Hiding in Plain Sight

[Thalia]

Miraseia

She’d wedged herself between the crenellations, body squeezed tight, arms wrapped about her knees. The stone was still warmed, and no torchlight breached the heavy shadows, just a questing ripple of wind. It was a commonly sought perch when she disappeared in the night, and a route less frequented by guard patrols given the inhospitable cliffside the walls overlooked. Not that discovery was a fear to plague her; none would remember her if she did not choose it.

The sky was a dark and empty canvas above, the stars covered by cloud no matter how hard Mira peered for a particular one. Over her long years the world had reformed innumerable times around her; from the Tarandrelle’s foamy shores, to the vast halls of the White Tower, and yet that great vista of constellation always remained unchanged. She desired to spy the anchor of it, but it stayed elusive, leaving only the shuttered dark. Tonight Mira was reluctant to sleep. Pressure built like a promise behind her eyes, and she was wary of the tells in herself. She’d startled awake frequently of late; filled with a panic she could not explain, and which lingered long after the frenetic scribbling had stopped. The first premonition she had ever had, unknowingly so at the time, had occurred decades before fruition revealed it as such, so she could not say it meant anything imminent. Only that it disturbed her.

And Mira had good reason to fear. It wasn’t chance that brought them to this particular fort all those years ago. Whether Val truly believed she'd never asked, nor wanted to know, but she'd never had a name for the face until he told it.

Mira never repeated it; not even in her own thoughts, as though it might be akin to a summoning.

She’d long ago found a room in one of the neglected towers to stuff the papers she did not destroy. They were not hidden so much as she simply did not want to look upon the images of the man that haunted her, yet could neither abide watching it curl into flame and smoke in the forge or the hearth, like most else. Mira did not value isolation, but like as not the tower room was where she’d stay tonight, until the worst of the feelings passed like a bad fever. Sleep was a long way off though. For now she was content to hide in plain sight.