Role

Chapter 1

Zelisha looked up at the moon, then double-checked her notes. Within, careful
carts and drawings of the moon phases and positioning of the stars.
Satisfied, she moved down the rocky embankment toward the gently lapping
waves of the Dragon Sea below. If Zelisha's calculations and research were
correct, tonight was a rare opportunity. And she was confident they were
correct, because all things follow an order. The cycles of the moon. The
stars. All of nature. Where others saw chaos, Zelisha recognized the order
beneath. To her, it was everything.

As she had expected, she saw a dim,
phosphorescent glow in the water. It bobbed up and down as the waves lapped
the beach. Ever so gently, careful not to let the water touch her skin,
Zelisha extended a silver scoop, gathering a small amount of the glowing
material and placing it within a glass jar. "Hello, beautiful," she whispered
to the jar, which now contained what appeared to be a softly glowing tuft of
moss. But Zelisha knew it was not just moss, it was what sea captains
superstitously called the "death wave," rarely seen but greatly feared on the
high seas, which only came to shore once every two hundred years. A
carnivorous plant, the rarest in the world. She smiled, whispering a quick
prayer of thanks to Rarywey.

Zelisha had risked much to come here this
night, skirting Imperial lands and its defenders. Anathema, they called her.
Anathema! So be it. She would rather be considered such than to bend to the
false "order" imposed by Imperial law. True order was immutable, unbending.
Imperial order was not truly order at all, but a self-serving set of
changeable rules to benefit the few at the expense of the many. She had
learned this the hard way, for once she had been the most promising young
priestess in the the Divine Sect. The star pupil. Once she'd had dreams of
becoming High Priestess. But all of that had changed when she learned just
how bending the supposed Imperial Order could be, just how little it served
everyone, despite their grand claims.

She slipped into her home in Hamsah
Mu'tazz, lighting candle after candle until the dark interior was illuminated
in flickering firelight. Her meticulously neat home was decorated sparsely,
aside from one wall. On that wall were shelves laden with exotic plants. The
fly trap, the pitcher plant, the dewleaf, the viper lily, and many more. A
place of honor had been reserved in the middle of the largest shelf, a small
tank of clean water. Zelisha moved to the shelf, carefully transferring the
contents of the jar to the tank. From a container on a lower shelf, she
scooped a tiny fish and placed it within the tank, watching in wonder as the
"moss" came to life, darting quickly to cling to the tiny creature. The
poison, the death, the digestion. The natural order. Life flourishes from
death.