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Rock.
Or is it rock? She cannot say for sure. All she knows is that she is cold. She doesn't like cold. It makes her skin crack. She wants moisture, humidity even. Or maybe something else, that she can't remember. What does she remember?
She breathes. And again.
Now she smiles, her face pink, eyes bright. The man looks back, smiling too. The sun may be far out of reach, but here there is warmth and company. More so than with any other person she knows. "Oh, look at you!" she laughs, fondly. "You're learning."
She stops to collect her thoughts, blinks.
Another memory...
It's a lazy day, stuck in her home again. They never ever let her out, even when she promises not to do something too outlandish. Stupid, really. What kind of person do they take her for?
Inside, she knows better. Promises aren't worth the bother, because nobody ever delivers quite as intended.
Before she can wonder where that thought came from, she finds herself on the front steps of her house. The streets are crowded with people and boxes and workers. A Clay Man sees her, and approaches.
She’s been told over and over again that Clay Men are harmless, but still the thought flashes across her mind--(what if he’s broken, what if he’s wrong, his fist is clenched, will he use it to crack my skull?)
(He’ll be the death of me. My first death.)
It’s a right of passage, death. A mark of importance. But it’s not one that she wants to go through now, and not by a Clay Man’s hands. And now he stands, close enough for her to see the scrapes and imperfections in his stony skin. His eyes are as grey and colorless as the rest of him. If there is emotion, she cannot see it.
He hands her a flower. "FOR YOU," he says quietly, in that peculiar stone voice, before practically fleeing to his next job.
She holds the blossom in her hand, staring at his quickly retreating back. A Clay Man, giving her a gift? How...unheard of. She looks at the flower now. It's a delicate blossom, one that grows near the riverbed and glim light, the brackish waters by Wolfstack. The stem has gone concave at the middle, perhaps even fraying, but the petals--The petals are perfect, delicately hanging off the center like strips of silk.
She looks up to find the gift’s giver and an explanation, but he’s gone. As if he didn’t exist. She wonders if she didn’t just dream the whole thing. Surely, this must be a joke. Clay Men are dirt golems, with hearts of stone. For one to give a gift like this--would he even understand the act? The emotions behind a kind gesture?
She thinks of grey, thick fingers curling around this tiny gift, treasuring it until it could be delivered. Just one more in a long day.
That flower lies, pressed between the pages of her diary like all the others after it.
Hair brushes her face. She reaches over to push it aside, and her hands come away with stone skin.
Echoes.
"You told me it would work."
"I told you not to. It is hard to change people, here where nothing screams. Here away from home."
"I love her. She loves me." A thump. "Help me fix it!"
A hand resting on her face. Grey, like hers. Stone, still, silent. She lies on her side, barely breathing. "I can do nothing. But the King..."
Reverence. "Do you think he can...?"
"If anybody could." The hand leaves, another one taking its place in hers. "There is one thing I can do to help. The star speech."
Nothing that she recognizes, but something in her stirs. "You know it?"
"Enough, I hope." Pressure on her skin, enough to leave a dent. Something takes shape, takes flame on her back. "For you. Something to help until you make it."
Her lover nods gravely, tears in his voice. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
The other man grunts and nods. "Go quickly and safely. May you be heard."
The parting is a Clay blessing, but her lover laughs bitterly. "I would rip out my tongue, if it would let me hear her again."
She tries to call out, to tell him it won't be necessary.
A gasp. "She's moving!" And then she can't see them anymore.
When she opens her eyes again, she's in her room.
In a daze, she checks her skin in the mirror. In scalded red on her skin is a rough symbol, edges cracked like marked clay. She fancies that it goes straight down to her bones, red on white.
She goes out for air, to clear her head. Standing on the steps, she loses herself in the noise and the bustle of the city around her. The last thing she wants to do is think.
Perhaps she needs to go out on town? Call on a friend, do something reckless and crazy, something that will block the strange vision from her memory. Unconsciously, her hand reaches for her back--the spot with that strange mark. She’s never had delusions before, but surely, there is a first time for everything. Perhaps she should talk to her beloved about it, but her mind stumbles over her words. What could she possibly say?
“I had a strange dream. You were in it. And we carried through with that plan we talked about. Turning me Clay.”
“Also, I may have died.”
Is this a vision of the future? They are not unheard of. The streets by Mahogany Hall are crowded with fortune tellers and mystics. Madame Shoshanna, the most famous of them all, has her own tent at Mrs. Plenty’s Carnival. It would not be too much of a stretch for that vision to be true. Of course, that would rely on the assumption that such things were truly possible.
Her thoughts swirl around in her head, so much so that she doesn’t even notice her own love walk up to her. She only notices his shadow, and turns around in surprise. Instead of his usual smile, his face is stone and flat. His voice shakes as he holds out a flower. “FOR YOU.”
She takes it in wonderment, and then he flees down the street. “Wait!’ she cries, confused. “Come back!”
He does not. How peculiar. How very peculiar. It’s almost as if they’d never met each other before. She looks at the flower, and her hands shake. She doesn’t know why.
She rushes inside, oddly eager to place this flower in her diary. She mounts the stairs as a creeping dread takes hold of her, until when she finally sits at her desk and opens her diary, she feels physically ill.
The pages are blank, as if she never wrote on them. Because she hasn’t. There are no flowers either.
And then she remembers that she’s seen this exact flower before. Days and days and days before. Before she fell in love with her Clay Man.
No wonder he fled. As far as he knew, they’d never met.
The lack of death makes her reckless. The mark on her skin makes her uneasy. It isn't a good mix for her. She asks her father, learned man that he is, about the symbol. When she draws the design for him, on a sheet of paper, it burns to ashes.
She is thrown back to her room, accompanied by shouts. The lock turns. But so do her thoughts.
She gets her hands on some books with charred edges to their pages. After seven hours of searching and smothering occasional flames, she sees the mark. Her mark. Her back twinges, and she imagines it humming like a tuning fork. Perhaps in recognition.
On the old vellum, in careful script, the definition. "AWARE."
She thinks it might mean second chance, for her if no one else. Because what else would explain how she found herself back at the beginning? There by the doorway, watching a Clay Man run as she clutches a flower. His flower, the exact same one. She takes it from her book and holds it close to her chest, breathes it in. The petals are just as she remembers.
She remembers where it went wrong the first time. The botched attempt to turn her. This time, she promises not to let it happen. She will go with him to Polythreme and be turned there. Where the process is easier. Where she'll live.
Plans swim through her brain before the idea ever crosses her lover’s mind. While they talk and laugh, and finally kiss (how wonderful to fall in love again), she thinks of ways to sneak herself onto a Clay ship. If she can remain hidden until the journey's end, and no human knows of her passage, then they can stay together, and live like they intended to.
Finally, her Clay love looks at her with grave eyes and says, "I HAVE BEEN THINKING..." He pours out his heart, begging her to live with him so that they both may be free. From society, from the city. Her heart breaks for him all over again, and remembers how she first came to love him. When the time comes to tell him, his face...She cannot read its earthy creases, but he nods assent. As she hugs him, she thinks that this could be perfect. The only problem is that they will not see the other Clay Man, who saved her life on that cold, awful night.
But of course, nothing can be truly perfect.
(She dies in the hold, lungs heaving and screaming until her eyes roll back and her back blazes in pain. Her body is discovered and her lover killed.)
She gasps awake, and finds herself in bed. Her nurse sits beside her.
"You fainted," she explains. "One of your father's Clay Men found you and brought you home."
She looks at her skin, smooth and pale. She cannot see her back. "What day is this?"
The nurse smiles. "Milady, don't be afraid. You were out for an hour at most."
"No, please tell me," she pleads. "What's the date?"
The nurse frowns. "Are you alright? It's still the 11th. Should we call the doctor?"
She shakes her head, and bids her nurse leave. As the door closes, her blood chills. It is the same day that they agreed on the plan. And yet, her death in the hold feels as real as any memory. Her back burns once more. Aware.
When she lies down again, she's shaking. Perhaps she will need new plans.
By the day of the change, she can do nothing but hold her tongue and go through with it.
This time, she has done reading, thinking of what could happen, what could've gone wrong. If her attempt to escape did nothing, she will do whatever is left for her to do.
On the days leading up to that night, she makes sure that nobody will disturb them. She reads about minerals, and what little she eats is flavored with stone and earthy things. She finds a recipe of ruby soup, but decides it's not worth trying. When it finally starts, her heart beats frantically as her skin hardens and her mouth changes. English will be hard with this mouth, but she is good with languages. He promised to teach her Loamsprach. That she would learn. She wants that promise fulfilled.
The last time, she fell unconscious when her lungs changed. But all she feels is a slight congestion and dampness. She coughs, feeling, of all things, hope. Perhaps she has made it?
The door bangs open and she turns to look, surprised.
She does not feel herself shatter.
Again, to the front steps. Again, the flower is pressed to her hands. But this time, she does not call after him. This time, she doesn't even keep the flower.
What went wrong? What happened this time? Were they discovered? Was there an assassin sent after her, who happened to appear when she was turning? Was this some bizarre curse placed upon her, for daring to love a Clay Man? Magic isn't technically real, but the Neath is full of strange languages that hurt to lie in, or tell you what happened five days from now. She tries to remember the man who traced the sigil onto her skin. Could she find him and get herself out?
Her Clay Man comes by the next day, as he did before. A continuation of their beginning. But her heart is not in it. She sends him away, avoids him for a week. That changes nothing, for she still loves him, seeks him out.
At some point, she notices that somebody has been watching them, talking to her staff, poking around the Clay Quarter. Perhaps this is the person who is going to kill her? She never got a good look at their face. For all she knew, it could've been her father. But she's sure that it's this strange woman snooping around.
Perhaps, if she can speak to this person, she can avert her death. But how much should she tell? Most people don't like the relationship's mere existence. Who knows how they'd react if they knew she was going to turn Clay. (They'd probably blame him for it, and they'd end up in deep trouble.)
The lady turns out to be quite young and quite nice. The two chat amicably before parting ways.
She'd like to think that's what saves her life when the woman kicks the door down the night of the change.
Not that it matters. Almost as soon as the lady leaves, she feels her lungs stop moving. All those attempts to keep someone else from killing her, and she forgot about the treachery of her own body.
This time, when she wakes up to that day and a flower pressed to her hand, she keeps the flower. There is hope for her--all she needs to do is chat with the lady again, and do her preparations. It makes her lighthearted again.
Her mood sours when, after careful investigation, she finds that the lady is no longer tracking her. In fact, when she tries to preemptively contact her, through a card, she finds that her address does not exist.
It happens again. Again and again, men, women, and some in between, meet her during her little romance. She tries talking to them sometimes. Perhaps she should hate them, for driving her to death over and over again. But they're the only thing that changes in this dreadful loop. She is starved for conversation. It is more than a human is meant to bear.
(One time she woke up and screamed and screamed and screamed. When she closed her eyes, she saw a jungle, and then a blur of orange.
The Tiger consumed her, and she heard his apology as she woke once more.)
She tries--oh Lord does she try. Because what would her life mean now, if she didn't?
(One time she gave up and instead went to the University. She eventually became the head of a department and married an archeologist. She lived a long, fruitful life, as many in the Neath do.
She woke up, of course, to a flower pressed to her hand.)
Eventually, she stops keeping track of who left her and who killed her. It's not relevant to her, and either way, she is no better than before. What does she care, that some stranger understands her?
The mysterious Clay Man who marked her never shows up again. She doesn't think she would recognize him, or that he would remember her. (To him it never happened.)
She doesn't know if she wants to meet him. It's not like she'd even know what to say.