Wandering

Wandering

Postby Rance » Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:49 am

Wandering through the Myrkentown bazaar, in all its filthy splendor, gave her comfort.

Sleet chewed at her cheeks, the shards whipping through the air like invisible insects. Bootheels and hooves had carved paths and pockmarks in the black, squelching mud between stalls where bearded men sold pinches of spice and round-faced women flapped cheap wares at passers-by. The crowd was a throbbing, pulsing mess of humanity: plumes of warm, stinking breath hovered as a fog; girls and boys chased one another amid a forest of skirts and trouser-legs; consumers and salesmen bandied, coin changed hands, and people trudged senselessly throughout the square, trying to adopt a look of purpose.

Gloria Wynsee did the same. With the blunted limb of her left arm tucked protectively against her breast, she nudged through the masses, her patchwork skirts clenched in her remaining hand. An earthen shawl and a white bonnet hid her face from view. Sometimes her hand lowered to find the swell of her belly, but the palm fell upon air alone; large, she was, in bone and body, fat by some standards, stocky by kinder ones -- but there was a breadth to her abdomen she missed. The kicking, the nudging from within, the tiny little life...

A turn of her head. Did Edmund follow? Would he?

At a stall where a bounty of threadspools stood like an army of color and order on an uneven table, her thick fingers ventured to lift a bobbin of yellow string so she might examine it--

"Do you embroider," said the red-cheeked woman behind the display.

"Doesn't every woman," Gloria said.

"Perhaps," grinned the sales-woman, her smile as simple as her frock. "But you're not even a woman yet."
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Re: Wandering

Postby Guppy » Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:24 pm

Edmund had arrived to her room at an early hour, eager to see the girl who had caught his eye. He found her with the tearful wildling, that strange girl that made a shudder pass down his spine whenever he met her gaze. She had allowed him to clean her untended wounds, though had not said a word about where she had gotten them. Vivid, violent colors stood against the pale skin of her features and she tried not to notice his frown. She had gently kissed Gloria's forehead and begged for him to give her excuses before vanishing into the night as quickly as he had arrived.

Had any of Rememdium's staff come calling, he would have given his most stern of glowers and refused them entrance. Miss Noura had very strict orders.

-----

Edmund Henderson was a patient man. He picked his way through the heavy crowd with a patient smile, all the way keeping an eye on the seamstress ahead of him. He stopped to help an older woman pass from one side of the street to the other. He smiled as she patted his cheek and blessed his Lady before he could move on. He came to stand at Gloria's elbow just as the shop keep made mention of Gloria's age.

He gave a nod towards the woman in polite fashion, his hand reaching out to settle on the seamstress' arm sweetly. "I almost lost you, Miss Gloria," he complained, without any real ire to his voice. His smile was quick and genuine.
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Re: Wandering

Postby Rance » Sat Dec 13, 2014 6:40 pm

Gloria's forearm, under Henderson's touch, was iron. The muscles that connected elbow to wrist were wound like bonds around her bones. The dark strained with force, exerting pressure upon the fabric of her sleeve so firmly that the fabric nearly threatened to burst. The seamstress leered at the peddler behind the expansive display of threads and needles. The girl's jaw was stone. Her fist wrapped itself around the bobbin she held until the color fled from her knuckles.

"Who are you to tell me I'm no woman," Gloria said, chin thrust high.

She looked down at Edmund's hand poised on her forearm as though it were a foreign intruder. It lent her pause. Her fist unraveled. She tossed the rolled thread down to the peddler's table.

A turn. Her skirts snapped across Edmund's knees and ankles. Silently -- I almost lost you, Miss Gloria, he'd said, as soft as down -- she led him across the avenue, her pace brisk, her heels unprejudiced: they crushed through canyons in the mud and sunk ankle-keep in offal at times. The sleet cut through the air, a relentless army of tiny blades. Nearby, a tanner's tent offered protection, the wet hides and rough leather stretched in display a suitable windbreak to anyone resourceful enough to seek shelter behind it.

Trembling fingers bearing nails bitten down to their very base peeled the wrinkled bonnet off her cheek. Finally, the girl looked up at Edmund, her pockmarked face contorted in a frown that not even sight of him -- stoic, solid, patient, and kind -- could diminish. "You didn't have to -- to follow me. I don't mind," she quickly added, "but I'm fine. It's the first time I've taken to Myrkentown in three weeks.

"I needed to wake my legs." Then, after a pause: "I wanted to hit her. I would have -- have liked to break her nose."

She swallowed.

"Are you following me because you're worried I'll do something stupid?"
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Re: Wandering

Postby Guppy » Tue Dec 16, 2014 1:19 pm

His soft touch on her arm was noted with a harsh glance, a foreign intruder. The Kestrel's man let his hand fall from her, sufficiently chided. The man was no stranger to those looks and he reacted appropriately.

He ducked his head like he were naught more than a boy, shoulders hunched, but still he trailed behind her obediently. Gloria was hurting and Edmund found himself wholly unable to help her with her grief. He was at a loss, uncertain how to proceed when she was so furious at all the world. His expression managed to hide very little. His steps were quiet as he paced behind her.

They hunkered down under the scant shelter, peering out at the cold rain-strewn expanse. He did not turn to face her, his jaw set and stubborn. "I know that I did not have to," he answered, calmly.

"No," and that was rushed as he glanced sidelong towards her, "I do not think you will do anything stupid, but Noura does and I am under strict orders not to leave you alone." His tone dipped softer. "She seemed concerned and I'll not break my promise."

He faltered, paused - troubled. "Though, perhaps the bruises on her face had a little something to do with her mindset. I cannot say."
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Re: Wandering

Postby Rance » Sat Dec 20, 2014 4:35 pm

"Bruises? What do you mean bruises? From Murrukh?"

She pulled the crumpled bonnet off her head and beat it once, twice, three times against her thigh, trying to stir the cold wetness from its musty slats. Released from it, the young woman's mane of hair hung, a blackened shade, around her face. Gloria used the ragged garment to wipe rivulets of tarsweat off her cheeks, its falling an interminable process even in the brisk winter day.

"What kind of -- of stupid things does she believe I'll do?" The seamstress' voice was a constant ribbon of tension. "And I don't want you here if obligation outweighs preference. I don't want to become a job or a task, Edmund. You're free of anybody's orders around me. I want you smiling honestly, not smiling dutifully."

Her eyes were tired stormclouds as they watched him. Why was his countenance always so truthful, always so clean-cut and simple? It wasn't the soldier in him, nor was it his good nature -- it was something else she couldn't define, a light behind his skin that had taken on greater value since that autumn day she'd wielded his shield and demanded he strike her with his sword.

Standing here between the walls of scraped hides, she tried to make amends for her earlier sharpness by extending the stump of her shortened arm, her elbow crooked and entirely his. Gloria smiled. Tentative as it was, the grin brightened the stout, sand-scarred portrait of her face.

"Do you think you can do that," the foreign girl asked. "Do you think you can stop being a good soldier around me, and just be a boy instead?"

"We're young. We're old, but still very young."
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Re: Wandering

Postby Guppy » Fri Dec 26, 2014 11:22 am

The mention of bruises made him lift his shoulders helplessly. "She did not comment on their source. She just seemed morose, perhaps disappointed. I could not reveal the reasons behind those emotions." The two of them were little more than strangers, as it were.

Her concerns over his dutiful appearance made his gaze soften as it rested lightly upon her tired frame. "You seem weary, Gloria, and with good reason. I just wish that I would see joy alight in your eyes again. I would give anything." His words were honest, wistful.

He ducked his head like a bashful schoolboy and focused on his callused hands clasped before him. "You've been through more than I can begin to understand and I suspect that you need time to yourself. My concern is far beyond duty, but you've not the attention for such things. Not right now. So," he straightened his spine into a rod, the smile settling into something close to worry, and spread his arms wide, "here I stand, ready to be whatever it is you need."

"Just a boy, hoping to spend time with a girl."

He reached for her arm, his touch light and unassuming.
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Re: Wandering

Postby Rance » Sun Dec 28, 2014 2:07 am

When his fingers touched her arm this time, she didn't pull away. The rough fabric of her sleeve was all his. The tension that had been in her forearm, wrist, and fist only minutes ago trickled away. Her fingers, each one a warm pillar despite the winter's wrath, sought out his. All she wanted to say to him as they stood outside the tanner's lot was--

There are much prettier girls out there you could be saying these things to.

But hurting him, especially with her own obsessive self-disgust, was something he did not deserve.

"I like spending time with you," she admitted, locking her elbow within his, glancing out from underneath the awning of the tanner's shop as the sleet fell in glittering sheets and curtains. "So much so, in fact, that my conscience starts whispering cruelties. It says you're going to disappoint him, Wynsee, or you're going to hurt him. I get so scared of those supposed inevitabilities that I get sick to my stomach.

"Even now," the girl whispered, "my words are me, me, me, and I just want to -- to shut up so I can be there for you instead. For anybody. It's always Gloria's problems, Gloria's troubles." A smile dared to smear the straight line of her lips. "Is it any wonder why I can't stand her?"

She thrust her cheek against his shoulder, drawing in a breath of him: the odor of oiled leather and soldiers' linens. The girl didn't stop looking at him, her lips and nose buried against his sleeve, her face like a half-risen Glass Sun from behind the hillock of his arm. "You seem flawless, Edmund. You -- you seem like you have everything in order, like a perfectly-drilled regiment of troops in your mind."
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Re: Wandering

Postby Guppy » Sat Jan 03, 2015 5:09 am

His smile was soft when he earned her hand in his own callused one. He gave her hand a squeeze of support, his gaze showing his gentle adoration.

"I like spending time with you, too. I am sorry that you are hurting. I wish ... I wish there was something that I could do to help ease you heart," he lamented. His brows went high as she revealed her insecurities. He was quiet as he considered them, startled into silence. His large hand came to lay on the crown of her head as she pressed her cheek into his shoulder.

Abruptly, he moved to pull away from her. His hands encircled her shoulders in an attempt to turn her to face him. One knee fell into the mud as he knelt, uncaring for the state of his clothing in favor of this, his eyes seeking out her own. His fingers on one hand relented and the bare skin found her cheek gently. "I have my faults. You will discover them in time. They will probably surface in our marriage," he teased, since the girl had not given him an answer to his question yet.

"I think you deserve a little you, you, you, given the circumstances."

Her child was missing.

"Do you want to go to the Rememdium together? Not leave until we get answers?"
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Re: Wandering

Postby Rance » Sat Jan 03, 2015 7:24 am

He knelt before her, giving her the advantage of height. Gloria's round cheeks, red from the bitter cold, flushed violently. When she smiled, her lips twitched, desperately trying to hide the shame of her sand-broken teeth. "Around you, my heart doesn't need easing," the girl said, leaning close to him that the words might be theirs and theirs alone. "It's wilder around you. It beats louder and harder. In my ears. Against my ribs. It dances and whirls and spins; I didn't know it could do those things."

Her finger fingers carefully wound around his hand, drawing it down from her face. She pressed his palm against the decline of her left breast, over the precious organ beating-beating (tha-thum, tha-thum, tha-thum) beneath her winter tunic and blouse. To any passers-by, perhaps the motion might have looked lascivious, even suggestive: a young woman in a ragged bonnet and moth-eaten dress giving parts of her to a soldier's touch. She poured herself into his eyes and forgot about propriety, about appearance, about the rest of the world.

"Do you feel it," she asked. "Do you hear it? What a wonderful way to remember I have a heart at all, when I see your face, Edmund Henderson. If you've faults, they'll gleam as bright as your perfections. I wouldn't let your faults hurt you; I wouldn't let you hurt at all."

Marriage. That strange, foreign, confusing word.

"I don't want to go to the Rememdium. I want to think about -- about something else for a few short minutes."

Someone else has my daughter. Someone better. Someone who isn't a fool like me.

(But even here, amid the mud-slopped streets and the pale curtain of sleet, she was a girl, even if she was a Jerno; she fantasized about love, about a bond shared similar to the one between her beloved H'zlz and G'leuse, about being someone's, about being, about plump babies that smelled like sand and sweat. About being his, even though she knew so little about him. About being kissed by him. And looked upon. And safe.

And when she awakened from those prophecies of domesticity and normality with fingers wrinkled like pruneskin, it was always Edmund, Edmund, and she was always his.)

"Tell me," Gloria whispered, never blinking, her pupils darting left, right, finding every shadow, every shape hidden in his. "Tell me what it would be like to be married."
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Re: Wandering

Postby Kestrel » Sat Jan 31, 2015 2:22 am

The two stood in the rain, half-sheltered under an awning. He knelt in the mud and stared adoringly up at her with a kind expression. He swallowed as she pressed his callused fingers over her heart. He tried not to fracture the moment by casting an uneasy glance around them; he would just have to hope that no one was glaring at him for taking advantage of this lovely woman.

"Mine does much the same. Perhaps they are speaking some private language," the young soldier suggested, baring his teeth in a smile in hopes it would distract him from how close his hand was to her breasts.

She pleaded with him to tell her about what marriage might mean and he smiled. He gingerly climbed to his feet and sought her hand with his own. He shrugged out of his sopping jacket and attempted to lay it across her shoulders. "Marriage will mean someone to keep you warm, safe, and loved. It might mean arguments and hurt feelings from time to time, but we are made of sterner stuff; we can handle those moments and patch them up nicely. It will mean someone will watch over you as you shove your way through life, protecting your back." He leaned over to press warm lips against her forehead. "Come, let us get out of the rain and we might speak more on the matter. I imagine you have a great many thoughts on the matter. I've never known you not to have an opinion of your own," he teased, nothing but affection in his voice.
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Re: Wandering

Postby Rance » Sun Feb 01, 2015 6:41 am

No more glaring eyes. No judging glances, no passing leers from passing eyes. He touched her, not just her ratty clothes and burning skin. Instead, he reached through those material things and put the pressure of his palm against the base of her tired heart. She watched him and said nothing, for what could she say? Lovely, he thought her; handsome, she thought him -- and around him, she felt simultaneously massive and miniscule, a woman and a child, a girl, an adult.

"This year I turned seventeen," she blurted, unbidden, never looking away from his eyes.

She shrunk into the warm protection of his jacket, tucking cheek against the stitched collar and her lips into its beaten lining. He shouldn't have been without the sleeves, not in the onslaught of sleet and too-cold rain, but in that moment she was his, his to protect and care for as he deemed fit. She could have crumbled all the way into him; if only he'd asked, she would have turned into a vapor and drifted into the winds, or sever all her remaining fingers just to give to him. Edmund Henderson (Gloria Wynsee adored the sharp edges of his full name, the way each consonant demanded breadth and severity) could have asked her to run away from this place--

"We are made of sterner stuff," she repeated as he kissed her. "I'll protect you. I'd -- I'd protect you if you needed it, Edmund."

Together, they crunched through the gravel streets. She never let go of his hand.

"I'm nobody's daughter anymore. I've no dowry, no worth in my name. I bring to you nothing of advantage, Edmund."

But because she couldn't not, she touched his knuckles to her lips and softly brushed her lips across each and every one.

"If you still think I'm worth it, if you still look at me with those eyes when I'm seventeen, will you..."

Marry me?
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