chimedetroit

Honestly sort of obsessed with this short story. It's only something like 7,000 words and was released for free as a tie-in/sneak peek to the Šehhinah series but it's got some of the most thought-provoking and thematically elucidating scenes in the series hidden in here. It's also probably the closest to being explicitly Jewish, as opposed to the other books which definitely blend in a lot of very original ideas and ideas from other religions and developments in biblical mythology despite feeling predominantly Jewish to me. Tamar is among my favorite characters, and this story also has by far the most substantial and meaningful content about her slightly-older mentor/friend Safirah in the series, which makes a big impact because Safirah appears to be the character who has the best philosophical handle on the character of God, on the Covenant, and on pursuing a theological position and consciousness -- moreso even than Jibril.
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The author does a great job of sketching in quite few words a thought-experiment on the way Tamar’s open-ended thinking and sensory-based reactivity and curiosity is drawn step by step into a lust and a taken-up challenge that appears to be difficult and alien to her nature yet also more generative of a depth and breadth of ideas, in its reaction with her and her mind, for this very alienness and difficulty. Additionally, the scene-settings of the story do a good job of world-building the basic expectations of reality both mythological and technological — the city streets at afternoon, dawn, and night; a department store full of advertisements; a teenage girl’s bedroom during a phone conversation with her friend; a formal debate event steeped in a strong but unexplained local scene’s discourse. The themes and invocation of particular words, images, and senses; such as that of eyes; of seeing and looking — mostly one-sidedly, with one being gazed upon secretly by another (Tamar) without making mutual eye contact; of being interrupted or turning around or aside; of transitions from place to place or night to day and of threshold spaces; of hardness and movement; of criminality, of the sun; is quite rich and evocative, and foreshadowing of Tamar’s price by seeing on Erezel Plateau.

Another aspect this story elaborates on is the relationship between Tamar and Eliya before the events of Stars, where the unexamined-so-far but clearly fraught, overbearing, suffocating elements of their relationship are depicted in their midst rather than in post-mortem and reunion.

However while the Tamar and Eliya relationship window is intriguing fodder, the star of the story is Safirah. The name is nearly Sefirah, as in the singular of Sefirot, and their personality is imposingly prophetic and sharp, an intellectual of a type who is youngish and therefore not fully established in their theories, but already impatient and secure in what they disagree with and what they aren’t convinced by. They behave in recognizable (to myself) overreactive, suspicious ways and vaguely mention being the recipient of threats and hate mail — one of the only whispers of societal violence that appears in Šehhinah, possibly the only one outside of child abuse. Not only are their words more prophetic of The Lives That Argue For Us, the final book of the series, than any other character, their very presence is as well:

And their left arm is blackened.
Well, it’s more like a reddish-brown, with a slight, flickering glow under the skin. But it’s burned, burned horribly—the skin twists and turns, and it’s easy to see how it wouldn’t be usable at all. Adding to that impression is the fact that Safirah doesn’t move it, not even for balance: it really was their price, then.
Her breath catches. It’s beautiful.
Actually, as Tamar continues to look at it—she’s allowed to, she reminds herself, no one will even care or notice—she realizes that the twists on the skin are actually moving. There are patterns there, patterns of flames and not of flames at all; Tamar squints at it. She continues to watch Safirah’s arm as the debaters take their seats, trying to follow the patterns there. She’s becoming half-convinced that they mean something—

[…]

….she focuses on Safirah’s face, trying to discern if there’s anything in the way they smile that hints at the power underneath them. The power that has burned them, changed them. She looks long and hard, finding her eyes drawn to Safirah’s. They seem hard, somehow. Like diamonds.

[….]

The glow beneath their skin moves too, in a different way from the marks on the skin itself. In the glow also, Tamar swears she can see patterns, if only it would stop moving for a second. She wonders if they’re the same patterns as the ones on the skin. Do they complement each other? Do they mean something different?

All in all a startlingly evocative and compelling window into the world and themes of Šehhinah for a story that has such a seemingly narrow focus and narratively-utilitarian premise and plotline.