“But why would we make that choice?” I said, ears flattening. “Why not just create an alien caste, to which only aliens can belong, and then make rules to govern how they are treated within Kherishdar?”

“That is a very good question,” Kor said, quiet. “To which I have only one answer.” I looked up at him and he replied, “ ‘We’ did not make that choice, Farren. Thirukedi did.”

I paused, taken aback. Then said, “What?”

“It’s very clear in the histories,” Kor said. “After we first met the aunera. Thirukedi told us how we were to speak of them. The decision was handed down directly from Him.”

I recognized the look on his face. He was waiting for me to pry more out of him. I was unfortunately too intent on having the answers to take him to task for it. “But?”

“But there are no copies remaining of the proclamation,” Kor said, watching me. “The histories speak of the notice, but do not record the exact wording. They mention it, that is all.”

I let the steam rising off the water distract me while I considered the implications I could understand... and the ones I could only imagine. At last, I said, “It is perilous to guess at the mind of Civilization.”

“Yes?” he said, and I did not detect the usual hint of humor that accompanied such questions.

“But it almost seems as if… He knows something about the aunera we don’t,” I said slowly. “And that, perhaps…in either case…He did not want an irrevocable decision.”

“It is perilous to guess at the mind of Civilization,” Kor said. “But the servants become like the master. We are His own… perhaps we might dare to guess, now and then, at His thoughts.”

“And this guessing is how you came to your conclusion,” I said, and paused to give voice to my exasperation. “Kor… must you really do this conversational gambit with the leading questions? Do you derive some bizarre pleasure from it?”

I startled a laugh from him; he still seemed tired, but I was proud of that laugh. Vexed at the foible, yes, but proud of the laugh.

“I am sorry, Farren,” he said when he recovered himself. “It’s hard to curb one’s habits. I am used to drawing people out during Correction, sometimes to lance a wound they cannot reach themselves, and sometimes to lead them toward the answer they need but will not accept without effort. It’s my experience that most people value more the answer they have to work for.”

I studied his face, becoming so well-known to me, and marked the fatigue in it still, and the shadows in his coronal eyes.

“You don’t have to be Shame for me,” I said at last.

“I know,” Kor said, quiet. “And I value that. I equally value that I don’t have to stop myself from being Shame for you. It’s as much a part of me as your art is a part of you, Farren. And yet, fewer people are discomfited at the exercise of your work.”

I chuckled softly. “I hope you will have less need to Correct me than I have need to paint.”

“You, need Correction? Rarely, I am guessing,” Kor said with a smile. “But I can’t change the way I react to the world.”

“Which is as a priest,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So what you’re saying,” I murmured, looking up at the ceiling with exaggerated patience, “is that I have committed to a lifetime of your practicing on me.”

He did not laugh, but his eyes were bright with it, and with the poignancy of his gratitude. “Yes.”

I like to think that my sigh would have pleased even a jaded audience. I gave it such zest that it made the surface of the water ripple. That won me another laugh, at last.

“If I promise to pose for you, would that soothe your pain?” he said.

“More than once,” I said.

“Regularly,” he promised, solemn.

“Very well,” I said. “I am appeased. I would demand my first session tonight, but regrettably I am too tired.”

“I am also,” Kor said, quieter. As he helped me from the bath, he said, “I will check on the others and then return here. And we should eat before we sleep, Farren.”

“You have an appetite?” I said, accepting the towel from him.

“Not at all. But we should try.”

We did try, though neither of us managed very well. The matter of the aunera remained with us like a lingering incense. Afterwards, when Kor took my latest painting away, I allowed it; I had become accustomed to him standing guard over the evidence of my grief. Perhaps that was a form of Correction itself: a gentle reminder that the alchemy that transforms pain into wisdom and growth does not happen on its own, that it must undergo a process and that this process has worth… and that the evidence of the process might itself trigger the same alchemy in someone else. It has taken me a great deal of time to truly accept that Kor was right to preserve my uglier works. At times, it is only by seeing the footsteps of others on the path that we know to keep walking… or that any journey is possible at all.

So, he spirited away the painting, and we prepared for bed. As I slipped under the hissing sheets—now clean of the scent of Ajan—I said, “Do you miss him?”

“Of course,” Kor said. “But we have time, Farren.”

Oh aunera. Such infamous words. Never again did I hear a similar sentiment from Shame.

“I don’t mind, you know,” I said. “Being displaced from bed for it. Any time.”

His fingers were spread on my solar plexus, and had seemed very relaxed there. He chafed the thumb against my fur, distracting me, then said, “Actually, he said he would be honored if you would be ajzelin-jzene.”

When I answered with absolute stillness, he finished, voice low, “I would be, also.”

Truly there are moments when the silence that follows words seems to echo all the way into the heart.

Among us the role of witness is sacred. Perhaps this is because in our society we truly rise and fall by our relationships with others, and so to see and speak the truth we have seen is important. Earlier in this account I mentioned how harshly we punish false witness in Kherishdar. But we also enshrine the role of those who stand outside and watch, so that it can be told how it was… indeed, some of you know the name of our most famous witness, the Exception.

It is true also, aunera, that to see truth so clearly brings with it an element of awe and fear. But if the Exception is notorious, she is also revered. Even one who stands outside society can be lauded for service, if their service is to bear witness.

To be ajzelin-jzene, touch-lover witness, meant that Ajan and Kor were willing to have me with them when they were together. It is not a usual thing, but when it is possible, when it happens… those moments are the subject of verses of poetry—both romantic and spiritual.

“You don’t have to,” Kor murmured against my shoulder. “Though if you do, we would welcome you.”

“Thank you,” I said softly, and brought his hand up so I could kiss the back.

I did not give him an answer then. I wish I had. But I am also grateful that I was not punished irrevocably for my hesitation, no matter what I would feel in the days that followed.

Some say that we are vessels, and that we must make ourselves empty in order to be filled with all that is good and worthy. That there can be no love without an attempt at perfection of self: that a cracked pot cannot hold, and that this is the reason we have loss and jealousy and fear.

But I believe that love is the vessel, and we are the thing formed by it. Love is always perfect. If there is loss and jealousy and fear, it is because we have not allowed the pot to shape us, but have in our hubris decided that we know better how to fill the empty spaces.

—Ereseya, Observations from the End of a Life