04-19-2025, 07:52 PM
Thalia laughed, soft as spring rain. She wasn’t sure which of them had actually begun the undressing last time, but they both knew she had been its unrepentant instigator. She was unembarrassed by her own desires, and the memory kindled was a pleasant one – she didn’t hide it from her expression. He lingered a moment longer, hands still cradled by both of hers, but it didn’t surprise her when he propelled himself back into action. She tilted her head to watch him roll his shoulder once he stood, knowing full well he was injured there. Tristan showed no obvious signs of pain, though he wasn’t likely to admit to it even if she called him out on the lie. If it was mobile it would heal with time and patience, and there was nothing either of them could do about it in the meantime, but it didn’t stop her looking, and knowing how he pushed himself.
She was learning him in increments, parts of him anyway, so neither was she surprised when he declared with solemn determination his resolve to scour the station again, to root out anything that might have been missed. When he was not slow and cautious, he often seemed filled with more stubborn intention than he knew what to do with. Yet he paused to look at her before he moved. By now he checked in often enough with that quiet kind of look that it was becoming her habit to meet it quietly back. She wasn’t the sort to swallow an objection if she had one, and he certainly didn’t need her permission. It felt more like a touchstone, communication that didn’t really need words.
While he continued exploring, Thalia shuffled herself gratefully closer to the heat. Left to her own devices she was easily engrossed. Quiet delight marked the moment she worked out the purpose of the stones he’d heaved in from outside (or so she assumed, and either way it worked). When one was swaddled in a blanket and wrapped against her chest she sighed with the imbued comfort of simple warmth. Thalia wasn’t an inherently practical person, and she had no survival skills to speak of, but she was always hands-on curious. Curled around that blessed heat, lids feeling almost immediately heavy, she was thinking not about radios and volcanoes, but about magic. Patricus’s warnings struck deep, and ignoring the power inside had always seemed natural. He told her not to use it and she didn’t, not really.
Now was perhaps the first moment she had ever considered the unfathomable possibility of what it could all actually mean.
After the Nemesyne had given her the idea in the tunnels, she’d tied off a weave of light to become its own entity; but infusing that same ball of light with heat had taken a constant feeding of new thread – that was the problem she’d encountered in the cave but been too frozen to think beyond. Fire needed fuel, and so had that weaving of power. But the pleasant bask of the stone made her consider transference instead; not creating and sustaining something new, but using the resources already around them. If the rock could hold and radiate its store of heat, couldn’t the floor? In theory even the air around them could be coaxed, but she wasn’t so confident she could manipulate something she couldn’t actually see. And she certainly didn’t want to play with anything that might become flammable.
So maybe she shouldn't be playing with it at all.
In truth, the fire Tristan made them was enough to sustain them through the night, and that was all they needed. But Thalia appreciated the smallest things; she didn’t want to just survive, she wanted to live, even if that was just moment to moment. Frankly the situation right now was dire whatever stubborn hope she kept burning, so those moments might be shorter than she’d prefer. A sensible person would hunker down and conserve energy they might later need, but she’d never been sensible, so she let the power rush into her bone-weary body. The softness of its presence around her felt better than even the stone hugged in her arms. It felt like an embrace back, so it felt like the right thing.
It was not not so different from the way she had melted the bars of Tristan’s cage, except she did not tempt it to rage so hot, and instead asked it simply to endure. She used the stone’s warmth as a guide for temperature, finally setting it aside once the weave sank in and knotted. Her palms pressed inquisitively to the ground soon after. And she grinned. It wasn’t a large circumference; she wasn’t sure she could create more unless she rested properly, but it was more than ample for two. The remainder of the blankets she laid out to provide some small comfort atop the new warmth. A hard floor was still a hard floor. But it felt more like shelter and less like the kind of desolate place that might mark their grave.
Afterwards she turned her attention to warming through the cans, not with the power this time – she reluctantly let it slip away and did it the normal way. By now the blanket snugged around her shoulders was looped like a shawl rather than pulled desperately close, and her hair was drying into fluffy curls around her exhausted face. Despite lingering discomfort she was mostly content and only occasionally caught by a shiver. Her thoughts didn’t stray too far to the future as she worked, though she had come to a decision – albeit one that felt as inevitable as a river’s path. She touched the pencil behind her ear every now and then, as if to reassure herself it was there. And finally paused to use the power for one last furtive task.
When Tristan returned she blinked from the reverie of warming the food, not because she’d forgotten him, but because she’d been a thousand miles wrapped inside her own head. She looked down at the frost-covered radio he’d unearthed, and realised with silent surprise that it pushed to the forefront an epiphany which had been floating around for quite some time.
She didn’t want to go back. Not to the life she’d come from, at any rate.
Thalia poked that feeling inside a little while Tristan’s gaze lifted to the window. The light beyond was twilight strange and had been for some time; not day, not night, but something weirdly suspended. She took little enough notice of the usual pass of time to know if the day had been unusually long or short, though she didn’t think it normally took so long for the sun to sink. The simmer of Tristan’s frustration and determination combined was palpable, but if the island turned against them she wasn’t sure it would serve them any advantage to know it was coming. Outside was a white void. Volcano or no volcano, they couldn’t stay here; that was plain. But arguing the sum of his fears was fruitless, and unkind.
She nodded, then reached to touch the radio he’d discovered with a finger. Maybe with the power she could help bring it back to life, but given she wasn’t sure what she was doing she might just as easily break it by mistake. Tristan was steady in the storm, single-minded in their survival, and he couldn’t sit idle before they were truly safe. Perhaps not even to rest. But a dead radio for now offered far more hope than a working one spitting lonely static. She was afraid of crushing the possibility of rescue right when they were headed into the dark hours, and if any answer was to be had, it was far more likely to be had in the daytime.
When she looked up he was looking right back with that piercing gaze, and it fluttered something inside with all the surprising gentleness of a breeze against water. He spoke more than once about resting, eating, recouping themselves before they pushed harder, but he took none of the advice himself. He looked coiled, fists closed; ready for the next task, even if that was wrestling fate itself until they had a clear pathway out of here. She doubted he was willing to listen to even his own drained body’s arguments before then.
“I am getting warm,” she said with half a smile. “You’re still pacing. Here.”
She reached to offer him one of the warmed cans, a spoon recovered from his salvage stuck in the top. There was the heated snowmelt to drink too. She hadn’t realised how chapped her own lips were until the first sip, and he was right that it had warmed from the inside out. The offered sustenance didn’t come with the insistence that he ought to sit – far better he reached that conclusion on his own, when he was ready – but it certainly held the invitation. Likewise, she left it to him to make his own discovery of the gently warmed area around their fire. She sat cross-legged amidst the muss of the blankets, nursing her own can. She was still cocooned, but the peek of bare feet poked out (all toes accounted for).
He had plenty of questions about where they were, but he hadn’t mentioned the dream again, not since she had suggested it back in the cave. Perhaps he didn’t think there were any answers to be found there, or perhaps he was reluctant for other reasons. She trusted Tristan with far more ease than was warranted given the length of time they’d known each other, but she did not burden him with reliance. That was unfair. And she trusted herself too. Trusted who she was when she was there, and the ways it had changed her life – to both good and bad ends. It wouldn’t be the first time she had cast herself into the unknown. Every night was that way. It would just be the first time she was aware of the stakes.
“We’ll rest, and get warm and dry,” she agreed. They were only his own words, more or less, but she wondered if she needed to say them for him to really hear them. “We have food and water, and a radio to try our luck with in the morning. It’s enough. You’ve done everything you can for us, Tristan.”
She was learning him in increments, parts of him anyway, so neither was she surprised when he declared with solemn determination his resolve to scour the station again, to root out anything that might have been missed. When he was not slow and cautious, he often seemed filled with more stubborn intention than he knew what to do with. Yet he paused to look at her before he moved. By now he checked in often enough with that quiet kind of look that it was becoming her habit to meet it quietly back. She wasn’t the sort to swallow an objection if she had one, and he certainly didn’t need her permission. It felt more like a touchstone, communication that didn’t really need words.
While he continued exploring, Thalia shuffled herself gratefully closer to the heat. Left to her own devices she was easily engrossed. Quiet delight marked the moment she worked out the purpose of the stones he’d heaved in from outside (or so she assumed, and either way it worked). When one was swaddled in a blanket and wrapped against her chest she sighed with the imbued comfort of simple warmth. Thalia wasn’t an inherently practical person, and she had no survival skills to speak of, but she was always hands-on curious. Curled around that blessed heat, lids feeling almost immediately heavy, she was thinking not about radios and volcanoes, but about magic. Patricus’s warnings struck deep, and ignoring the power inside had always seemed natural. He told her not to use it and she didn’t, not really.
Now was perhaps the first moment she had ever considered the unfathomable possibility of what it could all actually mean.
After the Nemesyne had given her the idea in the tunnels, she’d tied off a weave of light to become its own entity; but infusing that same ball of light with heat had taken a constant feeding of new thread – that was the problem she’d encountered in the cave but been too frozen to think beyond. Fire needed fuel, and so had that weaving of power. But the pleasant bask of the stone made her consider transference instead; not creating and sustaining something new, but using the resources already around them. If the rock could hold and radiate its store of heat, couldn’t the floor? In theory even the air around them could be coaxed, but she wasn’t so confident she could manipulate something she couldn’t actually see. And she certainly didn’t want to play with anything that might become flammable.
So maybe she shouldn't be playing with it at all.
In truth, the fire Tristan made them was enough to sustain them through the night, and that was all they needed. But Thalia appreciated the smallest things; she didn’t want to just survive, she wanted to live, even if that was just moment to moment. Frankly the situation right now was dire whatever stubborn hope she kept burning, so those moments might be shorter than she’d prefer. A sensible person would hunker down and conserve energy they might later need, but she’d never been sensible, so she let the power rush into her bone-weary body. The softness of its presence around her felt better than even the stone hugged in her arms. It felt like an embrace back, so it felt like the right thing.
It was not not so different from the way she had melted the bars of Tristan’s cage, except she did not tempt it to rage so hot, and instead asked it simply to endure. She used the stone’s warmth as a guide for temperature, finally setting it aside once the weave sank in and knotted. Her palms pressed inquisitively to the ground soon after. And she grinned. It wasn’t a large circumference; she wasn’t sure she could create more unless she rested properly, but it was more than ample for two. The remainder of the blankets she laid out to provide some small comfort atop the new warmth. A hard floor was still a hard floor. But it felt more like shelter and less like the kind of desolate place that might mark their grave.
Afterwards she turned her attention to warming through the cans, not with the power this time – she reluctantly let it slip away and did it the normal way. By now the blanket snugged around her shoulders was looped like a shawl rather than pulled desperately close, and her hair was drying into fluffy curls around her exhausted face. Despite lingering discomfort she was mostly content and only occasionally caught by a shiver. Her thoughts didn’t stray too far to the future as she worked, though she had come to a decision – albeit one that felt as inevitable as a river’s path. She touched the pencil behind her ear every now and then, as if to reassure herself it was there. And finally paused to use the power for one last furtive task.
When Tristan returned she blinked from the reverie of warming the food, not because she’d forgotten him, but because she’d been a thousand miles wrapped inside her own head. She looked down at the frost-covered radio he’d unearthed, and realised with silent surprise that it pushed to the forefront an epiphany which had been floating around for quite some time.
She didn’t want to go back. Not to the life she’d come from, at any rate.
Thalia poked that feeling inside a little while Tristan’s gaze lifted to the window. The light beyond was twilight strange and had been for some time; not day, not night, but something weirdly suspended. She took little enough notice of the usual pass of time to know if the day had been unusually long or short, though she didn’t think it normally took so long for the sun to sink. The simmer of Tristan’s frustration and determination combined was palpable, but if the island turned against them she wasn’t sure it would serve them any advantage to know it was coming. Outside was a white void. Volcano or no volcano, they couldn’t stay here; that was plain. But arguing the sum of his fears was fruitless, and unkind.
She nodded, then reached to touch the radio he’d discovered with a finger. Maybe with the power she could help bring it back to life, but given she wasn’t sure what she was doing she might just as easily break it by mistake. Tristan was steady in the storm, single-minded in their survival, and he couldn’t sit idle before they were truly safe. Perhaps not even to rest. But a dead radio for now offered far more hope than a working one spitting lonely static. She was afraid of crushing the possibility of rescue right when they were headed into the dark hours, and if any answer was to be had, it was far more likely to be had in the daytime.
When she looked up he was looking right back with that piercing gaze, and it fluttered something inside with all the surprising gentleness of a breeze against water. He spoke more than once about resting, eating, recouping themselves before they pushed harder, but he took none of the advice himself. He looked coiled, fists closed; ready for the next task, even if that was wrestling fate itself until they had a clear pathway out of here. She doubted he was willing to listen to even his own drained body’s arguments before then.
“I am getting warm,” she said with half a smile. “You’re still pacing. Here.”
She reached to offer him one of the warmed cans, a spoon recovered from his salvage stuck in the top. There was the heated snowmelt to drink too. She hadn’t realised how chapped her own lips were until the first sip, and he was right that it had warmed from the inside out. The offered sustenance didn’t come with the insistence that he ought to sit – far better he reached that conclusion on his own, when he was ready – but it certainly held the invitation. Likewise, she left it to him to make his own discovery of the gently warmed area around their fire. She sat cross-legged amidst the muss of the blankets, nursing her own can. She was still cocooned, but the peek of bare feet poked out (all toes accounted for).
He had plenty of questions about where they were, but he hadn’t mentioned the dream again, not since she had suggested it back in the cave. Perhaps he didn’t think there were any answers to be found there, or perhaps he was reluctant for other reasons. She trusted Tristan with far more ease than was warranted given the length of time they’d known each other, but she did not burden him with reliance. That was unfair. And she trusted herself too. Trusted who she was when she was there, and the ways it had changed her life – to both good and bad ends. It wouldn’t be the first time she had cast herself into the unknown. Every night was that way. It would just be the first time she was aware of the stakes.
“We’ll rest, and get warm and dry,” she agreed. They were only his own words, more or less, but she wondered if she needed to say them for him to really hear them. “We have food and water, and a radio to try our luck with in the morning. It’s enough. You’ve done everything you can for us, Tristan.”
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