A story Tamar told me (X-posted from LJ):

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The receptionist blinked and muttered a few choice words as the young girl suddenly arrived in a sudden burst of sound and black light. She smiled and said gently in an accent that reminded her of the new immigrants from the Middle East after the ongoing war between the Ottoman Empire and Iran: “Hello, I am Tamar Silverberg. I do believe you have requested me?” The nurse could only stutter and as she took the measure of Tamar she saw a mediterranean-looking girl with eight yellow eyes, each with its own pupil and all seemingly covered by this membrane. Miss Silverberg seemed exceptionally tall and well-built for a woman as well, and then said “Did I mispronounce something?” The nurse then paged Doctor Patel, who came to see the person he had asked to see.

Doctor Patel left the elevator as Tamar smiled, seeing in the doctor a slightly corpulent Gujarati man who nodded to her. In a musical accent he said “You are Miss Silverberg, yes?”

Tamar nodded “That I am. I believe you requested my presence in the oncology ward?”

Ari Patel nodded. “I did indeed. The Pediatric Oncologists and I thought that the presence of such a healer as yourself with your er…..unusual….traits would be good for the children. Come with me miss, please?” and he gestured.

Smiling again, Tamar followed the doctor, attracting stares and whispers from people around her, commenting on the eight eyes and the large holes in Tamar’s arm. Tamar calmed herself by breathing in and out, not letting her vision as an empath distract her, with all the people in drab hues some greener and others redder walking about. After a few more steps, Doctor Patel, who in Tamar’s vision was a brighter shade of green opened the door, and Tamar entered.

The children were rapt at the scene of a tall woman with brown skin and black hair and eight golden eyes entering. They whispered among each other, and Tamar said in a gentle and soothing voice, one which calmed all who heard it, even Doctor Patel “Greetings, children. I am Tamar Silverberg. You may have heard of me. They asked me here to talk to you, but I am going to do them one better.”

With three of her eyes focusing on one boy, she gestured to him. He came up to her. She knelt down by him so that he could see her better. “What’s your name?” she asked again in that calm, soothing voice. “T-Timothy,” he said. “Well, Timothy, I want to know, what is your happiest thought?” Timothy looked up, and then whispered it into Tamar’s ear. Tamar then said to him softly “Hold out your hand.” And he did.

Tamar extended her own hand with its long fingers with rough nails and Timothy laid his on top of hers. With a sudden glow in Tamar’s eyes, everyone was transfixed. Timothy’s face suddenly beamed, and he said to her “Thank you so much!” and he hugged her, tightly.

Tamar spent the next hour giving each child an hour of happiness, something the children clung to. For a time the uncertainty itself seemed to vanish. Tamar then spoke to Doctor Patel in a hushed series of words, and Patel looked uncertain. Tamar whispered a few more words and Patel nodded, and Tamar waved her hands and glowing silver light began to emerge, and it surrounded all the children. They briefly began to levitate, and then after a few minutes that seemed an eternity they rested again. Tamar smiled, and told the doctors to run a scan for trace of any cancer. The doctors began to do so, using devices that Tamar gripped her hands together at the sight of their use, remembering old wounds, and then they gasped, as Doctor Patel said “There is no more cancer.” And the children gasped, and nodded, as Tamar then said, “Please, dim the lights.” And the lights were dimmed. And the children’s first sight after the lights were dimmed was of Tamar dancing in the darkness ,creating graceful loops of gleaming light.

After it was over, Tamar went to her grandmother’s grave. The headstone, old and worn had a name on it, Annabelle Silverberg. Kneeling by it, Tamar let out tears, and whispered “If only someone like me had been there to save you.” She spent the afternoon there. For no change is without its consequences…..and for one who could cure great ills, there was always the question of why no-one before her had done so. Tamar stayed by the graveside, until her boyfriend Victor, his lumbering tread and mechanical creaks came towards her. She looked up and smiled again, watery-eyed. “Hey, Vic,” she said as he took her hand. He intoned in a voice somewhere within James Earl Jones and an AI drone “Do you ever regret not being around to save her?” And Tamar nodded. Victor then said “Things are never as easy as they were in stories, are they?” To that, Tamar could only nod and the two walked off to the encampment of the Diggers, ready to rest themselves before returning to their own lives.

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Ashari Chaliel

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A story Tamar told me (X-posted from LJ):

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