& Broken inside

The roughness of pen pressing on paper is the only sound Marina can hear besides the sound in her head. Her eyes never darting away from either the art piece in front of her, or the paper under her pen. Marina wants to be prepared for her audition to Juilliard. Getting that audition after the usual auditions had passed was a huge deal for any musician, and she could not simply go in with one single piece. To use one art form to inspire another art form was different, and she needed different to get into Juilliard. 

This excursion to the museum would normally have been last on the list of Maxwell’s leisurely activities, yet he found himself within the quiet walls of the building under the suggestion of his therapist. Expression. One of the detective’s biggest downfalls and his homeowrk of sorts during his visit to the art exhibit. Short , awkward steps were taken toward the Sunflower painting where there was a small blonde girl, writing notes. “Funny isn’t it? How such a simple subject matter can hold so much value and meaning.” 

“In the bible?”, Piret asks with narrowed eyes. “Wouldn’t, I don’t know, Google be a more appropriate place to look for answers to burning questions?”. The next moment, she realizes how dumb this has sounded, since she is here as well - it’s just awfully hard to google if you don’t know anymore what words to enter to find out what’s wrong with you in the first place (other than a diagnosis she believes to be true but has never helped her out). She bites her lip as she listens to the man answer, weighing the coins in her hand. That’s exactly what she’s tried to do, keep herself together against the odds of everything wrong with her and the world around her, but of course it hasn’t worked. It’s scary to hear those words from someone else’s mouth, and saying that the man must be ironic would be a lame excuse, it’s scary because Piret has liked to console herself in thinking that she is special with her problems as well, but if others are having the same problem - there must be a solution, right? It’s solutions that are scary. “Yeah, it’s like I can already see the abyss from where I’m standing. And I also think I fell in once already. A long time ago, but it was…” scary. Why can’t she say things out loud anymore when she’s been so good at speaking before? “Would it bother you if we were to pray together? Before I go light my candle? I mean, not loudly or anything, each of us for themselves. But,” she slides into the bench next to the stranger without even asking, “maybe it helps to pray in groups? Not like I would know.” Truth is, she needs another moment to let it sink in that someone else describes their situation in exactly the same terms as Piret herself would. 

“As convenient as that would be...” He starts with a playful eyeroll. “I would hardly trust the answers to my internal struggles or my fate to a search engine. Plus I’m old fashioned like that -- nothing quite like physically turning pages to me.” Maxwell himself didn’t exactly know what answers he was looking for, or if her even wanted to find them to be honest. But, something about the actual process of coming here and opening his mind to notions he had long ignored was satisfying, liberating almost. Maybe it was just the fact that he had succumbed to a life of apathy for so many years that to finally seek some semblance of direction was a welcomed change. There was no way he’d be a brand new man by just walking into a church, he was much too stubborn to allow sudden divine retribution, but it felt as if he was one step closer to a part of himself that he longed to have back -- a part of himself that shattered when his wife died, cursed to never be whole again. “Actually I’d appreciate the company, I can’t even recall the last time I’ve done this.” An impassive nod is given to Piret as she joins him in the pew, appreciative to have found himself in her presence in this place that was foreign to him. “Hey it doesn’t hurt, right?” Voice raising slightly to offer encouragement in his response, Maxwell then closes his eyes and clasps his hands together firmly -- pointing his chin up to the high gothic ceiling of the church as his mind engages in silent conversation with who he loosely hoped was god. 

A Single Touch | Tatiana & Maxwell

Piret shrugs in turn: “Neither am I. But that seems to be one of the very few things that have stuck with me from Sunday school. Sounds really pitiful in hindsight, if everyone around you makes fun of your accent and that’s what you get for consolation, but I seem to remember that’s how it went. Sorry if I can’t serve up any scripture to prove that though.” She nods to the bible in the stranger’s hands: “You trying to catch up on that?” Now Piret doesn’t quite know how to react to the money, she’s great at accepting drinks in an inebriated state from inebriated strangers, but that’s normal and asking people for money in church while wearing 300-dollar trousers is probably not. So she just mouths “thanks” as her hand closes around the coins, and tries to keep her face from flushing red as she wrecks her brain trying to come up with a way of phrasing her reply. Maybe because this is stupid to begin with, hoping for relief from praying when you usually only venture into a church for Christmas. “Do you know this thing when everything just seems to go wrong? When you’ve worked so hard for everything to get better, and at some point, you’ve actually thought that it was getting better and then everything still goes wrong because…I don’t even know why?” She shrugs again. “Guess I’m sort of praying for that to stop.”

“This?” Maxwell inquires with a dry chuckle before holding the book up. “I’m just looking in curiosity more than anything. I figured I’m already here, might as well take a gander just to see if there’s still any hope left for me.” The detective replies honestly, a playful laugh escaping his lips. His curiosity peaked when the woman reacted to the change he had given her. She seemed so confident at the start of their conversation, but didn’t quite know what to do after he handed her a few coins. Thankfully she wasn’t a heavily spiritual person from what he could tell, this church visit wasn’t necessarily to redeem his soul just yet, but to merely observe and gather his thoughts -- think about the path that lay ahead of him without the darkness that plagued the outside world. Piret’s answer to his question seemed to be some sort of ironic sign for the man, hitting the nail right on the head about how he felt in life recently. It was as if the very creator he struggled to prove and disprove to himself at the same time was showing Maxwell he wasn’t alone in his sorrows. With a scoff that came from disbelief at how relevant her words were, Maxwell answers. “What you described just now is exactly how my life has felt for a while now. I’ve been walking my own path and dealing with the problems as they came, at least thought I was handling things ok and keeping it together but it seems like the road still began to crumble beneath my feet and now I’m just trying to keep myself from falling into the abyss.” The detective then scratches his head. “Seems like a good prayer to me.”