He’s standing on the wide step, the arch of the high stone doors curved over his head like a halo. The wind blows steadily and a swath of dry, yellowed dust wraps around his shoulders like an old shawl, obscuring his face. The building behind him moans and hazy sunlight spills over the roof, trickles down the steps to enfold the outline of his motionless body. Through the filter of decayed light, he stares at her as if he knows every secret she’s never told, as the pillars crack and the walls tumble to the ground in a cascade of bricks and mortar. Ash clouds billow around his feet.

His mouth curls up like a contented cat, and he says, “Do you believe me now?”

Helo had been ahead of her, running after Sharon – after the Cylon. Pounding, hard steps forward into the thick choking dust that smothered Caprica, that made Kara feel like she would never be able to breathe in fully again, like somehow the air would collect in her lungs and suffocate her. She’d kept going because they had a mission: they had to get the arrow to Kobol, and Helo was going with her because there was no way she was leaving him here.

The building looked tired and worn, like the blast of a million atomic particles of terror had stripped away its shine, its strength, and it was left huddled at the edge of the street, like it had already given up. Helo ran past it, didn’t even glance over at the sagging pillars, the cracked foundation. There was a Cylon on the roof, shooting at them, and she aimed, emptied her clip and watched as the metal form crumpled over the edge.

She yelled after Helo: No! and Come back! and We have to go now!

He didn’t listen, just kept on running. She kept running after him, stumbling along the pocked road, pebbles crunching under her boots.

Helo! The arrow, frak you, come on! She’s not worth it, dammit, Helo!

That’s when she saw him:

Leoben.

Leoben says around his smile:

 I told you I had a surprise for you. I told you that you are special, Kara.

She blinks the dust from her eyes and clenches her teeth, her body tense and ready to attack. He only shakes his head, slowly.

He is speaking, still, his mouth moving in a small circle as the wind carries his words toward her.

“You have to believe Kara, because it’s the only way to God. It’s all here, Kara, all around us” – he spreads his arms wide, palms open to the sky – “and you are part of it.”

She has dreamed of a stone door since childhood. A stone door, nestled into a curve of a moss-covered hill, like a baby tucked inside its mother’s arms. A stone door, high and thick, between two olive trees with twisted trunks, clawing their way into the sky like gnarled fingers. A stone door, warm under her palm when she presses her hand against it –

always then she wakes.

She wakes with the touch of smooth stone like a phantom on her fingertips, and her fingers clenched in the sheets, joints aching from the broken bones of her childhood.

She tells him, “I prayed for you, you bastard,” then bites her lip bloody at the admission.

He laughs at her. He asks, “Why? I told you before – this has all happened, and will again. Pray for yourself, Kara. Pray that you will see what I see – you have a purpose, Kara, and you must fulfill it. There are so many truths that you still don’t understand.”

He enrages her, he angers her; she has so many insults to throw at him she can’t get them all out of her crowded mouth. She roughly swipes the back of her hand over her copper-tinged lips and opens her mouth and screams, throws back her head and yells to the sky, to the Lords of Kobol, and when she looks back, he’s gone.

It is later, with the sting of a bullet in her side, when she sees him again. He stands at the edge of the forest, tree branches spread out behind him like angel’s wings.

She clutches at her shirt, feels the soft, fleshy wound open under her fingers, the blood spilling over her palms. Sweat rolls into her eyes and stings; her eyelids are heavy, hot, but she won’t close them, she won’t – not until she kills him, not until his face is wiped out of her mind.

He raises a closed hand, slowly uncurls his fingers to show her what’s inside: a lush burst of color, deep wine-red, bruised purple – so unexpected she isn’t sure it’s real. He cradles the plum in his fingers, smiles at her like he knows every truth she’ll never discover, and when he bites into it, juice runs down his stubbled chin like puss from a sore.

He extends his palm toward her like an offering, the plum split open in two mangled halves, and says, “The fruit of the land will bring comfort to the weary and parched. The streams of life overflow with abundant love, with the love of God, and all God’s children will eat of the fruit, and drink of the water. We are the trees, Kara. We are the wind, and the ground, and the sky. It’s part of His plan, for you, for all of us.”

She tries to yell:

Shut up! Just fraking shut up!

but all that comes from her mouth is a strangled, blood-filled gargle.

He waves his arms in a large circle, like he’s gathering the entirety of the cloudless sky into his embrace.

“I told you before, Kara, but you didn’t listen: This is not all that we are.” He pauses and cradles the broken fruit to his face, presses his nose into the exposed flesh and closes his eyes. “This is not all that we are,” he repeats, and sinks his teeth into the plum.

The dusty remains of civilization rise in the air and cling to Kara’s sweaty face. Leoben looks up at her one last time with a crooked smile that cuts into her like a knife. Behind him the trees fade into a pale grey. They take the shape of old, weathered stone doors, rising high into a sky that’s as gunmetal cold as a tomb, and as her eyes begin to close, Leoben fades into muted, darkened silence.

Title translation:

Navi (Niv Sefatayim) means: Prophet (Fruit of the Lips)