Eliza reads the same line of page two for the fourth time. She's usually a quick reader, but her mind is too far gone somewhere else to concentrate.
She's home again. After almost a year.
It smells like wooden, and lilacs, and dust because it hasn't been cleaned, and it makes her stomach turn. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right and Eliza's leg aches as if she had the bullet buried deep once again. She feels the pain, and hears the gunshots, and the screams, and the cries, and the prayers. Her hands start to shake as she holds the book in desperation. She needs to be strong. She needs to be strong.
Suddenly, as she begins to feel tears prickling in her eyes, a soft voice pulls her out of thoughts.
"Eliza?"
She looks at the doorway, trying to find the words to justify her trembling body, but the excuse dies in her throat at the sight of her nurse.
Staring at her with an expression of worry is the absolutely most gorgeous face she has ever seen in her life.
She knew that the shortest girl was pretty just by looking at her eyes, but now that the face mask is gone, Eliza is left to witness the rest of her features, all small, all fitting, all perfect.
The nurse, however, interprets Eliza's silence as a bad sign, so she rushes to her side, kneeling on the floor.
"Is there something wrong? Does it hurt too bad?"
Her voice is rushed, and Eliza knows that she should be muster something, anything to reassure her, but the soldier seems under a spell.
The curve of her nose, her soft cheeks, her plump mouth.
"Do you want me to take you back to the hospital?"
Eliza is brought back at the mention of the place she'd rather never come back to in her life.
"No, no, I'm just... I zoned off, sorry", she stutters, and Jenna looks at her with her features still tinted in worry.
"Really, really, just-"
"Does it hurt, though?" Jenna asks, and Eliza doesn't want to fully lie to those open eyes.
"Slightly".
Jenna nods.
"I will prepare you a bath and apply some herbs on your leg to ease the pain. Meanwhile, I will cook dinner, and- you do not have a maid, do you?"
Eliza purses her lips.
"Not really. That is why everything is... not clean. I'm sorry. I can hire one-"
Jenna denies quickly.
"No, no. I'll deal with it as you take your bath. I'll cook. We'll think about the castle tomorrow, okay?"
She smiles, and Eliza feels like smiling too.
"You really don't have to, Jenna".
"Nonsense, I'm here to work".
She stands up quickly and, almost as an impulse, reaches to squeeze Eliza's hand softly.
The tallest girl swallows.
Jenna's smile could light up the whole room by itself.
-
Jenna wakes up in the most comfortable bed she has slept in her entire life. She rolls over under three blankets. She only needs two, actually, with the beginning of a prosperous spring allowing the temperature to rise, but she's never had so many layers covering her sleeping body, so she'll take as many as she can.
Jenna looks through the window. The sun is not up yet. However, given the purplish traces that can be seen in the horizon, the brunette guesses it will be morning soon.
So, despite her comfort, she wakes up.
She has listed her chores in her mind before heavily falling asleep the night before. Waking up early, cleaning the house, making a healthy breakfast, checking Eliza's leg, probably preparing her a bath-
Sounds proper.
Jenna lights up a candle and tightens her sleeping clothes around her body.
Under the dim light, the house seems even more castle-y. The walls seem to extend endlessly until reaching the decorated ceiling. Everything is in order, the furniture, the household objects, the paintings. Everything is in order, but covered in a heavy dust, product of months and months of lack of human contact.
The house is still beautiful. Jenna can see it. It just need a tad of proper care. And a lot of time, to be honest, to deal with the amount of massive rooms connected with each other by means of big, black wooden doors.
But Jenna is a nurse. Patience comes naturally for her.
With that thought in mind, she begins to work.
-
Eliza wakes up groggily with the sun hitting directly against her face.
She's tired. She has only slept for what she feels it was a quarter of the night, if not less.
Her leg hurts sharply, her head is pounding, and she's lonely in that big house, so lonely-
Suddenly, a smell hits her nose. Eggs, soup and rice.
Maybe she's not lonely after all.
She stands up weakly, trying to put her weight on her good leg, and moves to the dining room going over the events of the day before. She walks carefully, almost disoriented. Besides the delicious aroma, there is something else that feels unusual. The whole house seems suddenly less dark, less cold.
As she reaches the room, she stops in her tracks.
Jenna is kneeling in front of the agarwood table, her brows furrowed and lips pursed as she tries to fix something on a plate. She's still on her nightwear, Eliza observes, trying not to blush, but the usually white clothing is covered by dirt.
Eliza's brain, now more awake, realizes.
Jenna has cooked. And she has cleaned as well.
Just as the thought lets an unexpected warm wave quicken the pace of her heartbeats, the nurse raises her eyes and finds the taller woman standing on the doorframe, staring.
Eliza feels herself blushing profusely, and she's about to let out a bad excuse for her actions. However, Jenna speaks first.
"Oh, my, Eliza, please. You should have told me you were awake".
She walks quickly in the direction of the soldier and interlocks their arms again.
"Please, tell me when you wake up so I can help you. Do you feel alright? You can have breakfast on a chair, if you wish".
"No, no, I- thank you", Eliza hears herself speak, perplex. She can form a complete sentence. "It's alright. I'll kneel".
Jenna looks at her in worry, but the tallest girl smiles in reassurance. The nurse is gentle in helping her kneel, and Eliza wonders about the way her leg seems to palpitate less whenever the girl is around.
Once settled, the soldier dividing her look between the angelic figure kneeling just across the table and the appetizing food in front of her, the girls begin to eat.
Eliza thanks for the food. She does it again and again, between bites, and Jenna chuckles every time, telling that it's part of the job every time.
"But it's not, is it?", the soldier protests.
Jenna hesitates.
"Did I overstep?"
Eliza chokes on her food.
"No! Absolutely not. I meant that you are being too good, too attentive. The cooking... and the cleaning. Absolutely amazing. I don't think the house has ever looked like this before".
"Clean?", Jenna teases lightly.
"No", Eliza answers, "alive", she murmurs.
Jenna tilts her head in curiosity but decides not to answer.
Eliza clears her throat, embarrassed after letting out such a personal thought.
"Well, of course the excellency of your services will affect in your payment".
Jenna lets out a sound of protest, trying to swallow her tea quickly to voice her thoughts.
"No", Eliza interrupts, "I promise that as long as you live in this house, you will receive the treatment and payment you deserve for your services. It's the least I can do".
The brunette blinks. She would have argued, but the light now swimming in Eliza's brown orbs shines in a way Jenna hasn't seen before. The tallest girl seems more serious, more decisive. She wonders if that's the kind of girl that was put in a warzone for several months with a gun on her hand and without food in her stomach.
"Alright", Jenna answers then, "thank you", she murmurs.
With that, Eliza's features relax, and her mouth curls upwards once again.
-
The days pass quickly for Jenna.
She wakes up, she cleans, she cooks, she attends Eliza. She investigates the house-castle with interest, finding massive rooms full of old furniture full of ancient objects: paintings, vases, plates. Some of them, Jenna guesses, might cost an amount of gold that, for anyone else, it will make them worth of a nice spotlight on top of a shelf or hanging against an elegant wall. It doesn't seem so for the Manoban household, Jenna discovers. She's not even sure if the tallest girl even knows about the existence of such magnificent objects.
The days pass slowly for Eliza.
And with the passage of days, the ache on her leg seems to accentuate. It's even worse for the pounding of her head. She tries to distract herself reading, watching the nature outside, listening to her nurse talking about everyday life. The soldier herself has grown quieter. She knows that Jenna has noticed. She perceives the efforts the shortest girl makes to prompt her to speak about anything, food, her leg, even war tactics, but Eliza's tongue has been tied to monosyllables. It's driving her crazy, all the silence contrasting with all the noise making her body tremble, but she doesn't seem able to go through the walls she has built herself.
So she's reading again, her head resting against the cushion of the armchair, her bad leg on top of the coffee table because it's one of those days.
She raises her eyes when she sees her nurse entering the hall, and tries to manage a smile to reciprocate the big one sported by the shortest girl.
She fails, so she simply nods.
"How are you, Eliza?"
"Fine".
The tallest girl purses her lips in frustration.
However, the nurse seems unfazed. She begins to hum lightly as she slides a wet piece of cloth against the bookshelf with meticulous care.
The soldier steals a few glances in Jenna's direction. She's thinking. Eliza knows she's thinking, because despite her soft humming, lovely, relaxing sound, the shortest girl is pouting just slightly. Suddenly, cat-like eyes are struck with a light. The tallest girl tries to focus on her book again.
"Why do you like reading?"
Eliza frowns.
"What?"
"Why do you like reading?" the shortest girl insists, but she doesn't turn around.
Eliza thinks for good thirty seconds.
"It takes you away", she answers simply. She uses the tone of voice that indicates that she's unwilling to answer further questions. Jenna couldn't mind less.
"How?"
The soldier squints her eyes lightly, but takes a deep breath. Being anyone else, she would have snapped. Being under the stare of deep brown, sharp eyes, however, she makes an effort.
"You get inserted in other realities. You can be sitting in your armchair with a useless leg", Eliza begins, and feels her lips curling downwards, "but when you open your book, you can be in a balcony under the stars, or in Venice, or even sitting on a throne. You can be anywhere. You just have to choose the right book".
At the end of her speech, Jenna is looking at her with her head tilted, seas of brown shinning intensely before losing it all at once.
"Oh", Jenna says, "must be nice".
She turns around to resume her cleaning, and Eliza feels a weight in her chest.
"I can teach you", she blurts out, and would even take it back if it wasn't for the way in which her nurse turns around to stare at her.
"What?"
Eliza ponders just for a few seconds.
"I can teach you how to read, if you want to".
"Do you...?" the shortest girl hesitates, and Eliza is almost surprised, "I don't think I could learn".
"What? Of course you could", the solder asks, indignant. Of course Jenna can. "Come here. We can start right now".
The girl looks at her and lets her gaze move to the bookshelf once again.
"Jenna, you've been cleaning the whole day. I'm sure the bookshelf can wait for some minutes. Come here", Eliza tries to sit straighter, "You will make me stand up and drag you here", she threatens, knowing that she won't be taken seriously in the slightest.
The shortest girl, however, leaves her piece of clothing and sits beside her patient.
Eliza smiles. She truly smiles for the first time in days. She perceives a nervousness in Jenna that was completely unknown by her before.
"You will learn before you even realize it", she states, and uses the gentlest tone of voice she can muster.
"Thank you so much, Liz".
The tallest girl opens her mouth, but no sound is left out. Her heart picks up her pace without apparent reason, and a crashing wave of warmth wraps her heart up.
"Oh..."
Jenna scrunches her small nose.
"I'm sorry, Miss Manoban".
"Oh, no", Eliza is glad she found her voice, and catches herself chuckling slightly, feeling somehow joyful, "does this mean that I can call you Jenn?"
The soldier watches as the shortest girl blushes profusely, a new light covering her features.
"I-yes".
Eliza feels as playful as she's never felt before.
She also feels determined to be a good teacher.
"Ready, Jenn?"
The shortest girl smiles, soft gums in full display, and nods without hesitation.
-
Eliza is right. Jenna improves in her reading skills quickly, probably even quicker than anybody else would be capable of, Eliza considers.
Jenna is brilliant. She's brilliant in a way in which she manages to keep the house-castle immaculate, cook the most fantastic meals, take care of Eliza's wound many times a day, and spend some hours practicing reading Shakespeare. She's so fantastically brilliant that, on her third class, already having memorized sounds and symbols, she asks Eliza if she could teach her how to write too. She asks her so with her most charming gesture, with her head tilted to her side and her cat eyes softened by a pout on her lips. Eliza doesn't really require much convincing, both because she needs something to kill her free time with, but also because she is uninclined to deny the shortest girl anything. She appreciates the effort, however.
But Jenna is also brilliant in other ways. She's brilliant in a way in which she seems to illuminate the whole room with her mere presence. She's brilliant in a way in which she can smile just as Eliza needs, sometimes comforting, others charming, others happy. She's brilliant in a way in which she shines, her aura, her being, and everything is reflected in features that Eliza is surprised they all exist in one person.
Sometimes, however, in nights like those, when she's so deep in her shadows that it seems that she's never known anything else, no light can reach her.
Eliza cries, and shivers, and curses lowly. Her body shakes with pain, with fury, and with such a shattering sadness that Eliza feels that the bullet is back, painfully back, this time going through her chest, and her ribs and her heart until-
Until she hears a soft voice.
"Liz?"
Eliza can't stop shaking. She sobs, desperate.
"It's alright. I'm here. I'm here".
The back of warm hand presses against her forehead, against her neck, against her chest. She feels as if she can breathe again, but doesn't stop sobbing.
"Don't leave me please", she begs.
"I won't. I'm here".
Then, she feels the hand going through her hair slowly, attentive.
Eliza blinks quickly. The tears stop.
Suddenly, a voice reaches her ear again.
It's soulful, bewitching. It makes her feel like melting, like being deep in a mellow bubble bath. Her eyes begin to close, finally, after so many months.
The voice doesn't stop. It gets further and further away, as it mixes with her dreams.
Eliza falls asleep.
When she wakes up, Jenna is still on her bed. The nurse is leaning against the wall, fast asleep, and Eliza can't help but to think, in a drowsy state, that she must be uncomfortable.
She wakes the nurse up putting a hand on her leg. Jenna tries to stand up, startled, but Eliza grabs her by the arm and pulls in.
The shortest girl stares at her, her hair disheveled, trying to understand.
"Come", Eliza murmurs, "lay down".
Then, she pulls the nurse inside the covers, just besides her body. When she begins to fall asleep again, she hugs the shortest girl against her chest.
Jenna closes her eyes too, her heart beating in an elated pace.
-
Parting is such...
Such sweet sorrow
that I shall...
I shall say good-night
till it be morrow.
Jenna closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
Eliza is right. Reading means countless of exciting journeys. It's being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It's amazing, immersing, and Jenna can barely keep herself from opening yellowish pages once again.
Reading, however, can be exhausting as well.
Sometimes words mix with each other, and sentences are long and tedious and they seem to make little sense.
Jenna knows she has reached a limit when her temple pounds against the pad of her fingers. She curses under her breath, just like her mother taught her, and decides to ditch reading for an alternative favorite pastime: exploring.
It's almost mid-morning, and the sunlight is sneaking powerfully through the recently cleaned windows of the massive house. The food is almost ready already, and there is still one hour left before Eliza wakes up.
So Jenna stands up, fixes her hanbok around her waist, and moves to one of the most marginal rooms of the place. It's far, far back, and to enter it's necessary to take a left in the long hall that seems to lead only to the house's massive garden. However, hidden between the ornaments of the wall, there is a silver doorknob that Jenna saw by casualty in one of her trips to fix Eliza's flowers.
The nurse walks quickly, then, moved by revived interest, and opens the mysterious door with difficulty.
Jenna stays quiet staring at the room for a moment, her gaze going through the old furniture. It's not much different than the rest of the storage rooms, really. There are objects sprawled here and there, gold and silk, shiny medals that upper-class men would kill to have.
But it's somehow different.
Maybe it's the mystery, or the grayish-tinted walls that create an almost solemn shadow that spreads through the four walls, but Jenna feels the need to stay silent, and merely observe.
The one things that catches her eyes first is the painting placed in the middle of one of the beige walls. It's the biggest painting in the house, Jenna considers, and it only depicts a man sitting on a wooden bench with a smiley expression.
And somehow, it's beautiful. The traces are fine, calculated, sharp, and they highlight the man's face with grace. Righteous, Jenna thinks, and keeps staring at short, brunette hair and big eyes of a matching color before a voice startles her.
"What are you doing?"
Jenna turns around to see Eliza, relived for a second but immediately taken aback after seeing her expression.
The tallest girl is looking at her with stern eyes, her mouth pursed as an attempt of containing her anger. Both her hands are turned into fists and her body is leaning forwards almost aggressively.
"I- I was just..."
"Do I pay you to wonder around my property?"
Jenna lowers her gaze, feeling humiliated.
"No, I'm sorry. I was..."
"If you get bored enough to enter rooms without permission, maybe it's a signal you are not working just right".
Eliza spits the words without control, feeling her body shake.
Jenna feels as tears well up in her eyes, and merely leaves the room with quick steps.
"I'm sorry, miss Manoban", she sobs before leaving the tallest girl alone.
Eliza stays quiet, the air escaping in puffs out of her mouth, and the inexplicable anger begins to diminish.
What's left is overwhelming guilt.
The soldier raises her gaze to meet her father's eyes in the painting.
Despite the juvenile expression, he looks somehow disappointed.
-
Jenna gets out of her room hours later.
It's almost dinner, and despite her mood, she has tasks to fulfil. She always did, no matter what Eliza said. No matter how cold her eyes looked. No matter how crushing the words were for her heart.
But Jenna's mind keeps twirling, and it's rounding the idea that she's an over-stepper, a disappointment, a terrible professional-
She stops in the doorway of the dining room.
Eliza is already kneeling, plates full of food placed on top of the table.
She's staring at a bouquet of lilies in her hand with a thoughtful expression.
Jenna takes a step forwards, indecisive, and it seems enough for the tallest girl to notice her presence.
Eliza stands up quickly, her doe eyes, now soft as cotton again, seem full of regret.
"I'm sorry", she blurts out before anything else, and takes a tentative step towards her nurse.
Jenna stares at her patient, and then at the flowers extended towards her. She takes them, unsure. Then, her gaze goes back to Eliza. The tallest brunette's eyes are still shadowed by guilt, and Jenna doesn't feel revengeful.
She's about to speak, but Eliza interrupts her.
"It was my father".
Jenna blinks a few times.
"The one in the painting. It was my father. He died in combat".
"Oh", is all Jenna can say. Her heart clenches at her patient's confession.
"He raised me up because my mother died giving birth to me. We were really close, and then the war started. He volunteered and I promised I would volunteer as well as soon as I could. We... believe in our nation's freedom. But then, he died fighting. So I was left alone. And I hid all his things because... because it was too painful", Eliza pants, she feels like she can stop, "and then I woke up this morning and I looked for you, and I found you staring at his panting. I... got upset. I wanted to hide everything, but I couldn't. And then I said horrible things..." the soldier's voice breaks in a sob.
Jenna decides that it's enough. She places the palm of her free hand against Eliza's cheek.
"Liz..."
"I'm sorry, Jenn", Eliza murmurs.
The nurse pulls the tallest girl in, then, embracing her in a strong hug.
Eliza breaks against her.
She sobs quietly, her body shaking against Jenna's, but the nurse doesn't move.
"I love the flowers", the shortest girl murmurs a while after.
"I got them from the garden. It's so beautiful now. Everything is beautiful now that you are here. You are perfect. Your work is perfect. Please, don't leave".
Jenna sighs against Eliza's neck, feeling as if the girl's sadness could reach her own heart.
"I won't leave, sunshine, don't worry. I forgive you. It's fine. I promise".
Eliza nods quickly, thanking Jenna in a whisper, and pulls away.
However, the nurse connects their hands again.
"Do you want to cuddle in the hall and keep talking about it?"
The solder looks perplex for a moment before nodding again.
Jenna smiles, endeared.