“I know the Stratons prohibited anyone from speaking our name, effectively forcing us to be forgotten.”
He recognized shades of a memory and could see the blurry faces of young children playing with a youthful woman wearing a crown on her head. It was the Elder’s face, younger and fresher but still filled with beauty. He did recognize her. Time had eroded her physical identity some but the more he looked, the more she seemed familiar to him.
“You were the Queen the Stratons killed,” he whispered as the memory came to light.
“The Queen they thought they killed,” she corrected. “And then they went after the rest of my family.”
“Thea,” he whispered. It was becoming clearer to him now, why he had recognized it when he first heard it. He saw her younger self again, and the man who was her husband, the King. He saw his own parents with them, laughing and talking with glee only a short time before their demise.
He opened the thick cover of the book and scanned the pages, searching for a clue to prove she was telling the truth. He stopped on a page that contained a hierarchical graph and a list of names categorized by generation.
His heart stopped on the title. ‘Historical Records and Lineage of the Original Families of Terra: Thanatos, Nero, and Straton.’
Chapter 12: A Revelation
“Miss Thanatos?”
A man in a collared work shirt and slacks stood a few feet away with a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, both of which were moving towards her.
“Your signature please?” he asked.
Oh, right. Her thoughts had wandered off again and she was left standing with a far off look on her face. She glanced around the man’s work and nodded appreciatively. The spare bedroom was transformed into an office, complete with new furniture and littered with several shopping bags filled with all manner of accessory. The man had assembled the furniture and set it into place while she was off in the land of mental distraction. On another such trip, she’d nearly hammered her fingers into a wall.
She signed and tipped generously before showing him to the front door and wishing him a good day. Any and all conceivable projects she thought to take on, she did. The hardwood floors were refinished, walls painted, crown molding installed, the kitchen cabinets were outfitted with new hardware, and light switch faceplates replaced in every room along with each light fixture and ceiling fan. When one project finished she started another, every day for three days straight. Before she knew it was Saturday.
The morning after Evadine and Evan left, Zoe found herself in an unfamiliar mental space. For the entire morning and part of the afternoon she kept expecting Evan to show up at any moment. After all, he had been with her nearly nonstop since they met. Their shared experiences felt like a relationship that was longer than just two days, and his absence had a more profound effect on her than she would have liked.
The strangest part was knowing she had no way to contact him, that she couldn’t just pick up a phone or drive to his hotel, and the more she thought about it the more dissonant she felt. He was nowhere to be found in the world, which was the thought that perplexed her the most. Without his presence to serve as proof of the existence of another world, her belief began to wane. The idea of Terra made sense when she could see evidence of it in him, but without him there to ground her newfound reality, it became nothing more than a supernatural memory.
To occupy her mind she planted the flowers and shrubs she bought the previous day, and then set to work on the rest of the house, moving room to room until she had enough projects to last a lifetime. Her mind wandered off for stretches of time, but less and less she thought of Evan, and of Terra.
By Friday afternoon as she painted her living room lily pad green, she decided that the best thing to do was to not expect Evan at all. It was impossible to know if he would ever return and she felt that waiting for him would just be pathetic. She had a life before he ever entered into it and it would continue on after he left.
Zoe returned to the office and set to work on the shopping bags, placing the new items throughout the room until it no longer looked empty. Among the new purchases was a framed print of a Parisian cityscape, the lights reflected on the wet pavement as patrons moved along with umbrellas covering their heads. It was a clichéd piece of commercial art but she loved it, and wanted a reminder of the most beautiful city she had ever visited.
With a wall selected to hang the piece on, she picked up a nail and hammer and swung. The hammer penetrated and created a softball-sized hole in the wall. Fantastic. She yanked the hammer from the wall and stared resentfully at the tool and the damaged drywall. She considered her choices, wondering if she could patch the drywall herself with some help off the Internet, or if it would be easier just to hire someone.