[Closed] Threshold

[Marzena Idas]

19 Hamis 2719
Evening - Vienda // Uptown

It was Marzena's least favourite part of Vienda, an incredibly low bar that Uptown still managed to skirt beneath with a country mile of clearance. While in the interests of simplicity, she regarded and described Vienda as being home, even when she had lived here she had seldom visited the city itself, cloistered instead within the modest grandeur of her mother's home in the years before Brunnhold, visiting only rarely on excursions and misadventures during those school years, and even less frequently in the years since. Her dislike for Uptown was multifaceted, born in large part from the neighbourhood's duplicity. It appeared to be one thing, but on closer inspection was another. The grand architecture and air of culture only a thin veneer, beneath which lurked all manner of murky depths. Marzena had come to know the truth of the people who lived there, and frequented there. She knew what happened behind some of these walls, and some of the drawn curtains and fastidiously closed and bolted doors. She knew the kind of things that people did, and said, and pretended hadn't happened the next day. For them it seemed so easy, misconduct and debauchery forgotten about by dawn as if it were nothing more than a dream. Marzena was not equipped for that. Perhaps she drank too little, or paid attention too much; but for her, those wild nights never faded, each joy, each moment, each mistake, each downturn, etched into her mind as if it were carved in diamond. She remembered what had happened here. She remembered what she had done, and who she had been. The thoughts chilled her, in spite of the relative warmth of the Hamis evening, and she hugged her thin jacket a little tighter around her.

Yet, distasteful as that past was, and the insight into the present it provided, Marzena did not find herself feeling regret. It was an emotion that she had little use for, and thus little patience. Regret was a static emotion. It trapped you, forced you to wallow, made you complacent, and neglectful. There was no value in that. There was no value in being still, in not moving forward. The past was fixed, those measurements recorded, and time could only flow in one direction. You could learn from it, of course, and let it inform your future expectations and choices: such was the basis of all good science. But no matter how much the heart might wish it was so, you could not live there. The past was barren, and memories stood like ruins in the sand: a grand and imposing monument to what had once been, something that could be studied and extrapolated for insight and enlightenment, perhaps, but that could never be more than a broken echo.

Today, Vienda seemed even less welcoming than ever before. Perhaps it was the grand simplicity of it, the elegant and orderly structures a stark disparity from the cluttered chaos of the Stacks back in Brunnhold, a surrounding that at first had clawed at her tidy sensibilities like razors through flesh, but that now had become welcome and reassuring, the city wrapping around her like an embrace. Vienda didn't do that. Vienda left her open and exposed, drudging along wide streets, heels clicking against the cobbles, trying to ignore the intermittent foot traffic and to not notice the lingering glances that came her way. A self-conscious hand brushed through the short platinum of her hair. It was artificial, a modification she had inflicted upon herself during her school years. It was hardly much of a deception, barely a fraction of the albinism that a Gioran such as her was supposed to possess, but it was enough that her differences began to fade from people's minds; and here on the streets of Vienda, she was Gioran enough for a passing glance, noticed by the Viendan public for what she was, rather than what she did not quite appear to be. It allowed her to walk with a little more confidence, a straighter posture and bolder strides, exploiting the way her Gioran blood helped her tower over the galdori who belonged here, and even some of the humans with whom they intermingled. At one time, she had been ashamed of what set her apart; afraid of it, even. She had tried to make herself small, tried to make herself unnoticed. It was another lesson she had learned from, another set of measured results that had helped inform the new thesis by which she lived her life. The Marzena of today swept down the street as if she belonged, regardless of how deeply certain she was that she did not - or at least, so she hoped.

Her destination was not difficult to find: unfamiliar, and yet as blatant as one might expect from Francoise Rochambeaux. The Aeterna Theater loomed in the distance, close enough that one could get away with describing oneself as living near it, provided one was willing to be generous with one's definition of near. It was a nice home, Marzena supposed; she cared very little for art or architecture, her interest in them limited largely to the technical and objective; but it was not an ugly building, not objectionable, and nice was as close to a compliment as Marzena was likely to get on the subject. Or any subject relating to Francoise, for that matter. Her jaw clenched as she reached the doorway, allowing herself a moment to compose herself before reaching for the ornate wrought iron attached at what she supposed was a convenient height for the average Anaxi galdor, and hammered it against the sounding plate, the knock reverberating across the door's surface and into the building beyond.

The door cracked open slowly, hesitantly even. Marzena mustered no patience for it, nor whomever stood behind it. "I know she's here." The words that tumbled from her lips could have come from her mother, for all the stern disapproval they contained. "Let me in."

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 19th Hamis 2719
The Rochambeaux Residence, Uptown, Vienda

Francoise twitched the curtains shut in the sitting room, and turned back to her husband. Aurelien was sitting in his chair before the crackling fire, slippered feet propped up, reading the evening paper with a glass of something dark golden beside him. He turned the page, making a fluttering crackle sort of noise.

Francoise sighed. “I’m just worried about her,” She said, making her way across the room. She sat down opposite her husband, bent forward slightly, arms resting on her legs – then eased back, carefully, gaze flickering down to her stomach, and rested her hand against it.

Aurelien sighed, a long, drawn-out noise, and folded his paper, setting it down on the side table. He’d already styled his tight blonde curls for the day. His valet had grown quite good at styling them to cover the little thinning patches at the temple, but Francoise loved them; he had had a thicker head of hair when they had first married, but she liked the way it made him look older, more distinguished.

“Worry isn’t good for you right now, darling,” Aurelien said, his gaze dropping to her still-slender waist as well.

Francoise made a face. “Don’t be that way. She needs us.”

“She can stay with her brother-in-law,” Aurelien said, raising an eyebrow.

Francoise pouted, looking at her husband. “Enofe? Please. He’s half in love with her, you know, and he hasn’t the slightest idea how to manage her. He let her duel that – that Da Huane, in front of half of Vienda!”

“As if you could have stopped her,” Aurelien said, but his tone was gentler than it might have been.

Francoise grinned, reaching out to take his hand. “She’s been my friend for more than ten years. I know she’s not quite your favorite person, but she’s always been good to me. Please, darling? She’s still recovering, and I – I’m scared of what she’ll do to herself, left alone. She’s scarcely eating; she seems like a shadow. It makes me so afraid, thinking of… losing you,” her eyes softened, and she lowered her gaze, ever so slightly, and held, counting the beats to herself. One… two… three…

Aurelien sighed, clasping her hand, slowly. “I don’t want Mrs. Ibutatu here longer than she needs to be.”

Francoise smiled, and lifted her gaze to his. “Thank you, my sweet,” she leaned forward and brushed her lips over his cheek. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”

“I already do,” Aurelien was grumbling, bristling a little, but he was smiling too.

There was a knock at the door, and Aurelien sighed, shifting in his armchair.

“I’ll get it,” Francoise said, lightly, and kissed his cheek again. She rose, smiling brightly to herself as she bustled from the room.

The servants were still clearing away the remnants of dinner. Niccolette hadn’t come down – again – but at least she’d been awake for the doctor that afternoon. Francoise had cornered him, afterwards, and he’d left her with a report: the Bastian’s ear was healing well, he didn’t expect any permanent damage so long as she rested well and avoided loud noises, but he was worried about how frail she seemed. Francoise had left the maid with strict instructions to hover until Niccolette had eaten something, but the supper tray had still seemed, to her, barely touched.

It was, Francoise thought, worrying. She had never imagined seeing her vibrant friend so – so – dull.

The Anaxi was still thinking all of it over when she entered the front hallway. She wore a pale peach dress, patterned with small pink and green flowers, with embroidered white cotton filling the neck and the sides of the skirt – a comfortable gown for a night in, nothing fancy for visitors – as, naturally, they had not expected any. Her waist was still cinched tight; she was not showing yet, and she was as relieved as she was disappointed. She had still done her hair, naturally, the long, slightly curled style that Aurelien liked best, and there was a little bit of pink on her lips, a faint blush of color in her cheeks, the tiniest dusting of shadow around her eyes.

The human doorman was bowing, politely, to the galdor on the front steps. “Mr. and Mrs. Rochambeaux have retired for the evening,” he was explaining.

At the sight of the Gioran, Francoise’s eyebrows raised. “You,” she said, a little sharply. “I can’t imagine she would want to see you,” Francoise’s lips pursed, and she bowed, still standing in the hallway. Her field was full of living mona, bright but not especially strong, and rather than shifting to a welcome color, it held clear and unforgiving around her. “Ms. Idas. Welcome, of course.” Francoise stepped back, slightly, her gaze sweeping over Marzena, and her lips pursing slightly more.

The doorman eased back a little more, holding the heavy wooden door wide open to let the two women talk, doing his best to act as if he were invisible.

[Marzena Idas]

19 Hamis 2719
Evening - Vienda // Uptown

Marzena cared very little about art, and people like Francoise Rochambeaux were perhaps the reason why: for Francoise was nothing but art, a carefully considered and crafted appearance, nice to look at but utterly lacking in any sort of substance that wasn't pretentious, obnoxious, and annoying. Perhaps the opinion was cruel and unfair, but it was one earned and reaffirmed time and again, which had not dulled over the years since their school days together. They kept things civil, of course - or at least, Francoise vaguely followed the guidelines that civility dictated, in the interests of maintaining appearances - when their paths occasionally and infrequently crossed, but there was no love lost between them; nor had there ever been any love to lose. Moderate tolerance was the most the two of them had ever shared; though between then and now, Marzena had managed to understand the reasons behind it a little better. For Francoise, it was the kind of disdain that came from the arrogant certainty that you were better than just about everyone else in your immediate proximity. For Marzena, it had been jealousy: for in the waning days of their time at Brunnhold, Francoise had been a friend to Niccolette in a way that Marzena was incapable of being. Marzena had found herself adapting to that, striving to emulate, forcing herself into the uncomfortable mould of a person she could not stand, and she resented Francoise even more deeply for it. She didn't have to of course, it was a choice she made rather than one forced upon her: and yet, it felt as if it had been forced, by the insidious efforts of the woman now opposite her, trying to drive a wedge between Marzena and her closest friend. The only consolation was that Francoise had not succeeded, though only because another had hammered in that wedge instead.

Of course, things were different now. Marzena was different now. She had her work. She had her research. She had Brunnhold, her exclusive territory now it had been vacated by her social competitors. And what was Francoise? A wife? What more than that? Look at her, look at how composed she was, safe in the comfort of her own home and yet still without a hair out of place, still making concessions to appearance instead of comfort. Here was a woman who could find you bleeding in the street, and would still want to fix her make-up before seeking help for fear that she might be seen in a less than perfect state. By all rights, Marzena should have had pity, for the burden those life choices had placed upon Francoise, and how little she had changed and grown since they had left school behind. Yet Marzena still felt it, that same jealous rage, that same agonising realisation that Francoise still possessed what Marzena did not, still represented what Marzena could not be, still had something to offer Niccolette that Marzena was not able to emulate. Perhaps Francoise had not won Niccolette, not by deliberate action or effort, but Marzena had most certainly lost.

But a battle was not the war. As Marzena watched Francoise stand there, with her stupid perfect hair, and her stupid perfect make-up, her stupid perfect field and her stupid perfect dress that managed to be both flattering and yet somehow still look passably comfortable, with her stupid perfect house and her husband who was probably stupid and perfect too, Marzena turned her thoughts inwards, focusing on herself and her field: on the imaginary field lines that extended from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, strange arcing, curving lines of energy that made the strangeness of magic a little easier for her to fathom. She imagined the way the mona flowed along those lines, and urged them to do so more eagerly, like a flare arcing outwards from the edge of an eclipse, her own private form of posturing with her field.

"Fortunately, the reality of things is not restricted by the limited scope of your imagination," Marzena offered, through a tight and by-the-numbers polite smile, one of the few things that Marzena was glad to have inherited by her mother. "You look lovely as ever, Ms. Rochambeaux," she added, her eyes deviating away from Francoise for a moment to indicate the building around them. "As does your home, which I'm sure you'd like me gone from as quickly as possible. But -."

Another ascerbic sentence prepared itself on Marzena's tongue, but she caught it before it tumbled free. It would have been so easy to fall back into the same pattern, the jabs and barbs that the two had always slung at each other, worse and weightier as more time passed; but it would get them nowhere, and it certainly wouldn't get Marzena through the door. She let out a small sigh, aimed at herself as much as at Francoise.

"This isn't about you and I, it is about her. That we care about her is the one thing we've always agreed on, and I -" She faltered, her confidence slipping, a faint glimpse of a younger and more uncertain Marzena managing to peek through. "I heard what happened, Francoise. I need to see that she's okay."

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 19th Hamis 2719
The Rochambeaux Residence, Uptown, Vienda

Francoise had never quite understood why Marzena and Niccolette were friends. Marzena had been strange when they were girls of 15 and 16 together, and she had carried that strangeness forward into adulthood. It had always seemed to Francoise that Marzena thought her strangeness made her not just different, but better than everyone else; as if there was a sort of moral high ground to be held by refusing to engage in the things everyone else liked.

It was, Francoise thought, as if Marzena had decided she was playing a different game than everyone else, and that made her the winner. It was absurd, and it had always been absurd, and if anything, it had gotten more absurd with age.

Marzena pulsed her field, and Francoise pulsed hers as well, meeting the other, stronger galdor’s push with one of her own. She was well aware that Marzena outclassed her as a sorcerer, and equally well aware that Marzena thought she had scored a point with her attempt at an insult, but –

The other woman continued, and Francoise sighed as well. Her field relaxed, slowly, and she looked at Marzena. She might not have understood what Niccolette saw in the other girl, but she knew that they had been friends, once – very close friends, for a number of years, up until – well.

“I’m worried about her,” Francoise admitted, softening. “She doesn’t… she’s not herself,” She felt tears welling up in her eyes, and blinked them away; it was, she thought, terrible what hormones could do to you. She had never cried so easily before. She knew why Aurelien was worried; sometimes just thinking about Niccolette seemed to make her cry. Not that Niccolette didn’t already cry enough for two – perhaps even three.

“But it’s not about what you need,” Francoise met Marzena’s eyes, firmly, the much shorter Anaxi standing her ground against the taller, stronger Gioran. “It’s about her. If she doesn’t want to see you, I won’t let you make her.”

After a moment, though, Francoise stepped back again. “Come in.”

Francoise led Marzena down the thick tan carpet that led into the house, past the coat stand where Marzena could leave her coat, if she so wished, past a glimpse of the sitting room, where the top of Aurelien’s head was just visible over the edge of the chair, the newspaper sticking out above it. Francoise took Marzena up the long, sweeping staircase, carpeted with the same plush tan, one hand firmly on the banister.

“If she sees you,” Francoise’s voice was a little sharp, again, and then softened. “I shall have cocoa and buttered toast sent up. If you can get her to eat something…” Francoise’s lips pressed together, and she swept on down the hall – one, two, three, four doors, to the last one before the hallway turned, the corner guest room.

Francoise glanced at Marzena one last time, took a deep breath, and knocked.

From the guest room, sitting up in bed, Niccolette could just barely make out the edges of the Aeterna Theater in the distance. She had stayed in this room several times, and she had never noticed it before. It was not visible in the day; one could watch from dawn until dusk, and almost never know it was there. And then – as the sun sank over the horizon, a glimmer of light would appear, rising up over the trees and houses. The Aeterna, shining in the distance.

Niccolette sat, and she watched the lights through the shaded glass. It had rained today, and there were still streaks of water along the glass; it cast the light in prisms. Niccolette had wept too, but the tracks of tears on her face had long since dried, leaving behind only a feeling of dryness behind her eyes, a heavy ache, the taste of salt on her tongue and an ache in her stomach that she could not seem to banish.

She did not look away from the window at the sound of the knocking on the door, not at first.

“Nicco?” It was Francoise – again, Niccolette thought, bitterly. Niccolette knew she meant well; she knew she was worrying her friend, and she was grateful to Francoise for letting her stay – for taking care of her. But she did not know what Francoise wanted of her, and she doubted she would have been able to give it even if she had.

“Marzena Idas is here for you,” Francoise called through the door. “Shall I send her in?”

Niccolette turned her gaze back to the window, and did not answer.

There was another moment of silence. Niccolette could her Francoise whispering, or what she must have thought would pass for one. “The light’s on, but perhaps she’s asleep. I’ll just – ” The door didn’t creak, but it made a soft whooshing noise as it opened. Niccolette did not look; she knew what she would see, Francoise’s face, worried and creased at the sight of her.

“Nicco?” Francoise’s voice was a little louder now. “What do you want?”

Niccolette’s shoulders trembled, and she buried her face against her knees for a moment. She thought she might cry then, because she knew all too well what she wanted – and knew, too, that it would never again be hers. She cleared her throat instead, and shifted a little more upright. “She can come in,” she said, quietly, and her gaze drifted back to the window again.

The four poster bed was large, and comfortable; it had been moved so that the head board was nearly next to the window, awkwardly positioned in the room. Niccolette sat almost upright, supported by a mountain of pillows, the blanket covering her bent legs; she wore a soft, yellow cotton nightdress, with ribbons at the collar and the wrists. It hung slightly loose against too-thin shoulders, and the lamplight cast stark shadows in her cheeks, darkened the skin around her eyes like a bruise. Her hair was clean and brushed, but a little mussed, a little messy, and it hung down over the sides of her forehead, long locks spilling over her shoulders as well.

Niccolette held there, for a long moment, and then slowly turned to look at the doorway, her gaze flicking slowly up to Marzena.

[Marzena Idas]

19 Hamis 2719
Evening - Vienda // Uptown

Despite the long, protracted, agonising minutes it had taken Marzena to walk here, from where the airship had deposited her to Francoise Rochambeaux's door, she had not spent even a single moment thinking about what it was she would say. There was no point in it. No matter how many conversations passed, no matter how many times she tried, Marzena had never been able to say the words she wanted to, not to Niccolette. She made it difficult: not intentionally, of course, but the mere act of being Niccolette Villamarzana made speaking your mind an impossibility; or it did for Marzena, at least. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Niccolette didn't listen, that no matter what words she uttered, they would never be heard, not really. Perhaps it was fear of what would happen if Niccolette ever did listen, if a decade of friendship suddenly snapped into a new kind of focus. In fact no, there was no perhaps about it: fear truly was the reason that Marzena's tongue always failed her, though what precisely she feared was a far deeper and more complex question. What frightened her more: the prospect of Niccolette's scorn, or the prospect of the alternative?

Whichever fear was greater no longer mattered, of course. Marzena had experienced Niccolette's scorn, and it was as devastating as she had imagined. Their friendship had become a teacup, hurled against a wall in a fit of rage, and while enough care, adhesive, and time could potentially put the pieces back together, the cracks and fractures would remain, forever scarring the face of something that had once been so precious and beautiful.

Or at least, it once had been to Marzena. What it had meant to Niccolette, she no longer allowed herself the delusion that she knew. Less than him, her bitter psyche offered, as she stood in the doorway of Niccolette's room, watching the loss and sorrow play out like theatre across every fibre of her being, and every facet of her field. Marzena had seen Niccolette cry before. She'd seen her devastated, distraught. Those tantrums, those fits of sadness, paled by comparison to Niccolette as she was now. Her vibrance was gone, her field dull, her demeanour defeated. Apathy was not an emotion that belonged to Niccolette, it belonged to lesser people. Niccolette did not surrender. She did not back down, or buckle, or stay on the ground when the world knocked her there. She fought back. She fought on. She grabbed life by the balls and twisted, until it cried and begged for mercy. This was not her, not the Niccolette Villamarzana that she remembered. This lesser echo, this Niccolette Ibutatu, she was what Uzoji had made her. Her love for him had left her compromised, diminished, weakened. How dare he. How dare he do that. How dare he leave. How dare he leave her like this.

Marzena could feel the worry in Francoise's field, and she made no effort to hide it from her own. There was a time, too, when she and Francoise had been friends - on paper, at least, if not necessarily in practice - but too many differences to count had come between them. Now, for a rare change, a single thread of commonality stretched between them, Marzena's disdain ebbing as she reached out, a gentle hand of solidarity placed on Francoise's shoulder, her elegant fingers offering a secret and unspoken iota of comfort that was as much as she could bear to offer. They had never agreed on much, Francoise and she, but their shared concern, their shared worry, did more to bridge the gulf between them than anything else ever had. The hand lingered as Marzena continued to watch, continued to wait until Niccolette's attention made its way slowly towards them.

"You're lucky my mother isn't here."

In the years since Brunnhold, Marzena had honed a certain tone, a certain skill, a certain ability to sharpen the edge of her words into a razor that carved through the inattention of the school's children, and stabbed into their vulnerabilities. With the very young, it was stern and authoritarian. With those who knew her, it carried a poisoned note of disapproval, that pumped its way straight to their hearts. For Niccolette, it carried those both, and more. The weight of ten years pressed down against it, a glimmer of mirth, a flicker of familiarity. Serrations, carved into her voice by the last eight years, conveyed sawing sweeps of pain and anger. There was pity too, blended into a cocktail with worry, and disappointment; and as if her words weren't laden with enough subtext and emotion, her eyes pierced out across the distance between them, bright like the cool blue of a fractured glacier, harsh and soft at the same time, stern and yet shimmering in the light with the faint prelude of tears.

"Creating a scene like that, with a Da Huane no less, is exactly the sort of thing that would earn you one of her lectures."

Marzena softened, just slightly, a few careful steps advancing her through the room towards where Niccolette lay, propped up like she was confined to some kind of sickbed. An impulse urged her to sit down on the edge of the mattress beside her, but she resisted it, hesitating instead partway towards the bed, still safely on neutral ground. Her arms became a liability, her mind suddenly overly conscious of their existance, and their position. She brought her hands together in front of her, interlacing her fingers delicately, awkwardly, just to keep them occupied. All the body and bluster drained from her voice, and for a fleeting moment it was ten years ago, and Francoise's home was Brunnhold, and everything complicated between them was simply gone. Something, almost like the faintest crack of a smile at the edge of her stern and concerned expression, flickered into being.

"I bet he bloody deserved it though, right?"

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 19th Hamis 2719
The Rochambeaux Residence, Uptown, Vienda

Two worried faces, instead of one. Zena was resting her hand on Francoise’s shoulder, and part of Niccolette registered that that was odd, but she couldn’t think why. She sat, watching them, and she couldn’t – she couldn’t think –

They had never liked each other, Niccolette remembered. Her gaze flickered door and away, snagging on the lamp to the side of the door, the one that rested on the high wooden table, with the pale yellow lampshade, the little tassel; during the day, she could make out the yellow threads, distinguish them; at night, they blurred into a dark shadow, lumped together.

She looked back.

Francoise held at the doorway as Zena stepped forward. She lingered there for a moment, her hands tight in front of her, and then she turn and went, her skirt sweeping behind her, and pulled the door not-quite-shut, a little sliver of darkness from the hall still visible at the edges of it.

Zena was talking again, Niccolette realized. The light glinted in her eyes, shimmered at the bottom of them like she, too, was close to tears, and Niccolette swallowed a lump in her throat, shuddered, and looked away again. She could not – her hands tightened on the blankets, gripped, hard enough that her knuckles stood out against the skin, her fingers trembled, and then the urge to sob passed, flowed over her like a wave to break somewhere else, and Niccolette let go. She did not – she could not – look back at Marzena.

I bet he bloody deserved it though, Zena said. Right? It was a question, just there at the end.

“Yes,” Niccolette agreed. For a moment – yes; he had deserved it. She had been angry – furious – he had deserved every spell. He had ripped through her – pulled her down – and she had clawed her way up from the mud, and humiliated him, in the end, and Niccolette did not regret one single moment of it, not even the bone deep weariness that had threatened before, that seemed to have settled deep within her.

Too much casting, Dr. Fitzherbert had told her, with a stern voice, patting her hand. She needed rest – proper food – her field was in fine order, he had said, with a hint of vaguely paternal admiration that had left her nauseous, but her body wasn’t up to the strain. Rest, he had told her, was the best medicine for cases like these.

She had thought later that she ought to have asked – she ought to have asked – she knew there were things that she should have asked him. A perforation of the tymphanic membrane, he had said – not to her, but dictating notes to his assistant. To her he had said, gently, that the amplification spell had damaged her ear in the duel, that he would treat it, and that she should avoid loud noises and avoid submerging her head beneath water for some days, that he would come and check on her soon. Her hearing would come back, he had reassured her. In time.

All the faint feelings of anger in her flickered and died, and Niccolette felt even worse than she had before, shaky and drained. The softness of the bed beneath her – the pillows at her back – for a moment it was like the ground opening up beneath her, her body too heavy to fight, being pulled down – pulled -

Niccolette wrapped her arms around her legs and doubled forward, curling herself against her knees and burying her face against them. She gripped her arms, tightly, shaking, and tried to breathe through it. There were tears, a hot flood of them against the blankets, and a muffled sob, and then Niccolette sniffled, and caught her breath, her hands slowly letting go their grip, some of the shaking easing. No, she thought, no, but she could not have said why. A little longer – just a little longer.

Slowly, the Bastian eased herself upright again, or at least closer to it. She ran her left hand over her face, her left eye first, then her right, the ring pinching at the skin of her finger. She was still hunched over; she could not seem to find the strength to pull away and rest against the pillows once more. She ran her fingers through her hair, as if to push it up and back away, but the motion died, halfway through, and she ended up leaving it half-combed over her, an odd ridge at the top where it bulged and stayed.

“He did,” Niccolette said, as if no time had passed since her first answer, but there was nothing in her voice, no anger left, nothing but polite agreement. She straightened up a little more, and looked back at Zena again, abruptly. Her gaze fixed on her oldest friend; there were tears glittering in her eyes now, but her voice sharpened, grew distinct. “You would have – ” Niccolette lost the track of her thoughts, then, and buried her face in her knees again. She could not fight it any longer; there was never any stopping the tears, only the occasional chance to bargain, to delay, to sneak out a few moments more before the sadness overwhelmed her.

Niccolette sobbed against her legs, soft and breathless, her body jerking and shuddering with each gasp. Her field was pulled in close to her body, but it turned the air around her a hazy blue nonetheless, sadness spilling from her skin, oozing from her pores as if there was no end to its supply.

[Marzena Idas]

19 Hamis 2719
Evening - Vienda // Uptown

Indecision was the cruellest curse of the intellectual. A sharp mind, one that carved its way through to the heart of any problem, turned every complex challenge into a series of contiguous answers that led like stepping stones to a resolution, was not accustomed to the paralysing indecision of having no clue of what to do next. If it had been ten years ago, it all would have been so easy. Marzena would have known the part she was expected to play, and she would have acted in accordance. The Marzena of then would have flung herself onto the bed beside Niccolette in an instant, arms bundled around her, head pulled against her shoulder, drenching her nightgown in Niccolette's tears as she cried her heart out over a boy yet again, as she had so many times before. Niccolette's friend would have known what so say, and even if she didn't, the raging inferno of magma and emotion that lurked inside her heart as if it was the heart of a supervolcano, waiting to errupt with explosive force and endanger her entire world, would have forced out a geyser of affection, or a lava plume of comfort, and in her oblivion Niccolette would not have recognised the difference. But she was not that Marzena any longer. The supervolcano had erupted, and the ash spewed forth had choked the skies, and an apocalyptic winter had become of their once verdant friendship.

The Marzena of now was a different person, by far. Her heart was now a crater, and her friendships a winter, but that did not leave her entirely devoid of warmth. She had gathered up what fragments she could, of scattered, still-cooling volcanic stone, and piled them together in the caldera of her once-heart, not a repair for the damage, but at least an approximation thereof. Like a moa burying its egg in the hot desert sands, Marzena buried her emotions there, and the nest of ash and lava stone she had gathered kept it warm, enough that her smiles were genuine, and her caring real. She spent it on her students, on the younglings at Brunnhold that she assisted and tutored in between her bouts of focus on her research. If one of those had been on the bed before her, so devastated and so drowning in despair, she knew what she would have done: she knew she would have perched on the edge of the bed, not close beside but still close enough, as if she waited on the edge of the dock to reach out a hand and help pull themselves out of the waters that threatened to drown them. But just as she could no longer be Niccolette's friend, she could not be her mentor either; one of those she had never been, and one she could never be again.

What was she then? Why was she here? Francoise's words stung in her ears, the reluctant admission that the insufferable woman was right stinging like acid in a paper cut. It's not about what you need. Francoise was correct in her scorn and her warning with those words. Perhaps that was all of it, perhaps that was the only reason, some selfish desire to see Niccolette only for her own sake. Worse, perhaps the selfishness ran deeper, Perhaps the magma reservoir beneath the caldera of her heard still lingered, and with it the desperate, foolish hope that some vestige of their friendship might survive, that now in this darkest of times, Marzena alone might somehow be enough for Niccolette once again. She hoped it was not true, and hoped that by hoping, she was not as bad a person as that hope would have exposed her to be.

But while Francoise's words had been about derision, there had inadvertently been a deeper wisdom to her words, unintended and unnoticed by Francoise most likely, but still most assuredly there. It was not about what she needed; it was about what Nicco needed. What, then, was that? Through the murky fog of indecision, a quantifiable challenge flickered like the distant lights of the shore. Uzoji was the obvious, undeliverable answer; the man that Niccolette had decided was the only thing she would ever need again. He had become her everything, woven into her life so completely that he seemed almost essential to her survival, and expecting Niccolette to adapt to life without him was like asking a shark to adapt to life without water. There was no replacing that, just struggle, and anguish, and pain. But there had been a time when Uzoji wasn't her everything, and Niccolette had thrived without him, before him. Marzena was under no illusions that she alone was enough; but she was not alone, and nor was Niccolette. To the relief of Marzena's pride, Francoise alone clearly was not enough either; but perhaps the both of them would at least be a start.

Carefully, Marzena eased herself onto the unpleasantly soft mattress of Francoise's guestroom, not perched elegantly on the edge as she would have done with a student, but rather awkwardly beside her, in the empty gulf of mattress no doubt subconsciously left for Uzoji. She didn't care. To hell with him, for leaving Niccolette this way. Besides, the gaping emptiness that he'd left behind was vast enough that her Gioran behind impeding on a tiny fraction of it would hardly make much of a difference.

"If I was there," Marzena offered gently, picking up the thread that Niccolette had begun, carefully sliding off her heels and letting them fall to the ground beside her bed, and a little awkwardly adjusting herself and her outfit into a cross-legged posture atop the bedsheets, "I would have torn out his entrails and hung them from the street lamps like streamers."

She felt the urge to offer physical comfort again, a hand on the shoulder like she had with Francoise, but she thought the better of it, her hands fidgetting loosely in her lap as she sat quietly and politely enduring the silence that Niccolette had wrapped herself in. It felt strange to be in a room with her, without her voice filling the air, without some triviality or some hyper-opinionated assertion transforming itself into some great debate between them. That had talked so much when they were young, about so much; about anything, really, that floated across their minds. That wasn't something that had been torn away suddenly, though. That one had evolved gradually, as if Niccolette had been stood on a glacier and Marzena had not, and by the time she had realised Niccolette was already too far away for her to catch up. You noticed such things when you looked backward, things that you didn't see happening at the time. The older they had become, the further the two of them had grown apart, pursuing interests and lifestyles that ran in opposite directions. As much as Marzena would have liked to lay the blame for everything at Uzoji's feet, he had merely been the wedge driven into a log that was already beginning to crack. But while Uzoji bore less blame for that than Marzena would have liked, for this she was certain that he bore it all.

"De Huane isn't really who you're angry at though, is it?" Her voice was still gentle, but her brow was furrowed, and her voice carried with it an air of hesitant wisdom, or perhaps reluctant self-reflection. "People act as if love and hate are opposites, but they aren't. They are separate things, and it is possible to feel both at once, Being angry that he is gone - being angry at him for being gone - in fact it proves the opposite."

She faltered, swallowed, her brow furrowing deeper, her eyes focusing on the foot of the bed as if they were seeing something that was not there. Her nails began to dig into her knuckles, an idle and subconscious fidget as she tried to arrange her thoughts into some kind of practical order.

"The hard part, though," she continued, with all the unsteady and reluctant wisdom of hindsight, "Is the fear. Anger is big, and heavy, and easy to hold onto. It gets in the way of everything, and you can't see past it, and the fear? The fear is that if you let it go, everything else will have slipped away without you noticing, and you'll have nothing else," Her eyes climbed away from the bedsheets to Niccolette, though an ascent of Gior's mountains would have required lesser effort. "But love doesn't work that way. Love isn't something you feel, it is something you give, and something that - if you are lucky - you are given back, The love you gave, you will always feel that, but the love he gave back? You will always feel that too. He's in your heart, he's in your name, he's in your thoughts - and he always will be. No one and nothing can take that away. Not even anger."

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 19th Hamis 2719
The Rochambeaux Residence, Uptown, Vienda

The sobs battered Niccolette, tossed her about - caught in a downdraft, she thought, inanely. As if she would ever fly in the Eqe Aqawe again! But there it was, that sense of weightlessness, that same inability to move - pinned in place and free-floating all at once, beyond helpless, the nose of the airship pulled down, the gas not weighted right - too much ballast? Too little? - and the propellers struggling in vain to fight the powerful swell of winds.

And beyond? Niccolette’s heart pounded in her throat. Below, the frothing gray waters of the Tincta Bastia - below - below -

No, Niccolette thought. That was wrong; he had not crashed. There had not been any wreckage to sift through, no chance of survivors. She had not even been able to row out to floating bits of the ship, to search for bits and pieces - no mementos, nothing to cling to. No - there had been fire - there had been so much fire -

The Bastian felt the soft shift of weight as Zena sat next to her on the bed, and she knew where she was once more. She shuddered against her legs, and sobbed a little harder. She cried, for what she had had and what she had lost, and she let the currents batter her as they would, because she could not seem to steer.

Zena’s words were a distant thread of noise at first. Niccolette heard them, even if she didn’t respond. The sobs quieted, slowly, wore themselves out, and the blueshift wept slowly back beneath the Bastian’s skin. She felt even more drained, but no clearer, as if all she had done was to swirl up the morass of misery inside her, and now it had all settled back down anew. She listened, in silence, and she let Zena finish, trembling against her legs.

And then, slowly, Niccolette sat up. She pushed her hair back out of her face, and turned her face to the window, watching the flicker of lights in the little droplets, caught and reflected against the glass.

“How dare you,” Niccolette said, quietly. She folded her hands in her lap, and looked at Zena now, her eyes red and swollen from crying, but glittering green in the dim light. “I am not a student on the Field, Zena. If I duel a man, I know why.”

Enough, Niccolette thought bitterly, that no one in all of Vienda but Ekain Da Huane knew the why of it. He was the only one who needed to know; his knowledge was all that really mattered. And yet she had had to endure so many questions. Enofe thought the Da Huane must have insulted Uzoji; she had not fought that argument. Better to be thought a foolish, aching widow than to have her cousin’s reputation compromised. She could bear it; she could bear worse. It was not so hard a story, compared to what might have been.

Francoise had asked too, more than once. She might have understood; she knew enough of the history. But Niccolette understood that Francoise was not Francoise Deschamps anymore; she was Francoise Rochambeaux now, and Niccolette did not trust Aurelien, not with the preciousness of Gia’s reputation - not with the truth that Ekain had jilted her.

But Zena!

Niccolette could have wept, and not from sadness. She ought to get used to it, Niccolette thought. Widow. Well. Why should anyone else see beyond it, when she could not?

“As for the rest of it,” Niccolette said. Her voice was sharp, but she looked away, back out the window again, and it softened; the anger sputtered and died once more, and she was left with the taste of ashes in her mouth. “My feelings for my husband are not for you to know.”

There was a soft rapping at the door, then, and a head of dark hair peered inside. “Pardon me, madam, miss,” the maid said, hesitant. She glanced at the two galdor on the bed, then eased her way tentatively into the room, and set down a gleaming silver tray with a pot of steaming cocoa, two china cups, and a plate of hot toast, lathered with butter. She curtsied, and backed swiftly out of the room, leaving the door shut behind her.

Niccolette did not look up once; her gaze held on the lights beyond. She was trembling a little still; she had never really stopped.

[Marzena Idas]

19 Hamis 2719
Evening - Vienda // Uptown

Not for you to know. It was not news, of course, no startling new revelation for Marzena, but that didn't make the words hurt any less, nor blunt them as they sliced clean through her heart. Of course that was how Niccolette would feel, even after all this time. She'd made the choice, all those years ago, to pursue a life with Uzoji that Marzena would play no part in; and she'd made that choice before Marzena even had the faintest idea that such a decision was to be made. She'd informed her of it so gleefully, too, as if excising Marzena from her life was the most wondrous and exciting decision she had ever made. Marzena had learned where she stood, back then, and there was no reason at all to imagine that it might have changed. Yet, fool as ever, Marzena had allowed a small part of herself to hope. It was her single greatest failing, her one foolish weakness.

The arrival of tea turned the harsh reminder into something truly agonising. Marzena managed a tight smile for the maid, but little more, choosing the tray and service as the object of her own unwavering gaze, in twin to the way Nicco stared out through the window. She should serve them both, she supposed; not that Niccolette looked to be in the state or mindset of someone who might want tea. Nor did she seem as if she would accept it if Marzena offered. It was a difficult thing to recalibrate to, a difficult thing to realise that you were essentially no one again, essentially a stranger to someone you had cared about for as much of your life as you could remember. The worst part was accepting the idea that perhaps you hadn't mattered at all; or at least, not enough. That was somehow the most tragic part of it all, the thought that not being enough, not being good enough, not meaning as much as him was somehow her failing, her shortcoming. Uzoji had been all that mattered, and damn the rest of them all.

She shifted uncomfortably, fully aware of how wrong it was of her to feel and think such things. Gods! The woman was grieving her widow, and here Marzena was, nursing a heart that had been broken eight years ago, as if somehow that even mattered at all. What fresh arrogance was this, this feeling that her pain was somehow comparable, somehow similar, somehow adjacent enough to what Niccolette was feeling now that she might in some small way be able to understand. As if her unrequited feelings had ever been anything but a foolish, childish fantasy. She might as well have been trying to compare Niccolette's pain to something she felt in a dream, for all the reality it lacked. So of course, Niccolette's feelings for her husband were not Marzena's to know. Marzena was nothing. Her feelings were nothing. She meant nothing.

Why then was she even hear? What flight of arrogant, foolhardy fancy had convinced her that she had any chance of helping in any way? What could her nothing self and her nothing feelings possibly do?

The same as always. A defiant thought, a defiant notion, squirmed at the very depths of Marzena's thoughts. Perhaps she had always been nothing, but there was something else she had always been: there. It was the reason Niccolette's departure had been so painful, an everpresent codependence that Marzena had come to rely on utterly. Whatever she felt for Niccolette, and whatever she meant to her, there was no denying that Nicco had become the foundation upon which her entire life was built. It was fear that had gripped her, when Niccolette had so suddenly and willingly vanished herself from that place in Marzena's life, fear as everything came crashing down around her, fear of a life without her that Marzena no longer possessed the ability to imagine. But it had gone both ways. In Niccolette's lowest moments, in her sorrows, her struggles, her porcelain-hugging stumbles, Marzena had been there with a shoulder, or a sad smile, or a hair tie, or whatever else Niccolette needed. The latter part, what Niccolette needed in the here and now, of that Marzena had no idea at all. But she could be here. Perhaps that would be a start.

"Maybe they aren't for me to know." Marzena's voice was quiet. She wasn't sure how much time had passed since Niccolette last spoke: it could have been minutes, or seconds, or hours. "But right now you're carrying them alone. All that is left of him is trapped within your heart. Perhaps if you speak about it a little, a small part of that can live on in someone else, too."

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Evening, 19th Hamis 2719
The Rochambeaux Residence, Uptown, Vienda

Zena said nothing, and Niccolette was at first glad, with a sharp little feeling of fierceness - and then, abruptly, sorry, a moment of the feeling which flickered through her. She could not - she could not bear it, could not bear the weight of it. It was crushing her, steadily, her breath squeezed from her.

And to think a moment ago she had said that she knew what it was she did when she challenged a man to a duel.

And yet - and yet -

Niccolette held, there, her gaze fixed out the window. No, she thought - no, she was not - Zena had - she could not keep track of it. Her head ached; she felt as if there were a cloud, humming around inside it, as if she could not see through the fog.

Zena spoke again; Niccolette could not have said how long it had been. It had begun raining again outside, a soft steady patterning against the roof that overhung the window, not hard enough to splatter against the glass.

Niccolette shuddered. No, she wanted to say, clawing her way from the fog; no. Zena had never - had never liked Uzoji. Niccolette understood that now, but she wished she could tell her how many people’s hearts Uzoji still lived on in. She wished Zena could understand that; she wished Zena had not made her choose, so many years ago.

But Zena was not wrong either, and the argument would have been one of semantics, the sort they had loved as girls. They had spent hours on such arguments and Niccolette almost - but she could not, she could not summon the strength to care about it. She felt she was only just holding on, as if she were balancing on the edge, her harness fraying steadily - the threads parting one by one - she would not have long, she thought. She would not waste what time she had.

Niccolette bowed her head, shaking. Uzoji lived on, but their relationship, their love, it was hers and hers alone now. Zena was not wrong about that. The other half of it had been lost to a ball of fire above the Muluku Islands - bits and pieces, raining down -

Niccolette shook her head, able for a few moments to push the memory away, and gripped hard to the cord that held her present. She felt that faint pang again, something like the need to apologize. How could she tell Zena about their love? Zena, of all people? Now that - now that she knew -

The two of them had lost so much time - years - and the few scant inches left on the bed felt like miles. Niccolette sniffled. “No,” she said, softly, but she reached out without looking, and found Zena’s hand with hers, and took it and held. “I do not wish to hurt you.” Again, or perhaps still, or perhaps worse, she wanted to say, but did not. This pain would not be lessened by digging its sharpness into the girl she loved, or at least the woman she had become. It was hers and hers alone, and if it buried her she would not take Zena into the ground for the small comfort of another few breaths.

“I miss him so much,” Niccolette whispered. She turned now to Zena, meeting her gaze. Tears glittering in her eyes again, holding. She blinked, once, and one tear coursed steadily down her cheek. Niccolette shuddered, and held on a little tighter. “I am not - I cannot - only stay a little while?” Niccolette shuddered, and tears began to trickle steadily down her cheeks again, though she did not sob. “Please,” she added, shaking all the harder now.