AMALIA
She wants the silence but fears the solitude
She wants to be alone and together with you
Born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow"Why would they refuse?" Amalia asks, turning back from her grandmother's lantern to stare at the child in the porcelain mask. As much as her heart aches for herself, the pain she feels for those lost souls is worse. So many familiar faces had walked beside them in the night - the Palmers, the Valairs, figures from her childhood - and yet for more to be lost, for those unguided to be lost, disfigured, contorted, destroyed...
With a shiver, she wonders if her grandmother is in their midst.
The cat which kept her company at last breaks away, stopping for scratches from the rag-adorned boy before proceeding to the painted light. Amalia's eyes follow it, suddenly lonely without her companion, a bittersweet warmth stirring in her breast. It is enough to chase out some of the shadows, to clear her worried brow, and as Ludo speaks the girl's heart fills and expands with something half-hopeful, half afraid.
"She's with you?" A half-step toward the god, as though her grandmother might appear, as though Ludo's figure might shift and morph into the kindly, older woman. "She's safe? Will you tell her I miss her, I miss her every day, and I'm trying to be the person she wanted but it's so hard and I don't know how..." Like a wave, emotion rushes over her, the words coming fast, so many things she has ached so long to say. Amalia's face is a picture of pain, each line marked by her loneliness, her striving heart, the way she aches for adequacy.
Drawing silent at last the girl inhales a shuddering breath beneath her tears. A question... And though there are a million she would ask, a starlit sky full of thoughts and ideas she would like to pluck from her grandmother's mind, there is only one thing which the girl needs to know, one question she has voiced to the ceiling in the nights when she can't sleep, prayed to the rafters and sewn into every action of her short, brittle life.
"Is... is she proud of me?"
With a shiver, she wonders if her grandmother is in their midst.
The cat which kept her company at last breaks away, stopping for scratches from the rag-adorned boy before proceeding to the painted light. Amalia's eyes follow it, suddenly lonely without her companion, a bittersweet warmth stirring in her breast. It is enough to chase out some of the shadows, to clear her worried brow, and as Ludo speaks the girl's heart fills and expands with something half-hopeful, half afraid.
"She's with you?" A half-step toward the god, as though her grandmother might appear, as though Ludo's figure might shift and morph into the kindly, older woman. "She's safe? Will you tell her I miss her, I miss her every day, and I'm trying to be the person she wanted but it's so hard and I don't know how..." Like a wave, emotion rushes over her, the words coming fast, so many things she has ached so long to say. Amalia's face is a picture of pain, each line marked by her loneliness, her striving heart, the way she aches for adequacy.
Drawing silent at last the girl inhales a shuddering breath beneath her tears. A question... And though there are a million she would ask, a starlit sky full of thoughts and ideas she would like to pluck from her grandmother's mind, there is only one thing which the girl needs to know, one question she has voiced to the ceiling in the nights when she can't sleep, prayed to the rafters and sewn into every action of her short, brittle life.
"Is... is she proud of me?"
