Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 24 of 37

Morning light filled the cabin. Lydia sat up and let the blanket fall. The melody still moved in her head, but the room around her felt strange. She had lived in a cave for as long as she could remember. There she knew only stone, water, and her own voice. This place held too many things. Cups. Spoons. A kettle. A chair with a cushion. She did not know what a person did with all of it. Bastion moved through the room like the objects were part of him. He filled the kettle. He hung his cloak on a peg. He wiped the table in three strokes and set two bowls down without looking. Lydia watched every motion. She wanted to belong to this the way he did. So she tried. She stood and reached for the cloth he had used. She wiped the table too. But she pressed too hard and knocked a bowl to the floor. It did not break. She picked it up and set it wrong, upside down. She hung a cloth on the wrong peg. She lifted the kettle before the water was warm and did not know why he had waited. Bastion watched her without a word. Then he said, "You don't have to copy me." "I don't know how else to be here," she said. Her hands were empty and useless. "You know where each thing goes. I know rock and water. Nothing here." He set his spoon down. "I didn't know a kettle either. Once." "You were a child then." She turned the bowl over in her hands. "I'm learning it all at once. I feel like a stranger in your house." He did not argue. He did not soften it. He only nodded, as if he had heard the true thing under her words. That was worse than pity. It meant it was real. Lydia set the bowl down. The walls felt close. She needed air that no one had arranged. "I'm going out," she said. Bastion looked up. "The road is safe now. Gregorio won't come." She stopped at the door. She had never walked outside as only a woman, with no song, no beast, no cave to return to. Her hand rested on the wood. "Go," he said. "The house will still be here." She stepped out. Cold air met her face. Grass, not stone, gave under her feet. A small pool sat near the porch, still and bright. She had not made this world and did not understand it. But she could stand in it. She could learn the ground the way she was learning the melody, one step at a time. She walked past the pool and did not look back at the cabin. For the first time she was not fleeing and not hunting. She was simply going for a walk, and choosing to come home after.