"Where did you get that?" I asked in astonishment.
She explained that when the image of her face appeared all over the blank mines, her father was alerted. They brought him a few pieces of etched stone as evidence. Her father demanded to know who had done it, so this person could be punished. But Meva wanted to know for a different reason. She knew that the tiles could not have emanated from Jockson Reckson, because he did not love her. Marrying Meva would put Jockson Reckson in a better position to manipulate the blank mining operation. That is all he desired, not her.
So Meva took one of the blanks with her face and visited her aunt, who was known as Witchy Lady, though few had courage to call her that to her face. Her aunt's predictions were a mixed bag. Sometimes she was right, but was often wrong. At one time, she had been involved in guiding the mining operation to the richest veins of blank slate, but after a few costly wrong predictions, she was no longer asked.
But Meva was desperate, and had no one else in which to turn. Her aunt flipped the tile over in her hands, running her fingers along the edges. Then she gave Meva a blank tile and told her to keep it close at all times, and an answer would come. This was not the answer Meva had hoped for, but she took the tile home and put it under her pillow. That night she dreamt that she was getting married to someone with no face. And when she awoke, my face was etched into the tile.
When I heard this I was emboldened. I took her hand and asked her to come with me. She nodded.
We didn't know exactly where to go, so we chose a direction that was away from the mine. We stuck close to main roads to avoid the wild animals in the deeper woods, but we didn't walk on the road, for fear of capture. As the days wore on, the sound of hover vehicle engines lessened, then ceased all together.
I remember one day in particular. We were walking over rolling hills that followed a river. I agreed to play a game of sorts. We would take turns asking a question. The other person had to answer with total honesty. She went first.
"Do you believe in love at first sight, Tzurk?"
I said I did not see how it could be true. How could someone love another when they had only seen their face? Love is more than infatuation. Love is more than a feeling. So how could the mere sight of another bring about such depth of commitment, self-sacrifice and revelation?
She reminded me that I was supposed to be answering her question, not asking my own.
So I told her, in earnest, that I had seen many pretty females before I had seen her face etched into that blank, and it had always been infatuation. But when I saw her face, it was different; Maybe not love, but not infatuation. I knew she was someone I needed to love.
My turn.
"Do you love Jockson Reckson?" I asked.
She did not. But the marriage was something she agreed to because there was no alternative. Her family wanted it. His family wanted it. What point was there in resisting? But now things were different, with the dream and my face etched onto the blank in her pocket.
"How did you come to be a miner?" She asked.
I feared her reaction to this question. But I told her anyway. I told her how my two brothers and I were sold into servitude when I was very young. I told her how we ended up in mining, though my older brothers were near to being sent into the military. I told her about the day I got word that they had both died when a mineshaft collapsed on them. And so, not knowing anything about my parents, I was alone in the world.
"Do you love me?" I asked.
She took some time to think about her response. Then she said that she wasn't sure. She needed to know me better.
So it went between us all that day, and as the day wore on, I realized that what I had felt at the sight of her face, back in Jockson Reckson's office, was changing, blossoming like a flower. If I had been back in that mine shaft with my hand on the wall, I would not have etched her face into the blanks, I would have etched her very soul.