Introduction

[Mischa Aleksandrovich]

Blonde hair fell over shoulders bent in prayer, trailing like golden streams over the black stones of the fabric over her shoulders. The black dress clung to her frame, though it was more somber than those she usually wore; it led the eye down her smooth, arched back, the graceful hips down to the bend of her bare knees where they rested on the cushion that had been laid out for just such a purpose, the smooth legs and black heels.

A Russian Orthodox by birth left very little influence on her life since then. The years of living with criminals, the deviousness, the vices indulged and the virtues unheeded; if she had ever been very religious, she would have lost it by now. Despite her fallings in and out with religion, she found herself on her knees within the school’s chapel. God or no god, she loved it there.

The stone walls appealed to her, they seemed so stoic and austere. And the way the crucifix at the altar looked over the scene, watching over any one who dared enter, the tortured face of Jesus looking upward, with his crown of thorns and wounded limbs. She glanced up at him from her silent reference, and her eyes met the cross in greeting. Sometimes she imagined she knew that look. The absolute suffering there. She hadn’t had his hope, though, when… that evening she didn’t dare think about.

She was not the sort of person who dwelt on the past; she had enough of it that, if she were to, she would never leave her bedroom, just lay comatose for days on end. But she couldn’t live like that. She needed projects, tasks, people and things to experience and move through. Holding still never helped anyone. If you were dodging bullets? You had to run.

[Collin Augerman]

Collin knew nothing of dodging bullets, nothing of criminals, deviants, or even Russian Orthodoxy to say the least, his concepts of vice and sin were limited in experience to what he had seen on TV. What he did know was how to sense a soul in despair. He had seen Mischa arrive, he had been sitting in a window box overlooking the front grounds the day the she had been dropped off. It had rained that morning and the birds were especially talkative. He had chosen the view because the trees in the front most reminded him of the ones that covered the sloping hills and eroded mountains of east Tennessee. Her shockingly blonde hair had pulled him out of his reverie and the shape of her legs had confused him.

He didn’t dwell on it, she was who she was and who she was was Mischa. At least that’s what they had been told. It wasn’t enough for some who couldn’t understand her, couldn’t put her in a box, but it was all he needed. Clothes didn’t make the man, or woman, he wouldn’t judge her the way some of the eyes in the school did. But just because kindness was in his mind, it didn’t mean he knew how to express it. He didn’t know what to say to her, he’d only just arrived himself and his welcoming her to the school didn’t seem valid. He watched her, staying in the shadow of her other admirers, hoping the right words would come to his mind. But words had a way of running from him, especially when he needed them most.

So instead, he spoke with food. Three days ago he had left some fresh strawberries outside her door. He never knew if she got them but hoped she had. Last night he had set out a fresh pan of yeast rolls, just like the kind his mother taught him to make before she went back to school. He had been out marking off the rows for his future garden when he had seen her walking into the chapel, alone. Plucking up his courage, he had followed her, still racking his brain desperately for something to say. Coming up empty handed, he took a seat a few rows away and just watched, waiting for divine inspiration to grant him the right words.