WEAVERS: A GothamX Story

14

When I was younger, I never really noticed the daily motions of living. The daily routines. The repeating patterns. I've begun to notice it and I honestly hate it. Sleep, wake, breakfast, bathroom routine, studies, lunch, studies, dinner, bathroom routine again, sleep, repeat. It's exhausting.

My Aunt Rose didn't stop by to see me this morning, after last night, I wasn't expecting to see her but I had hoped to. A quiet Matron brought me pancakes with sides of butter and syrup, a bowl of sliced mixed fruits, orange juice, and a small thermos of a bitter tea, it tasted like the hibiscus tea my mother used to drink. I stick it in my bag and make my way down to the library.

Master Malakai sits behind his messy desk reading what looks like an Atlas, I don't acknowledge it; I have enough on my plate with the Atlases I've accumulated on my own. "Good morning," I say to him, taking a seat nearby.

"Good morning, Miss. Deveraux. Feeling better?" He asks, peeping over the Atlas and desk at me.

"I'm alright," I answer.

"You can be honest here, Alexa. I'm not going to bite your head off." He sighs.

"My Aunt Rose said that too." I mutter as flashbacks of the night before replay in my head, "I read more of Soren's Atlas last night. When she lost her parents, she had someone, she had my Aunt Rose. When I buried my parent's empty caskets, I was alone." I blurt out, growing annoyed and upset.

"You're allowed to feel sad and angry, Alexa." Master Malakai says softly as he nears me with his cane, "Talk to me." He adds, resting a warm hand on my arm.

"When I told her that the Grand Matron's Den was full of darkness, she shrugged it off like it was nothing. I know what I saw. What I felt; it was cold and heavy and awful." I tell him, replaying it all in my head, "Elias felt it too, before he-" I struggle over the words to use, "before he touched The Great Tome."

His warm hand tightens at the sound of his name, Elias, "We fought that morning before he went searching for the answers to questions I couldn't answer. If I had- If had known the outcome of his visit to the Grand Matron- if I had just answered a few of his questions, I could've protected him. I failed him." He opens up to me, "Stay away from that damn book, Alexa. Please." The pain is strong in his words.

"What happened to Soren?" I whisper as I look him in the eyes.

His mouth moves but no sound leaves his lips as he stares past me in sadness.

"What am I going to learn from her Atlas?" I ask him.

"She found Darkness." He answers before adding with a whisper, "Hold strong to your bones."

I can't read it inside the Great Library, not with the walls feeling like they will shrink in on me. The Garden, perhaps, it's open and the fresh air could benefit me.
It's the walk from the library that helps me fully grasp it; there are too many plot holes for everything to make sense right now. But does make sense; Elias found Darkness. Soren found Darkness. I found Darkness.

It's cloudy and grey outside, which fits the mood too perfectly and I start having regrets about leaving the Library. I find a spot beneath a magnolia tree and pull Soren's Atlas out of my bag. "Please don't break my heart," I whisper as I open her Atlas.

Soren Reign. January 3rd, 1998-October 12th, 2017. She was popular in the Mundane World but within the Vale, her peers saw her as a strange alien trying to fit into a mold that wasn't meant for them. Her ability to read Atlases was weak, only a few pages at a time and in small broken bits of sentences. Soren was familiar with Burnout; irritation and anger, depression and loneliness, migraines, hot flashes with the chills, dizziness, and hallucinations. But the tea she was given did wonders to get her back on her feet, even if it did remind her of fermented tea drinks she and her high school friends used to drink; fizzy and tart and faintly sweet.

Her free time was spent wandering the Great Library and reading sections of Atlases. As her strength grew, she would sit down and read until her eyes watered and burned. The day she noticed that she was making stacks of Atlases where she sat down to read, was the day she realized that she was a Weaver and it gave her great satisfaction to physically see the progress she made when she felt so behind. There was something about Atlases stacked that made her feel like she was leaving behind traces of herself when she felt invisible most of the time.

She was unseen by most until a student kicked over a stack, sending Atlases flying in different directions, one striking her in the side of the head, leading to the tense exchanging of profanities with an older student named Jace Jordan, who helped manage the Library when Master Malakai was away. He had made it a personal goal to find the person stacking the Atlases so that he could make it cease.

The tense exchange of profanities became the exchange of personal stories. Soren learned that he was also born and raised outside the Vale. Both of his parents were living and well in two different cities, divorced and bitter. He, knowing about the Vale since he was little, decided that it was time to take his place and start his first chapter as a Weaver. He introduced her to Elias Malakai and in a short time, the three became nearly inseparable friends.

Things changed the day she was summoned to meet the Grand Matron.