No night without dawn. Can love beat death? Sorrel & Silvia

With Wixspartan's poetic soul

Sorrel loves dusk. The city seems to grow into the darkness, as if each shadow were a new adventure. She often just wanders through unknown quarters, watching the day folk give way to the night people - the merchants to the lovers, the shop workers to the drinkers and the bankers to the thieves. This evening, however, she is wandering for a different reason.

Silvia.

Her confusion is so acute it's almost a physical pain. Everything is beyond her comprehension. Emotionally, she sailed passed wreck long ago and is finding whole new depths.

And Silvia is at home.

She is terrified. The woman she had given up for dead simply walked from the shadows… well, it was a little more complicated than that, but still. Two days to get used to her being back and it’s just getting harder to understand it all.

---

Silvia sits at home. Stew boiling. Slowly she stands up, new muscles creaking and straining to lift her strained body. She fingers her rising sun pendant and looks to the front door. What an amusing pair. The devotee of the rising sun and the devotee of the moon.

It was getting cold; Sorrel should be home soon.

Her mind was in chaos.

She shouldn’t be alive. She had died, her story had come full circle.

And yet of everyone who died that day, of everyone whose stories ended, she was allowed to keep living.

---

Eventually Sorrel stands in front of the wooden door on the old familiar street. She has let herself into this house so many times by so many different routes and yet this time she feels compelled to knock.

This is, after all, her first resurrected girlfriend and... well, you got to be changed in some way by having every atom in your body torn apart by magic, your soul propelled to wherever souls go, eternity suddenly vanishing and the pain or joy or... whatever... of entering something approximating the body once disintegrated.

Sorrel would be, she reflects, a little freaked out.

Silvia... well, how Silvia is Silvia?

The door opens. Silvia’s dark eyes look out at Sorrel.

“You’ve never knocked before,” her voice is soft. “Something’s bothering you. Come in, food’s on.”

Sorrel takes a moment to let her eyes search Silvia, looking for - for what? Something different? Something the same? She feels like a blind woman holding two cups wrapped in paper and trying to discover which is hers with clumsy fingertips and her own life at stake.

But it's true, she has never knocked before. Silvia has her memory at least.

She's spent too many years bluffing spies not to know when her face is betraying her. She gathers herself, gives a half smile and holds out her hand.

Silvia stops for a second. She's seen Sorrel since she came back but this is different. A shadow has been growing above them, so obviously needing the attention that neither of them were willing to give it.

"Where have you been? It's late. What's.. what's on your mind?"

She knows it's not just Sorrel betraying something. She knows she so obviously feels tense herself, but she just can't bring herself to admit it.

Silvia reaches her own hand out towards her.

Sorrel examines the knuckles, looking for the old scars, the red weals from the red thread that bound Silvia’s darkness inside.

“You remember that day in the field when you took my hand?” Sorrel whispers eventually. “You spoke so softly but I’m paid to listen at doors. Live for me Sorrel, you said.” Sorrel eyes are wet, and she can’t raise her head. “What happened to our pact? Where did you go? And why did you go without me?”

Silvia stands frozen, unsure of how to respond. She wasn’t expecting this.

“Sorrel, I. I didn’t mean to...”

That’s a lie though isn’t it? She was the one to charge in. She was the reckless girl getting herself killed.

“I’m sorry Sorrel, I shouldn’t have ever. I’m so sorry I left and. And I’m so sorry I’m the only one who came back…”

That was a stupid thing to say, she knew it, but it was the only thing that felt fair

“But I’m back. I know it’s hard to even believe but I came back, for so many things but ultimately for you. I promise never to leave again, not like that, it’s not fair to you”

Sorrel still can’t raise her head. She cried in Jackal’s arms and swore she would not let anyone, even Silvia, see her tears again. A vow made at 16 and kept until this strange, beautiful, infuriating woman died.

“Everyone leaves me,” she says eventually. “Even if they don’t mean to.”

She takes a deep breath and meets Silvia’s eyes.

“I went somewhere as well, somewhere very dark and I did some terrible things. I don’t know how changed we are. Who are you now Silvia? Are you the girl with the red thread fingers? I can’t quite find you - it’s like I’m still reaching through the grey rain into an empty land. It may be me that’s trapped still. But it would help, I think, if you told me what happened. All of it.”

Silvia nods slowly. “I am Silvia Valtaire, as I have always been. I am the girl who held your hand in the field, even if these hands are softer and not covered in thread. I died Sorrel, and I died because I was scared of being side-lined. I thought I had to be the worthy one, the one to throw myself in front of danger so others could feel safe, and I died for it. From there it gets complicated, how much do you need to know?”

"All of it. Of course. It has changed you; I can tell. When veterans return from grim campaigns many of them keep the story secret, perhaps because it is too hard to explain. But those that do lose the people around them. No-one can understand why they are like this or that, why they weep every midsummer, what makes them flinch when a chair falls to the floor. And in the silence they slowly go mad. I have seen it too many times, Silvia. If you don't tell someone, it will cut you off. It might not be me. But I would like it to be me..."

Silvia looks darkly at Sorrel, watching her love's face. "After I died I lost everything. Time, being, soul. The first thing I remember was the road, endless, infinite, expansive. There was a house on the road, and.. someone was in it, I know they were, and I know who. But I couldn't reach it no matter how long I walked, and I walked for what felt like forever.”

She stops, her eyes flickering left to right as if searching for danger. She is silent for a long time. Sorrel waits.

“After some time that wasn't I gave up. I sat down. I was in purgatory, my soul not allowed to leave for the light, for the gaze of the Watcher, but not allowed to be pulled to the shadows. Waiting..."

She stares past Sorrel, lost in recollection. "It hurt, Sorrel, it hurt so much to be adrift. And then there was a celestial, calm, peaceful, several limbs made of pure life. She spoke to me a while, explained that I was trapped, my soul claimed by too many parties. And then...”

Another long pause.

“And then I woke up alive and you know most of the rest..."

Sorrel gives a crooked smile.

"I don't think I'll ever know more than the tiniest piece of you Silvia, but even that's almost too much for my mortal heart."

She reaches her hand out again, this time almost pleading. "You are the girl with the thread on your knuckles who saved me."

She can't quite bring herself to stroke Silvia's skin, but she smiles through her tears. "And now you are this luminous woman, reborn and so bright I almost hurts me to look at you..."

"Not reborn just yet sadly. Not fully. I don't know if I ever will be..."

“But something has changed - and I don’t think it’ll change back," Sorrel cocks her head. "I can’t see clearly, I’m no prophet or seer and the Moon maiden sees me as an amusing child, but you glow, Silvia, and I was taken to find you behind the endless grey curtain by something very powerful that has a strong interest in something to do with you. The celestial emissary of the Morning Lord. But I don’t know. And I’m tired. So let’s talk about it in the morning. Let’s see if the bed still works.”

“Please let’s, it’s late and we have so much sleep to catch up on darling.”

They move through the kitchen and up the stairs, leaving an empty room filled with the soft pulsing of the pot still bubbling away.

The sunlight fades and the gentle glow of the moon fills the room.

The universe holds its breath.

Following the events of Sole Renata as seen by Sorrel and as seen by Silvia