~ Sophia ~

An Escape Into Hope

Lady Sophia Worth sat in the family lounge of her home, arms crossed, the expression on her face not quite impatient but certainly getting there. She had dark green eyes and ash-blonde hair that couldn't quite be called long, a somewhat cheeky smile and a slightly broad nose. Although Sophia couldn't accurately be described as fat her fondness for sweets did show through in her figure, and despite years of dance and physical comportment lessons there was a certain clumsiness to her movements.

"Are you hungry, my lady?"

Sophia shook her head.

"Would you like some tea?"

"No."

"Are you hot? I could open a window—or too cold, I could put some more logs—"

"I don't require anything, thank you Margaret. Just ... go away and dust something, I don't know."

Sophia clicked her tongue as she watched Margaret scurry out of the room. That girl, she thought, could be outsmarted by a cocker spaniel. And talk about not being able to pick up on moods! How difficult is it to tell how someone's feeling? Not very! Oh, honestly, where are those two, this is the only time I ever really get to see them and they don't have the common decency even to show up on time, I mean I know they're busy and oh so important but really now, I AM their only child. Even if it is just to discuss my future and my duties and my 'path', I still—

"There she is. The prettiest girl in the whole of the city."

"Good evening, Sophia. Your posture is excellent."

Sophia smiled brightly as her parents made their appearance, her father tall and neat and dignified, wearing his small square spectacles and dark suit, her mother slim and elegant and businesslike, her bushy blonde hair tied into a short ponytail. They sat on the couch opposite Sophia and smiled at her as she smiled at them.

"Should we have some tea?" her mother asked.

"I already had some before," said Sophia, her smile becoming fixed as she noticed her father had already taken out his pocket watch and was checking the time. He noticed her looking at him and hurriedly put it away.

"We had been thinking," said her mother, as she smiled at Sophia, "that perhaps you'd consider something in the way of education? You'd make a splendid governess."

"I'd only be able to influence a couple of children if I did that," Sophia said.

"Perhaps a teacher then—"

"Only a couple of dozen children."

"Professor at—"

"Only a couple of hundred," said Sophia, "most of them rigidly inflexible adults or near-adults, and by the time the people in charge have judged that you've learnt enough to teach anyone else you've forgotten anything useful you knew. No, education isn't for me. It's too ... passive. I want something more direct."

"Lawyer, then," said her father promptly.

"As I have told you many times, Father, I have absolutely no interest in following in your footsteps," said Sophia. "Besides, lawyers don't do good, not in the way I'm thinking."

"Going back to one of your previous arguments," said her mother, "I'd like to make the point that ideas are the basis of any change—"

"You've made that point about a million times, Mother. I am not becoming anything to do with philosophy."

"I still think that if you'd just come along with me to the college again—"

"I've been with you over a dozen times and felt nothing, I hardly think that's going to change now."

There was silence for a few moments.

"Doctor?" her father suggested, breaking it. Sophia shook her head.

"All you can hope to achieve with that is giving people more life, and I bet more than half of the patients don't even deserve it, not really. Also you know of my distaste for ... insides."

"Then how about becoming an architect?" her mother suggested. "You've always had a good eye and a fine hand, you could design great theatres and universities and cathedrals—"

"But really, they're just buildings. If I didn't design them someone else would, and besides which it's what goes on INSIDE buildings that's important."

"Politician?"

"I do read the newspaper, you know."

"Then how about something more abstract?" her mother said. "Musician, artist, singer, writer—"

"At our last discussion it was you who said ninety-nine percent of all art was worthless," said Sophia.

"I also said that the remaining one percent more than made up for all the rest, dear, try to pay attention."

"Well, I don't like those odds."

"Sophia," said her mother. "You're sixteen now, it's well past time you found your path and began—"

"It's not as if I haven't been looking," Sophia said. "I'm diligent in my studies, I've read more than half the books in the library even if most of them were extremely boring, I've talked to people in just about every profession you could care to name, we have these little discussions every month and I do always make a very good effort to take an active role, you cannot fault me for that, even if I do somewhat regard them as a waste of time. I am trying, I hope you can see. I am doing my best."

Sophia's mother and father exchanged glances again. Her father was about to speak when her mother began talking—

"It's not as if we want to rush you," she said. "But time waits for no girl."

"Well, that may be as so," said Sophia, as she stood up. "But it's going to have to wait for me. I'm not choosing a path until I'm sure it's the right one."

A few weeks after Sophia's monthly discussion with her parents, midway through her morning lesson, it began to rain.

"Gosh, that rain's heavy," she said, interrupting her teacher, who was trying to explain the finer points of early Targan post-Devastation history to her. She leaned back in her seat to look out the window. "Do you think there might be thunder?"

"I'm not here to teach you about the weather, my lady."

"Oh, right, right. That silly old Devastation and all that." Sophia waved a hand. "Carry on, then."

Sophia's tutor opened his mouth, then shut it again and frowned.

"Where was I?"

"You were saying something about all the little southern war tribes banding together—"

"I certainly was not."

"Oh. Weren't you?"

"We were discussing the early emergence of order in Targe, the reason for our nation's great success."

"Oh."

"I believe I was just about to move on to the founding of this city—"

"I've done this," Sophia said, frowning. "I did this last year—and Unity wasn't founded. It was just, well ... found. It was already here. Everyone knows that."

"You did the basics of the history of this city last year. Now you will learn about all the gaps that were missed."

"Oh. Good."

"And this city was not 'found', not as it exists today—there were certain buildings, certain remnants of streets and so forth, but were you to travel back in time a hundred years or thereabouts I believe you would find yourself rather astonished at the difference. I would imagine you'd scarcely recognise the place."

"Travel back in time," Sophia repeated. "Do you think that could be possible?"

"Of course not. We travel in one direction; forwards. That's why it's so important to study the history of our land, to avoid the mistakes of the past."

"But there's only about a hundred years of history anyway—"

"Closer to one hundred and fifty, actually," her teacher corrected curtly, "according to recent theories—"

"Well whatever, my point is that it only goes back to the Devastation—"

"All the more reason to study it!"

"But wouldn't it be more useful to know what actually caused all that to happen?"

"I daresay it would," said Sophia's tutor. "A pity, then, that there are no surviving records of the times before the Devastation."

"Doesn't that seem suspicious to you? It's like something's being hidden."

"It would, perhaps, seem more suspicious if not for the cataclysmic event that all-but wiped life from the world at the time. Writing down what's happening might not seem so important, when 'what is happening' happens to be killing you."

"But surely SOMETHING must have survived—"

"Only stories, most of which I'm sure you know."

"Oh, those things. They're just a bunch of rubbish about monsters and demons and swords that can cut people in half, those aren't real. Personally I think the Flaklanders are probably right and it was some kind of machine. Some kind of huge great machine that rolled across the country eating up everything."

"And where would this machine be now, then?"

"Don't ask me! Maybe it rolled over the mountains, or into the ocean, does it matter? We're all here now, is how we got here REALLY so important?"

"My lady," Sophia's history tutor said, showing great restraint in not killing and eating her. "If you could—"

"Oh, wow! Did you see that?" Sophia was already up out of her seat, skipping to the window and staring out with wide eyes. "Lightning! And that means—oh!"

Sophia let out a delighted kind of frightened gasp as the thunder rumbled low and long.

"Storms are so romantic," she said, with a happy sigh. "Don't you just get the feeling that simply ANYTHING could happen during a storm like this?"

Sophia looked back at her tutor's stony expression.

"Well ... I suppose YOU don't."

"My lady, really—"

"There's another one!" Sophia cried, as a flash of lightning painted everything white for a second. "That's really close, this is going to be a wonderful storm." She paused, grinning, then half-shrieked, half-giggled as the sound of thunder rolled through the room. "How perfectly thrilling," she trilled.

"My lady."

"Oh, just relax. It's not as if it matters to you how much I learn today. This is MY education, after all, not yours, I feel I should have some control over it. And if I want to delay learning about the history of the city then I feel that should be my prerogative. Prerogative? Is that the right word?"

"Ask your language tutor," the history tutor mumbled.

"Pardon?"

"As my lady wishes," the tutor said, through gritted teeth. "Perhaps I should leave you alone to reflect on what we've already discussed."

"Half an hour should do! Or until the storm's over, anyway," Sophia said, already dragging a chair over to the window. She sat down as the tutor left the room, shaking his head and despairing over the state of modern youth.

It's a pity this rain's so heavy, Sophia thought as she gazed out, waiting for the next lightning strike with wide eyes. I bet the gardens would look very pretty lit up by the lightning if I could see them. Even though it's daytime. Isn't that odd, how lightning works even during the day, you'd think it wouldn't. I guess everything being all dark and grey and a bit yucky helps. I bet the city would look quite nice lit by lightning too. Or even without being lit by lightning, how long is it since I actually left this house? It has to have been a month, at least. Oh, no, wait, I went to Lillian's birthday party. That was fun. Kind of. No, it was. Kind of.

Sophia stared out at the rain, the delight of before now gone from her face as thoughts of her path came back to her. As much as she scoffed at her parents for continually talking about it, the truth was that Sophia was more concerned about her future than she let on. She felt a deep, pressing urge to do something, something important and meaningful and lasting. As childish as it sounded—and Sophia had never said this out loud—she wanted to do good. And not on a piddling, small-scale, one-person-at-a-time basis, but on a grand, large-scale, everyone-at-once basis.

Sometimes—often, actually—Sophia wished that there were monsters, so that she could slay them. That would make things very simple, she thought. Or if I was a genius then maybe I could invent something that'd be so useful and wonderful that it would change everything forever. But I'm not a genius, I have to admit that, I'm just very clever. So then what? What? WHAT?

Although Sophia didn't come to any kind of meaningful conclusion that day, using the time she should have spent learning about history instead staring out at a storm, her meandering, circular thoughts eventually led to the seed of an idea being sown. Over the course of the next week this seed grew, a presence in Sophia's mind that she was barely aware of—that is, until a few days before the next monthly discussion with her parents. It was as Sophia was just falling asleep that the idea suddenly blossomed, all so clear and all so obvious, she felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. She barely slept that night, and in the days leading up to the next discussion with her parents it was all she could think about, to the despair of her tutors, and for the first time she found herself looking forward to talking about her path.

Whether the seed had grown into a flower or a weed, however, was as yet unknown.