On Dibella

Sex goddess.

…Okay, so that’s unfair. Not inaccurate, but unfair, and vague. Sure, it’s easy to get hung up on the Dibellan Arts and the Bed-Wife thing and all that, but really, what does Dibella encompass? What is a Dibella, anyway? Why put her next to Kyne and Mara as the wives of Shor? What calling does she answer that cannot be summed up in four minutes of labored breathing? If Kyne is the mountain-steps of the Hawk who comes to take your throat, and Mara is the deep den of the Wolf whose pups shiver in the night, who is Dibella?

Dibella is the Moth who circles the campfire. She is the one who hikes sixteen miles up into absolute nowhere because she’s heard about a waterfall that can make the rocks themselves weep. She’s the one who stays out until three in the morning in the middle of December, wrapped up in six blankets and sipping hot chocolate, waiting to see the aurora from beginning to end. More importantly, she’s the one who drags you along to do so, and despite your complaining and your aching legs and your uncertainty, every single moment with her is etched into your retinas for the rest of your life. Your shoes are shot to hell from the rocks, and maybe you stopped feeling your face a couple hours ago, but the sight of the spray catching the sun as it rockets off the mountainside, or the first streak of light off the Perseid meteor shower, or the look on her face as she asks if it was worth it? That’s what makes it so.

And yet, she’s even more than that, because even that kind of beauty is surface-level. It’s amazing, it’s memorable, but Ada aren’t memories, right? So what is Dibella?

It’s about eight-thirty at night in the middle of June, and you’re sitting on a rock waiting for the sun to go down. You’ve seen a lot of sunsets in your time, no big deal, sure. But this time, the rock you’re on is in the middle of a gorge. On either side of you, mountains stretch up probably four thousand feet, covered in pines each the size of like two or three school buses. But right ahead of you, right between those mountains, is the mouth of the gorge, and through that is the sea. And the sun is going down right between those mountains, right on that horizon, and dear God, you’re right smack-the-fuck-dab in the front row seat. You’ve seen gold sunsets, you’ve seen purple sunsets, sure. This one? It stains the mountainsides the color of blush and lipstick. It takes an hour to get done showing off to you. You can’t look at the sun proper, but your gaze circles it like a moth, because that perfect crimson orb is straddling the ocean and staring right at you.

In that moment, you are acutely aware of the ten billion different circumstances that led to you being here for this, and you love each and every one of them. You love the car that got you there, you love the bullshit signage on the I-5 that got you lost about sixteen times so you got to your cabin late, and you especially love how there was just enough light to beckon you onto that hiking trail at eight-thirty at night, like a bridegroom being led by his necktie into a bedroom.

That’s what Dibella is. Not just sex, not just beauty, but the song of the universe that calls you to look at it, and be utterly enthralled. And you love every second of it.