Heritage
Under her pile of blankets, Maya feels colder than the snow.
The boiling tea couldn't do the trick. Nothing is enough, not even Pearl's warm breath tickling her ears. The fever may have been gone for days, but her nightmares aren't — the mask of serenity she has built crumbles a little more every day.
Kurain is peaceful. Under her futon alone, in the square of her fragile bones, the ground is falling apart.
Spiritual energy cuts through her in pieces – just like the rain when it is cruel, when it drops sharp blades on the sorrow of men. She has tried hard not to listen to it, in spite of her training, in spite of the messages from afterlife, caught and unread in her sleep.
None of her efforts has been useful. It just comes back to her — it is her blood.
It weighs like molten lead in her fragile veins. She opens a pair of scared eyes, to see the faces of her ancestors in the night; they are the distant clouds of the storm that has just passed, and still they ask for her whole being, with a thirst – of blood? – their daughters could never quench.
She blinks, and the silhouettes are there and gone at the same time. They stay, those ghosts that have nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with whatever she will want for herself, whether it is to tread their path or to break the red string in between their fingers, death after death, woman after woman.
She tears away her gaze from the moon. With every inch of her shaking, she decides it is time to run away.
Maya cannot decide whose eyes are the most hopeless.
Pearl is too tiny to keep such a responsibility inside that little body of hers. When she sees her suitcase, filled hastily and in secret, she doesn't even have tears left to cry.
But Maya is the only Master left – she has to know which threads can or cannot be pulled in the net of this deadly family. As long as she lives, her little cousin won't see a glimpse of blood.
She explains how promises mean nothing to her – how certainties only have meaning, especially from those who are older than you. Maya wipes Pearl's cheeks with pale thumbs, almost hating herself and her own words.
But those were the best things she could figure out, in that intricate weave of dreams and stories; she cannot lose confidence in what she feels, not when half of her world needs her alive, and the other half wants her to be happy. She makes Pearl see how she will have to return soon, how she could never let it go.
Maya is a Fey, and a Fey can never forget.
She hugs her tightly, asking her to be brave for the last time.
At the end of her journey, Maya finds an open door and the silence she so desperately needed.
Phoenix would never ask her why. When he lets her in, on the doorstep, his eyes tell her that he had been expecting it from the first moment. A surprised mention of well, I thought it'd be much sooner — that is all he adds to a cup of hot chocolate and a whole evening in his arms.
Her today and her yesterday are parted by little time, but all the difference in the world stands between them. She tries not to be much of a bother; she watches much and then, whenever she comes up with anything annoying to tell him, she goes for silence.
On second thought, this probably worries him. However, at least five more years of wisdom have been slammed in her face, in the tight space of a few hours – there will be plenty of time to joke, but not here, not today. This is a time of growth and observation, for her and for the people she holds dear in her life.
His steps have become so sure, on the frail ground of his job. One would never believe what he has gone through. She listens to his tales and smiles, from behind her hamburger. On the other side of the phone, quieter every day, Pearl grows to be the greatest hero she will ever meet in her life.
She would never have thought fourteen days of peace would make the world so much lighter.
Now she faces a lonely window, sleepless in the quiet of her room, and looks at the same sky she used to dig in from the mountains. The city neons make everything dimmer – but the black night above is sprinkled in white dots, made sharper and brighter by the icy air.
They say the winter has the most beautiful skies. She takes in a deep breath. For the first time, she bursts in tears under the watchful constellations.
The weight of hundreds of ghosts falls from her shoulders.
Poor Maya needs more love and more hugs.
Come on, friends, none of us thought she stood a single chance when she said she wanted to be strong for Pearl and for the others - a breakdown was due to say the least. And for me, in that very second, writing about it became a purpose to be fulfilled.
Here it is, almost two years late.