05-27-2020, 03:19 PM
What a strange and prickly creature. So grumpy! Thalia watched the tug of his frown, pulled up around him like scales of armour she suddenly had the overwhelming desire to poke at gently and see what yielded. Much as she spied the shield of Koit’s stoic silences and Nox’s deep need for a slice of normality, she began to sense ripples of dissatisfaction in the contained irreverence of his manner. The priests bounced off him like the incessant drumming of rain. Thalia claimed an artist’s eye, but Aylin accused her of deeper sometimes; like a pet that curls up on an owner's lap in response to their sadness.
He did begin to talk about the drawings now, but it felt like an epitaph to a life she’d missed in a blink. The dissonance plucked at her; the sense of something missing, which honestly was not an unusual feeling for her. As with most inexplicable instincts she travelled through it, allowing it to wash her up where it may. She watched him raptly. His divination was met with surprising acceptance on her part, for the little trickle of impossible leaking into her life had long since flooded her banks full, and after a little flapping about in the new water, usually wondering if she would drown, Thalia adapted. The truths delivered now, despite shivering her with mindless panic moments before, seemed both a surer and calmer thing when they fell from his lips. His voice set things in a gentle order; a narrative to the frenzy of images bled from her fingertips.
“If you tell her what you’re looking for, and she finds it, I suppose our hands will know.” She spoke without thinking, glancing briefly at her bandaged palm in reflection that it might not be such a pleasant experience for her while the wound was still fresh, but the concern was fleeting. The offer to help came natural, and without strings; sincere. She did not hear the gasp, or was slow to react, or maybe too mired in the quiet churn of her own thoughts. When she did rouse to the new scenery, it was to wave a little at the handful of people milling beyond the church grounds; pulled by the Pope’s orbit like he were the sun and not at all concerned with her, but it seemed polite.
A smile hovered on the edges of her lips for the exchange, amused yet also troubled. Not for his exposure, though it clearly displeased him. “They always want something from you,” she said. He was the Pope, so of course they did, and that was not what she meant. The insight was more vague, slippery even as she voiced it.
She wondered if he’d countenance the brief escape she had been considering. If he even had anything approaching normal attire. Maybe. She doubted he really got to see the world beyond the pedestal of his station, and by the sharp chastisements he’d whipped at Father Ando he clearly detested the bureaucracy. He’d invited only the families of the children to mass, shunning the spectacle Ando had clearly desired. But she did not think it was a diversion he sought, even with the assent he had sighed upon her question. Thalia couldn’t bear the bars of such a cage; her spirit was of too free a nature, whether it was the liberty to shut out the world beyond her studio, or to bounce whimsically onto a train heading to anywhere. But he was not trapped; in fact she imagined he was exactly where he chose to be. Only.
Her lips tipped up into an easy smile. She sought his attention with earnestness despite the heavy weight of annoyance she imagined the bespectacled priest left in his wake. Likely he was cross at being overheard, but such was the nature of chance. He had the force of an ocean behind him, he would not be easily funnelled where they wished. And perhaps it was no bad thing to have been unceremoniously shoved out of his rut mere moments after agreeing with the sentiment.
“There are other sketches too,” she told him. He’d just agreed to return inside, and she wondered if that had been a subtle dismissal on the priest’s part, given the umbrella of odd he opened over both their heads. Not that the label seemed to bother her any more than it had him, by his tart reply. Either way, Thalia seemed in no hurry to take her leave, nor really to relinquish him to the wolves inside. “Ones without urgency. Manicured gardens and a lake blue as the sky. I’d like to see that some time.”
He did begin to talk about the drawings now, but it felt like an epitaph to a life she’d missed in a blink. The dissonance plucked at her; the sense of something missing, which honestly was not an unusual feeling for her. As with most inexplicable instincts she travelled through it, allowing it to wash her up where it may. She watched him raptly. His divination was met with surprising acceptance on her part, for the little trickle of impossible leaking into her life had long since flooded her banks full, and after a little flapping about in the new water, usually wondering if she would drown, Thalia adapted. The truths delivered now, despite shivering her with mindless panic moments before, seemed both a surer and calmer thing when they fell from his lips. His voice set things in a gentle order; a narrative to the frenzy of images bled from her fingertips.
“If you tell her what you’re looking for, and she finds it, I suppose our hands will know.” She spoke without thinking, glancing briefly at her bandaged palm in reflection that it might not be such a pleasant experience for her while the wound was still fresh, but the concern was fleeting. The offer to help came natural, and without strings; sincere. She did not hear the gasp, or was slow to react, or maybe too mired in the quiet churn of her own thoughts. When she did rouse to the new scenery, it was to wave a little at the handful of people milling beyond the church grounds; pulled by the Pope’s orbit like he were the sun and not at all concerned with her, but it seemed polite.
A smile hovered on the edges of her lips for the exchange, amused yet also troubled. Not for his exposure, though it clearly displeased him. “They always want something from you,” she said. He was the Pope, so of course they did, and that was not what she meant. The insight was more vague, slippery even as she voiced it.
She wondered if he’d countenance the brief escape she had been considering. If he even had anything approaching normal attire. Maybe. She doubted he really got to see the world beyond the pedestal of his station, and by the sharp chastisements he’d whipped at Father Ando he clearly detested the bureaucracy. He’d invited only the families of the children to mass, shunning the spectacle Ando had clearly desired. But she did not think it was a diversion he sought, even with the assent he had sighed upon her question. Thalia couldn’t bear the bars of such a cage; her spirit was of too free a nature, whether it was the liberty to shut out the world beyond her studio, or to bounce whimsically onto a train heading to anywhere. But he was not trapped; in fact she imagined he was exactly where he chose to be. Only.
Her lips tipped up into an easy smile. She sought his attention with earnestness despite the heavy weight of annoyance she imagined the bespectacled priest left in his wake. Likely he was cross at being overheard, but such was the nature of chance. He had the force of an ocean behind him, he would not be easily funnelled where they wished. And perhaps it was no bad thing to have been unceremoniously shoved out of his rut mere moments after agreeing with the sentiment.
“There are other sketches too,” she told him. He’d just agreed to return inside, and she wondered if that had been a subtle dismissal on the priest’s part, given the umbrella of odd he opened over both their heads. Not that the label seemed to bother her any more than it had him, by his tart reply. Either way, Thalia seemed in no hurry to take her leave, nor really to relinquish him to the wolves inside. “Ones without urgency. Manicured gardens and a lake blue as the sky. I’d like to see that some time.”