I saw you tonight as I see you evary night, I ran my fingers threw the curleng sprowts of your hair and lissened pashently as you laffed and burblt and told to me beu beautifal stories.
Gloria wakes prior to the the cockcrow. An hour before dawn bleeds across its black canvas, night is silent and barely seems to move, a petrified diorama relieved in shadows outside the window of her room. The soldier's alarm stirs her from within, the work of a gluttonous amount of double-boiled water begging to be relieved. The habit has become ritual: she peels herself from her coverlet, her bladder aching, her head a fog of dream-remnants and Golden spires.
You fit perfecktly in my arms. I have never seen a thing which is so tiny and fragel and yet to my eye so expertly sculp't. You have got your father's silfered hair but when I look at your face it is mine in a youthful mirrerglass. You will not remember but today you held onto my hand and you dared your feet with your ballince and weight. Today you walk't for the first time and I was very happy.
She packs a pipe with a pinch of coltsfoot and lights it from the tired flame of a candle. The smoke curls like a misty cloud around her sleep-matted hair. The acrid pipesmoke and a refreshing breeze from the open window work together to pry the sleepiness out of her head and bones.
Her loft-partner occasionally breaks the silence with a riotous snore; Ailova Smith's whiskey-leaden sleep, Gloria knows all too well, never seems a restful reverie. The woman rarely even surrenders her boots to the floor. A half-finished whiskey bottle stands at Ailova's bedside, just out of reach of dangling fingers. Sometimes, when the snoring riptide becomes too loud, Gloria quietly whispers, "Turn over," and shoves Ailova's to her side. The snores dissolve into coarse, half-hindered breaths.
Well it is not so much a walk but it is like a waddel, I wached as you took two steps and then four. Your legs will be oxin-strong when they have grown fully, do you know. And then you laff'd and laff'd and we set to playing the game of which you have become verry fond: you unravelt the ribbens I put into your hair and when I have put them back in you unravelt them again.
The clay pipe fades cool and lightless by the time she finishes writing. She taps the bowl empty against the sill of the window. Errant ashes scatter onto the knees of her sleeping-gown.
The city is verry Golden and shines as brite as a preshious stone, sometimes I wish that I coult sleep forever so I do not miss even a fracksion of a moment with you.
She folds the letter and stuffs it into the case of her pillow with all the others. Then, as orange light crawls over the horizon and summons a smoke of fog from the warming earth, Gloria Wynsee tugs on a pair of faded breeks — a rare choice for the hefty girl — and shoves her heels into still-wet boots. A careful hand snaps suspenders over each shoulder. She claps a fieldhat of woven straw onto her head, stuffing lawless tendrils of her dark hair underneath the rotted brim. And because today is the day, Gloria stands at her friend's bedside and prods at Ailova's shoulder with a jabbing finger. "Wake up," the younger girl says, childish excitement bubbling underneath her demand. "Ailova, wake up. You said you'd — you'd go with me to pick one out, to choose the right one."
No excuses of too much whiskey and too-late conversations about the Constable and the dockworker would save Ailova Smith from waking early on this day.
"I'll even treat you to breakfast."