Tatienne
an excerpt

After five months, two weeks, three days, thirteen hours, forty-nine minutes and seventeen seconds of study, constituting of hours upon hours around musty books and out in the cold gaining her designated hours of field study, Tatienne knew one thing for absolute certain.

She did not like the way that squirrel kept looking at her.

It was certainly a sneaky little bastard. While all of the other squirrels had holed up in their trees to pass away the winter, the singular black squirrel had found a way into the castle’s courtyard, which was always at a pleasant seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit. The courtyard had five trees, and the squirrel had chosen the one precisely in the center, the one by the picnic table where Tatienne took her breaks. Many a time, Tatienne and the squirrel had sat, staring at each other for minutes on end. The squirrel would twitch, but never blinked. It only ever stared with those huge, dark soulless eyes. Tatienne, of course, would stare in return, but she knew she didn’t match up. How could she? She wasn’t a soulless little ball of coal-black fur. She couldn’t look at someone with such intense neutrality as that squirrel could, the kind of neutrality that chills the soul in the beings that have souls, unlike the squirrel.

“Excuse me?”

It had been one month, three weeks, five days, seventeen hours, thirty-three minutes and forty-one seconds since Tatienne had been close enough to another human to hear their voice. In that case, she could not be blamed for her wild eyes as she turned on the speaker like a feral cat. The pretty young woman at the other side of the picnic table blinked at her, and Tatienne blinked back.

At least this one seemed to have a soul. The young woman with the soul blinked again, then again before coughing awkwardly.

“Are you…uhm…” She dug in her coat pocket, pulling out a few keys and individually wrapped pieces of candy before she presented a piece of paper, which was smoothed out and read. “Fr...Frit…jof? Fritjof?”

“…That’s a male name,” said Tatienne, blinking at her, standing up on the picnic table. “He was the last student here. He left six months ago. I’m Tatienne.”

“…Oh,” said the young woman with the soul, looking quite awkward. “I guess I’m…very behind. I apologize – I really need Fritjof.”

Tatienne sauntered across the picnic table and plopped herself down, staring into the young woman with the soul’s clear blue eyes. Tatienne thought they were quite a strange combination with her dark skin and dark hair, but at least they had a soul, unlike the squirrel. The soul was obvious – her eyes were nervous, shy, and currently widened in confusion, entirely full of soul and entirely devoid of that horrible neutrality.

“Why Fritjof?” Tatienne asked, tilting her head to the side, still examining the eyes of the young woman with the soul. “He wasn’t a very good student, I’ve heard. I heard he was always messing around.”

That was a lie. Fritjof was one of the most brilliant students to study at the castle. The time he spent ‘messing around’ was actually spent on entirely original, ingenious experiments that led to several vital discoveries, but Tatienne had a grudge against Fritjof for leaving her with such massive shoes to fill. So far, Tatienne had simply waddled about in her clown shoes, staring at soulless black squirrels.

The young woman with the soul looked away, and a sadness came into her clear blue eyes. There may have been little tears at the corners.

“I need his help,” she said, a hitch in her voice. “He is the only one who can save my brother from a horrible fate. He is the only one who can save the world.”

Several things occurred in Tatienne’s mind all at once. One: this was almost as interesting as the suspicious soulless squirrel. Two: Fritjof was a whore. Three: Fritjof was two thousand miles away studying the habits of the unicorns in northern Mongolia and how their way of life could end starvation and disease worldwide. Four: She could totally save the world.