Interlude: Sonia

She’d always thought it was interesting how a place could change so much in the mind. Its exterior could stay the same, frozen in time, and yet the way the memory viewed it could alter irrecoverably.

Sonia wasn’t sure when exactly the first shift occurred. All she knew was that one day as she gazed at Clearside—at its quaint wooden homes, its dirt road, the still lake behind it—its scenery was no longer the calming presence it had once been.

The comforting routines of village life became dull and predictable. The once reliable community was now stifling. Somewhere along the way, she’d realized how colorless Clearside truly was and how little it mattered.

It was fitting, she thought, that it sat on the Glass Lake’s shore. Both were static and unchanging. Neither one could ever grow into something more.

Perhaps it was simple aging that had done it. Or perhaps the early death of her parents had planted the seeds, and only now were they blossoming.

Their deaths had occurred fairly early in her life, early enough that the most Sonia had ever felt towards them was resentment at her own lost childhood. There had always been a weight on her, one that kept her from running carefree along the shores like the other kids her age.

Regardless of the exact reason, by the time Sonia had reached her mid twenties, she’d come to resent Clearside.

She detested its inhabitants, the way they put on false smiles and lived their days happily ignorant of the world outside. She despised its enclosed buildings, the low ceilings that she could never seem to breathe properly in. And she hated the lake—its flat, dull line that seemed to mock her with its presence.

And yet, despite this growing resentment, she remained within the village. Not because she enjoyed stewing in hatred or because she feared leaving. She was plenty capable and had even managed to slain an Echo by herself. She knew she would do fine on her own.

But Sonia wasn’t alone, and no matter how tainted her own image of Clearside became, Sylvia had never held that same bitterness.

Of course she didn’t. Sonia had made sure of it.

The childhood Sonia had never had, she gave to Sylvia. She took care of household responsibilities so her sister could laugh and run freely outside. She worked multiple jobs to maintain a steady income so Sylvia wouldn’t have to.

“You’re a good sister,” the general store owner had said to her once.

They’d been running errands when one of Sylvia’s school friends had shown up and invited her over to a party. “Parties” weren’t much in Clearside, but Sylvia had looked at her with big blue eyes, so Sonia had told her to go and leave the rest of the day’s chores to her.

Her sister had beamed and thanked her profusely before running off, and Sonia remembered the fond look on the store owner’s eyes as they’d both watched her leave. The woman’s own daughter had moved away from Clearside a few years ago, if Sonia remembered correctly.

“Not really,” she’d said. The store owner had given her a knowing look that Sonia had ignored. She didn’t expect the woman to understand.

Of course she knew why people would say that. Sonia was responsible, and she took care of Sylvia with the same diligence and effort she put into everything else.

But at the end of the day, she would be lying if she said she was particularly fond of her sister. Most of the time she thought of watching over Sylvia the same as she did her other jobs; something that had to be done and that she did well, but there wasn’t much emotion in it.

Some days there was more. The time she’d walked into the kitchen and seen Sylvia failing miserably at baking her a cake for her birthday. The evenings when they sat on the roof to watch the sunset and she listened to Sylvia ramble about her day.

But those moments, Sonia had noticed, were growing fewer and farther between. It wasn’t love that made her stay in Clearside to watch Sylvia. It was a sense of obligation and duty, and Sonia had always been nothing if not dutiful.

And so, she allowed her own growing bitterness to fester as she continued about her days, feeling each grain of time slip past.

—

The second time Sonia’s view of Clearside changed was after Sylvia died.

The villagers left condolence flowers. Sonia didn’t answer the countless knocks, but at night she would open the door and see them piled around the home, the petals spread around the worn wooden walls in colorful bunches. It looked like someone had pulled a piece of a meadow and dropped it around their house.

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Her house, now.

Sonia left the flowers outside. She didn’t have room for them indoors, and they would wilt soon anyway.

A week after Sylvia’s death, Sonia began her old routines again. She heard the whispers around her as she did her errands and went to work, saw the sympathetic glances tossed her way.

“Poor girl,” they would say. “Taken by the lake.”

Sonia let them whisper. She brushed off any attempts from people to “talk.” Irving had been particularly persistent about it, but she wasn’t interested in trading sob stories with the man.

The landscape had shifted again. It was no longer just stifling, but actively insulting.

Sonia watched the villagers add Sylvia’s name to the list of people “lost to the lake” and wondered if they were conditioned to be so spineless, so unthinkingly accepting of the state of things. If the fae ever appeared, she knew Clearside’s inhabitants would probably all drop to their knees and pray.

Sonia had no interest in “paying respects” to the lake. She had no interest in playing the village’s song and dance.

The other villagers wouldn’t even acknowledge that Sylvia had died. It was always “taken,” as if the word could soften the truth. Or perhaps there were some who were foolish enough to believe that those dragged into the lake somehow survived.

She had never minced words before, and she wouldn’t do it now. Her sister was dead. Her sister was dead, and she still didn’t know how to feel about it.

She was sure she should’ve felt more sorrow; that was certainly what the villagers expected. Instead, that moment when she’d watched Sylvia step into the waters, ignoring Sonia’s yells and calls, she’d felt nothing but hollowness.

And now, as the days passed, that hollowness morphed into anger.

Sonia didn’t have a lot of experience with anger, but she decided that she liked the emotion. It made her mind sharper, made the world snap into focus. Anger made it easier to come to a decision. It made it easier to shut out the little voice in her head that whispered that maybe Sylvia hadn’t been possessed by some old fae magic, that maybe she’d stepped into the lake of her own accord.

That maybe Sonia had failed her duty so deeply that she hadn’t even noticed why Sylvia might choose to be pulled into the waters.

Sonia tightened the drawstring on her bag and gave the house a final cursory glance.

It had always been mostly bare. Their parents hadn’t owned much, and Sonia had never seen the point in excessive decorations. Sylvia had tried to “spruce it up” by adding some flowers she found, but they always died quickly.

Sonia swung the bag over her shoulder and double checked that she had everything. Once she was certain, she stepped outside and left the door hanging open behind her, departing Clearside.

—

Sonia didn’t believe in fate, but when she heard Ivan’s vision of the fragment on the Glass Lake, she understood why others did.

Up in northern Avel, the night air was crisper, the dark shadow of distant forests and mountains blocking out the horizon. The Hounds had guards posted to watch for the Silence, and as a safety precaution no one was allowed to leave the camp alone after nightfall.

The rules, of course, didn’t apply to Sonia. The guards simply nodded at her as she stepped past, and she didn’t give them a second glance.

She enjoyed taking strolls at night. Most would only call nighttime dangerous, but to her, the quiet was a welcome reprieve. She liked how the wind grew chillier, how the entire word softened under a blanket of darkness.

Tomorrow, she would inform the rest of the Hounds about the fragment. Then they would head to the lake.

The corners of her mouth curled up in something that wasn’t quite a smile. Perhaps she should’ve felt trepidation or unease at returning to the Glass Lake—to Sylvia’s graveyard.

Instead, another emotion rose, one that was hard to put her finger on. It burned like ambition but cut with a sharper edge. It was old and deeply familiar. It was the desire to conquer that which had once taken from her.

A soft chirping interrupted Sonia’s thoughts. She glanced over to see a small bird hobbling along the dirt road. Animals usually hid at night too, but based on its uneven movements, it was likely injured. The bird flapped its wings a few times, but could never leave the ground for more than a few seconds at a time.

Sonia watched its movements grow increasingly frantic. She activated [Lifeline].

With a simple tug of a finger, the bird flew backwards. She caught it in her hand, staring impassively down at it as it struggled in her grasp. As she’d thought, its wing was broken.

Footsteps sounded behind her, and Sonia glanced back to see Flora stopping a few feet away.

“Excuse me, Douglas is looking for you. He said he wishes to speak with you about something.”

So the man had heard about the vision. She should’ve known Ivan would tell him. Sonia nodded and waved Flora away. “Tell him to meet me in my tent. I’ll be there soon.”

Flora nodded and left, her movements calm and steady as she walked. She was one of the most reliable of the Hounds, Sonia had found.

After taking a moment to enjoy another breeze, she tossed the bird aside, the creature scrambling away in uneven hobbles. It likely wouldn’t survive the night.

Turning towards the camp, Sonia made her way back, blond hair gleaming in the moonlight.