A Little Fall Of Rain
The first day of their partnership, Tiara had resolved to teach Graham the basics right off; starting from his name, to her name, to the flowers, the sky, and then to the path that led them to the stately house that would be their home. She named things as they went, leading her partner by his hand. He plodded along behind her, repeating things dutifully, his voice slow but his mind sharp, and his single open eye roving about with animal wariness and child's interest.
The next three days were filled with dialogues that were more singular words than sentences. Tiara named the rooms of the house, the furniture, books, and windows. The word 'mirror' was an incident all of its own, for Graham had taken one good look at his reflection and panicked. They spent that evening pulling the shards out of his arm, while the damaged skin melted and reformed like putty around the wounds.
Then it was back to business.
A few hours of the night were devoted to stars. He was entranced, and Tiara wondered--as that unblinking eye of his flicked from side to side to take in the sky's span--if he had ever seen them before. She'd put him to bed that night expecting him to sleep, but had found him awake hours later with his fingers pressed to the glass. Pale, ghostly lips moved silently to shape the word over and over again: star. Tiara learned three things that night: Graham didn't sleep very much, Graham had never seen stars before, and that she couldn't imagine a world without them. The little magic user made note to teach him their names one day.
But not the third night when clouds massed in the sky. She explained that to him over dinner; saying how yes, clouds hid the stars but no, they weren't gone for good. The concept of food, as it turned out, wasn't a problem. Table manners were. That would be a long schooling, Tiara suspected. She turned out to be right.
It was on the fourth morning that it rained.
She woke up with a hand on her shoulder, shaking her urgently. 'Sara, let me sleep a little longer,' her mind mumbled, before she remembered it had been four days since she'd seen Sara, and longer since they'd had a sleepover--
The voice was practically in her ear, soft and scared: 'Tiara…!'
"…Mm…Graham?" She sat up, rubbing her eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Outside." Even in such immediate distress he spoke the words carefully, fitting an unaccustomed mouth around the sounds, "There's something…outside." She blinked at him, and he pointed, raising his bandaged left arm to single out her bedroom window. "Out…There. All over." Through the drops pattering the glass, Tiara couldn't see anything. She leaned forward, resting a hand against the pane to get a better look.
"Where-?"
She was yanked away with barely a chance to squeak. "Graham!"
"There…!" Her partner pointed again, clutching her tightly with his good arm. He stared at the window as though some great beast hovered on the other side. "There…" His voice trailed off, uncertain.
"…I don't see anything."
"It's all over," he mumbled, hanging his head as she squirmed out from under his arm, "Tiara… Tiara shouldn't touch it. Tiara might...hurt. Might be hurt."
"…By the window?"
"No."
She sighed. Patience. She would need it in the years to come. " 'Tiara shouldn't touch…' what?"
"That."
"What's 'that'?"
The mattress shifted as her partner crawled cautiously onto it, skirting forward to tap his brave hand against the glass once, sharply. Shaken from its perch, a dangling droplet slid down. It vanished into the windowsill. He made a tactical retreat.
"That," Graham said again, softly. "It's falling."
"Oh." And she understood. "Oooh." And she smiled. Giggling as she scooted up next to him, Tiara rested a hand gently on his bowed head. Graham's hair was coarse under her fingers, too stubborn to smooth, but she tried anyway. He seemed comforted by it. "You've never seen rain before have you?"
"Ra-Raain?"
"Rain," Tiara repeated, taking his hand in hers and pressing it to the glass. "It's raining outside."
"...What…IS it?" He breathed, eye fixed on his miraculously uninjured hand as the drops slid past his palm.
Her dear Sara could have answered it logically, even wisely, but Tiara in the morning had neither necessary virtue at hand. It had taken her a moment for the idea to come, after the 'big-words-she-could-barely-understand' failed her; a long, quiet moment of folding her hands in her lap, thinking, while Graham watched her. He looked curious, or at least in later years Tiara remembered it as curiosity. She hadn't known him long then, and expression was hard to gauge in a gaze made up of one otherworldly eye, and another blind one. She would come to read his posture, his lips, the single pale eyebrow arching and falling over a lid that never opened—but back then all she had was his question.
It had a good answer.
"I'll show you."
A drop hit him on the shoulder, then the second, and the third. Graham whirled, striking at the air, beating off the assault with much courage but little balance. Tiara caught him when he tripped, and he sniffled a little as he hunched against her shoulder. His eye fixed up on her beseechingly through a curtain of wet hair. Never mind he was a head taller than her even then.
"It's cold," he said.
"It
is," she agreed gently as she stepped away, holding his arms to steady
him. "But you'll get used to it." For
the second time that day she took his hand, lifting it as far as she
could--standing on tiptoe to match his height, "Does it hurt?"
His lips parted slightly. It was an expression she recognized:
Wonderment. As the drops touched his
skin, his skin jumped, and it was cold, cold but only cold, although it tickled
a little, it didn't bite or sting like he'd expected--
"No."
"See? This is rain, Graham. It's water, and it makes things grow. Like the trees and the flowers."
Graham nodded, "Yes." Turning his palm up, his fingers uncurled. Head tipped to leave an unmasked profile in plainer view; he looked like a normal boy savoring the taste of the season.
Maybe he looked cute, or maybe it had just been a long time since she'd had the chance, but whatever it was, Tiara couldn't resist it. Graham found himself grabbed and already halfway across the path before he could even focus on the laughing culprit. Her hand tightly hooked around his, she tugged him along—and off—the path with no apology in any of her motions. Clawed feet scudded in the mud behind her; heavy steps to her dainty bounds. Dirt and grass flew everywhere in great clumps. Graham for his part took it well, or at least was too surprised to voice any objections. When Tiara finally stopped--a whirl that swung him full circle--he was barely breathing heavily, though one eyebrow had winched up into his wet bangs. She suspected that translated to 'stunned'.
"You're a few days old in this world," The girl began by way of explanation, grinning up at him. "That means you're a child...And sooner or later /all/ children play in the rain--"
Like a puppet hanging by the strings, his head listed more than turned to her. His shoulders slumped, matted hair hung heavy with rain, and the hand in hers was eerily still, but she knew he was listening. He was watching her, his lips moving in a silent mumble—catching the words and committing their sound to memory.
Her partner was a fast learner.
"—But adults don't, so much."
"Why?"
"Because…" She paused to think about it, absently brushing at her own soaked curls, "...Because adults know that if you stay out for too long, you get sick—But don't worry!" She added quickly, feeling the tension return to his fingers. He knew, vaguely, what 'sick' meant. "…We'll dry off inside. If you keep warm, it's fine."
"Oh." The dusky pupil contracted as it rolled upwards, following the path of the clouds with a new interest. This time, the magic user watched him—or at least his eye; the endless patterns of the iris as it readjusted itself constantly. She'd thought it mechanical before she'd gotten a good look at it. It reflected everything. The sky, the tree tops, and her face as it refocused on her, the ends of the circle stretching outwards like the lens of an old camera Kagetsu had once shown her,"Is Tiara a child?"
"Um…Well…"
"Tiara plays in the rain, but Tiara knows not to stay out too long. Is Tiara a child?" It almost sounded like he was challenging her.
"I'm…Not. But I…Am?" She confused herself with that. Scowling, Tiara wrinkled her nose, and tried harder "…I mean, now that I have you I'm an adult in the Elder's eyes. 'A successful summoning is the mark of a new stage' so...Children don't summon partners."
Except for her. She was the youngest to do it, and the weight of her accomplishment had only just begun to settle on her shoulders. No child could perform a summoning, and no adult—
She wasn't so different from her partner in those first few days, trying to figure out the depth of who and what she had become. A stranger cast into an entirely different world, an almost unfamiliar body brimming with a new, frightening strength—but no amount of study or definition in a magical test could help /her/.
"…But…I still want to…." The words fell from Tiara's lips like a protest. Green eyes peered upwards as though searching for someone to issue that protest to, but there was only Graham. Gangly, otherworldly Graham, her partner, the thing that marked her as different in the first place--
"Ah." She had it. And she straightened her shoulders proudly, "Graham. I have a job for you."
"Uh…?"
"Sara says adults forget things. Games, sweet foods…Friends—I don't want that to happen. So," she leveled him with her best commanding stare, "Your first duty, as my partner is to make sure I don't forget the rain. Because /all children/ play in the rain, and if I can remember that…Then…"
"…Then maybe I can remember the other things too. Do you understand, Graham?"
She knew he didn't—not entirely, not nearly, but he nodded anyway and promised her, "Graham will not let Tiara forget." That was enough; she squeezed his hand, and was grateful.
"Good. That's good. Now," she was a little kinder in tugging him a second time, giving him a moment to make sense of the pressure on his arm and follow as she began to step back, "I think it's time to go in now. We're soaked." And he was muddy to his knees. It was that night that Tiara learned how difficult changing the bandages on his legs was. "Come on." Another gentle tug, another careful step, "I'll make us something warm. It's time I taught you what cocoa is, anyway--"
He
tried to trail behind her. She didn't
let him; they found the path again side by side. The girl slipped once on the grassy
slope, and he caught her with his good arm.
She thanked him, he smiled, and the glow of the lights she'd left on in
the house called them in from the rain.
Her partner had one more
trouble, moving up the steps as drops began to fall more fiercely. In that odd way that was simply 'Graham', it
had nothing to do with the word 'cocoa', though that would become the topic of
conversation on that fourth late morning, curled up in blankets by the fire.
"Tiara?"
"Yes Graham?"
"What—Who. Who is Sara?"
"Someone very, very smart."
"Not smarter than Tiara."
"You'll see for yourself. I /did/ say I was going to introduce you…"
The door creaked open, welcoming them home, and all in all, it was a good lesson that day.
-End-