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 Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2016 11:05 pm
Lorenzo Fisch opened his office door and stepped into the familiar hallway that served as his waiting room, setting his suitcase against the wall, and the briefcase from Lab 305 into one of the armchairs. He collapsed in the chair next to it and let out a deep breath, murmuring, "I'm home," to nobody, or maybe to Buddy, before falling into a deep, jetlagged sleep.
When he woke up, he ached all over. Easing himself gently into a standing position, he stretched and tried to work out the crick in his neck, nearly tripping as Buddy twined around his legs, meowing insistently.
"Mmmmph," he replied sleepily, pulling out his phone and checking the time. Seven PM. He had been asleep for four hours.
Looking around, he spotted the suitcase and opened it gingerly, just to check. Inside, the soul bottle cast a soft blue light onto his face, the rusalka's soul glowing brightly inside. He supposed it was too late to call the carrier service, so he shut the suitcase again and took it into his office, looking for somewhere more secure to store it for now. He finally settled on putting it on top of his desk so he wouldn't forget, and patted it absentmindedly before tackling the daunting task of heaving his luggage up the stairs to his living room.
The next few hours were folding clothes and doing laundry, and as Lorenzo piled up neatly pressed shirts, he turned on the television, catching up on the news he missed on Gaia. He then put away the souvenirs he had taken with him from Russia, mostly snacks, and chopped up some vegetables to start making dinner.
Lorenzo was used to this kind of transition, from the extraordinary feats that a necromancer might be asked to perform to the ordinary schedule of daily life. But he found as he chopped carrots that his hands were trembling and unsteady. He had never done anything as dangerous as he had been doing in the past week, after all. And he had nearly died. For real. Lorenzo's grasp on the concept of death was only tenuous, but there were no necromancers nearby in Russia to fix him up properly, and fewer still who would bother to drag his corpse from the bottom of a marsh. The only thing standing between him and a dangerous client had been a woman who was barely equipped to deal with the undead, and she had almost paid for it with her life, too.
There were necromancers out there, he reflected, who pined for the romance, the darkness, the bad old days, when everything was oh-so-slightly nefarious and nobody had professionally printed business cards. They would have killed for an adventure with a rusalka in a marsh, possibly literally. He had never been one of those necromancers. He was raised by a lawyer and a guard, and he had always considered himself to be impeccably practical.
But maybe if he had been the kind of necromancer who had silver knives and undead servants and a mask, Dina would not have had to have nearly died.
He shook his head. A necromancer who raised undead armies and turned their powers against the living revoked the right to live amongst them They gave up laundry and supper and offices and florists and family to pursue power for the sake of power, and even the undead that served them were little more than tools to aid and abet their lonely lifestyles. The best way to protect the living and aid the undead was to abide by the rules and regulations imposed on licensed necromancers and to trust that the living could be strong even without magic and masks and silver knives. Dina had more than proved that.
Hissing sharply, he withdrew his hand from the cutting board as he nicked it with the knife. Buddy looked up from the living room in alarm, and Lorenzo groped around for a paper towel to hold against the cut. That was what he got for losing himself in thought, he supposed.
As he washed the cut, he watched the slight trickle of blood wash away neatly down the drain. Despite everything, he was still alive. He was a living, licensed necromancer, with no mask and no knife more esoteric than the set he kept in the kitchen. He needed to sleep and to eat and he couldn't just sew his arms back on if they fell off. He couldn't make undead servants or stop a rusalka in her tracks or even get Buddy to stop trying to eat mice long after his digestive system had stopped properly functioning. But because he had kept one foot in the world of the living, he was able to counsel the undead. He was able to help families adjust to their newly undead relatives, to talk through fear and mistrust and antipathy. And he was uniquely qualified to create something that no nefarious unlicensed necromancer could make: a comfortable home for the rusalka to start afresh in.
He would see the briefcase off to Lab 305, and whatever sort of raevan emerged from it would be warmly welcomed into his home.
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Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2016 11:07 pm
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Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2016 2:38 pm
In the rush of work that came from taking a single week off, Lorenzo been forced to put the rusalka aside. The briefcase containing her soul was safely tucked away in his office, radiating guilt beams at him whenever he inadvertently brushed up against it, but he couldn't prioritize the rusalka's problems just because she was going to be living with him. He had already put everything on hold for her once, and there were people and pets who needed his help just as much as she did.
Even if Lorenzo could have controlled his appointments, he could not control his mother's schedule, and he was due to have a follow-up meeting with her before he shipped the rusalka's soul to the Lab. By the time both of them were free enough to meet, it was already late January.
"I've called the carrier service," Lorenzo's mother greeted him briskly as he stepped into her spacious office. "They'll be here shortly- we only have a few matters to discuss, as we've been in touch over email." She gestured to her desk, where printouts of the reports Lorenzo had sent during the soul capture process were neatly stacked on a manila folder. It was strange to see them there. He had gotten so swept up in work that the events of his soul capture felt like they had happened an age ago.
"Overall," Nicolina continued, "A less efficient process than I would have liked, and furthermore, a solution with very dubious moral associations for our law firm. And--"
Lorenzo winced, bracing himself.
"Dangerous!" Nicolina grabbed her son and looked him up and down, presumably for boo-boos. "You could have been seriously hurt, young man. I was worried sick! Thank Gaia your father is undead already, or he would have died of fright." She snatched up one of the reports. "There are clear signs of enchantment in this writing style, and all of the wading through marshes! You know your constitution is weak, Lorenzo."
"Ms. Fisch--" Lorenzo began gently, trying to remind her that they were still talking about business.
Nicolina cleared her throat. "Although I will admit that the circumstances of the case were dire. The solution may not be terribly elegant, but it's a miracle that a solution was reached at all. It speaks," she concluded, "To your excellent upbringing."
"And to my excellent translator," he reminded.
"Yes, yes, we've processed the invoice you sent us, with a generous bonus." Nicolina said, waving aside such trifling matters and stroking a hand over the briefcase Lorenzo had set on the desk next to the reports. "So this is the client's soul?"
Lorenzo dusted himself off and opened the briefcase. "As I understand, it's the client, soul, body, and all. She's in there, and they'll combine her with the fel essence to make enough energy to build her a body." The soul bottle glowed blue-green and cast a strange hue onto his mother's face as she leaned over it.
"Such an interesting contraption," she remarked, picking it up gingerly. "And they make a new body in a lab to put it in?" She glanced back down at the suitcase and spotted the jar. "Is this the fel essence they chose for her?"
Leaning in to pick up the jar, Lorenzo nodded. "They call it a false reflection. Water that doesn't quite reflect the viewer accurately when you peer into it. It's fitting to combine with her soul, but I don't think it's what she would have chosen, had she been given the choice."
Curiosity piqued, Nicolina gingerly set the soul bottle back in the briefcase, and took the jar from her son. They both peered into it, and reflected back at them were two not-quite-familiar faces. Nicolina's normally brown hair had become a dusky pink, and the effect was almost funny. Lorenzo's face, however, looked pinched and sly, very much a traditionally nefarious necromancer. Lorenzo laughed nervously.
"Hopefully that's not how the rusalka will see me," he said wryly, putting the jar back where it came from. "Although I think pink hair quite suits you."
"Your father would throw a fit," Nicolina joked. She paused. "And how will the client look, when all's said and done?"
Lorenzo shrugged. "It's hard to say. She could have pink hair for all we know."
"Does she get a choice?" asked Nicolina.
Lorenzo looked away awkwardly. "There weren't many choices I was able to provide her. I tried everything I could, but the only choice I could give her in the end was whether or not to do this."
"And she chose to live," Nicolina reassured as the secretary rang to tell her that the carrier service had arrived.
Lorenzo hesitated and looked into the jar containing the fel essence one last time before closing the suitcase tightly and lifting it off the desk.
"That's right," he said, accompanying his mother to the reception room. "She chose to live."
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Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2016 7:32 pm
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Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2016 12:27 am
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Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 1:17 pm
Lorenzo opened the car door and the rusalka floated out, looking at the brownstone building that his apartment and office were located in, then back at Lorenzo.
"We're here," he said.
It took only that for her to zip right up to the building, and soon she was far out of reach, peering into the windows on every floor and trying her best to explore her new surroundings. Returning to Lorenzo, she announced, "I still like the flowers best," and clutched the small bouquet he had given her at the lab more tightly.
He laughed nervously and unlocked the door. "Well, I'm working on it," he admitted. "Welcome home."
The rusalka looked inside and found a hallway set up like a waiting room. Having only seen the lobby and offices in the Lab, she found this completely typical, and settled down in his office, looking for things to play with. Lorenzo watched her float around it anxiously. She seemed comfortable floating at any height, and often went high up to inspect things if she wanted to. He didn't know much about whether it was safe, and he fretted that it might exhaust her.
"You don't have any pictures," she noted, but seized upon his office supplies with glee, throwing her bouquet aside momentarily. "Ah! Highlighters!"
"Take them if you want!" Lorenzo encouraged. "I can buy more."
"Thank you!" the rusalka gushed, gathering all her presents back into her arms again. "What day did you say this is?"
"Valentine's Day."
"I love Valentine's Day!"
Lorenzo smiled, much less nervously this time, and said, "Good." Seeing the rusalka like this, seeing her happy when all his memories of her in Russia were of a girl who was uncertain and terrified, was making his Valentine's Day worthwhile, too.
"I might have some late night calls tonight," he announced, getting back to business, "It's my job- You're my client, but I have a lot of clients, and a lot of people accidentally die on holidays, so I usually have at least two or three emergency resurrections. You can just relax tonight if you'd like- tomorrow we'll go see the lawyer your soul contacted." He paused, and clarified, "My mother."
"Oh," the rusalka said, faltering slightly. "I'm not your only client?"
Lorenzo looked surprised. "You're the only one who lives with me," he explained, "But I'm not a research necromancer- I have a practice, and I see clients every day."
"Oh. Oh!" The rusalka took a moment but seemed to recollect herself. "Of course." Fidgeting slightly, she asked, "What about my name? Shouldn't I be choosing one?"
"I thought that until you chose, I could call you 'Niemoj'," Lorenzo offered. "J-just for ease of reference, of course! It's a traditional Slavic placeholder name."
"Placeholder?" asked the rusalka, furrowing her brow.
"It's a traditional name that young children would have to keep evil spirits from finding them until they were old enough to protect themselves. Well, one of those names. 'Niemoj' specifically means 'not mine'."
"Oh! 'Not mine'." She didn't seem to be particularly thrilled by it, but said, "If it makes things easier, then that's fine."
Lorenzo nodded, pleased. "If you really want to start thinking about your name right away," he said, "I've prepared some Slavic name books and lists for you with notes upstairs in your room."
"My room?" she asked, perking up suddenly. "I get a room, too?"
"Of course!" Lorenzo chuckled. "You didn't think you'd have to live in the office, did you?" He led her upstairs to his living quarters and she gasped, looking around at all the new things. While Lorenzo's taste in office decor was markedly different from the Lab, the contents of the lobby were pretty much identifiable. The living area was full of strange new devices, however, and Lorenzo had to stop her before she wreaked havoc.
"N-not there!" he said pulling her away before she opened the oven, "You could really do some damage to yourself exploring in the kitchen."
"Kitchen," she repeated, looking back at it as she was led away.
"This is your room," he announced, switching on the light.
The room was heavily draped in Russian tapestries and decorated in extremely traditional Russian decor. Lorenzo had worked hard on it over the past two months. The rusalka floated in uncertainly, seemingly at a loss for words.
"This... is my room?" she asked carefully.
"I did my best to recreate an environment you'd be familiar with," Lorenzo explained.
"But I don't remember being a rusalka at all!" she fretted.
"It's all right!" reassured Lorenzo. "I expected that. You don't need to remember. But you were still a Russian girl before you were a rusalka or a raevan and it's important that you hold on to your heritage. It's all part of the adjusting process. That's- That's what I'm here for, to help you adjust. And starting tomorrow, we'll do just that. One step at a time."
Just then, Lorenzo's phone rang. He and the rusalka looked at it, then he looked up at her apologetically.
"Are you okay for now, Niemoj?" he asked.
"I- yes! I'm okay," the rusalka blurted. Lorenzo turned on his heel and left, speaking on the phone and grabbing his coat as he did so.
The rusalka watched him drive away from her window. She then set the flowers and her phone and the highlighters on the desk in the room, her room, and began to study Lorenzo's lists and lists of names.
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 12:01 am
"Can you hear me?"
The man looked up groggily, nodding.
"You were dead for an hour or so there," Lorenzo told him gently, helping him into a sitting position. "My name is Lorenzo Fisch, and I'm a licensed necromancer specializing in accidental deaths and pet revivals."
"...Pet revivals..." the man groaned, rubbing his temples.
Lorenzo nodded encouragingly and looked up at a concerned girl with dark hair who was crouching next to his client gingerly. "Paula here called me. Do you remember anything about yourself?"
"Don't remember anything."
"That's fine, that's normal," Lorenzo reassured. "The mind tries to reject the traumatic experience, and it takes a while to remember anything at all after being resurrected. We'll stay right here with you, and when you feel like you remember something, let me know." He stood up and swayed slightly, struck by the drain that a full resurrection entailed. Paula reached over to him, lending a steadying arm.
"Thanks for coming out here," she said shakily.
"No problem," Lorenzo said. "It's that time of year." She looked at him, horrified, and he gave a nervous little laugh. "Sorry. It is, though."
She frowned, crinkling the copy of the emergency contract she had signed moments before Lorenzo had resurrected her guest. "Do many people call the necromancer in an emergency?" she asked faintly.
"You did."
"I was drunk. I panicked."
"How'd you get the number?"
"Google," she admitted.
"Number one search result for 'necromancer, durem, fast'," Lorenzo said.
"I wanna stand up now," the man announced woozily, and Lorenzo and Paula rushed over to help him. Shakily, he managed to get to his feet, and he squinted at Paula.
"She looks familiar."
"That's because she's your neighbor," Lorenzo replied simply. "And as soon as you remember her, I'll leave you in her care."
"Will his memory come back soon?" asked Paula worriedly.
"Depends. I'll leave you with a contact number if he's still missing details by the end of next week, but he should remember everything important within the next few hours. The memory only really stalls in exceptional cases, or when the corpse has been dead for a long time. He was only gone an hour, so I'm not concerned."
They waited in tight-lipped silence as the man tried walking shakily, and began to pick things up in his apartment to examine them. Because a tight-lipped silence could only go so far, they both took out their phones to check on them, Lorenzo out of concern that the rusalka might have texted him, until it occurred to him that he hadn't even spent the time to show her how to send a text. He remembered her face as he left her in her new room, and he felt a guilty knot form in his stomach. But he couldn't put getting to know her over the life of another human being, after all, and the money from this resurrection was going towards supporting her lifestyle now anyway.
He looked up at the man again, struggling to regain his memories. It had startled him, even though Cesc had said it was likely, even though he knew it was likely, that the rusalka hadn't remembered anything. He remembered every detail of his soul capture so vividly, even though dealing with the supernatural was more usual for him than most people. He didn't know what to make of the rusalka's memory loss. It could be like Cesc said, that she'd never remember, and that would be a blessing, but if it was as Lorenzo experienced it--
"Paula Deacon?" the man asked suddenly, squinting and looking at her carefully. "From next door?"
"That's me!" said Paula, seizing on the recollection. "Remember, we met when--"
"--You played your music so damn loud and I asked you what the band was!" the man finished.
Lorenzo sighed, relieved to be done. "If anything else happens, call me. I'll send you an invoice this week."
If it was as Lorenzo experienced it with the undead clients he counseled, it was a trauma the rusalka had pushed far out of her mind. Four hundred years was a long time to be undead, and he couldn't imagine how far a trauma like that would be buried if it lingered still after revival. And if even a fragment of the memory of being a rusalka caught up with the frei he cared for, as a necromancer, it was his job to make sure she'd be able to handle it.
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Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 7:04 pm
Anfisa, Russian, meaning flower girl.
The rusalka looked at her hands and whispered "Anfisa, Anfisa, Anfisa," testing the name and shaking her head. She couldn't picture herself being an 'Anfisa' even though the friendly handwriting underneath informed her that this was one of Lorenzo's Top Picks.
In fact, she could barely imagine herself at all. There was a mirror standing in her room, which reflected everything within the room back out, but when she floated in front of it, the image did not even ripple, and the room shone right through her. And, try as she might, when she looked down at herself, she could only get the vaguest impression that everything was where it should be. It was only when she looked down and said a name from the list that she could get a clearer sense of what she looked like, but the impression she got changed each time. "Anfisa," evoked slender, pale arms, and flowery ribbons. "Agneza, Slavic, meaning chaste, or lamb," brought to mind a girl with rosy skin and stiff, creasing ribbons, twisting neatly around the thin blue line of light that Lorenzo had explained in the car was a rune which powered her. "Isa," he explained, which was also, she noted, a possible name in the handwritten packet he had left her. She said it aloud and got an impression of icy, bluish fingers. Recoiling, she decided that she didn't like it.
After fighting her way through A, B, C, and D, the rusalka's head was spinning from all the different versions of herself that she had processed in just half an hour, and she floated over to the thickly embroidered comforter on her traditional Russian bed, burying her face in it and wailing. She wanted to ask someone their opinion, or find out why the mirror wasn't working, or else just stop for the night and let her eyes take a break from the constantly shifting shapes and shades of her limbs as she whispered each new name to them. Lorenzo wasn't home yet, and the house was dark and silent, so she shut her bedroom door tightly. The Russian decor cast harsh shadows onto the rug floor, and she curled up in the smallest corner of her bed.
"Lorenzo," she whispered, looking down at her body. Nothing changed, as if it knew that name was someone else's.
"Zeke," she tried next. It was the same.
"Valentine?" she tried. A rush of pink and the ribbons of the small bouquet from Lorenzo. She took one of her highlighters and dutifully wrote it at the very bottom of Lorenzo's list.
"Rusalka," she said, looking down at her torso again, but the word was a nonsense-word to her. Nothing changed.
There was a bookshelf in the room, and she ran a finger along the spines, stopping at the biggest one and pulling it down into her arms. It was an illustrated Slavic mythology book, she saw, like the mythology books in Zeke's office, and she opened it eagerly, hoping to find the word there. She flipped through quickly, stopping at any drawing which looked pretty, and finally found a picture of a pale, naked girl with blue hair, emerging from the water at night.
Rusalka.
She looked down and noticed that her hair, which she had only sort-of known was there before, did look blue. Floating back to the bed, she read the description written neatly above the image.
"Rusalki are water nymphs born from maidens who have died in or near water. Many rusalki are born from women who die of heartbreak or kill themselves, and the undead rusalka who lives in water primarily serves to entice and lure men to their deaths."
The rusalka breathed in sharply and pushed the book aside. Grabbing for the list of names again, she said, "Anfisa!" and whipped her gaze downward to see what had changed.
She saw a flowery girl, but this time something was different. The skin looked waxy and cold, and her fingers were blue as they had been when she said "Isa." Her breathing grew sharper.
"Agneza!" she said, then stumbled willy nilly through the list, grabbing at straws. "Elena! Lyudmila! Valentine!"
For every name, the impression of waxy white skin remained, a permanent feature that she had imposed on herself the moment that the word 'rusalka' had become a known quantity which applied to her. The rusalka cast the list aside as well and sat on the edge of the bed, staring right into the mirror that reflected the comforter, the tapestries, the imposing furniture, everything about this new room, her room, but did not reflect her.
She did not look back down at her body again that night.
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Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2016 12:18 am
The rusalka did not remember falling asleep, but she woke up to the sound of Lorenzo cooking himself breakfast. The smell of bacon wafted into her little bedroom, and she got up with a jolt, wondering for the second time since she was born the day before, where she was. When she remembered, she groaned, and sank back down onto the bed, burying her face in the traditional Russian pillows.
She only had ten or twenty minutes more of fitful sleep before Lorenzo called, rapping on the door. "Niemoj," he said gently, "Are you awake?"
The rusalka debated whether to respond to 'Niemoj', but she had told him it was fine to call her that for now, and after the night she had had, she was more than sick of thinking about names. "I'm up," she groaned, opening the door and yawning. "Morning, Lorenzo."
Lorenzo looked almost as surprised to see her as she had been to wake up in his house, and for a moment it made her feel better to think that he was just as uncomfortable adapting to the situation as she was. He rallied himself and replied, "Good morning. If you get showered and ready, we'll head to Barton today to visit Fisch & Co. legal representatives."
"Sounds like a real time," the rusalka said, letting Lorenzo steer her to the bathroom.
"You called them last year, even if you don't remember it," Lorenzo replied. "There are plenty of people there who care about your well being, and they'll be thrilled to see you safe and well."
"Well," the rusalka repeated, thinking of the incidents of the night before. "Lorenzo, I-"
"Yes?"
"-I want you to pick a name for me."
Lorenzo stopped in his tracks, taken aback. "Why?" he asked. "You seemed enthusiastic about it last night."
The rusalka paused for a moment. "I thought it would be fun, but it's boring," she whined. "There are too many names, and I- I don't really care anymore."
"Names are important," Lorenzo admonished. "Especially in necromancy. If I choose your name, it'll be less powerful."
"Why?" the rusalka demanded. "You're a necromancer."
"Because you're just my client," Lorenzo replied. "You should chose your own name so it's more strongly connected to you."
"I don't care," the rusalka demurred.
"Try to care," Lorenzo said. "When I met you in Russia, you had lived so long that you had forgotten even your name. Back then, you cared about losing it."
"Well, maybe I'm different now," the rusalka sulked.
"It's an important chance to start afresh," Lorenzo insisted. "You'll be glad you put some thought into it in the long run."
"If I'm your client, you can't tell me what to do," the rusalka said.
"Then I can't tell you what your name is," Lorenzo parried smoothly.
The rusalka pursed her lips and floated into the bathroom, letting Lorenzo explain the shower and trying it for herself after he beat a hasty retreat. Floating under the stream of warm water, she felt her cold, clammy skin and wondered what kind of name she could possibly feel positive about.
"Niemoj," Lorenzo called as she dried off, and she hurried up, floating down to meet him in the car.
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Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2016 10:43 am
The law offices of Fisch and Co. were nothing like Lorenzo's office, which was nothing like the Lab, and the rusalka found herself trying hard to adapt to another strange environment as she sat in the waiting room, struggling to get a grasp on which of these places was supposed to represent some sort of 'normal'. Lorenzo, however, seemed perfectly at home, whereas in the Lab he had seemed more like he was struggling to get a grip on the situation. Vesna watched him read home and garden magazines out of the corner of her eye as she practiced locking and unlocking the cell phone he had insisted she take with her when they went out.
Even with an appointment, they had to wait for half an hour. The office was full of people, most of them with waxy white skin the way hers looked now, or missing limbs, or long scars. The rusalka tried not to look up at them too often, but many of them seemed to be staring at her. This was new too, and while the day before, she might have appreciated the attention, this morning she found that she wasn't in the mood to deal with it.
At last the door opened, and a short, slender middle aged woman came out, asking "Lorenzo Fisch?"
It wasn't until Lorenzo and the rusalka had been led to a spacious and well-decorated office that the little woman turned around and embraced them both. "Here she is!" she said delightedly, looking the rusalka up and down. "And what a lovely young woman she turned out to be."
After the evening she had, the rusalka felt buoyed by the praise, and floated a little more lightly, smiling for the first time that day. She felt a stab of anxiety though when the woman stepped back and asked, "I'm Nicolina, Lorenzo's mother. What's your name?"
"I..." the rusalka began, and stopped. "I'm thinking about it." Lorenzo seemed pleased by the statement. She wished she had a leg to trip him with.
"There's no rush," said Nicolina. "Names are important." Standing up, she pulled out some files from her desk, straightening them to bring over, and said, "I wish I could tell you your old name and maybe help the process along, but my law offices weren't able to dig up anything on who you used to be last year when we were advocating for you. Whoever you were, my dear, you died a long, long time ago."
"That's fine!" the rusalka interjected quickly. "It's fine. I don't even remember it, so..."
"No worries, that's fairly common. My husband didn't remember anything for a year after he was resurrected." She nodded over at Lorenzo, and said, "He took it hard, poor dear."
"Mother!" Lorenzo said, turning red. "That's not important. Anyway, it's uncertain whether Niemoj ever will remember her past. Most raevans don't."
"Niemoj?" asked Nicolina lightly.
"A placeholder name," Lorenzo explained.
"Then, Niemoj... Do you mind?"
"Ah- no!" the rusalka said, but she felt frustration bubble up inside her. Great. Now two people were calling her by the stupid nickname.
"Niemoj, there are just a few forms that I need you to sign to tie up the loose ends of the contract you agreed to as a rusalka," Nicolina continued. "But if you don't remember anything and you don't have a name yet, maybe it's best to have Lorenzo fill you in on the details first."
"No, that's fine!" the rusalka said hurriedly. "I can read and everything. Let me see them." Nicolina handed her the papers and she dug in, but ten minutes later, she found that she was just nursing a headache.
"I'm sorry, these words are actually a little advanced..." she trailed off. If her skin had been at all warm, she'd be blushing. She handed the contracts quietly back to Nicolina, who nodded sympathetically.
"It's nothing serious," she said, "But if you're going to live with a necromancer, I'd like you to begin to develop an understanding of contracts. I'll make a copy of these for you to bring home, and once you understand them, sign them and send them back to me. Does that sound right, Niemoj?"
"Mmm," the rusalka agreed quietly.
"When you've had a few days, come visit at the house sometime," Nicolina encouraged. "You may be Lorenzo's client, but my husband and I want to help you settle in, too."
"Thanks," said the rusalka, a little more warmly. Behind her, Lorenzo stood up.
"That's all for now, then, I think?" he asked his mother.
"I think... ah!" She turned back to the rusalka. "Lorenzo got you a phone, yes?" The rusalka handed her the cellphone, and she looked it over. "It's a cute model, for one that Lorenzo picked," she joked. "I'll put in my work number and my personal number, and if you need anything, you can call me anytime." Her fingers moved across the screen much more adeptly than the rusalka's, and when she was done, she took a small, colourful bag out of her pocket.
"One of our secretaries, Guinevere, heard you were coming today and picked this up for you as a present. She's the one who suggested we try to rebirth you through a Gaian sponsorship program."
The rusalka opened it and found a small black plastic cat attached to a colourful strap. Her eyes lit up. "Cute!" She tried to put it on her wrist, but the strap was too small, and she frowned. Nicolina laughed.
"It's a phone charm," she explained. "She gave you this, too." She stuck an adhesive plastic square onto the back of the phone and then looped the string through the gap in the middle. "There."
The rusalka looked at the phone charm and smiled. "I love it," she said earnestly. "Can you thank her for me?"
"Of course," said Nicolina. "And Niemoj, call me if anything comes up."
"I will!" said the rusalka, despite that so far she had only barely mastered locking and unlocking the phone. "Thanks."
"It's nice," said Nicolina, "To finally meet you."
The rusalka smiled. "It's nice to meet you, too."
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Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2016 1:45 am
The rusalka held up the phone she still wasn't quite sure how to use in the moonlight, watching the cat charm as it dangled and swayed, catching the light. There was a meow from the door as Lorenzo's cat, the cold, undead Buddy, pushed his way into the room and jumped up next to her.
She had wanted to go see more after she had finished with Mrs. Fisch. But Lorenzo had insisted they go straight back, driving her past all sorts of interesting things and herding her back into the brownstone building that she was supposed to call home.
"It's for the best," he had assured her. "We still don't know how much your soul affected your physical development. Until we know, it's best to adapt you to living slowly, just to be safe."
And she had agreed, just like she had agreed to being called "Niemoj", just like she had, apparently, agreed to being born as a raevan at all, months ago, in a marsh, in Russia.
She rolled onto her side, and Buddy came up to her, pressing his nose against hers. She reached out to pet him, and her cold, white arm glowed in the moonlight, standing out in the shadows of her room much more sharply than the cat charm had. Buddy, cold as he was, didn't care, and rubbed up under her arm, purring.
"What could happen?" she had asked.
And he had answered, "Say you get cut. For a living person, that's not a problem. Their cut will scab over and heal. But for an undead person, that cut will never heal, and whatever blood is left in their body will leak out of the cut over time. Or-"
"Ugh, stop, okay. That's gross, Lorenzo."
"It's not gross," Lorenzo had corrected her patiently. "It's just different."
But it was gross. And, she thought now, reaching out to scratch Buddy's ears, it was a gross thing that her body did. Probably. But the sight of her cold, pale limbs demanded of her: Do you really want to risk trying to prove that wrong?
She buried her face in Buddy's fur and he struggled, wriggling out of her grasp and out the door again.
"Traitor," she whined, watching him go. Outside the door, in the direction of the living room, she could hear the sound of voices, but she didn't bother to go out and greet them. She had seen them come in, undead friends of Lorenzo's who were surely discussing undead rights and necromantic theory and a hundred things she didn't know about in conversations she couldn't contribute to. It didn't matter. She remembered waiting in Mrs. Fisch's office that morning. She was a little lonely, but she was sick of the living dead staring at her.
"They just don't know what to make of you," Lorenzo had explained when she had complained to him.
Picking up her discarded phone, she unlocked it and locked it again, fiddling idly with the phone charm. It was simple and cute, and it made her feel at ease. Everything else she owned, except the flowers, which were beginning to wilt, was imposing and intimidating, stately and traditional. She wondered which of these types of things was supposed to suit her, and whether it was bad that the fact that the things Lorenzo thought should suit her didn't quite feel right. She wondered how many conversations she would sit out, half-hearing from down the hallway because she couldn't understand. And she wondered, again, what kind of name could make the kind of raevan that felt like she belonged to any one of these places, with any of these people she had met so far.
The voices faded as the night grew deep. She looked into the mirror and wished she knew what to make of herself.
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Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 12:39 am
"All right, now unclench your fist."
The rusalka obediently unclenched her fist, just as she had been doing with each of her limbs for the past half hour.
"Now move your pinky."
She complied again, and he made a note of it.
"Blink for me, please?"
A blink.
"Now wink."
The rusalka winked somewhat dramatically, leaning in close with a conspiratorial smile.
"Niemoj, come on," Lorenzo said, lowering his clipboard. "We have to test your reflexes seriously."
"But I'm bored!" the rusalka insisted, floating up towards the ceiling in protest. "I can move my limbs just fine."
Lorenzo consulted the clipboard. "It certainly seems like none of them have been unduly affected by your soul," he admitted. "But if it's not fun for you, we can figure out another way."
"Like what?" the rusalka asked suspiciously, floating a little closer to the ground again.
"Well, for young children and fresh undead, I usually get them to dance," Lorenzo answered.
"I don't have feet," pointed out the rusalka.
"Then I'll lead," Lorenzo offered, holding out his hand.
The rusalka hesitated, but she reached out for it after a moment, deciding that anything was worth a shot if it didn't mean another hour of imperceptibly flexing her muscles. She noticed Lorenzo flinched when her hand touched his, and she fought back the urge to withdraw it. She could feel the heat of his palm, and was extra-aware of how cold and moist her own was.
If he found her touch unpleasant, though, Lorenzo didn't actually say anything. He went to the radio and turned through the stations, stopping on one that was playing a swing song. "Okay, Niemoj," he said. "Let's test your arms."
He swung her outwards, and she pulled back in, suddenly caught up in the music.
"Grip," Lorenzo said, and she squeezed his hand.
They spun across the room as Lorenzo listed a litany of gestures that worked into the dance, which was more made up than professional, just a series of movements which were unbearable on a checklist, but somehow enjoyable when set to music and treated like a game. It was almost easy to forget why they were doing it, except for the heat of his hand against her cold and slimy palms.
The station eventually cut to a commercial break, and Lorenzo slowed their spinning, circling back to the coffee table where the checklist lay waiting to be completed. He glanced back down at it, and offered two more commands.
"Frown," Lorenzo asked, and the rusalka pulled a grimace. This one was easy. It felt like she hadn't been happy ever since she got here- everything changing so fast, even her own body, and often in ways that she felt uncomfortable with. It was almost cathartic to pull a funny face to express her frustration in front of Lorenzo.
"Smile."
She hesitated for a moment, looking into his eyes. He nodded encouragingly and gave her a smile of his own.
She couldn't help it. She smiled back.
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Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2016 10:58 pm
"Today I'm going back to my regular practice," Lorenzo announced calmly over breakfast.
The rusalka looked up from where she had been reading the newspaper, having mostly skipped over it to get to the comics section.
"But you've been seeing people already!" she protested. "You see people even more than that?"
"I see people every day," Lorenzo replied. "In fact, my office hours are from 9-5 excluding Sundays."
"Why those days?" the rusalka demanded.
"People tend to find it objectionable to do necromancy on Sunday," Lorenzo explained. "But it gives me a day off."
"Oh." The rusalka looked down at the toast she had been buttering for Lorenzo, now decidedly overbuttered. A thought occured to her, and she looked up eagerly. "So are we done with my tests?"
"Not quite," replied Lorenzo, and the rusalka groaned. He had tested everything from her reflexes to her reading comprehension. The tests wouldn't be so bad if they were at all challenging, but they were both simple and agonizingly slow.
"I can take a break at least, right?" she asked, setting the toast aside and pulling out some clementines to peel.
"Not quite," Lorenzo hazarded carefully, and raised his hands when the rusalka made a small noise of protest. "But we will be testing something slightly different. And you'll get to take a break from me."
"I'll get to meet someone new?" the rusalka exclaimed, perking up.
"Well, technically, you've met her before," Lorenzo said. "You just don't remember." The rusalka gave Lorenzo a very strange look, and he explained, "she was my translator in Russia. She was there when we captured your soul. Her name is Dina and she'll be testing whether you remember any Russian."
"That'll be a quick test, because I don't remember anything," the rusalka retorted.
"Well, if that is the case," Lorenzo continued, "She'll be tutoring you."
"All the way from Russia?" said the rusalka doubtfully.
"Over Skype!" Lorenzo insisted, pulling out a laptop. "I got you this."
"A great rectangle," the rusalka encouraged, holding it hesitantly. "Much bigger than the last one you gave me." Opening it carefully, she held it up to her ear like she had seen Lorenzo do with his phone. He laughed and reached over for it.
"It's not a smartphone, although it does a lot of the same things. This is a laptop. A computer. I was going to walk you through how to use it more thoroughly, but the tests we did took longer than I thought. For now I'll just teach you how to use Skype." He turned the computer on by pressing a button, which had a sticker on it that said 'on/off' in his handwriting. The screen lit up, and after a moment, a picture of waterlilies appeared.
"Ah!" the rusalka said. "Pretty."
"That's your desktop," Lorenzo explained. "You can change it if you want--" he pushed her hand away, and added, "--later."
Double clicking on a blue icon at the bottom of the screen, he said, "This is how you open Skype. There's Dina, I added her already." He pointed to an icon with a green check next to it. "She's online waiting for you already. She's been anxious to meet you."
Sure enough, a window appeared saying that Dina was calling. Lorenzo accepted the call, and a pleasant, tiny Russian girl appeared in a box on the program.
"Good morning to you, Mister Fisch!" she said cheerfully, waving out at them. "It's morning for you, yes?" The rusalka gaped at her, looking back between her and Lorenzo.
"Can she see us?" she asked.
"Is that her?" replied the small woman, and the rusalka startled. "I can hear you, but I cannot see you-- I think there must be a problem with the camera."
"Hold on," Lorenzo said, and tilted the screen away from the rusalka. "Can you see me now?"
"Ah! Yes," Dina said, her face lighting up. The rusalka floated over to see, and Dina's brow furrowed. "There you go again."
"It's the rusalka. We think she may eat reflections, since mirrors don't reflect her or anyone else in them around her, but it might go for digital reflections, too."
"Well, even if I cannot see her, I can hear her." Dina paused. "Is she there now?"
"I'm here!" the rusalka pitched in, entranced. "Hello Dina!"
"Hello there!" Dina gushed. "It's so good to finally meet you, even like this. What shall I call you? Miss...?"
"That's fine for now," the rusalka said quickly before Lorenzo could weigh in. "I'm still choosing a name."
"I wish I could have chosen my name," Dina offered. "I never liked it."
"It's hard," the rusalka whined. "There are a lot of names, even just Slavic and Russian ones."
"Well, maybe I can help," Dina said. Lorenzo cleared his throat.
"Dina, I actually have to--"
"Yes, yes, Mister Fisch! Get back to your job." She waved a hand through the screen. "I can take it from here. And before I help with any names, I will do the job you are paying me for. After all, I am the best there is."
"So I've heard," Lorenzo shot back. "Will you be okay, Niemoj?"
"Niemoj!" Dina cut in. "Are you calling her that name?"
"For now," Lorenzo answered.
"Well, that name is awful. She will be fine with me, Mister Fisch. We are already great friends. Isn't that right, Miss?"
The rusalka blinked. Lorenzo had never called her anything but a client, and Zeke had just called her by the endearing but impersonal 'sweetheart'. 'Friend' was a new one for her. She had been alive for four days, but she had yet to make a friend.
"I'd like for us to be friends," she offered hesitantly, and looked back at Lorenzo.
He smiled. "Good start. Now say it in Russian."
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Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 12:04 pm
"So it appears," said Dina's tinny voice on the other side of the Skype call, sounding a little weary through the interference, "That after hours of testing, you really do not remember any Russian at all."
"I'm sorry," the rusalka muttered. She hadn't been embarrassed by the fact that she didn't remember any Russian until someone sat her down and tested her as if she was supposed to know it. "I thought maybe some of the words sounded familiar," she offered hopefully.
Dina laughed. "It's okay, Miss!" she reassured. "In Russia I had to translate everything you said into English. Now I must teach you Russian. How the tables turn!"
The rusalka giggled half-heartedly, but hearing Dina joke about it did make her feel a little better. "I don't know about any of the Russian things Lorenzo's showed me," she admitted. "I don't remember you either. Um, sorry."
"That is quite all right," Dina said, waving the matter aside in her tiny video box. "When we met, you were not having a wonderful time, you know? It's better in my opinion to forget sad things and move on with life."
"There are lots of little reminders," the rusalka said, looking down at her pale arms with a grimace. "I don't want to feel like a rusalka anymore. I hate it."
"Well then," Dina said, "You should choose a really good first name. One that reminds you of the kind of person you want to be!"
"Who I want to be..." the rusalka said thoughtfully. "I tried all the names Lorenzo wrote for me, but none of them really felt right, I guess. Or, like," she scrunched up her face. "They were all nice, but I didn't really know which one felt like me. There wasn't really a moment where things clicked."
"Why not?" Dina asked. "What kind of person do you want to be? Maybe if we start with that, it'll be easier to choose a name to fit."
"I guess I don't really know that either?" the rusalka admitted. "I've met Zeke and Lorenzo and Lorenzo's mom and you, but I feel really different from all of you. Um," she looked down at her body, which was more of a torso floating in space, and a decidedly undead looking torso at that. She knew she didn't want to be undead, but unfortunately, that didn't seem likely to change anytime soon. "I guess, I'd like to feel pretty even though I'm kind of weird looking? Or like, I guess, just... you know, I guess, just to like myself as much as I like other people."
There was a long silence at the other end of the call.
"Well," Dina said, "I do not know what you look like right now. But I think that you sound like a very likable young lady who thinks hard about her problems and is sorry when she can't remember people in circumstances where remembering would be almost impossible." She hesitated again, and asked, "Have you really only met four people?"
"I met some of Lorenzo's clients, too," the rusalka said dismissively, "But only briefly."
"You are... What is the word for what you are?"
"Rusalka," the rusalka said glumly.
"No, the other one."
"Oh! ...Raevan?"
"That's the one," Dina agreed. "You are a raevan now, yes? Is Zeke a raevan?"
"No, but he has a raevan." the rusalka said.
"Maybe if you feel weird about yourself, it would be good to meet another raevan." Dina encouraged.
"Lorenzo says I need to be careful, so I'm not allowed out yet, just in case," the rusalka rebuffed dutifully.
"Is that a raevan thing?" Dina asked.
"No, it's because I'm part-undead," the rusalka admitted reluctantly.
"Then why can't a raevan come to visit you?" Dina asked.
The rusalka's eyes widened. "Come to visit me..." she said. "Do you think that Lorenzo knows a raevan I could meet??"
"He had many pictures of raevans and guardians when he came to see you in Russia," Dina informed her. "He must have met them and asked them to take those pictures to show you. He was telling you about all the people that you could meet, and that they were good people, so surely if these people are so good, they will come to see you when you cannot go see them. After all--"
"--I'm not just a rusalka!" gushed the rusalka frei, floating a little higher. "All the Russian things and everything-- but I'm not just undead. I'm a raevan! Dina, I can find out how to be a cool raevan! And when I know what kind of raevan I want to be, then I can choose a name!" For the first time in days, her limbs suddenly felt very light. She spun around and said, "I'm going to tell Lorenzo right away, thank you so much, Dina!"
"Wait!" said Dina, but the rusalka was gone, and the video was restored to the Skype call, showing Lorenzo's empty living room. Dina typed the materials that the rusalka would need for their tutoring lessons into the chatbox, then copied them into an email to send to Lorenzo. She paused, then typed, i'm glad to help into the chatbox.
The video closed and Dina ended the call.
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Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 12:10 pm
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