Page 94 of Dark Chains: First Link
"Plants breathe?"
"Yes." He looked smug because he knew something that Asira didn't. "Through their roots and their leaves."
"I didn't know that. What else do you know about plants?"
Tomek launched into everything he'd learned in the garden, and Asira's hand moved across the paper while she listened, her eyes flicking between his face and the drawing. He even stopped fidgeting because he was too busy talking, which was exactly what Asira had intended.
Sullha watched them and felt something loosen inside her.
The enclosure produced two kinds of women. Those who were broken by it and those who found a way to survive. The broken ones were the majority, and Sullha didn't judge them for that. The system broke women and resisting it required a strength that not everyone possessed.
Some even bought into the delusion that they were doing Mortdh's work by producing more soldiers for his army. It gave them a sense of purpose, of fulfillment, and she didn't resent them for it. If believing that helped them endure and survive, then who was she to point out that their god considered them barely human, never mind deserving of immortality?
Asira possessed strength. She had channeled whatever rage and grief and helplessness she carried into art, and the art had kept her whole. It was the same thing Sullha had done with gardening and with Tomek. Finding something to pour herself into, so the rage and pain couldn't fill every part of her and burn through it until there was nothing left.
"Can I see?" Tomek asked after a while.
"Not yet. I'm almost done."
"Do I look handsome?"
"Very."
Tomek straightened on the stool, craning his neck to peek at the paper.
"No peeking," Asira said. "Three more minutes."
He sat back with an exaggerated sigh, but waited patiently until the pencils stopped and Asira put them down.
"Done." She turned the board around and held up the portrait.
Tomek's face looked back at them from the paper. His dark hair falling across his forehead, his brown eyes slightly too large for his face, his mouth set in the stubborn line that he wore when he was concentrating.
It was Tomek, but it was also more than Tomek.
Asira had captured the intensity that lived behind his eyes, the seriousness that sat alongside his playfulness, and the determined set of his jaw that he had gotten from Sullha.
"It's me," Tomek said, and there was wonder in his voice.
"That's you," Asira confirmed.
He tilted his head, examining the portrait. "My hair doesn't look like that."
Asira had taken some artistic liberties with the portrait, exaggerating some features to make them stand out.
"It moved while I was drawing it."
"Can I keep it?"
"Of course. It's yours."
Tomek took the portrait with both hands and held it carefully. He looked at Sullha with an expression that said this was the best thing ever, and he didn't know what to say.
"Say thank you, Tomek."
"Thank you," he repeated. "I'm going to show it to all my friends."
"It was fun." Asira mussed his hair. "You are a good subject." She turned to Sullha. "He has a very expressive face. He looks a lot like you."
