A Proper Gift

A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Wed Aug 28, 2013 6:20 am

Two dusty bottles of a very familiar red wine were left at Gloria's door with a piece of stolen parchment folded in half without a seal, did the Dagger have a letterhead? Inside, the scrawling but fine cursive read:

Beautiful Gloria,

My sincere apologies. Have a proper birthday present!

-T
User avatar
Tolleson
Member
 
Posts: 709
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 4:00 am
Location: Arizona

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:24 am

She'd never known about the horn, about the botched and desperate attempt to wrestle it from Mister Catch. Had never known about the beating, the brutal damage that had been levied against Tennant, the thief, her friend--

She sat at the Inquisitory with a desk wholly swept of its work. A paper-stone was at one corner, a dipper of ink perfectly aligned with its assigned quill at the other. The two bottles were perched in front of her, delivered by someone who'd recognized her name on the note. A play was acted out across the wood, invisible and seen only to her, a dancing memory locked in her eyes with sound and sense.

Cherny, falchion snapping out, a vicious steel tongue lashing out in defense of a friend, a knight.

Niall, the eyes going wide, skin going cold. No flare in the azure marks on her skin. No heartbeat.

Pretense.

The knuckles of her bare hand were swollen, bruised, scraped wholly free of their dark flesh. They were patches of wet pink and scabbing blood, still spackled with slivers of tree-bark and splinters of wood. Her numb fingertips shook as they held the note. She read it several times. Too many, perhaps. She saw the word beautiful on each pass. Beautiful Gloria. The girl scraped the parchment with a jagged fingernail until that adjective refused to exist, until it was nothing more than a hole torn in the top of the little page.

Her response was delivered to the Broken Dagger that afternoon by hand when she went to retrieve Cherny's shears.

She refused to look at the grass, at the blood that had turned it soft.

Please drink them with me Tennant. Tonight. Tomorrow. Whenever.

Please.

- G
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:10 am

This redheaded, grizzly bearded man wore no shoes, the soles of his feat a muddy black, and calloused. It was a sight that might have been seen if it hadn’t been for the fact that the stout stone wall he sat upon was too short for his long legs to swing. The wall was part of the bridge that continued the fence that lined the road between Myrkentown and the Dagger.

And he had been waiting there a good while. Though it was clear the sunburn that stained his otherwise fair skin was not the work of a single day. So even as the sun sat low in the sky and burned up the freckles on his cheeks he sat, smiling, waiting for the chance that Gloria was coming down the trail.
User avatar
Tolleson
Member
 
Posts: 709
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 4:00 am
Location: Arizona

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Thu Aug 29, 2013 2:18 am

The landscape was orange, cut across with long and crawling shadows that tried to thrive despite the dry light of the summer evening. Myrkentown bustled in the distance, the energy of it almost palpable -- but this was the way of summer, that as it waned toward its conclusion, preparations were to be made for the coming harvest. Every last trickle of day was as valuable as gold to farmers and landowners.

The seamstress stood in the middle of the trail, one bottle of wine clasped in each hand. The labels had cracked and peeled away by age for the most part, and her fingertips left long streaks in the old dust caked across the glass. Had she been any other girl, she might have passed him by -- but she could have known that hair even in a sandstorm. Against the fading Sunlight, it was a beacon, a burning totem of rust red and familiarity. It had started to spread like wildfire, a bountiful crop on his face that had not been there before.

Her eyes were tired holes, rimmed with black exhaustion. Her hair was a tangled mess of dark curls. Her sweater was a moth-eaten thing too heavy for the warmth in the air, and instead of her usual patchwork skirts, a crisp bedgown hung to her ankles. Yet, when she saw Tennant, a brightness chimed in her face. A fleeting sprite of happiness.

"You got my letter," she said, pushing out one of the bottles toward him. "I would like a drink. I would like a very long drink.

"Why the apologies," Gloria asked him. "Why the idea that a jig was not enough?"
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Thu Aug 29, 2013 4:10 am

There in the fading light he grinned, something big, visible even under all the hair on his face and entirely delighted.

“Gloria!”

The moment she neared, even as she spoke he was up in a flash. Despite the water that rushed below, the height and unevenness of the stones, he stepped with practiced grace; balancing with ease, he ran with quick little steps atop the bridge wall to close the distance between them. She faced him, thrust a bottle at him and despite the near impossibility that his grin could grow any larger, his face lifted into an outright and open smile, as if jovial laughter might forcefully pour out of him.

A momentary pause accompanies his glance to the dusty bottle, a flicker of recognition and a nod, as if in that moment he reminded himself what he had done. His smile wouldn’t falter, taking the bottle in one hand and pressing close as he wrapped the other around her in an unannounced embrace. Even the bottle holding hand would wrap around her, lifting her up in his enthusiasm, if she didn’t scramble away.

“No, you sent a letter?” The other mentions remained unanswered for the time, as usual, their communication went awry.
User avatar
Tolleson
Member
 
Posts: 709
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 4:00 am
Location: Arizona

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Thu Aug 29, 2013 5:03 am

He had grace. Grace and poise, both the perfect complements to a boy with his face on posters. Elliot Brown had once had the same confident composure, the understanding of how to make muscle roll into motion, how to turn movement into sheer conflagration, to burn brightly with talent and athleticism. She envied them; she envied Tennant, who only stole, who was only a thief and nothing more--

Not a deceiver. Not a poison, not caustic.

He bounded across the stones, the lapping water. He scooped up the bottle and then wrapped her in his warm arm, hugging, lifting her enough for her boots to scuff off the ground and her hem to tangle amid her ankles. She emitted a squeak, the breath blowing out of her. Her feet cycled in the air, trying to find the ground -- but despite how much she shouldn't, how much she wanted to refuse it, she bleated out a laugh.

"Let's get -- get very drunk," the girl said, wielding the words like they were a product of fantastic mirth. Her eyes, however, were hollow. Pleading. "You are growing a beard, and it is very handsome. And why are you apologizing? You -- you gave me a wonderful dance for my birthday; you gave me a wonderful time."

He had a bottle of wine. She had a bottle. That was what wine did -- it communed, it brought together, it made your cheeks hot and your words so much easier, your mind and its prattling doubts less of a burden. Even when her heels met back up with the earth, she clutched to him, her gloved hand a snare around his lapel--

--and her cheek, desperate for closeness, rested against his chest, hear ear listening for a heartbeat. "Let's get very, very drunk," she whispered. "That is what I said in my letter. You -- you waited for me? You knew I would come this way?

"There is blood in my hair," the seamstress said, with erstwhile enthusiasm -- the wrong emotion, the wrong words. "I can't get it out."
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Thu Aug 29, 2013 10:08 am

A laugh squeezes out of her and he grinned more. The beard was unruly, unkempt, and sprawling over half his face but until the moment she mentioned it he seemed oblivious to the fact it had grown. Once she is set back down he’ll scratch at the thing only to be happily surprised by her sudden closeness.

Upon his chest she laid her head, a bottle holding hand still wrapped around her, as he looked down. Steady and constant his heart will beat, “A good guess,” she was a frequent patron of the Dagger after all and the road was the quickest, safest route.

A couple beats are hastened, a momentary stutter and even if she couldn’t see his face his smile faltered for just a moment. Why had he apologized?

“Apologies because I know Catch is dear to you. And I have disappointed him,” he would have run his hands through her hair, help her with her problem. But his hands are far from crisp or clean themselves; calloused and cut, covered in sweat and earth. Instead he pulled back and took her hand, leading her toward the Dagger but then away, towards the lake. “I’ll help you wash it,” and he certainly didn’t seem to be joking.
User avatar
Tolleson
Member
 
Posts: 709
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 4:00 am
Location: Arizona

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Thu Aug 29, 2013 5:28 pm

She looked down at his hand, at the filth that caked it -- but it didn't discourage her or dissuade her. Her bare hand was a mangled mess, scabbed with fresh blood at the knuckles, the dark flesh scraped away to reveal the pink, wet undertones beneath. She put his palm in hers, clenched it with desperation, as if every step they took might send her careening into an endless ravine. Their path took them toward Silver Lake. Mosquitoes danced across the ferns and locusts rattled dirges of summer's death.

"Mister Catch adores you," she said, watching her feet as the path crept on beyond them, overrun with more patches of grass as the woods thickened and the Lake glistened like a field of tarnished diamonds in the distance. "He -- he is dear to me--"

(Niall was his friend; Niall was his friend)

"--but I too have done things to disappoint him. To hurt him."

The cat-tails stood like weary soldiers and the musky underbrush that rimmed the edge of the lake tangled around their feet. When they neared the lip of the water, the seamstress squatted in the foamy mud without any concern for the state of her boots or bedgown-hem. The white deserved the brown; her skin deserved the filth. She lay her bottle against her thigh and tried to draw him down to sit next to her. "You don't look like yourself. You look weathered. Older." A pause. "Worried. If you're afraid I'll turn you away for -- for a mistake, you're wrong. I am a good listener. I am your friend."

As she'd not been to Noura. To Elliot. To others.

She dragged the bonnet away from her hair, crushed it down into the moist grasses, and let loose the twisted coils of brittle black and Sun-bleached gray. For all the girl had talked of muck, of blood in her hair, the mane was the cleanest it had ever been, raked through again and again with fingertips and brushes. But here, she leaned forward as if to accept his offer, to helplessly show him the imagined disarray. That she might trust his hands to bathe it--

"Tell me what has wrapped the brambles around your heart," she said.
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:31 am

Her hand seemed delicate in his, even if by most accounts it was far from. His hands were large, lean, long fingers proportional to the rest of him. As she gripped tighter, he would as well, even slowing his pace, perhaps cognizant or at least sympathetic to her fears of moving to quickly or toppling into the water.

“I think he will forgive you,” an earnest answer, that implied more than it said.

In the late summer evening, the sun embracing distant mountaintops, even the cat-tails held a warm, orange glow. Taking a squat beside her, he flicks them, sending the long necks of the weed to sway.

“I’m not worried or afraid,” his attentions returning, his eyes clear and free of care, smiling along with that bearded smile. As she leans in, he does as well, not touching her her but rather taking a deep whiff of it before leaning back.

“Your hair is lovely and it doesn’t smell of blood at all,” she asks him a question about his brambles but he merely shrugs. He then proceeds to lie back, into the damp grass, elbows propping him up against the slight incline of the bank.

“And your brambles? Why might there be blood in your hair?”
User avatar
Tolleson
Member
 
Posts: 709
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 4:00 am
Location: Arizona

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:09 am

"Then why would you apologize to me," she asked, scraping her fingertips through her hair, unaware that he'd drawn near enough to draw in the scent of those curls -- and he might find that she, like any fool girl, suffered from too little an understanding of subtlety. There had been a bountiful dusting of crushed cinnamon sprinkled in her hair, an overzealous want to remedy a smell beyond that of sweat and earth. The spice smeared in brown streaks along the pads of her fingers. She clawed with such vigorous want to relieve her hair of said blood that it turned the curls wild and listless.

"Why, if you disappointed him, would you seek out my forgiveness?"

The question was not unpleasant. It was more curious than it was accusatory, and she finally turned to watch him as he lounged back against the damp earth. Lovely, he called her hair, but it wasn't -- it wasn't, it had so much blood in it, she could feel the flecks of it on her fingertips even though none ever came free, it stuck together the ends of it like tarsweat, stank of iron and metal and death. Nauseated her. Made her want to drink. Red wine. A whole bottle of it. A whole wonderful gifted bottle of Derry Red, dust and all, glass and all, she'd chew it, she'd swallow the shards if she had to, crunch them like holy sand--

"Niall's dead," said the seamstress, perched like a gargoyle on the water's edge. "Niall's dead, and I can't get her blood out of my hair. It -- It won't come out." The final word was spoken with enough volume that it darted out across the Lake and lost its echoes in the water. "I keep washing it and it's always there. It's on my bonnet. I swear it's all over the inside of my bonnet, little scabs of it on my scalp."

She did not realize her battered hand was shaking until she scrambled for her bottle of wine and it it almost leaped from her fingers. She dug her short nails into the cork and tried to pry it open. She wanted the wine. She wanted to get very, very drunk.

"What did you do, Tennant, to disappoint him?"
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Fri Aug 30, 2013 1:52 pm

“Because I care about you.” The answer is plain, he wasn’t afraid or worried, he simply wanted to apologize for any damage he’d caused. And he’d certainly expected more.

“Oh, I’m sorry for that too. I didn’t know Niall that well,” or at all really, but better to be polite to a friend in mourning. Especially someone so clearly harboring as much guilt as Gloria was. Like a rabid dog she went for that bottle and he nearly shoots up from where he lies, taking a firm hold of her trembling wrist.

He would hold her a second before prying the bottle from her to open it properly with an fine silver screw bearing someone else’s initials. The thing is folded up carefully and stashed back in his pocket.

“You don’t want to break the cork, it’ll ruin the wine.” His smile doesn’t fade, even as he twists the bottle into the soft soil and sand between them until it stands upright on its own.

“But that will not help you get blood off your hands,” it is here his smile falters and he pushes himself into standing again, holding both hands out. Beckoning her to join him.

“That lady, she had my mind. He got her out.”
User avatar
Tolleson
Member
 
Posts: 709
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 4:00 am
Location: Arizona

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Fri Aug 30, 2013 2:41 pm

Because I care about you.

No. They'd had their night, hadn't they? A stitch-sampler thrown over a stump, glasses of wine, she was a princess and he was a prince and they made like everything was grand, that the world was theirs. A pact she'd begged for, pleaded for, knowing Tennant didn't hold her hand with anything but the palm of a friend. They weren't royalty. She was young and he was a desire, a boy like none of those in the birthing pens. A sweet-heart as Catch would say; an extra beat in her heart when she saw him, the spring to her lope, the reason for so many smiles she could scarcely even explain, but that she coveted as if they were gold and ruby--

He explained the fragility of the cork. He took it from her, opened it with that winding contraption.

A.T. were the letters etched into it, carried on enough of the fading Sun-glint that she might see them -- a Junior Inquisitor's eyes, hers, that had started to seek out answers in more than just dusty books and Maxwell's color-coded parchments.

But instead of drinking, he stood and beckoned for her -- But that will not help you get blood off your hands -- and she gradually found her way to her feet. Her hands, one gloved and the other raw and scraped, reached for his. It was alright to hold hands, wasn't it? Her grip was as hard as rock, squeezing his knuckles as if her fingers were a blacksmith's vicegrips. Perhaps they would jig; the mud would not be amenable to it, but they would beat it into flatness with their heels.

"He -- he got her out?" Her lips remained parted, a question left unasked. When had she had him in the first place, when had she-- "How could you disappoint him? He cares for you; he would break down walls to help you. He would shatter mountains for you, for Menna Genny, for..."

The words trailed off, and the next question -- while it wasn't as necessary as the others -- poured out of her with an honest curiosity:

"Who is A.T.," the seamstress asked. "Do you care for them, too?"
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Sat Aug 31, 2013 3:46 pm

“He is a true friend,” her words were accepted at face value. If Gloria said as much, it must have been true. It was a statement to her list of facts rather than an answer to her question, though it may well have been both.

A vice grip in his hands and he didn’t say a word or wince against it. He simply pulled her up and then along to the water’s edge. Blood orange, scarlet and lavender hues reflected from the sky, rippled atop the water where fish peeked up and insects landed. For the most part the lake was still, the evening was hot, humid and without a breeze. In stillness it hummed, a moment that waited on them.

Who was it and did he care for A.T. too? The question holds him, his smile doesn’t fade, it simply stops. Suddenly he is frozen, his eyes distant and thoughts leagues away.

“Genny,” obviously the initials weren’t hers, but the thought was connected in some way. “I want to see her again, I want things to be right again,” the smile returned as if the words relieved him of a great burden. As if the thing he said was some simple matter of reuniting.
User avatar
Tolleson
Member
 
Posts: 709
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 4:00 am
Location: Arizona

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Sat Aug 31, 2013 4:36 pm

"You aren't answering my question."

It was not a reminder meant to scold or affirm -- her voice was devoid of its usual Jernoan glass, its conviction. Instead, the words were a gentle urge, that he might say how the disappointment had come about. Her hands were his, the gloved palm and the scraped one, the bloody one; at the water's edge, she echoed with unspoken fear -- her eyes danced not across the wideness of the Lake, but into the depths just beyond her feet. It was foreign to her. She could drown in it, couldn't she? She could never drown in sand, in vast dunes of Sun-beaten grain. Perhaps Tennant felt the tightness in her grip, the dimensions of rigidity in her elbows--

--because the girl was afraid of the water, because she was a Glass Sands-girl, a Jerno. Cups of it she understood, drinking it, but not the bathing in it, the immersion. Being so close to the Lake's edge set her breath to rushing and her heart into a run. Wash her hair as she might, sponge her flesh as she was learning to do, what if it filled her lungs, spilled into her mouth, her nose, dragged her under.

"D-...Don't let me fall," she whispered.

(Forty-four days in the churning guts of a slaving ship, a bucket between her knees, a forest of reeking bodies around her. They were all surrounded by imported rubberwood, and beyond that, a sea, a whole sea, an invariable, crushing, pulsing world of wet nothingness, she would drown if the ship cracked, she would drown, she wouldn't be able to sing her songs, work her seams, what if the hull cracked through with a spider-web, what if the salt bubbled up and ate her like it ate Soodsy)

She clutched to him more viciously than she intended to; it was only Silver Lake, but it felt like the edge of a whole world.

"Are you afraid that -- that you shatter everything you touch?" the girl asked him plainly. "Mister Catch and -- and your sister. Do you sometimes feel it in your chest, that tightness that makes you think they will hate me or they won't forgive me? You haven't broken me, Tennant. Menna Genny is -- is your blood; Catch is your friend. You aren't just a poster. You aren't a bad soul.

"Things can be made right," the seamstress told him. "Like stitches. And I know stitches."
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Sat Aug 31, 2013 9:26 pm

“No, I suppose I haven’t.” Recovering he offers her an apologetic look.

“Abbrem Tolleson, and yes, I did care for him,” his words should be heavy, for he has certainly never spoken them aloud before. But they come out simply, plain and as easy as ‘good day.’

To a fish, being outside of water was strange, it was foreign and deadly. Myrken was land to the boy from the sea. It was harsh and no matter the friends and things he thought he might know or be able to face, it was not environment for thriving. Deadly in its own way, here he was the fish. Perhaps that is why he admired Gloria, she was a fish as well. Or whatever a desert-fish would be, here, in unfamiliar and dangerous water.

He had almost begun to pull away, to walk right into the water, an intention of swimming perhaps. But he can’t. It is more than just the grip of her hand, the tension in her elbow, or even the rigidity of her body as they near the water. His calm is practiced and his senses adept hearing, at moving, at feeling the waves of emotion emitted by people around him. No more than most other people were capable, just a sense he had practiced listening to. Perhaps it was this patience that had allowed him to excel in his field, to let things lie, and to hear the things that went unsaid.

“I would never. Are you afraid of the water?” It wasn’t a taunt, it certainly wasn’t accusing or mocking. Again, his voice level, calm and plain despite the affection, or was it concern, in his eye. He had stopped by now, already knowing the answer.

“I know,” so plain, almost distant, but a smile that bespoke contentment. “I know because you are whole, un-shattered.” The others he was not so certain about, surely, he hadn’t bothered to mention them.

“I could carry you,” he gestured lazily outward, over the sunset colored waters lapping mildly some steps away. “And you could help me stitch things together.”
User avatar
Tolleson
Member
 
Posts: 709
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 4:00 am
Location: Arizona

Next

Return to The Broken Dagger



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests

cron