Volume 1: [Perseverance 💜]
Chapter 1: Purple Soul
Act 5: Days with Synn
The morning after the grave, Paige opens her notebook to the very last page and draws three small lines in the corner.
One for the day she fell. One for the day Synn showed her the caves. One for today.
She isn't sure why she does it. Maybe because down here, there's no sunrise and no sunset, and no school bell to tell her when the day starts or ends. Without the lines, one day could melt into the next, and she might never know how long she's been gone.
So every morning, before anything else, she adds another one.
Every morning starts the same way, too. When Paige walks into the living room, Synn is already at the table, and two cups of tea are already waiting, glowing softly in the candlelight.
Synn: Good morning.
Paige: Good morning.
Most mornings, that's all they say. It's enough.
The scrapes on Paige's palms from the fall take a few days to heal. Synn wraps them in strips of clean cloth that first night, and she checks them every morning after tea, turning Paige's hands over in her bony fingers as carefully as she handled the bones on the pile.
Synn: Better.
Paige: You say that every day.
Synn: Because it's true every day.
After tea, there's work to do.
Some days, they walk to the flower cave with a basket. Synn shows Paige how to pick the tea flowers without hurting them: only the ones with wide-open petals, and never more than three from the same cluster, so the rest can keep growing. Back at the house, they lay the flowers on the shelves to dry, in long rows on old cloth. After a few days, the petals turn thin and pale, almost like paper, and Synn pours them into the jars.
Paige likes that work. It's quiet, and her hands always smell sweet afterward.
And every day, no matter what else they do, they walk to the cavern with the pile of bones.
Synn always does the same thing. She takes a single flower from her pouch, lays it at the bottom of the pile, and stays there for a moment with her head bowed. Paige waits a few steps behind her, holding her notebook, trying not to be in the way.
On the sixth day, Paige brings a flower of her own.
She picked it that morning in the flower cave, when Synn wasn't looking, and she's kept it in her sweater pocket ever since. Now she takes it out. It's a little crushed, and it doesn't glow as brightly as Synn's. But it's still glowing.
She kneels and lays it down next to Synn's.
Synn doesn't say anything. But on the walk home, she walks a little closer to Paige than usual, close enough that their shoulders almost touch.
The nights are harder.
When the candle is out and the house is dark, Paige lies in bed and stares at the stone ceiling, and she thinks about everything up there. The school. The gym. The coach. Her own bed, with her own blanket. She wonders if anyone has noticed her empty seat. If anyone is looking for her. If anyone up there is lying awake too, wondering where she went.
Some nights, the thoughts get so loud that she can't sleep at all.
Somehow, Synn always knows. On those nights, Paige hears soft footsteps in the hallway, the quiet clink of the kettle, and then a cup of warm tea appears on the little table beside her bed. Synn never says a word about it. She just leaves the tea and goes back to her room.
Paige remembers what Synn told her in the flower cave. Every night, they made me a cup of this tea to help me sleep.
She drinks it slowly. It always works.
In the evenings, Synn tells stories.
It starts almost by accident. One night, Paige asks what Synn's grandmother was like, and Synn is quiet for so long that Paige thinks she won't answer. Then Synn sets her cup down and starts talking, and she doesn't stop until the candle burns out.
After that, it becomes a habit. Every evening, after the last cup of tea, Paige opens her notebook to a clean page, and Synn tells her something new.
She tells Paige about her grandmother, who was strict and stubborn and told the best stories Synn ever heard.
She tells her about her mother, who hummed while she made tea and always burned the first cup.
She tells her about the time before the war, when the caves under the mountain were still open to the sky, and the creatures who lived in them could walk up to the surface whenever they wanted. About markets where creatures and humans sold things side by side. About a river at the foot of the mountain, where kids from both sides used to swim together in the summer, and nobody thought it was strange.
Paige writes it all down. Every name, every detail, every small thing. Page after page fills with Synn's words in Paige's neat handwriting, until her pencil is worn down to a stub and Synn has to dig a new one out of a drawer.
Sometimes, when Synn finishes a story, Paige reads it back to her. Synn listens with her head tilted, the same way she looked at the rabbit drawing that first night.
Synn: You wrote it exactly the way I said it.
Paige: That's the point. So it stays.
Synn looks at the pages for a long moment.
Synn: Nobody has written any of this down in a very long time. Maybe ever.
Paige thinks about the Church, and the fairy tale, and how easily a whole history can disappear when nobody writes it down. She holds the notebook a little tighter.
Some nights, Synn asks the questions instead.
Synn: What's it like up there now?
Paige has to think about it. Then she tells her about the town, with its cars and stores and streetlights that never turn off. About the school, with its bells and lockers and a gym full of shouting. About phones that can talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Synn: It sounds loud.
Paige: It is. That's why I like the forest.
Synn: And here?
Paige looks around the little stone house. The candle. The jars on the shelves. The two cups on the table.
Paige: Here is quiet.
She doesn't say the rest out loud. That it's the good kind of quiet. That some nights, it almost feels like home.
And there's one thing she doesn't tell Synn at all: the idea she had at the grave, about the barrier and the humans who built it. She has written it on a page near the back of her notebook, where Synn won't see it, and she reads it again some nights before she falls asleep.
She isn't ready to say it out loud.
Not yet.
Then there's the practice.
On the fourth day, Synn shows Paige something she hadn't noticed before: a narrow opening at the back of the house, hidden behind an old curtain next to the stove. Behind it, a short, low passage leads straight out into the tunnels.
Synn: If anyone knocks, you don't go out the front. You go out here. Left, then right, then straight to the crack. Take your cup. Take your notebook. Don't stop for anything else.
Paige: And then I wait for your voice.
Synn: Only mine.
They practice every day after that. Synn waits until Paige isn't expecting it, then slips outside and knocks three times on the front door. Knock. Knock. Knock. And Paige runs.
The first time, she trips over the curtain, leaves her cup on the table, and takes the wrong turn in the tunnels. When Synn finally finds her, she's crouched behind a rock that isn't the crack at all.
Synn holds up the cup Paige left behind.
Synn: Two cups means two people.
Paige: I know, I know.
The second time, she remembers the cup but forgets the notebook. The third time, she remembers both, but she's so busy holding on to them that she bumps her head on the low part of the passage. Synn doesn't laugh. Paige is almost completely sure that Synn doesn't laugh.
But little by little, she gets faster.
Cup in one hand, notebook in the other. Through the curtain, left, then right, then sideways into the crack, before Synn can even count to thirty. Then Paige sits in the dark with her knees pulled up, holding her breath, and waits for one voice.
Synn: Paige. It's me.
By the end of the first week, she can do it with her eyes closed. By the end of the second, she sometimes does it in her dreams. More than once, she wakes up already sitting on the edge of her bed, one hand reaching for a cup that isn't there.
On the eleventh day, the knock is real.
Three slow, heavy knocks, like metal against wood.
Paige doesn't think. Her body just moves. Cup. Notebook. Curtain. Left, right, straight. By the time she hears the front door creak open behind her, she's already squeezed into the crack, her heart pounding so loudly that she's sure it's echoing off the walls.
From here, she can't hear what's being said at the house. She can't see anything at all. She thinks about the first time, when she hid in Synn's father's room and left her notebook open on the table. This time, she has everything. This time, there's nothing on the table for anyone to find. Only one cup.
She sits in the dark, holding her cup and her notebook, and counts. One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred.
At four hundred and twelve, footsteps come down the tunnel. Light, careful footsteps. Not heavy metal ones.
Synn: Paige. It's me.
When Paige squeezes back out, Synn is holding the lantern, and for once she looks almost pleased.
Synn: It was a different knight this time. Shorter than the first one, with rusty armor that didn't match and a crack down the front of his helmet. But he was just as tired. He yawned twice before he even asked his question. He didn't come inside. He just asked if I'd seen anything strange, and I said no.
Paige: And he believed you?
Synn: He said they're checking every house twice. Orders.
Then Synn looks down at Paige's hands, and her head tilts a little.
Synn: You remembered your notebook.
Paige: I'm never forgetting it again.
Synn makes a small sound, low and soft, that echoes down the tunnel. It takes Paige a second to understand what it is. It's the first time she has ever heard Synn laugh.
After that, the days keep going. Tea in the morning. Flowers. The grave. Stories at night. One new line in the corner of the last page every single morning, until the lines turn into little bundles of five, and the bundles start to fill up the corner.
Paige gets better at other things too. She learns which tunnels echo and which ones swallow sound. She learns that the floor by the stove creaks if you step on its left side, so she always steps on the right. She learns to brew the tea herself, even if hers never glows quite as brightly as Synn's. And she learns that Synn hums when she thinks no one is listening, just like Synn's mother in the stories.
On the morning of the twenty-first line, Paige sits at the table with her tea and counts the lines twice, just to be sure.
Three weeks.
She has been down here for three whole weeks. It feels like much longer. And, somehow, much shorter.
She's still staring at the page when the knock comes.
But it isn't three slow, heavy knocks.
It's something else. A long, slow scraping sound drags across the front door, from the top all the way to the bottom. Something rough. Something that sounds almost like scales.
Then, from the other side of the door, comes a soft, dry hiss.
Synn's cup stops halfway to the table.
Paige looks at the door. Then at Synn.
This time, Synn doesn't have to say anything at all. Paige is already reaching for her notebook.