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As the shutters lifted for the night, Cored on the Oriental rug in her bedroo peas The leguht them to her, but after they soaked for a while, they becah to use
When she&039;d captured one, she reached to the left and took a toothpick frolish letters, SIMMONS&039;S TOOTHPICKS, 500 COUNT
She took the pea and pushed it onto the end of the pick, then took another pea and another pick, and did the sa first a square, and then a three-dimensional box Satisfied, she bent forward and attached it to one of its brethren, capping off the final corner in a four-sided base structure about five feet in dia floors of the latticework
The picks were all the same, identical slices of wood, and the peas were all alike, round and green Both reminded her of where she was from Sameness mattered in the Chosen &039;s nonte
Very little was alike here on this side
She&039;d first seen the toothpicks downstairs after the e and the Brother Butch would take the roo she&039;d taken a number of the one in her mouth, but hadn&039;t liked the dry, woody taste Not sure what else to do with them, she&039;d laid out the picks on the bedside table and arranged theether so that they formed shapes
Fritz, the butler, had come in to clean, noticed her machinations, and returned so in ater He&039;d shown her how to make the system work Pea between two picks Then add another section and another and another, and before you knew it you had soer andout in advance all the angles and the elevations to reduce errors She&039;d also started working on the floor so she hadforward, she checked the drawing she&039;d done before she&039;d started, the one she used to guide her Next layer would decrease in size, as would the one after that Then she would add a tower
Color would be good, she thought But hoork it into the structure?
Ah, color The liberation of the eye
Being on this side had its challenges, but one thing she absolutely loved were all the colors In the Chosen&039;s Sanctuary, everything hite: frorass to the trees to the temples to the food and drink to the devotional books
With a wince of guilt, she glanced over to her sacred texts It was hard to argue that she&039;d been worshiping the Scribe Virgin at her little cathedral of peas and picks
Nurturing the self was not the goal of the Chosen It was a sacrilege
And the visit earlier from the Chosen&039;s Directrix should have rein Scribe, she didn&039;t want to think about that
Getting up, she waited for her light-headedness to clear, then went to a n beloere the tea roses, and she noted each of the bushes, checking for new buds and petals that had dropped, and fresh leaves
Tied, their cycle of budding lasting three or four days for each blooet used to On the Other Side, there was no ti and baths, but no alternation of day or night, no hourly e of season Time and existence were static just as the air was, just as the light was, just as the landscape was
On this side, she&039;d had to learn that there were minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years Clocks and calendars were used to ured out how to read them, just as she&039;d come to understand the cycles of this world and the people in it
Out on the terrace, a doggen cae red bucket and he went along the bushes, clipping the white lawns of the Sanctuary And the un white trees And the white flowers that were always in bloo was frozen in its proper place so there was no trie
Those who breathed the still air were likewise frozen even as they h the Chosen did age, didn&039;t they And they did die
She glanced over her shoulder to a bureau that had empty drawers The scroll the Directrix had colossy top The Chosen Anitions and had appeared to complete her duty
Had Cormia been over on the Other Side, there would have been a cereh not for her, of course The individual whose birth it was received no special due, as there was no self on the Other Side Only the whole
To think for yourself, to think of yourself, was blasphemy
She&039;d always been a secret sinner She&039;d always had errant ideas and distractions and drives All of which went nowhere
Corlass she stared through was thinner than her pinkie, as clear as air, hardly any barrier at all She&039;d wanted to go down to the flowers for quite a while now, but aiting for she did not knohat
When she had first come to this place, she&039;d been racked by sensory overload There were all kinds of things she didn&039;t recognize, like torches that were plugged into the walls that you had to switch on for light, and s like wash dishes or keep food cold or create ies on a little screen There were boxes that chimed with every hour, and s you ran back and forth across floors that whirred and cleaned
There were more colors here than in all the jewels in the treasury S was so different, and so were the people Where she was froeable: All Chosen wore the same white robe and twisted their hair up in the sale teardrop pearl around their necks They all walked and talked in the identical quietat the same time Here? Chaos The Brothers and their shellans wore different clothes and they conversed and laughed in separate, identifiable patterns They liked certain foods, but not others, and some slept late and others didn&039;t sleep at all Some were funny, some were fierce, some were beautiful
One was definitely beautiful
Bella was beautiful
Especially in the Primale&039;s eyes
As the clock started to chime, Cormia tucked her ar her a taste of what it was going to be like when she and the Primale returned to the Sanctuary
And he looked upon the faces of her sisters with sie In the beginning she had been terri fied of the Primale Now, after five months, she didn&039;t want to share him
With his mane of multicolored hair, and his yellow eyes, and his silky, low voice, he was a spectacularprime But that wasn&039;t what really compelled her He was the epitome of all that she knew to be of worth: He was focused always on others, never on himself At the dinner table, he was the one who inquired after each and every person, following up about injuries and stoe and small He never demanded any attention for hi of his Was endlessly supportive
If there was a hard job, he volunteered for it If there was an errand, he wanted to run it If Fritz staggered under the weight of a platter, the Primale was the first out of his chair to help Frohter for the race and a teacher of the trainees and a good, good friend to everyone
He truly was the proper example of the selfless virtues of the Chosen, the perfect Primale And somewhere in the seconds and hours and days and months of her stay here, she had veered from the path of duty into the messy forest of choice She noanted to be with him There was no had to, must do, need to
But she wanted him to herself
Which eous music the Primale always played when he was in his roo down for First Meal
The sound of a knock on her door ainst her legs, she caught the scent of red s ino her room
The Primale had conon and tucked some of the stray hairs behind her ears When she opened the door a crack, she stole a glance up into his face before she bowed to hiin Scribe the Pri His eyes were yellow as citrines, his skin a ware of color, froany to warm copper
He bowed in a short, quick body bob, a forh, because no matter how many times he told her not to be formal, she couldn&039;t stop herself
"Listen, I&039;ve been thinking," he said
In the hesitation that followed, she worried that the Directrix had been to see hi for the ceremony to be completed, and all were aware it hadn&039;t been yet She was beginning to feel an urgency that had nothing to do with her attraction to hi heavier with each passing day
He cleared his throat "We&039;ve been here for a while, and I know the transition&039;s been tough I was thinking you ht like soht her hand to her neck This was good It was ti, she hadn&039;t been ready for hiood for you," he said in his beautiful voice, "to have sorace I agree"
"Great I have sohtened slowly Someone?
John Mattheays slept naked