Tahlea watched her twin homunculus's back as Amoretta walked down the terrace steps and out towards the gardens. They were an elaborate and beautiful design, combining trees, shrubs, hedge-rows, and beds of flowers, and obviously took a great deal of care to maintain in their condition. Roses predominated, but other flowers were there as well, some she recognized from her studies in alchemical herbalism and others that were entirely unknown to her.
She'd never been outside the Silver Star Tower before, and while she'd seen the forests and meadows, lawns and pastures of the surrounding countryside from its windows, Tahlea had never been this close to so much that was alive and growing. There was a...rightness, she supposed, about it that made her feel happy, despite her nervousness.
"These gardens are lovely," she said. "If we had something like this at the Tower I think I'd spend all my time in them."
"They are pretty to look at," Amoretta replied evenly. "Gaff's cousins do an excellent job."
"Gaff? Is he the elf we met before?" He'd seemed to know Father, and Father had told her that Lillet and Amoretta had taken a caretaker elf with them from the Tower.
"That's right. Some of his family are garden elves, and they're much more skilled with plants than are humans."
Tahlea gently brushed her fingertips against the petals of a white rose. There was a luxuriant softness to the living flower like nothing she'd ever felt before, velvety but pulsing with rich life.
"It's so glorious! I never imagined a place could feel so alive. It's so different from the bare stone of the Tower."
Amoretta inclined her head to one side, looking curiously at Tahlea.
"Is it? I can't really tell."
"You can't?" Tahlea was bewildered. How could anyone not feel the energies that swirled around them so freely? It was as if the garden elves had arranged things, encouraged growth in a way not only to produce beauty but in patterns that developed and redoubled the presence of Glamour magic like a natural gate to Faerie.
Oh.
Tahlea knew that at her core was the spirit of a fairy, a being of natural magic. It was this core that gave her the freedom to exist away from the flask in which her life force had been kindled, while ordinary homunculi could not do that. Amoretta, of course, had a similar core, but Father had said she was built around the spirit of an angel, not a fairy. So maybe it was the nature spirit within Tahlea that recognized the garden's magic, not her homunculus senses.
"I'm sorry," she said, biting her lip. This was going all wrong! She'd been so happy to finally meet her sister, someone like herself, neither human nor spirit nor ordinary alchemical creation, and nothing had gone the way she'd expected. Father had warned her it might be like this, and yet Tahlea hadn't believed him, not really. He didn't understand what it was like to be so different from everyone around her, how no matter how much she might be loved or cared for there was always a certain distance that couldn't be overcome. The notion of meeting someone like herself at last, someone who knew and understood her feelings--better yet, that as a fellow creation of Father's Amoretta was actually family--Tahlea knew, just knew, that Amoretta would feel the same as she did.
Except that she didn't.
Were they that different inside? Was it a matter of being a fairy rather than an angel? Was it that Amoretta was older? Or was there something special about a romantic love that made things different, that defeated the loneliness? Or was it just that her troubles with Father ran that deeply, that they spoiled things?
"I don't think that you have anything to apologize for," Amoretta said. "I know that the garden is special because Lillet uses it to help support some of her experiments in glamour. I'm just not capable of feeling anything unusual about it without using magic."
"You can use magic?" Tahlea exclaimed. "I mean, human magic, to summon and command familiars?"
Amoretta nodded.
"I'm not really very good at it, but I can use a few basic Runes. I'm best in alchemy, of course."
"That's amazing! I can't use Runes at all!"
"I think it's because of my angel core. Devils, after all, can summon other devils through sorcery, so perhaps angels can exercise a similar power--the greater devils, are, after all, merely fallen angels."
"That makes sense. I have a fairy core, so I guess I wouldn't have that power."
"Or it might be blunted by your body, created from alchemy and so in opposition to your nature."
"That's a thought! I felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin for the first month. It was horrible! Did you...?"
Amoretta shook her head.
"No, although everything was all new and strange to me. It wasn't uncomfortable in a physical sense, though."
Tahlea sighed.
"Another difference..."
"What did you say?"
She looked up at Amoretta.
"It's...it's just..." She sighed again. "I guess we really aren't all that much alike after all."
"Were...we supposed to be?"
"I thought so." She spotted a nearby stone bench and sat down, slumping forward with her elbows on her knees and her chin propped in her cupped palms. "It looks like I was the only one, though," she added glumly.
"Is it important, somehow?" Amoretta asked curiously.
Tahlea felt her stomach knot. She'd expected that Amoretta would understand her feelings. Explaining them in words to a seemingly unsympathetic stranger was a different thing altogether! She wasn't at all sure that she could bring herself to do it. It was so strange; Amoretta was so perfectly identical to her physically that it was like looking at her reflection in the mirror, but a reflection that was saying and doing different things than she was.
I just don't understand! Why does it have to be like this? Tahlea thought plaintively, knotting her fingers in the hem of her tunic and twisting.
"I...it's just that..."
She couldn't. She just couldn't. You had to be able to trust someone to open up to them, and she didn't trust this twisted mirror of herself.
"It's all right," Amoretta said. "You can tell me when you want to, although I am curious."
Tahlea smiled faintly.
"You say what's on your mind so easily, Amoretta."
"Everyone says that. I think that more people should. I can understand that some things are private, but there's no reason to lie."
"Do you ever consider changing, because people expect it?" Tahlea asked curiously.
"I have, but I don't seem to be able to. It's what's natural to me, and at the heart of it I honestly believe that I'm right about how I should speak."
"I see." Perhaps that was the angel's influence again. Maybe that was the point. Tahlea and Amoretta's cores were, essentially, their souls, and wasn't it the soul that defined a person? Certainly they'd had shared experiences on account of their unique creation and identical bodies, but they were different inside, and the circumstances of their lives only emphasized that.
So maybe, Tahlea thought, that makes "sister" a better definition of what we are than I'd thought. Not sisters in the sense of twins or copies, but sisters like human sisters, born of shared parents but different people inside.
"Amoretta..." she began hesitantly, If she couldn't bring herself to share her heart, perhaps the older homunculus could? "Why...why is it that you dislike Father?"
"He isn't my father," Amoretta corrected her, but not harshly, not as any kind of comeback or conversational riposte. She said it simply but firmly, as one stating a plain truth. "He is only my creator."
Tahlea flinched at the blunt rejection.
"Amoretta, how can you say that?"
"There are two ways to be a father. On the one hand, one can be a natural male parent. In that way, a man is technically a father regardless of whether or not he acts to fill the role socially and emotionally. On the other hand a man can fill the role of a father out of love regardless of biological ties. Dr. Chartreuse was neither to me. To him, I was a laboratory experiment rather than a daughter. I was valued as a prized homunculus, not as Amoretta."
Tahlea gasped. Her surprise was not so much at the story--Father had explained some of this to her in admitting his failures--but at Amoretta's willingness to so easily and plainly share it. The other homunculus was clearly much braver than she was, to express her feelings directly, without humiliation.
"B-but a homunculus...we aren't complete without love!"
Amoretta nodded, and pressed her palm over her heart as she spoke.
"And so I was not, for the first 106 days of my existence." She closed her eyes, and a smile of utter bliss came over her face. "Then I met Lillet."
"Oh," Tahlea sighed. She didn't quite understand, because she'd been loved by Father from the moment of her creation, but she did know how much she needed that love.
Amoretta opened her eyes.
"And so I'm here, with her, rather than at the lab."
Tahlea nodded.
"Was Father angry that you left?"
"No, but I think that it hurt him. I was his greatest creation, and I had rejected him. He didn't try to fight me about it, though. He knew that he couldn't provide me with what I needed and did put my well-being ahead of his experiments. I was very grateful to him for that."
Tahlea blinked.
"So you don't resent him, them?"
Amoretta sighed.
"We parted on good terms, without ill feeling. I was happy in my life with Lillet, and Creator didn't seem capable of giving me what I needed. It would be silly to hold against him that he couldn't do something outside his own nature. It would be like resenting a robin because it couldn't swim or a cat because it couldn't fly."
She did not have to explain further for Tahlea to understand.
"But...it isn't outside his nature," she said in a very small voice. "Father does love me."
Amoretta nodded.
"When Lillet told me about you, that Dr. Chartreuse considered you to be an important part of his family, I was terribly envious." She smiled faintly, ruefully. "I wanted to tear his hair out, or yours. The only time I've been more furious is when Lillet puts herself in danger."
Tahlea flinched again.
"Don't worry, Tahlea; I've had time to deal with those feelings. It's stupid to hold it against you that you've had something that I didn't when it wasn't your fault. And jealousy is a silly emotion that doesn't help anyone." Amoretta suddenly blushed and her lips curved into a secretive little smile, making Tahlea wonder just what she was thinking of. Certainly nothing about this conversation could provoke a smile like that, so it must have been some memory.
She wished that she had more memories. It was hard having the intellect and emotional maturity of an adult but only a year's worth of experience.
"I'm still annoyed with Creator, though. It was one thing when I believed that he couldn't love me. It's another entirely to learn that he can love, but failed to learn it until after it could have made a difference for me."
"Do you wish that he had?"
Amoretta shook her head emphatically.
"Do you mean, would I change the past? No. If I hadn't been whom I was at that time, then Lillet might never have fallen in love with me, and I'd rather die right now than lose a minute of the time I've spent with her. But those first hundred and six days..." She clutched her fists. "You're a homunculus, too, Tahlea, so perhaps you can tell what I'm feeling."
"Ah!" Yes, finally some point of common ground between us!
"I know that you haven't experienced it yourself, and perhaps it's different for you, who was loved in your creation, but try to imagine it. Never being loved. Having no reason nor right to exist. I could move and talk, think and feel, try to learn and understand the world around me, but I was just a shell, almost an object. I had nothing within to sustain me."
Hearing her say that struck Tahlea to the core in a way that it hadn't from Father. He knew the acts, but Amoretta knew the consequences. For her sake, Tahlea tried to imagine the unimaginable.
She found it all too easy.
Is this what being homunculi together means? she thought as a sudden shudder racked her. Being able to understand each other's pain?
When she looked up at Amoretta again, it was through a blue of moisture.
"I'm so sorry," she said in a voice barely more than a whisper.
Amoretta sighed.
"No, I am. I didn't mean to hurt you, but I wanted you to know why I'm not inclined to be particularly kind to Dr. Chartreuse."
"But...you're welcoming us into your home."
"It's for Lillet," she said as if it explained everything, which of course it did. Amoretta's devotion to her lover seemed even more intense than Tahlea's to Father--because it was romantic love? Because she'd had to find it on her own after having been without? Or just because she was Amoretta and that was her nature as an individual?
"You really do love her, don't you," Tahlea said wistfully, not really as a question.
"I'm blessed that she's in my life," Amoretta said, showing no hesitation in sharing it with a near-stranger. "She's everything to me."
Tahlea smiled. She was glad for her sister and for Father's sake as well that despite her beginnings Amoretta had been able to find happiness.
"I'm happy you have her."
Amoretta regarded her curiously.
"Why are you happy, Tahlea? You don't even know me."
"Because we're sisters! Or...at least I felt like we ought to be."
"Oh?"
Tahlea clenched her fingers in her hem again, but this time, perhaps buoyed by Amoretta's own willingness to talk, she found the courage to share what she felt.
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