18: The Goddess Yadira

       The sun won't talk to me anymore, and it kind of hurts my eyes to stare at it. So, I look around me. I'm standing on a beach, and there's a hill going up from it. I guess I'll start there.
       It's not long and I think I see the tops of some buildings. Maybe there are people there, and they can tell me who I am. Of course, I won't know whether or not they're lying if they do. They could tell me I'm Father Winter, and I wouldn't know. Not that I know who Father Winter is either. No idea where that came from.
      As I approach, I hear some voices. They're arguing with one another. My stomach twists in knots. I don't like this. I could be in danger and not know it.
      Thanks a lot, Mr. Sun, I think sarcastically. With a deep breath, I decide to try and trust these people. Maybe they're the ones who need me.
      The woman gasps.

      "Yadira!" she exclaims while almost covering her face with her hands. Am I ugly and that's why she did that? The two men she was talking to stop their conversation and turn to look at me. The man and woman near the house stop what looks like an argument. "Ma dieu, Yadira! What has happened to you?"
     Yadira? I watch her as she races up to me. A blond man follows closely behind her.

      I attempt to answer her question. "I... don't know." My few memories of recent events filter in. "I, um, ate the soft nothing and talked to a rock, I mean crystal, and then I drank the wet nothing."
     "You're glowing," the man says, and that makes the woman turn to him very quickly.
     "You can see it too?"
     "Of course I can. Why wouldn't I?" He looks confused. Something about him makes me feel safe. That's good.
      The woman says a bunch of things in some weird words to him. I have no idea, but it sounds funny.

      The man is disturbed by my giggling. "What's happened, Yadira? The dress, that thing in your hair, you're glowing. Literally."
      "My name is Yadira?"

      The woman looks concerned. "You... don't know your own name?"
      The blond man's face starts to fall; another man walks up with a very intense expression on his face; farther back, a red-haired man looks like he doesn't trust me. I hear the word 'demon' come out quite clearly from what he says to the other woman. She sounds like she's trying to get him to calm down. I'm not a demon, am I?
     I'm afraid of the red-haired man. "Well, it's Yadira, right?"

     She's right. This is weird. How can I not know my own name? Or well, before. I know it now. My mood sinks like a heavy rock.
     The woman sounds sympathetic. "You do not know who we are, do you?"
     My voice is almost a whine. "No." What's wrong with me? They all appear to know me. Well, I haven't decided on the red-headed man yet, but they know me. Or at least someone who looks like me. What if I'm not even me?
     I start crying, and that spurns the blond man to immediately come over and wipe my cheeks.
     "Yadira darling, don't cry. It'll be okay."
     My voice has a kind of hiccup to it. "B-but I d-don't know wh-who you a-are."

     "Shh. We'll figure this out." 

     I like his hand on my cheek, and that calms me. But the quiet argument near the house is still scary.

     The other man with the intense expression finally speaks, "I have a theory."

     The woman looks at me as she responds to him. "So do I."

     Blond man takes my hand as my eyes go back and forth between the woman and the other man. The blond man called me 'darling,' and I liked that. Does that mean we're together? Then why is the other man looking at me like that? "What are they?" I ask them.

     The other man speaks first. "I'm willin' to bet they're one in the same." He lightly nudges the woman in the arm. "She ate."

     The woman finishes for him. "And drank."

     "Are the stories true?"

     "I'd thought they were just stories. Allegories."

     "The fountain of forgetfulness."

     "It serves other purposes."

     "But that's a very noticeable side effect," he finishes.

     The entire time, the blond man doesn't say a word. He just keeps holding my hand and staring at me with a lovesick look in his eyes and something else. It's like... reverent?

     The man and woman back near the building continue to argue. The woman sounds like she's telling him off.

Orion

     Zuri gives me a knowing look. "It wears off eventually."

     "We don't know that." Stop it, Zuri. 

     I can hardly believe my eyes with what's happened to Yadira. She's gone from being the most beautiful woman I've ever seen to being so stunningly gorgeous that I'm having a hard time staying on my feet. And Rohan won't stop touching her, the very least holding her hand.

     And she doesn't even remember him!

      "So what's your theory?" she asks again since we didn't exactly answer her the first time.
      Zuri turns to me and asks if I see an aura around her, and I tell her I can. Then she turns back to Yadira. "I don't know how you did it, but you went to the realm of the gods."
      "The what?" She gives us an expression like we just told her she'd been standing in applesauce for twelve hours without knowing it.
      I decide to clarify. "Oh, it's called many things: Heaven, the Nexus, Valhalla, the Elysium Fields, Avalon, Mt. Olympus... Things like that." I pause. "You say you talked to a rock?"

      Her eyes turn directly to me, and I want to fall to my knees and beg her to remember me, remember what had happened as recently as yesterday evening.
      "It was more like a crystal that looked like it was on fire. It told me I had to use the flower to drink the water from the fountain."
      Zuri nods. "That sounds like the stories." She turns to me. "Maybe Sama has a book. Something with folk tales or ancient mythologies, which aren't as mythical as much as some say."
      Yadira holds her head for a moment. "You mean the FOUNTAIN made me lose my memories?! Then why did the rock, crystal, tell me to do it?"

      I answer, "Like Zuri said, It has other purposes."
      "It's what it gives you in return," Zuri tells her, "and right now, I can't say for certain which story about the fountain is true."
      "Then what about the thing I ate?"
      "It should've killed you."
      "Zuri!" I scold her. The last thing Yadira needs now is something to scare her.
      She looks at me, straight-faced. "Well, obviously it didn't."

      Yadira looks to be in shock, in a kind of 'I'll process this later' expression. She sways on the spot, and Rohan reaches out to catch her. He doesn't need to. She catches herself, but she's wobbly.
      "Is there somewhere I could go lie down?"
      Rohan takes her hand--again. "Of course. Come with me." The two of them go into their house, and then Rohan comes back out, walking back over to us. Vik has also joined our conversation, but Sama had to go inside to feed Zane.

     I don't take part, and I barely listen to the conversation going on around me. Zuri's talking about how she knew there was something different about Yadira. I agree, but I had no idea it was something this massive.
     She is completely and utterly out of my league. Rohan's too, but I just don't care about him right now. Zuri throws out the word 'goddess,' but I don't think it's that high. She's no ordinary human, though. Vik is worried she's possessed. Zuri laughs at him.
     All of this happens around me, but I barely hear it. I have to get away from them for now, so I mumble something about needing to go fishing.

     I'm depressed the entire day while Yadira sleeps. It's not fair. I spent all that time, I did all that work, and for what? For her to forget it all? I spend the rest of the day either fishing or just standing and staring out over the water. Before I know it, the sun has started setting.
     When I go to bed in my 'new' structure (a rebuild of what used to be Yadira's hovel), I wind up tossing and turning, unable to sleep. The moon is bright tonight, so I decide to get some air.

     Then I see her, standing alone and thinking. She's not glowing as noticeably now, but she's still stunning. There has to be something still there. I walk towards her.

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A/N: Next chapter we see Rohan's p.o.v., backing up to just after Yadira appears at the settlement. The chapter after that one picks up where this one leaves off.