Good-Morning Tea

Re: Good-Morning Tea

Postby Treadwell » Thu May 08, 2014 2:15 pm

The wearied Councilor gives Gloria another soft, warm smile. A very big part of him wants to eat the rest of this breakfast before them. But even Gluttony has a moment of good, common sense.

"Take what you like from the table, dearie, mmph mmph. Secretly if you need to. We can fetch you a bag or a box, mmph, so you can take it to your kin and friends--even to Catch."

"And of course I want you to visit here, and quite often! I need a good, dear friend in this town, mmph mmph, who doesn't worship me, isn't related, and isn't wed to me, hm hm? At home in Westenford, I was very much at the center of quite a lot, mmph mmph. Here? Old Tready is a fixture, yes, and--" a flappity flap of fat fingers before lacing them together at his belly--"tied to quite a few folks, mmph, but. . . well, Gloria, I could use the company. Most folks don't come for social calls on the taxman."

The smile only stretches further. By this point, his glasses are nearly tipped from the end of his nose, barely hanging on his wiggly ears by their arms.

"Darling Gloria? Would you do me the honor, hm hm, of letting me and Alice help with the baby when she's born?"

She? Confirmation of a fact, or merely going along with the young woman's speech?

"She'll need someone around her who can pass for would-be grandparents who can spoil her with kisses and attention and toys, mmph mmph, who can take some stress off you having to raise her."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: Good-Morning Tea

Postby Rance » Thu May 08, 2014 5:15 pm

The food was invisible. Substance, it had, and presence, even an odor and a taste, but it was fleshless and inconsequential to her in that moment. Such a spread had been prepared, but whether the abundance could be attributed to her presence, or she had merely been an interloper in a ritual of commonality, she'd never know. When she stood her hand wrung her skirts with fervor, littering them with wrinkles and creases.

"I can -- I can visit," she bleated. "But if I stop walking, I think too much; I think about how all the trees were once spinners or seeds, or that the rocks had once been lumps of fire-water in the heart of the earth. And I think too much on how I was just a little grain of sand, and you were -- were a seedling, and only by some kindness of statistics and mathematics did we manage to persevere. Isn't that clever?" she asked.

"Maybe she'll be clever."

She wanted no food. She wanted to stop thinking about babies, but she saw their plump, distorted faces in everything now: noses in the navels of oranges, bending arms in the stems of apples, even heard breathy sobs in the throats of nickering horses.

(And did Arleda, Riesse, Maddy see them, too? Did Arleda, Riesse, Maddy sometimes trip over shadows that, for the span of heartbeats, became illusory infants reaching for skirt-hems and ankles? Did they?)

"When she is born," Gloria said, "she will only have me. You see? I am going to make sure she always has got two hands. I am going to stop sewing and -- and shoving my nose into things; I am never going to sleep because I will always make sure she is breathing one-two, one-two." Her chest raised, then deflated, a mimicry of fulfilling breath. "But you can see her now and then. That would be very fine. You know some things about babies and -- and how they will always want more kisses and attention and toys and I won't know anything, I don't know anything."

The words just kept spilling out of her. Her shoulders jerked about with laughter. And she was crying, too, which felt stupid and dull; she was always stupid and dull, or so she thought, just some teetering metronome always swing well past the median, one-two, one-two like a beating, beating Soodsy-heart.

"I can't talk anymore. My head aches and I want to return to bed. I -- I bet Fat little Frederick is more than that; I bet he knows his numbers wonderfully or is a splendid actor, and I imagine it is better to say Dashing little Frederick or Brilliant little Frederick."

Her sleeve scraped at her eyes and nose.

"I'm sorry. It's nice to talk. I bet Alice is very handsome and has got good teeth. I'll visit, and I promise I am going to be happy. You won't ever see somebody so happy."

But you can't hold her. He'll shred you to pieces, and I can't sew with one arm.

She turned. Her clogs battered the manor floor. She ran and didn't know why. She never thanked him for his hospitality. Gloria Wynsee had to run or she was going to blow up, she was going to burst, and she did. Outside, under sleepy morning skies, she cried as much as she could because if she got it all out now she'd be happy later, she'd be happy months from now--

Stop it. Stop it, stop it!

Aloisius Treadwell had, in Westenford, been a storied thespian.

Being happy would take lots of practice.
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