He could have cleansed the dirt and blood off his hands with a divine gesture of contempt, but that would not have stung me as much as the very physical and time-consuming method of wiping his hands with a towel. (Even though the towel never became filthy. Which in retrospect was also an insult.)
“Feel better?”
Fucking bastard was asking genuinely.
I sucked on the freshly raw spot where a tooth once resided. My collarbone complained loudly about its new position beside itself. For all the contemplation of my life choices that my abdominal muscles were making, I knew my spleen had only begun to file its complaint.
Lying flat on my back in the unusually soft dirt, I watched the sun shine brighter in an obvious attempt to outshine the god. I wanted to laugh at the god’s brother’s attempt to upstage the victor, but my ribs convinced me to hold my humor for now. My cheek bones were not broken, but my nose was for sure. I was exhausted and beaten into the first stages of a pulp.
I haven’t felt this good, this alive, in a while.
“Yea. I do.”
I sucked a little harder on the swelling in my gum and pulled a new tooth out to replace the one lost amid the pummeling. A deep breath forced my ribs to comply with my ideal of myself and the gesture also realigned my collarbone.
The still white cloth’s fluff tickled my nose as he threw it on my face without ceremony. As I sat up, I rubbed my face with it, restoring what was injured back into health.
“You forgot, didn’t you.” He wasn’t offended by my forgetting. Certainly not after his very visceral reminder.
“Yea, I did, at first. I remembered too late after I had committed, so I hope you don’t mind me throwing myself at your immovable wall. How else was I going to find my limit?”
“And if you had remembered, would you still have asked?”
“Hell, no. I would have started it with a shove and a defiant stance.”
“So the physical equivalent of how you did start it.” He extended his hand, his glittering, glistening hand.
I took it and was reminded how dense his lithe body can be as I pulled myself up to standing. “Well, yea. Too bad I can’t remember the rhyme I said. You beat it out of me!”
The sun’s glare increased into an uncomfortable shimmer. The god looked up at his brother and laughed brightly. “She’s okay! Or she will be. She has endured greater abuse than this. I’m sure she will think up of even greater impiety to tickle me with.”
I think I heard the sun snort a harrumph, or was that the breeze sighing as it shook the heads of the trees. I couldn’t tell. I knew there was a greater audience than just my ego and the god, but I wasn’t concerned too much about that.
“Time for you to go, pugilist. Tell that obscure god of yours that you started it. This will be the last moment of frivolity between us for a while. It’s time to resume your lessons in earnest.”
I knew what he meant. I bowed my respects and thanked him for not breaking too much of my spirit.
He sighed. “That will be next time, [Magician]. I will not take your weaknesses into account, or at least, not in your favor.”
I bowed again and took a respectable step backwards before turning. Behind me, I heard the sun whispering its objections. Just before the dream darkened, I heard the cocky reply.
“I’m supposed to show her how to lose gracefully, not just lose.”
The dream ejected me as the force of the sun’s rebuttal burned everything at once.