The unseasonable warmth of their lawn clearing rake day gave way to the inevitability of less favourable and closer to normal November New England weather.

The day after the Cornwall concert, llhaesa and Jahrae woke to find the sky grey and dreary, clouds as if close enough to touch, with a steady and moderate rain falling.

Their morning unfolded in typical fashion, shower to breakfast to llhaesa practising, while Jahrae worked on learning about the numerous nations that she would call on over the next year.

The beautiful sound of accomplished piano playing reached through the downstairs of their home, the sound the tool of refinement for the player, the sweet and safe sound of confirming presence for the other.

Around eleven, Jahrae tired of staring at document after document, and headed for the great room where llhaesa practised, ready to tease her away from her work.

Unaware of Jahrae’s stealthily closing presence, llhaesa focused intently on her practise, only to startle when Jahrae gently placed a hand on each of llhaesa’s shoulders.

“Goddess of Arrhazon, Jahrae!” llhaesa blurted out in Arrhazonan. “You scared the shit out of me!”

Jahrae removed her hands from llhaesa’s shoulders as she jumped, allowing llhaesa to turn toward the smirking Jahrae. “I am most sorry for that ‘essa!” Jahrae offered, her smile betraying the humour circulating within.

“That smile on your face indicates otherwise, you playful sneak.”

“It’s just that you focus so totally, ‘essa; I could not resist!”

“You focused quite totally on me last night, as I recall. Should someone steal into the room and startle you as you probe the greater part of my body?”

“Serry already did that.”

“That she did! Just remember Jahrae, I shall have my turn at humour as well.”

“As Anderson said at the concert last night, ‘bring it on!’ Speaking of the concert, I was listening to the radio earlier whilst reading – and yes while listening to you as well and working. Anyway, the deejay saluted your mastery of Anderson last night, and marvelled at your talent – he said he had never seen anything like your performance.”

Llhaesa shrugged and remained silent, her point made the previous evening.

“Well, if you aren’t proud of you, I am, and not just because they are singing your praises. Your courage to stand up for what you believe was a huge lesson for Addison. Your grace in how you stood up for what you believe was a huge lesson for Addison.

I think back to the story you tell of the time you and your mum were on public transportation, how she literally stood up and defied a man trying to take your seats away. That was an important lesson for you, just as this was for Addison.”

Llhaesa’s mind flashed back to that moment over thirty years before, the memory vivid to this day. “I agree with you in that regard. In all honesty, Jahrae, you know I have pride in my work, in my performance, and that I have confidence that I can meet a challenge like last night and emerge favourably judged. I do not mean to dismiss your observations.

I guess doing and talking about such matters are different things for me.

Is this why you snuck up on me, to share what you heard on the radio with me?”

“No, I came in to ask you if you wished to go for a walk.”

Llhaesa glanced toward the twin three-metre tall, colonial, round-topped windows that dominated the front of the great room, windows that revealed continuous rows of drippings cascading off the roof and falling past the windows to the ground.

“Perhaps the sun eludes my field of vision, or I look out the wrong windows? If I turn toward the back, will I see bright sun and blue sky?” llhaesa teased.

“You well know I love to walk about in the rain.”

“Am I required to concede that I know this, or can I feign learning of your idiosyncrasy for the first time?”

Jahrae used this moment to set upon llhaesa’s lap, a move that llhaesa welcomed. Wrapping her arms around Jahrae’s waist as she talked, llhaesa outlined what she knew as truth. “Very well, my love, we shall take to the streets of Henna, allow our clothing to sop up as much moisture as they can possibly hold short of jumping into the pond, and come back to lazily sit by the fire, engrossed in our book de jour.

Shall I start the fire now so that it will be warm when we return?”

“I will see to the fire this time, llhaesa, but you know me too well. What you fail to concede is that you love rain almost as much as me.”

Llhaesa smiled and nuzzled her face against that of Jahrae, loving the arousing subtle scent of her partner’s skin. “Shall we brave the rain?”

Within minutes, after Jahrae started a fire in the floor to ceiling fireplace, and each donned light, hip-length coats and hiking boots perfect for raw weather, the couple set out on their walk, striding down the hill, towards the connecting streets of their neighbourhood.

Along for the walk was Pegasus, dutifully keeping pace just slightly ahead of the walkers while not straining on the leash held and controlled by Jahrae. The rapidly growing puppy, already three times his weight when first brought to them by the President, would occasionally stop and sniff, perhaps scanning for a suitable spot for self-relief.

Jahrae was prepared to handle his calling card deposit, her pocket carrying several plastic baggies to clean up after their dog.

Conversation was limited at first as both adjusted to and wallowed in the rain, enjoying the full measure of the experience they had come to love. Once they made the turn off their street and toward the left, heading along a connecting road while they walked along the gravel road shoulder, Jahrae shared an important message that arrived on her mobile earlier in the morning.

“It was from Marcia Paang, asking me to call Alicia. Apparently, they wish to hold a formal state reception for our diplomatic mission, which means official business for me and Jesnsera, and a social event for the lot of us Arrhazonans.

Marcia sort of stumbled around another matter, for I think she sensed it was rather awkward to ask, but she finally framed things enough for me to grasp they would be honoured if you played some at the event.”

“Play? ‘Play,’ as in play music, or play as in play a game.” Llhaesa mused. “Hide and seek, perhaps?”

“You know what I mean!”

“Of course I know what you mean, but has that ever stopped me before, T’srha? I get to call you that now, my dark haired goddess!”

“And I never should have shared my middle name with you!”

“I know better than that, Jahrae, and all teasing aside – for the moment – it bothers me that not revealing the name bothered you, that it haunted you, through all those years. We were young, and then as now we loved to tease, we relished teasing each other. In truth, yours is a perfect middle name, so suited to who you are, to the person I love. Whoever developed the mythology for T’srha long ago, no doubt they had you in mind as they fashioned the story.”

Jahrae stopped and looked for a long moment at llhaesa, her eyes wide and appreciating the compliment, touched by llhaesa’s words. As she did so, Pegasus, his concentration broken by the stoppage, turned to see what could possibly affect their onward course.

“Essa, thank you!” Jahrae finally and enthusiastically responded, in English, her accent with their non-native language seeming somewhat surreal still to llhaesa, who learned English for immersion in the United States, and who after all, in the past conversed with Jahrae in Arrhazonan.

“That does not mean I will forego opportunities to make use of the name, it merely means I love that it is yours, that the name and you are now forever fixed in my mind, both beautiful.

I doubt there are many others on Arrhazon who carry the name; in fact, I searched the Athenaeum a few days ago and found no one in the searchable database. The name is all yours.”

“Which means our child will be the second to have the name currently. I would add that Ahrella is quite an uncommon name as well.”

“Yes.”

The rain wanderers resumed their walk, placating the wishes of the impatient Pegasus, who happily resumed his preferred lead and guardian role. They were along a desolate stretch of road, the roads and homes carved out of one hundred year old forest.

They approached a roadside pond some ten meters wide and twenty in length, dug out when the road was built, expressly for the purpose of quenching a fire if one broke out. Alongside the leading edge of the pond, Llhaesa stopped again, lightly grabbing Jahrae’s arm as she whispered “shhhh,” while pointing to a doe that drank from the pond. The doe, unaware of their presence, continued drinking until spotted by Pegasus, who feeling called to defend Jahrae and llhaesa, called out with a mighty puppy ‘woof!’

The deer scurried away at the call of Pegasus, heading across the road and into the shelter of deep woods. The object of their quiet attention now gone, the rain walkers once again resumed their walk, following the current meandering section of new pavement until they reached a pathway that opened off the road and headed into the woods.

Llhaesa turned off their path along the road’s contour, taking the woods path, catching Jahrae by surprise, but both figured they were already soaked, and so their actual path mattered little.

The rain fell harder now, the water running down llhaesa and Jahrae’s faces, while their hair was sopping wet to the touch, unable to hold additional moisture. Jahrae’s hair curled from the continual onslaught of humidity.

“Thank you for asking me to walk in the rain, Jahrae,” Llhaesa commented, about to take the conversation in a different direction, just as they had with their path. “I know people must think these Arrhazonans daft for being about the neighbourhood without raingear, heading off into the woods, but this is fun, and that fire will be so welcoming when we return!

When is this reception at the White House?”

“In two weeks. Need I say this is a formal affair, requiring formal attire?”

Llhaesa groaned at the thought. “That is just great to ponder, given my current condition.”

“You are not showing yet, ‘essa; what is the problem?”

“I may not be showing, but my clothes grow tighter day by day, and fear what fits today will not fit in two weeks, especially since mine is a voracious appetite lately.”

“You also manage to occasionally lose what you eat.”

“I’ve only been sick twice this week, Jahrae.”

“Shall we shoot for once next week?”

“I would prefer none, but will take one.”

“Do you have a particular destination in mind, ‘essa?”

“Yes, and we are almost there.”

Another one hundred metres found them dropping down a small embankment onto an old closed off road, where remnants of broken pavement remained, evidence of a different use for this land decades earlier.

Looking further, Jahrae saw water – a sizeable pond. “Llhaesa, what is this place?”

“It is a watershed pond, one that feeds into the larger lake in town. Many of the towns in this area draw their water from this watershed, and this is protected land and water.”

Making their way closer to the water, they climbed upon an outcropping of rock some 5 metres in width. Pegasus jumped with excitement, his eyes wide at first sight of a substantial body of water.

“Aww, he so wishes to swim, he is such a Newfie, Jahrae!”

“Shall I turn him loose to test the waters, llhaesa?”

“We cannot, Jahrae – it is illegal for us to do such a thing.”

Llhaesa looked out over the water, her eyes probing the island in the distance, as well as the opposite shore. “Jahrae, I used to come here alone or with the girls, and walk along the old roadway. It is such a wonderful place to relax, and as the pressure within increased, this was my refuge.”

Jahrae felt the pull of words, and she gave in to the greater urge to hug llhaesa, unable to fathom how llhaesa had endured living with such conflict within. The two engaged in a waterlogged embrace, and even in the rain, Jahrae could tell llhaesa was attempting to stifle a cry. “It is ok, ‘essa, it is ok. That time is over, that shell cast away.”

Llhaesa could hold back no longer, her emotions pushed to the breaking point, her tears now matching the torrent of rain that fell upon them. She cried, she wailed, and she felt Jahrae’s embrace tighten, her words of comfort soothing, yet insufficient to stop the onslaught of pain.

They stood in embrace on the edge of the pond, Pegasus sensing llhaesa’s distress, watching her intently in case llhaesa needed his help.

“After the accident,” llhaesa stammered, trying to share what exploded through her mind. “After the accident that injured Susan, I was ripped in two; aghast at the injury inflicted and the harm done, tormented that my body was all wrong, that mind and body were so completely out of sync it caused harm to others.”

Llhaesa paused; force pushing tears back, vainly attempting to stem the flow. “Yet, even with such intense pain on the surface of my mind, I had no idea that things ran so much deeper, that this whole actual vibrant and interrupted life lay dormant within me, locked away by some force, preventing me from access to who I am, forcing me to live someone else’s life.

The last few days of Tim were harrowing, it was as if my mind disintegrated, that I’d gone mad – that is what I thought, what I feared, at that time.

Then the compulsion began. This unrelenting drive for Tim to use skill he did not have, assembling music through tedious trial and error, no doubt driven as the cracks between Tim and my intangible encasing shell widened, pushing him toward music to satiate his tormented soul.

My subconscious was doing this, was handing him the key to take it all down, though I know not how. In a way, Tim sacrificed himself so that I might live.

I could not tell the girls this, explain things quite this way, those final days and moments. Yet Tim reached where he wished to go, and that is to return to life as… me, free.

There was but one winner in this Jahrae, one entity that was better for your pain, Ronnie’s pain, our parent’s pain, our daughter’s pain, Susan Woodward’s pain, and that is the people of Arrhazon. Out of this came democracy and equality, thanks to you. Thank goodness you found a way to forge something positive out of something so destructive.”

Ignoring the now wind driven pelting of the rain, Jahrae felt her own tears trickle downward, though not of the level of llhaesa. These were tears of understanding, of empathy, coupled with a dose of pride for llhaesa’s praise.

Jahrae reached up, her hands caressingly sliding along llhaesa’s face, pushing her dreadlocked hair aside, Jahrae’s touch as if sufficient to feel llhaesa’s thoughts and her pain. Holding her hands along the contours of llhaesa’s jawline, her fingertips wrapping toward the back, Jahrae shared her thoughts. “Llhaesa, I was there to lead because you were with me. You were in my thoughts throughout, and you guided my choices. Your influence was everywhere, and everything I did I tried to do honouring your vision and your dream. Yes, it was my dream as well, but our dreams in that regard, in most of life really, are one.”

Jahrae removed her hands from llhaesa, but their eyes remained locked as she continued. “I thought your suffering over at 10:20 am on that awful first day following our separation; when the message came, it was with such finality. I had no way of knowing you suffered still, your mind raked clear by those heinous thugs as if it were a lawn, your thoughts, your memories pulled to the side, while the thugs embedded artificial memories to take the place of the old.

I had no idea that you lived, and that you endured and would endure such torture of your mind. You are right, the people of Arrhazon won, but both of us bare significant scars for the effort, and the memories that produced the scars will haunt us both at times.

Yet we have something not present six months ago or a year ago or five years ago, at the height of our suffering. We have each other, we have our family, we have the truth, we have our life-victories, and we work to make more.

Your stature grows in my eyes still, just as I know mine does in yours. That is a good result, that is a great result from out of such a sorry affair, I think!

We should head back straightaway, the drying warmth of the fire – and of my snuggling wife – waits.”