Zetallia stands at the railing of the ship, splitting her gaze between the horizon out ahead of her and the thin gold-and-ruby hairpin in her hands. Every time she blinks, she can’t help but see the gleaming white shores and perfect light of her visions. Love, the angel had said. The love that lights all souls and all of Theus’s creation. The feeling of it burns deep under her skin, more real than anything.
When she opens her eyes again, the realities of the sea and salt and shadows encroach on it. The warm inner light is still there, hotter than the few rays of sun that reach through cloudy skies. She’s learning how to not let it get lost in the mundane details of the world. Holding on to it is the most important thing now. How did she do any real good, before, without this feeling?
Maybe the feeling had been part of every good thing in her past, she just hadn’t seen it. Could she look back and find it, if she tried? A brief smile graces her lips as she remembers peaches and cream on the verandah, all the instruments her mother could play and how diligently she tried to teach her daughter. The endless games and laughter with cousins, the soft glimmering of stars through her father’s telescope… and yes, some feeling of that infinite love lighting up all her memories of Castille. Of home.
Then her face falls into solemnity again. Lit up by love or not, the memories seem so thin. The years between then and now had collected so much struggle– the Inquisition stripping away all the Greco legacy in the name of power, her family torn from home, long dark and hungry nights trekking through Eisen, her mother’s worried whispers.
“I love Careleon–” she sighs. Her father’s tired face looks up toward her from where he’s hunched at the railing. “I love the Avalonian isles and all their freedoms– and we’ve made a home there.” She smiles at her father. “But Castille was home first. All the fire and color of Castille is part of me and always will be.” She leans down onto her elbows next to him, fiddling with the hairpin as she gazes past it into the grey waters of the Widow’s sea. “What if…
“I know I’ve only been dreaming about Rioja as it was. Eight and nine and ten years ago. So many lifetimes ago, it seems. Going back there won’t bring my old dreams to life– and none of it will be the same at all, will it?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “But I just don’t know how else to imagine the city. The villa. I know it will surely be different, and I’m afraid to feel…however I’ll feel when I realize just how different.”
With fatherly reassurance, Don Tomas straightens and reaches an arm around her, echoing back her own words. “You’ve said yourself– Castille will always be a part of you. Rioja is in your veins as it is in mine, and no number of years will change that.”
“Still… I feel like I’ll risk losing what it was to me all those years ago– the sunny picture of home and peace– it feels so fragile, father.”
“Many good things in the world are,” he agrees, head bowed. “It was more fragile than we knew.”
The wind teases at their sleeves and collars and hair, whistling indolently. Zeta closes her fingers over the hairpin and tugs at a lock of her hair with her other hand.
“I don’t like to remember our flight from Rioja,” Zeta murmurs, teeth slightly tense as she faces this fact. “But I do,” she continues. “–the meager belongings we had, smuggling ourselves across miles and miles into Eisen and trying to sooth mother’s fears all along the way.” Zetalia straightens again and turns slightly, leaning against Don Tomas and wrapping her arm through his, tightly. “It could have been worse for us– I know that now. We were so lucky– weren’t we? Are.”
Her father straightens. He pats her hand and sighs softly in agreement. There’s a heaviness to him, she thinks. As if he is waning somehow.
“Luck is for the Inish,” her father chants, the usual mirth of the aphorism gone pale in the shadows of their shared memories.
She presses her lips together, thinking of Clover, then the selkies, and all the crisp green of those northern seas and coasts. “Not lucky then,” she concedes, “not exactly. Protected by Theus. Blessed.”
“Theus,” her father replies thoughtfully, glancing upward with a puzzled shake of his head. “If Theus is with us…”
Zeta unlinks her arm from his and reaches over to clasp both of his shoulders. “Not if, father. I know Theus is with us. With me.” It feels strange to speak so directly, so authoritatively, to him. But she meets his gaze, no wavering, no daughterly submission in her eyes.
A sudden pang of longing for her mother strikes through her heart. Mother had always been the more openly faithful, the more deeply versed in prayer and divine connection. She wishes she had found a moment to share more of this with her.
Her father doesn’t reply, but he smiles in appreciation of her confidence. Zeta draws her arms around him and buries herself into a brief embrace. For a few heartbeats she imagines they are both wishing Lady Lucia could be with them, holding this mix of fear and faith and regret and love and gratitude with them as they held each other.
She stands back again, finally tucking her hairpin into the breast pocket of her tunic. Her eyes close for a moment, and Zeta whispers, “I am chosen for a greater purpose. Greater than…” She trails off, feeling the magnitude of her calling but not quite knowing how it really measures up against the precious, joyful memory of those peaches and cream, her mother’s music lessons, playing at the beach with her cousins...
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