I did not want to write tonight. I just wanted to snuggle on the couch with the dog and Nathan. But. Discipline prevails. For now.
***
She looked at me, uncertain. I felt equally uncertain, but could not let it show, so I drew a deep breath.
“We will leave it. Shedim do not survive long without their flock, and it is past time for us to return to the city.”
She nodded, and I saw a certain relaxing of tension in her posture. She had not been eager to kill it. I admit here, neither was I. It did not strike me as a creature of evil so much as simply… another beast. But one that could talk.
“Tell me, my lady,” I said as we picked our way back across the rocks. “What did you hear, when it spoke?”
“I heard its words, Ku-Aya,” she said with an arched brow. I let out a huff of impatience with myself, for my lazy wording.
“In what language, lady?”
“Judaean,” she said, puzzled. “Was that not what you heard?”
“No, my lady. I heard my mother-tongue, Babylonian. I wonder why?” Her words confirmed what I’d expected, and I did not expect an answer to my musing. But she gave one.
“They say that the God of gods uses winged messengers,” she said slowly. “Beings whose speech can be understood by any who hear them. I have always thought this is because they speak the language that the God of gods intended for all His people, before we left the Garden. Perhaps these Shedim share the language as well as the wings.”
“Perhaps,” I said, but now I believe she may be correct. It is something to delve further into, if I am ever able to return to the Council’s library. Whatever might be left of it.
We re-entered the city the way we’d left it, and soon bade one another goodnight. Or morning, as it were. But instead of retiring to my bed, I made my way to the city gates, and informed them I was running an errand for my lady. They let me out without question, and I headed back into the desert, determined to have more words with the Shedim.
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