[Closed] Walls I Cannot Climb

[Desiderio Morandi]

outside the good pan

morning on the 29th of roalis, 2720

F

or once, Aurelie did not look down at Shadow. That seemed to him even more worrying. Her face was paler than it had been, the freckles darker against it. She was looking into his eyes, looking – terrified, he supposed, was the only word for it. But she was looking all the more closely, with something else in her eyes that he could not describe or find a reason for.

And now that he had looked down, though he felt her gaze very keenly, he could not look up and meet it again.

Worse, she was reaching out, absurdly. Her hand – still shaking – had stopped halfway across the table, unmistakably reaching out. It did not close the distance, but nor did it withdraw. He stared at it, dumbfounded.

It certainly attracts attention. That, he could not argue with. I suppose I don’t really… You could have hurt them, and I –

He saw her lips move in the shape of, That terrifies me, though her voice was almost too quiet to hear over the breeze and the sounds that drifted in from the street below. Strange to think of life moving on out there, a busy – if not bustling – street with not a clue what was happening just a storey above their heads. He could hear the occasional rattle of a coach, and then even the whooping shouts of children. That particularly hurt.

Terrified was precisely the word he might have used; at least he could take comfort in precision. When she spoke again, he looked up. Again he could feel a lump forming in his throat. How he wished he could rid himself of that habit; it was becoming particularly distracting.

“Nor I,” he replied, frowning. He could finally drag his eyes back up to hers now. “I thought that I knew what I believed and what I was.” He had the most horrible feeling she might understand. Was this truly Aurelie Steerpike – who had once fussed with him over breaking the slightest of rules – a fugitive, a criminal, who had quietly apologized to him as the thorns of her diablerie had pierced his eyes?

Why? The question stuck in his throat. He knew the answer, in theory; it was written into every line of her. But – why now? Why after ten years? Opportunity only? She had told him that once she thought she belonged there – why had she changed her mind?

(Why had he?)

He reached out and laid his hand on hers, awkward and hesitant. It shook underneath his, which was as still and stiff as his uniform, though he could tell she was trying with great will and near success to keep it still. His fingers curled slightly around her hand. He wished very badly that they were children again, facing some fear together like Peter and his friends; he wished very badly that they were Aurelie and Des. The deadpan, dry echo of his voice came back to him: Alas.

“Perhaps it was – merely the – strain, yesterday,” he went on, doubtful. “I have always been certain that I – I have never come to them, to the mona, with any doubt – they have told me that I cast with unwise frequency, but I have always been quite certain that I was right…”

He was creepingly aware of her, vividly aware, sitting in nothing but stillness and his own field. She was not like him, should not have been speaking of this around her, and yet…

“I am a danger in –” He swallowed, sharply and suddenly aware of the bittersweet irony. “In ways I cannot predict,” he went on, precisely-enunciated in his Bastian accent, as if debriefing. “I must accept this. I do not know what to do about it. I do not wish to be a danger to you, most of all.” He felt vaguely dizzy.

Would he ever cast on her? He tried to imagine it. His mind turned away, aggravatingly difficult, as it did from so many painful things - as if turning a blind eye. Only it lingered, now, like an itch.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 29, 2720 - Afternoon
The Good Pan Bakery

What a terrible understanding it was indeed. Desiderio looked up at her again, as if the action was great effort. I thought I knew, too, she wanted to say, but the words were tangled up in a ball on the end of her tongue. Aurelie could only nod, and hope some of it showed on her face.

He hadn't yet asked her why she'd left. She wondered if he ever would, or if it wasn't important to him to know. Aurelie didn't want to speak of it, not particularly—she had yet to convince herself it hadn't been an entirely foolish idea. The wrong-headed actions of a child. Worse, because she was putting so many others in danger. She couldn't convince herself either that it would never happen again. Aurelie wondered why, though; he'd asked her plenty of other things.

"Me too," came tumbling out of her mouth in a rush when he laid a hand over hers. "I mean, I thought I... That I knew what I..." His fingers curled just a little around hers, and she was ashamed of their shaking. Ashamed, and grateful that he'd reached out and didn't pull away. Aurelie was keenly aware she wasn't that little girl anymore, and their hands didn't fit together as they once had. Some of the trembling subsided.

It was that curious feeling now that she'd felt for a moment before. That sense that perhaps they were uncertain together. That it was all right, in the end, that it was at least partly the other that they were uncertain of. As long as he held on, she...

She was an idiot, that's what she was.

An idiot who held still while he continued on. What was that like? To feel no doubts, to be certain of your own rightness? Ana had that, too—Aurelie wondered if she would have, if she weren't... If she had been born the galdor she should have been, and not the passive she was. She could feel the mona all around them.

(Could they feel the not-emptiness around her? Could Desiderio...? She had considered asking him, but she couldn't bring herself to do it any more than she could with Ana. It hardly mattered, in the end.)

There was a shift in his voice as he carried on. Such clear precision with his every word—accented, always, in that particular Bastian way that she'd always liked. Mechanical and clean. A machine that has no need for food or sleep, she thought, dizzy, a tin soldier, unmoving.

But he wasn't. She thought, embarrassingly, of looking at him while he was still asleep that morning. Of their strange time in the farmhouse before it, vulnerable and out of sorts. His hand was so very warm—no wind-up thing had a hand like that. Aurelie smiled, soft and bittersweet. "I think I can understand that," she offered; her voice sounded unbearably tender.

"I don't know what to do, either," she admitted, searching his face again with a soft frown creasing her face. Catching on the scars that gave such vivid shape to his face. "Other than to trust that you will... do what you can. And I do," she said, slowly, "trust that. Trust you."

She shouldn't. Aurelie wasn't in the least sure he wouldn't hurt her, or Cass, or Peter and Ginny. She would offer it anyway, her trust. If she were certain, then, well. It wasn't trust, was it? Or faith? Aurelie moved her thumb so it ran under Desiderio's long fingers, skimming across his knuckles quite without thinking.

[Desiderio Morandi]

outside the good pan

morning on the 29th of roalis, 2720

T

here was no training which could have told Morandi what to say to this, and less what to feel. She spoke immediately at the touch of his hand; it was scattered – she trailed off – he was surprised that she had spoken at all. And when her hand stilled a little, he felt oddly giddy. He had never eased someone’s trembling, not with his presence. Least of all someone he himself had just frightened. That was not the way it ordinarily worked.

Aurelie’s smile, when it came, was unexpected too. He blinked, studying each and every bit of her face, as if separately they could tell him something that mystified him when taken together. It only mystified him further; this evidence did not fit together. The case was growing colder and colder.

And her hand was very warm.

And she was saying what he had not dared to think – that she understood. He swallowed; his throat felt paralyzed. He felt even stiffer than when he had reached out, as if he truly were made out of iron.

In one moment, he felt offended; he felt as if he wanted to argue – not only with her, with himself – that he was wholly in control. That he was and would always be. That he was proud. That was what it meant to be a galdor; that was, furthermore, what meant the oaths he had sworn when he had entered the service of his people. Whatever she was, she was not –

He was not like…

In another, he felt helplessly, hungrily grateful. Dizzied by it. Afraid of it. For what did any of this mean?

What changed your mind? Why did you leave? He was terrified to ask. It was a question that made him feel as much interrogated as interrogator. (What has changed mine?)

I trust you, she said, slowly with a thoughtful frown and searching eyes that told him there was doubt. Acceptance of doubt. Do what you can, not be safe, not that she was not still terrified.

If there was doubt, then how could she trust? This was not a thing Morandi had ever had a knack for.

As light as a little brush stroke, Aurelie’s thumb drifted over his fingers. All thought vanished. No part of him could process it.

Nothing except the vivid impression he had had in his dream, of having kissed her hand. He vividly imagined – embarrassingly, and forcibly as if he could not help it – the shape of a scar against his lips, the warm skin with its faint scent of violet soap and flour and, absurdly, dog fur.

Wholly without meaning to, that hand on hers – which had been so stiff, and was still as solid and deliberate in each motion as iron – shifted, and he stroked her hand back. For a moment, all he could think of was the curious texture of scars and calluses under the pad of his thumb, fascinatingly unfamiliar. Each one like a question with a dozen answers, a sort of question that could not be asked or answered across an interrogation table.

He caught himself. Stiffening, he withdrew; he cleared his throat. “I am –” There were no more words. He could not seem to find them. He did not even know what he felt.

He was touched.

Stiffly, he inclined his head and shoulders in a bow – as deep as he could go sitting down.

“I – ah – hmm – shall I –” He stood up abruptly, trying not to sound choked. “Shall I refill the laundry tub and fetch it up?” he asked, as if he were asking for the week’s reports.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 29, 2720 - Afternoon
The Good Pan Bakery

Aurelie was certain she shouldn't have said that—that she understood. What Desiderio was feeling, it wasn't the same. Her diablerie was a problem with no hope for alleviation or remedy. Baked into her nature, as surely as her freckles or the color of her eyes. The nexus, now that she knew it was there, only made her more sure of it. Desiderio stiffened on top of her hand when she said it; too late for regrets then. If he had any thoughts on the matter, he didn't share them with her.

There were worse things that could be said between them.

She still wasn't quite sure what he saw when he looked at her. He'd called her young lady, which she was not—not properly. Neither was she a little girl, not the one he had known nor any other. She didn't think that Desiderio thought of her as a child, with the way he spoke to her and acted around her. Not even a dangerous one. (He had never, not even once, treated her like a child, not even in his cruelty.)

There was something unfair in wanting him to know what to make of her, when she hadn't the slightest idea what to make of him. Aurelie hoped that when he studied her face he saw, at least, a friend. She could find that much in his, she thought. A friend who had grown stranger to her while she wasn't looking, who terrified her more than a little, but a friend.

His hand shifted and his thumb moved across her hand. Aurelie's mind came to a screeching halt, careening off whatever track it had been on mere moments ago. She hadn't realized she was doing the same until Desiderio moved. Aurelie's hand had moved on instinct, tracing contours of fingers both warm and increasingly familiar. What had made her...? It was terribly inappropriate; she would have expected him to be upset, or to pull away. Not to... Not to do this, which flustered and confused her utterly.

Forget what had motivated her—she was a stupid, absurd creature, and this wouldn't be the first or last time she did something so utterly out of line. But Desiderio? What was Desiderio thinking? The feeling of his thumb tracing over the little scars on her hand was marvelously pleasant; she caught herself wishing he wouldn't stop.

As if he could read her mind, Desiderio stiffened and drew his hand away. She curled her fingers into a loose fist; she felt... She didn't know what she felt. Disappointed? That was silly. She had no desires or expectations to disappoint. Not real ones, anyway. Her skin prickled where his thumb had been; she remembered yesterday as if remembering a dream, when he'd touched her face in much the same way.

Bells and chimes.

I am, he'd started, and then stopped. What was the end of it? "Sorry"? "Engaged"? That last one was certainly true; Aurelie didn't know when she'd come into the habit of doing such things with other people's fiancés. (She staunchly quieted the strange part of her mind that reminded her that he had been hers first; as if that mattered at all!)

Of all things to do after pulling his hand away, Desiderio bowed. Deeply, as deeply as one could manage while sitting down. Aurelie was startled into returning it, awkwardly and with much less depth. When they both straightened again, she withdrew her hand at last, placing it carefully on her lap. She could neither bring herself to look him in the eye nor fully look away.

"The...? Oh! Ah..." For perhaps the first in a very long time, Aurelie found herself rather reluctant to do a chore. Well, no, that wasn't quite accurate; the washing up she would have done happily, if the water were already here for them to do it. She simply didn't want Desiderio to leave to fetch it. "Later," she blurted out hastily, then froze. Hadn't she been the one to bring it up downstairs? Hadn't she also been the one to tell him, moments ago, that he terrified her?

(It wasn't him, she thought stubbornly, that scared her. Not quite. She simply didn't know how to say it any better than she had.)

"Oh, I, ah. I h-had, uhm. Something I wanted to show you. In my room. Uhm." Aurelie swallowed. What was all of this now, then? A child he might not see, but she must seem a bit moony. "If you'd like."

[Desiderio Morandi]

outside the good pan

morning on the 29th of roalis, 2720

W

hen he had risen from his bow, so had she. It took him a moment properly to process it; perhaps he never did. Whyever she had done it – and he did not feel less touched, in that strange, fluttering way he had no word for – she was not looking at him now, at least not in the eye. The skin of his knuckles tingled where she had brushed her thumb over them. The parts of his mind that seemed to have frozen when she did so were unfreezing, agonizingly.

And still they had not a clue what to make of any of it. Why had she done that? Why had he done that? He could not seem to understand.

She was looking at him, but each time he thought she would meet his eye, she would – simply – not. Morandi was therefore not altogether sure where to look himself. Her hand was in her lap again, so he could not look at that. He felt at first as if he was staring at her fringe with a rather brutal intensity. Where he stood, he could see the top of her head, a few strands out of place gleaming in the light from the window; the part of his mind that still seemed wont to wander off was imagining tracing them with a tiny brush, capturing the little curving end of one by her chin.

And then he was looking at her chin, and he glanced away, to the embroidery – damp in patches still – down her front. And he looked promptly away from that, too, and back up to her face, though her eyes were still pointed somewhere at the level of his chest.

What came out first was not quite an exclamation; it was as if she had forgotten entirely about the dishes. Morandi wondered if he was being stubborn on the point of remembering them.

Yet he was increasingly sure that he had to go back downstairs and fetch the tub, or he would be incinerated that very minute. He would have hand-washed five dozen bowls, never mind that there were not that many, to avoid thinking too hard on what had just passed.

Or on what he felt, which he could not pry out of whatever ridiculous tangle this was. His hand was cold without hers; it had never felt so before, but it felt so now. It was tingling all over, like – like the memory of a caprise. He had to check his field; it was still, to his absurd relief, quite indectal. Idly, he touched his hand with his other, fingertips brushing over his own knuckles before they jumped away and fell stiffly at his sides.

He turned away abruptly before she spoke again. Later. One small word; it did not seem to preclude argument – it was not an order.

But it stopped him and tugged him back, so that he turned as if he could do nothing else. Something I wanted to show you.

In my room. Uhm.

If his field was indectal and his posture straight, the tips of his ears were slightly red. It took him a silent, still few moments to respond, as if he had to be rewound.

Her room. With her bed.

And – the pillowcase for Elwes, he realized a moment later, which she must have worked on more that morning, as he had slept late. Naturally. “Naturally,” he blurted out, curt and sharp and certain as if he were accepting an order. A very natural response.

Yet more naturally, he stepped to the table once again, offering his arm as matter-of-factly as he ever had.

He watched her throat flicker in another swallow; he felt a pang. “Yes,” he added, the word sounding malformed with uncertainty, shapeless unscripted. “Er – I would like for you to. Show me.” In your room, he did not add.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 29, 2720 - Afternoon
The Good Pan Bakery

Aurelie was dimly aware of how much of a mess she was. Damp in the oddest places from bathing Shadow, soap drying itchy on her skin and making her fringe stick together unflatteringly. To say nothing of her behavior—that was messier still. Her eyes followed the fingers of his other hand as it went over the knuckles she'd just—Aurelie felt herself turn scarlet as his hands dropped sharply back to his sides.

He started to turn away before she stopped him with that absurd request of "later" (who was she, putting off something that needed doing?). She ought to have let common sense intervene and let him go; he would only be downstairs a few minutes. And maybe if he'd left the room, she could have gotten her heart in order and the speed of her pulse under control. (Maybe—she wasn't particularly confident on that front.)

There was a rather agonizing pause after she asked. Aurelie had been looking somewhere in the region of his collarbone, which she could just see with the loose top of the shirt; she lifted her eyes then hesitantly, expecting to see him looking annoyed with her for being so... so. He didn't look angry—no more so than usual, anyway, which she took to mean he was not—but she couldn't tell what he was thinking. He was terribly still.

Her eyes skittered away from his and fixed somewhere in the region of his ears. They were slightly red at the ends; she thought about how warm it would feel if she were to reach out and run her finger along the outside. Then she firmly and decidedly stopped thinking about that, as it was not helping in the least.

She had made the invitation sound positively scandalous, though. What on Vita possessed her to...? She had only meant—well she wasn't quite sure, but not what it sounded like. Aurelie bit her tongue on any further explanation, in case it hadn't sounded quite so terrible to him as it did to her. No need to plant ideas that weren't there, or intended, or even remotely appropriate.

Still. She wondered if perhaps she weren't the only one who was stumbling over their tongue, here. "Naturally" was not a... well, particularly natural thing to say. It made her start on a small, nervous laugh. (Natural or not, it was sort of charmingly strange.) The laugh choked in her throat when he stepped closer and offered his arm again, just as he had every time before. It wasn't significant in the least.

She was rather afraid she was losing her mind. Although, if she reflected too closely on the last year, she rather thought that had happened a long time ago and she was just... like this. What an awful thought.

"Good," she squeaked out, taking his arm and coming to a wobbly stand. She looked at her door, because she still couldn't quite bear to look at him. "I, er. I mean—ah. Then, I will. Show you. Yes."

The short journey from the table to her door was oddly agonizing. Shadow was excited to see them up and about, at least—he was jogging lightly all around the main room, not content to simply follow after them. A puppy's energy and enthusiasm, she thought approvingly. She was pleased to see him so happy—although she might have done without him nearly knocking her over.

"Darling, please, I'm trying to walk! Oh, ah—would you rather I bring it out here, or...? Uhm." Aurelie had looked up at Desiderio to ask the question, a little distracted by Shadow's energy. He certainly didn't need to be invited into her room—the moment the door was even a little open, he pushed his way inside and jumped up on the bed. Desiderio, though, was an entirely different matter—she ought not to have... Oh bells and chimes. It was certainly too late now.

[Desiderio Morandi]

outside the good pan

morning on the 29th of roalis, 2720

S

he laughed, first. It was as lovely a sound as ever, though this laugh was somewhat off-tune, and it confused him that she was laughing in the first place. He was making her terribly nervous, he supposed. The laugh crumpled in her throat as he offered his arm. This confirmed his suspicions.

She took his arm just as she had a few moments ago, and it was wholly different. Up the stairs, he had been tightly-wound; he had grown accustomed to her hand on his arm, enough so that the sensation disappeared, swallowed up by everything else. Now, that it was the very same hand which had touched his a moment ago – which was still tingling – sent the strangest gooseflesh prickling up his arm, radiating outward from her fingertips. Had her hands always seemed so small against his forearms? Had his sleeve always felt so terribly thin, and her fingers so warm? Was he imagining the little textures of her palm?

She was not looking at him, and he was not looking at her. Natural. “Excellent,” he replied, quite clipped and abrupt, as if he were accepting a report from an ensign.

If she found his manner strange at all, it was only the usual level of awkwardness between them. Whatever had broken a few minutes ago – whatever strong, sad hold her eyes had had on his face, whatever calm weight in her voice when she spoke of trust and terror – was wholly intact again. Peeking out from her still wet hair, the tip of her ear was as red as his felt.

More of his mind was beginning to thaw, little by little. It was running itself in circles, chasing the trail of its own leash.

What on Vita was wrong with him? What a beast he felt like! He knew himself cruel, but forceful in – that way? This was not The Marquess of Stansbury, nor The Flame in the Breast, nor any other by Madame d’Lsigny. It was hardly romantic, for a man in his position to be having – these thoughts. It called nearly everything into question. What if she came to think that he had only done what he had done because of baser urges? And what else, when he could not explain precisely why he had done what he had done? How could there be any trust?

And why on Vita had she–? Best not overthink it.

Pup tangling himself about their legs hardly helped; they were close together, and closer still whenever she stumbled, her weight resting very pleasantly on him.

When they came finally to the door, he was scarce expecting it. Pup charged into the breach first, swinging the door wide; the bed – which he had seen the night before – seemed yet smaller with a bander pup snuffling about atop the neat-tucked linens and embroidered quilt.

When Aurelie looked up at him, he scarce knew what to say. He did not look down for a moment. He stared dumbfounded into the room.

He thought for a moment to say that of course he would remain outside; it was utterly improper for a man to be in a young lady’s room. This was quite as natural as everything else.

But had she not said that they were – friends, and that she should prefer it if he not think of her in that way? Of course. He was scarcely thinking of her – that way. Simply because he was old-fashioned, simply because –

“Permit me to accompany you in,” he said stiffly, looking down at her with a frown. “As much weight off of your ankle as possible is very wise.” Yes. One could hardly argue with the logic of that.

Inside, it was quite a bit smaller than he expected. Not for her, who seemed to suit the little space perfectly, though he tried to imagine Elwes standing amid the furniture and the sloping ceiling.

He had thought they were going to the trunk; they were instead circumnavigating the bed. It was all very tidy, he thought admiringly, studying the chest of drawers and the small side table until he caught his eyes.

Until his eyes caught, rather, on the book he had seen earlier, underneath what he could now see was a slim volume on embroidery. His lips parted; they pressed thin, and he blinked, staring at the worn leather spine. For a moment, he was distracted, wholly absorbed by its unaccountable familiarity.

He tore his eyes away finally, looking at her questioningly. He felt a tug of something that must have flickered across his face; his brow furrowed.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 29, 2720 - Afternoon
The Good Pan Bakery

Shadow was making a terrible mess of her nicely-made bed. She would have to do it all over again. (Even as she thought this, he nosed her pillow off of the bed and onto the hardwood floor.) Aurelie couldn't bring herself to be upset with him, but it was terribly distressing. More so because Desiderio was standing in the doorway, which was absolutely absurd—what did he care if her bedroom was tidy or in disarray? Moreover, they both knew it was Shadow's doing. They were watching him do it! Feelings, Aurelie thought, responded very poorly to good sense.

So why had she thought to invite him inside? Well, to sort of begin to imply that he could if he wished to. What a funny thought. Not, unfortunately, funny in a hilarious sort of way—more baffling than amusing. Of course he didn't want to step inside her room. Whatever she was or was not, she couldn't imagine a man like Desiderio would find it at all appropriate. (It was not, in fact, at all appropriate.) His dumbfounded silence seemed to agree with her.

"Oh! Ah, yes. That's—very wise. Er. Thank you." Aurelie had been so sure he would want to wait outside, she wasn't entirely prepared for him to agree with her half-voiced suggestion. From the look on his face, he wasn't either. It was a good point, of course—she could move about her room without his aid, but it wasn't quite as easy and she did tend to lean into the ankle. Really, it was very considerate and sensible of him to say so.

Now she was even more keenly away of the mess Shadow had so gleefully made, and of the precise proportions of the room. The ceiling sloped down to a height that was perfectly comfortable for her, but she was a good deal shorter than Desiderio. (Another fact of which she was, indeed, keenly aware.) Shadow filled up so much of the rest of the room, she was almost glad he was on the bed now.

Aurelie peered a bit nervously around her room, trying to see it with different eyes. That wasn't too difficult—she hadn't been in it long, after all. His eyes, though? With her too-human quilt, the simple (and perfectly wonderful!) furniture? She thought of the dormitory room she had shared at Brunnhold, and laying it over this cozy little room felt a swell of happiness.

The book was on her nightstand, underneath the slim manual on embroidery she had been looking through of late. Aurelie was oddly nervous as they approached it; Desiderio was going to think her terribly silly, and sentimental. She had already told him she had the book, hadn't she? But it was one thing to hear such a thing. Seeing it with one's own eyes was quite another event entirely.

The both of them paused before it, Desiderio's lips parting slightly then pressing closed again. He seemed shocked to see it there. Well, it was perhaps a bit—to have held onto something like this all this time... He looked at her with a question on his face; Aurelie's heart pulled her mouth into a smile.

Aurelie released Desiderio's arm to sit gingerly on the edge of the bed. (Shadow had flopped to his side, so if she had wanted to sit more firmly on it she couldn't have. Fortunately, she did not want to.) She slid the book of embroideries off of the top of the storybook and set it neatly to one side. For a moment she was overcome with fondness, looking at that worn cover. She brushed her fingers over the letters; A Treasury of Tales For Children, all the letters spelled out in swirling gilt.

"Please sit, if you—ah. Somewhere. Shadow may need encouragement to be polite and share." One black-and-tan ear turned their direction, but the pup himself seemed rather comfortable and deigned not to move. Aurelie decided to simply get this over with, rather than think about the implications of any of this, or how the only place for Desiderio to sit was next to her. On the bed.

"I wasn't allowed to keep much, but..." Her voice was soft, heavy with feeling that was only stronger with Desiderio so near. Aurelie cleared her throat, and then tugged the book onto her lap. She looked at him, then smiled, feeling strangely shy. Too late for that now, though. She'd already asked him in here. And it hadn't been to show him the book itself.

Aurelie opened it up with a creaking of the leather spine, and then flipped very carefully to what was very nearly the back of the book. There, tucked neatly between the pages, was the drawing he had given her so long ago. The edges of the paper were a little worn, some of the lines slightly smudged, but she had taken as good care of it as she had been able and it was well-preserved.

"I, ah. I thought you might like to... see... Hmm." Aurelie looked at him out of the corners of her eyes only, feeling rather too silly to catch his eye.

[Desiderio Morandi]

outside the good pan

morning on the 29th of roalis, 2720

A

smile spread across Aurelie’s face, tender and tentative. He blinked, swallowing tightly when her hands left his arm. Across the threshold now, he felt vulnerable and forceful all at once. Perceptive mona filled every square inch of her small bedroom, and he himself took up more space than Shadow, who had seemed so large sprawled on her bed.

And sprawled he was. Aurelie could sit nowhere but the very edge, for fear of sitting on his great fluffy tail or one languid striped leg.

It was not the embroidery manual, of course, which Aurelie took from the nightstand. It was the queerly familiar leatherbound volume underneath it. She handled it with the same reverence she had handled his sketch book the night before. He felt a terrible tug down through him, watching her fingers trace the gilt letters as they struck the light; his hand tingled with the ghosts of her fingertips, and the tips of his ears grew hotter.

Then he made out the cover. Even upside-down – It was as if someone had pulled the worn rug from underneath his feet. He was utterly silent, staring down at it.

What he felt first must have been something like anger. He thought it was anger, at any rate; it felt like anger. White-hot and harsh like lightning. He had the urge to shove out of the room and away, and down the stairs, and then to run like a hound. Until his chest ached and his mind felt empty and clean. Uncluttered by disorder.

When you think of this Briarwood Hall, Desiderio, said a familiar voice from his memories, a woman’s in his native Bastian Estuan, Florne-accented, what do you think of?

I think of her –

There was no ‘her’; there was no one. He remembered sitting in the warm caprise of Professor Cremaschi’s field, the perceptive mona still softly etheric. The light streaming in through the window across her cherrywood desk. He had sat hunched and skinny opposite her in that great chair. We have thought of the place. Now we must think of the objects.

Somewhere? Aurelie’s entreaty, and the confusion that came with it, broke through.

He had lost some of his ramrod posture, shoulders sloping. He caught himself, stiffening. Perhaps it was thought of propriety – for where was there to sit but on the bed? It was quite improper. He frowned, holding onto that feeling, which was not unlike the starched angles of a uniform. He tried to force himself back into it.

He thought to refuse, to remain standing, but then she spoke again – with a strange and unsettling weight he could not ignore. I wasn’t allowed to keep much, but… She cleared her throat, looking up at him and smiling, a little color among the freckles on her cheeks.

Feeling lost, he came and sat beside her on the bed as if he had never thought of doing any differently.

Even on the edge, his own weight caused something more of a dip in the mattress than hers. He was terribly conscious of the closeness of her hip and upper arm. Shadow stretched out a little more and snorted. The bed was somewhat low, his legs somewhat long, and his knees somewhat high.

It was only when she took out the drawing that he understood properly. She had told him, of course. He had believed her, because why should she lie? But he had understood all of this abstractly: the book, the drawing. He had pictured somebody else’s book, and somebody else’s drawing.

The pages were well tended; they turned easily, with only the softness of wear at the edges. And so was… His throat caught.

Without thinking, he leaned over a little more, reaching to hold the edge of the book with her. He was suddenly heedless of the space between them; one of his arms was braced on the mattress behind her for support, and the loose strand of his hair was rather close to her face.

He studied it. The familiar archway, misshapen in his clumsy charcoal, the gap in the wall where ivy spilled inside, the shadows cast by the broken pillars. The blobby shapes of pines on the mountainside just beyond.

This? he had the absurd urge to say, even though she had told him before. This, you kept? Of me? Did you think of me?

“My grasp of perspective was beyond wanting,” he blurted out instead, harsh and sharp. “My balance of detail even worse.”

And then let out a soft huh, and then another, his fingertip trembling on the opposite page. There was text underneath his fingertips; they came away, not wanting to smudge or wear it. But they lingered on the leather cover. He was unable to pry himself away.

“I am afraid that I cannot remember the chapel well enough to draw you a better one now,” he said dryly, though a low waver betrayed him. He cleared his throat. “We read from this book so often. You - all this time–?”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 29, 2720 - Afternoon
The Good Pan Bakery

Desiderio seemed to have—not relaxed, quite, when he looked at the book, but his shoulders had lost some of their clean-starched shape. Aurelie wasn't sure if that was good or bad. It was a bit more familiar, at least, and tugged at feelings she ought to have put away many years ago. Clearly she hadn't done a very good job of it—one only had to look at the book on her lap to know it.

It was hard not to think about. Desiderio seemed to fill the entirety of the room, with his field and with his body. Or what space of it was left, not occupied by Shadow or herself. She didn't think she minded, but it was also hard to ignore. When he sat down, the mattress dipped and pulled her closer. Mercifully not close enough to touch, but closer than she had thought he would be.

Then they were both looking at the book spread out in front of them. It didn't occupy as much of her lap as it had before; in fact, it fit quite easily now. Aurelie felt a pang at that, sudden and inexplicable—they really weren't, after all, the children they had been. Yet all of this was familiar, close to easy. Desiderio might have felt so too, leaning in to take the edge of the book and hold it with her. Aurelie wouldn't let herself think about how there was the smallest lock of his hair that had escaped to fall very near to her face indeed, or of the ease with which she could lean closer. (She would fit, she thought, very easily under his arm.)

Instead she studied the drawing as he did, every line of it long since committed to memory. She had never let anyone see her looking at it; she'd had the strangest feeling that it would be taken away from her if they did. Like the book was all right, as was the small spec of her family, but the drawing would be a step too far. So she needed to memorize it anyway—who knew when she would lose it, and have only memory to keep?

Sometimes, and especially as a young girl, she remembered lying awake and trying to imagine what that crumbling chapel would have been like if it were real. In her imaginings Desiderio was always there, telling her about it. The picture had never been particularly complete; she didn't have much of an imagination, after all. And as time went on, she'd tried less and less.

The first words out of Desiderio's mouth, looking at the soft, slightly blurred charcoal, were critical. Aurelie wasn't sure if he was embarrassed; she thought he might be. The nice thing about cooking, she thought to say, was that one's less successful attempts had no permanence. There was only one's current skill, and memory.

"I like it," she insisted stubbornly. "Just as it is." Aurelie was a poor judge of art generally she supposed, and hardly the most objective, but her position was firm. She would hear no argument on the subject. And she didn't want another one, either—she almost told him so, but for the waver at the bottom of his voice. Something in her heart wavered, too, and she just hummed equivocally instead.

"You - all this time–?"

Aurelie nodded, feeling too silly to speak. Did he think her too terribly sentimental? A glance at his face out of the corner of her eye made her doubt that slightly. "I don't know if I even need to read from it anymore," she went on, trying to cover up her own shyness. "I must have read them all dozens of times by now—I think I have most of them memorized. Some of the younger girls, the very youngest ones, liked to hear them."

She had to be careful, of course, not to take them away from their work. But sometimes they cried, as children often do, and she had no better thing to offer them but for stories. She had always wished she could show them the pictures too—that would have been too much, though, she knew. It was questionable of her to have the book at all.

"It's important to me. Both things," she clarified, in case he thought she only meant the book or the drawing and not both of them. "Of course I kept them. I—" Missed you; she had already said that. To say it again was foolish. "I like to remember, I suppose," she said softly instead. It was no better.