Lemosyne

[Thalia]

Time passed before she raised her attention from that desperate sense of self. It was her normal proclivity to seek the old and wild places, particularly when she was alone, but though she was somewhere old now, it was nowhere wild. Chin on her knees, she stared at the gold and gilt, the vaulted ceilings impossibly high and sloping beyond what she could see without raising her head. She felt very small.

After some time of silent staring, Nimeda realised where she was -- in the loosest sense of understanding -- with the sadness of a bad parting. Though she had looked, she had not found Noctua in the dream, else he had not allowed her to find him. Sometimes she lingered over his star in the inbetween place. No sense of moral rightness had ever dampened her regular explorations into the dreams of others, and she did it often enough with strangers, but with him she never had. He clung so tightly to the title of No One that it would have felt like a betrayal to unearth secrets he did not give willingly, just because she missed him.

Eventually she pushed herself to her feet. The occasional ghost drifted; dreamers and memories, and none of them aware of the white-clad girl wandering barefoot in their midst. Sometimes she watched their progress through these halls, but it only plucked at the melancholy string of loneliness inside her to do so, and so mostly she explored the things that did not shift and flicker so readily. Her fingers brushed a cross like the one carved on the pebble Noctua had given her, the very same trinket weighing warm in the curve of her other palm as she thought of it. She did not know what it meant, of course, beyond that she held it sometimes as a talisman. And that, not because of what it was, but because of who had given it.

This place felt old; like there was a great sense of history, in this Age certainly, but nothing sparked against her own longevity. No memories or intrusive knowings.

What a peaceful feeling.

The ebb and flow of her existence quieted. Nothing pulled or distorted. Such a rare gift. Or, today at least it was a gift.

She laid herself out on the floor, as though it were nothing so different from a grassy knoll, and stared up at the painted ceiling. Let herself drift in that bubble of sanctuary.