She spewed and sputtered, not unlike the chaotic bubblings of a brook pebbled by river rocks. Meanwhile, Philip walked much as he had every other circle around the yard, hands clasped gently, eyes cast a few steps ahead, pensive thought drawn into the lines of his face. The weather had warmed since the previous day. A slight wind ruffled the cloth at his feet just as it plucked at the ends of Thalia’s hair.
As once before she inquired of a name, Philip considered the depth of the seemingly benign query. Was he Patricus I, Philip Sullivan, Christ himself? In dreams he self-identified as nobody, but she conjured a name from the swirl of heaven’s cauldron. In the days following, he queried the word, curious at the connection between himself and the species of moth he assumed she referenced. At the time, he disliked the name, though he became rather fond of the fuzzy moniker by dream’s end. The dictionary provided another explanation, and then it was clear. Upon locating the lore, Philip quite approved with her assessment. The qualities of Athene Noctua were at his core: intelligence, prudence, serenity, and a keen observation of subtleties hidden. Who could blame her astute observations?
“She did,” he used Thalia’s preferred pronoun. Not in the way of those requesting grammatically antithetical parts of speech to represent themselves, but because Thalia, while the same, was like a different slice of the same whole from which was derived Nimeda. Calling her as you felt wrong, albeit silly.
A grumble vibrated the Pope’s throat.
“She called me Noctua,” he said plainly. “And I called her, Nimeda. Although she did not seem attached to the title. You are her, and she is you. Get used to the idea.”
They came to an area of the yard to which he was leading, although the guidance would not have been apparent until he paused there. A patch of gravel spilled out from the planks surrounding the children’s play set. He knelt, drawing upon the surface with the touch of a finger.
Without preamble, he changed the subject, glancing at her for reaction only after posing a direct question as he stood over the symbol at their feet. ”What happened to your hand?”
Thalia trickled along the path he made for them like a river trained to its banks, unconsidering of the journey.
The tone of his voice suggested the name had been bestowed to him not shared by him, which plucked a curious grin to her expression, since it implied that apparently she had done the bestowing. “‘The owl of Athena takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering,’” she quoted, mostly to herself. That was about philosophy, not a literal thing, but it suddenly seemed apt. By the gentle tickle of her humour she clearly recognised the term, though since he used the moment for stern redress she did not think to say more. Her gaze pinged back to his face, wondering at the foundations he was building with that emphasis on reuniting her apparently disparate pieces. Before now she had imagined this only a fleeting thing; the story of a strange meeting she would tell Nox about later. With a beginning, a middle, and an end.
(something shivered, and she did not like it)
Her thumb slipped under the shoulder strap of her bag, toying with it, but she did not dwell.
She knew nothing of the workings of the world he knew her from, or the person she apparently manifested whilst there, or even if she had played party to his seeking her out. They must at least look the same, for Nimeda’s moniker to have haunted her on so many separate occasions, and yet she could not imagine this person who wore her face and shared her thoughts but not, it seemed, whatever essence might join the two. Questions bloomed, still a little shaded by temperance, in part an attempt to go slow enough to keep her feet while she explored this new current. How did they meet? Why did they meet? He clearly retained more than she, of both existences.
“She and I, we don’t share memories,” she said, though she sounded thoughtful rather than argumentative. She had gone from shying dramatically from the prospect to peering inquisitively at this new reflection in a manner of minutes, so the consideration was an utterly new one to her -- as was the concept of “we”. She was worried about you. That’s what Calvin had said, more or less; worried because Thalia hadn’t been sleeping. “But you remember dreaming. And you remember me. And I remember nothing.” None were questions, but it seemed she spoke them aloud for approval, or at least to allow correction for any missteps she made as she tried her apparent best to understand.
He paused then, and so did she, without really thinking. She watched him curiously as he bent to the task of his own drawing, and at the moment she realised what it was her breath drew in, though only because the image took her by surprise. Koit had warned her that the search in Viljandi had mentioned her scarred hand, but she hadn’t expected to be ambushed by the exact nature of her injury. It seemed a suddenly tangential swerve from the portrait Father Ando had suggested was desired, or even the nature of dreaming they had been discussing. Thalia’s mind did not always change gears quickly. At least not when she was still holding back.
A translation for the symbol had actually been one of the easier things to discern while she had been at the university library, the object it had contained less so. “Am I in trouble?” she asked. There was a static note of fear in the way she said it, though perhaps not of him in particular. Koit had wondered if it was the trinket she had found itself that the church was interested in, which had seemed impossible at the time but perhaps not so much now. Though why the Vatican would be hiding such things in an obscure tributary of an Estonian river was anyone’s guess, let alone in a box marked with a pagan symbol.
Not that she was actually convinced the laws of sense had much bearing on her life any more.
She was quite guileless as she swung her bag around to rummage its contents. Inside it smelled strongly of the cherries she’d purchased from the market, but it was the box she plucked free. “I burnt it,” she said. “On this.” The same symbol emblazoned the lid, though it was just an ordinary box now, small enough to clasp easily. Her hand was throbbing its persistent heartbeat, suggesting today’s pain relief was ebbing. It did not help that she insisted on using the hand, though since it was her dominant one it was hardly surprising that she struggled to adjust. The bandages were crisp and minimal, though the fingers poking from its edges were still poor looking things. It was clearly recent. “Is this what you came here for?”
He remembered dreams, yes. It was a plague until he was advised to journal the happenings as an unloading of the mind’s burdens. Many such journals were filled since that fateful day, but once the account was penned, Philip abandoned the memory as cleanly as Thalia.
“There are no bad gifts from the Lord, although his children are often annoyed by their burden,” he said. A twist to the lips suggested he himself was likely one so irritated. She may be as well.
The intrusion into the story of her wound was a prickly adventure. Thalia tensed as the rush of a river ahead of a waterfall. The sudden wariness of his presence was an unwelcome shadow. The box mirrored the shape emblazoned in his memory as fiercely as her skin. His gaze flicked from it to the bandages as if he may see through the cloth itself. How had an innocuous trinket branded the palm? Had she snatched it from a fire? It was unmarred.
Unease filtered, sparked by the incendiary box in question. He gently reached to graze the surface, and at the last moment, took it from her.
He turned it over a couple of times. Something was inside, but the eyes of the Holy Father beheld was not impressed. He did not open it. Carelessly, it rolled from his grasp in a thunk to the ground. Philip did not often touch people, finding even the most formal of encounters to be too friendly, but he wanted to shake her at the shoulder and make her see what he saw. Somehow, he restrained himself, and forced his gaze toward the trees instead. Unable to look at her for fear of the aforementioned rattling.
“I am a guardian of souls, Thalia. I came here for a soul.” His jaw tensed, “yours.” He let his eyes fall, lids shielding the sight of her from the temptation to walk these worldly paths.
“What you have is a brand, like the pirates of old forever marked to bear warning of their offenses. You’re dabbling in something dangerous, and someone worse wants what you have found,” he said, still unable to bring himself to look upon her. How old was she? He hadn’t asked of Thalia Milton, but the heartfelt purity of her gaze suggested childlike affection, for which Philip was vulnerable by a soft spot in his heart.
Thalia didn’t view it as a gift, bad or otherwise. For most of her life it had been nothing but a compulsion, one eventually contained to a well-worn ritual -- for the most part. She acclimatised to the surface of that current for years, and until recently she’d never delved deeper, let alone searched for meaning. But she understood in that moment that he saw through the same prescient eyes; that they were not just talking about the journey to strange worlds upon the reach for sleep anymore. He knew what she suspected but still would not admit about those drawings.
She did not stop him from plucking the box from her open palm. Nothing possessive marked even her gaze on its familiar shape, let alone the curl of her fingers around its edges. Had he claimed it for his own there and then, she would not have protested its loss, no matter the efforts it had taken to uncover. But when she watched it tumble instead to the ground a frown pinched her expression, even as his words made her flinch.
When she looked up his eyes were shielded; closed entirely in fact, like he could not bear to look upon her. It hurt a little, not that she could precisely articulate why. What she had done to earn it she was not sure, but she wondered if perhaps he did not so easily untangle her flesh-and-blood form from whatever presented in the dreamscape he spoke of. Perhaps he was angry for reasons she could not predict. Either way she did not know what he wanted from her.
“Well I’m not cutting my hand off,” she murmured, that comment meant entirely to herself as she picked at the edges of the bandage. Was he really not even going to look at her? She didn’t doubt him. A sense of anxiety had shadowed since the cottage. Scrapes and bruises marked her skin that did not exist before sleep. She squeezed her own eyes tight then, but only for a moment, trying not to see the face that had watched her leave the station at Viljandi. She suppressed the shiver. The box and the pinecone were in her possession now. The only path left was forward, come what may of the consequences.
“Are you angry because you think I stole it?" she asked carefully. "Because I don’t feel particularly guilty about that whatever the state of my soul, and I can’t exactly put it back now anyway.” Her own gaze sought escape then, settling on the chain link fence and the vines swarming it. Nobody will help us except ourselves. Those words had stuck, but Thalia couldn’t say who had said them to her. Only that they had urged her out the door the afternoon she had left Moscow. She pressed on like perhaps an explanation would soften his countenance, not pausing to wonder why it mattered to her. “I wanted to know if it was real, or if I’m just crazy, and I knew where it was because I’d drawn it, like some strange treasure map stuck on the inside of my head.” The earnestness of her honesty slowed a little, the last part quieter. “And since I needed to know if the rest was real it seemed a safe place to start at the time.” He’d know what she meant by rest, for ironically he was walking proof himself of the truth in her pages. Her heart began to speed a little again at the prospect, still finding little comfort in Nox’s assertion that the world was always ending and someone would always save it. She was afraid of the warning imparted, but she was more afraid of that. Her hand flexed with the memory, but she carefully prised herself away from the threat of drowning in it.
“I have friends who’ll help me if I’ve upset someone, and now that you've told me I’m sure you don’t have to worry for me. I’m not even Catholic.” Her lips quirked up pleasantly like maybe he was the one requiring the comfort from the tension in him, though her own affirmation was a little more confident sounding than she truly felt. But if Nox could not answer, then she had the contact for his friend Sage. She tried not to think of how far she was from home.
Although stealing was a ‘top ten’ sin, he wasn’t here to bring up the judgement. The defensiveness following Nimeda’s unabashed acceptance prickled, and twin lines were drawn into the thoughtful crevices of Philip’s expression. He wasn’t happy with the way their interaction was unfolding. He was equally aware that there were a number of dark windows above that could shield the watchers of anonymous curiosity. In fact, he assumed there were. At least they were sensible enough to try and hide the eavesdropping.
“I’m not angry,” he said, though he was aware he probably seemed that way. He was an irascible man. He made no effort to change his demeanor. In the dream, Philip was vulnerable around Nimeda, but he was beginning to entertain that the woman at his side was indeed
not Nimeda. It made him a little sad.
“Did you draw a figure that was both plant, tree and man? He spoke outrageous things,” he said, pausing in the shade. Gently, Philip reached out, stroking the soft needles and cones of the nearby
tree. Tucked into the needles were pink flowers soon to become more cones. There were several on the grounds in various stages of growth. He first noticed their presence dappled among the terrain in the drive from the airport. With a sudden snap, a twig broke away, which he promptly gave to Thalia.
“Tuuru,” he said as the gift was offered, hopeful that recognition bloomed along with the name.
“He guarded the column you drew. We roused him from his … slumber.” Awakening wasn't the right word. It was more like they activated the Arboreal. She had also drawn the crystal stake. Very same as the one that disappeared from his hands. He hadn’t given much thought to the significance of the key since then.
“How’d you find your burn box? The one in the river. Could you find something else like that?” His pace resumed the gentle stroll.
"Then perhaps you are disappointed," she amended wryly. She didn't sound offended, though she reflected that it did in fact bother her as much or more as his perceived anger had. Thalia never quite fit the mold, nor really tried, and she was used to the little bubbles of exasperation often left in her wake. Aylin, prime example. And her parents. Whatever it was he sought she wasn't likely worth the effort he had gone to, and nor did she suspect she was really who he had expected to find. Not that her own soul was worthless -- it wasn't, to her -- but she couldn't fathom being plucked from the obscurity of billions for this attention, and she shied from that spotlight like a fish caught in the shallows after the tide sucked out. She wasn't special. Nor did she want to be.
He didn't answer any of the outpour, not the questions or the desperate grasp for some kind of reassurance, like a drowning lunge for shore. At least not with words.
"Oh." It was not recognition that pulled the sound breathless from her lips, though as he handed her the twig it did lurch with a dizzying sense of deja vu. Enough that she rather thought for a moment she ought to sit down. The tumbling words of his explanation were debris, and she did not answer as she contemplated the gift. Like a touchstone, the churning waters of her thoughts calmed quite abruptly. For a moment longer she beheld the cup of her palm like she expected to find herself holding something else.
She had thought he came for prophecy, for abilities she had barely begun to acknowledge let alone understand. His words of declared saviour were too grand, but once the deluge of that great flood passed she discovered something infinitely more human left behind in the wreckage. Maybe, anyway. Because it didn't seem entirely possible that he had uprooted himself not for any great portents of the future, but because he had been worried about her. Or about Nimeda at least.
Thalia flexed her hand quietly, and thought about his words in the church.
Then her fingers ran over the stick, speckled with buds like the bulging vines feeding the caged heart on Eha's cottage wall. Really, what was with the pine cones? He gave the creature a name she had not known, and the words meant nothing but the tenuous feeling did, like tender shoots. Only the more she tried to concentrate on it the more nebulous it became. It seemed a refuge she could only look at side on. But it reminded her of something important: hope.
She pulled the hat back on her head, and stooped to retrieve the box. He was already walking away, back to their circular path.
When she padded up back beside him, the punnet of market cherries was in her grip, the box back in her bag, and the blossoming twig tucked carefully under her arm, whereupon its pink buds tangled with the loose curls of her hair. She peered up at him curiously under the brim of her hat, but left her thoughts to drift into unspoken depths. The tray was offered out, though she would be unphased if he declined. They were good though, as fruit usually was that fresh. “Pine cones are thought lucky in Sicily,” she told him. “I’m not really green-fingered, but it seems they come with a wealth of positive superstition. We even have a gland in our brains the same shape. Decartes says that’s where the soul lives.” Such disparate facts wove a tracery through her life, not that she found it that unique; you could convince yourself of anything if you tried hard enough. Or hide it from yourself too. “Would you believe me if I told you what was in the box?” She smiled, but it was only amusement for the strange currents buffeting her life of late. Her nose crinkled.
Then her mind turned to the question he asked.
"Maybe. I don’t know. Sometimes drawings just feel different. All I did was get on a train and carry on until I stopped. Almost like luck, or need. Nothing that could be called skill.” She tipped her shoulder, because it really had no more basis than that, and she had trusted it with the kind of careless abandon that probably gave her sister grey hairs. Even Nox cautioned her against the whimsy that sent her alone. She didn’t regret any of it, not even the brand on her palm, though it worried her too. Her gaze caught once more on the scenery, and she leaned to murmur, “You must be tired of walking in circles.”
Patricus I put no stock in luck. He sneered at the thought, expending little effort to hide the derisive reaction. Thalia would misinterpret the reprieve as personal, but such was her freedom to divine. She would not seek clarification. None did. They labeled him, tucking and folding him into neat little boxes that would surely burn the hand to open as readily as hers’. ‘Perhaps you are disappointed’, the label stuck to his robes like glue, dragging at the grounds, shredded as though he crawled through a briar. He may have well pulled the thorns to his own brow. The wound stung, but a deep breath of fresh air soothed the unexpected, but old, ache.
He wasn’t disappointed. He was lonely. With the one companion the whole of his life, he sensed Him now. Or perhaps it was flatulence. Sometimes he couldn’t discern the two. Either way, his companion was an invisible presence as steadfast and unreachable as the sun. To burn the hand that touches it unprepared for the light. Such a bedfellow made for a distant bridegroom. He tucked himself methodically into the covers at night, content and sleepy, but the soul wandered aimlessly. It was probably why the river washed him to Nimeda’s shore.
He needed her.
He needed someone.
A wariness accustomed to the old and wrinkled Popes she imagined him to be answered her assumption with confirmation. “I am tired of walking in circles.”
He paused, but only to gesture at the drawings once more. “You drew a shard that gleams like crystal. Tuuru gave it to me, but it disappeared. Your hand is imprinted on Nimeda’s. There is truth in some dreams and echoes stretch from the soul into the plane of the flesh. When I dream, sometimes I know what it means, but it always comes to pass,” he said with an air of gravitas undeserved. He went on. “I dreamed of a flood the night of the Tsunami. I woke knowing what would come, unknowing of when. So I waited. When Father Cheney found me, I knew what it would be before the headline scrolled,” he explained, gaze attuned to the past. Or perhaps the future. They were one in the same.
Prophecy weaves a thread through all the ages.
There was a gasp behind them.
He hadn’t noticed their recent companion joining. Patricus turned to acknowledge the intrusion of an older priest, slender glasses perched on his nose. It was the Vatican Secretariat of State whom accompanied him on this trip out of sheer insistence and annoying grit of will. Father Ando must have sent him out after being rebuffed earlier.
His jaw was agape as he hurried close. If he noticed Thalia before, his focus was tunnel vision now. “Holy Father, why have you never told us the Lord has given to you the gift of prophecy?” The normally verbose Cardinal musg have been rendered nearly speechless given he paused after one question.
Patricus I glared. All these years the gift that was his to horde was known to the worst person possible.
Shit.
Patricus waved, “Go away Giancarlo.”
The Cardinal’s momentary flight of fancy seemed contained now. He cleared his throat and shoved his glasses up higher on his nose
“Holy Father, your behavior has caught some attention. It is quite odd,” he glanced at Thalia. A few bystanders had taken up sentry across the street.
Philip was deadpan, “All these years, Giancarlo. You are slow to learn.”
The Secretary shrugged, “This is true, Holy Father. I have been told my mind is sluggish to churn but a reliable sponge to soak up bubbles of soapy truth.“
Philip cut him off. “If you stop, I will go inside. But for Heaven’s sake, never say ‘soapy truth’ again.”
With a nod, Giancarlo left, apparently satisfied with the Pope’s promise.
What a strange and prickly creature. So grumpy! Thalia watched the tug of his frown, pulled up around him like scales of armour she suddenly had the overwhelming desire to poke at gently and see what yielded. Much as she spied the shield of Koit’s stoic silences and Nox’s deep need for a slice of normality, she began to sense ripples of dissatisfaction in the contained irreverence of his manner. The priests bounced off him like the incessant drumming of rain. Thalia claimed an artist’s eye, but Aylin accused her of deeper sometimes; like a pet that curls up on an owner's lap in response to their sadness.
He did begin to talk about the drawings now, but it felt like an epitaph to a life she’d missed in a blink. The dissonance plucked at her; the sense of something missing, which honestly was not an unusual feeling for her. As with most inexplicable instincts she travelled through it, allowing it to wash her up where it may. She watched him raptly. His divination was met with surprising acceptance on her part, for the little trickle of impossible leaking into her life had long since flooded her banks full, and after a little flapping about in the new water, usually wondering if she would drown, Thalia adapted. The truths delivered now, despite shivering her with mindless panic moments before, seemed both a surer and calmer thing when they fell from his lips. His voice set things in a gentle order; a narrative to the frenzy of images bled from her fingertips.
“If you tell her what you’re looking for, and she finds it, I suppose our hands will know.” She spoke without thinking, glancing briefly at her bandaged palm in reflection that it might not be such a pleasant experience for her while the wound was still fresh, but the concern was fleeting. The offer to help came natural, and without strings; sincere. She did not hear the gasp, or was slow to react, or maybe too mired in the quiet churn of her own thoughts. When she did rouse to the new scenery, it was to wave a little at the handful of people milling beyond the church grounds; pulled by the Pope’s orbit like he were the sun and not at all concerned with her, but it seemed polite.
A smile hovered on the edges of her lips for the exchange, amused yet also troubled. Not for his exposure, though it clearly displeased him. “They always want something from you,” she said. He was the Pope, so of course they did, and that was not what she meant. The insight was more vague, slippery even as she voiced it.
She wondered if he’d countenance the brief escape she had been considering. If he even had anything approaching normal attire. Maybe. She doubted he really got to see the world beyond the pedestal of his station, and by the sharp chastisements he’d whipped at Father Ando he clearly detested the bureaucracy. He’d invited only the families of the children to mass, shunning the spectacle Ando had clearly desired. But she did not think it was a diversion he sought, even with the assent he had sighed upon her question. Thalia couldn’t bear the bars of such a cage; her spirit was of too free a nature, whether it was the liberty to shut out the world beyond her studio, or to bounce whimsically onto a train heading to anywhere. But he was not trapped; in fact she imagined he was exactly where he chose to be. Only.
Her lips tipped up into an easy smile. She sought his attention with earnestness despite the heavy weight of annoyance she imagined the bespectacled priest left in his wake. Likely he was cross at being overheard, but such was the nature of chance. He had the force of an ocean behind him, he would not be easily funnelled where they wished. And perhaps it was no bad thing to have been unceremoniously shoved out of his rut mere moments after agreeing with the sentiment.
“There are other sketches too,” she told him. He’d just agreed to return inside, and she wondered if that had been a subtle dismissal on the priest’s part, given the umbrella of odd he opened over both their heads. Not that the label seemed to bother her any more than it had him, by his tart reply. Either way, Thalia seemed in no hurry to take her leave, nor really to relinquish him to the wolves inside. “Ones without urgency. Manicured gardens and a lake blue as the sky. I’d like to see that some time.”
She was correct. The ever-present, ill-defined they always wanted something from the Pope, but theirs were foolish intent. It was to their own hearts they should turn, for what they sought was within, though most feared to peer into the darkness, even if it meant finding light on the other side.
“They seek God in me, but He isn’t going to show up. He's told me as much. Because I am no one. I am nothing. I am only a priest.” Unto Nimeda, Philip claimed the same title. He remembered the conflict within when posed with selecting the choice of identity so unexpectedly. The options were the same contradiction bequeathed by God himself: the End, the Beginning, and the Am.
Philip, Patricus, Priest, Nothing. He was all and yet none.
For that reason, he considered how little Thalia wanted of him, which was nothing. She admitted she wasn’t Catholic, but it was a rare person who was without at least a semblance of awe for the Bishop of Rome. The witnesses across the street were growing in number. Glassy displays were held up, capturing images that made him turn his back and pace the opposite direction. Without the scarlet cap and flowing cape, he was too plainly visible. They could enter the church from the back door. The one through which the children plunged some moments before.
“Il Palazzo Apostolico di Castel Gandolfo,” he called it by its Italian name. His accent, while thickly American, undulated over the pronunciation smooth as pebbles. “When I showed you that place, I had no idea you were a real girl. I’m still not sure you are not an apparition.” A brow rose with the hint of a joke. If he wasn't who he was, he may have poked her on the arm to confirm the skeleton of a human within. He did no such thing, of course. As it was, she could have no way to know the importance of such a place, the reprieve offered of the property and so desperately desired by its sovereign. He liked to swim in the lake on hot days. Floating alone.
“What else have you drawn? The shared dreams of other priests? I imagine they would be disturbingly dismal.” He snorted a laugh on that, imagining the inward flights of subconscious fancy undertaken by the likes of Fr. Revane Ando. After a moment, he posed another question.
“What do you see of me?”
Il Palazzo Apostolico di Castel Gandolfo. She tested out a few of the syllables, but had no great flair for language. The accusation that followed hummed her through with laughter, distracting her from the attempt. The irony tickled her greatly, since he was the scribble of a drawing made flesh and blood and breathing. Did Nimeda remember her in that other world? It seemed impossible he had been able to find her in Estonia otherwise. Perhaps Thalia was but the cast of her shadow when she opened her eyes here. A strange thought. And a little sobering. But she felt real enough.
The first question she answered easily, truth bubbling freely as she turned to follow him once more. “Oh, lots of things. Wolves, and monsters. Sometimes there are fleeting glimpses of people, like little windows. I wouldn’t remember those faces if I saw them again though.” She thought of Nox’s expression when he discovered recognition amongst the sketches he had flicked through at the cafe. Probably the shadows and curves of his face itself sandwiched somewhere in those old pages, but he had not been remotely familiar to her when she’d plucked him from his friends at the cabaret bar. “Of the ones I would know, and that I have seen wake, you’re the only one I stopped running from long enough to actually speak to. There was a man on the tube once, but I never saw him again.” Other priests. She puzzled a little at that, but did not pause. “Mostly it’s landscapes though. Forests with rivers running through like fingers. The moods of the sea beneath a crumbling cliff. Stones on the bottom of a riverbed, and the fish who hide there. Sometimes there’s water grey and slick as ice, with a pale sky that reaches into forever.” Nature shaped all of the work that tumbled from idle sketches to actual finished paintings, but she didn’t paint landscapes; she painted people. She always had, even before they had started spilling out real and walking from what she now knew to be dreams. Emotion and connection were important treasures, but like treasures they were rarer than the rest.
“I’m no poet,” she said to the second question, smiling. “And these are only conduits.” She wiggled her fingers in illustration, winced a little when the digits on one hand protested. It was a strange and leading question. He’d been present for the dreaming, after all, and remembered it as she did not. Insight was likely to be incidental, but of course he was free to leaf through the images themselves if he chose. “But you are welcome to look at them?” The bag hanging from her shoulder was still unzipped, the papers stuffed inside. She would retrieve them if he wanted to see for himself, though it would take some rummaging. They were not part of the deluge that had plucked the nails bloody from her hand when she had run out of paper at the cottage, so the gentler musings of recent days were jammed in small corners until she purchased another book.
Her head tilted. The pinch of his expression did not care for her labels before, and she doubted anything else she said would be pleasing to his ears. Not that she suspected he sought flattery; in fact she was confident he didn’t. Perhaps he only wished to pick clean her answer to discover what she wanted from him, by analysing the frame through which she saw him. Not access to god, but unlikely to be nothing either. No one could exist only on nothing, not even him. “Unless you really do want that portrait? Very reasonable rates you know, but I would have to stick around a while,” she teased.
Father Ando had pointed out the clean square left by a vacant frame; spoke of surprise that the Pope sought an artist at all. Yet he’d lingered a little on the page featuring his own likeness. It wasn’t the reason he’d reached across such great distances to find her though, and she didn’t mistake that now. He did not seek a mirror. She imagined him to do plenty of self-reflection in the long waits between answers from his god, and he called himself nothing. Deeper philosophical waters than she waded, at least consciously. So, not a mirror, and a painting itself was actually unimportant, but she suspected him of a need to be seen. Not his myriad faces. Something far more ordinary. She grinned.
“You’re hidden quite in plain sight you know, Noc-” A frown wrinkled as she realised she could not remember the silly titles. Your eminence sounded wrong, and it could obviously not be highness despite his kingly manner. She supposed she’d have to get used to those formalities, though they did not sit naturally. Ascendancy had always sounded silly to her ears too, but even Nox called him that. “Yet I don’t think they see you at all.”