Closing his eyes, he leaned his cheek against the top of her head. “When I see you, I think of all the other little children out there. I could never do to them what was done to us. Or allow them to be harmed. People should be protected.”
“Even by Simi?”
“Especially by my Simi. You’re very dear to this world, Sim. You are the only one standing between it and utter destruction.”
Her eyes widened. “Me? But I’s just a little Simi.”
“And it’s the little things that matter most. You keep me grounded and remind me of what’s important. As much as I love my mother, I will never help her destroy a world that brought you to me.”
Simi stood up in his lap so that she could hug her akri. Not just with her arms. She wrapped her wings and tail around him, too. “You’s the bestest akri any Simi could have!”
“And you’re the best daughter ever born. I will be forever grateful to your matera for being so kind to you and giving you a very special heart.”
Simi buried her face in his hair so that she could feel like she did when her matera held her. Only akri could make her heart feel the way it’d felt when her mama helds her.
Safe. Warm.
Special.
“The Simi will never leave her akri.”
“And I will never willingly leave you.”
She sat back down and spit on her palm, then held it up toward him. “Always!”
Laughing, he spit on his hand and shook hers. Then, he tucked her back in bed and left her room.
Simi knew he was exploring the gods’ temple. It was what akri always did while she slept.
Two weeks ago, they’d found the slumbering gods in the basement. That had made akri both mad and happy. Happy ’cause they were all gone, but mad that they’d cursed him for being born. That made her mad, too.
Even so, akri had been curious about the family he had been banished from.
So, one by one, she’d walked with him around the gods, telling him the names she knew. Some had been mean, and she didn’t have real names for those. Instead, she made them up. Poo-poo Bottom was her favorite. It’d even made akri laugh.
But it was the one goddess who made her heart hurt like akri’s.
Bet’anya. She had always been kind to the Simi. And just like akri, she had pain in her gold eyes that had always made Simi want to make the goddess feel better.
Sadly, the only thing that took the pain from her eyes was when the goddess had been pregnant.
While Simi understood the others being punished for their mean ways to akri, akra-Bet wasn’t like that.
She should have been allowed to be happy.
Akra-Apollymi had never asked Simi her opinion and there was nothing a baby Simi could do. But one day, she’d find a way to make akri smile all the time and forget about the Apollite people who’d been cursed by the god what had killed akri.
And the one thing that made him saddest of all. The fact that his own matera kept the Apollites safe and let them loose to eats the humans.
“The Simi don’t know why you did that, akra.” Not when it made akri so hurts.
To her surprise, akra-Apollymi appeared in her ghosty form next to Simi on her bed. “One day, you’ll understand, Simi. We all do things we wish we hadn’t done.”
“Akra is sorry she saved the Apollites?”
Shaking her head, Apollymi smiled. “No. I will never be sorry for saving the innocent victims Apollo and his pantheon condemned.”
That only confuzzled her, as it didn’t make much sense. “What about the innocent humans you kilted?”
