(Continued from here with @scxrytxles )
scxrytxles:
Alice listens. And she watches. And she tries, again, to imagine what the many lives the child has lived might have looked like. How they might have tasted to pucker his mouth and curdle his soft, sweet little face. Her expression mirrors his, only a bit and only for a moment before her cheer returns. A viciously bright sort of optimism that swings like a heavy pendulum. “That’s perfect!” She points at him, so hard and fierce and quick that the penz flies from her fingers and whizzes past his head. Whoops! She can’t stop, now, though, this is important. Alice springs to her feet, notebook loosely clutched between her fingers as she trots across the floor. Her shadow creeps across Diamond’s little form as she peers over him, searching for the purple sheen of her pen. Ooh, there it is. She drops to her knees, reaches past him and pats the ground until her fingers close around the cool metal and she brings it back to herself. Alice glances over her shoulder, considers going back to her place, but decides No. She’d rather sit here. Alice plops onto the floor, scoots close so that she can feel the warmth of a Person beside her, and Diamond can see her paper. Well. Almost. Her hair is… it’s kind of in the way. Alice quickly brushes it to the side, fingers raking through it to force it to stop, sit, STAY- “I, Alice Riddle-Tongue,” She begins, curled and looping letters blooming from the nib in a smooth line of glittery ink. It takes a moment for her letters to catch up with her mouth, of course, because it is important that it be legible. The recipe won’t do Diamond much good if he can’t read it, hm? “Daughter Life who was born of Mother Death, Sister to the Cicadas and Keeper of Creations great and small charge Diamond thus-” A pause. She gathers her words like river stones, looking for the smoothest and shiniest and prettiest - “Every seven days, he will follow his mother and father to my temple with an offering, be it drawn or written or cooked in the hearth, and he will leave it-” She pauses, flow interrupted. A soft, conspiratorial whisper. “Diamond? Can you describe the temple for me?”
Diamond hesitates as Alice settles beside him. She’s a god. But he’s tired, and she picked him up earlier with none of the wariness his parents fail to hide from him, and…
His fragile will cracks when Alice brushes her hair out of the way, and he cautiously leans against her side, head resting on her upper arm. Her skin is cool. It soothes the edges of the headache that’s been starting to build as he tries to answer her questions.
He stays there, if Alice lets him; watches her write, skilled dark hands crafting glittering lines, and listens to the smooth, poetic rhythm of her voice.
A rhythm that falters, coaxing out a fond smile and a silent breath of a laugh. Alice’s whisper has the air of a hushed conversation in a theater—a furtive attempt to avoid interrupting her own performance. It feels almost like an invitation behind the curtain, intentional or not.
“Sure. Ah…” Diamond straightens, fluffy brows furrowing with soft concentration as he calls the layout to mind.
“The temple looks like a cottage, with a garden in front. Inside, the middle part is this big room for, ah… groups. Meetings. Mostly the chairs are set up in lines, but sometimes there are tables or pillows. People hang things on the walls — quilts, and art, and news, and feathers and things they’ve found. It changes. There are some shelves where kids can put things they find or make, too.”
He lifts his hands to frame the air, describing a central building with two offshoots. “The chapel’s its own… wing? On one side. It has a — hm.” Atrium. He knows this, but only as a ghost-word; the wrong language. Diamond grimaces and flaps that hand. “An open part, in the roof, and a pool below.” Diamond’s expression softens as he looks around Alice’s room. “Kind of like here… less stuff, but with a fountain, and altar, and plants. It’s peaceful.”
He points to the other imaginary wing on the opposite side of the temple. “The other part is the ob—ob-serv-atory, and greenhouse. I haven’t been in it, but I’ve seen bugs in the greenhouse through the glass. And then… behind the temple, between the wings, there’s another garden. It has—”
Diamond blinks as he realizes he’s droning on, and rubs at his forehead with a small sound of discomfort. He’d… been thinking about the memories of making journals, and from there the rhythm of how he would record the temple’s layout and function had taken over. He looks sheepishly up at Alice. “Mm. Sorry… is any of that what you need?”