[[Continued from the events in The Height of Rumour]]

It was late, of course, by the time business concluded and Zhenya returned home. The apartment should have been shrouded in shadow, but a faint light still burned in the sitting room. She deposited her purse onto a sideboard, slipping down from the lofty height of her heels. It might mean Halima was still awake, though it seemed unlikely. Possibly the woman had fallen asleep in front of a screen, but more probably it meant they had had a bad night. Zhenya’s lips pursed, for no messages had pinged her wallet the whole duration of the evening, and Halima knew the order of Zhenya’s priorities. She would have answered.

Her head canted around the door, quiet lest she disturb the occupants. Though it proved an unnecessary consideration.

“Mama?” a small voice mumbled.

Auri’s bare feet padded quickly across the distance, and Zhenya knelt and allowed the small child to sweep into her arms, smoothing the dark strands from around her cheeks where they stuck clammy with sweat. Auri nuzzled away from the ministrations, pushing closer, her face burying into the soft fall of Zhenya’s hair and her arms wrapping about her neck.

“You should be sleeping, precious one,” Zhenya said, rubbing a hand up and down her back. She was warm as a furnace, fresh from the heat of blankets. Halima hovered, having risen from the sofa where the two had clearly been snuggled. A nest of bedcovers half hung from the cushions behind her, fortressed with a platoon of small stuffed toys. The woman’s face was weary, her eyes smudged with sleep captured and lost too quickly. Zhenya slowly prised her daughter free, adjusting her silky hair, smoothing her small arms. Bright amber eyes stared out of a pale face. The shadowy crescents cupped beneath her eyes were too dark for one so small. She wished it were so easy as to sweep them away with her thumb.

“Bad dreams?”

A reluctant nod.

“And did Yulian check the closet, and under the bed?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was mushy with the cadence of sleep fought valiantly off. A balled fist pushed against her eye, her face scrunched up around it.

“Then you are in the safest home in all of Moscow,” she assured, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Get yourself to bed, Halima,” she added softly, clasping Auri’s hand as she stood.

“There was something else,” the woman said, a touch of guardedness to her tone. Enough to pull Zhenya’s gaze up. “A call. I did not answer. It was late.”

“Lorcán?” She was not quite sure whether the question held hope or concern, though either way the sentiment was only fleetingly felt, for she could tell by the flatness of Halima’s expression that such was not the case. She nodded, smoothing away the other possibilities. A thought for tomorrow.

She tucked Auri up in the castle of her own bed, knowing they would both sleep better without the battle of insisting the girl back to her own room. Amongst the silk and mountainous pillows her dark-haired head was almost lost peeking above the blankets. A meandering lullaby played from the music box set on the nightstand, plucked with an expert twist of seidr. Light glittered like a thousand stars gleamed upon the ceiling, dancing lethargically on the air much like they had on the Apex Lounge’s dancefloor. Zhenya sat at her dresser, seeing to her nightly rituals.

“Will you tell me the story?”

“Which one is “the” story?” Her eyes found her daughter’s in the mirror, head tilted a little with the indulgence. The peep of that voice was sleepy though, already floating and quiet. Even as she spoke, Auri’s eyes fluttered shut.

“My favourite one, mama. The one about the Prince,” she yawned. “And his Kingdom of Ashes.”

Seven entered a shop at random. Well, if he was to be honest, he was walking random streets in the neighborhood he chose for himself to habituate for the foreseeable future. Upon one such block, artwork displayed in a window caught his eye. 

The jingle of a bell tolled his entrance. A young man arranging some pieces on a shelf peered his direction. He wore a collared shirt and slacks of someone who might work there, or else he was OCD enough of a customer to straighten pens into orderly fashioned while he shopped. Seven nodded, tucked his hands behind his back, and strolled about. However, it was to the window that he soon found himself studying.

The painting was a landscape, but it was unlike any terrain he had ever seen in person. The style was distinct, too. There was a name along the side. The artist was unknown to him.

Movement caught the reflection of himself in the window pane, but the motion originated from behind his shoulder. Seven didn't turn, though he was prepared for someone to come closer. Perhaps in attempt to sell the piece. His new living arrangements was disturbingly plain.  He was currently dressed in a trendy white jacket and expensive leather shoes. Acid-wash jeans cut a flattering angle to his hips. He wore a delicate timepiece at the wrist worth more than most cars. He enjoyed such things, but there was nothing haughty about presence. He was who he was, but he definitely looked like he had money.

A swipe through the air paused the video in order for Nik to rise. The holo screen was a life-size projection of a recently received transmission. The call was quick. He did not desire to speak long in current company. In fact, if he could have avoided the update personally, he would have delegated the task elsewhere and watched from the shadows. However, these matters were delicate. Whispers were already out there, suppressed for now, and completely capable of utter denial, but the potential for betrayal was always on his mind.

As he rounded the desk, a thoughtful emptiness set the lock of his jaw as it did when he absorbed other tragic news. Deaths, mayhem, tragedy and trauma washed him like oil on water, connected, but not intermingled. As then, so was now.

He paused before the life-sized figure of a dark-haired man about his own age despite the drastic differences in their appearances. The Russian was the stone-flecked cheeks of Scion Marveet, and held aloft before his beady eyes was a sort of necklace.

Nikolai’s fingers signaled his commands, and after some elegant motions, the image of man and surroundings dissolved, leaving only the device. It reminded him somewhat of the Arcus band for its simplicity and symbolism. Though the Arcus band offered nothing practical, this device was of great use, and Scion held the keys to its design in his possession.

He pulled the holographic device away, lifting it as though it was truly present in the room with him. There was no weight, of course, but just comparison, he placed the image around his own collar, superimposed above the suit and tie he usually wore, and studied the shape in a real-world mirror. He tried to imagine what it would look like in person.

After a few moments of contemplation, he reset the paused screen and Scion’s cool face returned to the frame. Behind him sat a somewhat disheveled Zacarias Amengual. If what Scion relayed about the drug lord’s behavior was half as accurate as he claimed, then the plans were going well. Already one loose end was cut away from the conspirators. Two more remained.

Satisfied with the proceedings, Nikolai closed the system down to await the forthcoming news of Amengual’s demise. Hopefully it would be today and they could move ahead with the plans for Butryka detention center.

She was told the nice lady doctor with the pretty hair was gone. Mara internalized the loss stoically, but there was no additional grieving. Instead, she continued about her days as she always did. Mostly she stared blankly, sometimes falling asleep where she sat. However, Mara didn't fight like she used to. Although she held to the name, Mara, rather than Daiyu as they insisted she was. She would tip a shoulder, onyx hair slipping in the movement, and return to Mara like a comfortable sock.

The new doctor was suppose to be different. The others whispered about her during recreation time. She didn't know the name, but at least the change would be something new. 

Mara waited in the therapy room, as always. Her scrubs were clean unlike some of the others. Her slippers were soft. Her hair was loose today, but her eyes sank the longer she wait. She sat so still, hands on her knees, she may have been in the midst of meditation if it wasn't for the drip of drool beginning to pool in the corner of her mouth.

With a jerk, her eyes yanked to the shadowy corners and she smiled as she pat her knee. Her pets would keep her company until the doctor came.

@"Meera Alam"

She climbed from the bus on wobbly footing like a mainlander complaining of sea legs. Her backpack swarmed behind her shoulders, longer nearly than she was tall. The wind caught her body like a sail, shoving her forward two steps despite the weight of her backpack, and she shivered ferociously. As the bus rolled away, a plume of black puffed in the air. Kemala coughed as she labored across the street to the depot.

The town didn’t seem like much. The weather said it was warm, but it obviously lied.

Once out of the wind, she searched for information on an air bnb or someplace to sleep for the night. She only picked this area to stop on the way to Moscow because of what she read about the lake itself. Its waters lapped like a slumbering ocean nearby. Wafts of fog began to mist new fingers landward. If it wasn’t so cold, she would have found the scenery beautiful. It was certainly different than anything she'd ever seen before. A lake this deep and ancient must nest a great Nāga king if she could find him.

Despite clear directions, she found a hostel along the waters’ edge. She paid the minimal fees after some help with a translation app. They may all be Custody citizens, but she barely understood what anyone said.

First thing she did was wash away the stink of travel before sinking to sleep on a bunk.

Music hummed softly to Thalia’s tuneless accompaniment. Her head tilted, and she squinted at the array of images tacked haphazardly in a great patchwork on the hotel wall. She’d had to perch on precarious tiptoe from the plastic desk chair in order to squish them all in, some sheets now torn into smaller pieces as she’d tried to group them in some semblance of… something. Her entire life these kinds of sketches had been nothing but an exorcism, forgotten as soon as they bled from her fingertips. She’d never even looked back at them until recently, when a break-in and that small glow of discovered power changed her life. Well, ruined it at the time.

Over the last few months a slow curiosity had begun to burn, though; wary to start, uncertain of what monsters might lurk in the hidden depths (because literal; actual, literal monsters lurked in the depths). Even back in Moscow she’d known there were truths here; faces that belonged to living breathing people, places she suspected were real places -- with enough whimsical conviction that she’d dropped all the threads of her life to begin a journey with no clear destination in order to find out.

She’d long suspected (and denied) something prescient when need ripped the images from her whether she wished it or not. But she’d never imagined there were stories buried in the rest, or at least had never admitted the possibility to herself. Nothing ever fled her pencil chronologically, or she did not think so anyway -- usually images were discarded the moment the picture felt finished, and she doodled in margins when she ran out of clean paper, or on receipts or napkins or her own skin. It happened frequently enough that a morning’s work might end up spread like a dandelion’s seeds blown in the wind, so it didn’t make the attempt at rearrangement now very easy. That, and she drew so much. 

Hence the currently strewn chaos.

For the last few minutes Thalia had reached to add annotations with the stub of a pencil, squeezing the cramped writing around the drawings wherever she may with what scant information she had.

Il Palazzo Apostolico di Castel Gandolfo. 
Noctua. 
River in Viljandi, Estonia. 
Tuuru. Of the outrageous spoken things. Awoken from slumber.
The guarded column.
The crystal shard, given and gone?

It left volumes of unknown, though. The black pillar that in some scenes twisted into the shadow of a scowling man, and the isolated cottage with the red door she had first drawn on the train; the ethereal woman perfected at Koit and Eha’s breakfast table before Koit plucked the pencil from the pinch of her throbbing hand. So much water; rivers and lakes and glaciers, the foamy crash of waves, the burble of a spring’s mouth. The mournful girl whom Aylin had claimed to be a patient before Thalia left Moscow, never investigated at the time. A man with bright golden eyes, and an old and grizzled wolf the size of a bear with his teeth bared in a snarl. Small sooty creatures that were sometimes curled like contented cats, and sometimes bristled into terrifying concoctions of teeth and claws and eyes. A man with a burning gaze, and a boy who cowered away terrified and shared the same features.

And it was all real?

A whole other life. Thalia stared up at the strange tapestry, and felt herself overwhelmed; not, this time, with fear -- but with wonder.

She flopped back on the bed with a sigh. Her nature was not solitary, though she was used to being alone. Fact was, she’d spent most of her adult life avoiding the sort of attachments that made new friends and acquaintances appear unbidden during the ritual of her morning sketches. There was just Aylin to spill her soul to, and Thalia did, for they’d always been close despite their (very) different natures. But she knew she couldn’t share any of this. Her sister wouldn’t understand, for one -- though she did always try her very best -- but worse than that it would only pierce her with the kind of worry that made Thalia feel a little shy of sane.

Nox was actually the first real friend she’d had in a long time, and she knew he would understand this strange and rather wonderful world she found herself perched on the threshold of (or at least he wouldn’t call her crazy), but he had his own worries and she’d already splurged all her anxieties on him once of late. And of course the person she wanted to speak to was his high holiness of the sharp smirk (Patricius I, originally born Philip Patrick Sullivan, though neither of those names really fit). Maybe he would not entertain the furious flurry of her curious nature, but he was the only one she knew who strode the same distant world -- and more, saw the things she saw.

Unfortunately, aside from the fact Mass had gone on quite forever -- and Father Ando, after that, a veritable eternity -- it was by now the twinkling early hours of the morning. Nor was it like she had any way to contact him.

She fiddled with her phone for a while, tried to slip into the realm of a book, but found herself drawn back to watching the display of sketches. Shadows curled their edges, smudging them into something otherworldly, and for the first time she was compelled to the heart of such a mystery. To want to understand. In some places her eye wandered like the contours of a map -- or a timeline, akin to the flickering pages of a flip book. But it was all theoretical. From the things he had said, Noctua clearly remembered this other world and its happenings when he awoke, but nothing stirred for Thalia. Feelings, maybe; a sense of familiarity that she had always assumed was because the art originated from within her. In some places, the more she stared the more she had a sense of some intangible connection, but like deja vu it slipped to nothing but the remnant of stirred emotions. 

Strangely, it mostly filled her with a sense of loss.

It was too late (early) to call anyone, even Aylin just to hear her sister’s voice, but she could not settle either. In the end she did summon up Nox’s contact, but only fired off a message to sate the pang of disconnect sitting in her chest.

@"Nox"  You will NEVER guess who I met today

Then, on a whim.

@"Sage"  Hi :) 

She let the wallet fall away, and sat up cross-legged amongst the blankets of the bed, restless. A faint breeze stirred through the window, and soft music continued to fill the loud silence. Thalia leaned to pluck the burn box from the nightstand, where it had been perched alongside the twig Noctua had given her at the church. He probably had not meant it as a gift, yet she was unable to let it go. “And you,” she said, twisting the ornament lifted from inside the box into her grip. It sparked dull in the moonlight, but only in a natural way; it did not shine as she knew it could. “What on earth are you?”

She did not think of the symbol burnt into her hand, or the warnings Noctua issued; that she meddled in things she ought not. That the theft would have consequences.

Her eyes were beginning to burn tired, yet she felt strange about sleeping, knowing now that her soul would fly somewhere unknown; that the images likely to spill forth tomorrow were not the workings of an idle mind, or simple dreams she never remembered nor cared to, but evidence of an entire other existence.

My newest thread is open for joining to anyone pc or npc.

Kemala stretched. For so many months, her arm was not quite long enough to grasp this branch that would carry her to the top of the tree. Finally, after days of trying, she told herself today would be the day of victory.

Her spindly legs gripped the trunk. Sweat trickled her cheeks. Her hands burned with the bite of a branch and she was pretty sure that a spider had crawled onto her shoulder. As though through sheer willpower, her body spanned the distance, and she pushed away, high enough that to fall would surely break her bones.

But her hands gripped tight and her body swung in mid-air. Not one to celebrate early, she kicked and pulled hard. Her barefooted ankle hooked the branch and she was up. She howled with victory, finally feeling the beat of her heart and the ache in her body. The branch bowed under her meager weight, fragile as it was, she was always thin and petite. The great-mothers said she was a hatchling, but as the only child of parents who tried for many years to conceive, she was probably a miracle to be born at all. For most of her life, those around her worried and fretted over her health. But Kemala was perfectly fine. She was strong of mind and what others saw as lean of body, she carved into muscle and will-power to conquer whatever she put her mind to.

Like climbing this tree. She ate three-times the amount of her daily meals for months. So much her stomach bulged and ached, but she would not be a hatchling forever. She wanted to be a great woman, lithe and capable. More than capable. She wanted to prove herself.

Today was the first step. Literally.

She peered over the tree-tops. The fresh air above the canopy soothed the sweat from her temples. Her dark eyes peered sharp as eagles into the distance. Behind her, Mount Agung, the highest peak of Bali and an active volcano, coiled a calm smoke. In front, the crystal waters of the ocean stretched and the shadowy outlines of nearby islands painted a beautiful canvas of color. Mother and father continued to pray to the gods for their blessing, asking for forgiveness for what sins that they thought deserved destruction of unprecedented fury, but that was years ago. Kemala saw hope behind those islands. Where they turned to the past, she would face the future. By her will alone, if necessary, she would see the island she loved, the places she loved, restored.

It took another decade of hard work and gritty determination, but she did just that.

*wink*

https://www.wotseries.com/2020/06/16/mee...DWPuT8xGhs

I hope they don't get the GoT Ghost treatment, though >_<