Tara always dreamt of holding conversations with a certain person—the dreams got longer as she grew older, more vivid the more time they took up. What started as a man talking to her was now her being able to willfully ignore the same man still thinking she would listen to his rambling.
He told her once his name was Itzun. The place they met—a single room styled after those of the first island, with just one seat for Itzun to sit in and nothing but black and gray mist outside the windows—used to scare her. Now, she could sit there with relative indifference, preferring to look towards the wall. Itzun seemed offended.
“Aren’t you curious, little one?” Itzun asked, trying to get her to pay attention. Instead, she kept her eyes closed and turned away from his voice. “Someone was close to their end, and a god promised her that she could lead a nation—but said nation isn’t Dakari because she still died. Well, supposedly, anyway.”
She wasn’t curious, because she didn’t particularly care. Not in the way Matteo did.
Itzun—somehow able to understand her thoughts if only while she was sleeping—spoke up to a more silent consideration of hers.
“Who knows,” Itzun mused. She couldn’t see, but she knew he must be smiling. “Maybe your oddities tie into it.”
Tara tensed at the suggestion. She couldn’t be free of insecurities even when she slept—Itzun knew her fears and actively played with them at times. Considering his laugh, she fully believed he liked taunting her.
“Relax! I’m kidding.”
“You’re not.” Tara opened her eyes and turned back towards him, frowning at his smile. “I’m capable of reading expressions. You make me question myself and you know it.”
“That seems like a ‘Tara’ problem,” Itzun mused, pacing around his little area a bit. His look didn’t fade; she couldn’t recall a time he ever seemed apologetic.
He cast her a different kind of smile after a minute—one that slightly concerned her, but she couldn’t say for sure why—and stopped walking around.
“Will it please you to know I’ll stop bothering you one day? Before the day you die, I mean.”
“I would…almost call that a reassurance,” Tara admitted. Although not entirely willing to give him the attention, she sat up. Itzun seemed pleased to see the compliance. Just as honest—and blunter than she needed to be, although she didn’t particularly care for his feelings either—she added, “And I won’t miss you. If I’m particularly lucky, maybe you’ll just…disappear—then I can stop worrying over things I know won’t happen.”
“Are you sure? I mean, you’re fears just vanishing”—he did a little hand motion to accompany it—“the second I do is a bit of a stretch on it’s own. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, even when you can’t speak to me I’ll still be there—I’ll still be with you.”
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“Out of curiosity—what would I need to be rid of you entirely?”
Itzun chuckled, despite it being a partial threat. “In order to do that, you would need to know what I am.” He turned away from her, still smiling. “Your brother might help you with that, actually. If he asks for help, please agree, all right? I think the curtains are finally being pulled back to start the first act.”
Tara prepared to protest, actually standing for once. Itzun seemed uninterested in carrying on the conversation for any longer, however.
…
“Tara. We’re almost back to San Asari.”
She opened her eyes, observing Adelinde on the train seat across from her and Rene to the left of her. Her job done, Rene pulled away and moved a bit further away. Matteo stuffed one of his books in his bag while Adelinde and Rene both gave Tara differing looks of concern.
Tara glanced at Rene.
“…Did I sleep past the last stop?”
“You did,” Rene replied, nodding. She almost looked more worried than Adelinde, which always seemed strange to her. Rene always claimed to be less ‘motherly inclined’ than Adelinde. “Are you feeling all right? You’ve been sleeping a lot recently.”
The care always caught her off guard, despite her fully knowing that she should expect it.
Tara didn’t really know how to respond. She knew the essential reason—Itzun just happened to want company, whatever she was doing previously be damned—and she didn’t want to admit to dreaming. Out of all her fears, them leaving her was likely the greatest and most irrational; still, she didn’t want to give them reason to doubt her place with them.
“Just a migraine.” Honestly, that’s the only reasoning she could give—the only reason an omyn would sleep during the day.
“I have some of my stuff with me, if you want to try that?” Rene offered. “Just after we get home.”
“I can manage—it’s mostly gone now.”
Rene didn’t seem entirely convinced—nor did Adelinde—but kept it like that. On Rene’s part, she had the means to theoretically help; Adelinde always seemed to notice that Tara didn’t tell them something, but also wasn’t willing to constantly ask after it. Matteo pretended he didn’t hear the conversation rather than give any input.
“At any rate,” Adelinde said after a moment, “It’s only ten or fifteen more minutes. Make sure everything’s packed.”
Tara nodded, leaning towards her bags. If she lost anything, it would’ve been in town—the check before the station was more to make sure they didn’t leave anything in the train. The sketchbooks and any supplies she brought with her were still in her bag, and she cared the most about those. Everyone else must’ve already gone through their things.
She leaned back and looked out the window. The sakura were in peak bloom—beautiful things that left far too quickly. She remembered the sakura necklaces the other three had—Adelinde wore hers fairly often during the season, while the other two were displayed somewhere in their rooms.
She heard the original story of it once or twice; she wasn’t apart of that memory, even if Matteo had no recollection of it either. It sounded like one of the most influential moments—one of the sweetest, most memorable—that tied them together. Considering the very oddities Itzun encouraged her to acknowledge, Tara didn’t see herself worthy of any fond memories with them; they deserved a normal daughter, and she didn’t math the qualification.
Both parents must have noticed some change in her expression, but neither commented. Tara wondered if Matteo realized it, too.
Through letting her thoughts wander wherever they wanted, the end of the train ride came fairly quickly. They got off the train, returning to San Asari and ending their vacation. Home seemed as welcoming as ever, however much her mind wanted to say it must be unfriendly.