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The grandfather clock’s pendulum swung back and forth like a metronome keeping track of a hibernating animal’s heartbeat. It was alright though; her brain had this all memorized like an etching carved in obsidian.
It had been a year since Columbina disappeared without a trace, a particular absence that had been stinging Sandrone so. The ripples on the bitter tea could only remind her of Columbina’s affinity towards gentle streams and morning dew.
Sandrone felt like she could hardly breathe anymore; how many losses did she have to endure? How much more would death sting her so? Her cheek hit the coffee table; covered in rings of condensation from tea parties past. She should not have expected any different, a life born from sorrow and grief was doomed to suffer at the hand of it.
Moonlight shone through stained glass of the Snezhnayan window, casting unsaturated colors onto Sandrone as she looked out that window at the moon. The Damselette adored the moon, Sandrone had to wonder if they were both looking at it right now.
The grandfather clock chimed its happy tune, before what followed could only be described as a hammer striking a hot blade from a forge twelve times. She should have gone straight to her lab and immediately to work but her motivation was grinded against and thinned to nothingness against the heaviness of her consciousness.
Her tea was getting cold, her eyelids heavy, yet this should have been no problem for someone like her. Human faults should never have never made her feel as ill as a wee fawn.
Two knocks sobered her heavy head and she simply just waited for whoever it was to open the door, for her cheek was practically glued to the polished cedar of the table.
“I thought I smelled something bitter in here.”
Sandrone audibly snarled; this was probably the last person she wished to see on her doorstep right now. The one other person who was closest to Columbina and La Signora.
The Knave; brutish and forceful making a godforbidden concoction of something so addicting and dangerous, even Sandrone had to wonder if even she was not immune to her dreadful spells.
“Hah, what a pitiful excuse to barge in without any business.” Sandrone retorted, that passionate fire dimmed from the blue hue that crept through the windows. Their dealings in the past were amicable enough, but now Sandrone felt as if without Columbina here they were simply…without reason to communicate.
Arlecchino simply hummed; the same tune from that grandfather clock earlier as her heels crept closer and left marks in the carpet. “Now I don’t know if that bitterness wafting from here was your lemon tea or your personality.” Sandrone turned the other cheek to simply grimace at Arlecchino from the plateau of the table.
Bickering gave normalcy though, it gave her some routine in this nightmare.
“Haha very funny Knave…If you haven’t noticed I have to work on these stupid blueprints for my stupid design bureau.” Both “stupids” were said with an extra snarl as if it would be a pain for her to do so.
“Hm, usually you would be glad to take something on like this.” Arlecchino sat on the plush couch behind Sandrone, plush pillows and many blankets caving in around her as she watched the little key in Sandrone’s back turn and turn, slowly outlining the perfect circle. “Don’t tell me…”
Don’t say it.
Don’t you dare mention her.
“Columbina’s leave has you in a rut?”
Sandrone slammed her palms on the table and twisted around before pointing a gloved finger Arlecchino’s way.
“Tell you what Knave!” Sandrone’s voice grew shrill and commanding. “I don’t care about what she does or where she goes! The only thing that has ever mattered to me is my research!”
“Then why did you brew her favorite cup of tea only to pitifully wallow by it?”
Sandrone’s eyes widened and a catch got in her throat as she threatened to make a shallow dig at the Knave.
“You care more than you let on.” Arlecchino grabbed her finger and moved it towards the floor. “I remember that day. You thought she would hate it.”
Sandrone looked downcast to the other side of the table, where Columbina preferred to sit and drink with Sandrone, where she would lean over and move Sandrone’s bangs out of her face. Where she would reduce herself to the sinner’s table just to sit with Sandrone.
Sandrone finally thought she had her, finally thought that the sourness of the lemon would pucker her lips so tight a single note would never leave her throat again. Then when the Damselette sipped it she squealed in delight; proclaiming it had cleared her throat perfectly for singing.
“Then she said honey would taste best with it…Which I’m sure had nothing to do with your absurd request for honey that next week.” Arlecchino and Columbina had a lot in common; especially teasing Sandrone whether it was intentional or not.
“You can shut your mouth before I shut it for you.” A sniffle penetrated the study, followed by Sandrone wiping her nose with her sleeve. “What do you even gain from torturing me like this?”
“It was not my intention.” Arlecchino responded looking at the teapot, still with a slight fog floating up from the spout. “I simply thought you were lonely and could use some company.”
Sandrone knew her games, studied them like machinery—yet she was no stranger to entertaining them anyway. In the game of cat and mouse she was a fox.
“If you just wanted a cup of tea you could have said so.” Sandrone reached for a teacup across the table, sitting up on her knees as she did so. She poured it, and handed it off to Arlecchino.
“Much obliged.” She sniffed it, sipping droplets as her face remained stoic. “Hm, she was right, it tastes just right with some honey.”
There were only two people in the room, yet the combined burden on both of their shoulders felt like a person was there. A boulder so palpable she could almost feel her warmth again.
Hear her song again.
They were too lonely people drinking down memories in hopes acid would burn them all alive.
“Arlecchino.” Sandrone said as she held the teacup to her lips. “Do you miss her?” Sandrone’s voice had some rasp to it as she quickly drank down the sour flavor to satiate her tears.
Arlecchino for the first time felt sympathy towards the Marionette. Losing both Rosalyne and Columbina, now they only had the other to relate too.
“Yes.” Arlecchino swirled the tea, ripples making contact with the rim of the cup and her fingertips. “It feels so empty here now, don’t you go dying on me. That spot is reserved for the Doctor.” Arlecchino chuckled at the joke, only getting a suppressed giggle from the Marionette when she mentioned a coworker suffering.
“How are the children after the flood?”
and finally there was calm in the storm and common ground found in Sandrone’s study.
“Scared them, but as long as they have each other they will be strong. Freminet asks about your work, perhaps a visit to your homeland is in order?” Arlecchino stated, earning a scowl from the Marionette.
“Yeah right. This design bureau and my assignment in Nod-Krai will keep me far from Fontaine…” She said as her mind drifted off to the real reason she staked her claim in Nod-Krai.
A tip from Katheryne that a long standing enemy had taken interest in the moon. God, the only thing more sour than this tea was her grudge against him.
“Well you know I’d do anything to get away from these heartless business men.” Arlecchino responded to her with a smile. “Even work under you for a bit.”
“As if I have a heart.” Sandrone found the fallacy in her logic, they both knew it, both knew the emptiness that laid within. Yet, her telltale heart had its true feelings pounding against the floorboards.
“Yet you refused a place in the Palestar Edict despite being in Nod-Krai…Making Dottore take it up for you.” Arlecchino’s voice was smooth—calm, everything it needed to be for this conversation. “Why is that?”
“I couldn’t.” Sandrone said, a hand shaking the teacup from how intensely she was grasping it. “I refuse to take part.” Sandrone’s energy was taking a dive as her anger module was consuming power like a gluttonous pig to a trough full of excessive food.
Arlecchino chuckled as she sipped the tea. Columbina would love this information the next time they would meet. She adored Sandrone, so she would adore the caring nature of Sandrone’s motives as well.
“Stop laughing, god you annoy me!” Sandrone took a pillow off the ground and threw it at Arlecchino. “I’m gonna work on this in spite now!!!” Sandrone dragged blueprints from under the table and picked up a pen, chewed up from frustrations in days past. The lines were muddled and frantic lines were scribbled over abandoned words as if cursing them to a black pit of damnation.
Arlecchino was all too familiar with this type of reaction from the Marionette; frustrations siphoned into inspiration as she hoped to make something that could even shine in the shadow of the Lord Artificer. That passion, that perseverance, it made her more human than some of the other harbingers. That fire one day, no doubt, would burn the Marionette.
“It looks ginormous…Is it really only for research?” Arlecchino asked as she looked over the Marionette’s freckled shoulder.
“I revel in a good secret Knave.” Sandrone used her arms and chest to cover the blueprints puffing up her cheeks as she looked behind her shoulder at the Knave.
“Hah, I’ll find out in due time I suppose?” Arlecchino completely relaxed into the cushions, her legs naturally widening as she leaned against the back.
“Let’s hope it does not come to that.” Sandrone’s voice trailed off as the clock chiming was the only thing permeating the tense air in the room now, followed by the scratching of Sandrone’s pen against the rough paper.
Arlecchino took a deep sigh through her nose, it truly was weighing on Sandrone, no matter how hard she wished to suppress it. Her heart was mocking herself like the crow of a raven. Arlecchino was acquainted with this type of desolation, grief that burns like the embers and passion born like a phoenix from the pits of suffering.
Sandrone was grieving, and she still had not a clue how to deal with it.
“Sandrone, your key is turning faster.” Arlecchino commented. This thing was normal though, and in due time Sandrone would be asleep–free from the mental torment of her work and sorrow.
“Could you be any more annoying?!” Sandrone gripped the pen and slammed its point first into the table, making it stand on its own from the force. “You interrupt my tea party, you sit in here and make crude comments even though I try to get along with you like Columbina and Rosalyne would want and you!!!”
Arlecchino just smiled as Sandrone’s rambles filled the air–even when it was directed at her she could not help but feel how cute it was. No wonder why Columbina would purposefully poke fun at Sandrone.
Her face growing more red and her eyes slowly getting heavier as she kept talking was exactly in Arlecchino’s grand plan, the plan to make her sleep after days of horrid restlessness.
“You pissed me off for the last time tonight, Knave.” Sandrone hissed, ripening into a yawn that made tears appear in her eyes. “Just go.” Sandrone rubbed her eyes and slapped her cheeks a few times.
“If you truly wish it, I am just concerned about you these days.” Arlecchino moved Sandrone’s bonnet off of her head and started to take out bobby pins from the back of her head, her fingernails digging into her hair as she undid the intricacies of it
“Arlecchino.” Sandrone was losing sanity, the sensations making her miss their little tea parties, her little heaven in this hell. “You may stay until you need to go to bed.”
“How generous of the Marionette.” Arlecchino leaned forward and watched as Sandrone’s hair fell all around her in a poofy mess from being tied up all day. “I’ll pay the favor forward one day.”
Sandrone laid her head on the cushion next to Arlecchino’s thigh and closed her eyes with one last yawn as the punctuation to her sleep mode.
For a robot…She was so strangely human, so wholly imperfect in what was made to be perfect.
“Sandrone?” Arlecchino knew she was already asleep, but she was still amazed with the brevity of her being fully awake to completely comatose.
Arlecchino chuckled as she drank the last of her tea, keeping a hand in Sandrone’s soft hair and massaging out the stress she was sure had accumulated in her being.
Their dynamic surely changed after Columbina left, both of them finding solace in the other's loneliness–in the feeling of being seen by someone else after a traumatizing event. Sandrone seemed more receptive to Arlecchino’s chatting and Arlecchino was much more tolerable to the outbursts of the Marionette.
This study was calming though. She could see why Sandrone preferred it here to the cold palace halls.
Arlecchino leaned forward to put the teacup back on the table and froze as Sandrone adjusted herself, her arms wrapping around her calf as her face nuzzled into the warmth that emanated from the black slacks.
“It is hard to believe you cut out a man’s tongue in cold blood.” Arlecchino put her arm around the back of the couch, the other finding Sandrone’s hair again to work out the tangles. Sandrone was mumbling in her sleep, mostly about mechanics, but the mention of Columbina’s name like a curse on her tongue caught Arlecchino’s attention.
“Columbina...” Arlecchino looked at the moon as she got comfortable. “Have a tea party with us again sometime hm?”
And could have sworn the moon shone softer after that.