04-29-2022, 08:57 PM
Maybe it was the magic’s aftermath still muddying her senses but she felt like she might drift up into the ether and disperse like mist, were it not for the calloused palms brisking up and down her arms. A guttural melody entwined the frightened cadence of her own heartbeat, and it could have been from admonishment or comfort or irritation that he spoke, she had no idea. The words were nothing she understood, nor was she even sure he was actually talking to her at all, but it was an anchor all the same – one to a here-and-now that felt like it was slipping through her grasp right alongside the shivering.
Instinct drew her gaze up, not around them. Her eyes rounded wide, lips slackened in awe or fear. The darkness above was fathomless, too absolute to be a real sky, too depthless to seem something solid. A firmament of constellations oozed soft light like the veins threading the shadowy walls. An impossible hallucination. Her attention blinked away from a reality she was not yet ready to accept (don’t think, don’t remember). Instead where he led she followed, relieved to shed autonomy for something safe and trusting, to pour the sum total of her parts into another’s keeping.
She sat where he placed her, pressed the offered cloth to her temple with something between a sigh and whimper. Frustration kindled from that sharp reminder of pain, but the throbbing pulse at her temple at least began reeling her back into herself. “Sanctuary,” she answered without really considering the question; a murmur, a self-soothing reassurance, something slipped free of the cracks. For a bizarre moment her name had sounded spiky and foreign in her ears; she puzzled over it quietly, then set it aside as a rather unwelcome revelation.
The shock began to ease now. Her mind made no smooth transition from the glacial and barren underwater cave to wherever this was, but her memory dulled the crossing to something bearable, and she adapted the way she always did: by not fishing too deeply for answers, by living in the moment. “I don’t know,” she admitted, perhaps unaware she’d already offered an answer. “I’ve never seen this.” It lapped at her consciousness, though, and it disconcerted her at the same time it felt like a hand to hold in the dark, or a cool palm on a fevered brow. She wasn’t afraid (or at least, she wasn’t afraid of where they were). Yet nothing was familiar, not in the ways she had explored since leaving Moscow; secrets divined from drawings on a page, scenes plucked from another life, physical things she could recognise and piece together. Trying to explain any of that seemed fruitless though; she’d witnessed Aylin’s patient despair too many times to seek the right words. Not that she thought Tristan would react badly; on the contrary, given the strange way they’d ended up here in the first place. But his reluctance was fresh memory. He didn’t need to think her crazier than he already did. That and she was too distracted for articulate words.
She twisted in her seat to observe the room around them, the bloodied cloth now tangled between the hands in her lap. Tables and equipment she had no names for crammed the space, and Thalia’s first instinct was the insatiable desire to touch everything, the temptation written clear all over her expression. But her fingers were numb and clumsy, her body tired and frozen, and it was another sense entirely which sparked the core of her curiosity and kept her from more mundane exploration. Intricate braids of power hidden like jewels in the framework of the walls. She hadn’t known that was even possible.
Without thinking she pulled herself up onto the nearest table, squeezing amidst a pile of boxes and other things she barely glanced at. Between the patterns of eerie light, the wall’s ebony surface looked glassy as the lake had been at night, and she cupped her hands and pressed her face close, as though she expected tell of another world beyond the bubble of this one. But there was nothing to see. A trick of the light, perhaps, like the scattered starscape far above their heads, and she felt a little foolish for the whimsical nature of her exploration when they were surrounded by the strangest artefacts. A cornucopia of mystery.
She leaned back, ran her fingers over the strips of luminescence. She ought to be promising to find Tristan a way home. To the best of her ability at least. Or maybe to find the creature they had both come seeking; it was why he was here. But all she did was cave to the temptation of answering those curls of power with her own (knowing full well she shouldn’t). Forbidden was just that much more tantalising, wasn’t it? She apologised silently to Patricus. And to Tristan, for the risk he would have no idea she undertook. It was only a gentle exploration (harmless surely), but its effect on her was profound; like a bridge to something ancient and primordial. Who made these?
“Oh.” The surprise was soft but unafraid. Because something did happen, much to her surprise.
The walls shifted like disturbed water, then blossomed with soft light from without. Thalia sat utterly mesmerised. A seascape unfurled, fading into hungry shadows at some distant horizon. She was not familiar with aquatic plants, but it did not look how she imagined the lake-bed of Baikal. Curious, she leaned closer and pressed her palm to where the wall had been, convinced she would slip right through to that other world, but though there was a soft, membranous give, she did not fall through. Fortunate, really, because it would have been a rather ill conceived notion to tumble right through. Her touch trailed away, captivated by the beauty of something so utterly alien. Her skin tingled with the wonder. Or maybe that was just the cold.
The window-view faded, smoothing back to those black walls like a slick of oil coated anew. She turned to find Tristan, half convinced he might have vanished. Not that she had any real idea of what they had just witnessed, but she was glad to share it. Her expression was alive with the gift of this strange experience.
“When we were children my nana told us our grandad had crossed a fairy mound and become trapped amongst the aos sí. I believed that for a long time. But if this was faerie I think there would be more enticing hospitality for water-logged travellers.” Hospitality it would have been unwise to accept, of course, but Thalia was not convinced she had so wise a head on her shoulders. Her hair plastered her back, still dripping. It felt like little rivers across her skin, tracking shivers the whole way down her body. A puddle had grown beneath her, cascading down the table’s edge in soft plunk-plunk-plunks. It smelled faintly marine down here though. She did not think the water would do any damage.
“So we’ll have to find our own,” she added as she slipped down and found her feet again. Alone, she would have probably already wandered into the thick maze of this place, and suffered for it when the cold finally closed its vise, and she recalled her body’s ills. She remembered being lost in the forest, phone dead. The still-healing burn on her hand tended by another’s care. But witnessing the half-drowned visage of another was like a mirror to the soul. She could ignore it in herself, but not so much in another. Not that Tristan looked particularly uncomfortable, just wary, like an animal exploring unfamiliar territory. But she thought he would approve of the sensible consideration of getting warm and dry.
Thalia pressed the cloth back to her head, though she thought the blood had staunched now. It was a strange material, soft, but it caught the glowy walls like fish scales, and it felt nice. There was probably a lifetime’s curiosity in this room alone, but it was him she considered then. The inquisitiveness was open; the treasure of a thousand questions visible in the depths, and she almost succumbed to the distraction. But when her lips parted to speak, what she actually said was: “Vanagandyr. You look the part right now.” It was a word he had spoken back at the cabin, not one she had remembered; conjured now for the way the swim had flattened the hair to his head and beard down his neck. It suited him in the way Noctua suited Noctua, and she spoke it with the same kind of fondness. Amusement laced too, because the humour tickled her, and she presumed he knew what it meant.
“Come on, then.” She turned to one of the shadowed doorways with unerring confidence, intending to lead the way.
Instinct drew her gaze up, not around them. Her eyes rounded wide, lips slackened in awe or fear. The darkness above was fathomless, too absolute to be a real sky, too depthless to seem something solid. A firmament of constellations oozed soft light like the veins threading the shadowy walls. An impossible hallucination. Her attention blinked away from a reality she was not yet ready to accept (don’t think, don’t remember). Instead where he led she followed, relieved to shed autonomy for something safe and trusting, to pour the sum total of her parts into another’s keeping.
She sat where he placed her, pressed the offered cloth to her temple with something between a sigh and whimper. Frustration kindled from that sharp reminder of pain, but the throbbing pulse at her temple at least began reeling her back into herself. “Sanctuary,” she answered without really considering the question; a murmur, a self-soothing reassurance, something slipped free of the cracks. For a bizarre moment her name had sounded spiky and foreign in her ears; she puzzled over it quietly, then set it aside as a rather unwelcome revelation.
The shock began to ease now. Her mind made no smooth transition from the glacial and barren underwater cave to wherever this was, but her memory dulled the crossing to something bearable, and she adapted the way she always did: by not fishing too deeply for answers, by living in the moment. “I don’t know,” she admitted, perhaps unaware she’d already offered an answer. “I’ve never seen this.” It lapped at her consciousness, though, and it disconcerted her at the same time it felt like a hand to hold in the dark, or a cool palm on a fevered brow. She wasn’t afraid (or at least, she wasn’t afraid of where they were). Yet nothing was familiar, not in the ways she had explored since leaving Moscow; secrets divined from drawings on a page, scenes plucked from another life, physical things she could recognise and piece together. Trying to explain any of that seemed fruitless though; she’d witnessed Aylin’s patient despair too many times to seek the right words. Not that she thought Tristan would react badly; on the contrary, given the strange way they’d ended up here in the first place. But his reluctance was fresh memory. He didn’t need to think her crazier than he already did. That and she was too distracted for articulate words.
She twisted in her seat to observe the room around them, the bloodied cloth now tangled between the hands in her lap. Tables and equipment she had no names for crammed the space, and Thalia’s first instinct was the insatiable desire to touch everything, the temptation written clear all over her expression. But her fingers were numb and clumsy, her body tired and frozen, and it was another sense entirely which sparked the core of her curiosity and kept her from more mundane exploration. Intricate braids of power hidden like jewels in the framework of the walls. She hadn’t known that was even possible.
Without thinking she pulled herself up onto the nearest table, squeezing amidst a pile of boxes and other things she barely glanced at. Between the patterns of eerie light, the wall’s ebony surface looked glassy as the lake had been at night, and she cupped her hands and pressed her face close, as though she expected tell of another world beyond the bubble of this one. But there was nothing to see. A trick of the light, perhaps, like the scattered starscape far above their heads, and she felt a little foolish for the whimsical nature of her exploration when they were surrounded by the strangest artefacts. A cornucopia of mystery.
She leaned back, ran her fingers over the strips of luminescence. She ought to be promising to find Tristan a way home. To the best of her ability at least. Or maybe to find the creature they had both come seeking; it was why he was here. But all she did was cave to the temptation of answering those curls of power with her own (knowing full well she shouldn’t). Forbidden was just that much more tantalising, wasn’t it? She apologised silently to Patricus. And to Tristan, for the risk he would have no idea she undertook. It was only a gentle exploration (harmless surely), but its effect on her was profound; like a bridge to something ancient and primordial. Who made these?
“Oh.” The surprise was soft but unafraid. Because something did happen, much to her surprise.
The walls shifted like disturbed water, then blossomed with soft light from without. Thalia sat utterly mesmerised. A seascape unfurled, fading into hungry shadows at some distant horizon. She was not familiar with aquatic plants, but it did not look how she imagined the lake-bed of Baikal. Curious, she leaned closer and pressed her palm to where the wall had been, convinced she would slip right through to that other world, but though there was a soft, membranous give, she did not fall through. Fortunate, really, because it would have been a rather ill conceived notion to tumble right through. Her touch trailed away, captivated by the beauty of something so utterly alien. Her skin tingled with the wonder. Or maybe that was just the cold.
The window-view faded, smoothing back to those black walls like a slick of oil coated anew. She turned to find Tristan, half convinced he might have vanished. Not that she had any real idea of what they had just witnessed, but she was glad to share it. Her expression was alive with the gift of this strange experience.
“When we were children my nana told us our grandad had crossed a fairy mound and become trapped amongst the aos sí. I believed that for a long time. But if this was faerie I think there would be more enticing hospitality for water-logged travellers.” Hospitality it would have been unwise to accept, of course, but Thalia was not convinced she had so wise a head on her shoulders. Her hair plastered her back, still dripping. It felt like little rivers across her skin, tracking shivers the whole way down her body. A puddle had grown beneath her, cascading down the table’s edge in soft plunk-plunk-plunks. It smelled faintly marine down here though. She did not think the water would do any damage.
“So we’ll have to find our own,” she added as she slipped down and found her feet again. Alone, she would have probably already wandered into the thick maze of this place, and suffered for it when the cold finally closed its vise, and she recalled her body’s ills. She remembered being lost in the forest, phone dead. The still-healing burn on her hand tended by another’s care. But witnessing the half-drowned visage of another was like a mirror to the soul. She could ignore it in herself, but not so much in another. Not that Tristan looked particularly uncomfortable, just wary, like an animal exploring unfamiliar territory. But she thought he would approve of the sensible consideration of getting warm and dry.
Thalia pressed the cloth back to her head, though she thought the blood had staunched now. It was a strange material, soft, but it caught the glowy walls like fish scales, and it felt nice. There was probably a lifetime’s curiosity in this room alone, but it was him she considered then. The inquisitiveness was open; the treasure of a thousand questions visible in the depths, and she almost succumbed to the distraction. But when her lips parted to speak, what she actually said was: “Vanagandyr. You look the part right now.” It was a word he had spoken back at the cabin, not one she had remembered; conjured now for the way the swim had flattened the hair to his head and beard down his neck. It suited him in the way Noctua suited Noctua, and she spoke it with the same kind of fondness. Amusement laced too, because the humour tickled her, and she presumed he knew what it meant.
“Come on, then.” She turned to one of the shadowed doorways with unerring confidence, intending to lead the way.
![[Image: thal-banner-scaled.jpg]](http://thefirstage.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/thal-banner-scaled.jpg)