Mar 24, 2019 5:53 pm
Ten steps from the gate, Verrian is bathed in the psychic presence of the kinship. The unjoined seem to believe the Naucan sharing to be an overwhelming tangle of individual minds and thoughts, a cacophony that would drive one mad without years of discipline.
That’s not what it’s like at all. Verrian usually tells her unjoined friends that the sharing feels more like an ever shifting symphony, that the individual threads blend together into a kind of psychic tapestry. It’s not really accurate – it’s too hard to describe in mere language – but it seems to bring unjoined slightly closer to understanding.
As she opens the gate, she is about to share her arrival – something that other Naucans would experience as an image of her walking onto the grounds or through the gate, accompanied by a sense of how doing so feels to her emotionally. It is more or less the equivalent of announcing "I’m home" when walking through the door. But before her sharing has quite begun, she feels others already sharing the news of her return – the equivalent of numerous people announcing, She’s here!
The front door of the large common house bursts open and a dark-skinned girl of thirteen bounds down the steps. In her excitement, Neery of Yael shares like a younger child, all disjointed and half-finished and invigorating, images of idealized adventure mixed with questions great and detailed mixed with worry and fear and pride. The closest, meager translation into spoken language might be, It’s true, isn’t it? Everyone is sharing it. You’re going away? Outside the wards?
Neery throws her arms around Verrian, smiling up at her (though not too far; she’s getting tall) as Verrian shares her confirmation that yes, she’s going outside the walls. Arms entwined around each other, they walk into the common house beaming and laughing and sharing.
Inside, the mood is somehow both solemn and exuberant, and Verrian becomes aware that a formal bonding ceremony is in the works. She isn’t surprised; she’s about to leave the comfort of Naucan fellowship, possibly forever. The bonding is an intense, purposeful, and potent session of sharing designed to saturate her mind and soul with the kinship, to give her a well of remembered sharing from which to draw strength, advice, and especially comfort as she moves into a life of unconnectedness.
She extricates herself from Neery with a kiss to the top of her head and excuses herself to prepare for the ceremony. Halfway up, an overwhelming thread of anger, betrayal, and grief stabs into her mind. The kinship isn’t a utopia, and Verrian is well aware that not quite everyone in it is happy for her opportunity (or sad to see her go), but this sharing is different.
Looking up, she sees Gamnel of Yael, Neery’s fourteen-year-old brother, bottomless black eyes staring down at her with the kind of focused condemnation that only teenagers have the purity to perform. In the three years since the wards had inadvertently created the Meriava kinship, Verrian had become as close to these two young people as she’d been with her own family in Nauca. But where both children were passionate, Gamnel had the greater tendency to angst and temper. Still, she’s surprised at how angry he seems to be.
Climbing the remaining stairs to the second floor, Verrian reaches out to him, enveloping him in her love, hope, sorrow, regret. It’s her way of saying, I’m sorry to be leaving you, I know this feels like abandonment, I’m doing it for all of us, even you, even though it hurts.
That’s not what it’s like at all. Verrian usually tells her unjoined friends that the sharing feels more like an ever shifting symphony, that the individual threads blend together into a kind of psychic tapestry. It’s not really accurate – it’s too hard to describe in mere language – but it seems to bring unjoined slightly closer to understanding.
As she opens the gate, she is about to share her arrival – something that other Naucans would experience as an image of her walking onto the grounds or through the gate, accompanied by a sense of how doing so feels to her emotionally. It is more or less the equivalent of announcing "I’m home" when walking through the door. But before her sharing has quite begun, she feels others already sharing the news of her return – the equivalent of numerous people announcing, She’s here!
The front door of the large common house bursts open and a dark-skinned girl of thirteen bounds down the steps. In her excitement, Neery of Yael shares like a younger child, all disjointed and half-finished and invigorating, images of idealized adventure mixed with questions great and detailed mixed with worry and fear and pride. The closest, meager translation into spoken language might be, It’s true, isn’t it? Everyone is sharing it. You’re going away? Outside the wards?
Neery throws her arms around Verrian, smiling up at her (though not too far; she’s getting tall) as Verrian shares her confirmation that yes, she’s going outside the walls. Arms entwined around each other, they walk into the common house beaming and laughing and sharing.
Inside, the mood is somehow both solemn and exuberant, and Verrian becomes aware that a formal bonding ceremony is in the works. She isn’t surprised; she’s about to leave the comfort of Naucan fellowship, possibly forever. The bonding is an intense, purposeful, and potent session of sharing designed to saturate her mind and soul with the kinship, to give her a well of remembered sharing from which to draw strength, advice, and especially comfort as she moves into a life of unconnectedness.
She extricates herself from Neery with a kiss to the top of her head and excuses herself to prepare for the ceremony. Halfway up, an overwhelming thread of anger, betrayal, and grief stabs into her mind. The kinship isn’t a utopia, and Verrian is well aware that not quite everyone in it is happy for her opportunity (or sad to see her go), but this sharing is different.
Looking up, she sees Gamnel of Yael, Neery’s fourteen-year-old brother, bottomless black eyes staring down at her with the kind of focused condemnation that only teenagers have the purity to perform. In the three years since the wards had inadvertently created the Meriava kinship, Verrian had become as close to these two young people as she’d been with her own family in Nauca. But where both children were passionate, Gamnel had the greater tendency to angst and temper. Still, she’s surprised at how angry he seems to be.
Climbing the remaining stairs to the second floor, Verrian reaches out to him, enveloping him in her love, hope, sorrow, regret. It’s her way of saying, I’m sorry to be leaving you, I know this feels like abandonment, I’m doing it for all of us, even you, even though it hurts.
Last edited March 25, 2019 3:26 am