Dream, Memory, and Blood (Olkhon Island | Baikal Lake, Siberia)

[Thalia]

Pain jarred her spine at the heaviness of her landing. Thalia was a little dazed. She didn’t cross the dizzy bridge of memory to discern exactly what happened, but her skin smarted and Tristan was fussing. Thalia’s eyes remained wide, pulled to the fantastical vision she could barely take a blink from, at least until he gently gripped her chin. A few murmured “ows” punctuated his grumbling exploration. She had an impressive threshold for pain, though it was easier to ignore when someone wasn’t poking every bruise sustained since leaving Moscow. Eventually she wrapped her fingers around his tree-trunk wrist, though not to pull him free; it was to get his attention. “Have you ever seen something so beautiful?” she asked in earnest. He lived fully in the light of a world she had only ever seen in margins, and the glimpse of such a marvellous truth left her breathless. Wonder blossomed the beginnings of a smile.

The screech a moment later made her flinch, though only in the reflexive way of something unexpected. She looked back to where the creature rose high from the pool. Water slewed down the curves of her torso, and she held something, though Thalia barely glanced at what. Captivation left her senseless until a monotone voice filled the air around them.

{I S  S H E  O K A Y?}

“Are you okay?” she replied, surprised. The surreality struck her hard for a moment then, but she barely missed a beat before she simply adapted. “I’m tougher than I look,” she added. ”And I guess maybe so are you.” She was vaguely aware of a weight on her shoulder then, needle-sharp claws pinching a perch with a little more ferocity than was strictly necessary. A head pushed through the wild tangle of her hair to butt against her cheek. She felt it, but in her peripheral the cat was like mist, almost incorporeal.

[Stupid deaf Thalia. Stupid slow Tristan.]

{T H E  L I G H T  B I N D S  M E.  I  C A N N O T  D I S O B E Y.  D O  N O T  T O U C H  I T}

Confusion reigned for a moment, before her hand reached to clasp the tentacle-shaped blotches on her ankle. Memories lit like dull sparks in the darkness. “Oh,” she said in apparent understanding, though a moment later her brow lowered in the consideration of what exactly that even meant. She shifted her weight to sit on her knees. It was cold where the overspill lapped, but she wasn’t sure she trusted her feet, and she was wet anyway from having fallen. She looked at Tristan for his reaction; wondered at what he had imagined to find when he travelled across continents on the whim of a dream, and what it meant to him.

“We dreamed of you,” she said to the guardian. “You were afraid. You have a child. Who has hurt you?”