Wanderlust (Olkhon Island | Baikal Lake, Siberia)

[Thalia]

Aylin & Thalia

She made the last ferry by the skin of her teeth.

It was late afternoon by the time Thalia stepped foot back on the island. She paused to feed the goats milling plaintively about the yard before she headed up to her room, calling a breezy greeting through to Anastacia as she did so. A confluence of loose sketches were strewn like a small hurricane blew through in her absence, precisely as she had left it. She’d refrained from tacking them up on the walls, given it was not her house, but they drifted across practically every other surface. Tentacles and scales, mostly. The glitter of clear waters. Strange symbols.

She ought to shower and sort the knots bound to have snarled up in her damp hair, but she perched on the bed instead, wallet in hand, and began to sort travel arrangements for tomorrow. Whether or not Kemala chose to contact her, Thalia would still go. She didn’t know what else to do.

The phone began to ring while it was still in her hands. Her chest tightened with unusual reluctance; she never avoided her sister’s calls, not on purpose, but their last conversation had been unpleasant. I have a commission from the Church had soothed troubled waters for a while, bringing some promise of normalcy to her abrupt flight from Moscow. But Thalia couldn’t lie, and certainly not to Aylin. I met the Pope and he came all the way from Rome to save my soul had resulted in stony silence on the line, no matter how Thalia had tried to explain it in a way that made sense -- or at least to frame it in a way Aylin could accept. Inevitably she’d found herself drifting away from the parts that sounded craziest. It left a chasm between them; one there had never been before.

“Hey Aylin.”

They spoke pleasantries for a while. Thalia drew her legs up on the bed, watching the bright tops of roofs she could see from the window, and the smudge of blue beyond. Her sister had always been firm ground to Thalia’s flighty indulgences, and inevitably the net that caught her when she fell. For most of Thalia’s adult life it had just been the two of them. So the words, when they came, didn’t surprise:

“Please just come home.”

A sigh upended from her lungs. Thalia had no compelling reason to stay, beyond a bunch of drawings and a feeling. Nothing had happened when she went to the lakeside. Or nothing she could articulate, anyway. She pressed a hand over her head as Aylin continued into the silence, knowing there was nothing she could say to placate her sister’s worry. She wasn’t completely oblivious; she understood how strange it must seem -- to Aylin especially, given her work at the Guardian.

“Sometimes I don’t think you remember how worried mum and dad were about you when we were growing up. The things you’d come out with, Thally. The things you insisted you saw.” 

There was a soft plea in Aylin’s voice, but also that smooth kind of carefulness that sounded like her doctor’s voice, as if she soothed a wild animal. Thalia closed her eyes tight. Didn’t think about those hazy childhood memories, or how normality had been something learned; squeezing between the lines, choosing what to say and to whom upon discovery of how and why she was different. Those differences had never troubled her; they made her feel alive, just a strange lens through which she sometimes viewed the world. At least until she’d learned to fear it all.

The power had unravelled all that. And she wasn’t afraid anymore, just very alone.

“I’m not saying there isn’t something strange going on,” Aylin added quietly. “I know that sometimes your drawings are…” 

The words faded into discomfort. The resultant silence felt like a universe, with Thalia very small inside it. Aylin didn’t want to understand, or couldn’t -- and Thalia didn’t need her to. But right at that moment, she was desperate for her to simply accept.

"Like Yana,” she supplied, eventually. Her chin rested on her knees. She tried not to think about the tattoo inked on her back.

"Like Yana," Aylin agreed. “And you’re a channeler. That’s real enough. But think about your behaviour, Thalia. It isn’t normal to pack a bag in the middle of the afternoon and end up in Estonia. And now you’re in Siberia! Less than a month ago you had an utter break--”

“-- you think I need to go back on the meds.”

The static said all it needed to, and Thalia felt her heart sink.

“I’m just worried. Do you even remember what happened the day you first came to Moscow? You draw strange things, but that doesn’t mean you have to go off and chase them down. Let me make the arrangements. We can talk about this better in person...”

Even Nox had cautioned her decision to go alone -- out of care, she knew, not disbelief of her conviction. The Pope’s words stung a reminder too; that she was dabbling in things beyond her, and walking resolutely into danger. She’d told him she didn’t need saving, surprised more than anything. She was but a drop in the ocean, whatever her oddness. And she was tired of being told to be careful.

She could go home.

She should go home.

The thing was, Thalia needed to know if it was real.

When the call ended she stared a moment at the phone. Did not glance at the artwork all around. There was still plenty of light. She slung her bag on her back, and headed out the door for the trail.