Maintaining a Mind Apart

Mepka reentered the cabin side-by-side with the first rays of gray light off of the horizon. 

Estrid woke with a vigor, demanding to know where her daughter had been. Mepka took the tiff as it came, letting barbs glance off of her with little need to respond in kind. Estrid seemed not to know what to do with this newfound lack of spar in her daughter, and so by the end of that first day returned she fell into a fuming silence.

This suited Mepka fine, for whom a period of time was necessary to reacclimate to the world. The swamp around her was ever unchanged, its inhabitants much the same. It was her that had shifted. She felt less an element of it all than she had before. So, throughout this resettling of her routine, she maintained a mind apart. 

She tended temple, playing at penitence, but her thoughts lingered only ever on the mists. She guarded her experience preciously, asking none of the questions that now propelled her. Instead she took to staring off at the great wall of aether, far in the distance from where she was, as a sort of silent confidant.

Though they were not speaking, Estrid watched her incessantly. The pressure of her mother’s perception was most acute in their cabin at night. In the temple, or out in the swamps, there were other things to be occupied by. But in the bare dark, while they lay down to bed across the room from one another, her mother was all there was. 

At first light each morning, she fled out into the swamp on the pretense of foraging. It was only when she was absolutely certain that the moment she held was in privacy that she brought to bear the word that the aether had given her, "Ahtr’ul".

Each time she did she was rocked by that selfsame vertigo as in the depths. She knew it to be a word of power, but she was no learned spellcaster, and so she struggled to put her full weight behind it. Time and practice would win her this faculty, but with the other penitents about such freedom only ever came in fleeting bursts.

It was weeks before her first cantrip struck through. She called her word, and traced mist laden fingers through the air, and where they passed she felt the resonance of a force unseen tugged into place. When she released those strings, her whole body became untethered from the world and she began to float in an upwards drift. After a beat Mepka’s feet reaffixed themselves to the ground, but her sense of awe lingered.

When Mepka started back that morning, she came to a host of penitents out on the temple’s front steps. At her approach, she caught the tail end of Estrid’s address to the group, "- and there was really nothing to be done about it. Of course, we felt absolutely horrendous displacing him, but the work that my husband is doing really must take precedence over such quaint manners as he employs."

She noticed Mepka, and her voice took on a saccharine quality, "Ah, and my lovely daughter. Come, sit darling."

The group mumbled hellos, and Mepka mumbled them back. She took seat between her mother and Leça, a penitent of weathered years. Leça had not been of a class to know Mepka’s family in Peyr, but here as equals in exile Mepka could plainly see the esteem their character held amongst the others.

When they leaned over to speak, the chatter of the group fell away. "It is a fine thing to see you Mepka, you have been scarce since the last reclamation. How goes your time here?"

Mepka stiffened, feeling her mother hovering over her shoulder. "It has been good to reflect. Though, you speak true. I know I ought to spend more time in the temple proper."

"Nonsense," Leça waved away the depreciation, "You do well by us. You are adept at navigating the swamps, and without that skill we’d be lacking for food."

Mepka smiled tentatively from her guarded state of mind. "This is kind of you."

Leça shrugged. "As you said, I speak true. No less, no more."

Mepka rubbed at the tension in her neck, trying consciously to relax.

"We certainly welcome the appreciation you have for all that our family does Leça," Estrid stressed, "But my daughter really is meant to be serving the temple. Developing a devotional mind, and all, so that when we return to our lives we’ll be able to move forwards as if this unfortunate mess had never happened."

Mepka felt herself flare bitterly under her mother’s smothering story. "Are these not our true lives then? It feels an awful lot like we’re living them."

"Now there," Leça spoke in a tone intended to placate, "Your mother has something at the heart of the matter. Trying as it is, this time will pass. You’ll not be in penance forever. You’ve been under this sentence for some time, the high abbot may even permit you to return to Peyr soon."

It was a thought that Mepka had been avoiding, one that notched a dreadful pit in her core. 

"We- I, um," Her mind raced and the air thinned in her lungs. The community nodded around to each other in misunderstanding, expecting her assent that all would one day be well if only they could return to Peyr.

"I’d not want to go back!" She burst.

"Daughter," Estrid enunciated in a veiled vexation, "Hush yourself, before-"

"No," She cut her mother off abruptly, the words starting to pour out of her, "The way the conservators go about things is a misery, and I can’t be the only one thinking it. What’s so good about Peyr? They exiled us, all of us, and for what? Trying to come up for air, from their drowning? Blaspheming against the will of the abbots? And the abbots, high fucking hypocrites they are. They don’t give any more of a damn about this temple than I do. If they did they’d be here, drudging away like we are. They call this place holy, but all it does is bind us. We’d do better to let the swamp take it, then what will they have to threaten us with? I don’t regret the blasphemy that landed me here, because it wasn’t until I was forced out of Peyr that I understood how much of a fucking trap it really was."

Mepka ended her outburst, breathless.

Leça had listened in a pensive pity. The other penitents sat through in a fearful stun, as though Mepka’s sacrilege could stick to them if they were to say anything in response.

Met with this terse silence Mepka stood and took her leave, feeling their stares boring into the back of her skull. She returned to the cabin, an empty chamber for her anxious thoughts to echo.

She expected Estrid to burst in, enwreathed in wrath. Instead, her mother shuffled in sullenly. She took a seat on the bed next to Mepka, and started to sob. Mepka held a moment, unsure of how to handle this, before placing a hand uncomfortably on Estrid’s shoulder. 

"I’m sorry." She intoned weakly.

"You’re not. You’re not, or else you wouldn’t have done it." Estrid sniffled, wiping at her eyes. "I know that you resent me. You think that I do the things I do because I feel the same way about you. That’s not it at all though, nothing could be further from the truth. All I want is for our family to have the best life that we can. To be respected. But you always sabotage us. I’ve given you the chance to live well, don’t you want that?"

"Of course I do, I just-"

"Then why won’t you just do as I tell you?"

"I just can’t stand to be around the conservatorship. Trying to square their beliefs, and the way they treat us, it makes me feel like I can’t breathe."

"You don’t have to believe," Estrid jabbed fingers at her own chest. "You think I believe, in my heart of hearts? Having faith has barely anything to do with showing faith."

A moment passed between them without a response. 

Estrid took a heavy breath in through her nose, wiping under her eyes. She composed herself into a more familiar, stiffer form. "I’ll only ever do what’s best for us, Mepka."

Mepka nodded tentatively, unbalanced and ashamed. For all her indignation, her mother’s tears still lashed her heart tender.