Marina Bernadette Beauvais

Summary: Just a drabble to commemorate me finally finishing the Silver Tree.

It has been years, so many years, since they had seen the face of God.

"So many years that some people are beginning to forget, to turn away from the truth," her grandmother had said to her, the night she left for somewhere across the vast black waters, wider than the largest lake (but never, never, larger than the sky). "We must leave before it's too late. Some are already enthralled, are using cowardly ways." The old woman made a disgusted face, spit on the lacred ground. "Like snakes, all of them. They have forgotten the ways of the wolf! Subtle, savage! But never cowards. Are you sure you do not wish to leave?"

It was tempting, she would admit. But she had to hope, had to keep believing, had to do her duty. Lose hope in Him, and stop guiding his people? Never. Never. The notion was as foolish as horses eating meat. The day she lost all hope, the day she gave into the ruin that slowly crept up onto her beloved city, twisting it into a shadow of its glory even more, mocking it, was the day she would finally lie on the earth, waiting for her brothers to take her.

That is why she was here, with a crowd that seemed to get smaller every time they gathered; and, even then, so many had such hostile eyes. Cowards, she remembered. She would never forget that. Never. Snakes in the grass, trampled underfoot by great steeds, and beheaded by the wolf's sharp teeth.

In front of her, the head shaman steps forth, raising his gnarled hands up high to the roof, and an errant thought escapes the carefully constructed bundle of her mind: thin glaze is not sky, and cold gold is not sun.

"Let us give thanks, and let us pray..."

~~

Marina wakes up in a cold sweat and with tears in her eyes, whatever caused it melting away from her memories like snow in spring as she searches for her rosary.

For once, she found a secret on the grounds before Danni did, thin fingers prying the loose stone out gently. In a cottage as old as this, she thought, you must always be on the lookout for secrets. And to think this all started because her servant, who bragged constantly (though not without basis) about her sharp eyes and memory, couldn't find the tomatoes so that she could teach her how to make some proper food, oh, s'rry--

"'Anythin', Miss 'rina?" someone seemed to call from up above, but Marina paid it no mind. There was a musty smell in the air, like the tombs of old she uncovered and excavated, mixing with a scent that reminded one of horsesick, along with a cloud of fine, white dust; she breathed, and, in the hollow that was now revealed, her eyes discerned a shadow in the shape of a--

(No, not a shadow; in a fit of inattention her eyes had wandered to the long shadow on the packed, hoofbeaten ground rather than what cast it--a bottle, smooth white ceramic as cold as the mountains during first snow fall, with the familiar horsehead stopper of bone. But even that glinted in the bright sunlight, she saw, as she set the rest of the meal in front of her--cheese, meat dumplings, dried curds. Her stomach ached; it had been a hard few hours riding, but worth it to get away from the court, if only for a few moments; how she could not wait to fill up her belly as her mare was doing a few meters away! The horse was grazing on the golden green grass, the light playing off her white coat, as it played off the bottle of heady liquid, as it played off, she realized with a detatched sort of delight, everything. And all the while, before, while, and long, long after she had passed from the Earth, it would continue this dance, the sun galloping, as tireless as the best of the khan's stallions, across the endless blue and white plains that was called the sky...)

--familiar looking bottle. A bottle of airag, here? The archaeologist wondered who had rented this cottage before she had. Regardless... "Miss Flint," she called to the girl she knew was waiting at the very top as she was climbing up the stairs that led to the kitchen proper, "Please fetch me my gloves and other basic tools; there seems to be something rather interesting in the pantry."

She smiled at the groan of protest that elicted, follwed by the sound of two scuffed boots shuffling away, but it took on a different sort of meaning when she paused mid-climb. She turned; she looked at the yawning gap, the now barely-visible bottle resting within it; she looked at the ceiling, and her hands began to tingle with a familiar sensation.

Then she turned and continued her traverse up the staircase, but she was away still in yet another place and time.