ANDROMEDA DEMIR
THULE MANOR
DRUCKENWELL
CLIFF PATH
EARLY MORNING
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The thing about Irvulix was that you never left it, not really. Some part of it was always with you, waiting for just the moment to present itself. Andromeda Demir supposed that that was true of other homes too. She wondered as she walked the cliff path, within sight of Thule Manor but quite out of the way of visitors or staff or the Baron himself, how home manifested itself to other people. For her, Irvulix was a many-faceted stone, something precious and terrible someone had bled to pry out an unforgiving seam. A different appearance in every light, from every angle.
Sometimes it was a sharp rebuke, a reminder that while she slept in four-poster beds and clean linens and never worried for a moment whether the water that came out of the tap was safe, those she had left behind broke their bodies in mines and poisoned themselves because it was either that or die of thirst.
Other times it was a memory of light, of miraculous shafts of sun when it broke through the clouds to grace the gardens here in much the same way Irvulix's sunlight had occasionally managed to battle through the thick cloud cover that often blanketed Far Ridge.
There were moments when it was a smell, a particular, not-unpleasant smell of blighted soil, that had no business sweeping across the cliffs at Thule Manor and that no one else -- no gardener or tradesman or lover -- ever noticed, even standing right beside her.
But Irvulix came kindly, too. The floors at Thule Manor were old enough to complain beneath a careless foot and sometimes, when the house was busy and the creak of floorboards carried strangely through the walls, Andromeda was in the village hall again, boards creaking under too many boots. Sometimes she lingered near the kitchens just to hear the sounds of preparation and chatter and laughter through the wall, and remember those feast days when all of Far Ridge came together to share what little they could coax from the soil.
Everyone knew everyone in Far Ridge, which had not always been a blessing. There were days Andromeda would have given much to cross the village without somebody stopping her to ask after Antares or relay an instruction from her mother or wonder where she was going and would she bring back this tool or that cloth on her way back. Andromeda had not understood then what it meant to live somewhere where nobody did.
Most often it was a dream.
A drizzly landing pad, far from home. A dark presence. A boy who loved her. Then light and heat and pain and Andromeda sat bolt upright, the sheet falling from her heaving shoulders. She had learned to gasp and weep silently, after too many months sharing close quarters with Service Corps personnel whose sleep she had disturbed with her night terrors, and still more with someone she respected too much to be careless about his rest. Much carry, much care. She had risen from the bed, smoothing the sheet where she had rumpled it, and returned to the room where she kept her things to dress.
There was never a return to sleep. A walk sometimes helped to settle her, so Andromeda let herself out the library doors and crossed the gardens, slipped out a gate, and set her feet to the cliffside paths.
No, Irvulix never really left you. Andromeda was glad, in a way, even though the dreams were awful. She had escaped and now lived a reasonably comfortable existence. It wasn't without its dangers, or its responsibilities, but it was not the hardscrabble life she had once known. And she had found friends, mentors. A man she cared for with an intensity that still frightened her a little. But the reminders of Irvulix were good, she thought. So she wouldn't forget that she owed something to her people. Just what that was, she hoped one day to learn. Andromeda stopped at a low wall and moved to sit atop it, cross-legged. It was peaceful here, the sound of the surf and the night insects chirping reminding her that the Force was all around her. She submerged herself into it, let it flow through and around her.
Andromeda smelled blight, and tried not to think of Antares.
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