Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
—Carl Jung
Skyline Boulevard above Silicon Valley, California
7:35 a.m. GMT-8, January 2, 2023
Prayer completed, Zara rises to roll up her mat. She rubs her foot through her boot as Peter intently stares. “Still find my feet arousing, do you?” she says, staring back.
“You’ll never let me live that down. The first time you caught me staring at your feet on the plane ride to Kurdistan to find Alexander’s object. You didn’t seem to mind so much after you found out what a wicked foot massage I can give.”
“Now is not the time or place for one, but my feet. I have spent years in military boots fighting Saddam with the Peshmerga, then Assad, and then the Daesh with the YPJ,” laments Zara. “I do not understand why they hurt now. These boots you bought me are the exact size I used to wear. My feet must have grown soft.”
A tender moment, literally for her feet and figuratively for their relationship. Her vulnerabilities exposed and yet she still feels safe. A feeling of safety with a male she only ever truly experienced with her father and brother.
Her eyes scanned the misty redwood tops as she inhaled deeply, a sense of calm washing over her. But as she turned to face him, her gaze was met with his expectant eyes. She struggled to find the words, torn between the confidence she had promised and what her heart was telling her.
“What you professed earlier, it was more than I could have hoped for,” she finally spoke, trying to find the right balance between honesty and respect for tradition.
His eyes glance down at his slithering slugs. “Your grandmother Roza always said I needed to give you space to grow into the saintly woman you were meant to be. I didn’t want to push you about your great-grandmother Sara’s last words. I know it’s something you need to share on your own terms.”
She took another deep breath, her eyes too lingering on his cherished yellow mollusks. “Sara would have thought your professed love and submission for Her words were a sign for me to tell you more about the parchment. It’s something that has been passed down through the women in my family, but I trust you enough to share it with you. I have no one else to turn to for help.”
A single tear rolled down her cheek, a mix of emotions causing it to fall. He gently brushed it away before taking her hand in his.
“In her final moments, I rubbed my tears on her hand and she miraculously spoke. ‘Seek the light. Blue light. She awaits you.’”
He held her in a warm embrace, one that reminded her of her father’s and made her feel safe and loved. “What did the parchment say?” he whispers in her ear.
She looked down, a sad smile forming on her lips. “I don’t know for sure. Sara waited decades before showing it to my great-grandfather, who said it was an ancient form of pre-Kurdish.”
“Why haven’t you asked Jean-Paul? With his expertise in ancient languages and biblical archaeology, he should have been able to decipher it.”
“It’s something that was only meant to be shared between a woman and her husband if absolutely necessary, after years of marriage and children,” she explains.
He let out a small snort, “And I’m assuming you’re sharing it with me now because I qualify for that ‘H’ word? Your mother certainly thinks so. Just say the word and we can move onto the next phase of our relationship.”
She playfully punched him in the chest. “You should be grateful that I come back as often as I do. You know I cannot be rushed, especially not anymore.”
The intimacy of the moment was broken by loud noises, like crunching and snapping, followed by a woman’s screams from the nearby road. The runner in Peter comes out as he springs up as if he were in the Olympic hundred-meter dash, racing to the road to aid those in need. But when he gets there, he screams, “Oh my God. The poor slugs.”
By the time Zara catches up to him, her ancient genetic husband is helping a cyclist, a lycra-fleece-clad woman, off the ground. Her carbon fiber bike is shattered in many places. A couple meters up the road, she sees Peter’s friends, or what is left of them, smeared across the road. This woman hit and slid through a herd of banana slugs trying to slither across the daunting damp descent.
A curdling scream from the other direction. The type of cry she heard all too many times in the battlefields of Iraq and Syria. Three meters downhill, another cyclist, a man in a bright yellow lycra jacket with a torn left sleeve, shrieks in torturous pain. The type of scream she heard when one of her soldiers took a bullet to the abdomen. The type of scream her Ezidi cousin, Rona, let out as the Daesh, who had held them as slaves, mercilessly violated both of them.
The woman trying to untangle herself from her trashed bike tells Peter to help her fiancé first. Zara hears tires at high-speed coming around the corner from them. As the lights of the oncoming car come into view, Peter, like the rabbit caught in the headlights, bolts up. Faster than Zara has ever seen him move, he dashes in front of the oncoming car, shielding the screaming rider on the ground, waving his jacket as a signal flag.
The charging red Mini Cooper suddenly slides diagonally across the road, smashing into the grey steel railings meant to prevent vehicles from rolling down the mountain towards the San Francisco Bay.
Zara yells to Peter, “Check the driver of the car. I have the screaming guy covered.” Her in-field combat medical training comes into play as she determines the wailing guy has dislocated his shoulder and likely has a broken wrist along with a good deal of road rash lacerations.
Peter assists the Mini Cooper driver out of his mangled motorcar. He is okay, but furious at the situation as he taps his MoxWrap for road service. Peter returns to help the woman cyclist. He scans around at the sadness. At least half a dozen banana slugs were killed because two cyclists were joyriding down a mountain road at a time when it was not safe. For man or slug.
Zara says, “This man will be okay, but needs medical attention. I called 911, but it will be more than an hour for emergency medical help to reach our location because of some sort of traffic congestion this morning. His injuries do not warrant an airlift out.”
After determining the woman has only road rash—and a snapped three-hundred-dollar handlebar, a shattered two-thousand-dollar carbon wheel, and a smashed seven-thousand-dollar bike frame—Peter asks, “What were you two doing racing down this road at this hour?”
The woman cyclist taps her MoxWrap. Up comes a 3-D projection of a contest for fastest time down this mountain road, only good until 7:45 a.m. The prize? Free trip for two to the Tour de France. She says, “My Harold wanted to win this so bad, so we planned our equipment perfectly for the fastest descending speed just after sunrise.”
His arm around the woman, Peter brings the black-fleece-clad woman down the road over to Zara and the injured man. Zara says, “I can reset this shoulder. I did this several times in the battle for Kobanî.”
The man’s panicked eyes are alit and his fiancée cries, “We have to get my Harold to an urgent care facility sooner than the ambulance can. If you could kindly give us a lift in your MoxMover, we can make our appointment with our wedding planner and then the church at noon. The whole family is coming into town tonight. Harold has to be ready.”
Shaking her head so ever slightly, Zara contrasts this woman’s dilemma with those of her people she fought for. She battled Saddam, Assad, and the Daesh for Kurdish freedom. And now, this woman’s wedding plans are more important than anything else in the world. Such is love. Or at least, life in love.
Zara and Peter help them into their MoxMover. Between them, their bikes and Peter’s gear, there is only room for either Peter or Zara. She offers to stay up here as she calls for another MoxMover. There is one only minutes away that can pick her up. She is acutely aware that Peter also needs to be back in the city to prepare for his special day tomorrow. The launch of his first book, his first creation.
She pecks Peter’s forehead and says, “I will see you later at your mother’s house. Take care.”
And off Peter goes with the killers of his beloved slugs. It is a great person who helps out those who mercilessly murder the ones they love most.
Standing with her prayer rug, Zara tightens her jacket as the damp fog chills her, her adrenaline rush subsiding. She rubs her pendant through her shirt. Did she do the right thing by opening up to Peter? He is not her husband. He may never be her husband. The tradition said the words were only for women. Only shared with their lifelong mate, their forever husband, if absolutely necessary. Is being her ancient genetic match enough to be her husband? Oh, what did she do? Does she really feel that way about Peter?
The answers to her questions, the urgent reason she came out to see Peter this time, become clear again as she scans her MoxWrap. The headlines all speak of a mad search for meteorites by the world’s powers, potentially leading to flash point conflicts across the globe.
What she did not tell Peter was what the voice said to her. The voice of Her, who said that, now that the black object had been found, Zara must find cavern of the blue light to save her people. To save all people. And only Peter could help her find it.
As the MoxMover she called for arrives, its gull wing door opens, and his face appears. “My little Zara. I thought you would never call for me.”
Sasha.
Copyright 2025 by Tail of the Bird Books
