Echo in the Night - Chapter 6 Asha's Beginnings
St. Thérèse of Lisieux (bare feet, brown habit, arms folded like a schoolteacher) stood on a chair, glaring across the table.
St. Rita of Cascia (black veil, faint scent of bees and roses) leaned against the counter, one eyebrow raised in eternal, patient judgment.
Neither saint had slept well. Again.
“If your elbow finds my ribs one more time tonight,” Thérèse said in a low, dangerous voice, “I will fill your pillow with rose stems.”
“If you steal the quilt again,” Rita answered, calm as candle-flame, “I will send bees into your dreams.”
Brother Jerome, the silent monk, sat on the windowsill in his rough brown robe, hands folded in his lap. He opened his mouth (probably to beg for quiet) but the two saints turned identical warning glares on him. His lips closed at once. He lifted both palms in surrender and went back to staring mournfully at the coffee pot, mute as ever.
The three unsainted house-faeries (acorn caps, glittering wings, foul mouths) ricocheted around the honey jar, cursing in Old Irish.
Berta didn’t even turn from the stove. “Next voice I hear gets salted and served on toast.”
Silence dropped like a curtain.
Warm yeasty rolls breathed steam across the table. Blackberry preserves glowed deep purple. A soft-boiled egg sat upright in its little blue cup, regal and waiting.
Asha slipped into her chair. Her place was already set: roll split and buttered, preserves spooned, the egg wearing its cracked crown.
She tapped the shell. Gold ran slow.
“I heard him,” she said quietly to the room. “Last night. Lior. A scream that’s been locked in his chest since he was small finally tore free.”
Thérèse’s stern face softened. She reached over and rested her small, calloused hand on Asha’s wrist.
Rita closed her eyes; the bees around her veil hummed a low, sorrowful note.
Brother Jerome lifted his gaze to Asha, eyes gentle and exhausted, and pressed two fingers to his heart (the only way he could speak). Then he traced a slow, careful cross in the air, blessing whatever had just broken loose in the pines.
“Will he ever tell what the knots were?” Asha whispered. “The ones I saw the first day—like someone laced wire through his heart and pulled until it bled?”
Rita opened her eyes. “Impossible causes take time,” she said softly.
Thérèse brushed an invisible petal from her sleeve. “But love does it in little ways,” she added. “One breakfast, one honest morning at a time.”
Berta set the coffee pot down like a gavel.
“Essen,” she said.
Asha smiled, "danke" (small, crooked, real) and obeyed.
Brother Jerome folded his hands again, eyes shining with unsaid prayers.
Outside, the pines listened.
Somewhere beyond them, a young man with mercury silver hair woke up tasting yeast and blackberry on the breeze, and for the first morning in years, the light felt like mercy instead of a flashbulb.
When Asha had finisished every delectible bite, she found her journal and began writing..
"Dear Diary,
Last night I think I heard Lior's pain release some. It was violent. I hope so. He's been trying so hard to help capture childrens' tears. Me too. If it was him, maybe he can show me how. Maybe there is hope. "
Comments