Entry tags:

character: neculai antonescu, character: talyssa anghelescu, location: dining hall, location: school grounds, location: the woods

Who: Talyssa Anghelescu and Neculai Antonescu
What: Chance encounter in the woods.
When: November 5th, 2018
Where: The woods on the edge of the Saint Margaret’s grounds
Rating/Warnings: Low/None
Status: Completed

A lot of things had changed, but some things remained the same. She was a private school girl now, a girl who had the best educational opportunities money could buy, a girl who had a makeshift, cobbled together family made of people who gone through the same fires she had, but still...

Anton Castle lingered on her skin like a rash, or a bad smell she could never quite wash off.

Every night she woke remembering the injections, the horrible tasting medicine, the painful experiments and the confusion, always the confusion of not knowing what was happening to her or why. Because after the first year or so, they somehow managed to define her gift and then take it from her so completely that she was unable to speak at all for the best part of nine years. The drugs they gave her robbed her of her ability to talk, and most of her ability to understand speech. Still, her mind remained as alert and sharp as it ever had been. That was the true horror of Anton Castle for Talyssa.

Now here at Saint Margaret's she found herself opening her mouth to speak whenever possible. She could see the looks some people were giving her. "Does that girl ever shut up? Does she ever not speak?" she imagined they were thinking. How could they know that she had a horror of going back to that time in her life, when speaking was not an option for her? How could they possibly know that every time she spoke, she was making sure she still could?

Her gift had returned in full force and she knew, instinctively, how to speak to everyone who stood before her. This thing they called language, however, was still largely a mystery to her. Why was it that when Tanek spoke, it was called Czech, and when Tomi spoke, it was called Japanese? Why were the words coming from the teachers called English, and the words she shared with Neculai called Romanian? It did not make any sense to her. After all, what were they but words? Just the words that those people happened to understand?

Oh, intellectually she could grasp what they were referring to. It just seemed to Talyssa that it was all so unnecessary. Still, she reflected, that was possibly largely because she could speak ALL of the "languages", while most people seemed only able to speak one or two.

This was what was on her mind as she padded softly through the woods at the edge of the school grounds, pausing here and there to hug a tree and feel what it was feeling. That was something else she was coming to understand—that she was the only one who understood the trees and plants the way she did.

This one, this mighty sycamore, winced when she put her arms around him. "What is the matter?" she asked softly in the first words that came to her. French, she thought these ones were called. The tree didn't answer, only continued to ache. "Oh, this is America, and you are an American tree," she exclaimed, switching to the kind of words the teachers used and asking again. This time the tree responded. Not in words, but with a deep pain that drew a gasp from Talyssa.

"You poor thing," she cooed. "What can I do?"

The answer was nothing. There was nothing to be done. This beautiful, ancient tree was dying, and there was nothing within Talyssa's power to reverse the process. She spoke no more, but simply sank to her knees at the foot of her dying friend and wept for him, stroking his rough bark softly. She could still feel his pain, but it was tempered with gratitude, and even a little affection.

So caught up in her emotions, she didn't hear the footsteps behind her until the person causing them stood right behind her. She turned, wiping her eyes. "Hello," she said, after a moment.

***

“Hello?” Neculai repeated in Romanian, surprised to hear the language. He shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself. Talyssa could still be disarming with her ability, however. “Sorry, I thought I heard someone crying and I…” He swallowed, looking at the girl curiously.

Though he wasn’t Sorin and took great strides not to be like Sorin, Neculai couldn’t help but have a soft spot for the other survivors of Anton Castle. He stepped into the small clearing and crouched down a few paces from her.

“Are you alright?”

***

“He is dying,” she said simply, reaching for Nick’s hand and pulling it toward the tree. “Can you feel it? And there is nothing we can do, nothing we can give him to save him. It is very sad.”

And concentrating on the tree, who she had already began calling Ivantie in her head, she did her best to listen and translate. “I can hear him,” she whispered to Nick. “Can you?”

***

Nick let her put his hand on the tree and he looked up into the branches, then back to her face. He waited, expecting to feel something, but when nothing came he shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t feel anything different. It’s just a tree.”

Nick placed his other hand over hers and patted it awkwardly. “Maybe we can contact Barclay? The Green Witch who was friends with Sorin. He could help the tree. Maybe. I think I still have his number.”

***

“Ivantie says it is too late for any of that,” Talyssa said mournfully, standing up and dusting herself off. “It is a great sadness, but death is a part of life, after all.”

And if they did not know that after their time in Anton Castle, who did know it?

“Let us just… honor him,” she said. “Say a prayer for him. Pave his way to whatever heaven it is that trees go to, and then leave him to his rest. And… and find something to eat,” she finished with a wry smile. Another side effect of being more or less back to herself and out from under the influence of the drugs was a hunger the likes of which she could not remember knowing before. As much as she cared for Ivantie, the sudden rumble of her stomach could not and would not be ignored.

***

Who? Nick’s mouth formed the word he didn’t say out loud. She meant the tree, probably. Definitely. And the tree was a he? Of course it was. Neculai shook his head as he too got to his feet. He winced a bit at the idea of saying a prayer, however.

“You go ahead. I don’t—” he started to explain that he didn’t believe in prayer, believe it went anywhere or did anything, but he remembered how spiritual Talyssa could be. Instead, he finished with “—know any good prayers.”

But he did believe in eating. The reflection of Sorin had the metabolism of any healthy teenage boy, though no matter how much or how little he ate, his physical appearance never changed. The curse of being a dead person’s reflection, he supposed.

“I heard there’s apple pie in the kitchens.”

***

“Apple pie would be good for after,” Talyssa said, the bulk of her mind searching for a suitable prayer. “But first I want some steak, or some chicken, or some kind of meat. I am ravenous.”

She flashed a grin at her brother, then turned back to the matter at hand.

It came to her, simple and sweet and without a great deal of thought. “Loving God, watch over Ivantie our friend during his last days on Earth with us, and grant him peace in heaven at his end. In Your name, amen.”

After speaking these words, she turned expectantly to Nick. “What language was that?” she asked, just as a small branch gently fell from Ivantie to brush across her back. Natural, wasn’t it, that branches and leaves should fall from a dying tree? Still, interesting that this particular branch should fall in just such a way that it looked almost as if Ivantie was embracing her one last time.

***

Nick looked up again into the branches, warily watching for any more dead branches as he shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t know that one. It sounded perfect, though.”

Respectfully, Nick laid his palm against the bark of the tree and gave it a soft pat in farewell. Then he curled his arm around Talyssa’s shoulders and guided her away from it and back towards the school.

“What were you doing out here?” He asked her as they stepped through the chilly forest. “It’s supposed to snow any day now. You really shouldn’t be wandering so far.” He knew, even as he said it, that he was sounding like Sorin. To distinguish the sentiment, he added, “I mean, do what you want, but let someone know. Okay?”

***

Leaning into her big brother, Talyssa wiped the last of the tears from her cheek. “I was just… being,” she explained, switching unconsciously from Romanian to Romani halfway through her sentence. “Sometimes it is not nice for me in school. There are girls who look at me… not nicely.”

Not that she would tell Nick their names if she knew them.

“I talk because I could not,” she went on, by way of an explanation. “And sometimes it seems like people do not like me to do so. And besides, the building is so… it is such a building. I needed outside.”

But she was happy enough to take his hand and follow him back through the chilly grounds to the dining hall, where she made a beeline for the sandwich bar and fixed herself a thick sandwich with three different kinds of meat.

“Thank you for not laughing,” she said quietly as they sat down at a table. “I feel that many would have laughed. I know that Ivantie is a tree, just a tree. But also he is my friend, and I feel great sadness that he is dying.”

***

Nodding his understanding, Nick let the subject drop. It wasn’t his heritage, but Sorin’s that made him know what she meant. The Roma were travelers and after being trapped in a castle for most of their lives, the survivors, all of them, had the wanderlust. It was akin to Neculia’s hatred for quiet places. Trapped in the mirror with no sound or any sensory access whatsoever had taken its toll on him like their imprisonment had on them.

Neculai felt a rising of anger at anyone who would make Talyssa feel anything but comfortable with herself. He wanted names, definitely, though he didn’t think she’d give them to him. He’d need to start paying closer attention and take matters into his own hands if he spotted the bullying. He and Tanek both would fix it.

While his sister made her plate, Neculai got himself a piece of the apple pie and found a section of table for them to sit at. “I’d never laugh,” Nick assured her quietly and in the same language. “Unless I thought you were trying to tell a joke. And badly.” He smirked a little, hoping to lighten the mood. “You are pretty bad at jokes, Pui.”

***

“My humor does not translate,” Talyssa complained lightly. “I try, sometimes. I make a pun that I think is hilarious, but people look at me oddly, or groan loudly. Yesterday I told a wonderful joke. ‘What does the lazy fish do? Nothing!’* ” Here, she paused to laugh merrily. The play on words was just too clever.

“But no one laughed. So maybe I am just not as funny as I thought.” She tore into her sandwich, thoughts drifting back to Ivantie.

“You were nice to Ivantie,” she said softly. “He knew you could not understand. I knew you could not understand. But you were… respectful anyway. You are a good brother.”

***

Neculai blinked when she landed the punchline, but could not find the humor in it. He smiled anyway and shrugged, cutting a piece of his pie. “You’ll work on it.”

When her tone changed, Nick glanced up at her and this time his smile was more genuine before it turned more cheeky, as it always did when she called him a good brother. “Yes I am, aren’t I?” Which was what he always said in response.

Nick winked and at his pie with his sister while the dining hall buzzed with chatter around them.

***

* This pun is/was Spanish. “Qué hace el pez perezoso? Nada!” Because in Spanish, the word for nothing is “nada”, but nada is also the word for “he swims”.

Get it? Don’t worry. No one else did, either. Welcome to Talyssa’s world.