The Holy Maiden froze, her mind surfacing from blankness like a diver rising through cold blue. Shock hit first, then a strange hush, then anger. Her face sank like a stormfront rolling in. A twitch slashed diagonally across her mouth like lightning. She seized Selina’s arm and yanked, scraping them apart like peeling sticky gum off fabric, prying Selina away from Hedi.
“Taking advantage at a time like this!”
“No.” Selina blurted, panic fluttering like a caged bird. Her other hand still pinched Hedi’s curled hair. “I did this in the Dark Realm!”
“Shameless!”
“It’s true... I swear it’s true...”
“When someone’s unconscious—” The Holy Maiden’s breath snagged, gulping air like a fish on shore. “You shameless creature!”
“Back then—”
“Explanation is just a cover!”
“No cover! CPR needs rescue breaths!”
“Nonsense!”
Selina widened her eyes, her glare flat and cold, pinning the Holy Maiden like a nail.
The room lay in murky shadow, quiet as a sealed jar; only rain drummed the roof like a thousand fingers. A cold current slid through the oppressive scene, hard with malice, washing over their bodies like damp cave breath.
“You told me to try...” Selina muttered. Her mouth skewed right like a bent reed. “Then you blame me for it...”
“How could I know you would... would... ugh! Don’t you go near Melvina again!”
Selina leaned forward. In a heartbeat she fused herself to Hedi, one inseparable shape.
“You— let— go—” The Holy Maiden’s eyes bulged. She cranked up force that could uproot a small hill. “Now—”
“No!”
“Melvina’s a patient! She can’t take this thrashing!”
Selina snapped her arms tight, like a hunting giant octopus, wrapping Hedi hard against her chest.
The Holy Maiden’s face slipped into frenzy, like a wrestler in a brutal clinch. Every pull was full force, yet she couldn’t pry them apart.
“If you’ve got the guts—” She sagged onto the bed like a spent banner. “Hold her for life!”
“I will! I wanted to hold her for life back at the academy!”
“Brat!”
“How do you know I’m a kid? I might be older than you!”
“I’m two years older than Melvina!”
Selina fell silent, sensing the Holy Maiden used talk like smoke to distract. She lifted Hedi gently from the bed, gliding like a thief to a dim corner. She kept four or five steps from the panting Holy Maiden like a hunter wary of a snare.
“Look at you... your clothes are soaked like a drowned cat...” The Holy Maiden raked her hair in frustration. “Do you even want her to wake?”
“The moment I separate, you won’t let me near the Professor!”
“Of course! Melvina doesn’t even like you!”
“I need to hear that from the Professor’s own mouth!”
The Holy Maiden sat on the bed with forced patience and sighed, the sound thin as wind through reeds. “Come back. I still haven’t found what’s blocking the magic.”
“So long and still no cause,” Selina squatted in the corner, small as a shadowed sparrow. Hedi slept in her arms like a tiny doll. “You’re not even trying!”
“Don’t question my motives!”
“You said it yourself! I didn’t doubt you.”
“Fine... I just... wanted to catch up with Melvina...” Her voice drifted like dust from old letters.
“So you weren’t focused at all!”
The Holy Maiden shot to her feet like a spring. Selina flinched and shielded Hedi by reflex, like a mother bird cloaking a chick. But the Holy Maiden didn’t approach. She paced the room, chafed like a tethered horse.
“This kind of thing won’t come out of the mouth,” she said, the words heavy as stones in the throat. She halted by the window, gazing out as always, yet her eyes held a different tangle, like threads knotted in rain. “I’ve strayed far from the figure in Melvina’s memory, like a river that changed its bed.”
“So you talk to the Professor like talking to yourself?”
“People speak to tombstones; who calls that laughable?”
“Don’t curse the Professor!”
“It’s an example! An example!”
Selina watched the Holy Maiden quietly, like a cat in shadow. Her face was blank, eyes half-lidded, staring straight at the pane. Her nose was long and narrow, like a single chopstick; its lean tip shone with a dewy halo. Her lips were clamped, skin pulled tight over the jaw. That slightly crooked mouth didn’t match her delicate features.
“I like you more now than before,” Selina said, lifting her face to the ceiling’s dim whites and blacks like cloud-pale ink. “Was that old persona an act?”
“No.”
“It’s completely different.”
“Different occasions, different faces.”
Selina smiled, nostalgic, like warmth on winter glass. “Multiplicity!”
“Melvina said that?”
“Mm.”
“Figures. She told me the same.”
“Do you like the Professor?”
The Holy Maiden shook her head, crisp as a blade flicking light.
Selina went quiet, as if chewing a knotty riddle, her thoughts ticking like rain on tin. “Then why stop me from liking the Professor?”
“I didn’t stop you. Given Melvina’s temperament—”
“That’s childhood temperament. Even you aren’t the same now.”
“So what? Does that change her not liking you?”
“When the Professor wakes—” Selina cut herself off, then softened like a lamp turned low. “Is the Professor your only friend?”
“Don’t jump to guesses!”
“Look at your reaction... losing a friend acts like that, like a cat arching at a rival.”
The Holy Maiden lifted a hand to the glass, late to her own thought, fingers fogging the pane like breath. “You think this personality is better?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re noisy now, and you say cutting things. Does the Sacred Cathedral allow a Holy Maiden to talk like that?”
“You started it... fake... heh...”
“Sorry.”
“Why apologize for the truth?”
“You’re still mad...”
“Why be mad?”
Selina lowered her head, guilty, pressing her left cheek to Hedi’s right like leaf to leaf. “Because I denied your resolve to impersonate the Professor? I don’t know if words work, or heart does better.”
“The Sacred Cathedral needs a Holy Maiden. That’s all.”
“Then use your own name.”
“How could I? I’m the glass bottle for Priest John’s penance.” The Holy Maiden again saw his last moments like a faded photograph in rain. “Letting him confess to me as Melvina settles his conscience. With his stiff nature, only at death do pretty words come.”
“You made the impostor choice because of a priest’s speech? That’s reckless.”
“I also think Priest John was irresponsible.”
Selina noticed the sidestep and corrected her, her tone straight as a ruler. “I meant you.”
The Holy Maiden answered softly, “Maybe,” the word falling like a single drop.
“Will you tell me your real name?”
“Hedi Melvina.”
“You’ll regret that.”
“A child’s temperament rests mostly on the raiser,” the Holy Maiden murmured, eyes closing like drawn curtains. “I fear I’ll speak pretty words only on my own last day.”
