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Sometimes, in quiet moments, Maelle stares at the waves where they crash against the harbor. She stares out to the continent and feels the invisible string tied around her heart pulling here there. Lumière has never felt like home to her. It feels like a prison, like an inescapable punishment. And the strangest part about all of it is that she can’t understand why.
Without thinking about it, she leans down and grabs a rock — really it’s just another crumbling piece of foundation but it works just as well — and throws it into the water. A habit she picked up from Gustave in the time she’s spent in his care. He’s the only thing about this city that feels…right. In her short sixteen years of life, she’s been through more families than she can count. No one seemed to want to keep her for one reason or another. Eventually she’d just started running away when she knew her welcome was coming to an end. But Gustave…
Maelle swallows back the tears that threaten to come. She refuses to cry. There’s no point in it.
She picks up another rock and watches as it sails through the air, arcing over the water before it splashes in. She thinks about the pain in his eyes that he’s fully convinced he’s hiding when she talks about the way she feels and all the times she’s reassured him that she’s happiest with him and Emma.
But still…she wonders now, alone there at the edge of the city, if there really is someone out there waiting for her. There are times when she feels like there are two people living in her head. There are days where the other part of her — the one that feels not quite right — is silent. But then there are days when that voice is so loud it drowns everything and everyone else out. Those are the days she runs away, the days she zips through the air on her stolen grappling hooks and thinks of nothing but the feel of soaring, of flying.
How she wishes she could just sprout wings and free herself from this place, to see what waits for her at the edge of the horizon — or confirm if it really is nothing at all.
Alicia sits before her canvas, dragging the brush in wide, blocking strokes. This place, here at the top of the tower the man who is not her father created, she is content. Here, she can get away from everything, away from the broken pieces of her family that remain; the reminder of what she is. Usually, she finds solace but now… something feels wrong. With a sigh, she drops the brush and stands, moving away from the easel.
The sea sparkles under the fading sunlight as the waves roll through red coral barriers. But something at the edge of this world calls to her. It wasn’t always there but for the last few years, she feels something. Her hand moves to her heart and the sharp tug she feels there. That call…the thing that feels like a missing piece of herself is there once again — so close but still too far away to matter. Alicia closes her eyes and listens, hoping that maybe this time she can hear something. Anything other than the resounding silence that usually comes.
The painted girl heaves a frustrated sigh and wraps her arms around herself. It’s in these moments, when she feels the tug, the call — or whatever it is — that she feels anything close to whole again. A feeling she hasn’t experienced since before her family fell apart. The family that is hers but isn’t at the same time. A mirrored facsimile of the one that exists outside of this place. She misses her brother, the one who wears a dead man’s face — the dead man whose last screams she’s doomed to hear for eternity. But he made his choice, just as she did and now the rift is wider than ever. It feels like some kind of endless war.
But at least, in these small moments of solitude, Alicia can hold onto the piece of her that’s out there and wait for the day she will finally be whole once again.
Alicia sits on the edge of her bed, trying to catch her breath. Her scarred, tight throat aches the worst when she first wakes up. She rubs her hand over her neck, trying to warm the muscles there, coaxing them to loosen to little avail. The sky is still dark outside her window and she isn’t sure how long she’s slept or what time it is. But she does know if she sits here for any longer she’s likely to go stir crazy. It’s rare that she leaves her room now, except to eat occasionally and tend to her bodily needs, but now, the room that usually feels like a safe haven… feels stifling.
The girl pushes herself up from the mattress and makes her way to the door. Hopefully it’s either late or early enough that Clea is still asleep and she can move through the halls of the Dessendre manor without being seen or questioned. The manor is dark but she’s used to traversing the layout in the darkness that she doesn’t bother with a candle to light her way. She moves through the corridors, silent as a wraith, passing the doors of those slumbering within like a ghost.
She doesn’t need the light to see the unfinished wreckage left by the fire. The last place in the manor left to repair, and a constant reminder of…
Alicia moves past it without a second glance. Dwelling will do her no good.
She finds the kitchens without incident, gets herself a glass of water and some left over crusty bread before heading back up the stairs. A sliver of light spills out of her father’s atelier. It beckons her. Alicia checks both ends of the hall, listening for any signs of anyone stirring. When nothing but still silent darkness answers, she moves. The door is ajar, but not enough for her to slip in without opening it wider. She grips the handle and slowly pushes it, anticipating the way it squeaks on the hinges at certain angles. Thankfully she’s able to shimmy in without pushing it too far and enters the atelier.
Moonlight shines through the floor to ceiling windows and illuminates the room in a dim glow. The room is full of half finished paintings, some of which are covered with a heavy drop cloth, and an assortment of furniture. But it’s what sits at the center that calls her attention. Swirling pools of paint dance around on the face of the largest canvas in the room, and there before it, sit both her mother and father. Each of them locked in stasis with the same swirling paint in their eyes that drip down their cheeks. They’ve been this way for weeks, fighting in the only way they know how.
Alicia moves closer to the canvas, keeping her steps light as though one wrong move would somehow break them out of their trance. She looks over her parent’s faces and notices how gaunt her mother’s cheeks have gotten as well as the permanent furrow in her father’s brow that almost looks like it’s turning to exhaustion rather than anger as it had before. Or maybe that was just the light.
Her eyes move from the pair and drift to the canvas itself. The perpetual movement of the paint on its surface is hypnotizing. Mesmerizing. She can feel something inside calling to her, can feel it like a hand wrapping around her heart and pulling. Alicia takes another step closer and without realizing, her own hand is reaching back.
There’s something on the other side that feels familiar. Only familiar in the same way that a dream lingers at the edge of waking, scattered in pieces that don’t quite fit together.
She thinks about it, considers stepping into the canvas and following that calling. Part of it feels like the version of her that she once was…before the fire. The piece of her that was daring and brave and confident. But the other piece feels like the part of her she is yet to become. A quiet, contemplative piece of her that has in some way accepted what’s happened. It’s hard to contend with both of the feelings that coalesce though her as she stands there. She’s not sure what to do with them, how to stitch each of these pieces of herself back together now that they’ve been torn apart. It feels like the edges have frayed far too much to ever be the same again.
Her hand stops just short of touching the edge of the canvas and with a sigh, she drops it back to her side. She needs to sleep. That’s all this is. The last few weeks have been nothing but fitful tossing and turning punctuated with the occasional nightmare. Alicia returns to her room and crawls back into bed, pulling her duvet up and over her head. Warmth cocoons her has her heavy eyelids close and she drifts off to sleep once more.
Only now, she doesn’t dream of fire or the sound of screams but instead, Alicia dreams of the sea.