Process, Part 8 (CROSSProcess) by Hildred M. Billings

Author:Hildred M. Billings [Billings, Hildred M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barachou Press
Published: 2023-04-16T23:00:00+00:00

By the time she returned to Yarensport, the afternoon was waning, and Sulim decided it best to find a hotel and a hot meal. Maybe a change of clothes. She had packed lightly, and not everything was the standard Cerilynian uniform. Yet to change into civilian clothing, which always felt strange on her skin after years of soft black fabric, meant trying to blend in with the locals. Something Sulim knew she would never achieve.

Better to be a known quantity than a stranger in their midst.

“Hey! You there!”

Sulim had lingered in the main boulevard for too long. As she attempted to walk away from the front gate leading to the Temple, a willowy woman with long black hair ran up to the fence, opening the gate and beckoning for Sulim to come to her.

“Yes! You! With the blond hair!”

Sulim hoped to the Void that this was not a job request. “Yes?”

A smile of relief appeared on the youthful visage before Sulim. Only then did she realize that the white blouse and brown trousers were indicative of a Temple employee, and the woman’s build suggested she was a julah. Or at least a hybrid. Around here? Definitely a hybrid. Full-blooded julah were not assigned to backwater Qahrainian cities.

“It’s you.” The priestess’s fingers clung to the fence as she took in the sight before her. “Sulim di’Graelic, right? You’re originally from around here.”

Sulim’s back bristled as if that were a trick question. “What do you need?”

“Could you come with me, please? I can’t tell you here.”

This was certainly not something Sulim expected on her first trip back to Yarensport in over ten years. Yet as she followed the excited priestess into the Temple, where a young Sulim had been declared “from another dimension,” she thought back on Cairn’s multiple attempts to find her father’s family.

“What’s your name?” Sulim asked the back of the woman’s dark head.

“Oh! Sorry. You don’t know me, that’s right.” They entered through one of the doors on the side of the main chapel. An office was neatly kept for the priest or priestess in attendance, although the woman went right past her desk and instead pulled an old, weathered book out of a shelf. “I’m Phelima Lerenan. Yes. Those Lerenans.”

The only reason Sulim immediately knew that name was because it was on Cairn’s short list of possible relations. All because she looks like their famous cousin.

“My predecessor was the priest when you were first brought in.” Phelima opened the book on her desk. As the spine cracked and Julah words appeared on weathered pieces of paper, Sulim studied the young priestess’s face. The golden brown skin and dark hair associated with House Lerenan were as obvious as the hints of human aging that marked this woman as a hybrid. She was older than Sulim, but they were destined to have the same lifespan. “When I took the position, he didn’t say anything. I only found these instructions a few years ago, and by then… well, this place had been sacked by, uh…”

Sulim scoffed.

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