Yaaf #2
She'd felt him, and it was oddly satisfying that she had.
He removed the thrall from her, and as her eyes landed on Number Three, she smiled.
"Hello, Tersan," she said. "It's nice to meet you."
Number Three's reaction to his own name was a slight pull back. The name hadn't been spoken by anyone for over a year and a half.
He nodded, and through the collective, Number One realized that Number Three didn't know what to say. He was trying to construct a response and failing, as if he had gone mute and the muscles of speech no longer cooperated.
In a way, it was true. Number Three rarely spoke out loud. He wasn't used to the sound of his own voice.
Sullha seemed to understand, and her expression softened.
"I know that you've met me already through Yaaf, and I've met you too, but I didn't know that I was meeting you because Yaaf didn't tell me that there were seven other men living inside his mind.
" She cast Number One an accusing glance.
"Now that I get to know you in person, I can say that it's nice to meet you. "
"It's nice to meet you, too," Number Three said, and it came out raspy as if he hadn't spoken in weeks.
The thing was that he'd spoken from time to time, so there was no reason for the rasp unless the cause was emotional rather than misuse.
"I'm sorry we didn't tell you sooner," Number Three continued as if he was suddenly finding that his voice operated just fine and he was eager to use it. "We thought that you would not like Number One knowing that he was part of a collective."
"It is strange, but I am getting used to the idea of it. I guess I need to meet each one of you and make up my mind whether I like you or not. I can't like a collective, but I can be friends with all of its individual parts."
"You are very reasonable about it."
She chuckled. "Some of it is pretense. A friend told me that pretending is easy and believing is hard, and she was right. I am pretending until I figure out how and what to believe."
Yaaf felt something move in his chest at her words, a kernel of hope, but he did not have time to examine it too closely.
Number Three nodded. "That's a smart approach." He glanced in the direction of the bathroom. "Did you tell her about me?"
"Your mother?" Sullha asked.
He nodded again and then winced. "I'm not sure. I think I recognized her voice, but I didn't get a close look at her."
Sullha looked confused and turned to Number One. "Did you just get here?"
"We were standing here for a few minutes."
"So, you must have seen her."
"I wasn't looking at her," Number Three admitted. "I retreated from the collective because Number One was about to thrall her to go to the bathroom, and a son shouldn't enter his mother's mind."
Sullha frowned. "What does it mean to retreat from the collective?"
"I made myself less present. It's like closing your eyes so you don't have to see something."
"I see."
Sullha glanced over her shoulder at the bathroom, then back at them.
"That's your mother. Her name is Rohilah, and I spent about half an hour talking with her before you got here.
I found her yesterday and invited her and her little girl to meet Tomek and me here.
The little girl in the yellow dress over there in the sandbox is Bianca. "
Number Three's eyes went to the sandbox, and the wave of emotion he infused into the collective was even stronger than before.
It was love, Number One realized. Or maybe just tenderness, because how could he love Bianca if he'd never met her?
Number Three was looking at his little sister, and his heart was filling with tender feelings for her that might be love, and from there it continued to the collective, filling the spaces between all eight of them.
Yaaf raised a hand to his chest.
"What is it?" Sullha asked.
He looked at her. "I can feel the love. It is sudden and enormous. I do not understand how he can love her so much when he has just seen her for the first time."
Sullha smiled. "That is the power of babies."
"She's not a baby. She's two years old."
"Two is close enough. Babies and little children are like factories of feel-good vibes. I don't know why everyone doesn't fall in love with them."
Yaaf looked at Number Three, who was still watching his sister with adoration in his eyes, then at Sullha, and then back at Number Three.
"It's a different kind of love," he said. "His love for her is not like the love I feel for you."
The words spilled out of his mouth without him intending to release them, loud and clear and terrifying.
The emotions had been growing within him for weeks, but the realization that he loved Sullha hadn't coalesced until now.
He loved Sullha, but hadn't intended to say it aloud, not yet, not when the disclosure about the collective was still so recent, and her response to it was still so cautious.
The collective registered his speech with the sharp attentiveness it gave to all his slips, and the others held the moment like it was a live grenade, not knowing what to do with it.
Sullha's eyes widened.
She did not respond, but her gaze stayed on his face, and he could see her processing what he'd said and what it meant and whether he had meant to say it.
Yaaf could see the small recalculation happening behind her expression, the same recalculation she had done on the bench when he had told her about the collective, the same readjusting of categories that her mind seemed to be performing whenever he handed her a piece of himself that did not fit the narrative she'd created around him.
He looked away.
Sometime before Yaaf's blunder and Sullha's calculations, Number Three had walked toward the sandbox, and he was now crouching next to it and watching Bianca and Tomek building their castles.
The children couldn't see him, but Tomek was frowning as if something wasn't adding up for him.
The boy was sensitive like his mother, and he was sensing Number Three's presence in spite of the thrall.