The Kingdom

I stared at her out of a keen sense of empathy for the extreme emotions playing across this stranger, turned lover, turned companion for life that I was blessed to have. Nothing I could say was going to make her feel any better so I said nothing at all.

I gestured to one of the recruits to come up and help Susori dismount. That done, I rode off alone toward a promontory point after having given the order for the others to wait.

*****

Susori wiped at her eyes and asked the recruit near her, "What is he doing?"

The recruit looked from his retreating commander to the otherworldly beautiful woman before him. The sight of her did strange things to confuse his tongue in saying the simplest of things, "He's……ah…… praying. He always prays when…… when it's bad." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "And when things go well too. He prays a lot."

Susori blinked several times in apparent confusion, "You have seen his gods answer him?"

"Oh, just one God ma'am. His name is El Elyon and I'm convinced it works!"

Susori looked puzzled by the last statement and the recruit added hurriedly, "The praying. I'm convinced the praying works. A lot of us picked training under him not only because he's the best, but because, well, the Creator just seems to really like him and more people survive under his leadership than other recruitment commanders."

Susori looked from the recruit to the back of the man she now belonged to. In many ways Benaiah was still a mystery to her. An increasingly wonderful mystery. A mystery that she wanted to unravel and better understand.

He was a man of prayer and strong faith, but what else was he?

Could he also be the deliverer of her people? Somehow just looking at him gave her a burst of hope that perhaps the impossible could be achieved. She wanted to be with him to hear what he was praying to his God, but she sensed that he wanted to be alone so she stayed where she was.

*****

I stared out over the promontory down to the rocky valley below. I felt like I'd arrived at the invisible pathway of divine direction.

I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to go cut up monsters, but there were problems to that simplistic approach.

"Problems indeed," came a voice off to the side of me.

It was Urtholan. I glanced over to where the group waited and Urtholan answered my question before I could speak it, "Only you can see me at present."

Nodding, I turned to stare back over the promontory. "How do I fix this?" I asked slowly.