*** Let Me Know When the Matriarch Messiah Releases ***

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Chapter 2

I love God: I have no time left in which to hate the devil.

Rabi’a al-Adawiyya,

eighth-century Persian philosopher and mystic

Skyline Boulevard above Silicon Valley, California

7:20 a.m. GMT-8, January 2, 2022

She could not say he was the last man she wanted to see at this moment. But he was near the top of the list. At seven and a half feet tall, a veritable giant, filling the back seat of the MoxMover. She sneers as the monstrous man smiles. His straight white hair frames his modestly wrinkled long face with long earlobes.

“You?” she exclaims, “I told you I never wanted to see your face-to-face ever again. Not in this lifetime. Nor any others if this ancient matriarch DNA and past lives affliction Peter and I share means we will be two other people in another thousand years.”

Zara taps her MoxWrap refusing to engage this man’s dark, dark eyes. A reflection of his heart, his soul, his power. She says, “Go away and bother someone else. I will get another MoxMover. I am sure the world’s most powerful business mogul, the world’s most corrupt power broker, the head slave master of MoxWorld Holdings, your insidious corporate octopus with tentacles into every corner of human existence, has many better things to attend to than chat with a humble Kurdish woman seeking out everything that he is not.”

Her protestation is met with a malicious sneer befitting of the magnate monster she just described. And the great Alexander Murometz replies, “I am quite certain my dear little Zara there are no, nor will there ever be, any other MoxMover which will come here to pick you up. It is me or several hours of a bloodletting blistering hike in those boots of yours. My sources say your feet have become softer in all the wrong places.”

This man not only has no respect for data privacy laws, he has no respect for any laws since he thinks he is above it all surmises Zara as she stamps her feet in frustration and the deep desire to find a more comfortable position of her tender spots. Still refusing to engage him eye to eye, she focuses on her MoxWrap tapping away as she replies, “Then I will have Peter come back and pick me up. Now go somewhere else to bother someone more interesting than me. Someone who might not care that you are the evil incarnate.”

With another malicious snort, the monstrous magnate grins and says back, “Yes. The evil incarnate who has looked after you all your life. Such a great evil man am I that I paid for your father’s freedom from Saddam’s torture prison. Twice even. A malevolently great evil who sponsored your theology and economics education with the Jesuits at Georgetown and international business education at Moscow’s National Research University.”

“Yes, you, the monster who sent a naïve young woman to chase what she thought was love at Georgetown and Moscow only to find you wanted me to compromise those men for your own devious purposes.”

Hand to chin, Alexander says, “Ah, now I am a monster. But one who spent several months bribing all of his corrupt connections to find out where the Daesh soldiers had hidden you. Who arranged for you to be rescued from those sex slavers who violated, tormented, and tortured you and your cousins for nearly a year, and who helped you find redemption in killing all those involved. Freedom is never given but taken and it took a grand taker like me to free you and your father.”

No longer facing him with her stiffened back towards the MoxMover door, Zara answers, “You have played the guilt card for long enough. I repaid my debt to you three years ago when I left your service. And my family is clear of any obligation as well. How many lives did I end working for your personal security team? They are now spirits who haunt my nights. Did they deserve to be assassinated only because they were in your way? I told you three years ago…I told you when you kidnapped me last spring coercing me to join with Peter to find the black object, I am no longer that woman of hate, vengeance, and violence. I seek only to be a simple, humble Sufi like the saintly Rab’ia of Basra, who dedicated her life to be in the love of Xwedê. In the love of God.”

“May I remind you, my dear,” says the giant. “One can never repay one’s debt to one’s mother, in my case, your parental other.”

“You may be a nephew of Sara, but you are not my parent,” insists Zara.

The mists of fog have morphed into a fine drizzle. Zara’s headscarf is matted and clinging tightly to her face. Dripping like a wet sheep in rain, she tries in vain to wring part of her scarf dry.

“My dear little Zara. My child. My dearest. Please come inside and be dry. I have your favorite style of headscarf in here. The finest lambs wool from the Kurdish region of the former Iraq where you grew up. Why torture yourself when I am here to pamper you as my precious princess?”

Looking into the white skies which spawned drizzle pummeling her eyes, she wonders why the heavens have not been favorable to her this morning. Soaked, Zara concedes and begins to enters the MoxMover. She hesitates and then points to the man with the munched mini cooper. “We should help him.”

“No, my dear. I do not help such diminutive plebes who think to deceive their loved ones without a world changing reason. No, I do not think that man wants anyone to know he was up here. You see, there is a chalet nearby where he spent the night with someone he should not have.” Alexander taps on his MoxWrap and a virtual screen appears. “You see, he is already working on his alibi as we speak on his MoxWrap.”

Zara snorts as she sees another example of her Sasha’s disrespect for individual privacy, folds her arms across her damp chest, and gazes out upon the carnage across the glistening road. The dead cousins of Sammy the Slug smeared across the road.

She turns back to sneer at Sasha only to be met by the glint in his eye. She exclaims, “You monster. You arranged this massacre. The award trip to that big French bicycle race. You arranged for it to be offered on their Mox devices, did you not? You timed this accident to happen. You arranged for that man to have his affair up here and you likely made him rush out just at this moment to cause this accident. You made that traffic jam stalling the ambulance. I know you. Why? Why nearly kill everyone in sight to get to me?”

“My dear Zara, you would do well to not madly rant so to others. They might wrongly conclude your psychiatric impairments you suffered in that year of torture of all things venereal have come back. Those psychologic afflictions my medical experts tried to patch up, have they relapsed? Be careful, someone might think you were still suffering severe paranoid schizophrenia.”

Her buttons pushed. No, insensitively smushed. She lets out a quick exhale through her nose, closes her eyes, and slowly inhales. Exactly the remedy one of those medical experts had instructed.

That man. He knows exactly how to disarm and defeat the strongest psyche. And hers. Strong on the outside, but devastated on the inside. Well, an inner psyche on the mend since she met Peter.

Her face dripping. Her eyebrows set to fierce. Her eyes play chicken with his. Then the image comes back to her. They saw him. Peter and she did one time when they bonded near the object. Sasha’s face on one of the evil giants who tormented the ancient matriarch’s family.

She breaks the eyeball chicken match. “You,” she yells with finger pointed. “We saw your face on one of those monstrous giants who raped the women of the matriarch’s family, who enslaved their men into deadly labor camps. You are one of them. No wonder you are such a misogynistic masochist. No better than all those who have tortured, imprisoned, and violated the Kurds for centuries.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” utters the giant man. “The kettle calling the crucible black. When was the last time you looked at yourself? Because I am naturally gifted with height, you call me out of prejudice, out of fear, out of intolerance, a monstrous giant. Look at yourself.”

Poor Zara. She straightens her back and gazes away from this man as she stands defiantly outside the MoxMover. Yes, she is the size of a pro woman basketball player. But she is still shorter than her accuser.

The nerve of that man. Turing the accusation against her. Dripping and shivering in the damp cold mountain breeze, Zara stomps her feet again. Legend tells stories of the saintly Rab’ia making a carpet fly. If only she could do the same and fly back home to her sunny warm mountain, to her spot she shared peace with her father. Whoever coined the term “sunny” California certainly did not live on this mountain overlooking San Francisco.

Surrender is her only choice left. She gives the black MoxMover a look over. Nodules along the length of the roof, along the front hood over the lights, and along the rear bumpers. “I take it this is not your grandfather’s MoxMover.”

“No, my dear, it is my presidential security model. I have loaned several to the US President. This is one of his west coast fleet. It is equipped with my latest security tech. It can defend and defeat air, armor, and commando attacks. Is that not right, Moxy?”

A firm female voice responds. “Yes. I am tasked with keeping you safe Mr. Murometz. Would you like me to scan Ms. Khatum for weapons?”

He dismisses Moxy’s request with a hand wave as Zara enters the advanced AI guided self-driving vehicle. Solar powered using no fossil fuels, requiring no recharging, emitting no greenhouse gasses. Satellite guided using information gathered from surrounding vehicles’ onboard navigation systems along with occupant’s and nearby pedestrians’ Mox devices. Light years more advanced than the competitors’ ill-fated attempts to develop self-driving cars.

A blare of horns and flashing lights causes her to dive into the backseat almost landing onto the monstrous man. His brows pointed into a vee formation, his eyes as dark as obsidian disks, her Sasha helps her sit upright as he commands, “Moxy, chase that attacker and take out his tires.”

The MoxMover rockets from standstill to 60mph in 1.4 seconds stabilizing at ten feet off the offending pickup truck’s bumper. A blue beam emits from the front nodules and the pickup’s rear tires explode. The doomed truck goes into a tailspin on the slick road crashing into the aged trunk of a redwood.

As the MoxMover speeds innocently off, Zara screams, “We must stop and make sure the passengers are okay.”

Alexander smiles as if he had the best meal a man could have simply stares forward saying, “Moxy, please take us to Peter’s mother’s house.”

“But the pickup’s passengers…we must make sure they get medical care,” pleas a frantic Zara. “Moxy, turn around and call for paramedics.”

The Moxy voice politely responds, “My protocols do not include your command. Mr. Murometz, would you wish to include Ms. Khatum into my command protocols?”

“No Moxy. Not until she regains her rationale sense. She must understand that anyone who endangers my dearest Zara will be subject to counterattack by my forces. No one endangers my family without lethal repercussions.”

Curling into the farthest corner of the backseat away from this madman, Zara’s eyes bead down into tiny rubble sized pupils. “You are not family, Sasha. You are plain mean. I pray you treat Peter better than you do me.”

Towel in hand, Alexander says, “Here my dear. Dry yourself off. Remember when you dived off my yacht and swam back to the Crimean coast? You suffered from pneumonia for weeks.”

A snarl, a pause, then she grabs the towel he hands her, removes her headscarf, and dries her straight dark brown hair rubbing her long earlobes in the warmth of the towel. If one squinted, one could imagine Sasha at a stretch qualifies as Mahram. Someone she could remove her headscarf in front of. Given the situation, Zara gives him the unorthodox benefit of the doubt. She hides her face into the towel shaking her head at this morning’s turn of events.

The man to whom she had loaned her soul after he saved her from the Daesh brushes her cheek with the black lambs wool scarf with red and gold embroidery.

Her hands bracing herself as the MoxMover rushes through the hairpin turns down Highway 92, Zara peers at him. “Do not think you can bribe me with the memory of my grandmother’s scarf which I had lost in London when those Islamaphobe boys tried to violate me. I have not forgiven you for abducting me after Ramadan last spring, forcing me to violate my own promise not to bear arms again so you could recover the two halves of the precious black monolithic object you said were the root of Peter’s family’s ancient legend.” She grabs the utterly silky soft scarf from him. “And I have not forgotten either how you tried to kill us last June on that pier jutting into the ominous Black Sea.”

Head a tilt. Eyes a squint. The monstrous man replies, “Nor have I forgotten how I saved the world by reuniting the two halves of the legendary black object which evaporated back to the heavens whence they first came.”

He nestles back into his seat with lips pouted. “And then the massive electromagnetic pulse emitted by the objects shut down all the modern military hardware deployed in lower Russian down to Palestine. The hotspots of the world neutralized.” He turns to Zara and asks, “And who by chance equipped all of those military forces, made them addicted to those modern AI tech advances? I stopped the third world war from happening. I am the hero everyone should worship.”

“Hero? Right,” protests Zara. “You arranged for all those countries to be in the same spot at the same time armed with all of your advanced AI tech they bought at premium pricing. And you arranged for them to be purely mad at each other. Enough to nuke each other.” She turns to glare out the back window. “Just like you made victims of Peter’s poor simple, innocent, God worshipping banana slugs. You the hero who everyone know is the villain.”

With a dismissive puff of air through his thin, mean lips, the giant man says, “Speaking of my dear boy, have I not done for Peter what I have always done for you? Taken care of his deepest wishes? Once he has taken care of those two self-indulgent cyclists, Peter should be heading to his appointment with MoxWorld’s finest public relation specialist who will prep him for his first novel’s book signing event. He along with nine other authors are the privileged few whose books were selected for the debut of MoxMedia’s MoxReads, my newest company. I think he has already forgiven me for having pointed his own gun at his head and pulling the trigger.”

“Forgive you?” says Zara. “You shot me seven times in the chest. If not for two layers of body armor, I would not be here. And then you tried to shoot Peter.”

The monstrous magnate touches scars around his hands and adds, “Forgiveness. Something we both need to do more of. And I have magnanimously forgiven Peter for handing me that gun primed to backfire in my hands and face. Perhaps you should be like him. Forgive this old man as you would forgive an errant father.”

Yet again he hit another one of her buttons with devilish precision as she exhales very prominently. Something about this man brings out the worst in her. Ever since she kissed his cheek when he awaited with the med-evac team receiving the MoxWorld commando team which extracted her from those sex slavers, he had deemed his right to her in all ways possible training her to be his most effective, MoxWorld’s most soulless, black op specialist. But she is no longer that fragile broken girl. She is in command of her body, her mind, and particularly of her soul. Now and forever.

“A father,” protests Zara. “You could only hope to be one percent of my father. He loved me for who I am. Not like you, who only pretends to love me when you need me to do dirty deeds. You are still manipulating us. What is your end game in toying with Peter’s heart? His secret desire to be an author after a decade editing others words? Know that I hate you for what you do to the innocent. Your evil pails that of Saddam, Assad, the Daesh, even Erdogan. All of whom I fought in the name of our people’s freedom.”

She turns to him, finger pointed between his darkened obsidian disk eyes. “If you do anything which brings harm to Peter, I will inflict upon you what you strong-armed me into doing to so many others.”

His response? Not what she expected. With an ear to ear grin he takes her pointed finger and pets her hand. “That passion. That fervor. I am so proud of my girl. You embody the aged saying – if you love someone, you will do anything for them.”

She is taken aback by his remark. Did not Sara say this came from an ancient ancestor? How did he find out about it? However he did, he continues to find buttons within her that she never knew about.

“You really do love my boy Peter. Your passions reveal your true self,” posits Alexander.

She shivers with a deep breath. Her head quivering back and forth. Buttons being squashed again and again. What are lies and what are truths coming from the world’s most manipulative master?

He places her palm onto his chest as he states, “I seek deliverance. I am destined for deliverance. And only you can bring me deliverance. The ‘you’ who Peter will help bring to her fullest being, your real essence. But only if you commit to him. As a woman. And he your husband. She who wants pearls has to dive into the sea.”

Zara takes her hand back, revolted that he keeps using traditional Kurdish sayings to seduce her will. Her body is hers as is her soul. She again protests, “Peter is not your son. No more than I am your daughter. You may think so as you have tried to buy your way into the graces of my family. You maybe my grandmother’s second cousin. You may have the same ancient matriarch DNA which Peter and I share. But you are not my relative. You are not family.”

That smugness returns as he points to her MoxWrap. “My dear. Am I not family?  Look.”

Gasp is all she could do as her eyes are locked upon the image on her MoxWrap. Eyes batting back and forth as she tries to formulate words for what is in her mind. “How? How? This is my family’s secret.”

A sinister snort from her tall tormentor. “Yes, I know. You were sworn to secrecy you could only tell your husband about it. And yet, you told Peter. What does that say about how you really feel about him?”

He makes an obscene gesture with his fingers to which she narrows her eyes at him. He says, “You only need to consummate your love for each other tonight and you can fulfill what you have already signaled to your ancestors by your mere act of confiding in him.”

She turns away from him tightening her thighs together. Her head still quivering.

“Look at your MoxWrap again,” says the manipulative magnate. “My gift to you, my dearest.”

A bigger gasp and Zara replies, “But my great-grandfather said this was a dead unknown language. Possibly from those who proceeded the Kurds. How did you translate it?”

With her lightning speed reflexes, she turns and slaps his face emitting a thunderous sound. “You stole this. You and your micro-drones. Shame on you.”

Her hardest open palm strike and he only smiles even bigger. “So impetuous. I do love you so. You are so much like me when I was your age. Maybe you should come back to MoxWorld. You could run it one day.”

“In your dreams,” she scoffs. “I plan to quit the post you created for me as MoxWorld’s Head of Turkish-Kurdish relations. I naively imagined our world’s problems would be solved if your empire injected capital into the region. Now they no longer fight with bullets. They fight with verbal abuse and threats. And me caught in between. I want to become like Rabi’a and devote myself to the love of Xwedê. Me, my lambs, and my mountains back home.”

Her eyes back at her MoxWrap reading the translations, she says, “Oh my. The black object was only a stepping stone to something far more ominous.”

“My dear, I used Father Jean-Paul and his access to the Vatican’s vast historical records to solve the Gollinger family’s oral tradition in order to find the black object. What he did not have access to was why I needed the object to get to the end goal. They were only a means to activate yours and Peter’s dormant genes for what is to come. You and he must procreate. Your child will allow you to find the blue light.”

Ignoring him, Zara re-examines the photo of the document the translation is based upon. “This is not the parchment Sara left for me. This is someone’s transcribed copy.”

The giant innocently turns aside. “Well, as they say, I persuaded someone, someone very lovely, to draw me a copy.” He turns back to her. “Forcefully persuaded if you must know.”

She scoffs again. “I put nothing beneath you.” She continues to study the translation. “This describes the pathway to Xwedê. This is how I can be with Her.”

Still with all smugness, he adds, “And the pathway to my deliverance. Which by the way can only be made by you. And only if you are bearing the child of Peter.”

Zara crosses her legs turning away from him again. “There lies the beginning of a number of non-negotiable problems. First, my body is mine. Not yours. Not anyone else’s either. Second, I cannot bear children. Those Daesh savages’ torture methods made sure of that. These scars on my outer body pale in comparison to what they did on the inside.” She lays her hands atop her lower abdomen.

“I am fully aware of your medical report. Tell me, did not Mary have a miraculous pregnancy? The Immaculate Conception. The objects have made you and Peter two unique beings. People of miracles.”

What is it about Peter which makes her not be able to agree to lifelong bonding? This thought has haunted her for the many months since they first found a higher order love together. But this is not the time nor place to resolve this question as she redirects. “Then there is the incompleteness of this parchment’s text. It says what exists, but not how we find it.”

“You forget, my dear. My father and Peter’s great grandfather and grandfather worked together during World War Two in the Crimea. Peter’s grandfather Nikolas did not take the secrets of the caverns in the Crimea to his grave. He left Peter his diaries. Coded to protect from the wrong eyes. I have had MoxWorld’s best cryptologists work on the answer, but the code is something which only Peter knows. But you know him. He has no idea of what lies within him.”

Zara smiles as she pictures the innocent ignorance Peter emits every waking minute of his life.

“My little Zara, with your love, not just your spiritual love which you two share, but your intimate physical love, you and only you can empower him to crack the code.”

Her buttons smushed again. She stomps her feet on the floorboard. “Oh, do not play that game again. You told me the last time I had to have sex with Peter to solve the mystery of the matriarch to find the object. You lied. Peter. He’s genuine. He could have taken advantage of the situation for his own vicarious pleasure, but he respected me and found the secret for the two of us to transcend is not sexual. But spiritual.”

The giant puts his chin in his hand Nostrils flared. That vee in the eyebrows back. His eyes bear down into hers. His fully darkened obsidian circles. “Very well then,” he states. “We play hard ball. Moxy, get the President of Russia.”

MoxWorld’s vastly superior AI answer to the eighth generations of the other digital giant’s virtual assistants, Moxy replies, “Would you like his secure line this time?”

“No, I want my private direct line to him.”

And the two larger than average human beings stare at each other in détente for a minute until Moxy says, “I have the President for you.”

“Sasha, my friend. What is so urgent that you must interrupt my cabinet meeting with your super-secret private line?” says the President in Russian.

Grinning away, Alexander responds back in Russian, “You flatter me by calling a friend. Our last call, you called me something much more vile I seem to remember. I know you would have me executed if you could find a way to replace how I pump up your economy. That and the security of all those votes I get swayed your way, inside and outside Russia.”

The line is momentarily silent other than the President’s breath. And then he speaks. “You must want something very gravely to play your guilt card so early in the conversation.”

“Yes, no games. I want the city of Siirt in the Anatolian Kurdish State nuked within the hour.”

Siirt is her home. Zara gasps as she searches the MoxMover interior for an off button or at least a weapon she could use to stop this monster. If she could have been born one of those fashionistas like Mei, Sasha’s fashion and genetics executive head, she would have eight centimeter long stiletto pump spikes to puncture his neck. There is no way she can do anything with these boots other than stomp on his monstrous ocean-liner-like feet.

Before she can raise her right booted foot, the Russian President replies, “But Sasha, my sometimes friend, the ramifications of a nuclear attack so close to the on-again off-again NATO country of Turkey must be considered. And then there are those pesky Americans and their objections, threats, and sanctions.”

Alexander lets loose a giant-sized scoff. “No worries my comrade, my next call will be to the President of the United States, who also has a laundry list of a guilt card with me.”

A sigh over the call line and the President replies, “Very well Sasha. But the price this time will more than just guaranteeing the next election for me. I have a few other country elections I would like guaranteed as well.”

That giant grin back again, Alexander replies, “Very well yourself. Let me know which countries you want their elections fixed and more importantly when your nuclear forces will be launching their attack.”

The line goes silent and Moxy asks, “Mr. Murometz, would you like me to dial the American President on your private line?”

Before he can answer, Zara stomps on his feet which only seemed to cause her patron giant more pleasure. “You cannot destroy my home, my grandmother, my mother. They are your relatives too.”

“Ah, good,” replies Alexander with the smirk of smirks. “The truth comes out. I am family after all.”

She stomps on his feet even harder. “You are just plain evil. And you must stop that attack. It is not right.”

“My dear Zara, that is called negotiation leverage. You studied how to do this in your Masters in International Business program in Moscow. The fate of your home and your family is in your capable hands. Have a child with Peter so you can access the blue light for your own good. And of course, my good. Or have your family, friends, and neighbors vaporized. Very simple.”

Now she beats on him with her fists as she screams, “This is pure insanity. You cannot ask that a city be destroyed only to force a poor Kurdish woman to submit her body, her womb, to your will. You just cannot.”

“You misjudge me,” he says no longer smiling. “I have done so before and will do so again. This quest to solve the legend of the object and now the blue light supersedes any other principle, moral, or concern. Moxy, how long until Moscow will be able to launch their nuclear assets?”

Moxy replies, “Seventeen minutes. Would you like me to get the US President for you now?”

Head into her hands Zara cries out, “You cannot do this. Human life is more sacred than you killing it only so you can own my body. Did you not hear me? My womb can no longer bear a child. I have been left barren by the will of Xwedê. My punishment for abandoning Her to chase those men in the military. Something I will always atone for.”

She kneels down at his feet and gazes up to meet his blackened eyes emotionlessly focused on her. A flattened line between his thin lips. His head nodding ever so slightly. And then he leans down to kiss her forehead. “My child, you do have the best for mankind in your heart. Your soul is no longer the darkened place it once was. The first of many changes your exposure to the object will bring upon you. You are ready for what is to come.”

Moxy interrupts this precious moment asking, “Thirteen minutes until Russian cruise missiles are deployed. Do you still wish me to dial the American President?”

Alexander smiles at Zara kneeling subserviently at his feet. He gathers the black lambs wool headscarf and delicately wraps it around her head and neck. And then says, “Moxy, end the nuclear attack demo program.”

Face ashen. Mouth agape. Zara quietly says, “You mean that was a trick?”

“My virtual reality systems are superb are they not? Even the Russian Cabinet would not have been able to discern that was not their president. Even better, nor would the best voice recognition software of any country be able to detect that was not their commander-in-chief.”

Zara gets up and sits away from him again. “You are evil. Pure evil. Hell is not hot enough for the likes of you.”

“Compliments will get you everywhere with me. But only your compliments. So, I take it we have a deal. You will let Peter father your child.”

Face scrunched up into something hideous, she protests, “You have not heard me. It is not possible.”

“My dear Zara, you please me that you do not say you do not love him. Only that a physical impediment prevents you from loving him in that way.”

Zara glances down mulling the profoundness of his insinuations. The second time during this car ride he has caught her.

“My little Zara. If not with you, Peter is going to have to be a parent with some other woman with the right genetics. Only a woman with the matriarch’s DNA who is with child can access the blue light. If not you, who? He must be that woman’s child’s father.”

The MoxMover stops in front of Samantha Gollinger’s house, the childhood world of her son Peter and daughter Michaela, and where Zara and Peter are staying while MoxWorld retrofits Peter’s new condo with the latest security systems.

“Peter’s mother would want you as her daughter-in-law. You have been here a dozen times since meeting her. You know this is your new family as well as I do.”

“Again, you are wrong,” protests Zara. “I only want to follow the path of Rabi’a. She was and I am celibate by choice. And only in love with Xwedê.”

Shaking his head, he replies, “If not you Zara, then if you want to find God, you must help Peter find the woman who can make our destiny possible. Read for me what the translation of your great-grandmother’s parchment says. I want to know you know this by heart.”

Zara gazes at her MoxWrap and says, “With her miraculous child within, she met Her.”

Shaking his head, the giant interrupts. “It says Him.”

Undeterred Zara continues, “Only with child could she have found Her. The blue light. The final point. The only point. The end and the beginning. And she who has been with the light knows that only another like her bearing child can free her to be with the light. The blue light. The child of her child will one day return with a miraculous child and the cycle continues. So is the love of our God.”

“Good,” he replies. “You understand well what you must do.”

Torn. Zara leaves the MoxMover. Unsure to be angry, to be afraid, to be in awe. Two steps to the house, she turns back and leans into the MoxMover and kisses the giant’s cheek.

“That is for translating my great grandmother Sara’s parchment. She would have wanted to give you that kiss. That is the last affection you are to see from me.”

Copyright Tail of the Bird Books 2019