Good Morning

[Quincy]

There's no shame in letting someone help you, and you shouldn't feel bad about it, because someday... someone will need to lean on you, and when you are there for them, you don't want them refusing you.

'All ri', but it's goin' to be you 'o I'm goin' to 'elp one day, got it? '

Got it.


---


At the day’s first blush, when the sky was vast and bloody with the light of a blazing aurora, there was at first the longest, softest cry; whether it was the repulsive heat or the memory of the dawn before, the sound was augmented until it was no longer one voice.

The vocalization was immense and terrible and came as though the sound itself lacerated the darkness and spilled the wounded heavens’ bright viscera on the fields and forests of the land.

It was a score of screaming angels, an alluring nightmare from the quaking cage of a small, mortal body bent over the sapphire hilt of a thin blade sheathed in the ground.

Her furor endlessly gutted the would-be silence of daybreak until finally all of the privations of her young life came to a cumulative effect on her physical settlement, and she fell, alone and bereaved.

The strange tongue of her ‘mother’ did not fade away as songs often do. The choir of bleeding voices punctured the air with a very final, and desolate scream. Shyntei's Song, put to such woeful use, would have driven Shyntei herself to the ground in agony, had she the sanity to hear it now.

Every anarchist hair on her head stirred in the meek northern wind as she slaved through the grass on her hands and knees for the scabbard.

The end was a full day gone and yet she stayed, inert of mind in some prolonged suspense - as though the outcome was yet uncertain. She tried to taste the lost ashes while waiting for a final, hysterical punch-line to spring out of nowhere and cut her throat.


Cry.

As much as you want.

Her face was still wet. How it was possible for her ducts to weep for so long was another inscrutable puzzle: a puzzle for which she would never look for an answer. She would simply know that she had never cried so much before in all her short life.

She collected the scabbard and folded against the earth beside the sword named Dog-Ears. He was stoic. He did not hold her now, but his memory did. Not a shadow in all the world could dim his righteous beauty.

She knew what the Half would have said for the first rays of mourning light.

Every morning we see is a good morning, Quincy.

When she looked at the perfect sky with strange eyes steep with her heart, she held his azure hilt and sobbed endlessly: 'Good mornin'! Good mornin', Dog-Ears!'

[Quincy]

The light of the third daybreak poured through the window of a troubled dreamer and her steel bed thief. It had been a trial the night before: she could not put him on the desk, against the wall, on the dresser, or by the window. At some point she had regarded him in all of these variant poses before finally she’d reposed his hilt on a pillow, pulled the sheet over the blade, and collapsed on the floor as a woeful, self-imposed subordinate.

The light came and abducted her sleep, and she climbed to her feet with throbbing joints and wet eyes. Though the experience was short lived, Pritchard had been so impressed by the Half’s janitorial prowess that Quincy had been given a rather appalling set of guidelines. With the fervor of a second chance and the sorrow of a great loss, she had attacked the workday until her physicality was whipped to an aching feverpitch. The morning after she felt every inch of the welcome punishment.

Today was the start of a ritual that would, foregoing all the plausible years of constant ceremony, feel instantly ancient. She did not put on her eye patch, just her slippers and her cloak. The reflection in the mirror glared back at her: she looked smaller and whiter than ever. Dog-Ears came with her on her back in his scabbard, and she was strangling a sack so tightly that it must have been precious.

The hallway and the stairway knew her intimately, from her whispering walk to the way that she made her hand’s shadow talk on the wall when no one was looking. She never walked on that one, groaning floorboard that was as nondescript as any other, and the only souls awake were in the kitchen when she walked out the back and for the field beyond the inn. It took a strange heart to retrace those steps.

“We won’ let that bad man touch you,” she promised. Her curse was unfathomable; since that merciful dawn, two men had begged her assistance in their own deaths, and someone was already out to steal Him. Quincy did not know why he wanted Dog-Ears. She only knew that he was violent and monstrously manipulative. She might have been gullible at first, but her receptiveness to abuse was thin.

There was no mark on the ground, but she knew the moment when she walked across his last home. The girl dropped with her small sack and began to pull up weeds and grass with her naked fingers. The sapphire hilt loomed over her soft shoulder. “I know you don’ mind. I jus’ think that pretty things should grow ‘ere. Nobody ever comes over this way. It’s too far off o’ the road.”

“I wrote you a letter, too, but you didn’ ever get to read it,” she prattled on, tilling the soil with her knuckles. She sounded quiet and desperate. “Don’ feel like you’re missin’ nothin’, though. It wasn’ a very good letter anyway.”

Once starved for sunbeams, her porous shadowland of dark hair was now aflame with dawn. Only her left sleeve was pushed up to the elbow, a firm hand smoothing across the growing patch of bare dirt. It was easy with the recent rainstorms. Quincy dumped the seeds out of the brown sack, spread them out, and pushed them finger-deep in the willing earth.

"I don’ know wha’ your favourites are, so I got differen’ kinds. Nothin’ with thorns, though, okay?"

The beginning of a tiny garden was watered with fresh tears.

[Quincy]

What a morning it was on the fourth dawn: there was a maple tree thronged by swallows agog with chirping arguments, and the light was golden but chilly across the contours of the damp field. Quincy was there long before sunup and watched the rise with Dog-Ears. Her fingers were already dirty from clearing away new weeds and grass from the garden patch.

She waited until the sky was full of the sun before she ever spoke to him.

“If we’re goin’ to be together all th’ time then we shouldn’ ‘ave no secrets.”

Leaning between her knees, she let her watering can sprinkle on the brown dirt, nurturing the seeds.

“I was kin’ of jealous when I seen Victory tryin’ to dance with you,” she confessed. “I used t’dance before I got ugly, an’ I even won a masquerade once. I don’ really like t’ get close enough to dance with no one now.”

“ ... but I reckon now that it’s differen’, we can dance all th’ time. I tried t’ dance wi’ another sword once not too long ago, but I threw it away. Dancing is supposed t’ be happy, isn’t it? ...an’ swords is for things that aren’t happy.”

Quincy put down the watering can and reached back for the glittering sapphire hilt, drawing the blade off her back to hold it up before her. “...but you aren’ just a sword to me, no matter what, got it? I can dance all I wan’ now, ‘cause I’m never goin’ to kill again, right? An’ it will be happy, ‘cause it’ll make you happy.”

It would make him smile forever.

“I don' think I’m ready yet, though,” she frowned along the keen edge before she suddenly bowed her head and slid the weapon into the scabbard. He was at rest on her lean back. Tears were not something that she could predict or stop, and these days, she was lachrymose at the most insupportable moments. At least here, alone with Dog-Ears, she was not ashamed.

By now she must have suspected that there was something more: the start of a murmur not her own, a black thought while she held him dearly. It was her own mind that was not yet accessible. Frightened by the extent of her lacking self-preservation and the depth of her anguish, she was ill at ease to close out the world and listen to what was inside. Instead she pushed him away while enigmatically persisting in these constant, obsessive attentions to his memory. It would take time, and she was making time.

She'd even gone so far as taking different paths from town to work, through the forest on her errands. Her motivation was sound but eerie. He could fly before - surely he would get bored of the same roads. Quincy wished that she could take him in the air. If she ever found a way, then she would not hesitate, even if it took place on the back of an unwilling dragon.

“Jus' stab me if I talk too much.”

[Quincy]

A drizzle began on the same morning. She did not know how late it was, but she was determined that the garden should be perfect. It was a frightening flawlessness that her engrossed heart had in store for the nursery of flowers. Quincy wondered if the spring was dreary just for her.

“Please don’ wash away,” she whispered in a voice like strings through a hollow shell. Her hands were in the dirt, and the dirt was turning into mud.

That was when she began to listen; her ears closed to everything, sweet and willing, and maybe she had a small knot of hope in her belly. She came here with her keening and tears, and she must have wanted something. However, Quincy did not even know what she waited for, and in the end it was just a shivering effort to block out the rain that fell like cold knives on her back.

There was nothing at first, but that would soon change…

‘I want to tell you something that means a lot to me. Something I never forgot...’

The mental trespasser was more than welcome. Maybe he wasn’t a trespasser at all; maybe all this time, she’d been standing outside her door of thoughts, begging him to come in and make himself at home. Somehow it still shocked her, and she was looking wildly over her shoulder through a gray downpour.

‘We can't always walk in straight lines. Sometimes, it's necessary to take the long way around, Quincy. Sometimes that's the only way. I once felt it best to do so as quickly as possible, but now...You take your time, Quincy. I'll never get bored of that.'

Quincy did not even realize that she was holding his hilt. When did she draw him from the scabbard? Her pounding heart threatened the meager architecture of her ribcage. She did not remember rising, but she was on her feet, too.

'...The woman who taught me how to dance was actually my sister. I didn't know she was my sister at the time, so I guess you can imagine how awkward things were when I found out! Since then, dancing has been a bit of a private matter for me. People tend to die when I dance. Victory should be thankful, but she'll never know.'

Compelled by her inner stupidity, she ran through the rain at the lonely maple in the field and circled it, searching for his ghost.

'...Have you wondered why my hilt is blue? It was red once. Did you know there are two types of blood in you? There's blue blood, and red blood. Look at your arms; some veins are bluish, aren't they? In my youth, red blood meant life; blue meant death.'

It was the Sword! The Sword!

Voice lodged in her throat, she threw up her arm, sopping sleeve falling to her elbow. Her mismatched eyes stared at the paths of wetness and the veins of her lily-white skin. She looked frantically from her arm to the hilt of the sword, gasping for air. That’s not the only reason why I have blue blood, Quincy bitterly thought.

Do you know how swords are made? You take the metal from the ground, you put it in fire and beat it. Torture it, shape it, discipline it. Then you make it cold and hard. Those who wield swords...Are Swords, Quincy. All but you, because you're special; your Sword loves you.'

“I love you too!” she exclaimed, and somehow the words were filled with despair. Turning around and around, she held him up. Her mouth was hanging open to drink the rain, and her eyes were crying again.

'I'd like to spend more time with you in that clearing...You remember the one? Where I spoke to you and Eva. It's not far; I'll show you the way. That's our place, Quincy. I trained there, spoke with nature there. Asked my questions there. When you need to be alone, take me there.'

She swung around to a face full of wet leaves and pushed them aside, looking back toward the drowning garden. It was a perfect dark stain in a green sea. Her hand tightened on the azure-wrapped hilt, and she was shaking with more than the cold. The garden…

'...Every garden has weeds, Quincy. Even the best of gardens. You can spend forever trying to get rid of them, or just accept that even weeds have a life of their own. But when the weeds begin to choke the flowers...You need to decide which must go.'

Her silence was not a loss for words. It was Quincy longing to hear his voice - hearing him with all her fledgling ardor. She turned away from the garden and swallowed hard when everything went suddenly quiet. Looking from the inn down the slope to the forest, she knew what to do for now.

Tomorrow she would go to the clearing; she couldn't afford to get sick again, and so the puddle-dodger raced home, steel carving through the rainfall.

[Quincy]

'I remember the first time I saw a dinner plate. I was looking down at it on the floor. Of course, it was round, a circle made of metal. You know what I'm talking about. But then, not long after, I saw the same plate but from a different angle. It looked flat and long then, because I saw it from the side. But when I turned it, it was round again. The same plate looked very different, just because of how I looked at it. The same goes for people and situations.’

‘Tha’ reminds me o’ somethin’, Dog-Ears. M- Maybe it ain’t the same, but I reckon words can be like that, too. Like dinner plates, I mean. My frien’s say that I believe anythin’ that I ‘ear – that I don’ question enough, an’ just ‘urry off to save the day withou’ a secon’ thought.’

‘I tried askin’ questions, y’know. But mos’ o’ the time, I jus’ end up goin’ aroun’ in circles forever, an’ find ou’ nothing at all – or too much o’ the wrong thing. A big giant circle of stupid.’

‘M-Maybe I’m jus’ not smart enough. ‘eldenbrand said, ‘e said my passion is goin’ to kill me. ‘e said, ‘Quincy, the world don’t revolve aroun’ you an’ your exploits.’ I don’ think the worl’ revolves aroun’ my exploits, Dog-Ears. I don’t even think I got an exploit.

‘Wha’ is an exploit?’

‘Why does every’un always try an’ tell me wha’ to do? They call it ‘elping, but come on – when I’m standin’ up to my enemy, is I’ really ‘elpful for some’un to come up be’ind me an’ star’ sayin’: ‘Quincy, you are doing this all wrong. Quincy, ‘e’s saying that so you’ll get mad.’ Oh, AYE. Why don’ we inspire th’ enemy’s confidence even more by showin’ ‘ow s-stupid I am!’

‘I know I ge’ carried away sometimes an’ it’s got me in a lot o’ trouble, but I’m still ‘ere, aren’t I? I got you now, too. Me an’ Kobra ‘as got to be real good friends. I d- don’ think ‘e’s bad, Dog-Ears – I don’ like what ‘e done to So-lee, but …’

‘They say tha’ she brou’ Mephisto back t’ life before.’

‘Mephisto talked like dinner plates.’

[Quincy]

As always, Quincy has been busy. Rarely is the Sword off her back, except when she works - except when she happily slaves with brooms and cloths. To work is a gratifying self-exile from all that is darkness; it is a fine, thankless simplicity - something that can be done well, when all other things are un-well.

They have been to the town square, danced in the rain again, encountered a red-headed woman in the woods with a cauldron, and made echoes in a deep well while a thirsty minotaur waited impatiently for water. Dog-Ears has only killed one man, and he was a man who begged to die. Quincy had shut her eyes. Mercy, she had thought. Even that did not stay her tears.

They have not encountered Victory at all, and although the young janitor is perpetually displeased with the fighter - she keeps a watchful eye on the inn, awaiting her arrival or a rumour of her whereabouts. Dislike does not mean uncaring, after all.

There is a new chambermaid at the inn named Dulcie. Quincy and Dulcie, thus far, have had a rather odd but pleasantly honest working relationship. The janitor is easily fond of the clumsy, forthright, flirty farmer-girl.

~*~

On a sunny morning she walked past the garden in the field with more than a second glance, paused to pull just a few weeds, and went on toward the clearing in the woods. She had a quantity of hair over one eye and a ribbon around her neck; the cautious manner of her walk and her vagrant mantle gave her an air of injured innocence.

She had not seen the strange, flying creature again since their first day in the clearing, but when she flounced beyond its threshold, she still stole long looks up at the sky. She spread her fingers in the hazy light that filtered through the tangled boughs overhead.


'They say every rose has its thorns. I say every thorn has its rose. it doesn't really matter what they say, or what I say. Understanding that all things of beauty can cause pain, and all things that cause pain can be beautiful...That's what it's about. Just don't do what some people do and forget the difference between the thorn and the rose. Solena did that; for a little while, Victory did that too. You have to keep your eyes and heart open, always.’

'I kn-know tha' beautiful things can cause pain, but I thin' almost everythin' is beautiful, Dog-Ears!' She turned around and dropped her hand, roaming around the stump while she spoke. 'Every'un always is mad or lyin' to each other, though. I shouldn' judge nobody, I guess, but I got to help my friends, don' I? It ain' good when my friends 'ate each other. Sh-Should I not be some'un's friend because they're bad? No, tha's a stupid question. I can be frien's with anyone, bu' when it comes down to it - I got to do what is right.'

'Laugh. As much as you want. In fact, do anything as much as you want, as long as you remember that you're never alone. I never got the chance to explain this to you, but I hope I will someday. People also talk about ripples on a pond - I don't really get it myself but apparently the ripples are meant to be what happens when we do something. Yknow, drop a stone in the water and stuff. Either way, you have to remember as well that you're not the only one dropping stones, not the only one doing things. It's HARD to remember, I know! And it hurts to remember this, because it means you see people for what they really are: just like you, just like me. They cry and laugh too. Even the really bad ones.'

Quincy deeply sighed and dropped to the fallen log, planting her face against her knees. 'Tha's the 'ardest part. Cryin' an' laughin'. Like you said you was bad, Dog-Ears. You wouldn' lie to me. But you don' believe in jus' plain good an' jus' plain evil. Maybe I shouldn', neither. .. an' really, I don't. If some'un was all bad when they do ANYTHIN' bad, then I wou' be bad, too. All bad. .. but I do got a little bit o' bad in me.'

'I know you said tha' I could jus' leave the past behind an' jus' make my good story now with th' rest of my life, but maybe tellin' it will make it heal up. .. So when I get up the courage, I'm goin' to tell you about me. All about me. 'cause even things from a long time leave me real confused - an' m- maybe you can one day 'elp me with that, too.'

She was quiet for a time after that. Next time, she thought, she would bring her coals and tablet and draw a picture for Phlynn. A wren was building a nest, and she watched it hop with a twig in its beak. Her dark eye was filled with gloomy recollections and a small spark of solace.

'One day, you'll fall in love. This probably isn't a topic your Sword should discuss; we're supposed to be all cold and determined, I guess, but hey - Swords don't usually tell stories either. Anyway, your life's going to be changed by that, and I won't be able to give any more advice then. Your heart will know what to do. Some day, you won't need me. That's when you'll have to *really* kill me, Quincy, but there's no rush for that either.'

She shook her head vehemently from the start.

'I ain' got it in me for tha' kind of thing no more,' she whispered. 'I'm jus' goin' to love you, Dog-Ears.'

[Quincy]

'Dance. Every day, dance at least once. Someone far wiser than I said that, and I agree. You don't have to dance *with* someone - sometimes you can just dance a little bit. Dancing makes the heart light and the world alive.'

Quincy, despotic with her broken branch, stood on a stump in the clearing and jabbed condemnation at the air. She liked the way it whistled and pulled back when she swung the leafed scepter. ‘You ‘eard my Sword! Dance, everything! Dance!’

It was easier and easier to escape the severities of society, to indulge in the fantastic – to shy from the poignant, the overwhelming mortification of true horrors. Her heavy eye was glassy with imaginative distraction, and when she stopped in the light, the contours of her face conveyed entirely, singly, the idea of unmitigated gravity and repose.

This was some time after the incident with the strange letter and the raw liver on a plate outside of her door. At the time, she had kept her cool and explained softly, convincing herself, to Dog-Ears: ‘I ‘ave seen lots worse than this; it ain’ goin’ to make me sick.’

She had disposed of the plate and read the ridiculous letter – more about treason, the governor demanding arrest, but now, so much was clear to her. Had it been a tale that someone was telling, she might have found it all fascinating, remarkable and grotesque – what will the brave heroes do! Now, in the clearing, her remorse rang out: ‘I don’ know wha’ to do!’

She went on, trying to offer insight to her mental conformation – though with these intimate solitudes, it has ever gained clarity. These sessions of exercising over habits, persons, manners, propensities, iniquities, and exaggerated honour were both pertinent and proved her gentleness; a harsher mind would have been quick to dismiss this entire place.

How could this be Home?

‘I’m glad you ain’t like them other swords that’s got voices, Dog-Ears. I didn’t know it ‘til recent, but one o’ my enemies ‘ad a sword like that, except the sword was livin’ on him like some kind o’ life-suckin’, brain-twistin’ parasite.’

‘People died tryin’ to get rid o’ that dark elf. ‘e ‘ad it out for me – ‘e got in my brains real good once. ‘e took me down under the groun’, an’ ‘is undead gnawed me down to the bone, almos’. Tha’s when I really started appreciatin’ healers, you know.’

‘I sh- shouldn’ complain about ‘ow I look now. If not for a good ‘ealer, I would ‘ave been either dead, or even more of a ‘ideous monster.’

‘I thought tha’ when the dark elf – Aud-mathus were his name – got dead, tha’ was the end of him, but it was really th’ sword all along. Shadow-dancer.’

‘I don’ think it should ‘ave a name like that. It’s an evil sword, an’ not all things in the shadows is bad like that. It’s too pretty a name, don’ you think? You’re a lot more prettier.’

‘Anyway, now ‘e’s got inside o’ the governor ‘imself. Tha’s why they is tryin’ to make us go in the gaol. It’s jus’ .. that sword, again. Swords can be real powerful, cain’t they? It’s jus’ an ugly trap. I ain’ goin’ in no prison. They wouldn’ let me take you with me, neither, but I know you wou’ be there anyway if I needed you.’

Quincy threw the branch and sat down with her fingers in her hair. A ladybug walked across her long earpoint.

‘If we turn into outlaws, we can’ jus’ come an’ stay here.’