Chapter IX

Katharina Bakaschwili

by Katharina Bakaschwili

Story

Even though Thinathin had spent the better part of her life in this keep, it was only one meaningful encounter she could recall with Shorena herself. After all it was Mzia who she really grew up with. Shorena was too young to be of interest to a youth learning to fight and internalizing the importance of duty. As a child Thinathin would watch birds in the early mornings and followed fireflies into long forgotten patches of the forest near her home that must have been, and Thinathin is the same opinion still, be inhabited by nocturnal fairies that lived between high grass, trees, shrubs and the last scattered remains of a ruin of some sort. Back then it was her plan to go to university and return one day to investigate these ruins but until then she sketched and wrote everything she saw and signed with date and her name after each entry, so she had proof to be the discoverer of this wondrous place if ever an old goat of a professor would try to steal her discovery. But every once in a while she was so enchanted by her fairy kingdom that she just sat herself down and watched. It was never the moon that brightened the clearing. It was the forest floor itself emanating luminescent green light highlighting the glittering dust and dirt that at the speed of calm heartbeats was pushed up and settled and pushed up again. The crickets harmonized with the owl and the leaves of the trees and when she looked up, the stars seemed so close that for a moment she feared they would fall to the earth. As if they were just as enthralled as Thinathin by the theater on the clearing they tried to edge a little bit closer. One day in Mtskheta when she had almost forgotten her ruins the night sky above the orchard cleared and the ground seemed to glow again just like back there on her clearing. And she heard the estranged sound of pen scratching over paper again. Following it she found young Shorena. A girl with the sharp-edged face of a raven that was still softened by youth, slowly fading and for the first time she felt, only for this little raven, her clearing should be shared. As they studied a lonely mountain flower in the midst of the dark and royal carnations Thinathin asked: 
“What does it make you think of?” 
“Nothing”, Shorena replied at first. And after looking upon it again she concluded:
“It’s just beautiful.” It was like a part of a wing of a butterfly that is more like a flower. It was one petal of a flower that is more like a leaf and a leaf that is more like a tree. It was detached. And the knowledge that it was part of something bigger, something connected to so many things was just a faint dream fading in waking.
“It is just beautiful.” The moving sensation of connection that first caressed her heart while they talked about that flower started to tuck at her with the similar pain that she is used to but for the first time she felt the urge to shut it out as she realized that two kindred people were feeling the same ache of being ill-placed in this world just as they shared the same sight of a handsome garden by night. How to change the passing of time? How much has changed inside the head of that girl? One that now demands change. 


© Katharina Bakaschwili 2023-08-31

Genres
Novels & Stories, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Moods
Abenteuerlich, Herausfordernd, Emotional, Mysteriös, Reflektierend