A Princess in the Tower
Theo had, since she came to Nachton, found a home full of peace and safety, and never in her long life had she enjoyed such a thing for so long. At first she felt the constant need to test her surroundings, to see when and where they would give. What would get her sent away? Beaten? Locked in a room for days? It was a long time before she understood, on any level, that none of these things would happen to her in the towers, and sometimes even now she questioned that. After a time, though, she came to have the opposite opinion; rather than believing she might be thrown out on her ear at any moment, she developed a proud sense of belonging. The towers were sanctuary; an island of safety and solace in an unstable and frighteningly cruel world. Theo rarely left that security; she had seen so much already that her mind craved the peace that came from quietly going about whatever you chose, in your own time and in your own way. She wanted to work and help her clan, and so she had found a job. She wanted plenty of time and space to create, and she was generally granted what she needed.
Lately, however, she had become discontent. For years and years she had gone without suffering the ill effects of boredom and loneliness. There was always something to do, in her mind, and if she wanted company she certainly knew how to get attention. Now, though, she was restless. She started sculptures and growing bored with them, tore them down again, put everything away in her color coded bins. She grew dissatisfied with the arrangement of her room, and spent all day rearranging it only to find she had made a mirror image of what she had before. She watched the clock. She spent a day feeling sorry for herself because she was convinced she didn’t have any friends, and spent half the next writing emails to the friends she had after all. She didn’t send any of them, though; the thought of them not writing back was too sad to her.
Wanting friends was a new thing to Theo; before, people had simply come and gone, always leaving eventually, but in the meantime there were people she liked and people she couldn’t bear. The ones she liked were her friends, in her mind, and when she saw them she was happy. When they left, she ceased thinking about them; that was so much better than feeling bad because you’d been left again, in her opinion. Now, though, she wondered what would happen if she emailed Jan, or knocked on Nic’s door…maybe she could bother Kem or sit in Christian’s office. She normally wouldn’t have had any trouble doing any of those things, but the idea of –needing- company was so foreign to her that she found herself putting up walls instead. Perhaps, those days she had made herself at home in Dani’s lobby or got pretty looking and went out, she had needed company, but she hadn’t –known- she needed company then. It was different.
Finally, weary of her own thoughts, she had gone down to the basement to work, sorting shells and beads and fragments of pottery, mumbling aloud to MARI whenever a piece would ‘speak’ to her. MARI was something of a comfort, reminding her that she was never –really- alone, but after a while she grew restless again and put her work away, wondering what she could do to make this odd feeling go away.
It occurred to her that all these feelings might have a simple cause; she could be tired of being indoors. That seemed like a much more comfortable explanation than the others she had tried and, with renewed spirit and the spring back in her step, she called for Tim, her bodyguard, to please join her in going out.
/ooc Theo out