The world’s pieces fell like a weak shower around her. A strange picture it was, a muddled cacophony of giggles, a mahogany ceiling, bright sunlight and cool breeze. Like watching her own self in a dream. The ceiling cleared revealing a few water stains as the constant murmurs and high-pitched giggles turned o white noise as adult voices punctuated it. Her thick, tangled tresses of hair provided cover. It will be alright.  

“She’s faring well. A normal pulse although her stomach still rejects food from time to time.” A voice said. Its cadence was a little bit different from a Mercantile she was all too familiar with. 

Sal lay still, ignoring the nudging feeling that they are talking about her. There she was, eavesdropping again.  

“Who could’ve done such thing to a young girl?” 

Sal lay prostrate and quiet in bed at the woman’s question. Her stomach was a little stirred and remnants of sour bile remained stuck on her mouth. The arms were pinned weak on scratchy sheets. She was almost like a doll posed and helpless on the bed, smiling. She turned her head ever so slightly so as to save her face from scrutiny by covering them with her hair. It just awakened trouble. The murmurings became louder then hushed. Three figures towered over her and she recoiled at their stares. One woman seated her up on the bed. Three pairs of feet stood on bare floorboards by her bed. Bare, bleached floorboards? She craned herself out of the bed and rubbed her palm on the floorboards. Clean, but rough. The touch was different on her fingers.  

“Why is the room strange?”  

No movement in their feet. There was silence then a bit of an argument. One of them approached her so Sal withdrew her hand to her chest, curling herself up on her ball.  

“Hey, that’s rude. Kid.” A female voice. “You’re in Hospicia de mi Sofrenzha here in Isla Domicillia in Tanawa. I’m Lea, I don’t bite despite what people may tell you. So, what’s your name?” 

The woman’s voice was rough but high like steel grating on steel. A strange singsong accent and a stacccato like delivery laced her words. Sal brought her arms further and wrapped herself with her arms. The woman was talking. The sound melted to her ears. All she could see through her tangled hair was the all-too wide room and walls blank like paper. “Do you perhaps believe she’s a runaway?” 

“That would be awful.” The murmurings from one side of the room went louder. A bunch of heads peeked by the door like mushrooms growing on a tree.  

Sal kept her sight on the ground as the other woman came in closer.  

“Child, are you feeling fine? Does it hurt somewhere?” 

The sounds drifted in and out.  

The woman with the scratchy rough voice climbed on the bed. And at a moment’s notice, she found her face bare, face to face with the woman as she proceeded to run her hands all over Sal’s arms and cheeks and forehead. Sal bristled. Then, the woman paused. 

Sal was watching herself from a dream. The woman was a mirror. Dark hair paired with big but fox like eyes. Deep, emerald eyes. The only other person with the green eyes as her own. 

“I knew it.” the woman whispered.  
 

THIS place in the dream was more naked than Sal thought it was. The windows get to be opened all the time and it was bane to close them during the day. The room was terribly bright. She would have pretended to sleep but the light is making it difficult. Sal willed herself to stand but not before clocking in the relative lack of other footsteps in the place.  

It was best to close the windows but she could not bring to tear away her eyes on the sight, the sight of children playing below on the yard. They are like little heads of mushroom that are now buzzing bees hovering to and fro just outside within the gates. They ran about and giggled, and shrieked and laughed. Strange, happy creatures playing a game whose name that was almost at the tip of her tongue.  

A woman, who must be the maid, put an end to the bustle.She signaled at the children with one flick of the arm before calling them in. Slowly, the children trickled back inside the house like ants on a funnel.  

Soon,the yard was empty. It stood quiet as only dried leaves littered the reddish-brown earth. An old, mossy fountain lay in the center hogging all the spotlight unto itself. Just about the horizon were trees. Trees that looked like those in the Casa.  

Sal climbed on the windowsill only to discover that onlyair lay beyond the sill. But she paid no heed. She stood on the sill, savoring the slight familiar lurch in the stomach as she fixed her gaze below on the ground from the second story where she was.  

“Get off! Right this instant!”  

Sal found her feet welcoming air as she landed in almost a freefall. She nursed a sore hip while on the floor.  

“That hurt!” the woman said as she rubbed her hip before straightening herself up then reached a hand to her. “Six days in and you’re trying to jump off windows before telling me your name.”  

Well, Sal was not trying to jump off. She was…  

“Look! If you have problems, talk it out.”  

Sal bristled at her searching gaze and angled her head towards the window. The woman closed the gap between them so Sal darted for the window, taking the mattress to cover herself.  

The woman sighed. “Girl. I’m calling you girl since you haven’t told me your name.” She craned her head out the window, taking in the air. “The clear, fresh air should purge all that aftereffects of the poison in your system.”  

Unwell? Sal felt a hand to her stomach. She was perfectly fine. Whole. A little ache here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary for her within these past few days.  

She wheezed.  

“Called it! If you have the stupidity to stand on the ledge, you are strong enough to run around.” The woman held her by the hand and tried to wring the mattress out from Sal’s body. She failed.  

Sal should’ve resisted. She cannot come outside. Not with her bare face duly uncovered. She should have refused, yet the allure of the idea of going outside was too tempting. And this woman was forcing her out.  

Sal walked the long winding hallways with the scratchy mattress as a protective shield. Long stretches of hallways in the same, dull floorboards with even duller, plainer walls welcomed her.  

The woman led her down a big flight of stairs leading from the second story to a large, open door leading to the yard below. Sal paused, taking in the picture, contemplating, when the woman pulled her down the stairs like a rag doll.  

The yard was how the sea would feel like. It was an open space with small mounds of red earth and trees dwarfed the place like giants guarding the vicinity.  

Sal dipped a bare foot into the earth, then another. The heat surged up on her feet, slowly turning into a comfortable warmth.  

She stretched her arms and light air found its way onto her face. She breathed in. The air gave her some kind of new found strength in her back. Strange, duly strange.  

Another step into the warm earth had her pulled in. She crouched down to the ground and scooped up some earth and rubbed it on her hands. She took in the color of the landscape, how everything towered over her. A big space, intimidating wide space. She found herself cold, but it didn’t matter as she took another step. The woman was speaking to her but her words blend with the noise and the sounds of the wind and of the tweeting of birds nearby.  

It was then that she realized that her mattress has fallen on the ground. Sal was bare and exposed to everyone. Sal crouched; her hair dangled on her face. A sharp pain pierced her stomach. Her chest heavy like a brick was dropped into her airways. Sour bile on her tongue.  

Sal vomited on the yard. For a moment, it felt like her insides were being pulled out. She shivered as lightheadedness pervaded.  

“Did you vomit everything out?”  

Lea was watching. She did not realize. That woman was watching. The woman leaned down to her before she could hide her face again. The woman took her panuelo and wiped Sal’s mouth, albeit a bit roughly.  

“Now, that’s a mess! “ The woman snickered before proceeding to kick up earth and dust to cover the vile mixture.  

“I-I’m sorry.”  

The woman instead leaned by her side and continued to wipe her mouth before assisting her to stand and laughed and fussed over her more.  

Strange. Really strange.  

 

 

 

ANYONE who puts up with endless questions must be the stranger one. Sal stared at the neat parting in the woman’s crown while the rest of her hair fell in a tight, rope-like braid.  

Sal readied another query. “The room is spotted. Why?”  

“Discolored spots? The floor was soaked too much with water during cleaning.”  

“The place is empty. No paintings, or flowers, or books.”  

“Impractical. Unsuitable. Costly.”  

“Costly?”  

“This place runs on donations. We are practically beggars to rich Mercantiles and other patrons.”  

“The Hospicio. Why is it so big?”  

“It was originally a villa. Some rich guy on the brink of death was scared witless out of his nerves at the thought of that so he decided to do charity upon getting well. At least, that is what Rocco said.”  

“Who’s Rocco?”  

“Some annoying constable.”  

It is not that Sal has run out of questions but too much of her queries might have surely irritated her. But the woman’s face had always that almost perpetual scowl.  

“No more questions?” the woman asked, her tone in the end, a little too lilting for Sal’s ears. Mocking.  

“I’m sorry.”  

“Don’t be. I am not some adult up stuck on some glass pedestal. We will need any information that might be useful if we are to get out of this place.”  

Sal curled further unto herself, wrapping the mattress over herself like a small armor.  

“You are recovering well, so we could get out of this place soon.”  

This place was from a dream. It is something that will disappear once she wakes from slumber. And where does she wake up to? She does not know. It is a dream, perhaps that was why she was more reckless and thoughtless than before.  

“What is this place?” Sal asked.  

“They call it a Hospicio for formality, but this is actually an orphanage. A place where children with no parents go.”  

Surely, this place is a strange dream. Her hands froze. Thoughts focused on the white spot on the ceiling. A faint recollection of the needles in her stomach, that desperate gasp for air. That faint lamplight in the distance.  

“About that night,” the woman nudged her arm. “Who wants to hatm you? Who is after you?" 

Sal curled her hands into a ball. Hiding her face in the mattress until her whole head was swallowed by that measly, scratchy piece of cloth. Nothing to be seen. Nothing to answer for. She knows nothing. She knows nothing.  

The woman tugged at her mattress, but Sal kept hold eventually falling on her side on the bed.  

“At least, tell us your name. I know a lot of people up in the North. The Cagliostro clan, you know them? Or the Le’s from Port? The branch family of Cauyan? We could connect you to them when we get out.”  

Sal bristled. All the questions in her mind filled by that sense of want to erase from the woman’s mouth all the names she’s mentioned. She has a name! A name. What are all these useless clans?  

Sal peeled away the cloth covering her face, and stared intently at the woman who must have taken her sight off her for a moment. The emerald eyes, those green eyes she’s never seen before in anyone else but herself.  

“Why are your eyes ugly?”  

The woman stared at her intently, her eyes going wide as she grit her teeth. “What did you say?”  

Those orbs, green like poison, green like anger and fire of an ugly, unsightly beast.  

“You know what? You’re on your own.”