Chapter 51.3

“So.  Severed, be it?”  Jax sighed wearily.  “That explains things.  Always had ye figured fer some minted Clan’s get.”

Lynnria had gone to stand over by the window, but her gaze had turned inward.  Not that there was much to see out there.  Just a couple of low, grassy hills sat side by side.  With some oddly-placed shrubbery right at their peaks.

“I’m surprised you’ve heard of it,” she murmured.

Jax shrugged.  “Rumors mainly.  Ain’t the sort of thing us low types get up to.  We ain’t that cruel.”

My eyebrows lifted a hair.  The hell?

“Still…”  She turned to glance at the door.  “The other one didn’t seem to recognize it.  I’m surprised.”

“She don’t come from the same stock as us.”

That seemed to puzzle Lynnria, but she soon brushed it aside.  For a long while, she stared at me, searching for something.  Whatever it was, she did not find it.

“Explain it to him,” she said finally, her voice cracking ever-so-slightly.  “I don’t think I can.”

“Better to show him, I’m thinking.”

Lynnria did not respond for a long while, but she did eventually turn toward us.  I might not have been an empath, but even I could see the emotions warring across her face.  She looked like she might fall apart from an errant breeze.

“What if he rejects me?” she asked finally, her voice thin.

Jax rebuffed the idea before I could even open my mouth.  “Too late fer that.  Yer one of us, now.”

“But I’m disgusting,” she argued.  “He’ll cast me aside.  Never touch me again.”

Jax interjected, again well before I could formulate some response, this time with a snort.  “Ain’t much chance of that.  He accepted me.”

“Um… I’m right here.  I can speak for myself.”

Jax glanced at me from the corner of her eye.  “Wait.”

“But you’re so beautiful,” Lynnria protested, ignoring us.  She seemed afraid to even look at me.  “And so confident.  I could never just walk around… bare.  Like you.”

Jax could not help but preen a little at the compliment before waving it away.  “Told ye before.  I started from one.”

Lynnria folded her arms in front of herself defensively, not wanting to acknowledge the point.  I could understand that, at least.  Even I had hard time remembering the Jax from those days.

“You were still a woman,” she muttered weakly.

“That,” Jax said with some force, “were one thing I were not.  And still ain’t.  I be Dolilim, proud.  And ne’er nothing else.”

“You look woman enough.”  I could barely even hear Lynnria’s voice anymore, it was so quiet.  “What’s the difference?”

That sounded like a deflection.  Lynnria was likely trying to steer the conversation away from her own discomfort, but I did not call her on it.  I was more than curious to see how Jax would answer, having long wondered about it myself.

Jax shrugged, unconcerned.  “Easy enough.  What do women mate with?”

“Men,” Lynnria answered immediately.  Then, after a brief hesitation, added, “Mostly.”

“Right.  I do nay mate with men.  Even mostly.  I mate with Donum.”

Lynnria shook her head in quick denial.  “You’ve mated with Arx plenty of times.  I’ve seen you!”

Jax cocked her head.  “She ain’t Donum?”

“You… only mate within the Clan?” Lynnria asked, bewildered.  “I don’t understand.  How does that make you not a woman?”

A good question.  As far as I could tell, what she was talking about was sexuality.  Not gender.

Jax sighed, having been put to task.  This was not an easy thing to define, especially for those whose statuses laid outside the norm.

“Tell me, lass.  I know y’ain’t been Dolilim long, and lesser at that.  But who’s face do ye see when ye imagine someone ‘twixt yer legs.”

Lynnria glanced at me quickly.

“Aye, that’s the way of it,” Jax agreed before she could speak.  “But now imagine someone else there.  Not me, nor Arx.  A stranger’s face.”

A sudden look of fear overcame the girl.  “No.”

Jax stepped forward.  “Go on.  Do it.”

“No!” she said again, backing away.

“Come on.  A strapping lad with wide shoulders.  Laoi.  Blond hair, mayhaps?  Tanned, like them-uns from up north.  With a great, big cock.  Throbbing away.  Ready to plunge into—”

Lynnria had begun trembling through the description, but at the last a sudden, animal-like snarl ripped out of her throat.  She crouched low with claws splayed, and her tail stood stiffly behind her, its every hair on end.

Jax pulled up short but did not otherwise react.  She simply stood over the girl, commanding and imperious.

“What do ye want to do with him?” she asked quietly.

“Kill him!” Lynnria growled.  “Rip his throat.  Drink his blood!  Take his Life for—”

She swallowed abruptly, having realized what she was saying.

“Take his Life fer Master,” Jax finished for her.

Lynnria did not reply.  She was staring at the ground, perhaps in denial of the instinct that had overcome her.  Or trying to.

I looked on impassively from one side.  I already knew how Jax felt, and I had seen the same from Arx.  So, for Lynnria to be displaying the same attitudes did not surprise me much, even if I might have wished otherwise.

Still, this did not prove much beyond that a Dolilim’s sexuality seemed to be… consistent.  Though, I had no idea what the word for it might be.

Violently polygamous, maybe?

“None of that makes you less than a woman,” I pointed out.  “Other than your own say-so.”

Jax grimaced in frustration.  Here, it seemed, words had failed her.

“What your companion is failing to explain is that ‘gender’ is not intrinsic to her being,” Mia supplied.  “You are.”

“Lilim may be flesh and blood, but they do not reproduce.  Nor are they born.  They are living constructs.  Their bodies are crafted with purpose and, almost always, with a specific target in mind.  Which is part of the reason you will never find any sort of consistent description of one within the lower world.  That your companions even have the appearance of a gender is because that is the form most capable of drawing out complex and varied emotions… from you.  Their master.”

A beat passed as I contemplated her words.  That explained… a lot.  Particularly with how they tended to behave.  The flagrant disregard to their own rights and well-being.  The contempt they held for everyone else.  How emotionally drained I had been feeling.

Man, they really are demons, aren’t they.

It was a uniquely bizarre concept.  To have your physical state be reliant on another’s preference?  And not caring?  To have that just be… how you were?

“So, you’re saying… if I hadn’t been attracted to women—”

Jax retched immediately, then shoved a knuckle to her lips.  “Ne’er say that!”

“Sorry.  I was just following the hypothetical.”

She nodded uncertainly.  “Whate’er that means.  I can nay bear the thought of ye not wanting to look on me.”

“Had that been the case, you would have still become attractive to him.  But you would not appear as you now do.  Nor would you necessarily have become male.  Attractiveness is a flexible concept.”

“Fie.  Away with ye, funt.”  She shivered with revulsion.  “I nay like this game.”

I nodded both out of sympathy and agreement.

While I could at least separate myself from my own desires enough to countenance the idea, I certainly did not want to dwell on it long.  Imagining Jax as something… other… and enjoying it?

Blech…

Still, this raised quite a few tangentially-related questions.  Like… did Faen have gender?  They were supposed to be the spirits within lilim, after all.  And as fragments of Goddesses, what did that say about them?

If they did not have a gender, why did they identify as goddesses, specifically?  Why not just call themselves gods?  That was supposed to be the neutral… at least, according to my own understanding.

But maybe I was being biased?  None of these people—or whatever—had been brought up within my culture.  They were not even human!  That they happened to default to something approximating a human female by coincidence was at least… plausible.

Though, now that I was thinking about, it was surpassing strange that any of them took remotely familiar forms.  Or even thought in human terms.  This was an alien planet!

“I think that answers the question sufficiently enough for now,” I said, turning to Lynnria.  “She is not a woman.  And I suppose that means you aren’t either.  Technically.  Unless you still want to think of yourself that way.  It isn’t my place to tell you one way or the other.”

Lynnria had fallen silent during the exchange, so I was not at all certain how she was taking it.  She had just been informed that she was becoming a species whose forms were modeled solely upon my own views of attractiveness.

Which… probably said a lot about me.  Best not to dwell on it.

In any case, it would be a lot to take in even if she had not been struggling with whatever this ‘severing’ business was about.

Lynnria finally sighed in resignation.  “I suppose you’re right.  I’m not a woman.  Haven’t been for… some time, now.  Not really.”

Her chin crinkled with building emotion, but she steadied herself.

“Maybe it would have been easier if you were attracted to men.  Maybe then,” she began to tremble, and her voice squeaked with building fear, “you wouldn’t find me so disgusting.”

With that, she lifted her shirt—just enough to see her chest.

There was… nothing.

No breasts.  No nipples.  Nor even any sign of scar tissue.  Just smooth, flat skin.

“I… don’t understand,” I said slowly.  “Did you have cancer or something?”

Lynnria had averted her eyes, terrified of the reaction she had expected would come.  But my question confused her.  “I—what?  I don’t…?”

“The Master be new to these parts.  Don’t know our… customs,” Jax supplied before turning to me.

The rest, she delivered in an emotionless monotone, as though she were ashamed to even know about it.

“She be severed, Master.  Be a ritual some of the bigger Clans get up to.  Laoi, anyways.”  She took a breath, hesitant to say the rest, but she marshaled on.  “Her chest were cut away.  Sliced clean and healed.  Then cut again.  Over and over, til even the healing would nay bring ‘em back.”

I stared at her.  Then at Lynnria.  Then back again.

It was a simple enough explanation.  But…

“Fuck,”I breathed.

Jax flinched slightly, but did not call me on the obscenity.

After all, what else could I say?  That was…

I did not even know what.  I barely had the words to describe my own reaction.  It was one of the most fucked-up things I had ever heard.

“Why?”

Jax waited for Lynnria, but she did not seem to want to speak.  Finally, she shrugged, “A punishment, be all I know.  After, ye be cast from the Clan.  Set adrift-like.”

“It’s… so that no man will touch you,” Lynnria explained weakly.  “And no children will… will come from you.  To challenge for their place.  You are severed both in body and Clan.”

“You’re saying… your grandfather?”

“No!” she denied quickly.  “H-He’s my paternal grandfather.  From a… a different Clan.  My severing was… not a punishment for anything… anything I did.  So they… they were merciful.  And adopted me.”

“You were punished by proxy?” I had not thought this little tale could get much worse, but it seemed I had been incorrect.  “Th-they cut off your—and you were a scapegoat?!”

Lynnria glanced away.

“Master.”  Jax touched my shoulder gently.  “I’m thinking ye need to worry more about what she needs to hear.  And not so much these questions.”

“What?”

I turned to Lynnria again.  She had not moved even to lower her shirt, but she had the look of a woman awaiting the headman’s ax.

“Oh, shit, Lynnria.  Did you actually think I would… reject you over this?”

Her eyes began shining and her lips pulled back over her teeth.  But not to smile.  It looked like she was trying as hard as she could not to howl with grief.  Never mind answering.

I pulled her to me quickly and held her tight.  This time, pouring every drop of comfort into her I could.  So much that she would never want to let me go.  That she would remember this moment as the safest and most reassuring place she had ever been.

“Oh, Lynnria,” I whispered into her hair.  Over and over.  Like a mantra.  “I would never.  Not for something like this.  Never.”

She fell into my arms completely then, unable to bear the weight of her own burden.  And she cried.

And cried.