A New Abode (closed)

[Nesrin Aziz]

She was back at Kallisti by the skin of her teeth, which technically meant she was late, but her mood was so buoyant it hardly mattered. This was a short term prospect anyway, and now that she’d shifted the Key she only needed to wait to see whether the Emissary would make a move against her – if any of m’Antinomian could even find her now that she had Wicked’s protection. She retrieved his wallet and slipped it in the back of the leather pants she’d raided from the dressing room at his suggestion. After she’d changed from Eddie’s clothes she’d winked up at the nearest camera when she sauntered out, but sent a bunny emoji anyway. What was life without a few fun risks? She was hardly going to stand out that badly in a place like this, and anyway, it was the kind of dare she just couldn’t turn aside from. When he responded with a thumbs up and big eyes she smirked and tucked him away.

Technically she was only supposed to be shadowing Nissa, but the work was easy and for now at least Nesrin enjoyed the novelty of it. Kallisti sold a fantasy. It was a bold-faced lie, utterly self-aware, but everyone played to the narrative: performers and patrons alike. Since most preferred the personal touch of table service, Nesrin was able to watch everything from the shadows of the bar. She’d been keen to watch Anna’s performance on the small stage; Cade might have been reserved about her attention (with good reason, sure) but Nesrin thought she was beautiful. It didn’t turn out to be one of her nights, though. And Nissa said Elyse was on some kind of sabbatical, which Nesrin presumed had something to do with her reaction in the bar, though she didn’t say anything about what she’d seen.

It was a largely uneventful first night. By the early hours she was back in the narrow bedroom upstairs, finally able to devote her attention to what the Archivist had told her. Some of it had been completely meaningless – things she didn’t understand at all, and Lucien could offer no insight. He hadn’t offered to take a second Reading from her, and she didn’t ask. The thing which charged her mood so high was one single, very simple fact – one Brandon had not seen fit to share, even when she’d told him her mother had died when she was small. Perhaps he hadn’t even considered her ignorance, or what it might mean to her. 

Mariam Shaaban: that was her mother’s real name. Even on its own, for her it was worth the exchange of the Emissary’s Key –  to finally be able to open that door to her own past.

Poring through the web, Nesrin discovered a journalist who had been controversial in her time, mostly on dusty Arabic websites and news archives. Mariam's political leanings had made a target of her in the days when the ASU had been in its infancy, including attempts to silence her voracious support of world unity. Overwhelmed, for now Nesrin skimmed, until she finally unearthed a peppering of stories covering the then President Brandon’s diplomatic world tour – the one which preceded the annexation of the Middle East. There were no hospital records, no birth certificate, no documentation at all of Nesrin’s existence. Not that it surprised her. Neither was there a death certificate. Mariam simply faded from public view, completely unnoticed.

She stared a long time at one of the photos, a paparazzi shot taken during the world tour. Mariam wasn’t looking at the camera, but she was smiling. Nesrin had only ever seen a single image, one burned into her memory well enough she’d invaded Brandon’s dreams with it. As a child she’d made up a lot of stories about the woman in that photograph. Seeing her now, more real than Nesrin could ever have imagined, tightened her chest with emotion she was unsure she wanted to let unknot. In the moment she was suddenly uncertain if she wanted to savour the discovery, make it last, or if it was just painful.

Either way she closed the screens after that, let the room fade into darkness.

[[Continued at Bode, Interrupted]]