Chapter 9 — Motif

It was the sixth day of ‘soul awareness exercises’, as Yvette called them. So far Rína had only managed three pokes per day, with the third always leaving her head feeling like it had been split in half. It was so bad that after the pokes on the first day she hadn’t even realized that it was into a completely new bed and bedroom that Yvette had led her to lay down—Rína’s own, apparently.

The room was simple and unadorned, much like the rest of the cottage. It had a curtained window, a soft bed, her wardrobe, a fully stocked writing desk, and a modest amount of floorspace with which to pace back and forth. The room and its sudden appearance was just another entry to the list of things Rína would never get an answer to.

The three of them had fallen into a pattern. Rína and Yvette would have exercises in the morning, before breakfast, then Rína would spend her entire afternoon bemoaning her lot in life, lying down with a wet cloth across her forehead. She was free in the evenings but there was little to actually do.

Yvette had given her permission to use her lab and stores, which she did. Rína managed to get her fuse design to be accurate within a minute, which she was particularly proud of, but the reagents were running out and Yvette said that she wouldn’t be able to restock them. Rína had made painkillers the first evening, but they were useless. Rína at first thought she’d made a mistake, but Yvette assured her she hadn’t. The headaches originated from her soul, so chemical painkillers were useless. Though that did bring into question why the wet cloth and back rubs seemed to help.

When the lab was no longer an option, Rína turned to the handful of bookshelves Yvette owned. Somehow the older woman only had a half dozen books in Serish—Rína couldn’t even identify the languages of the other books. The Serish books were a set of impossibly dry historical volumes going over the economic history of the Seric Highlands in excruciating detail. Rína was desperate for mental engagement, but not that desperate—at least not yet.

Yvette would only be present during meals and exercises. The rest of the time she appeared to be meditating on the porch, seemingly giving her preparations her full attention.

Felix would either disappear into the woods for hours on end, or simply lounge around the cottage as he had been. One evening Rína had the idea to visit one of the wolf packs with Felix again. Unfortunately, this second time Rína and Felix stumbled upon the group mid meal. And while the group seemed just as friendly, they were all covered in a generous amount of fresh blood. Felix certainly didn’t mind this, but Rína most definitely did. Only afterward did she remember that wolves hunt in the evening—the luck of her first visits’ timing was not to be repeated, it seemed.

“Where’s the nearest mountain?...” Rína moaned, having completed the third poke of the day. The bucket was still needed unfortunately, but since they did the exercises before any meals, it was there mostly to catch small amounts of bile.

Rína and Yvette were sitting beside each other as usual. Felix had taken to lending his support in the form of back support—he laid behind the two women, creating a wall of fur for them to lean against.

“Hang in there,” Yvette encouraged as she rose and offered Rína a hand, “It’s just a matter of time.”

Rína nodded and was about to accept the hand when she stopped, “Actually, I think I can take one more poke.”

“Are you sure? Rushing will just make it take longer,” Yvette warned.

“I’m sure,” Rína nodded, “The headaches have been kind of easing up.”

“That’s good progress then. The pokes per day form an exponential curve, each increase shortens the time it takes for you to be ready for the next increase,” Yvette approved, returning to her seat.

“I’ll take whatever good news I can get…”

Yvette nodded, “Now on three: One… tw—”

“Wait,” Rína interrupted, pausing Yvette, “Sorry, I feel a little dumb, only asking this now, but do you have anything for the nausea, or at least the vomiting?”

“Unfortunately not,” Yvette frowned, “Like the pain, the nausea originates in the soul. I could give you something to suppress the vomiting reflex, but, speaking from personal experience, you’ll still feel like you need to vomit and being unable to just makes the experience worse.”

Rína begrudgingly nodded, “So you had it just as bad when you went through this?”

“That I did,” Yvette sighed rubbing Rína’s back, “As did every mage in living memory and every one that will follow. If it’s any consolation, at this very moment there are probably thousands of aspiring mages around the world hunched over buckets, just like you.”

“Not a very glamorous start to a magical career…” Rína observed.

Yvette snorted, “That it is not. Although… While I don’t have anything to help with the unpleasant bits, I do have something for the tedium in between sessions.”

“Like what?” Rína asked with a suspicious eyebrow raised.

“It’s not like I sell it, so I’ve never bothered naming it, but it is in a similar category as alcohol, or other recreational substances, just without the unpleasant side effects or addictions,” Yvette explained, “I use it regularly, under normal circumstances at least. It’s perfect for passing even large amounts of time, like when I’m forced to wait for a process to finish.”

“I think I’ll pass, thank you though,” Rína said.

“Are you sure? Here, after breakfast I’ll bring some bottles out in case you change your mind,” Yvette offered.

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“That’s really not—eh, whatever,” Rína relented, “Anyway, I’m ready for the fourth when you are.”

Yvette nodded, “One… two… thr—”

Four teas a thousand leaps above the sea sensibly seen through the sieve of senility sat the sergeant of…

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Rína could start to feel a… pattern? Perhaps ‘correlation’ was the correct word, or maybe ‘motif’...

…onto the back street the banshees balanced balls bound by the rotund roots wrecking foundations found deep to support the superstructure superseded by the sun beaming beams of binding brickwork that were staked into the steak…

…but the feeling of… ‘recognition’, perhaps, would be gone in an instant noodle niggling at the back of your mind to remind you that tomorrow is dirt’s day of…

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…bellowed a blaring sound foundation upon which the cherry’s stem held the fruit and ficus together till the end of the buoy’s chains chaining the gastrointestinal intestines trailing the stomach stomaching the loss of…

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…gripped by phalangeal fingers fused to a fabled icosahedron eyeing the eyes whose nervous optic nerves were caressing an elephant’s mighty trunk from which sprouted a leafy canopy supporting a one rope swing swinging…

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“There’s definitely something there…” Rína wondered aloud. She was sitting cross legged atop a couch-bound Felix as if he were a hill with a superior vantage point. In her lap was ‘The Seric Highlands and its Historical Foundations: a Treatise on the Flow of Sociopolitical Units of Value and Their Lasting Effects; Volume 1: Goat Milk and Associated Dairy Products’.

Rína’s will had been broken, though not quite enough for her to properly read the volume. Her eyes had glazed over and she had given up within the first two pages of regional dairy price indexes. Instead it was the flashes of concepts she got during the exercises that occupied her thoughts.

“Oh? Has your inner historian awoken?” Yvette asked from the kitchen where she was preparing dinner.

Across from Yvette, on a separate kitchen counter, rested a small rack of corked glass bottles. They were the promised solution to Rína’s boredom, but despite Rína’s desperation and the bright, eye-catching cyan of the concoction, Rína had left them alone.

“Gods no,” Rína shook her head and closed the book, “No, I was just thinking about the stuff I feel during the sessions. It’s still noise, but… I don’t know, it feels like more and more of the noise is fitting into a mold. Does that make sense?”

Yvette turned, “That it certainly does. The mold you speak of is the model your subconscious is building to understand your soul’s perception. The fact that you’ve noticed it…” Yvette smiled conspiratorially, “It means you’re getting close.”

“Thank the FUCKING gods,” Rína yelled excitedly, flopping onto her back and thrusting her fists into the air. They had been having the sessions daily for three weeks now, with Rína now capable of fourteen pokes per day. It was to the point that she only needed the bucket for the last couple each day. That damned bucket. Rína couldn’t wait to throw it into the fireplace, or maybe the sun.

Yvette snorted with a smile, “A word of warning, though: don’t try to put words to the shape of the model until it’s fully formed—until you’re no longer experiencing noise. Words carry conceptual baggage, so to speak, and they can delay the model from fully forming in your mind. Oh, and dinner is ready, by the way.”

Rína slid off Mount Felix, briefly paying a toll of ear scratches before sliding into place at the kitchen table.

“So what have we got tonight?” Rína asked, as the smells of spices and cream hit her nose.

“It’s called ‘yhenb’; it’s a kind of curry,” Yvette said, placing the dish before her, “It comes from the southeastern corner of the Shalkar continent. The city state of Aksu has a rather quaint, and bizarrely historical, story about the recipe’s invention.”

“Oh yeah?” Rína raised an eyebrow, “How does the story go?”

“If I recall correctly, it starts with a stereotypically humble farmer tending to their fields behind the city walls. All is well, until one day…”

Yvette wasn’t a particularly good storyteller, but Rína was a rapt audience nonetheless. The actual story of how an admittedly delicious food was created wasn’t particularly interesting, but the picture the story painted of the culture that created it certainly was. Rína had lived her whole life in Leighton, and to say that her access to information about the outside world was limited would have been an understatement.

And so Rína continued to listen to Yvette’s story, though it was hardly the first. The two of them had fallen into a groove, with Yvette as chef and storyteller for each meal, giving Rína a taste of the outside—literally and metaphorically. Rína had asked how Yvette had learned all the recipes and where all of the exotic ingredients were coming from, but a predictable ‘no comment’ was all Rína got.

This state of affairs wasn’t how their meals had started though. At first Rína had tried to strike up conversation with questions about Yvette’s past or family, but practically heard the ‘no comment’ before Yvette even opened her mouth.

Other topics of conversation were similarly a lost cause. Stories about Rína’s own past, beyond a few humorous ones from her childhood, were rather thin on the ground—growing up in the middle of nowhere just wasn’t very eventful.

The topic of where they would go was similarly short lived. So far the only plan was to travel to the nearest city, gather more information, and then make a more informed decision from there.

Rína had also asked for more magic theory lessons, but Yvette said that any lesson would talk about the shape of the soul, which could hamper Rína’s budding model.

“... and so the city’s lich,” Yvette narrated between spoonfuls of curry, “commanded the farmer to travel to the next nearest city and retrieve—”

“Oh, sorry, hold on.” Rína interrupted, “Speaking of ‘nearest city’, I was meaning to ask you how it’s coming on your end? The preparations to leave, I mean, before we head to Westreach.”

“Hm? Well, the tentative course for us to take doesn’t go close to that outpost.” Yvette said.

“What?” Rína gave a quizzical look to Yvette, “Westreach is a city—easily the closest one.”

“Huh,” Yvette considered, “Regardless, I am a bit ahead of schedule. I should only be another four days. I might have finished already if it weren’t for that second militia group…”

Rína stopped eating, staring at Yvette with wide eyes.

“I should have mentioned that,” Yvette commented absentmindedly, “Shouldn’t I have?”

“Absolutely,” Rína stressed, deliberately nodding, “Are they… dead?”

“Oh no,” Yvette assured, making Rína sigh in relief, “Doing that would only attract more attention. Even if we’re already leaving, there’s no point tempting fate. I just performed some minor sabotages that could be attributed to bad luck or incompetence: spoiled rations, faulty equipment, game animals being hard to find, normally safe berries giving them the runs, that sort of thing. Though it still took the group two days to give up and return to Leighton.”

“How long ago was this?” Rína asked.

“About a week,” Yvette answered, “I imagine they’ll send another group soon, but we should be long gone by the time they do.”