fall is nowhere near as dangerous, as incomprehensible, as she is.

The world’s not ready for me. It’s not ready for any God but God. And you know who’s least ready—

"I’m ready," Lucifer pleads. But that doesn’t matter.

"God’s not ready, that’s who. Not in the slightest! Her nails bite into her palms. Strange how her heart still races when she says this, as if she hasn’t already made peace with it. With what she’ll have to do. If They got word of what I am… if They even slightly understood… what do you think They would do?"

Lucifer’s flinching back, as if desperately trying to not imagine that very thing.

What do you think, Lucifer, who ripped Them right out of you—

I don’t know! he shouts. But maybe…

"Whatever maybe you’re going to say, Nam’ir says, each word pointed, balance it against the maybe that They’ll lash out like a monsoon does, except not from months of pressure, but from all the years that have ever passed. You know how much power They have—what would happen if They were scared, really scared? Would They try to control anything They could touch, just to keep the fear back? She quiets her voice now, softens it just like mist. Would They try to control you?"

It’s a cruel thing to say to her only friend. She knows it. The shake in Lucifer’s hands proves it.

But it would be so, so much crueler to keep on living, to ‘argue with her life’ when her life can only ever have one argument, and that argument might be the only one God cannot countenance, might be the only one They’d break everything to prevent.

Why can’t Lucifer see that?

Fine, he says, clenching his fists that haven’t quite stopped shaking. "Fine. If that’s what you—I know you’d say it’s what you want—but if that’s what you’re willing to try and push me away for—if there’s nothing in this whole, huge world that can change your mind—then fine. I’ll… I’ll let you go. He swallows, shakes his head. No, not let you go, because it was never my place to hold you to begin with. No one can. But… Nam’ir, the Theurgy, the method of this… are you sure it’ll work?"

She nods. She’s thought about it long and hard—thought about it more than she’s slept, these past weeks. Or is that months? Everything has been so long and yet so short.

Ice to hold me, she says. The thought is so easy to hold now. Ice to preserve me but also ice to record the movements of the earth, and count them, and when the ground has shook palpably six-hundred and sixty-six times—however many centuries, millennia perhaps, that will take—and when the last one has passed, ice that will let me out, as alive as I was today. Sweeps of ice, catching the light, coiling around her—she aches for it and that is why she will only allow herself to manifest in this one way, this way that will keep the world safe from her.

But you don’t even know how long that’ll take.

"Of course I don’t, just as I also don’t know if it’s even possible that God could realize slowly—that it could ever, ever be okay, really, for me to come back. Because what I do know is that I am what I am, and I always will be that which I am, and I never could be anything but the way I am, the way I always will be, which means that if I live, if I keep living now, I will end up saying it. Shouting it. Being it."

And she can feel it, just that, at the edge of her, a building up of a scream, of a glacier—she forces it in the right direction, toward her, the image of her inside it, sealed, sealed.

Lucifer’s crying, now, tears shining in the starlight just like any human’s. He made them, she knows. Made them of nothing but his self, the way she hasn’t done yet, even once. So cold, so empty to keep everything inside her. But now she’ll keep herself inside herself and it’ll be just as cold as she needs it to be. She almost smiles. She’s already so far away.

It’ll be so long, Lucifer says. So long before I can see you again. My friend.

It would be a long time for you after I died, too.

But I had so little time, to start with, by your side.

Nam’ir reaches forward, wipes at Lucifer’s tears. You’ll find someone else. You’ll live, as you have done before.

It’s a terrible cycle.

Goodbye, Lucifer. Go. I don’t think you’re going to want to see this.

But Lucifer doesn’t acquiesce, not immediately. He steps forward and grasps her, holding her close in his big arms, crying into her shoulder as she doesn’t quite allow herself to cry into his. This will be better, after all. It will be better.

Still, she takes comfort in this embrace, the final time Lucifer will hug her in this century, in this millennium, in only her ice knows how long.

1

but no longer

seven months ago

No photograph of it can be taken, only of the reflection it casts in the sea.

—Newspaper clipping describing the manifestation known as ‘The Tower’

The night and the edge of the bay; the bay and the edge of Teśena’s life. It spreads like a map and in the center of that map is a cut and it is a ship, a ship Teśena watches leave because ae never could have done otherwise.

Kjorel. Kjorel. Kjorel. The name a repetition in Teśena’s mind predictable as the waves. Now gone, the shore would say in response. The wave recedes like breathing: Kjorel. And returns: now gone, now gone.

Teśena stands on no shore but instead on a floating pathway, one of the many criss-crossed atop the bay, warp and weft to trace the water. A map like heartache. So sheltered, this bay, so different to the wide ocean Kjorel embarks on now, away from aer, away, more away than even an ocean can take him. Inland, the jungle, still tended for food, not that Teśena can be hungry when Teśena’s insides are all gone. Everything that should be inside aer, everything ae should hold. Gone. And among these boardwalks are sandbanks and on sandbanks are homes and Teśena feels no place in those either.

Alone.

There’s gaps in the clouds, the first in days, and unlike all other such gaps in the past month these will stay. Stay. Stay. Ae remembers the concept like the clench of a hand. Holding too tight. Stay. The crescent moon peeks through. Not a drop of rain falls.

The monsoon is over. The Seafarers leave, Kjorel among them.

Forever, forever, forever, in his case, he’ll come back next year but not to Teśena, surely he’ll avoid even one sight of aer face. He made that clear as the sky’s about to become.

It could have been…

It would have been different if it was different. Like they’d discussed. He was meant to leave but not like this; was meant to join his family this year while Teśena completed aer apprenticeship, then the next year they could go together, he was to leave and so Teśena wanted him, wanted a part of him, wanted aer a part inside him, ae had wished—

They were close as sky and sea and the rain howled but the room was safe and they were together. Ae pointed to aer intended words in the book ae’d worked so hard on, each word accompanied by a drawing, some by Kjorel himself: Manifest—inside—you. With—together—across—always.

And he had turned away.

Away, away, away, as if he found new degrees by which to turn, an exponential distance over the course of days.

If ae could only touch.

The way the moon touches the sea.

No ripples on that sea now for the first time in so long, bare of the thousand raindrops, bare of even one. The sea now is smooth as a sea ever could be, as if the rain never was. Even the waves beyond the bay have turned so gentle, carry you my love, but no longer is he aer love.

The ship a smear and a cut against the fading dusk of the horizon. Ae would have held him in aer soul, if he’d let aer, if he’d let aer. Even the moon lies low, dipping like a fingernail seeking to graze the ocean, its coming disappearance preordained unlike some things.

What was I? The words rise in aer as they sometimes do in thoughts but never in tongue. As temporary, unowned, caught briefly, as a firefly, but yet as true.

And like another firefly-flash words respond to words: I was love.

A flash against the sea too deep to be lit. What did I want? An answering call, so far away. To touch, only to touch.

But even that, even that, was too much for Kjorel to contain. All Teśena is, was more than he wished to hold. And so away, away, turning more degrees than a circle away, turning until he spun off the planet of Teśena’s self away.

Like an overfilling and an overflow Teśena was and would be and always will be too much. The feeling like a pressure behind the eyes, a pressure behind every inch of skin, aer hands desperate for touch, so desperate, overflowing, and oh, if only the moon could just fall into the sea and overflow that too, let all be subsumed in water and salt, but let it still glow with the light of that moon, the glow itself overflowing just as Teśena would, just as Teśena should, just as Teśena knows aer soul would glow—

But here is the problem and the answer, the tears caught behind eyelashes. Ae knows it, Kjorel made sure of it: how aer presence, aer eternal presence, aer Theurgy, could drown.

And he wished no drowning.

And so the undrowned has left away, forever and free.

And so it is aer left behind, grasping for air.

2

displaying scars

[Flames opening wide][Arrow from a center to an edge, partially cut off][Many figures standing in flames][Break shown by a literal break in the stone medium the translation is written on][Conclusion of an arrow, positioned above the globe][Many figures standing from graves][Many circles and other shapes; many differently pointing fingers][Global symbol of question][Flame-wreathed wheel of eyes and wings, lines indicating a shrugging of each of the wings][The following engravings are cut deeper][Many humans standing][Image of a baby progressing to an old woman][Two people gesturing wildly at each other]

—Verbal description of Edomite pictorial translation of the Covenant, 4780AC

In and out. In and out. The colors darting between colors, the thread on the cloth. A greater image in Teśena’s mind: the final product, the tapestry that will declare aer apprenticeship completed, declare aer a full weaver. The tapestry that will forever display on the walls of Teśena’s own shop, just like Attim’s marketplace scene decorates hers.

Each color important, each thread defined by its place next to other threads. But always Teśena must hold two focuses: the immediate weave in front of aer, and the completed image. That of the sea and the moon, but with the shine on the waves in gold and not just silver, with purple and red threads amongst the blue to give it depth.

Ae pictures it, holds it as ae has held the image for months. The pattern is already penciled, nearby, but its clarity in aer mind matters more.

Hold it, like the moon holds the sea. Like the light deep inside shows every drop.

Like ae had wanted to—

Ae breathes, deep and clear, listens to the sound of Attim at her own loom. Ae can control aer thoughts, ae can focus, ae can stay in the work that is aer life. All of aer life, now. Another breath, this time a small shake of aer head for that is not true either. There is family, walks on the beach. The fullness of what is woven. Hold, Teśena, the stolen words in aer mind whisper, and ae is holding. Ae is holding.

But sadness is like water and it too can fill. Will it ever clear, evaporate into mist? Months now but months of practice, letting the feeling exist without losing focus, without instead filling with nothing but his name.

The weave, the weft between the warp. Push it back, set the thread tight and true. Again. Again.

But a sound, a rustle, a breath in the room. Weave another line. Again—

What is my number one rule? Attim, aer mentor, leaning down to aer, eyebrow raised.

Teśena sighs and points to the embroidered sign on the wall: Set down the loom if you’re about to cry.

But ae wasn’t about to. Ae wasn’t. Ae has aerself, all aer endless feelings, under control.

The sting of saltwater down aer face.

Another sigh, and Teśena ties off aer place, sets down the loom. So Attim was right, again. But still it so seems that she shouldn’t be, that it should be different.

Hmm? Attim’s saying, but not with pressure, more with reminder. Aer emotions, the depth of them lacking the slightest sea-bottom, even if from time to time ae finds a shore. Still. Still. After all this time.

So when Teśena flips through aer book of words, the ones others use so effortlessly, the one that is correct is embarrassed. The image above it: a body hiding itself. As ae wishes to but cannot do from aer own feelings.

Oh, Teśena. There is no deadline for healing.

Ae pouts. There should be; then perhaps ae could finish aer tapestry, could find something else to fill those hollows of aer heart.

"You were together for years, and the breakup was sudden. Of course it’s going to hurt."

Ae holds up aer finger, a sign to give aer the time to respond. Ae flips through aer book, to the time section, and points at the moon-illustrated picture for month. Holds up seven fingers.

Still, it’s no surprise you’re sad sometimes. And those are not the times for detail work, trust me.

For a moment Teśena thinks to find more words, to show how the tapestry is all detail work, but Attim knows that already. And more importantly, ae is almost entirely certain the tapestry entry was drawn by Kjorel, so much of aer book was drawn by Kjorel, and oh, here’s his name in aer head, now there will be no escape, no chance of simply getting back to work today, ae would laugh about it if that weren’t guaranteed to also make aer cry, and of course ae could instead use different words, point simply to this, or just truly point with aer finger, but all of that would be in avoidance of that which is Kjorel-drawn and that would be even worse.

So ae simply sighs and doesn’t cry, doesn’t cry.

Attim seems to take that as a sign to sit down on the stool next to Teśena, and ae knows what’s coming, one of Attim’s stories to distract aer. Ae smiles, just a little.

Did I tell you about the night before last, at the bar?

Teśena shakes aer head. Of course this story would be set at the bar; Attim’s usually are. Ae remembers so clearly that conversation with aer family, the one where ae pointed to the words in aer book, alcoholic drink, alcoholic drink, alcoholic drink, three times for frequency, then bad, question. Aer favorite aunt had said: yes, it is possible your mentor is something of an alcoholic, and no, it would not be for the best to emulate her in that way. But even so, aer aunt continued, it never seemed that Attim was drinking to cover up a deep despair or anger, and didn’t get into incidents too bad from it, so while it may be a flaw, it’s hardly the worst. Sometimes people have problems, sometimes people have flaws, but that does not stop them from being a person—

Ae shouldn’t have thought to that memory, for all that now allows aer to think is: what, then, was aer flaw? What was Kjorel’s?

So the competition was well underway—Teśena? Should I try telling this one later?

Words are such fluttering things, so hard to grasp, and like mayflies they can be transparent in certain slants of light. But Teśena would rather these not get away, would rather Attim’s words than anything else ae might now catch in aer hands and mind.

So Teśena shakes aer head: do not tell it later, tell it now.

So, the competition, the darts competition. You haven’t been in bars much, right, so you haven’t seen how darts goes but—I’ve told you things before. So you won’t be surprised if I tell you it was getting contentious, like darts usually does.

Teśena lets aer amusement show, and quickly flips to the numbers section of aer book, points to the heading of numbers itself, tilting aer head in a quick question.

"Yup, it was about the scoring. I swear half the ‘new games’ people come up with are really just excuses to cheat by making up rules on the spot. It was one of those, a bunch of the regulars getting rowdy about it. I wasn’t involved this time, so I was just watching, but that’s how I noticed someone else who was watching: that guy! Teśena’s eyes shoot up. Yes, the one! The new arrival! That Fallen guy! The one who’s still into God!"

That had been one of Attim’s most exciting recent stories: the day this Iešua had shown up, proudly displaying scars across his body, scars especially where his wings were. How it hardly took an hour for Attim to first overhear how he loved God, loved God and fell, as… a challenge? To understand what it was like? As far as Teśena knows, Attim’s never gotten a clear answer out of him.

"He was watching intent as fuck, Attim continues. Maybe even literally, like, borderline voyeuristic. And that seemed way more interesting than the darts argument itself, so of course I walked up to him. Like, ’What, you’re not gonna mediate or something?’"

And he just gave me this fucking smile, like all soft in that way that’s exactly the opposite of the scars and makes me wonder if maybe I can feel hot for people after all—

Teśena puts up aer arms in an X. Stop, stop now! Ae does not need to hear about aer mentor’s sexual feelings!

"Oh, oops, anyway, what I was saying was… he seemed, like he’s seemed before, way too nice for this place. And too nice to not break up a fight. But what he said, was, ‘Why would I do that?’"

"And that’s not what I expected and someone threw something that very much was not a dart before I had a real response, but then I was like, ‘Aren’t you an ancient, immortal traveler? Isn’t that just what you do?’

"And he just gave me a look, and then said something about how—okay, look, I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like, ‘No, I’m just observing, taking notes on what it is to be human, the way that lives argue.’ And one, who says that, two, it was just a darts game!

"I told him as much, like, ‘I’m pretty sure they’re just arguing about darts,’ and he said, like this was a completely normal thing to say, ‘Sometimes the big arguments are found in strange places.’ Also, he was like, taking down notes, not in any language I recognized either, and listen, what was I going to say to that?"

Teśena has no idea. Even selecting words when grouped by subject matter and hinted at with image can be challenging; doing that by mouth, and fast the way speech is, already seems like a feat.

"So what I ended up saying was just, ‘You’re weird.’

And he said… ‘Thank you.’

Attim smiles then, looking at Teśena as if her look itself is an invitation of: do you feel better now?

And it is not quite better when the sadness touches no ocean-bottom, or perhaps it is because maybe Attim’s extended a part of shore, like a line of thread holding back the water, or at least suggesting other colors, just like the tapestry.

Ae takes a breath, holds it, lets it out the way the moon might let out a tide. Weird, thank you. Thank you, weird. And those old questions: what was aer fault? What was Kjorel’s? Again: Weird, thank you. Yes, somewhere there is a thread, a tie that shifts the ripples into interference patterns, smoothing the sea for a time, though only ever for a time, ae’s felt peace before and will feel it again but that is not enough to stop the tears even after seven months.

Do you want to take the rest of the day off? Attim suggests.

Thank you, weird. A thought, a weave. Maybe if ae thinks on this the smoothness will for once stay, the endless ocean abated; but of course this is just wishful thinking, ae has thought this before, wrong every time, but still the hope will not leave, will not leave.

Ae wants to take a long walk on the shore.

Ae nods. Yes, ae will take the rest of the day off. And ae’s so grateful to Attim, always, weird, thank you, this maybe-alcoholic master weaver who makes so much space for aer.

Even if ae has space for so much more than this.

3

the medium of conveyance

Legal Battle About Sēt Harbor Sand Dune Continues Into Third Year—

8:00am, Eden. As other harbors strain under increased traffic, sailors wonder when this crisis will end. The city council has proposed a gondola allowing for goods in ships anchored just outside the harbor to pass into the harbor, but many concerned are still not happy. Ms. Enneš Yašim, a local sailor, was quoted saying, Don’t they know about the kinda storms we get here?

—The Eden Times

The ocean ends in stages. There is the moment you can see the land, but even that is preceded by the wave patterns that tell it to you, if you know how to listen. Then as the sea shallows it begins to change color: once, twice, more if you’re passing a reef. Making out details of the land is another stage, varying on the quality of your eyesight. And then you can see the bottom—and then you’re docking on shore.

Kjorel prepares himself, trying to tell his muscles what to expect for the last stage: the part where he stands on land, a place that no longer sways. Strange how where he spent his secondary school years hardly counted as such, the walkways of Askannan being what they are, though the houses themselves were on more stable islands. Here, now, he’s been on the sea for weeks and his legs have become accustomed to that way of life. But they’ll learn.

His fifth docking, this year. His fifth docking, since his schooling ended and he rejoined his family year-round, no longer only seeing them when all Seafarers return to Askannan in the monsoon. He didn’t need to spend those four years from thirteen on as a land-dweller, but Seafarer teenagers sometimes choose to, to find out what they’re missing. Now he knows. And he has returned to the life he led as a child, the life he will lead from now on.

It’s not the most interesting of places. Just Eden, the most obvious stop for anyone who travels at all. Seafarers prefer the less-trafficked places… but not to the absolute exclusion of places like this. The meaning of a Seafarer’s life is to hold the knowledge of everywhere they have been and spread it to everywhere they go, and where better to do that spreading than major population centers? So Eden it is, now, for the third time in Kjorel’s life. He’s not the most excited, but he does have a job to do—a lifestyle, more like—and if he gets too bored, he can always wander farther inland, as long as he meets back up with his family before they leave to another shore. The shore of home, probably, to celebrate the monsoon with indoor coziness that Kjorel is honestly even less excited for than Eden.

So. Here. He is walking down to the dock. His fathers are nearby, grandmother, cousin—but he’ll be dispersing from them soon. Seafarer families spend more than enough time together onboard ship: all who are not children tend to spend their time on land as far apart from their family as they can, and even older children will often take long excursions on their own.

As for his direction… he doesn’t know. Eden is as it always is, tight cobblestone streets lined with colorful cloths denoting storefronts, decorating like murals, or just in the form of drying laundry. And laundry does dry fast here, given the climate. It’s loud, too, even more than usual at this harbor, packed tight. He’s heard something about another harbor being blocked; maybe that’ll be his first