by Rance » Thu Jul 04, 2013 5:29 pm
He would not have given up on us.
Noura touched her elbow, cradled it, paused her. She shook; the wool of her winter dress hid most of the tremors' visibility (the suffocating fabric reeked of age and sweat, incubated her skin even in the Sun, brought out the tarsweat and promised her some memory of home). Her voice spoke about anger and fury, but her body of a simple child's emotion: fear.
"Not his trinket," she whispered. "Mine. He -- he once told me in his arrogance that he would burn my body when I am dead. That is what they do here in Myrken Wood. They burn the bodies. Perhaps he thought to disturb me, or -- or bother me. But I gave him coal," she said. "Because I will go first. Those are the odds. That is how it will be.
"It will be nice," the seamstress added with an ineffectual smile. "When that day comes, that would be just fine if he could hold his promise."
She wanted to be a greasy flag of black smoke against the Myrken sky. She hoped that even her corpse would reek, that the tarsweat would bubble and pop on her skin and passers-by noticing the pyre would put palms to their noses and look away. It humored her, that thought. Sometimes she drew billowing twists of smoke on her learning-parchment when she thought too much of
a Dream.
Noura lunged forward to embrace her. The autumnal hues of Rhaena's colors were like fire against her skin, but her friend was beneath them, not changed, not meddled-with, just Noura, warm and welcoming and -- for a moment, a split-second breath -- everything seemed normal, time and law unmolested, serene.
I only ask that you keep an eye out, Noura said.
She would not dirty her own hands, Noura said.
She separated slowly, regretfully, from the whelp, as if they were magnetic stones drawn apart by a child's hands. While the other girl spoke, she listened; she did not retort for some time, reveling in silence and considering, considering--
--but only long enough to remove from her satchel a frightful little fang of a blade that shook in the seamstress' quivering palm. Its handle was leather-wrapped, stained in black sweat, and its blade was a jagged shard of muddied mirror-glass, the kind that showed fictions, desires, wants, envies, needs. She placed the fragile knife on the bar beside them, speaking both with heart and honesty. "If -- if you are lost, Noura, and all measures have been exhausted, every avenue of opportunity scoured and ineffective in returning you--"
Her fingertips touched the tin pommel, as if to say, This is what a friend would do--
"Then I will. I will do this, so It may not have you. Do you understand," the girl asked without asking, her eyes frightened but resolute. Because if you cannot be you, she wanted to say. If Rhaena Olwak makes such a thing irreversible...
"Let me see your shoulder," Gloria interjected, an interruption, a rational steadying. "Seams are not always meant for clothes. It is what I can do. For you, for keeping my brother safe from what he ought not do."