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 Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2024 9:30 pm
Characters: Sorya and Gabriel
Prompt: The first time they met each other in Musique.
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Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2024 12:26 pm
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Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2024 9:49 pm
   With the arrival of spring, Sorya found her wounds healed enough that she no longer required daily dressings, and for the past two weeks she had been making the daily trek up the mountain to the remains of her home, usually arriving mid-morning and lingering until early evening. The first week had been miserable; with so much of her strength drained due to how long her injuries had kept her in bed, what would have been an easy trip last year had seemed an overwhelming task. It was getting easier, but she still got the shakes sometimes, which she was beginning to realize she couldn’t attribute solely to her weakened state.
Or…she could, but she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about much lately.
The sight of the temple still threatened to break her the first moment she saw it each day, the receding winter snows and returning green of nature making it look that little bit different every time. She had cried more in the last season than she had in her entire life, and she didn’t know when she would run out of tears or the awful grief that felt bigger than her skin could contain. The first day she hadn’t been able to stop weeping, and the villagers that had accompanied her had shied away from comforting her with the Guardian looming so near.
Now many of them had grown so used to the statue that it was not unusual for them to share in her grief, to offer a comforting touch, sing the laments of old with her that she hadn’t even realized they would know, and to weep sympathetic tears with her. The daughters of Armoniosa had been isolated from most of those beyond the mountain, but those who lived on it had known them, and enough had had friends and kin among those who had fallen that it had made Sorya realize she was not totally alone in her sorrow. It helped a little to know, but there was still so much that she couldn’t share with them. Memories that she alone carried now. Not enough, and already fading. She had spent much of yesterday trying to remember a joke Sister Helvia had told last summer, but to little avail.
It had been long winded, as many of her jokes were, but Helvia had been such a good storyteller that it had always ended in everyone within earshot shrieking with laughter. It had been the first thing Sorya thought of when her body had been dug up from the rubble, the distinctive maple leaf pattern sash she had loved giving away her identity far more readily than her crushed face. Her body had been curled around two of the children the sisters had been caring for, and they had taken Sorya longer to identify. Chenda and Pich.
They weren’t the last she and her companions had found yesterday, as the south wing had been where everyone slept during the winter, and that was also where the…where what happened had started. There had been one hundred and thirteen original residents, seventy-eight of which had been Armoniosan monks, and thirty-five of which had been the children the temple had taken in, some of whom having been orphans, with others having been purposely sent to them to be raised in the faith. Then the Lunar soldiers had numbered thirty.
In two weeks Sorya and her companions had dug up forty-five bodies, and laid them to rest in the temple’s graveyard located half a mile to the west. It had been hard work, made harder by Sorya’s injuries still paining her when she moved her left arm too much, but the villagers that accompanied her helped pick up her slack, stepping in where she failed…though sometimes she thought they urged her to ease up because the Guardian kept getting underfoot. Or maybe overfoot was a more apt description.
Whatever spellwork informed it of its purpose, it was clear to her that it saw no purpose in aiding her and the others in their gravework. All it did was dog her steps, always silently insisting on remaining within twenty feet of herself, and only moving when she strayed too far. She wished it wouldn’t. Or she wished it proved as interested in providing more valuable aid than simply staying at her side, its serene, close eyed expression unchanging in the face of the destruction of its own home.
…What use was a guardian that had protected the wrong thing?
Hands and feet covered in dirt and dust from the debris, Sorya again thought of all the memories and knowledge that were simply gone now as she lifted up a large broken brick to pass off to the next person. Sister Helvia’s jokes. Mother Vanna’s tales of the old pantheon and all the lessons entangled in them. Grand Mother Candena’s recipes that had dated back from five centuries ago. The names of all the birds Sister Rania had befriended. The old scriptures Mother Arianthe had memorized by rote, only half of which Sorya had learned in the last five years of her apprenticeship. All of Tola’s string games, and Chenda’s rhyming songs that she made up on the fly, and Pich’s adventurous dreams that he always had to recite every morning at breakfast.
Why hadn’t the guardian protected any of that?
Though the temperature was still cool, especially at this elevation, Sorya still found herself wiping at sweat dripping on her brow, leaving a smear of dirt that she couldn’t be bothered to clean. She straightened up, blinking away the salt in her eyes as a voice called to her. It was a taller man with brown skin and a kind expression in travel worn clothes; no one familiar to her. Was he from a different village, or from off the mountain entirely? She glanced for Vibol, the man she had been working with, to find him a distance away with their other companions and a wheelbarrow of rubble, speaking quietly to each other. She turned back to the newcomer, tugging her veil over her head like a hood.
"It’s fine," she replied slowly, quietly, "and your name, sir?"
He introduced himself as Alain, wishing to take up some of her time to record what had happened here. He spoke well and earnestly, his eyes so intent upon her that she had to avert her gaze.
"--know that I'll do everything in my power to make sure your experiences don't go unheard. You and all who once lived here deserve much better than that."
His choice of words had her blinking back tears again. She hadn’t been able to send word to the capital due to the winter snows, and then she had grown too preoccupied with her grief and recovering the bodies to give them a proper burial…the Silent One had taken the voices of everyone she loved, but she still had her own, and she had a responsibility to ensure that the movers of this country were aware of the invasion. Luna had only sent thirty soldiers last winter, and could send more at any time. Sorya nodded to avoid trying to speak through the lump in her throat, and gestured for him to follow her away from the ruins.
As she walked to a stone bench in the nearby courtyard, the guardian statue followed with the now-familiar sound of stone grinding on stone, its footsteps making the ground shake with small tremors until it came to an eerie stillness a mere five feet beside where she sat. Its four arms were settled in resting poses while it stood, its serene face turned to her like a sunflower to the sun.
"Wh-Where do you wish to start?" she asked, swallowing down the lump in her throat and absently wiping at the dirt on her forehead with the end of her veil.
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Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2024 6:44 am
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Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2024 12:50 am
The scribe’s stutter drew Sorya’s eyes, where she found his own flicking between herself and the guardian statue. Of course. How could she have forgotten what a surprise it would be to see it move for the first time? She thought to say something, to apologize, but he was already taking a step back, and recomposing himself to ask his first question with a stronger voice. She had been too slow.
She often was.
"Would it be alright if I ask how you came to live here, then? If we start where you started?"
Sorya blinked up at him, taken aback, and followed him with her gaze as he came to sit beside her on the bench. He wasn’t starting with…with that night? A tightness in her chest she hadn’t even been fully aware of loosened a little as he assured her that she didn’t have to answer any questions she didn’t want to. She inhaled through her nose, smoothing the end of her veil over her shoulder. There hadn’t been enough time for her to consider what sort of questions would be asked of her, but she would have thought…well, nothing much about herself. Just a straightforward recounting of that winter night.
"On that you have my word, okay?"
There was an intensity to Alain that had her fingers twitching to lift her veil up and hide her face away from, but in the way one may shield their eyes from the sun. Kindness sang in him, soft and vibrant. She was blessed to hear it.
"I understand. Thank you."
She said nothing else as she thought on her answer, her view of the courtyard going unfocused. When she was old enough to understand, the Mothers had shared what they could of her arrival at the temple, but there was little to tell. It was enough that it had brought her to them, they had said. She had agreed. She still did.
Finally, she said softly, "I was born here. My mother was likely fleeing the war…she was terribly wounded on her journey here, and she did not survive the birthing bed. The Armoniosan Temple does not turn away people in need, especially not children, so they raised me as their own. My whole life has been spent here."
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Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2024 9:19 pm
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