>>6318159# # # # # #
You have really started to hate that sound. The grating nails of the Sister against Bragia’s barrier.
It is cracking, but it still holds fast.
Bragia huddles herself, rocking back and forth as she mutters prayers. She is utterly alone.
“When you said you are never alone,” you ask to the Stilladìa, “were you referring to this? This moment when you were completely abandoned?”
She nods, her white locks swaying.
“This, and what will happen next. It is the connections I made over the years that made me what I am. Who I am. Just like I told you: your souls is a paltry thing, but it is the bindings it carries that make it valuable.”
“I wouldn’t know about bring reduced to value.”
“Trader’s habit,” she smirks. “Now, hush please. He is almost here.”
You do as she says. Just a few hours ago the thought of the Stilladìa asking you to keep your mouth closed in her presence, in the presence of her memories, would have seemed just madness. Now you do it not because she ordered you, but because you understand her pain.
The echo of a male voice shudders through her inner world. The barrier jitters as a new layer grows over the first, and Bragia stands up—the inner world folds around you, and it is the dark cavern again, the water rushing blindly in the dark. You pull the coat on tighter, you feel it scrape against your back scars.
And there, in the darkness, something stumbles, sloshes, calls. His voice distorted by the echo.
Then, again:
“Li—Lithala! Lithala?”
“<span class="mu-i">Helias!</span>” Bragia’s desperate shriek fills the cave as she stumbles ahead, and then you see from her memory-filtered perceptions as she touches a hand, his hand, a shoulder, his shoulder—there’s a bandage there.
“What—what happened? Why are you here? Oh Helias.”
“Runt,” he grumbles, pulling her into an embrace you feel from her own sensations.
It is still a bit—too intimate to be here. Before she shielded you away from their kisses, their tenderness, now she is displaying it all out.
It cannot be for a happy reason.
She does not work like that.
By now you know.
[cont.]
