Painted Ladies
The teenager didn’t know. He hardly knew what to make of his own childhood anymore. It should have been so simple really. He should have walked into that house and seen confusion on their faces, quickly followed by horror once they realised what he was and who he was. Toibin Madden had reacted in the way he’d expected. He hadn’t had a clue who Fionn was and of course, he’d realised what the boy was once he was in range. Not straight away, admittedly because the idea that his daughter had brought a passive from Brunnhold had been too difficult for him to swallow. The idea of a passive dressed up like a galdor with none of the bearing of a creature that should have been downtrodden but no human could be like that. When he’d realised what the youth was, he’d become an ‘it’ and ‘that thing’ but when he was told who...
In all honesty, the servant didn’t know if the Incumbent had been more shocked, horrified and indignant about his passive son being brought into his midst or at his daughter’s very clear refusal of her engagement. Fionn had already begun to space out by the time that Niamh had dropped that bombshell, mainly because Eliza Madden had been the one who realised who he was having stared at him since he’d entered.
After that, many things had unravelled in his head.
Niamh had intended for them to return to Brunnhold today, assuming that they’d have everything done and dusted by midday — the worst over and done with as she’d put it — and be back by midnight or so. That had been the plan before they went but after it… The young woman had tried to be kind to him, patient and gentle as well but he hadn’t wanted her anywhere near him, hadn’t wanted her to use soothing words to calm him. Fionn had changed into the clothes she’d told him to, ones more suitable for a human or even a personal passive, if a bit rough, but then he needed space. He’d told her that he needed to be alone, that he needed to walk — or he thought he’d said that — and then he’d been gone, leaving the prosperity of Upper Vienda behind him.
The young man had put as much distance as possible between himself and the hotel where they’d been staying. He’d wanted to get away from galdori as well, every one of them that he encountered sending shivers through him. None of those fields felt like Eliza’s, or even Toibin’s, but he just hadn’t been able to stomach it. So he’d found himself in the rougher areas, the poorer ones, roaming around with his hands in his pockets and his head full of memories — ghosts of the past. He pored obsessively over them, trying to reconcile everything in which he’d come to believe while in Brunnhold with the mother he’d known before his gating — and the one that had sobbed and embraced him today.
Nothing made sense anymore. The teenager should be angry — maybe he was and didn’t know it — but he was mainly bewildered. Bewildered and lost and haunted. Fionn stumbled along as if in a dream, avoiding bumping into others somehow — some habits were difficult to break — including the one for self-preservation because he seemed to sense when he was in rougher areas — potential trouble — and steer himself away. Perhaps in the near future, he’d look back and realise just how lucky he’d been, his disconnected state making him a prime target for anyone who wanted to victimise him.
Maybe it was funny, the Circle exhibiting a sense of humour when they placed a cat in his path, amusing because it dragged him out of himself. Sort of.
When he’d been at home, a lifetime ago, Fionn had had an osta. It was a feline but different in many ways to an ordinary cat. He’d always liked cats though, had always had a strange affection for them but he hadn’t been allowed a pet. It had been Toibin who’d gotten the osta, Toibin who had intended to be the master of the creature but felines could be incredibly choosy and so it had settled on Fionn — after biting its would-be master on the nose. It had been Eliza who had saved it from being destroyed as the man of the household danced about in a fury and it had been her present to the lonely boy. It was an odd connection between mother and middle child, now at least and perhaps that was why this smaller, far less colourful creature — this was a little silver tabby rather than a rusty orange — caught his eye and held it. The fact that he wasn’t in his right mind was why he set off after the thing. The poor, frightened animal trotted away because it didn’t understand why this stranger was coming at it with such intent and he followed it anyway.
Some deranged part of his mind decided that he needed to pet it, that the youth needed a friend and so it became his purpose, one he pursued with bloodyminded intent, even when it took refuge under an odd little nook under one of the colourful houses. The residential area was slightly hilled and this was one of the spots with a bit of a slope where ground and foundation had chosen to be at odds with each other, parting ways instead of kissing. It was here that the young man hunkered down, crouching low and stretching forward so he could reach into the little gap. He was heedless of the way the rough ceiling of the space scraped at the back of his hand, or the frightened, warning hisses of the creature. The servant also didn’t notice that his erse was basically stuck up in the air, wiggling as he shifted around, reaching desperately for the cat.
He didn’t know when he started crying because he wasn’t paying any attention. Fionn wouldn’t have understood the why of it either. Just a few little tears, welling up so that his vision blurred but he was crying all the same.
And then he felt something… impossible.
The areas he’d been through had contained wicks with their smaller, freer fields and humans with their vast emptiness. The nothingness that surrounded the humans had gotten through to him at first and then it had become a blessing, a relief, his senses wonderfully free of that press. He hadn’t encountered any passives though — none within the range of his senses — but that made sense; free passives weren’t really a thing. So the feel of a passive was unexpected but that wasn’t the truly shocking thing.
This one was familiar. This one… this one belonged to a ghost.
It was there, just on the very edge of his range and it made him pause then reverse, straightening up abruptly as he turned, wildness in his brown eyes, blond hair stuck up at every angle and red and pink marking the back of his hand. He’d only intended to move off, to start hunting but then he saw something familiar as well. Familiar and yet strangely unfamiliar — unheimlich. A pale version of the man he remembered, quite literally in this case because the hair had been drained of colour, stark white on his head, although that was probably contrasted by the warmth of his skin, a tan still lingering from the warmer months, although faded now. The resemblance was uncanny. Aside from the changes in appearance, including a choice of clothing so different to the uniform to which he’d grown accustomed to him wearing — the one he usually wore himself although he was in a white shirt and worn black slacks now — there was something in the manner.
It was magnetic really, Fionn drawn forward against his will as he felt himself compelled to do so. One step, two and then it was there — the nexus. Except it was impossible. He’d managed to reconcile himself to the fact that he’d never see him again because he was dead. He had to be dead. Except that he wasn’t. He was changed but not dead. He staggered another step, legs suddenly a-tremble, and stared. Stared because his voice wouldn’t come to him — it had been stolen by shock.
His heart moved, swelling, squeezing, throbbing, he didn’t know but it hurt, oh sweet Lady, it hurt. It had been broken and yet now it seemed to be trying to stitch itself back together, stirring with a feeble hope, a hope that he couldn’t explain.
Impossible.
If it was a phantom then he didn’t care. He wasn’t thinking enough to care. All he could do was approach it, touch it, see if it was real or if he’d gone mad. The middle Madden must have lost it so he moved to feel him, hesitant and frightened as he reached out to let his fingertips graze that face, to trace features that seemed familiar, oh so cruelly familiar.
“Lars?”
It was a question and a prayer, a plea. A desperate, disbelieving plea.