14. Thaola
Thaola
The lights were flipped on, and with a silken touch of pressure to her forehead, his finger slipped away from hers.
“Noooooooo,” she groaned. Flora rubbed her eyes, still half asleep as she grumbled, “You can’t… make… me…”
She felt the electric chill of the stream’s water between her toes, the breath of the morning breeze on her neck.
Flora stirred awake with a shudder, her eyes opening to the playful glow of daylight as it filtered through the fog, painting a dreamy backlight behind the aged wooden fences and vine-covered homes.
“Geez.” She rubbed the goosebumps on her arms. “It’s freezing this morning.”
She swatted at where Noec should have been, then looked around in confusion.
“Okay, bye?” she called after him as he strode toward the woods like he had someplace to be.
He didn’t look back, but his fingers were snapping into fists, then flexing loose again.
Flora wasn’t sure if the gesture was a symptom of panic or anger.
Noec pushed through the brush along the edge of the village, and a moment later, he was gone.
Flora blinked. “Well, alright then.” The sharp wind cut through her hair, and she grumbled as she looked out at the village.
A village girl, Mayra, was stepping along the road from the direction of the southern gateway, her eyes glazed over in thought. In her arms, she had gathered a basket of night lilies. The pale, glowing flowers shimmered faintly, each said to carry a fragment of a departed soul.
“Morning,” Flora greeted, and though Mayra paused, she didn’t seem to have it in her to be startled.
“Oh. Florabelle.” Mayra said with a weak smile, adjusting the basket in her hand. “We’re putting them to rest tonight,” she said, her voice dulled with lament as her eyes met Flora’s. “You should stay, if you can.”
“Of course.” Flora assured her. “I’ll be there.”
Mayra tossed her scarf around her neck as she began across the bridge.
“Mayra?” Flora started, glancing over toward the woods. “Would you mind letting me know if you see Noec come back around? After yesterday, he’s got me worried.”
Mayra stopped. “Sure,” she replied, her mind clearly preoccupied.
“Though I’ll be more focused on the people the water couldn’t heal.
” Numbly, she continued down the path. Mayra moved slowly, and so did the other villagers droning about on this chilly fall morning.
Sorrow hovered heavy, dense and suffocating like the fog above.
Flora breathed a shallow sigh, glancing first toward where Noec had taken off into the brush, then toward his family home. Before she trailed after him demanding answers, she should at least let his family know he’s still breathing.
“Flora!” Elia greeted as Flora approached her garden, waving as she tended to her flowers, the bright patterns on her gloves faded from years of labor and dirt. “You’re back!” She brushed off the skirt of her apron. “How's he doing, honey?”
“Healed,” Flora replied tentatively.
“Oh, thank the goddess,” Elia said with a relieved smile. She stood on her toes and looked past Flora, then looked around from side to side. Elia placed a hand on her hip and raised a brow. “Did you forget to bring him home?”
“He’s here…” Flora replied, glancing back at the creek. “I just don’t know… where. He ran off as soon as I woke up.”
“Poor thing,” Elia replied. She sighed and added, “Our sweet Noec’s got a lot to process.” Still, Elia smiled slightly and said, “I’m just so happy he’s alive.”
“Elia…” Flora began, stepping just a bit closer. Elia raised a curious brow. “Noec’s body is healed. But I’m worried something else is broken.” Flora paused, wondering if she should keep the rest to herself.
“Something else?” Elia pried.
“He’s been… aggressive,” Flora muttered. “Breaking things. Saying things. I’m worried.”
Elia blinked. “He’s been aggressive?” Her countenance sank. “To you?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Hm,” Elia said thoughtfully. Elia’s pleasant demeanor shifted as she studied the yellow-painted spade in her hand. “Heron!” Elia called toward the house. She turned back to Flora and assured gently, “Don’t worry, honey. Heron and I will show him aggressive.”
“No, Elia, he…” Flora stuttered. “He was acting like Perri. Sick, like Perri.”
Elia paused, worry creasing her brow. They heard the sound of the front door opening and closing.
“What do you need, sweetheart?” Heron asked as he rushed around the corner. He noticed Flora and offered a smile and something like a half-hug. “Florabelle! Where is Noec? Is he still well?”
Flora nodded, but she fumbled to find the right words.
“Noec wandered off,” Elia replied for her. “In a particularly bad mood, it seems,” she added, placing a gloved hand on Flora’s arm.
Flora sighed and looked away. “He’s sick,” Flora repeated to herself. “He wouldn’t act that way if he wasn’t sick.”
Elia shared a worried look with Heron.
“Sick or not,” Heron said, “My son wouldn’t miss a funeral. He’ll come around soon.”
Elia’s eyes drifted toward Crescent Creek. “You should pay your respects,” she advised. She plucked a deep purple flower from a bush and offered it to Flora. “While it’s not too crowded.”
At the far edge of the village, where the stream flowed out from the woods, Thaola stood beside a dark-wooded casket, its surface adorned with notes and flowers. Only the quiet hum of the water dripped through the silence as Thaola’s skirt swayed in the wind.
Clutching Elia’s flower, Flora approached Thaola’s downcast figure, with no comfort to offer but a soft, “Good morning.”
Thaola couldn’t smile, but she met Flora’s eyes with a frailty as she tried to. “Poor Kestra and Ross,” she said, blinking up. “I can only hope my children won’t end this way.”
“I’ll take them to my world if things get that bad,” Flora said. “I’ll take everyone, if that’s what I have to do.”
Thaola sniffed, and with a bittersweet smirk, she commented, “Wouldn’t that be against the cleric’s rules for you, Sleepwalker?”
“Definitely,” Flora replied with a nod. “But to save her villagers, I think that’s a rule she’d be proud to see me break.”
Thaola smiled truly now. “I think so too, Florabelle,” she said. “But I think she’d be proud no matter what.” Flora clipped her eyes tight and leaned into Thaola’s shoulder just slightly, a silent thanks.
Flora saw the casket, but she couldn’t look inside. She wasn’t ready, not yet—so her eyes fixed down on the open box beside it, and her brows furrowed anyway.
Perri.
For a moment, Flora remembered her friend.
The scythes would leave nothing of his body to find, they said, so beside Sona’s casket was no more than a mourning box for Perri, filled with trinkets and memories of who he used to be.
Flora’s eyes lingered on the sharp, swirling pendant of his great-grandfather’s necklace as the crushing reality sank into her chest.
He wasn’t just lost, wasn’t just injured. Perri—the kid with the toothy smile and the curly hair—was gone.
So, Flora refused to remember the haze of violence, the shadow of rage that smothered out the brightness in his eyes.
Instead, she clung to the sound of his laughter—bright as the sun as he called her name from the cherry tree above, wild as the wind as he darted past with that heirloom necklace flashing in his hand.
Flora smiled faintly, rubbing her nose with a small, stifled sniff.
Perri was a good friend, she reminded herself, and she smiled still because she knew it was true.
But a dreadful weight still lingered in Flora’s heart as she clutched the violet flower to her chest. Finally, dreadfully, she allowed her eyes to drift toward the face of her mentor.
Her body was cloaked in soft mulberry, her black tattoos freshly painted with vines of ivy green.
The marks of her final struggles were healed, her body briefly preserved by Lunara’s water.
But the lively freckles on her cheeks were growing dull, the lacy mark of the cleric broken by a new scar.
Flora waited, as though her eyes might still open.
But the scars remained on her dusky skin, and there was no one left inside the statue of Sona.
Flora’s fingers curled tight, but she loosened her grip just enough to cradle the flower unbroken in her palm. Gently, Flora placed her blooming flower into Sona’s wilting hand.
“Just take care of Flora for me,” Sona had said, and in her thoughts, Flora promised that she would.
Despite the cleric’s broken body, her voice remained beautiful and unwavering in Flora’s memory.
Flora closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
She held onto Sona’s final embrace, grasping to remember the look in her eyes, the smell of her hair, the feeling of looking up to someone who had never once looked down on her.
“Here, Sona. I brought you something else,” Flora whispered, unlatching her gold wristwatch. She laid it gingerly atop the lily in Sona’s fingers. “I figured you might like it.”
As Flora wiped a tear from her eye, a comforting hand touched her back.
“Those damned scythes,” Thaola remarked bitterly, her grip tightening. “They’ve taken too many.”
Flora clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes. She sniffled, still, but her sorrow turned sour as she thought about the creatures in the Forest. They lounged safely in their grove on the hill, while the village below suffocated in their shadow, starving for a breath of light.
Thaola let out a sharp sigh. “Sona should have stayed far, far away from that blood research.” Gravely, she added, “I can’t help but wonder if that’s why they came for her.”
Flora ground her teeth, but after a moment, she paused, and her brows knit together. “What do you mean?”
Thaola huffed. “Everyone says Rachel is talking crazy, Florabelle, but that man is out all night and day. He sees and hears everything.” Thaola’s sharp eyes met Flora’s, and she continued, “He’s been saying he overheard Sona and Perri talking outside his shop—about potentially injecting the blood into Perri. ”
“What blood?” Flora whispered.