Isolation

Zane couldn’t deny how much he loved the rain, not the treacherous storms that battered the Clocktower the second winter hit, but the drizzle that meant the town was quiet of traders. No one would dare make their way all the way to Madame Rosevin’s in this weather, most magi were far too delicate to handle the cold and wet. Now and then they’d get a few people trail in, dripping water to the floor that the mop hastily hurried after. But they were never there for Zane, they were there for Madame Rosevin.

It meant that Zane got the freedom to do whatever he wanted, to an extent. He still wasn’t allowed to actually participate in any experiments that mattered, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t spend that free time on research. 

Madame Rosevin’s apothecary shop had three floors above ground and one below. The ground floor was simply the shop, shelves upon shelves of artefacts and potions that had been so carefully surated. The first floor was for Madame Rosevin’s esteemed guests, other magi who were looking for particular pieces that only she had. Her bedroom was tucked away in the back, hidden by bookcases and velvet curtains. A rounded outcrop tower held a circular table reserved for tea–or a strong liquor if the event required such. The basement was storage and Madame Rosevin’s personal research that had a tendency to become light sensitive when left out for too long. 

That left the attic. Madame Rosevin never used it, the rickety ladder leading up to it was too much for her to climb, not that there was anything but empty boxes and cobwebs up there. But once Zane became a more permanent fixture in the shop, she grew tired of seeing him huddled up beneath the winding staircase whenever he had a moment of peace. So, the space became his.

It was a large enough area, the roof itself was pointed so high that he could get away with standing in the centre despite his height, and he could fill the edges with bookshelves and drawers for all of the ingredients needed for his small experiments that Merrin wouldn’t let him do back in the Clocktower. He had space for a desk, which was already buried beneath endless amounts of paper.

After he’d been in the attic for just over a month, he’d discovered his sanctuary. A crawl space tucked beneath old, worn down planks to the side of the attic, obscured by the support beam. Once he’d moved it, more out of curiosity than anything else, a narrow crawl space tunneled into the small slip of roof that joined onto the tower’s turret. There was enough space to stand in the turret, the roof pointing up over a metre above Zane’s head. 

No one else knew it was there, and the only connection to the outside world was a series of small windows just beneath the joint of the roof tiles and the wooden wall. 

Over the course of just a few weeks, Zane had turned it into his own little space hidden away from the world. Wallpaper across the planks cut out some of the draft that the wood let in, and a rug on the floor meant he could slip off his shoes without the worry of splinters. Curtains kept out anyone who could have possibly seen in and meant he could have the room as dark as he wanted. 

He’d managed to convince Merrin to help him build a small, makeshift sofa out of spare planks from a project and sofa cushions they pried out of the abandoned library. It wasn’t anything special, but with enough blankets and throw cushions, it was a little slice of comfort. 

Though he had bookshelves both at the apothecary and at the Clocktower, he kept the special ones in his sanctuary. Ones that he didn’t want Madame Rosevin to know about, but ones he needed too often to keep at Tal’s. Not that Tal would mind his presence throughout the day, it was just a pain to continuously make the trek out to the herbalist’s cottage; it was on the complete other side of Ashenport to the apothecary, though it was closer to the Clocktower than any other building. 

But up in his sanctuary he didn’t have to worry about anything or anyone other than whatever book he’d found. The soft patter of rain against the window was all the background noise he needed to drown out the distant murmur of voices from the shop floor. Zane wasn’t entirely sure if Madame Rosevin knew where he was, but he was out of the way and out of trouble, that’s what really mattered. 

He liked being left alone, but he wasn’t lonely. He never felt lonely. Even when Merrin spent evening until morning down at the docks, and Zane would be left in solitude in the Clocktower’s unending expnase. Even when Madame Rosevin was out on business, leaving Zane to tend to the shop alone despite no customers ever coming in without her presence. Even when he went days without a conversation, without speaking a single word out loud. He wasn’t lonely. He was safe. 

In fact, Zane wasn’t really aware what it was like to crave company until the cold winds froze him to the core on his way in to work. Only then did he consider just how nice it would have been to turn around and walk to the herbalist’s, knowing htat a hot cup of tea would be waiting for him. A soft fur blanket draped over his shoulders, and a warm smile that distracted Zane from whatever words were being spoken.

He thought, as he flipped through the book he’d picked up, that Tal would be the only one allowed in his sanctuary other than himself. Perhaps a dog, if Merrin ever let him get one, and if Madame Rosevin would let a mutt in her store. It was likely she wouldn’t, but Zane had his ways. 

But he wasn’t lonely. He couldn’t be. 

He had his books, he had his experiments, he had his endless stream of thoughts that hadn’t stopped since he first got out of bed. How could he be lonely when he had all of that going for him? It was no different than this time the previous year. Nothing had changed…

Right?