06-23-2020, 09:40 PM
Music hummed softly to Thalia’s tuneless accompaniment. Her head tilted, and she squinted at the array of images tacked haphazardly in a great patchwork on the hotel wall. She’d had to perch on precarious tiptoe from the plastic desk chair in order to squish them all in, some sheets now torn into smaller pieces as she’d tried to group them in some semblance of… something. Her entire life these kinds of sketches had been nothing but an exorcism, forgotten as soon as they bled from her fingertips. She’d never even looked back at them until recently, when a break-in and that small glow of discovered power changed her life. Well, ruined it at the time.
Over the last few months a slow curiosity had begun to burn, though; wary to start, uncertain of what monsters might lurk in the hidden depths (because literal; actual, literal monsters lurked in the depths). Even back in Moscow she’d known there were truths here; faces that belonged to living breathing people, places she suspected were real places -- with enough whimsical conviction that she’d dropped all the threads of her life to begin a journey with no clear destination in order to find out.
She’d long suspected (and denied) something prescient when need ripped the images from her whether she wished it or not. But she’d never imagined there were stories buried in the rest, or at least had never admitted the possibility to herself. Nothing ever fled her pencil chronologically, or she did not think so anyway -- usually images were discarded the moment the picture felt finished, and she doodled in margins when she ran out of clean paper, or on receipts or napkins or her own skin. It happened frequently enough that a morning’s work might end up spread like a dandelion’s seeds blown in the wind, so it didn’t make the attempt at rearrangement now very easy. That, and she drew so much.
Hence the currently strewn chaos.
For the last few minutes Thalia had reached to add annotations with the stub of a pencil, squeezing the cramped writing around the drawings wherever she may with what scant information she had.
Il Palazzo Apostolico di Castel Gandolfo.
Noctua.
River in Viljandi, Estonia.
Tuuru. Of the outrageous spoken things. Awoken from slumber.
The guarded column.
The crystal shard, given and gone?
It left volumes of unknown, though. The black pillar that in some scenes twisted into the shadow of a scowling man, and the isolated cottage with the red door she had first drawn on the train; the ethereal woman perfected at Koit and Eha’s breakfast table before Koit plucked the pencil from the pinch of her throbbing hand. So much water; rivers and lakes and glaciers, the foamy crash of waves, the burble of a spring’s mouth. The mournful girl whom Aylin had claimed to be a patient before Thalia left Moscow, never investigated at the time. A man with bright golden eyes, and an old and grizzled wolf the size of a bear with his teeth bared in a snarl. Small sooty creatures that were sometimes curled like contented cats, and sometimes bristled into terrifying concoctions of teeth and claws and eyes. A man with a burning gaze, and a boy who cowered away terrified and shared the same features.
And it was all real?
A whole other life. Thalia stared up at the strange tapestry, and felt herself overwhelmed; not, this time, with fear -- but with wonder.
She flopped back on the bed with a sigh. Her nature was not solitary, though she was used to being alone. Fact was, she’d spent most of her adult life avoiding the sort of attachments that made new friends and acquaintances appear unbidden during the ritual of her morning sketches. There was just Aylin to spill her soul to, and Thalia did, for they’d always been close despite their (very) different natures. But she knew she couldn’t share any of this. Her sister wouldn’t understand, for one -- though she did always try her very best -- but worse than that it would only pierce her with the kind of worry that made Thalia feel a little shy of sane.
Nox was actually the first real friend she’d had in a long time, and she knew he would understand this strange and rather wonderful world she found herself perched on the threshold of (or at least he wouldn’t call her crazy), but he had his own worries and she’d already splurged all her anxieties on him once of late. And of course the person she wanted to speak to was his high holiness of the sharp smirk (Patricius I, originally born Philip Patrick Sullivan, though neither of those names really fit). Maybe he would not entertain the furious flurry of her curious nature, but he was the only one she knew who strode the same distant world -- and more, saw the things she saw.
Unfortunately, aside from the fact Mass had gone on quite forever -- and Father Ando, after that, a veritable eternity -- it was by now the twinkling early hours of the morning. Nor was it like she had any way to contact him.
She fiddled with her phone for a while, tried to slip into the realm of a book, but found herself drawn back to watching the display of sketches. Shadows curled their edges, smudging them into something otherworldly, and for the first time she was compelled to the heart of such a mystery. To want to understand. In some places her eye wandered like the contours of a map -- or a timeline, akin to the flickering pages of a flip book. But it was all theoretical. From the things he had said, Noctua clearly remembered this other world and its happenings when he awoke, but nothing stirred for Thalia. Feelings, maybe; a sense of familiarity that she had always assumed was because the art originated from within her. In some places, the more she stared the more she had a sense of some intangible connection, but like deja vu it slipped to nothing but the remnant of stirred emotions.
Strangely, it mostly filled her with a sense of loss.
It was too late (early) to call anyone, even Aylin just to hear her sister’s voice, but she could not settle either. In the end she did summon up Nox’s contact, but only fired off a message to sate the pang of disconnect sitting in her chest.
@"Nox" You will NEVER guess who I met today
Then, on a whim.
@"Sage" Hi :)
She let the wallet fall away, and sat up cross-legged amongst the blankets of the bed, restless. A faint breeze stirred through the window, and soft music continued to fill the loud silence. Thalia leaned to pluck the burn box from the nightstand, where it had been perched alongside the twig Noctua had given her at the church. He probably had not meant it as a gift, yet she was unable to let it go. “And you,” she said, twisting the ornament lifted from inside the box into her grip. It sparked dull in the moonlight, but only in a natural way; it did not shine as she knew it could. “What on earth are you?”
She did not think of the symbol burnt into her hand, or the warnings Noctua issued; that she meddled in things she ought not. That the theft would have consequences.
Her eyes were beginning to burn tired, yet she felt strange about sleeping, knowing now that her soul would fly somewhere unknown; that the images likely to spill forth tomorrow were not the workings of an idle mind, or simple dreams she never remembered nor cared to, but evidence of an entire other existence.
Thalia woke sprawled atop the blankets, still fully clothed. Blinking with grogginess she rubbed a palm over her face -- and winced at the pain, because of course it was the wrong hand -- and then pushed herself up. The curtains were still thrust wide from last night’s moonlit vigil, and brightness streamed in now, which right then seemed mostly an affront to all her senses. She rolled, reached wide for the bag that was somewhere on the floor, but ended up shuffling off the bed into a heap beside it. She pushed the messy curls from her face as she pulled the sketchbook into her lap. The new, creamy paper slipped like silk beneath her fingers, and she began to sketch. It took her a while to wake up properly, the motions automatic to begin, but once she did it was probably the first time she had ever really taken the care to consider what she drew while she was engaged in the creation. No urgency pushed her to haste, and she remained bundled on the floor, the book balanced on her knees. Morning light peered in bright over her shoulders as the imagery took shape.
A naked woman’s torso was first, wrapped in delicate scales that made sharp patterns on her skin. There was strength to her limbs, a wild sort of beauty that was also compellingly alien. Thick tentacles swarmed from her lower half, both elegant and powerful, and her shifting stance had a sense of guardianship -- in fact there was a spear held tight in her very human hand. But oh, her face. Thalia’s pencil lingered in particular over the emotion, and it filled several pages The pucker of snarling lips. The flash of fierce eyes, searching. Tendrils floated like seaweed around her angled cheekbones, framing a moment of gut-wrenching distress.
It reminded her of the ijiraq queen’s anguish; such loss, or the fear of it.
A landscape unfurled next. Land curving around water in a distinct semi-circle, the waves cupped within perfectly clear as though made of glass. Thalia stared a long time at that, pulse rushing funny in her veins, then flipped back to the creature’s face. Nox warned her against naivety when she’d laughed about the faerie doors in her nana’s stories and her childhood fancy to travel through one. And he’d assured her of the ijiraq’s nature despite that Thalia had only seen pain in the twist of her features. Thalia believed him: Nox’s own fear of the creature and its feeding had been a palpable thing. Yet it didn’t dislodge the knot of empathy in her chest. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders; had told her he was in the business of killing only the threats to humanity. But how did you tell the difference?
With a brief frown she tore the drawing from the book, despite the intention she’d had to keep everything in a neater order from now on, then folded it carefully and stuffed the square into her jean’s pocket. There was a restless itch in her now, but the drip of images had not yet done.
More followed, though of a different mood. Bubbles zipping from a grinning mouth, seen deep underwater. Shoulders wrapped with tribal markings she recognised from previous drawings. The eyes, too, smudged with warpaint like he was touched ancient. Then hands on skin, before Thalia felt a flutter of amused understanding. It wasn’t the first time her work strayed into more sensual territory, though it by no means happened often. She’d shared glimpses with Aylin before, of others, much to her sister’s furious blushes (admittedly it entertained Thalia at the time). Her breathing deepened a little, like the feeling evoked still lingered in her body. Or maybe it was just the new understanding that this was as real as everything else, not some plucked fancy from the recesses of imagination. It flushed her very warm, though not with embarrassment. Curious to think that somewhere out there, this man woke up and would remember, and she did not.
It was late morning by the time she showered and stepped out from the hotel lobby. Her hand cramped sore beneath the fresh bandages, but she didn’t know how to ignore the flood of morning drawing beyond taking it as methodical and slow as she had this morning -- really looking at each image before she moved on to the next, trying to coax some futile understanding from the lines and shape. Some spilled forth in detail, like the water woman’s features, while others remained faster impressions. They weren’t prescient, they didn’t have that feel, but they lingered in a way that kept dragging her attention down to the symbol on her palm. After a while she stopped trying to untangle the emotion. It was not like she could ask Noctua for a translation this time.
Speaking of, she didn’t know how long Patricius I would stay now that he had found her, and she was not willing to be the one to abandon whatever wriggling tributaries of fate had brought them together. Whimsy stole her attention in myriad directions, including the new lake, but she headed first back to the church.
Thalia took a meandering route through Tartu. She’d been in the city a number of days now, but the inquisitive pull of her nature did not dissipate with familiarity. Small things captured her attention, unmoved by the push and pull of busy weekend traffic thickened by summer tourists. She moved against the tide, caught in her own oblivious current. Noctua pricked the last bubble of fear she’d been protecting herself with, and in this newly awoken world she drifted. She thought about the flood he’d told her he’d seen before the tsunami broke headlines, then of the fire and ashes rolling like smoke through her work, and the way it shuddered her with horror. The images on the cottage walls; great animals, and the snare of vines feeding into a caged heart. It should have been terrifying. It had been terrifying. Yet it no longer scared her in the same way.
Her stride paused abruptly on the cobbled stones of the city’s centre, bumped a little from behind for the suddenness of her stop in the street, though she barely noticed. Fingers reached out to the small green shoot that stole her attention, little more than a weed squeezed through the gaps in brick in the building’s outer wall. She touched one of the fragile leaves, felt herself splinter into a thousand pieces for an epiphany she could not quite grasp beyond a sense of feeling. That of tentative hope. Something too thin to hold on to yet, though.
As she finally arrived at the church, a trio of children jostled passed in a flurry of laughs and taunts, and she twisted to briefly follow their exuberant path as she headed into the grounds. Another child had been left behind in the playset, sat in the sandbox by which Noctua had led her yesterday. Thalia glanced around as she wandered in, as though expecting to find the Pope still wearing deep tracks into the circular path around the church’s garden. Rather than ascend the steps inside, as had been her intention, she diverted to plonk herself down on the swing. Her heels dug into the dirt as she pushed herself lazily back and forth, hands curled light around the chains. “Hi.”
The boy scrubbed a vicious hand across his cheek as his head snapped up. He was probably no more than seven or eight, with wispy blonde hair peeking beneath a cap shading the sun from his eyes. He glared at her as she grinned. Or maybe it was only squinting, for he now slid a pair of thick glasses back up his nose. His pale skin blotched pink beneath the tears; he might have been cast from pale marble. “My name’s Thalia.”
He sniffed and mumbled something lost beneath the creaking of the swing set.
Thalia had been the odd child once, grown into what most would consider an odd woman, and she recognised the kinship -- though she didn’t have much in the way of comfort or advice for she supposed she had never really tried to swim in the same currents as everyone else. She wasn’t sure what he would do with pity anyway; it would only serve as a bandage for a moment, and it would not heal the wound. “Were you at mass yesterday? I couldn’t understand the Latin, but it sounded grand. I don’t really know anyone here, so I hope you don’t mind my company. I’ve been studying at the university. Folklore, mostly. Stories are important, don’t you think?”
“I’m Rasmus,” he said, a little tremulously it had to be said. His eyes didn’t trust behind the thick screen of his glasses, and he seemed quite intent on hiding the evidence of his crying, even if the wrack of it still punctuated his chest beneath the creak of Thalia’s lazy back and forth on the swing.
“Rasmus.” She nodded. “You know, Rasmus, I read once that the earth was born from an egg, and it grew up around the great pillar of a tree. The skies above us are nailed to the North Star, and the Milky Way is but the reach of a branch across infinity. Can you imagine that? A very important tree.”
He blinked, looking at her a little confused (understandable). The hitch of his breath began to calm though, if he still looked rather sad. And very alone. He dug his fists a little into the sand, clearly uncertain of what to make of her company -- she was a stranger after all. Idly Thalia wondered where his parents were, though likely if he was of the neighbourhood kids Father Ando would be able to see him safely home if he needed it. She dug her heels in, coming to a stop. A smile played mischief on her lips as an idea blossomed. “Do you think you can keep a secret safe for me?”
Without waiting for an answer she grinned impishly, finger pressed to her lips as she slipped down from the swing. She sat cross-legged in the dirt opposite, coils of hair curled into the crook of her elbows. He blinked curiously back at her from the sandbox.
“A secret?”
“Absolutely. You can’t tell anyone, though, okay? Because it might get me in trouble. But you’ll have to give me a minute. I’m not very good at this yet.” Which was possibly an understatement given the very basic grasp Emily had taught her back in Moscow. She cast a quick glance over at the church building, recalling Nox’s warnings, but it was unlikely anyone was paying attention. And children couldn’t be Atharim, right? “Sometimes people don’t understand different, and we can be cruel to the things we don’t understand. Which is why I have to keep it secret. It’s scary, and it can scare others too.” She leaned to whisper the words, cupping her hands and abruptly realising the dual task of talking and reaching for the light was not quite so easy as she expected. “Seeing the good in the scary? That’s a choice though. It can be lonely, until you find the right people -- the ones who see the world like you do. Sometimes they are not who you expect at all.” She grinned, given the strange rush of the past few days, and the entire reason she was sitting on church grounds at all. Then she quietened for a moment, watching her own waiting hands, letting herself fall like a river rolling in its banks. A breath left when it blossomed, and the threads began to criss-cross like an artist’s pen. Bubbles erupted from her palm, alight with whimsical colour as they took up on the wind. “But Rasmus,” she added, smiling with delight as her gaze followed their path before falling back down to the boy, “even then, we have to be prepared to help ourselves first. That part’s important.”
Over the last few months a slow curiosity had begun to burn, though; wary to start, uncertain of what monsters might lurk in the hidden depths (because literal; actual, literal monsters lurked in the depths). Even back in Moscow she’d known there were truths here; faces that belonged to living breathing people, places she suspected were real places -- with enough whimsical conviction that she’d dropped all the threads of her life to begin a journey with no clear destination in order to find out.
She’d long suspected (and denied) something prescient when need ripped the images from her whether she wished it or not. But she’d never imagined there were stories buried in the rest, or at least had never admitted the possibility to herself. Nothing ever fled her pencil chronologically, or she did not think so anyway -- usually images were discarded the moment the picture felt finished, and she doodled in margins when she ran out of clean paper, or on receipts or napkins or her own skin. It happened frequently enough that a morning’s work might end up spread like a dandelion’s seeds blown in the wind, so it didn’t make the attempt at rearrangement now very easy. That, and she drew so much.
Hence the currently strewn chaos.
For the last few minutes Thalia had reached to add annotations with the stub of a pencil, squeezing the cramped writing around the drawings wherever she may with what scant information she had.
Il Palazzo Apostolico di Castel Gandolfo.
Noctua.
River in Viljandi, Estonia.
Tuuru. Of the outrageous spoken things. Awoken from slumber.
The guarded column.
The crystal shard, given and gone?
It left volumes of unknown, though. The black pillar that in some scenes twisted into the shadow of a scowling man, and the isolated cottage with the red door she had first drawn on the train; the ethereal woman perfected at Koit and Eha’s breakfast table before Koit plucked the pencil from the pinch of her throbbing hand. So much water; rivers and lakes and glaciers, the foamy crash of waves, the burble of a spring’s mouth. The mournful girl whom Aylin had claimed to be a patient before Thalia left Moscow, never investigated at the time. A man with bright golden eyes, and an old and grizzled wolf the size of a bear with his teeth bared in a snarl. Small sooty creatures that were sometimes curled like contented cats, and sometimes bristled into terrifying concoctions of teeth and claws and eyes. A man with a burning gaze, and a boy who cowered away terrified and shared the same features.
And it was all real?
A whole other life. Thalia stared up at the strange tapestry, and felt herself overwhelmed; not, this time, with fear -- but with wonder.
She flopped back on the bed with a sigh. Her nature was not solitary, though she was used to being alone. Fact was, she’d spent most of her adult life avoiding the sort of attachments that made new friends and acquaintances appear unbidden during the ritual of her morning sketches. There was just Aylin to spill her soul to, and Thalia did, for they’d always been close despite their (very) different natures. But she knew she couldn’t share any of this. Her sister wouldn’t understand, for one -- though she did always try her very best -- but worse than that it would only pierce her with the kind of worry that made Thalia feel a little shy of sane.
Nox was actually the first real friend she’d had in a long time, and she knew he would understand this strange and rather wonderful world she found herself perched on the threshold of (or at least he wouldn’t call her crazy), but he had his own worries and she’d already splurged all her anxieties on him once of late. And of course the person she wanted to speak to was his high holiness of the sharp smirk (Patricius I, originally born Philip Patrick Sullivan, though neither of those names really fit). Maybe he would not entertain the furious flurry of her curious nature, but he was the only one she knew who strode the same distant world -- and more, saw the things she saw.
Unfortunately, aside from the fact Mass had gone on quite forever -- and Father Ando, after that, a veritable eternity -- it was by now the twinkling early hours of the morning. Nor was it like she had any way to contact him.
She fiddled with her phone for a while, tried to slip into the realm of a book, but found herself drawn back to watching the display of sketches. Shadows curled their edges, smudging them into something otherworldly, and for the first time she was compelled to the heart of such a mystery. To want to understand. In some places her eye wandered like the contours of a map -- or a timeline, akin to the flickering pages of a flip book. But it was all theoretical. From the things he had said, Noctua clearly remembered this other world and its happenings when he awoke, but nothing stirred for Thalia. Feelings, maybe; a sense of familiarity that she had always assumed was because the art originated from within her. In some places, the more she stared the more she had a sense of some intangible connection, but like deja vu it slipped to nothing but the remnant of stirred emotions.
Strangely, it mostly filled her with a sense of loss.
It was too late (early) to call anyone, even Aylin just to hear her sister’s voice, but she could not settle either. In the end she did summon up Nox’s contact, but only fired off a message to sate the pang of disconnect sitting in her chest.
@"Nox" You will NEVER guess who I met today
Then, on a whim.
@"Sage" Hi :)
She let the wallet fall away, and sat up cross-legged amongst the blankets of the bed, restless. A faint breeze stirred through the window, and soft music continued to fill the loud silence. Thalia leaned to pluck the burn box from the nightstand, where it had been perched alongside the twig Noctua had given her at the church. He probably had not meant it as a gift, yet she was unable to let it go. “And you,” she said, twisting the ornament lifted from inside the box into her grip. It sparked dull in the moonlight, but only in a natural way; it did not shine as she knew it could. “What on earth are you?”
She did not think of the symbol burnt into her hand, or the warnings Noctua issued; that she meddled in things she ought not. That the theft would have consequences.
Her eyes were beginning to burn tired, yet she felt strange about sleeping, knowing now that her soul would fly somewhere unknown; that the images likely to spill forth tomorrow were not the workings of an idle mind, or simple dreams she never remembered nor cared to, but evidence of an entire other existence.
[[Soteria]]
Thalia woke sprawled atop the blankets, still fully clothed. Blinking with grogginess she rubbed a palm over her face -- and winced at the pain, because of course it was the wrong hand -- and then pushed herself up. The curtains were still thrust wide from last night’s moonlit vigil, and brightness streamed in now, which right then seemed mostly an affront to all her senses. She rolled, reached wide for the bag that was somewhere on the floor, but ended up shuffling off the bed into a heap beside it. She pushed the messy curls from her face as she pulled the sketchbook into her lap. The new, creamy paper slipped like silk beneath her fingers, and she began to sketch. It took her a while to wake up properly, the motions automatic to begin, but once she did it was probably the first time she had ever really taken the care to consider what she drew while she was engaged in the creation. No urgency pushed her to haste, and she remained bundled on the floor, the book balanced on her knees. Morning light peered in bright over her shoulders as the imagery took shape.
A naked woman’s torso was first, wrapped in delicate scales that made sharp patterns on her skin. There was strength to her limbs, a wild sort of beauty that was also compellingly alien. Thick tentacles swarmed from her lower half, both elegant and powerful, and her shifting stance had a sense of guardianship -- in fact there was a spear held tight in her very human hand. But oh, her face. Thalia’s pencil lingered in particular over the emotion, and it filled several pages The pucker of snarling lips. The flash of fierce eyes, searching. Tendrils floated like seaweed around her angled cheekbones, framing a moment of gut-wrenching distress.
It reminded her of the ijiraq queen’s anguish; such loss, or the fear of it.
A landscape unfurled next. Land curving around water in a distinct semi-circle, the waves cupped within perfectly clear as though made of glass. Thalia stared a long time at that, pulse rushing funny in her veins, then flipped back to the creature’s face. Nox warned her against naivety when she’d laughed about the faerie doors in her nana’s stories and her childhood fancy to travel through one. And he’d assured her of the ijiraq’s nature despite that Thalia had only seen pain in the twist of her features. Thalia believed him: Nox’s own fear of the creature and its feeding had been a palpable thing. Yet it didn’t dislodge the knot of empathy in her chest. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders; had told her he was in the business of killing only the threats to humanity. But how did you tell the difference?
With a brief frown she tore the drawing from the book, despite the intention she’d had to keep everything in a neater order from now on, then folded it carefully and stuffed the square into her jean’s pocket. There was a restless itch in her now, but the drip of images had not yet done.
More followed, though of a different mood. Bubbles zipping from a grinning mouth, seen deep underwater. Shoulders wrapped with tribal markings she recognised from previous drawings. The eyes, too, smudged with warpaint like he was touched ancient. Then hands on skin, before Thalia felt a flutter of amused understanding. It wasn’t the first time her work strayed into more sensual territory, though it by no means happened often. She’d shared glimpses with Aylin before, of others, much to her sister’s furious blushes (admittedly it entertained Thalia at the time). Her breathing deepened a little, like the feeling evoked still lingered in her body. Or maybe it was just the new understanding that this was as real as everything else, not some plucked fancy from the recesses of imagination. It flushed her very warm, though not with embarrassment. Curious to think that somewhere out there, this man woke up and would remember, and she did not.
It was late morning by the time she showered and stepped out from the hotel lobby. Her hand cramped sore beneath the fresh bandages, but she didn’t know how to ignore the flood of morning drawing beyond taking it as methodical and slow as she had this morning -- really looking at each image before she moved on to the next, trying to coax some futile understanding from the lines and shape. Some spilled forth in detail, like the water woman’s features, while others remained faster impressions. They weren’t prescient, they didn’t have that feel, but they lingered in a way that kept dragging her attention down to the symbol on her palm. After a while she stopped trying to untangle the emotion. It was not like she could ask Noctua for a translation this time.
Speaking of, she didn’t know how long Patricius I would stay now that he had found her, and she was not willing to be the one to abandon whatever wriggling tributaries of fate had brought them together. Whimsy stole her attention in myriad directions, including the new lake, but she headed first back to the church.
Thalia took a meandering route through Tartu. She’d been in the city a number of days now, but the inquisitive pull of her nature did not dissipate with familiarity. Small things captured her attention, unmoved by the push and pull of busy weekend traffic thickened by summer tourists. She moved against the tide, caught in her own oblivious current. Noctua pricked the last bubble of fear she’d been protecting herself with, and in this newly awoken world she drifted. She thought about the flood he’d told her he’d seen before the tsunami broke headlines, then of the fire and ashes rolling like smoke through her work, and the way it shuddered her with horror. The images on the cottage walls; great animals, and the snare of vines feeding into a caged heart. It should have been terrifying. It had been terrifying. Yet it no longer scared her in the same way.
Her stride paused abruptly on the cobbled stones of the city’s centre, bumped a little from behind for the suddenness of her stop in the street, though she barely noticed. Fingers reached out to the small green shoot that stole her attention, little more than a weed squeezed through the gaps in brick in the building’s outer wall. She touched one of the fragile leaves, felt herself splinter into a thousand pieces for an epiphany she could not quite grasp beyond a sense of feeling. That of tentative hope. Something too thin to hold on to yet, though.
As she finally arrived at the church, a trio of children jostled passed in a flurry of laughs and taunts, and she twisted to briefly follow their exuberant path as she headed into the grounds. Another child had been left behind in the playset, sat in the sandbox by which Noctua had led her yesterday. Thalia glanced around as she wandered in, as though expecting to find the Pope still wearing deep tracks into the circular path around the church’s garden. Rather than ascend the steps inside, as had been her intention, she diverted to plonk herself down on the swing. Her heels dug into the dirt as she pushed herself lazily back and forth, hands curled light around the chains. “Hi.”
The boy scrubbed a vicious hand across his cheek as his head snapped up. He was probably no more than seven or eight, with wispy blonde hair peeking beneath a cap shading the sun from his eyes. He glared at her as she grinned. Or maybe it was only squinting, for he now slid a pair of thick glasses back up his nose. His pale skin blotched pink beneath the tears; he might have been cast from pale marble. “My name’s Thalia.”
He sniffed and mumbled something lost beneath the creaking of the swing set.
Thalia had been the odd child once, grown into what most would consider an odd woman, and she recognised the kinship -- though she didn’t have much in the way of comfort or advice for she supposed she had never really tried to swim in the same currents as everyone else. She wasn’t sure what he would do with pity anyway; it would only serve as a bandage for a moment, and it would not heal the wound. “Were you at mass yesterday? I couldn’t understand the Latin, but it sounded grand. I don’t really know anyone here, so I hope you don’t mind my company. I’ve been studying at the university. Folklore, mostly. Stories are important, don’t you think?”
“I’m Rasmus,” he said, a little tremulously it had to be said. His eyes didn’t trust behind the thick screen of his glasses, and he seemed quite intent on hiding the evidence of his crying, even if the wrack of it still punctuated his chest beneath the creak of Thalia’s lazy back and forth on the swing.
“Rasmus.” She nodded. “You know, Rasmus, I read once that the earth was born from an egg, and it grew up around the great pillar of a tree. The skies above us are nailed to the North Star, and the Milky Way is but the reach of a branch across infinity. Can you imagine that? A very important tree.”
He blinked, looking at her a little confused (understandable). The hitch of his breath began to calm though, if he still looked rather sad. And very alone. He dug his fists a little into the sand, clearly uncertain of what to make of her company -- she was a stranger after all. Idly Thalia wondered where his parents were, though likely if he was of the neighbourhood kids Father Ando would be able to see him safely home if he needed it. She dug her heels in, coming to a stop. A smile played mischief on her lips as an idea blossomed. “Do you think you can keep a secret safe for me?”
Without waiting for an answer she grinned impishly, finger pressed to her lips as she slipped down from the swing. She sat cross-legged in the dirt opposite, coils of hair curled into the crook of her elbows. He blinked curiously back at her from the sandbox.
“A secret?”
“Absolutely. You can’t tell anyone, though, okay? Because it might get me in trouble. But you’ll have to give me a minute. I’m not very good at this yet.” Which was possibly an understatement given the very basic grasp Emily had taught her back in Moscow. She cast a quick glance over at the church building, recalling Nox’s warnings, but it was unlikely anyone was paying attention. And children couldn’t be Atharim, right? “Sometimes people don’t understand different, and we can be cruel to the things we don’t understand. Which is why I have to keep it secret. It’s scary, and it can scare others too.” She leaned to whisper the words, cupping her hands and abruptly realising the dual task of talking and reaching for the light was not quite so easy as she expected. “Seeing the good in the scary? That’s a choice though. It can be lonely, until you find the right people -- the ones who see the world like you do. Sometimes they are not who you expect at all.” She grinned, given the strange rush of the past few days, and the entire reason she was sitting on church grounds at all. Then she quietened for a moment, watching her own waiting hands, letting herself fall like a river rolling in its banks. A breath left when it blossomed, and the threads began to criss-cross like an artist’s pen. Bubbles erupted from her palm, alight with whimsical colour as they took up on the wind. “But Rasmus,” she added, smiling with delight as her gaze followed their path before falling back down to the boy, “even then, we have to be prepared to help ourselves first. That part’s important.”
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