The Tale of Romir and Solana
by Christina Janousek
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
It was on the day of summer solstice, on an island close to the Equator, in the same year. Thirty-year old Lucia Ray, a biophysicist, was enjoying her lunch break and strolling along the beach. The sun had just reached its zenith, and its warmth was alleviating her pain. She had recently returned from a trip to a territory where she examined an icy tinge — a natural phenomenon that, according to legends, created the territory’s landscape, and that so far could only be attributed to the war between the last Snow Queen and the Holy Ice Saints that had broken out after the latter had ostracized the former for unknown reasons.
The icy environment had aggravated Lucia’s illness. Now she realized how often she had taken permanent sunlight for granted. Lucia had been born with a rare chronic disease, had gone to several doctors, but none of them had been able to diagnose her properly or give her the attention she merited. She was an isolated case, practically invisible for the medical classification system.
There were times when she could just go to work and nothing would indicate her disease, when she took pride in being the only female researcher of her team with an extraordinary natural genius, when she was the most productive, and her libido at its peak. Years could pass and nobody would have been suspicious, and then out of the blue, she would feel as if something were beating her from the inside of her stomach. Her heart would race arrhythmically to such an extent that the disease interfered with her work.
When she was a child, a doctor colleague and close friend of her worried and recently divorced mother, had belittled her symptoms as “psychosomatic.” He would put her off with antidepressants, which caused severe side effects. In the most dubious areas, word had spread that he was using some of his patients as guinea pigs without their knowledge, though nothing could be proven against him. His face had not particularly stood out to Lucia, but his surname made her think of this mythological being with waxy wings. She only recalled that on the day he left the hospital for good, the staff darted looks of disapproval and deprecation at him. Since then, he had changed jobs and reoriented himself professionally.
Two months ago, she woke up one morning and felt that her pain had doubled. At first, she thought it had just worsened when another possibility dawned upon her. But how? After all, she had taken the right precautions. After her fears were confirmed, the first question that occurred to her was: “Will I pass this curse on to the next generation?”
Although she was aware that summer would not even come close to solving her uncertainties, she would have to refuel her energy as much as she could and clear her mind. She had to grant herself some time to plan her future, and for that a walk on the beach would be a small start.
When Lucia entered the beach, she was surprised to see that it was completely unoccupied. The rough waves were breaking against the rocks, sending a fierce spray over the coast. High piles of foam built up within seconds and invaded the sand paths until they touched the tip of Lucia’s toes, making a hissing-like sound, as if they were aiming only for her.
Had this sight not been so unsettling, it could have served as the inspiration for The Birth of Venus. A feeling of despair surged over Lucia when she noticed that the foam followed her footsteps. No matter which direction she turned, it always caught up with her. At some point, it coiled up her leg, wriggled to her waist and — as if to hug her — circled around her stomach, and then untameably led the way at its own pace.
Lucia could not help but follow. After some time, the foam dissolved into hot air, and then she noticed that she was standing on the exact same spot where for once she had let down her guard. But what astonished her even more was the sudden rain of yellowish clumps gushing from the sky and morphing from a plasmatic to a liquified and finally to a gooey mass.
The rest of the beach remained unaffected. Shielding her eyes in order not to get blinded, it took Lucia a while to realize that the sun was the source of this outburst, as if making itself vulnerable and wanting nothing in return. Its corona, its outermost layer, had just been peeling off! Every living being would have been cremated in the blink of an eye. Instead, these tepid hand-sized masses attracted each other like charged particles in a magnetic field. After the outpouring had ceased, they formed the following words:
The future do not fear,
your suffering can disappear,
with the sun’s crown by your side,
no more obstacles from which to hide,
more safety than before,
what’s inside you will adore,
and it will love you even more.
But if on Equinox it turns out the sun has shed in vain,
and your intentions go against its grain,
people’s own sight shall vanish,
reflections they will no longer contain,
the sun won’t shine as before,
its light impure,
across the globe,
but there is hope,
if two souls learn to rekindle its original spark,
the world will no longer be left in the dark.Solana
While reading this cryptic message — the words were still gracefully floating in the air — Lucia picked up some of the sun layers and felt how her symptoms would inexplicably flare up and vanish even faster as if the layers tried to convince her of the veracity of the floating words. What if these sun layers could not only cure people or prevent the disease from being inherited but also reveal the existence of an undiscovered chemical element referred to as Solana? After all, had the only purpose of Lucia’s research unconsciously not been to find a cure for herself?
While she was still indulging in her thoughts, a long shadow was suddenly cast in front of her. The solar particles jumped apart as if they were taking flight and had to fear for their lives. “I thought you would be here, the hopeless romantic you are. Seems to run in your family. I have never grasped your sun worship, until now,” a grave voice uttered. It was her colleague, Victor Icarus.
Since the incident, they had mostly been avoiding each other, so Lucia could not make sense of this unexpected encounter. His attention was inevitably drawn to the sun layers, and when he touched them, he experienced a feeling of invincibility. It was as if they brought out something uncanny that had been lurking inside of him. “Jose will love this,” he whispered to himself.
“We must bring these masses to the lab and run tests on them. We don’t know what we are being confronted with,” Lucia urged.
Victor winced. “We don’t have to do anything. Besides, nobody would accord credibility to someone who is sick whenever she feels like it and even once suffered from the hallucinogenic side effects of wrongly prescribed medicine,” Victor responded patronizingly while collecting the layers.
How could she have been led astray and forget so easily? How could she so gullibly have made herself so vulnerable two months ago, just for the sake of being seen? When Victor passed Lucia, his shadow did not immediately follow him, but remained where the layers of the sun had been resting. The next day, Lucia unavailingly returned to the same spot hoping the sun would bless her with yet another shower. She was inconsolable, her pain excruciating.
* * *
As fate would have it, seven months later, on the night of the Equinox, Icarus and Opal met at a party hosted by the latter’s parents, where they both shared ‘their’ scientific achievements. Curiosity and insatiable thirst for knowledge had gripped them both, and so they stole away even before the acceptance speech was given.
The speech was held in honor of a new department, the International Society for Disciplined Abundance, Elimination of Necessity and Nature as Defect, whose objective was to introduce their teachings as a new subject for elementary and secondary schools. At the lab, the mirror and sun layers were fused together. It was precisely at that moment when both Mary and Lucia gave birth to Romir and Solana, whose names were the last words that passed the mothers’ lips before they were forever closed.
The ominous prophecies had fulfilled themselves. All over the world, dim light stretched across the sky, people and animals alike were deprived of their reflections regardless of whether they stemmed from natural or artificial sources. Only inanimate objects remained untouched. In extreme cases, the excessive attempts of people to find their reflection in natural waters only resulted in the waters’ drying up.
At first, governments assumed a special case of mass hysteria, but this suspicion soon subsided. Visual messages of all kinds could not be broadcast in the usual form, and so people had to make do with outdated footage and shape it into new content at great cost.
The curse did not distinguish between rich and poor, old and young, male and female, cultures or countries. Every child born into this era learned to take the absence of the mirror image at face value. Schools withheld the concept of ‘mirror’ from them, so the students could not perceive as a loss something they had never been familiar with.
Even the wisest of teachers started to fall for this, which made their lessons even more convincing. Sometimes, the students had to partake in exercises where each stood opposite of another within a two-meter distance, so as to be within reach but still unapproachable, and had to stare in the others’ eyes until it was time to swap partners. That way they would always define themselves through and as someone else.
Yet, Romir and Solana, who were born with thick indigo scars running in a serrated pattern above their hearts that extended to their clavicle, would often be tormented by a feeling of loss without being able to ascribe a reason to it. They were raised by their grandmothers who, after the unfortunate passing of their daughters, happened to move to the same town. Both children attended the same school, parallel classes, born on the same day on opposite sides of the world, neither being aware of the bond they shared.
Romir and Solana were both let in on the premature and unexpected deaths of their mothers but, apart from all its lacunae and inconsistencies, and were saddened by the fact they would never get to see them. Their grandmothers, who were teachers themselves, had been hiding all the family pictures as a protective measure for fear of endangering the children.
However, it was not really their death which caused these two pain in their hearts, especially when they both turned thirteen. At that time, Solana felt a streak of rebelliousness. She would wander around a lake near her school — one that had not petered out yet — and dangle her feet above the water.
The water started to form the contours of her face, yet with no content. It was a sight that made such a dazzling impression on her that she panted for breath, rushed home, and locked herself in her room, frightened of herself.
Solana’s grandmother, although sensing something had distressed her, decided to let her be, and Solana wished to keep the incident to herself anyway. She was hesitant about whether language was invented for experiences of such a kind. On occasion, she cautiously tried to ascertain whether the water had the same effect on her fellow students, but to her dismay it did not. That was when her pain would resurface, there was no soul she could confide in.
Her absentmindedness and declining school performance did not escape the notice of her teachers or classmates. One time in class, her gaze was lingering on the glass of a windowpane for several minutes, as if in it she could fathom the answer to her questions. This earned her not only punitive sermons, but also detention and, after emphatically lowering the shutters in all classrooms, it was decided that they had to always stay that way without exception. The lights were kept even dimmer than they had already been.
Romir shared similar experiences. He too struggled to dissemble his doubts about his identity. So it happened that for the first time both sat opposite each other during detention, indulging in the above-mentioned exercises. It was at that moment when Romir leaned forward so that he unwittingly revealed his scar.
At first, it was only Solana who was besieged by pain, but then it became apparent that this feeling was based on mutuality. Romir felt an indescribable pull and could only tear himself away from Solana’s sight with difficulty. But at the same time, his look was marked by displeasure, anger, frustration and even disdain, and secretly he blamed her for his physical pain and discarded their encounter as portentous. He hated the way she made him feel. Ever since then, he put up a brave front whenever Solana’s name came up amongst his peers, conformed to their behavior, and whenever they laughed, he would join in, even if he was sometimes plagued by regrets.
On a school trip to the Avantgarde Museum of Blankness, Solana was approaching a statue made of obsidian that had caught her attention not least because at the bottom of its foot the lettering was scratched. She could still make out part of the word “R...CIS...S” showing a youth-like figure with its head lowered as if transfixed by something it could not let go of.
While mimicking the position of the statue, as if putting herself in its place and imitating its gaze, the fabric of her shirt got caught, so that the statue, despite its weight, lost its balance and fell, its head aiming for Solana, who dodged just in time. It shattered into pieces. Solana, who stayed surprisingly phlegmatic, was trying to reassemble them, and despite all the unwanted laughter she attracted, including Romir’s.
He would soon fall silent when he noticed her scar, which had revealed itself after her shirt had slid down. Dismissing everyone around him, he rushed to Solana’s aid without caring about the pain he felt this time and not knowing what possessed him. Placing his hand on her scar he mumbled, “Are you hurt?” Solana pushed his hand away and scornfully replied, “What’s it to you? After all, you are not the statue.”
For reasons the museum would not disclose, no monetary damages were sought.
As if with her last utterance, Solana had spoken a hidden truth, Romir dreamed that very night, the night before the next Equinox, that he did embody the statue, but that Solana did not cause its shattering. When Solana managed to put all the pieces together, Romir startled from his sleep, and that was when he knew he could no longer stay away from her, that he needed to speak to her urgently. He was ashamed of his tactlessness and knew that it might prevent Solana from ever wanting to see him again. But it was a risk he had to take.
After school, he passed her by, waited for the right moment and asked what had led to her detention. At first, she felt caught off guard, she did not owe him any accountability. When she noticed how serious, almost adamant yet still apprehensive he sounded, as if his life depended upon it, she smiled, she needed no words to explain. It became apparent to her that he had been battling with the same demons, but that he had dealt with them differently. Yet, he had not forsaken her.
She took him by the hand, and he willingly followed her to the lake. When Romir saw what the water did so vividly, he felt not only relief but also vulnerability, as if a sharp object were piercing its way from inside his heart to the outside of his body. This feeling was reciprocated in Solana, the split mirror halves were united until they disintegrated forever.
For the first time in years a living ray of sunlight was cast on a mirror-surface again. The two were neither appalled by their reflections nor did they get lost in them. From the wounds that had formed in the scarred areas poured inexhaustible possibilities, spread out in a far distance. These can be seized if Cowardice does not despise them as danger.
Copyright © 2023 by Christina Janousek
