Ch 1
Fate is older than it cares to admit. It was already middle-aged by the time cavemen were drawing on walls and fighting beasts much much too large for them. It was considered old when Man first went to war. Rusty by the time of the fourth “World War” as they called it (though it was more like watching children fight over toys). And it was ancient by the time a young girl sat down and learned of her story. She and Fate would meet several times throughout her life, and whether they cared to admit it or not, they had a soft spot for the child.
It was Fate that brought the young girl’s parents together, and their parents, and theirs. But their great-grandparents? Total accident, who’d have guessed. Fate was there when the girl’s life would irrevocably change without her noticing, and of course they were there when she decided to take Destiny into her own hands.
Destiny, what a piece of work.
⟴
“Much like the secret underwater gardens our pre-war oceans housed within shallow waters, Poncona Sea is home to a variety of seagrass. Isn’t that fascinating Noel?” A pair of hazel eyes filled with thoughts of swaying grassy spikes turned to peer into glassy black ones. The sleek raven Davina had been whispering too blinked disinterestedly at her twice before returning to the pile of seeds laid between them. Noel was one of her favorites, sleek, satiny, and the best listener of the bunch.
Noel let out a deep croak. Davina took that as the bird’s agreement and smiled proudly to herself. Though she herself did not quite understand the importance of undersea grass, nor had she ever seen it, to Davina the idea of being anywhere, even the bottom of the sea, was riveting.
The sudden metallic toll of the bell sent the girl’s hands into a frenzied panic. Stuffing the smuggled book back into its hiding place between coarse brown bed sheets and the wooden frame, she didn’t even notice the quick slice of a paper cut. Expert fingers secured the clasp of the white mantel that draped down her back and reached her ankles. Brushing off any bits of seeds from her brown tunic she turned back to the window to whisper a goodbye to her closest friend. All that was left of the bird was a slowly shrinking black dot on the horizon. Davina couldn’t help the pang of envy that spread through her chest as she watched Noel. Watched him fly over a gray sea. Watched him soar carelessly. Watched him...leave.
Taking a quick breath to settle her nerves, and hide any traces of her wrongdoings, Davina opened the door to her unit and joined the slow procession of the other black and white veiled sisters. Ahead of her walked Sister Viola, a black-veiled tempus like Davina, and the itchy panic of secret keeping faded further away.
Unlike the third, and last, tempus in their community, Sister Angelonia, Viola was a bit of a rule breaker herself. It was not uncommon for Davina to share whispers with Viola during prayer hours, gossip over statue carvings, or even share exasperated glances about stern lectures from the old-fashioned maneats. Davina could still remember when Viola and Angelonia had joined their shrine five years ago. Before then, there had never been a sister remotely close to her in age. At that point the youngest maneat was Sister Zinnia, whose warm smile or crow-footed wink felt more motherly than anything else.
Giving Viola’s veil a soft tug and getting her attention without alerting the other sisters, Davina did her best brow wiggle. Viola only gave her a soft smile in return before diverting her attention back to the ground. The path down to the worship hall was more fun than her company, apparently. This is how a raven became her closest friend, and not the person walking before her. Viola was a bit of a rule breaker herself. Past tense. Though Viola and Angelonia had both joined the shrine at sixteen and were a few months older. Meaning they were preparing their souls for the Ceremony of Sun, and Davina wasn’t.
Once a tempus reached the age of twenty-one they were eligible to take part in a ceremony that would forever bind them to the Shrine of New Light. The temporary vows they had taken would become permanent, and they would become fully integrated into the community. A tempus vowed at least five years of silence (speaking only if necessary), chastity, obedience, worship, and poverty. A maneat vowed to all of those things for as long as they should live, with the added vow of seclusion.
She had worked hard to not show how jealous she was. While she didn’t enjoy sticking to her vows, she was desperate to belong to the community.
Over the past few weeks Viola had apparently made the mental switch to accept her vows. She no longer whispered to Davina when the sisters were not around, breaking their vow of silence. She no longer gossiped or talked negatively about the maneats, breaking the vow of obedience to the shrine. No longer did she listen to Davina’s whispered dreams of seeing what lies beyond the shrine’s walls, which would break their future vow of seclusion.
One of the reasons Noel was her favorite from the other ravens that frequented the shrine’s grounds, was that he listened to her. Or at least Davina told herself he did, it was hard to tell if he was actually listening or if he just liked the seeds she’d give him. Nope, nope it’s definitely my stories.
As the sisters filled into the worship hall, Davina sent one last look at Viola before taking her place at one of the benches lining the left side of the room. She could still see the back of her old friend’s veiled head, her back perfectly straight as she sat with hands folded next to Sister Sage.
What she wouldn’t give to switch seating arrangements. Next to her sagged Sister Lilly. She was very kind, but the ancient woman smelled of musk and stale flowers.
Her silent complaints were drowned as the children not-so-quietly filled in and sat noisy upon their prayer cushions. The maneats chose to ignore their hushed whispers and playful jabbing, they were still learning.
Davina’s heart always swelled with pride when she saw the children around the quiet community. She was personally responsible for their presence, and each of their successes felt like her own.
The benches and prayer cushions were some of the only furniture in the dimly lit room of black and white veils. She didn’t mind gathering for the evening choir because unlike the morning and afternoon prayer gatherings, which were done in silence, they got to sing. Members of the nearby community were welcome to enter the shrine and join their praise of Soldeus. Any chance to speak in more than a whisper Davina took. She sang loud, apologized just a little too loudly when she “bumped” into someone, she even sneezed loudly.
As Revered Matrem Aster stepped into the center of the hall, a hush fell over the already quiet room. The matrem, like the maneats, donned a white veil, heavily embroidered belt, and a long white mantel, but she was the only sister to wear a white tunic. The embodiment of holy light. The service was the same as the ones before it. Deep contemplative and concentrated worship towards Soldeus, silent prayers urging the citizens of Nescio to find light, and beginning for forgiveness of our past transgressions. Davina was an expert at looking pensive while zoning out. The service only regained her attention when Matrem Aster called for attention by having Sister Angelonia play soft notes on the piano. The notes hauntingly carried across the too quiet room and slowly faded away as the ghosts of sound Davina so longingly wanted to create.
Sister Angelonia. Someone “born to be a sister”, or so she’d seen the maneats report back to the matrem. If anyone were born to be a sister wouldn’t it be me? Angelonia had joined the shrine at sixteen, Davina had joined at two. The Malden Bay Shrine of New Light had found her bundled in a pea green blanket with only the name Davina carefully sewn on its border. So Davina DeMal (the sisters were very original with her last name) grew up within the quiet walls of the shrine.
For the first time in shrine history a child was welcomed into their ranks. They even created a new level just for her, since most tempuses did not start until the ages of fifteen or sixteen. So her earliest memories of being a tentant were filled with veils and tunics much too big for her small frame, and the maneats casting worried glances between one another as they welcomed a retired teacher from the community into their home. Only the Sisters of New Light were permitted to enter the section that housed their units, but an exception was made for Ms. Annette. Tasked with teaching the child how to speak, read, and write, she lived with the sisters for several years. Davina missed the women’s brittle voice reading passages of books to her on rainy days. Stars, she missed talking to people.
Angelonia did not start her temporary vow of silence until she was sixteen, Davina started hers at six (though she broke it when the sisters were not around). Angelonia never once attempted a friendship with her, it would have made her seem young and improper in the sister’s eyes. Davina resented her. Not for being unfriendly, Davina could handle that, what she hated was the girl’s sense of holy superiority.
Davina drowned her bitter thoughts in the harmonizing wave that was her town's people song. And the out of tune squeals that came from the children. It was an old chant that told of how Soldeus cleansed the Earth with a blinding light, giving those under him a chance at new life. Most of their worship songs told this story, or praised the Great Light in general. Davina was just happy to sing. It was easy to lose herself in that small act of prohibited rule breaking. While other sisters saw her closed eyes as passionate devotion to Soldeus, in reality Davina was almost light-headed from the glee of speaking. Letting go of sounds that had for so long been stuck between her ribs and pressed down down down to her very core, was freeing.
At the end of the service, the few locals from the community gone, Matrem Aster walked to the center of the room.
“My dear sisters”, the slow speed of her withered hands seemed to saturate each word with wisdom and power. “In one weeks time two of our dear tempuses shall be undergoing the Ceremony of Sun. I ask that each of you keep them close in your prayers, and seek refuge within the warm embrace ofSoldeus.” She bowed her head once, her dusty eyes closing, and every sister followed suit.
⟴
That night, while the other sisters had retired into their units for final prayers and a night's rest, Davina’s mind wandered. What else would it be doing? She had only ever seen one ceremony before, a neighboring shrine with a young tempus, had requested to have her veiling ceremony in their larger complex. Though she was quite young at the time, she remembered the excitement of having new sisters within the white brick walls. Their hour of recreation was livelier than ever, excited energy clung to the air and after those sixty minutes her hands hurt from asking them so many questions.
The tempus’ ceremony highlighted the sister transitioning from a black veil to a white one, and into their permanent vows. Only the Revered Matrem and other maneats were allowed to witness the full ceremony, and possess knowledge of what went on during the Ceremony of Sun. So naturally, Davina had watched part of the ceremony from within one of the air vents.
There are many stories about a certain curly-haired child hiding within air ducts while maneats frantically searched for the missing girl who’d shirked her duties, but those aren’t important. What was important was that the only thing Davina remembered were the backs of everyone's feet, as she was too low down to get a proper look, and someone singing a song she’d never heard before. The ceremonial song had been chanted in a language Davina’s tongue had never tasted. When she thought about the old memories for too long the foreign words blended into nothing. When no one was around, or perhaps if she was outside alone in the garden with Noel, she’d hum what little of the melody she remembered.
Eyes closed, mind still wondering, Davina’s dreams were filled with inky feathers, secret languages, and swaying seagrass.
⟴
Davina’s life was a series of bells. Morning bells. Morning prayer bells. Lunch bells. Afternoon prayer bells. Recreational bells. Evening choir bells. Bells. Bells. Bells. For a group that loves silence they sure do have a thing for bells.
The noise and values of the outside world had no place within these walls. The sisters were constantly striving to make themselves more pleasing to Soldeus and more valuable to others. They withdrew completely from the world with the hopes that their sacrifices and prayers would better reach the world they left behind. Trouble was, Davina would rather help the outside world, well, from the outside. Over the years she wasn’t too sure how much they could truly do from behind closed doors.
The most she had ever seen of Nescio was the view of Port Malden from the front gate, and the Bridlo skyline beyond the animal’s fence.
Bridlo. A civilization just out of reach. The shrine sat on the very edge of the county. No no, the actual edge. The Malden Bay Shrine of New Light overlooked the rocky cliff side of Malden Bay. Someone straying too far from the garden path at night could easily find themselves tumbling down steep jagged rocks leading down to the cold grey water below. The chilly and wet town wasn't much, but to Davina it was everything.
Scattered with the red and tan roofs of various homes, and the white twirling windmills that powered most of Nescio, Davina admired the familiar skyline. Far in the distance amongst splotches of green she spotted the fuzzy regal outline of the Devoe estate. As a child the maneats would sometimes let her take a break from chores and allow her to stare off into the distance. Perhaps they were hoping she was thoughtfully reflecting upon the morning readings but in reality her mind was miles away.
Young Davina often daydreamed about what her life would have been like had she grown up outside the shrine’s walls. It wasn’t that she wished the sisters hadn’t raised her, in fact she was thankful they had chosen to keep her. She’d seen the sisters pray for the children in city clinics. Children who had no parents or family to care for them were taken in by the town and raised in a small brick building crammed with hundreds of other tiny hungry mouths. Though she wasn’t too keen on the silence, the seclusion, or the constant work to better themselves, she had never experienced hunger, nor was there ever a moment when she felt unwanted.
No, her daydreams consisted of imaging the inside of a schoolhouse, or running down stone lined roads with friends her age. Sweet sun, the idea of eating food that wasn’t unseasoned meat, vegetables, or fish made her mouth water. She’d asked both Sister Sage and Sister Zinnia to tell her what their lives had been like before they joined the shrine. They had spent many recreation hours sitting at the sturdy wood table beside the hearth telling the curly-haired girl about who they were before they became sisters.
Quiet Sister Sage was once Leighandra Mc...Something. (Davina had forgotten the complicated last name as soon as it was told to her, but she thought there may have been a Q in it somewhere.). In her youth she was a flour-caked bakery hand who struggled after the loss of her only surviving family. The idea of a community supporting her was what initially drew her in to spread Soldeus’ warmth.
Sister Zinnia’s story felt like something out of a storybook. Her favorite sister had played music inside the Devoe estate back when her name was Anne. Everything she knew of the royal families came from densely written (and smuggled) books, but here was someone who had breathed the same air as one of the Royal Six.
It took everything in Davina to not bombard them with waves of questions when she saw them. It was also quite hard to not call the sisters by their pre-vow names once she knew them. Perhaps that’s why the matrem prohibited them from sharing. The kind sisters couldn’t say no to young Davina’s big round hazel eyes.
Davina could easily picture eating warm flakey pastries with a Leighandra under the grey Bridlo skies, while an Anne played the cello nearby. She could so easily envision a world where she wasn’t Sister Myrtle.
⟴
Davina DeMal stopped existing when she was six. Sister Myrtle was born in her place, named by the Revered Matrem after the tree that symbolizes luck and energy.
“For what else if not life and luck has this child brought into our family?” Davina wasn’t so sure about the luck part. Sure she was full of energy, especially when compared to the slow and quiet lifestyle of the older sisters, but lucky? She had a track record for being the opposite actually. Never had so many vows been broken until she set foot upon shrine property. Davina mayyyy have accidentally started a kitchen fire (or four) due to a naturally wandering mind, and that she found kitchen duties mind numbingly boring. There had been several months where the sisters’ tunics sported burn marks, thinking the nine-year old would be good at ironing. And even a shortage of Soldeus statues across Nescio when the sister’s shipment of maple logs accidentally rolled into the bay when she tripped over them.
So that was one of the reasons why she preferred not to go by Myrtle. The other, being that “Davina” was the only thing she truly could call hers. The pea green blanket she was found in was gone, having long since disintegrated into a pile of string. But the name sewn onto it she could clearly remember. Not that she would have been able to keep it anyway once she completed the ceremony. Maneats did not possess any worldly objects. But back to the point. The blanket was embroidered with white thread and must have taken someone a long time to finish. So why would they leave her if they’d gone to the trouble of seeing her name into clothing.
She’d had plenty of ideas of course, what kid wouldn’t? In her child fantasy brain her parents were spies for the resistance who had given her up in order to protect her, or her mother was the lady-in-waiting to one of the Queens. Only she had fallen in love with Davina’s charming father, gotten married and had the wriggling curly-haired child before acquiring the Queen’s consent, so she gave her up to spare not only her job but her neck from the gallows. As she got older the more realistic scenario of an overworked and tired city clinic employee dropping her off at the shrine’s doorstep crossed her mind. Her favorite however, was that a fisherman and his wife from the nearby port who were struggling with money dropped her off at the shrine with the hopes that she would be taken care of, and as loved by the sisters as they had loved her. The part of her mind that clung to that dream always hoped that the couple kept watch over her as she grew up.
Everytime one of the fishermen came to deliver fresh fish to the sisters, Davina got this intense pinch of curiosity and hoped that maybe, just maybe, that the polite low gravelly voices drifting from the front entryway was that of her father. No one could prove that he wasn’t.
The mornings leading up to Viola and Angelonia’s ceremony were demanding.
Davina whispered to Noel in the early morning hours. Quickly donned the white toque that fit over her head and shoulders, slithered into black stockings, threw the brown tunic over her head, and fit her black veil into place. The final step before running out the door was to smooth out any creases that gave away the fact that Davina did not spend her time in the morning carefully dressing. The garments the sisters wore were to be cherished, for they represented the choice to live in poverty and remain faithful to Soldeus. Yeah, Davina was a terrible sister.
Vows were broken left and right, she had no regard for her sacred garments, and she wasn’t too fond of the sisters' choice to remain barefoot (even when the already cold weather of Bridlo reached freezing). But she did love Soldeus. She didn’t love the savior out of a deep spiritual devotion, but she loved him because he made the sisters happy. Anything that made the women who helped raise her happy, made Davina happy. Which was why during the preparation week of the ceremony, Davina was as un-Davina as she could be.
She continued her normal rule breaking in the privacy of her unit during the mornings and evenings, but she was Sister Myrtle once she stepped outside. For the first time in her twenty years of life, chores were done meticulously, she offered to help in the kitchen, helped serve the children snacks during their lessons, finished her embroidering work during the recreational hour, and even sang at a resealable volume during choir. After five days of mentally being Sister Myrtle, Davina was ready to snap.
What helped her push through the exhausting façade of “perfect Sister Myrtle” were the secrets. The more she impressed and assisted the sisters with various tasks, the more they relaxed around her. Normally during preparations for Soldeus feast days, or arranging events with the nearby community, Davina and the other tempuses were kept out of the loop. Now however, the maneats seemed too quietly stressed about something to worry about younger eyes seeing their plans.
Twice she had seen the sisters gesture the world guests in the sacred language but it was quickly discarded as a mistranslation. It wasn’t until a very tired Sister Yarrow slipped up and mentioned “...preparing the spare rooms” over kitchen cleanup, that Davina believed her eyes.
We’re going to have visitors!
⟴
The night before the ceremony Davina couldn’t sleep.
The soft snores of little Sister Scaevola coming from the bed under hers were the only sounds in the small unit. It wasn’t uncommon for her to switch rooms after a bad dream, she’s only eight afterall. She didn’t mind the child’s snoring, it was rather soothing after a few minutes, but Davina also had a soft spot for the girl.
After the apparent success of raising young Davina, the Matrem decided to open the doors to their community and allow girls as young as eight to join their ranks. Now there were seven fresh faces donning brown tunics and singing during choir. Most of their time was spent on the second floor of Big House, where the maneats would rotate teaching. Molding their young minds and warning them of the dangers the outside world carried was no easy task, many of the maneats looked dead on their feet by the time evening prayer came around.
Though her body was exhausted from a day of moving tables, chairs, and lifting heavy objects that the sisters couldn’t, her mind raced. She was both thrilled and terrified of the visitors.
Some of the outside world was coming within the walls of their shrine. No visitors had truly stayed there since her beloved tutor. The villagers from the nearby homes were only allowed inside for daily worship, and even then there was a large wooden partition separating them from the sea of veils. Davina had never actually seen her possible neighbors. She knew them only by their song.
What if these visitors don’t like me? She immediately thought her question stupid. For there were more important things to ask like: how long would they stay for, or where were they from? But at the thought of having one of her deepest wishes granted, the too fast beating of her own heart took away any notion of bravery.
As a final act of misdeed, and perhaps as a way to sooth her nerves, Davina hummed the foreign ceremonial song until she fell into a thankfully deep sleep.
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