Ailbhe Amos |~|~| Irena Syun (my_vine_twists) wrote in darker_london, @ 2014-12-13 14:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | ailbhe amos, irena syun |
When you were asleep and I was out walking - Irena
Irena's cheek vibrated with a steady hum and she stirred, reaching under her pillow to pull out the mobile phone that rarely worked as a phone but instead served as an alarm clock. The bedroom was steel vault-dark, sunrise not for another handful of hours and even then it would be weak and cloudy - at least, that was what the weather last night had suggested.
The room was not as cold as it could have been, the closed fire having burned low to embers but keeping the very worst of the chill at bay. Still, Irena had little interest in getting out from under the blankets. She rolled over and snuggled in close to Ailbhe, burying her head in the other woman's warm pajama shirt. Ailbhe made what Irena could only assume was a sound of mostly asleep acknowledgement, but otherwise just kept breathing deeply and unmoved.
From her place under the warm layers of covers, Irena spent a few warm delightful minutes deciding what she would actually wear once she had slithered out into the cool air.
Eventually she forced herself up and out, the weather feeling like a personal affront to her. Winter in Dubrovnik was warmer than a lot of other cities, lucky enough to be coastal and Mediterranean, but it was almost always wet. The rain in Dubrovnik was always what marked the true arrival of winter, because it never found a way to snow. Unlike here, where snow was common just like rain, and Irena sometimes couldn't feel her fingers.
The light on the bedside was weak and yellow, good for not waking up a sleeping partner.
After putting on her dressing gown, Irena walked over to the window draped in a thick blanket and pulled it back enough to see the glass. Outside she could see the vaguest of shapes (the sliver of moon was made mostly useless behind clouds) but she could clearly read the thermometer that had been taped to the outside of the glass. -3°. Irena didn't doubt it. The moment she'd pushed the blanket back the icy weather had tried to jump through the glass.
She let the blanket fall back into place to keep in what warmth they could, and then she dressed quickly in the dim bedroom light, layering clothes upon clothes and then covering it all with her dark green coat and trusty rabbit fur trooper. (Rabbits were delicious and warm. Irena appreciated rabbits more as a werewolf living out in the woods than she ever had done in her previous life.)
In the back of an old receipt in her coat pocket, Irena drew a love heart and then left it on the bedside table, on top of Ailbhe's half-finished copy of The Romance of the Forest.
If anyone else was awake in Izmaylov then they were impressively silent as Irena made her way out the back door of the convent and down the tall steps. One of the old stables was now where the vehicles were kept, both the ones owned communally and the few personal ones. Irena's motorbike lived among them. It was one of the only things she hadn't given up to the cause but instead kept as something her own. Living in such close quarters with so many other people with the same goal, it could be hard sometimes to keep anything private.
Before she wheeled it out of the stables, Irena spent twenty minutes or so checking it was all running as it should. When she found a broken hose that would need to be replaced, she sighed.It might make it down to Verkhoturye and back, but it very well might not. It wouldn't be a disaster to get stuck on the roads somewhere between here and Verkhoturye - it could only be a four hour walk at most to get back, and Irena could even do it as a wolf - but it was an inconvenience she wanted to avoid in this cold.
So instead she grabbed the keys to one of the cars - after signing it out in her name on the books - and started it up. While she let the engine run and warm up, Irena checked under the hood for any problems there. But nothing was apparent with a quick overview, and she tried to keep everything here in good working order anyway.
Outside it was still black, sunrise not coming for another hour, and Irena drove carefully, her headlights brightening the road only directly in front of her. There was a lot of wildlife in these parts and not enough cars on this road to properly scare them off. Hit a fox or a squirrel and it was one thing, hit a bear or an elk and the car wouldn't be moving again.
Driving through the wide empty streets, Irena found Verkhoturye near-silent. Her car was the loudest thing around with its strong engine and heavy snow tires. But there was movement, and she saw it as she drove past particular churches. Churches were not a rare sight either. For it's declining population of (currently) 8,800, the town of Verkhoturye had forty churches, almost all of which still held services, even if some were much smaller than others. They weren't all just small churches though, and the one that Irena herself attended - the Trinity Church - was a towering cathedral built in 1703.
The priest greeted her at the door, taking her gloved hands in theirs, and Irena smiled at him. There was a lot of things she felt uncertain about in life, but she knew that church still brought her a sense of belonging even though, all things considered, she would not belong there if they knew true things about her.
They would not accept a woman who could turn into a wolf. They would not accept a woman who loved other women. But if there was a God, then Irena couldn't help that she felt Him most clearly when priests spoke of Him, when surrounded by other believers. If God had a plan, then Irena's life must be following that plan, because she had never turned her back on faith. This is what Irena had to believe, and if she occasionally had to lie to a priest because of it, then so be it. She kept no lies from God and He was above any laws set on earth.
Sometimes Irena looked around the group of parishioners as they prayed and she thought about the war of Lucine's that was to come. But most of the time she didn't think it at all. To Irena the 'war' seemed like a game of 'what if's and children's imaginings to keep them all from becoming to frustrated with the state of the world. Irena wouldn't put it past Lucine to have created the idea as a ploy to bring their kind together and give them a family. In that sense it had worked. At Izmaylov Irena had gained the sort of loving family she'd always failed to have with her own. There had been nothing wrong with her own parents, but ties of blood had never been enough to keep them together. She'd not even spoken to them for years, having simply told them she was living in Moscow. They'd never asked more, and she'd never volunteered it.
~
By eleven, Irena was back at the convent and it had awakened in her absence, the strong winter sun glaring off the stone and a pair of deathless sitting (wings away) on the edge of the guardhouse building together. Irena drove the car through the tall gates beneath them and parked it back in the stable, signing back in and then blowing her hands as she headed for the back stairs.
Inside she peeled off her gloves and hat, abandoning her coat on the hook by the door. She had no plans for the day, nor was she scheduled onto any tasks, and so she found herself wondering if she could disappear to her bedroom and watch movies. But it didn't feel like a day to be cooped up all alone in her bed and so she went instead to Aiblhe's office, knocking on the door and smiling when the redhead appearance.
Ailbhe kissed her, taking her cheeks between her hands, and said, in English, "enjoy the service?"
Irena chose English as well, the tongue easy for her and the only one Ailbhe spoke with any fluency. "Good. Have you had a busy morning?"
A shake of her head. "No, no one needing me at all."
"Then how about," Irena suggested with a little smile and momentarily lowered lashes, "we go back upstairs and snuggle up in bed with a movie?"
Ailbhe definitily looked like she was considering it, but Irena was already quite sure of what the answer was going to be. So when Ailbhe said, "no, I'd better stay in the office just in case," it came as no surprise. "But," the British woman added, "bring your computer down here. We can watch something from the couch."
Irena smiled brightly. "I'll see if I can find anything going free in the kitchen and then I'll be back."
Ailbhe kissed her again, always the more affectionate without cause, and nodded, "I'll hope for no broken limbs to set before you get back then."