The Paradigm Shift
Nightmares wake Seraph early, stealing strength from her exhausted body as they flee into the early morning. She rises, rubs sleep from her eyes. Vision blurry, body stiff, she drags her legs over the side of the bed, and stares at the opposite wall. “There’s a gamite down there…” Out loud, the statement makes her laugh without mirth. Insane how that’s not the worst surprise I found. Hollow’s passive, mild expression manifests in her mind, and a sinking sensation pulls on her, the awareness of the young one’s physical existence just below her weighing heavy as stone on her conscience. Seraph's heart pounds, but she forces back the anxiety, compresses it into a ball and stashes it away for later. When she emerges from the room, she affects an expression of total calm, and fakes refreshment like she slept well and long that night.
On the floor below, Juno greets Seraph for the first time since he bid her farewell. His smile comes easily as ever, but the sight of it puts Seraph on edge. The smells from the warm kitchen are of cinnamon and sugar, but sickness threatens in her throat. She reciprocates Juno’s expression in a brief flash but hurries out to the balcony as quickly as she can to have a discreet struggle keeping down the contents of her stomach. This cheerful, generous, lighthearted soul reflects a different light now. Juno… you make me sick.
Even Dione’s sour expression at breakfast can not hold a candle to the way Juno’s smile makes her feel. The ugly snarling greeting full of teeth she gave Seraph on her first night pales in comparison to his feigned innocence. There isn’t a mark of corruption on him, but at least Dione has the decency not to deny her indecency.
For the next few days, Seraph keeps up the facade, plays the part of the grateful and naïve house guest, pouts at Dione’s bad manners, laughs at Juno’s humorous quips. She compliments his cooking, chides her rude remarks, and tells stories of her own travels at dinner, or quietly listens to their banter. Most of all, she waits for her next opportunity, prays it comes soon, before she must leave to follow after Midas, and abandon young Hollow to its unknowable fate.
One weeks remains. Finally, her second chance arrives. Dione goes on another errand, and Juno takes a day trip to do some shopping. They trust Seraph now - clearly Hollow stayed true to its word, and said nothing of her secret visit in the night.
“As always, we have food stashed in the cupboard for you,” Juno explains, putting on a coat by the door while Seraph stands on the last step at the bottom of the stairwell. Seraph fakes patience and gratitude. “I’ll try to bring back something special while I’m out. Sounds good?”
“Sounds great,” Seraph agrees, smiling appreciatively. Take as much time as you need to do that. “And you’ll be back…?”
“Should be around supper!” Juno offers, giving her a more exact window of time than she had before. “Would you mind waiting for me if I’m a little late?” His sheepish grin lacks the disarming affect it once held.
Seraph nods, but says nothing else. Satisfied, Juno wraps a scarf around his neck, wishes her a good day, and steps out into the cold, where the first snow lightly dusts the ground in a pale blanket of white. Just as before, Seraph waits before committing to the door, resisting the temptation to run immediately to it, just five strides away from where she stands. With much reluctance, she instead ascends the stairs, and spends that time pacing the kitchen, thinking about what she wants to say when she sees Hollow again.
“I can’t leave it here,” she stops pacing, and the nervous energy transfers into fingers tapping along her crossed arm. “I can’t just take Hollow with me, not without asking first.” Her idle hand comes up to rub the tension out of her brows before she develops a headache. I’m not like Juno. I should talk to Hollow about it first.
Finally, she can stand it no longer, and hurries back to the door, opening it as gently and quietly as before. Again, the gamite reacts to her appearance, writing and spitting in its little enclosure. Juno must have placed some kind of containment barrier around the glass to trap its nasty, spiteful aura, because Seraph feels no sudden downshift in her mood as she might expect in the presence of the literal manifestation of negative energy. He’s done one thing right, I mean, if you consider keeping one of these monsters ALIVE to fall under ‘the right thing’, that is.
“Seraph.” The gentle echo of Hollow’s voice draws her attention away. It sits exactly where it sat before, still as a statue, given away only by the slight flicker of the eyes tracing her movements. “I wondered when I would see you again.”
Relief washes over her. She realizes just how long she has held her breath, but finally she can take it easy again, if only for the moment. “So was I,” she sighs, crossing the room to sit in front of the other daiten. “I think they trust me alone now, so they’re both out of the tree today.”
Hollow leans forward. “Outside? Outside the tree?” The eyes rotate around the space, but quickly settle again on Seraph - they have already observed every inch of this space, but not that which lies beyond.
“You’ve never been out of this room, huh?” Seraph asks, even though she knows the answer. Hollow only nods, and she continues. “I spend most of my time traveling around the big wide world. Actually, I… well I have something I have to tell you, and some things to ask.” She takes a deep breath, aware she holds Hollow’s entire attention. “I have to leave in the next week - maybe sooner, if I’m unlucky.”
The bare skull gives few clues to Hollow’s emotional reaction, if it is having one at all, but it says, “Oh,” in a small voice that sounds disappointed. “That’s very soon.”
“It is. Before I have to go, I thought, well, maybe you might want to learn about the world?” This is it, the thing she must bet it all on. Hollow has nothing to yearn for, but perhaps she can paint a picture for it to want to see for itself. “I’m told I am a very good storyteller, after all!” She smiles, prompting Hollow's ears to flip up and down in what she hopes might be amusement or interest.
“Mmmm…” Hollow gives the idea much thought before responding. “It might be hard to imagine it all, although, sometimes it seems as though I have memories of things I’ve never seen before. Do you know why?” Its head tilts, waiting patiently for her answer.
“I-I might!” Seraph tells it, stumbling forward along an unexpected tangent. “Well, you see, daitens like you and I are created from bits and pieces of souls, sort of cobbled together, or, maybe woven together?” She twists her fingers around each other, aware she knows too little about the process to be giving the best answer. “The pieces hold memories and knowledge, and help make us whole.”
This appears to satisfy Hollow’s curiosity, and it nods. “Alright. Maybe the pieces inside me will know what you speak of.” It leans in again, ears perked in anticipation. “What places do you go?”
Seraph lets go of an anxious breath, glad to be back on familiar topics again. “Many different kinds!” She spreads her arms wide to demonstrate the point. “I’ve seen barren deserts, rolling with sand dunes and crawling with small animals. I’ve visited beautiful lagoons, full of shining blue water and teeming with a hundred different swimming creatures. The forest we’re in now,” she looks up to the wood grain in the ceiling above her, and pictures the branches overhead, “it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”
“I think…” Hollow dwells on it for a moment, perhaps speaking sooner than it was ready to. “I don’t know what a desert is, but I know sand. How does the sand roll?”
“Um…” Seraph realizes, with a sinking heart, she does not herself know the reason for the enormous dunes. “I think it’s something to do with the wind, and how small sand particles are. It gets pushed around in big piles called ‘dunes’ so they kind of, I guess, ‘roll around’.”
While they talk, she answers many questions like this. Hollow asks mostly technical questions, seemingly uncertain how to ask more personal ones, lacking meaning or context for them, but finally it asks the question Seraph expected to come up much sooner. Why.
“Why do I travel to all these places?” She repeats the question to make sure she has it right, and Hollow nods eagerly. “I wish I could say it’s because I enjoy it, or I want to - actually, I used to travel over smaller distances because it was just a pleasant thing to do.” She bites her lip, and tucks her wings tighter against her back. “I have a… condition… that I have to keep treating.”
“What kind of condition requires you to move such long distances?” Hollow presses, unperturbed by her reluctance. “Migratory animals?”
Seraph laughs at the thought, despite her initial anxiety. “Oh no, nothing quite like that! Actually, I am following someone else who can help me.” She adjusts the flowers twisted and braided around her halo, gently brushing life back into the blooms. “He has to move around so much mostly to stay out of harm’s way. So, I have no choice but to follow. Where he goes, I go.”
“So then…” Hollow brings a hand to its chin to telegraph its need to think, and it is a motion not so different from the same one Juno does when he wants to give something a little thought before speaking. Perhaps Hollow is mirroring the behavior now. “You’re leaving soon because of this person, who treats your unnamed condition, and must stay on the move for his own safety. Is that right?”
Seraph closes her eyes and chews her lip again, wringing her hands. “I’m afraid so. A-actually,” her eyes fly open again, and she moves closer, propping herself up on her hands. “That was the question I had for you. That is, I mean, I wanted to ask you to come with me. When I leave. O-or, ask if you wanted to come with me.” Without much success, Seraph struggles to keep desperation from her voice and mannerisms.
The silence that stretches after nearly gives her a heart attack, but eventually Hollow responds. “I don’t know. That sounds very interesting and all, but what would Juno think?”
“He wouldn’t know a thing about it!” Snaps Seraph before she can stop the angry words from escaping. Her hands fly to her mouth, mortified by her own outburst. “I mean. It would be our secret. I don’t think he’d miss you all that much, anyway, considering he barely talks to you.” If the resentment comes through now, she no longer cares.
“Does that upset you?” Hollow’s question takes her by surprise; it is another personal one, not technical or literal like many others.
This time, it is Seraph’s turn to stay quiet for a long time. At last, she nods, her shoulders drooping. “You realize this already I’m sure, but I was never meant to be down here, and… I wasn’t supposed to know you even existed.” I should be honest with Hollow, especially right now. It would do neither of us any good to hold back. “If I hadn’t snuck down here the first time, I would leave in a week’s time without a second thought.”
Hollow stares at her. “And I give you second thoughts.” This is a statement, not a question. “I’m sorry.” It says, a moment later, somewhat uncertain in its tone.
“Nooo no no, no need to be sorry!” Seraph grips her face in one hand, regretting her choice of words. “Here it is, the plain truth: I can’t just leave you here and rest easy, but, I also refuse to just steal you away without your consent. That would be just as wrong as stashing you away in secret.”
Delicately, Hollow takes one of her hands. “I see. I understand. You are giving me the choice.” If there are eyes in its sockets, they appear to fix on her hand in contemplation. “I wish I had an answer for you right now, but…”
Seraph clasps its hand with her other one, and gives Hollow a reassuring smile. “You still have time! I wish it was more time than this, but that’s just the way things are.” For what feels like the hundredth time that night, Seraph sighs. “I’ll try to come back again before I have to go so we can talk about it more. Either way, you get to decide - I just wanted you to know it was an option.”
Hollow’s ears flick up and down in a motion Seraph has come to recognize as a kind of smile in the absence of lips, and the tension in her chest slowly eases out in one long breath. “Would you tell me about him?” Hollow asks, and again they fall into easier conversation, Seraph describing her strange and storied relationship with the daiten known as Midas, and all the many trips she followed him on.
This time around, Seraph almost forgets her deadline, and only just makes herself scarce from the vicinity of the basement before Juno returns. She can hardly stand to eat dinner with him that night, and excuses herself earlier than usual, claiming sudden exhaustion and brushing off any of Juno’s friendly offers of help as briskly as she can without being overtly rude. When she shuts the bedroom door, it is all she can do to make it to the bed before fear-shivers overcome her body.
It is not just Midas’ departure looming over her that might cut her time short, she realizes. I can’t keep this up forever. Playing the part, acting out this role of innocence and feigning cheery warm reciprocation towards Juno; the more she thinks about Hollow, the less she finds Juno even remotely tolerable to sit with. Grappling with confused feelings of anger and grief, Seraph pulls her knees tight against her chest, to the point where her lungs can hardly draw breath. She knows that, ultimately, Hollow might decide to stay. Only when she grows light headed does she release her grip, but this thought alone still holds the power to strangle her.
The next days inform Seraph what drowning must be like. She learns that her final opportunity to speak to Hollow and potentially leave together arrives at the end of the week, and while Midas’ stay could very well extend longer, hers - in this place - cannot. Regardless of Hollow’s final decision, she will leave at the end of the week, without saying anything to the other two occupants of the house. Better they know nothing of her whereabouts, and she has plenty of time to put distance between herself and this cursed tree. In the meantime, all she can do is drown, and pray to the long-gone Heaven that the other side will give her a chance to breathe.
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