The sky was gray when they left the restaurant, food neatly packed in plastic containers. No drinks this time for him despite the oppressive heat of summer becoming stronger with each passing day. Tomás knew exactly how much money he had in his checking account and he couldn’t afford another extraneous purchase.
And yet, here he was, strolling along University City, arms filled with food bought from one of the many trendy and expensive cafés on campus, his crush laughing besides him.
He used the rising humidity and heat as an excuse for every executive decision made.
“No, Ada, I’m all right. My red cheeks are because of this awful weather. Thank Our Lady for the storm today.”
“Why don’t I take off my windbreaker? It looks tight around my arms? Well, you see, I think whatever scant breeze that decides to grace us feels even better when I wear it. ”
Tomás hoped that he didn’t sound pathetic and that Ada was too enthralled in her interrogation about his future plans to notice. They settled onto a park bench, the spruce tree above them providing ample shade, and indeed, after settling down her questions hardly ceased in their number or speed.
They had each spent the last four years or so honing their skills in their specialized fields within the country’s postal office department. Alucina’s post office was comparably small in relation to their neighbors, Errantia and Liming. Since the island was in the middle of the two powerhouses, right between the Raison and Vang rivers, its post office specialized not in dispatching but in package processing, ensuring that the international mail, which was the bulk of their intake, were in compliance with the law and were subject to more rigorous scrutiny than domestic mail.
Of course, you didn’t need to be a post-knight specifically to do that. The postknight division was specifically created for the transport of highly sensitive materials, or the transport of said materials through extraordinary means.
As of right now, they were on the precipice of graduating with a degree in legal studies and for Ada, materials science, but both of them took courses that qualified them to work in a post-related job. Tomás was decidedly less convicted in his degree than Ada was with hers and this had been a topic of hot debate between the two of them for a couple of months now, and she had been earnestly trying to help him find his “true calling.”
“You can become a Postal Inspector. My boss’s brother’s husband works as one,” she said. The overcast dulled her usual bright strawberry-blonde hair into more of a brown, but not her personality.
“...Your what?” he replied incredulously.
“My boss’s brother’s husband,” she repeated, as if that was supposed to clear up anything. She waved her fork, stabbed into half of a pickle, up and down with each word, as he tried to thread her words together. “Remember? We attended their wedding.”
Right. Alucina was such a small island, with a small population to boot. Her boss’s brother was his boss. The Ardelean brothers. Ada had the younger one, Sebastian, a professor of chemistry at the university. Tomás was under the supervision of the older one, Stefan, a head of archiving for the museum.
The lavish wedding had fallen on a brilliantly sunny day and he had failed to bring sunglasses, so his eyes were constantly strained and his ears too, as he was trying to parse out conversation through the string orchestra. At the time he only held the title of archival assistant for a few weeks, so he followed around the only other coworker he knew - Isabella - awkwardly standing by as she made easy conversation with total strangers.
Tomás had spotted Ada in a throng of academics, looking as beautiful as she did when they shared many of the common courses in their first year. He mentioned this to Isabella, who immediately wandered over to that very same group and cheekily slid away, leaving him and Ada alone.
Perhaps he should thank/curse her for reigniting these feelings he had been harboring for Ada, for they had come back with a vengeance.
“I don’t see what this string of relationships has to do with my possible affinity for postal inspection.”
Ada shrugged. “It’s simply an option.”
He slouched down into his seat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I should’ve sucked up to one of my instructors and begged for an internship. Maybe wouldn’t be floundering around as much.”
“Are you implying that I sucked up to Dr. Ardelean?” She stared at him owlishly and he struggled to recant his words, but as soon as she started smirking, he knew that no harm had been done. “Was it because I did better than you in that class?”
“No. No. Of course not,” he laughed, but he still wasn’t able to control the anxiety-induced word vomit that followed. “You’re great, you’re perfect! I’ve already accepted that you reign supreme in...in...”, he trailed off, struggling to remember the course name.
The only reason why he took it was because he wanted to see if he could make it into the sciences. Definitely not to spend more time with Ada. Nope. Definitely not.
That C+ will haunt him until the end of his days.
“Substance compatibility in packaging?” she helpfully supplied. “Really, Tomás, it wasn’t that bad.”
“I’d like to see you ace all my law courses.”
“Reading those dusty things? I rather not.”
She wrinkled her nose; he remembered that she sneezed so much while helping him look for books in the library and how the librarian threatened to kick them both out for disturbing the peace. Her sneezes, he noted, were high-pitched and came in bursts of three. No more, no less.
“Why take a gap year and have no direction when you could just go straight to law school? Why even take a gap year?”
“I think I just need a break. Running on energy drinks and a few hours of sleep wears you down. I’m not planning to be great... just good enough.”
Truth be told, Tomás didn’t have the ambition to be well-known in the public eye, of every sense of public, including the possible niche audience he’d have to serve once he became a full-fledged lawyer. His parents were just happy that he was going to graduate with a shiny degree, the first in his family to do so.
He closed his eyes briefly, inhaling the sea breeze intermingling with Ada’s vanilla-scented perfume. The rolling storm steadily approached them, but it was still a ways off until it would start pouring.
“Oh, please. It’s not like you’re mapping the afterlife, like those poor souls from Errantia are doing soon.” Ada took another bite from her sandwich and the tomato was slipping out from the other side. He wanted to push it back into the bread. “Isn’t it kinda thrilling to make a name for yourself?”
He snorted. “For you. I can see myself being satisfied with defending our country’s post office from lawsuits or enforcing the strict regulations of what comes in and out. It’s not as high stakes as your future career is, but I think it’s a noble enough cause.”
“If you’re going for nobility, then you can always work as a regular postknight and start with domestic deliveries. You took all the required courses to be qualified as one. If you stick with domestic, you don’t have to worry about all the complications that comes with international.” She scrunched her eyebrows in disgust, no doubt remembering the required introductory combat training course that every person enrolling in postal work had to take. Her recollections were so steeped in vehemence, anyone unfamiliar would’ve thought it was actual torture. “You cannot pay me enough money to rough it out in the wild.”
“Is following established paths really ‘the wild’ though?” He took a bite of his food, wiping the crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve. “It’s not like our postal office has an exploratory division. Out of every occidental country, we probably have the safest domestic mail delivery routes. If you’re that afraid, you can hire a knight to accompany you.”
Of course, this was all a hypothetical situation. Ada wouldn’t be caught dead doing hard, physical labor, or at least, labor she couldn’t romanticize.
“Gross. Like I would be willingly protected by those pompous Errantians. If I had to choose a knight, I would choose you.”
Tomás turned red and swiveled his head away from her teasing expression; it were times like these where he wasn’t sure whether Ada was flirting with him or not and even if she was, he would have no idea how to express the enormity of his desire for her. They’ve been friends for what felt like years now, thought it had only been three. However, she had a very extroverted personality and a fair share of admirers. Whether she was merely being friendly or consciously flirtatious was a topic he was afraid to broach, so he chose to approach every action with platonic friendliness.
Risking a good relationship, whether romantic or platonic, for a possibility, would be foolish.
“You’re so annoying,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Besides, how am I going to protect you when you’re tucked away in a building?”
“There’s danger around every corner!”
“That’s what the security guards are for. Knights consider themselves too good to enter a civilian building, and postknights are exclusively for inconvenient deliveries, and a university hardly qualifies as inconvenient. If there truly is danger around every corner, then maybe the Science and Technology Building needs an audit.”
“I’ll have you know that we passed with flying colors on the last one. You won’t find criminals where there are scholars.”
“Wasn’t Dr. Ardelean arrested for murdering somebody?” Tomás questioned with an arched brow
Ada put her fist to her palm, almost knocking over the cup of iced tea balanced precariously on the table’s edge. “Allegedly. Allegedly murdered somebody. They never found actual evidence and even if there was evidence... well... he didn’t do it.” She paused thoughtfully. “Did they ever find the true killer? Oh well, it’s not my problem anyways. I’m just a research assistant... but by Our Lady, the gossip was so good. Meitner was fuming when she found out that Ardelean wasn’t convicted.”
Tomás was vaguely aware of all the things happening between the labs at Ada’s building and he was hyper aware that she wasn’t supposed to be saying the gossip so casually to him; Anyone could be listening in, but a small part of him didn’t care. Alucina was so small and there weren’t a lot of people living on this idyllic island. He loved it when Ada went on a tirade. Her hazel eyes would light up in a specific way, as if there lived a lightbulb right behind them and its incandescence leaked into her irises.
What he knew about Ada's workplace drama was this: Meitner was an apparent academic rival of Ada’s boss, and she and Dr. Ardelean were vying for a tenured professorship. The doctor and his older brother came to Alucina after being exiled from their own country, but for what, neither Tomás nor Isabella had any idea - with what scant conversation they shared with Mr. Ardelean. He recalled vaguely that Meitner was originally from Errantia, but that wasn't incredibly surprising. Those who were originally from the sister country left because their ideals didn't match Errantia’s unyielding logic. In fact, there was no original "Alucinian people"; everyone else came here because there was no where else for them to go.
Which was fine! He rather just be a face in the crowd. With any luck from Our Lady, he would be able to move into a bigger town and start anew. Ada too, had expressed her interest in moving but for the exact opposite reason.
In any case, as long as everything remained the same between the two of them, then it should be fine, right?
“Are you sure you aren’t recounting the events of a soap opera and not your workplace?” he said.
“Oh, absolutely. You have no idea what kind of schemes are brewing over there. Even I don’t either. There’s only so much eavesdropping I can do.” She shook her head. "I will say, the tension between Meitner and Ardelean has been getting... intense. We haven't had anything explode - unplanned, that is - in years. If anything is going to blow up, its going to be those two."
“For your sake, I hope that doesn’t happen.”
He took a sip from his water bottle, suppressing the grimace that immediately followed if something were to happen to Ada. He really wouldn’t know what to do with himself if she wasn’t in his life anymore. He was convinced he was in love with her; whether she felt the same way about him was yet to be seen, but they have all the time in the world, until Ada decided to change course for the stars that is. That was inevitable. Right now, they were eating lunch and that was he had to worry about. The future will have to wait until they were done.
They continued eating, chatting about whatever possessed their minds, and were only interrupted with the rumbling of thunder. The dark gray clouds rolled over them, yet the sun still shone its golden hue onto the ground a distance away; the surrounding area created a valley of shadow cradling the sunlit field. If he squinted, he could see the tallest spire of the Stella Maris Cathedral peaking past the cloudscape - one of the few attractions here.
The story went that Our Lady Stella Maris had conflict with her sister, Errantia’s Lady of Reason. Stella Maris fell in love with a mortal man and had a son, but the son was stillborn. The Lady of Reason, angry with her sister that she made such a foolish decision, admonished Stella Maris, forcing the goddess to flee her homeland. Stella Maris marooned herself in the rivers between two countries, and the tears she shed for her dead child crystallized into the island of Alucina.
To Tomás, it was just a story, told in stained glass when his parents used to force him to attend worship services. He knew that in other countries, their gods played a more active role in their people’s lives, but not for Alucina and Errantia. The sister patron goddesses haven’t made their presence known for a long time.
It took a while before the storm clouds made their way to the town. By then, they had moved on to discussing current events. Alucina was too small to send a few of their populace down to the Afterlife. Besides, with theirs and Errantia’s stories being closely intertwined, there was no reason to have a whole separate group.
“You know my friend Kurt, right?” Ada said. “Meitner’s research assistant?”
He had no idea who Kurt was. She had a habit of introducing people that he hadn’t met yet, but it was partially his fault too. If he didn’t see said person every day for two weeks straight, then he would have no idea who they were. For the sake of conversation, however, he replied: “Yes. What about him?”
Her eyes widened. “Well, he told me that Meitner has been acting antsy all week. She's been giving him so many random projects that have to be completed ASAP and making him run errands. He thinks it’s because of the expeditions, but he’s pretty sure that she doesn’t know the people who are representing Errantia.”
“Well, what’s wrong with her then?”
“I don’t know! Ardelean has taken noticed of this behavior too and counts it as a win in his eyes.”
“Ada,” Tomás said firmly, “why do all the people you work with sound insane?”
“I mean, if you stick a bunch of weird shut-ins, each passionate about a different specific topic, in a poorly funded institution...”
“I know what you mean.”
Her description reminded him of his own department of legal studies. The number of times he was locked in a library study room with his classmates, each and every one of them studying a different branch of law, and heard insane opinions about the most mundane topics ever committed to ear. Example: someone, in a bout of sleep-deprived induced insanity, suggested that Alucina should bring back the death penalty.
He didn’t think lesser of them. In fact, he had said some weird stuff too. Well, mostly to Ada but she didn’t seem to mind.
“I’m glad!” she beamed. “I feel bad for Meitner honestly... but I think this just means that I can probably get a slight pay raise with tenure coming up!”
He opened his mouth to respond but felt something wet on his nose. Instinctively, he looked up into the sky and stared owlishly at it. Ada did the same, swiping several droplets from her cheek in one go.
Neither of them moved from the bench as the first few droplets fell, until it started pouring - then the sprint was on. They haphazardly closed their food containers and threw their belongings together in their bags.
Tomás threw his coat over the both of them, but the coat wasn’t enough; the rain still seeped through. They were drenched within seconds. If it wasn’t for Ada’s pealing laughter, he would’ve felt bad for the food they wasted. He could feel his socks wicking up the water, and hearing the maniacal screaming from other people who also got caught in the rain.
They finally found shelter in yet another café located in a square mere minutes away from the park. In the center of the cobblestoned sequester was a fountain, water pouring from the sleeves of Our Lady and into the basin below. Like all statues of her, her face was twisted in perpetual sorrow: blue eyes rimmed with red, either turned towards the Heavens to plead with her sister about her tragedy or downturned to the closed-eyed face of her dead son, cradled in her hands; this particular statue had the latter. Behind her head was a halo of stars etched onto a dark-blue disk, a gift from the goddess so anyone from the island can find their way home again.
He can’t recall ever seeing her depicted with happiness. Whatever joy that she had left with her son, if he had to guess. Lady Reason of Errantia, at least, had an enigmatic smile - inspiring her people to pursue the unknowable. Ironically, it was unlikely that her people will know why they have not seen her in centuries.
Tomás dabbed his eyes with the dry interior of his windbreaker, its smooth fabric doing little to absorb anything. He opted instead to gently shake the water over the welcome mat of the café, twisting and squeezing the fabric. When he turned back, Ada was holding a wad of paper towels. Droplets fell from her eyelashes and onto her rosy cheeks as she dried her forearms.
“When do you think the rain will stop?” She plastered her wet bangs back up and onto her scalp. She stared through the fogging window, watching the town’s street life dwindle as everyone sought shelter.
He opened the weather app on his phone, while also taking a paper towel from Ada’s stash to wipe the droplets from his eyelashes. “Says here it’s going to stop soon. It’s a passing storm.”
“Shame it couldn’t last longer. We haven’t had a good summer storm in so long.” She stretched an elastic band around her fingers. With deft movements, she put her hair up with a few turns of her wrist. “I can never get bored of the sight.”
Tomás gazed at her while she stared outside. “Neither will I.”
He put his hand onto the cold glass, about to idly trace their initials onto the surface - AF and TF - when he noticed that there was a slight sloping to the surface, as if worn. It was directly beneath the pad of his finger. He initially attributed the anomaly to a simple imperfection in the glass, but as he continued tracing, he found that the intentions continued down _exactly_ the path he intended. Once finished, he delicately trailed his fingers along the edge of his markings; the glass was perfectly smooth everywhere else.
Huh. That’s weird.
He brought his face closer to the window, squinted, and turned on the flashlight on his phone. Whatever whimsy from before slowly dissipated like their initials as his mind firmly set down his heart back into his chest. Imperfections like this happen all the time, he thought to himself. But it spoke to him. Call it an aspiring lawyer’s intuition, to let no stone go unturned lest you miss something.
He bent his knees to see the rest of the imprint.
Ada peered quizzically at him above. He felt the curious gazes of the café customers also bore into him. “What are you doing?”
“I felt something on the glass.” He grimaced as he tilted his head and the light to try and get a better angle.
She squatted down with him, resting her chin on a closed fist, humming. “Could be an imperfection in the glass. The atoms aren’t completely immobile. They slowly shift. Maybe this glass wasn’t quite cooled close to its melting point and the atoms are moving faster than expected or a truly long time has passed since this panel was made... but if that were true then -”
“I think this imperfection is too deliberate,” he said suddenly.
Ada stared at him, her mouth slightly agape. “What?”
He blinked, also surprised by the certainty of his statement. He couldn’t tell you what compelled him to say it - only that he was ready to speak upon hearing Ada talk.
“I - I don’t know where that came from,” Tomás stuttered.
She pursed her lips. “I think it’s a mere imperfection. Oftentimes, the simplest solution is the correct one, although I do want to see for myself. Where is it?”
“Here.”
Before his senses caught up to his brain, he gently guided Ada’s finger to what he determined by contact to be the origin point of the indentations, if one wrote from left to right that is.
“What do you read?” he asked.
“Oh - let’s see. A...F.” She blinked. “My initials.”
“There’s more. Let’s jump a few centimeters more.” He moved her finger to the tip of the third letter in sequence. “What about here?”
Her eyes widened. “...Yours. And based on what my imagination filled in, they’re in your handwriting. Were you about to write out our initials on the pane? In this exact same spot?”
“...Yes,” he admitted, a blush creeping onto his cheeks yet again.
Ada tsked, once again tracing her fingers where the indentations were. Once again, she was too engrossed in this nascent mystery to probe more into his initial intention, but he would be lying to himself if his interest wasn’t also piqued.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence?” he said.
“Nothing is ever a coincidence. There’s always a reason why something happened. You were right - these indentations aren’t some kind of natural process. It’s possible that they mean something different. Perhaps an inside joke on whoever made this?”
“It’d be a weird coincidence then.” She pressed her palms together. “You think the café might know something about this?”
“Are we playing detective now?”
“I might as well be one. My boss’s -
“- brother’s husband is one.” He finished, with a roll of his eyes, before frowning briefly. He turned his attention back to the glass. His thoughts swam with wordless possibilities. He and Ada came to this café a few times in the past like...like...
When was the last time they came here?
He knew that they were here before and it was recent. He tried to think about what he did last week and strangely enough, he couldn’t remember much. He knew his life was boring, but there are usually a few memories which stick in recent memory. Everything before the start of the week was covered in a fog, as if it happened lifetimes ago. His memory couldn’t be that bad, right? In his corporate law class they were discussing about -
About -
...about...
Well, this week, they were discussing the complications of mergers and acquisitions as it applied to postal law; you see, it’s not as simple as changing the address. You must consider the company’s legal matters, what they were now providing with the nascent merger or what they were not providing anymore and adjust their status and package requirements accordingly... not only that but -
A slight jab to his side brought him back to reality. He blinked once, twice. Ada was staring outside, her gaze transfixed to seemingly nothing.
“Do you see it?” she whispered.
“See what?”
“There.” It was Ada’s turn to take control of his hands, pointing to an area above the ground, just above the red-and-white striped veranda across the street. “It’s a black dot.”
Tomás squinted, looking for it. The crepuscular rays leaking from the gray sky made it difficult to see. His eyes weren’t as good as Ada’s. She spent her days peering into the glaring lens of a microscope, looking for minute differences in her samples. It’s why she had to wear corrective contacts. It’s why he believed her when she said something was there.
It was almost imperceptible at first, like a passing dust particle in a beam of sunlight. He only caught sight of it when it became easier to notice. It was growing. Ever so steadily. It was only until it was the size of a fat grape - one that was nearly bursting out of its skin - that it started to garner attention. It was evident, then, that it wasn’t a perfect circle; space itself was torn and ragged at the edges.
Ada stared at it intently. Her expression was exactly the one she had on while she was working: studying inscrutable diagrams of chemical mechanisms, following each and every movement of an electron as it jumped across atoms. He was no scientist, but when holes appear in a company’s ledger, the best way to investigate the missing piece was to look in the information around it. It’s how you measure nothing.
All they could do was observe from behind the glass as the hole grew and grew. By now, it was about the size of a bowling ball. If the hole were to expand even more, continually, relentlessly, it could theoretically engulf this little street. Would it be satisfied? Or would it want more? What would happen if they were consumed?
A young man, someone around their age, boldly climbed up onto the rooftops. The people on the ground pointed their fingers at home. Shouts came from below: a mix of panicked caution and reckless encouragement. His hair was badly dyed blonde and his knees were scraped; Tomás instantly recognized him as one of the people who constantly skateboarded around campus, deftly weaving between crowds all the while sipping on an energy drink.
This same man stuck his finger into the hole, eliciting gasps from the crowds.
Tomás saw him make a move to pull it out.
It didn’t work.
He only had four fingers now, with the missing one a bloody stub and the offending finger half-suspended in the air. And he was screaming. People scrambled up the roofs to help him, for naught. The damage was already done.
Ada gasped, eyes going wide, her right hand covering her mouth in shock.
Tomás didn’t know what compelled him to do this, it just felt like the right thing to do, but he took Ada’s left hand into his own and squeezed.
(She didn’t tear away.)
With his other hand, he instinctively made The Sign, crossing his middle finger over his pointer finger and put them over his heart, looking towards the fountain of Our Lady for reassurance and scrambling to remember the prayers - though his thoughts soon stuttered to a stop once he saw her face.
She was crying. Rivulets of tears streamed from her unblinking eyes. At first, he thought it was just droplets from the storm earlier, but the flow was constant, her tears gently dripping down her chin and into the basin.
It only took a few seconds for Tomás’s eyes to water as well and soon, everyone around him was overwhelmed with inconsolable sobbing.
For what they were crying for, they didn’t know, but for the first time, he understood Stella Maris’s sorrow.