Work Text:
Picture it: scenes fit for a painting, for a museum in a place of prominence. A quaint little countryside, hamlets speckled through sprawling fields. Built first for function, then refined for form. Teasing beauty from raw materials, crafting structures that no longer detracted from their surroundings, then later enhanced them. Perfecting the picturesque and cementing this place, this island, as home.
Once, there were other lands out there. Hope remembered them sometimes, those other places the boats could go. Other docks, other ports, other people. Lost now, replaced by hordes of strangers and an encroaching storm. But she's getting ahead of herself.
As a child, Hope loved the sea. She loved heading down to the beach with her big sister, spending all day sifting through the sand and sticking treasures in a pail until the sun set and their father called them back home. Then it was back to the big house in the big woods, back to her big bedroom that was big enough for both of them, for her and Valeria both. There they sorted through their findings according to whatever new serendipitous system they'd invented this round until they were both prodded towards their beds. Both of them humming their secret songs in the dark that they both knew by heart until sleep took them both.
Once, Hope thought they were both happy back then. She is no longer so naive.
When they could still travel past the boundary, the two of them would take to the streets of strange places with abandon. They knew they were always watched, that there was always someone nearby paid to keep them safe, so they were never in danger, never had a way to escape the fold. Soaking up all the unfamiliar sights so they could be faithfully reproduced back home. On the walls, on the floor, getting them both in trouble. Her and Valeria both, reprimanded for their art, though not dissuaded. Merely redirected to better mediums, to paper and canvas and paint. At least, at first.
Hope did not remember the first time she needed money for something. For so long, she never wanted for anything. There was always enough. No mind paid to the signs placed in shop windows, laid against walls, tagged to objects of all sorts. It was insidious, the way value snuck into her attention. The hesitation that lengthened when she pointed at what caught her eye, until it ensnared her too and she considered whether to raise her hand at all. The way wants were tamed into needs, then the ways needs tamed them. Hope and Valeria both, no longer bursting with art but bound by an arcane arithmetic. Metaphorically, then later literally.
Here is how the sisters formed their secret songs, those composed in the dark: they were born of the seasons, of the syncopation between summer and winter. Seagulls screeching and robins ruminating, then recalling those in the silence brought by snowfall once autumn finished stealing colors from the woods outside the house. That building that got emptier every year, growing colder, losing its former cozy atmosphere and chilling into a place that no longer felt like home.
In the winters, they did not go to the beach. Instead, they trekked south through the snow and found the train tracks. Snaking around the island, the sound of its horn didn't quite reach their house. Sometimes it couldn't be heard at all when too much ice coated the tracks and the salt left by the workers sat in useless clumps after their pickaxes broke in the cold. Hope never liked the sight nor sound of the locomotive, finding it lifeless and ordinary, loud and obnoxious. Drowning out the music she always heard in her head. The train was a passing substitute filling the gap between summers, not something truly beautiful. She always thought Valeria felt the same. Back at the house, they would draw it, a section per sheet of paper, taping them together into the full train before hanging it on the walls and decorating it different ways. Using every shade of the paints they had left, then resorting to the crayon stubs, then simply using standard pencils. The same ones they did their homework with, though Hope did not realize Valeria was still working when she made her designs. No, Valeria's sketches of the train were no longer born of fancy, but of function. Of purpose.
When they both became adults and the house became abandoned, Hope was not sure what they'd do. Whatever it was, she assumed it would be something they'd do together, like they had in all their drawings, in all their dreams. She was wrong.
There was a new power on the island now. One familiar, one that had lurked in the background of their lives. The emblem found pinned to all their protectors, to the people watching and keeping them safe. The society that required a high price, one that eventually became too high to pay and showed no sympathy to those who fell from fortune. Nor did they offer forgiveness to those who failed. But they pardoned Valeria because of the books.
Snap the hourglass at its narrow neck, spill the sand across the floor. Sift through the scenes each second represent until the secrets show, until the story is spread out and stark.
Hope thrived on variety; her treasures were diverse, from ships trapped in bottles to fanciful jewelry wrought from shells and stones. Possessions always shared freely with her sister, and Valeria likewise shared with her. Valeria and her books, her pages and pages of words, of symbols, of knowledge more than beauty. But there were books Valeria picked that held no beauty, books hidden from Hope and filled with danger. Danger they could have navigated together, had Valeria shared the same dreams as Hope. For every book Valeria shared with Hope, there were another two kept out of view. Books filled with lies presenting as truth, books that should have been marked fiction. Books promising so much more.
Those were the books whose pages were never ripped out to use for their art. Those were the books Valeria quietly opened once Hope was asleep and her half of their harmony went silent. Those were the books writing the yawns Valeria made during the day because of all the reading she did during the night. Burning the midnight oil into a flame that flew off alone, without Hope, because Valeria saw there was no hope for her dreamy sister and her childish artwork. Reality demanded too much for dreams to suffice.
Perhaps Valeria picked those books out of mere curiosity, once, and not because she felt forced. Not out of desperation, but of genuine interest. But once she read the signs around her that the family fortune was fading, failing, then the fire was lit. A candle with only one wick, one handle, one light for one sister. Keeping her alone warm while the other would be lost to the storm.
Hope drifted, for a time. Haunting other abandoned places, places that felt more like home than that old empty building in the woods did now. Eventually, she returned there, with a new purpose all her own. One born of the satisfaction she could still change the world with her art. For the island had changed. Circles shrinking from the sea, bringing a gale that seeped away all her strength. Over and over, never stopping at all, until all the times blended together in some abstract that spelled it out for her: the rules were different now. Survival required a higher price than ever, one the Society stayed adept at paying, loop after loop, thanks to their tokens of favor that allowed them to steal more than ever. And who would dare resist, because at least the train ran on time, right? A fair enough cost, despite the associated taxing.
Valeria must find it sweet, how she rose from the ashes of misfortune and left her sore sister in the dust. Keeping all the feathers for herself and using them to fly away. But Hope was no abashed bird. She was a cat, and she'd land on her feet. Underground, maybe, but still with sights on knocking the powerful from their perch. The cost of surviving the island was adaptability, and there was no better source for honing such a skill than art.
Even with how much everything had changed, there were still birds here. Hope could still hear them chittering in the trees, and she kept pulling their tunes into her own, building ever more lyrics around the same chorus she'd sung as a child. One with no words, though once did hold harmony with another's.
But no longer. Now hers was a solo. Whatever allies she could find would have to match her rhythm. She was strong enough to stand on her own, and she would, she will, she has. In the lines of every painting, in the bars of every song, because this was still her home.