An envelope left for Kyle where she knows he'll find it. A link to the Google Maps listing, just added, for the Tamarack Falls Jewish Bookstore texted to his phone. The envelope contains two keys on a keychain that's made of steel, its icon both a dove and a flame at once. Gisa never was one for unnecessary words.
One key opens the front door of the shop, and the second opens the door marked 'Private' at the top of the spiraling staircase inside the shop. A curious cat can find that much, surely.
There's a dull orange glow in the loft space, and not much else. The only light, tiny as it is, comes from the shin on Gisa's forehead, but even that is dimmer than usual, and obstructed: she's wrapped in her blue and white tallit, tefillin laid on her forehead and arm. Her hair's loose, not neatly braided as usual, ragged coils of wire snagging at the phylactery leather and shawl's cotton.
She's perfectly still, and her eyeflames are out. In the darkness of the room, she appears utterly inert.
It is of course some time before Kyle makes it to this room. It's not because he doesn't know she's here or because he's avoiding her, but rather because he's exploring! He goes through things.
Everything.
Honestly when he's not being watched Kyle sticks his nose in every closet, under every bed, around dead end corners, behind bookcases and furniture, and even finds the restrooms to check them out. He just gets to Gisa's current location last, is all, and pads into the room on softly stepping feet. Seeing her in this state, he makes an assumption of sleep for Gisa, and stops. Shall he leave? Nah. He very silently closes the door as only someone as stealthy as he could, and then creeps over next to her to sit and then lean up against her with his face against her shoulder, closing his eyes and relaxing there. What need for words? He just said what he has to say in perfect silence.
There are oh so many little nooks and crannies in the bookstore, as if she picked this place to have many of them. And then there are all the lovely and strange new pieces of Judaica to go through downstairs -- shiny mezuzot and pretty yods and silly t-shirts with 'Matzah Man' on them -- so it likely takes quite a while indeed. And she knows he's here, can hear him, more like than not. After all, the shop is closed, and he's the only person with a key other than her.
Just knowing that her curious cat, her best friend, is in the building, changes things.
He leans against her, and in silence she sits for a good long while, totally still except for the barely-imperceptible rise and fall of her chest. There's nothing more to say for a long while, it's true. Eventually, she tightens her fingers on the straps of her tefillin, and her eyeflames pop into being. The way the straps are wrapped around her fingers form a three-branched shin on her hand, the proper alphabetical version of the symbol on her forehead. And when she does talk, what she says is: "Her name was Annabeth. The second one."
Her fingers loose, and she slowly starts unwrapping the phylactery's straps from her hand and arm. Preparing to put it and its mate away, given she's not actively praying at the moment.
"Wasn't the first one Beth? Beth and then Annabeth?" A connection? Kyle obviously wonders, but that's all he asks. Aside from that he's clearly getting a sense that this is a time for listening and not for talking, so he is the Cat Who Listens now. Eyes remain closed, cheek remains against her shoulder. They aren't physically that different in stature but the impression of Gisa is always that she is taller and bigger and just More.
They're about the same size, really, but Gisa is just... solid. For all that goylomim are hollow. "I don't think it's the name," she answers, shifting him slightly as he leans on her, but only so that, with measured gestures, she can remove the second phylactery from her head and carefully wrap her tefillin up, neatly folding them both into their leather case and snapping it shut. "They were both -- tough. Physically fit. Beth's body was a dancer's. Annabeth was built-- " And she stops, then forges forward. "Like me. Broad-shouldered and strong." A weak sound in the back of her throat. "He's like Mengele. He's killing them to see how long it takes them to die, Kyle. That's what the number means. It took Annabeth sixty-six hours to die."
Goylomim can't really cry. But Gisa creaks, like ceramic being pressed, stressed to its breaking point. "She went missing days before that."
It's a good thing she's made partly of clay because Kyle slips a hand around her tipped with claws at the end that prick against her quite without meaning to. It'd be uncomfortable for most anyone else, but he's really just trying to be sure not to let her go. In a subtle way he starts to shift their postures where before he was leaning against her, he tries to pull Gisa into more of a lean against him. That's how you comfort someone. "You feel guilty."
Those claws just make a clink clink noise against her tough skin. That's all. In a way that she would never even allow anyone else to see, let alone be on the opposite side of, the old golem slowly curls to her side when Kyle starts to rearrange her, allowing him to move and maneuver her. She's still got her shawl wrapped around herself, and so when he moves her, she pulls the shawl off her shoulders, and sets both the tefillin and tallit aside on a side table, one of the elaborately-knotted fringes dangling in the air off one side. Her wire hair digs into his shoulder, more like than not, and for once, she's mindless of that. Her eyeflames go out again. "I am guilty."
"You are guilty in the sense that you feel guilty. You are not culpable. That's different." It's not the tone of voice one hears out of Kyle very often, but just as Gisa allows herself a personal liberty with him that she wouldn't with anyone else, so too does he. Sure he's quite capable of being serious. She's even seen him serious around other people, and usually in some somber way. This carries some kind of strength with it though, like he's not going to allow her to start taking blame that isn't hers to take. None of that changes in the slightest the fact that Kyle has his Gisa held now and just accepts and cares for her in that moment. His plump digits move from shoulder to rub her poor guilty head, heedless of the wire and other tactile offenses anyone else might take at her physical form.
"It is what I am made for," protests the golem. "He is killing them like Mengele with twins." There's a horror in her voice that has nothing to do with Durance or Fae, a guilt that has layers, like an angry onion of survivor's guilt, fear, self-loathing, and loss, all bundled up and laid at the feet of this most recently-washed corpse. "I should have looked for her. I should have." She should have looked for Annabeth. She shouldn't have stayed in what would become Israel to look after the ones who got to British Mandate Palestine. She should have done. She should have done. But she didn't.
Gisa's shoulders shake sharply, and she presses her face into Kyle's shoulder, falling mute. Letting him pet her, for once.
"Oh Gisa." The pain in his voice is all sympathy, deep and genuine. Kyle turns a little to hold her more directly and he presses a kiss as best his furry face is able to do against her forehead, chaste and loving. After that his eyes scan the room, ears perked and alert as he makes sure nobody is around to see this. Because this is the time to stand sentinel over his best friend in her time of pain. "Did you know her?" he asks.
The wide back windows look out over a low, sloping roof over the back room, but that looks like a bit of roof that Gisa probably sits on to sit watch over the back room itself, rather than where someone might, currently, see in. Gisa shakes her head slightly against his shoulder, still mute, and twists her hands together in her lap. Another one of those strange, inhuman, stressed-stone sounds, like someone twisting metal until it pulls like taffy. Knowing her was irrelevant. Gisa knew what was happening, and didn't go looking. She was, instead, confronted with a corpse.
It would appear that the answer wasn't that important to Kyle anyway. He didn't know Beth and he still felt awful giving her an autopsy. "What will you do going forward?" he asks, cutting to something far more relevant. It doesn't change the comfort that he gives her here, as best he can.
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