It’s been a little while, so: Part One – Part Two
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Some lives follow a pattern.
She didn’t remember a time without the darkness of tunnels and caves, passages long forgotten and long abandoned. She often thought that if she’d been born Tarsin instead of Tieke, she’d have picked up a chisel as soon as she was able so as to carve her own ways into the stone and into the earth, just the same as her ancient ancestors had when they’d arrived at the cliffs that would slowly, slowly become a city over the course of hundreds and thousands of years. She couldn’t stand the idea of being out in the open sky for too long, either under the desert blue wideness or the deep reflection of being on the ocean, blue under blue over blue over deep darkness.
She came by it naturally and honestly. She hadn’t been raised in the city itself, but outside, up top of it, in the forests that stretched all the way back towards the Crater. Her family was a sort that foreigners didn’t notice or remember – gatherers who largely stayed out of the city, away from the hustle and the bustle of the busy harbour and the noisy marketplace. When they did go, it was as a stealthy pair, her and her father. Her mother always stayed behind. Her mother who no one looked at fondly, but always with wariness. Her mother who didn’t speak, and who couldn’t tolerate the city. The one time she’d needed to be taken was down to a herbalist and medicine-maker to have an infection looked at. They’d put it off as long as they could, longer than they should have, and in the end it had festered and swollen until she couldn’t use the hand at all. All the same, the pain was something she was more willing to endure than the journey into the city. They took the usual way, through backdoor tunnels that wound through the stone, shortening the distance under open sky as much as possible, but still she shook and she keened the entire way, moreso when the murmur of voices of other travellers rang through from tunnels adjacent to their much less travelled paths.
She’d always been that way, Halena’s father had told her. Her mother was born strange, had always been strange, and had been through enough attempts to normalize her that the very prospect of societal life in the city was traumatic. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stand it, and as soon as she’d been old enough, she’d escaped her own family and started a life alone in the forest. She was perfectly intelligent, perfectly skilled, despite the rumors. Her father hadn’t been deterred when he met her, although it had been like trying to catch a wild animal and make it understand trust.
She wondered sometimes, if that had been why their relationship was so enduring. They’d been forced to become friends before anything else. Her mother hadn’t allowed even a thought of romance without her complete and utter trust first. After all, where else could she go to escape but deeper? Crater-ward. That way was a hardship that was much too deep. So, friends. He learned to understand her wordless talking, and she learned to trust him enough to show him her world.
And then she’d shown it to her daughter, her one and only daughter.
Halena hadn’t been born the way her mother had, but oh, she was still strange. Of that there was no doubt. While she had her father’s tongue and his words, and while the world didn’t overwhelm her the way it had her mother, she had the understanding and appreciation for places where the rest of the world didn’t go. The first time she’d gotten “lost” was when she was barely two years old, chasing something – she never did see what – through the underbrush of the forests. She’d been small enough, much to its chagrin, to follow it into the twisted roots of a tree so old that it was probably holding up half of the city beneath it.
And it was there that she discovered a world that hid itself away, and said nothing, but would show off secrets if one was patient and curious and willing to use all of one’s senses to explore with. Under that tree’s great roots was a forgotten tunnel, carved maybe by tikedi and maybe by animal-kind or maybe just the natural growth of the forest – roots twisted and pushed apart by burrowers until they formed a chute under the earth. It was dark and it was damp and it was a steady sort of silent that made her stop and hold her breath and just… listen.
It was like being inside of a living being – being permitted to reside there, warm and safe and granted the secret of what’s inside, never seen and never shown to anyone else.
The first time, she hadn’t explored it. She only existed in the wonder of it, hunkered at the mouth of it, shaded by roots, staring into the darkness of the earth until later – minutes? hours? – a voice had come calling, she’d squawked back, and her father’s hands had pulled her out and back into the daylight.
He hadn’t scolded. He’d listened, and he’s put as much of his own head into that darkness as he could fit, gazing with the same wonder she had.
He’d been envious, she remembered. She knew he was. Too big to fit. Too old to be invited down.
But old enough and wise enough to encourage her exploration, as long as he told her where she was going.
She’d dreamed of the depths that night, and it was the start of a dream that would return to her again and again and again as she grew up. The depths called her, right from that first accidental exploration. The earth beneath her feet never felt the same again. Not solid, just deep. Deep and resonant and full of secrets waiting to be found.