Lost Sanctuary

Chapter 2

Sally Jean Baker was incorrigible. Nina groaned inwardly as she traipsed after her mother from dress shop to shoe shop to hat shop. Realistically, they didn't have the money to spare on the kind of outfit her mother was putting together one piece at a time, but Nina would never underestimate her mother's desire to gloat.

'Well, if she isn't going to make you a bridesmaid, we're going to make sure you're the best dressed at this wedding, regardless!'

'I didn't... don't want to be a bridesmaid.'

'Tsk, of course you do. You deserve to be.'

'Mum, it's her wedding, she is allowed to decide her own wedding party.'

'Your father—'

'My father is barely involved in the planning and spent enough of his good graces on getting you invited.'

Sally Baker had the audacity to look shocked at this. Nina rolled her eyes at her mother's back. Their conversations almost always followed this apparently preordained path. A disgruntled mumble floated on the wind toward Nina though she didn't have the energy to respond. Her mother had been trying her patience all morning; asking every conceivable question about her degree and future plans to which Nina had very few satisfying answers. With every question Nina felt the knot in her stomach tighten. The tension in her limbs pulled taught by every huff and tut her mother uttered. She didn't know how to voice the knowledge, the dread that had taken residence deep in her core over the last few months, that she had lost all confidence in the path she was following. Her degree and the weight of her responsibility to excel had started to feel more like a burden than a blessing as she applied aimlessly for one internship and research assistantship after another. As the first in her family to attend university that alone had felt a considerable feat. However, upon arrival it became clear she would also have to do well to justify her families investment in her and her education. Rather than voice any of this, Nina continued following her mother.

After convincing her mother not to come home with her to make her lunch and help her put away the new purchases, Nina meandered home. It was a half hour walk or a ten-minute bus ride. She opted to walk, hoping the journey might help ease the disquiet limning her bones. As she rounded a corner, nestled between tall, commercial high-rises of steel and glass, appeared a small copse of trees. The dense vegetation crowded around a well and an altar of sorts. The clearing between the trees was perhaps little more than five-metres across and the canopy crowded the sky above, filtering the noon-day sun in an opalescent green and gold dapple. Standing in the centre of the clearing little could be heard of the rushing traffic mere stride-lengths away. The low whistle of the wind through the trees and the dull drone of insects sat heavy and incessant in the humid air. The carefully arranged ring of stones that constituted the well at the centre of the clearing stood at approximately a metre off the ground, shielding the onyx pool far, far below. Nina had never seen anyone care for this space, tucked as it was in an inobtrusive recess of the city, but she had also never seen a leaf or plastic wrapper out of place. At the very back of the space, behind the well and between two particularly tall trees, stood the altar. Altar was perhaps generous. A carefully arranged stack of smooth, grey, approximately rectangular stones, maybe a metre long and half-metre wide squatted between the two willows flanking it. Each stone bore hundreds of minute markings in what appeared to be, but could not be, chalk. Nina had come to the clearing once before, as a child, having discovered it after running away from her family in the middle of an outing when she was eight.

Mama and Papa were shouting. They did this more often than not, these days. Nina watched in dismay as the other patrons in the restaurant stared and grimaced at her parents as they vented their frustrations in the middle of this public establishment. She pushed the food around her plate. They were still arguing after they had paid and risen to leave. Her parents didn't notice when she slipped out the door and onto the street. Nina spied the sliver of green trees peeking out between two buildings a little further down. She spared a glance in the direction of her parents who hadn't noticed her absence yet and skipped for the glade. As she vanished between the trees she heard her name echo along the pavement and fall instantly silent as the trees closed behind her. She had never much considered the impossibility of this.