Of the Eleven

Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Cherny » Fri Jun 07, 2013 8:43 am

The bird is attentive, watchful, waiting, and this anticipation speaks of an exchange that has occurred before - the bird expects something, and after a moment it becomes clear what.

The button balances on Cherny's thumbnail for just a moment before he flicks, sending it spinning in a gleaming arc over the crow's head; the bird croaks excitedly and tracks its path, moving even before the missile lands among the leaf-litter some feet away, hopping after it in ungainly pursuit. The fledgling searches with apparent enthusiasm, flinging dried leaf litter about until - aha! - the button is found again and the bird immediately gallops back with the trophy gripped in its beak; it deposits the button in Cherny's outstretched palm before gaping its beak and fluttering its wings in plain anticipation of reward, croaking frantically to be sure it has the boy's attention.

Previously he'd only winked, or glanced sidelong, of perhaps half-smiled, faint and faded echoes of his more customary expressions, dulled by that desperately-maintained distance; in the moment, though, as the crow returns with a dull brass prize and the mill-boy looks to his sister, there is a flash of the Cherny of mere days ago, a pleased and toothy grin. He reaches for the seamstress' stale crust, then, to tear off a pinch of bread and offer it to the crow in payment; the morsel is siezed and gulped down with gusto, and a clack of the its beak and croaking call makes it clear that the crow is ready to repeat the trick, the game. By this point others among the foraging flock have taken note and start making their way over - none quite so bold as the first, but all quite interested in what's going on and particularly the nuggets of bread to be earned.

At which point Cherny presses the button into Gloria's hand and nods encouragingly.
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Rance » Fri Jun 07, 2013 9:36 am

Beak to palm, the delivery of a shining prize.

Bread to bird, a returned charity, a gentleness between human and beast that needed no language or communication except through means of barter.

There was a sting of realization, that had it come much closer or sought out her ankles or the edge of a stocking with its young, shining beak, she would have wrenched the book from her satchel, swatted, swung, crushed the black bird beneath a hammer of hard leather and parchment. It should not want flesh; it should not hunger for skin, or for eyes, or for anything but seed and grizzle. It should not show itself to be an abomination, a feathered devil, a Hawk drawn right out from the goldenrod cobble streets of a--

But this one was not like those. She blinked herself out of the mire of recollections only to catch Cherny's wink, his encouraging smile -- do you see the trick it does, his face seemed to ask -- and she could not help but giggle and take the button in her palm. That was the boy she wished would stay. Perhaps the thing the sausage-men had talked about had still eaten him, but it had preferred his inner meats more; instead of breaking his bones, it simply ran its tongue along the upholstery of his skin and scooped out the life underneath, scraped clean the hide, returned to them a Cherny-husk--

Was he suffocating under there, under silence?

The hatchling's jerky motions were the birdish expressions of excitement. She had what it wanted, and it turned its head left, right, then left again to examine her closed fist, as if wondering where the shining bauble had gone.

Back came her arm. She threw the button. Not far, not hard, not with any more velocity than it needed, and off went the crow, its tail-feathers rustling in the leaves and belly yearning for another pinch of leavened bread.

Without looking at Cherny, she said, "I had a bad Dream," while they watched the scavenger seek out its prize.

Eleven children. And when might there be twelve, when would the probabilities take over and put them at a chance of death again, put him at risk. It should be said. It should be told, now, when words were so precious and few.

"You weren't in it for long," she whispered. "And there were so many birds."
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Cherny » Fri Jun 07, 2013 12:36 pm

The bird is young, clumsy as it flaps after the thrown prize, and everything about its movements speaks of play; a bird child, still learning its limbs, flight still a new and exciting skill to be mastered. A couple of its fellows - nestmates, siblings or cousins perhaps - join in the hunt for the button, with much squabbling and croaking over which of them is allowed to search where.

This closeness with the birds - his birds, who he has watched and fed and nurtured and befriended - has brought some life back into thin features, a gleam into eyes that had been dull and hollow. To watch them, full of mischief and delight in their own cleverness, has granted him respite from darker thoughts, bloody memories still scabbing over. A distraction, so that he might not pick at his wounds, so that he might heal.

She speaks quietly of her bad Dream, and he watches, listens; a frown of concern for his b'lettah, and he leans a little closer against her to offer comfort, as she had for him. She whispers of birds and he tilts his head, rolls his eyes towards the bickering crows, dark brows raised in mute query.

Heedless of their conversation, the victor in the fight for the button - possibly the same bird as before, it's hard to tell - waddles back towards the pair of them, trailing a couple of bitterly protesting losers behind; the mill-boy waves to direct it to Gloria's side and reaches to tap lightly at her knuckles; he turns his own hand palm-up and nods encouragingly towards the prize-bearer. She cast the button, so it's for her to accept its return. And dispense the reward, obviously.
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Rance » Fri Jun 07, 2013 3:58 pm

As the birds squabbled over the button, she -- for moment's pause -- felt guilt for their violence, that maybe it had not been simply contest for the trinket, but some empathetic residue on the bauble itself. Her sweat. Her skin. Maybe something Jernoan had invaded it, and every time she cast it, she would be subjecting the little creatures to combat.

Cherny leaned against her, and even in his silence, she knew his mannerisms, his concern. The crows snapped and rustled, but she looked to him and said, "Dreams are -- are dreams. They fade with the sunlight.

"Today is yours," she said, as the triumphant crow came skirting back across the underbrush. "Today, and tomorrow, and -- and any other days you need or want me to be near. Do you understand?" A black beak awaited its equal trade. She followed Cherny's direction, unfurling a gloved palm while with her other hand she tore off a fingernail-sized bramble of bread.

The boy directed them as if they were his own little army, a militia of dark feathers and oil-drop eyes that seemed willing to do his bidding. And like a well-trained servant, the corone afforded obedience to her motions -- it dropped the button to her. The morsel was given. The crow warbled, viced the grain-bread in its beak, and returned to its gathered associates to proudly display its earnings.

"Tonight," she told him, "I stay with you. Tomorrow. The next day, and the one after. I shall sleep under the stars if I must. There is no place else I would rather be. And -- and you know I can do enough talking to keep us both entertained.

"Your coat," she said, giving a gentle tug at its lapel. "Let me see it for a moment, t'oddah. I've something to give you."
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Cherny » Sat Jun 08, 2013 3:35 am

Cherny nods in answer to her question, understanding; it doesn't banish his concern, but for all that her dream troubles her - which troubles him in turn - he is in no place to press the point, to pester her to tell him more so that he might help somehow. So a nod, a shrug, and a pause as the button returns and the reward is granted.

Watch children play; observe their quarrels and rivalries, and how they taunt and tease one another; the fledglings shout and flap among themselves, a bluster of drab feathers and hoarse voices, but no dagger-beaks seek flesh, no claws rake or scratch. The victorious young crow baits its siblings with that scrap of bread, and is chased by a raucous pack in return until it finally gulps down the morsel when it seems as if it might otherwise lose it. The thwarted pursuers grumble and protest for a while before returning their attention to seamstress and mill-boy, jostling for the best position in anticipation of the next throw.

She offers to stay with him, to remain close, and he nods slowly; not wishing to cling, to betray fear and need, but glad that the offer has been made. She asks for his coat, reaches for his lapel, and his hand is quick to reach for her own, to stop it for just a moment - the other lifts the lapel to show the little bone needle carefully tucked beneath. She wants to see his coat, though, and there's hesitation, some instinctive reluctance in his gaze before he nods, trusting, and begins to shrug his thin arms out of the sleeves.
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Rance » Sat Jun 08, 2013 6:49 am

"They're waiting for you to throw again," she said, smiling her pride at the bone-needle tucked within the fabric of his jacket. She made an exchange -- in his palm, she placed the shining button and the diminishing fist of bread.

He was more hesitant than he had ever been before, the shedding of the jacket like the removal of armor. The seamstress had nothing but patience for him, but as she took it, she folded it over her arm with the care of one who knew fabric all too well. She doubled the coat's tail to meet the shoulders, spread wide the arms arms, and slid her fingers along the wrinkles to smooth them.

She bared her left wrist, just above the cuff of her black glove. There, strung through her torn sleeve, were three steel needles of varying sizes. He had gifted her those some time back, and their cleanliness belied her usual carelessness for her own hygiene. They had been precious to her, a valued belonging, an heirloom. From satchel-side, she unstrung a long bobbin, threaded the needle with a tan thread, and then acquired something else from one of the shoulder-bag's many half-ripped pockets.

"I was in the Dagger the other day," she explained, "and inspired by your walnut game, I set out a tin mug. I have a little box of old buttons. I was tossing and tossing and trying to see if I could land them in the cup, but I found one I thought to keep--"

The button she clasped between her fingers did not shine with brilliance, but its whitened center -- ivory, perhaps, cut from the tusk of some great beast, or chiseled from sun-bleached stone -- had set in it a carefully-carved silhouette, a stylized bird with hard angles and a stout beak. Perhaps it was a thing of worth and value, fallen long ago off some officer's coat.

She pressed it down against the outside of the jacket's lapel, not meaning it for function, but for ornamentation and decoration. "It -- it is like it is saying I am Cherny, the boy who has got all the birds. I think there is no one better is suits.

"Might I sew it on for you," she asked. "I think it would make you look quite dashing."
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Cherny » Sat Jun 08, 2013 9:16 am

The onlookers follow the button's transfer with keen interest, but must wait a little longer while he peels off his coat at the seamstress' request; without it he seems strangely thin, gawkish, stick-like limbs draped in the loose linen of his too-large shirt. The coat itself is a thing of mends and repairs, extra seams running like old scars through the fabric, scabbed with patches at elbows and cuffs where the cloth has worn thin and frayed. But it holds his shape even when stripped from his back, the fabric sagging and settling over narrow shoulders, weighed down by pockets laden with trinkets and oddments.

While she threads her needle the boy tends to the increasingly impatient flock that gather round, holding up the button for them to see; tossing it up but snatching it from the air a moment later, or trying to trick them with feinted throws; with each teasing motion they grow more agitated, more eager, awaiting the moment when he lets the prize fly for real, and their croaking and chuckling rises in volume as if goading him to get on with it.

When at last the button is released from his hand - abruptly, to one side rather than ahead as he'd feigned - there is an explosion of motion, a clatter of frantic wingbeats and coarse shouts of excitement as they chase after it, leaving Cherny and his sister in relative peace for a time. Long enough for him to peer at what she's retrieved from her bag, eyes narrowing as he inspects the worn surface, and when he recognises its design his pale features split in a grin of delight. He must reach for it, touch it, turn it to better catch the fading light, brushing fingertips reverently across its inlaid face.

She asks if she might sew it on and he nods immediately, tapping it to show that it is in a good spot already, and leans closer against her side to watch, waiting for her hands to set to work.
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Rance » Sat Jun 08, 2013 4:55 pm

He gamed with the crows. He tossed the button high, feigned errant throws, set the little creatures to confusion. They were an ever-shifting mass, their obsidian eyes following his motions as if he were some divine commander and they his scattered clergy. She should not have grinned or even laughed -- one of them cast itself in a wild, scampering circle, scarcely in control of its wings let alone its scrabbling feet -- but she did, she did, because despite the words of sausage-eating men and the silence of her t'oddah, he was at her knee and elbow. Near her. Watching. For that small relief--

They're still mopping up the cavern; they're still scrubbing the stains from its floor, picking up pieces...

--she was happy.

Sewing buttons was a matter of patience. She strung the needle and thread through the bent hook on the button's back and drew it with confident tightness against the fabric; time and time again she strung through the needle, swooping through, piercing, and swooping again. She bent the button against the lapel, making visible the repetitive threading.

"This is yours," she told him, not with a loudness in her voice, but a whisper. "This button, this coat, these birds. Me, Catch, Many-Fights, the memories you have of your mother, with her hair just like yours--" a finger scooped up one of his bangs, parted it, let it fall back to its boyish discord. "Your trinkets, your walnuts, the -- the pies we ate in earnest and messiness two months before Yool."

She loosed her fingers from button to splay their tips against his bony chest, right above where an arrow once tried to deny him life, and he'd in turn disobeyed it. "This scar and the noble, moral thing behind it; the bravery that kept a devil's knife from its purpose, that risked discovery by beast and man to get me my lost hat.

"When you find your voice," she said, "I will listen. Because it, too, is yours."

The button needed only a few more passes and a final stern knot. She shifted the jacket to his lap, then put her dry lips to his temple. A kiss. Safety.

"Make that medal yours, Bird Master Cherny. Tie it off. And then I will boil us tea."

After some time she stood, brushing crumbs and burrs off her skirts with a gloved hand. She reached down for his, but -- with his jacket now off -- her gaze hesitated on little ring festooning the lace on his wrist.

"That's not where a ring is supposed to be worn," she said. Teasing and playful. Normal.
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Cherny » Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:06 pm

He keeps his flock occupied while the seamstress works, accepting it back from whichever of them was quick or devious enough to find it first each time, handing out morsels of bread in payment; eventually the crust of bread is gone, distributed among the fledglings, and he slips the button back into his pocket before showing the young birds his empty hands. They understand that the game is done, there's no more bread to be won, and drift off into little groups to forage for grubs and bugs or chase one another up and over the fallen trunk, checking in case any overlooked scraps of meat remain.

Between casting the brass button his dark eyes follow the needle back and forth, a sliver of gleaming steel between her fingertips, each stroke binding the bird-button more tightly in place. It's soothing, something he can watch without thinking while she speaks. Things that are his. He holds up his fingertip as well, with the little dark dot that marks where that needle - or one of its siblings - had pierced his skin not so many days ago. That is his, and also theirs. He tilts his head into that kiss, accepting, before inspecting the returned coat and its new adornment for a moment. The needle makes a few more passes in his fingers, securing the thread with a cunning loop that draws tight and locks in place, then bows his head to snap the thread between his teeth.

The steel needle he returns with the solemnity of one passing a venerated sword back to its rightful wielder, before hee too rises and shakes out his clothes, dusting dead leaves and dirt from the seat of his britches. When she comments upon the ring - a fine piece of jewelry, threaded onto a leather bootlace wound about his bony wrist - he shrugs, unwinding it by a loop or two so that he can slip it onto his too-thin finger and show how it's held in place by the thong.
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Rance » Tue Jun 11, 2013 1:12 am

That is his -- the almost invisible mark, swallowed up by the skin, where he'd pierced his flesh with a needle some time ago.

That is theirs.

When he was done with sewing the button as if it were some makeshift badge of honor, she praised his technique with earnest. "Buttons are frustrating," she admitted. "So much thread for such a small space. And yet we still manage to -- to lose them. But that one, that one, Cherny, will rightfully stay put."

When he displayed the clever harness for his ring -- the thong of leather meant to hold it in place -- she smiled at his inventiveness, but put off her questions, her inquiries, until a more appropriate time.

Night fell. The crickets prattled their endless songs in the dark and locusts chittered with excitement in the distant brush. Myrkentown, for all its torchlit streets and the candles glowing in stern, tightly-packed homes, was an aura of tired orange on the horizon beneath the summer starlight. From within Cherny's shack, she retrieved a battered old kettle with a cracked spout, filled it halfway from her corked water-bladder, and dropped in two hand-sewn cheesecloth bags of cheap tea from the Broken Dagger.

"You never know when you will want tea," she explained with a smile. "I have been -- been walking a lot lately. Get some brush," she said. "Twigs. No greenwood; it will be too stubborn to light.

She huddled near the stone-encircled firepit just outside the rickety wall of his hut, the little dog-smelling home where he took his sleep and lodged with Many-Fights. With her skirts stretched across her knees and her bloodstained clogs peering out from beneath her hems, she drew out a tarnished tinderbox from her satchel and carefully organized its contents on a flat stone: a tried tangle of oft-burnt tinder, a knuckle-hook of rusted steel, and a sharp arrowhead of flint.

Finally, while she struck steel against jagged flint-edge and a burst of sparks blew out, caught the wind, and faded like wisps, she said to him, "It is an odd thing, to tie a ring to your wrist, Cherny. One would think wearing it should be enough.

"Is it important to you," she asked. "Is it -- is it like an heirloom?"
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Cherny » Tue Jun 11, 2013 2:25 am

The sun set. The millpond crows returned croaking and chattering to their roost in the dark pines, and the mill-boy and seamstress return to the ramshackle hut he claims as his own. For her instructions on how to pick kindling he has only a long-suffering roll of his eyes in answer, wandering round the back of the shack for a moment before returning with a good handful of thin birch twigs, bundled and dried, a handful of sturdier sticks to burn once the brush is alight, and a pleased little smile.

While Gloria fusses with flint and tinder he arranges the fuel in the firepit, a little nest of birch brush roofed in stouter sticks, so that the sparks might grow into little flames, might feed and grow and spread from one set of sticks to the next.

She mentions the ring again, where it's once more laced about his wrist, and he shrugs; nods to the first question - important - and shakes his head to the second - not an heirloom. Fitting it over his finger again, he holds up his hand to show how loose the ring is, how it rattles around when he moves his hand, how it would easily fall off if worn without the thong. It's a gleaming thing, valuable, and he's loath to lose it. That's all.
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Rance » Tue Jun 11, 2013 3:37 am

The ring rattled around his little digit, as if it were--

"Meant for a larger finger," she expressed, racking steel against flint again, a hard-fisted strike that belched more of the sparks into the tinder, lighting her face in the night. "Which means it was not yours. Yes?"

There was no accusation in her voice, though, no condemning assumption. She knew, if she knew anyone at all, the mill-boy; he was no thief, no Elliot Brown, and the ring was likely retrieved from some sloppy bit of mud or crushed under the heel of an unassuming boot along Wharf Street.

A spark livened into a lick of flame on the tinder. She cupped the pale, hairy brush in her callused hands, brought it to her mouth, and beneath the hood of the bonnet, gave a great huff of breath. White smoke curled up into the air, moistened her eyes, and as the embers started to combust, she put the bellowing tinder against the gathered twigs. The flame leaped, caught hold of dry wood and leaves, and began to spread with a few assertive blows. She ground out the smoldering tinder under her clog, puffing, wheezing into the infantile flame--

And when the wood, after time, had turned to glowing coal, she mounted the kettle atop them in the firepit to boil their evening's tea.

"If no heirloom, what is so important about a ring," she asked him over her knees, her eyes ashine with the reflection of the flames, her gloved hand occasionally prodding at the flames with a twig, "that you must tie it to your wrist for fear of losing it?"
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Cherny » Tue Jun 18, 2013 1:09 am

A larger finger, yes; he nods, and shrugs. His hands work, miming tugging the ring from his finger and casting it disdainfully into the firepit; a moment later he reaches to the edge of the circle as if plucking a small object from the ashes; dusting it off, settling it upon his finger where the band now resides. Something discarded, something found and claimed. As with so many of the mill-boy's possessions - the little hut he's made his own, the cast-off coat he wears, even the dented little kettle that boils water for their tea.

The boy is still while Gloria tends to the tinder, nurses a spark into a flame into a merry little fire; lost in his own thoughts for a time, comforted by the quiet business of feeding sticks and twigs into the campfire, watching the thin plume of woodsmoke rise to the canopy above waiting for it to burn down to something that'd heat a kettle rather than just blackening its bottom.

She speaks again, questioning, and he has to think a little before he can answer; a tap of knuckles for his brow, before he turns his hand palm-outward in denial, blocking. Stopping some undefined thing from getting into his head.
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Re: Of the Eleven

Postby Rance » Tue Jun 18, 2013 6:50 am

His motions were a pantomime. A game, almost -- but she did not think of it so much as a charade as it was an essential matter of primitive communication, a necessity when his tongue was frozen by what he had seen, the fears he had experienced. Horrors, nightmares the likes of which could scar and cripple far more than any brazen sledge or battlehammer.

The world around them was black. The smoke was a billowing pillar, a gray, greasy flag leaning high into a night sky pricked through with white stars, a great black canvas stabbed through with celestial sewing needles. He stoked the flames, and with a hand carefully wrapped in a skirt-hem, she adjusted the kettle until it found its heat and it started belching out sputters of steam.

Despite her keen grasp of the Standard, it was still habitual for the seamstress to read motions and language of the body to accessorize what speech she heard. Cherny, even without words, was an open tome -- the movements were clear, defined, and though it took her several minutes to understand, she did, she could.

"A barrier," she said, snapping open the hinged mouth of the tin kettle and letting the steam escape. "Like it is an armor for your -- your head. The more you keep your eyes to the earth for fantastic things, Cherny, the more wondrous your finds become. I should hope that the one day you find something of extravagant worth, you might treat me to a humble little home when you trade it away for a thousand shillings.

"Something modest," she clarified, smiling over the fire. "Nine to twelve rooms would be perfectly ideal."

But while they shared tea and enjoyed the quiet of night, she realized just how thankful she was for things like armor, for breakers of steel and deflectors of blades--

Cherny could never have enough of those, she thought. Scales of leather. Rings. He could never be too safe.

"Here, now. Have some tea. And maybe we will look at stars. And maybe," the girl clarified, "we will name some of them."

And moments like these--

when nothing else existed
when no beasts skulked in the night
or fed on children
and all that mattered was fire and tea

--things could be inevitably, undeniably, unflinchingly

normal.
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