Secrets tend to tell themselves, I find.
I find I will not miss...
Clandestine heartaches buried years deep in stagnant days.
Writing lullabies across the moon
I have rescued dreams dying on yesterday's embers
Fashioning flowers from fancy.
Skipping stones across April showers.
We will dance upon days time has forgotten.
- Saetia
One Afternoon Prior: Red Dragon Inn
The pitter-patter of her slippered feet seemed porch-bounced. She stopped short just beyond the steps and looked up, orbs flickering to the overcast sky.
You're going to overwhelmed.
"You dun say?"
The wind whipped a reply.
"Well." The girl took the ends of her flowing skirts (a mishmash of fabric, really, and strangely sewn patchwork) and gathered it into a ball at her side. Slowly, suspiciously, she ascended the stairs to the porch, and headed for the door.
So there she appeared, to linger in the threshold.
"Between the worlds."
She pressed her side to the doorframe and whispered to the wood.
No answers this night.
She peered inside. "Hm. Ahem. Hm." She frowned, as if someone she'd expected did not appear. And where was that strange girl from the night prior? Tina. Viki spun, and glanced outside.
"Hello, Viki."
A voice. Clearly a voice in this plane. She felt she would turn in circles today, especially as her name was called. Off-blue orbs settled on the waving Lenika, and the girl managed a warm smile. "Hello!" She called out to her, her voice airy, light.
With a yaw, she began a slow saunter-shuffle to the bar. It was never to early for that - the sauntering, I mean. And she hoisted herself into a vacant barstool with relative ease, happily squinting at the many bottles which lined the walls.
It was there she would perch, for the moment, and enter a sort of awakened-sleep, with her eyes aloof and her mind entirely elsewhere.
Another carries the spice, the pes'cis, although she calls it something else.
That did it. It would seem to those around her that the girl became alert, and quite suddenly, and as if startled by some uncertain vision. She leapt from the barstool, and backed away from the counter.
Her reaction caused quite a response from the otherwise peaceful crowd. Eyes were upon her again, but not from the unwelcome or the unknown. She took her arms to her sides and straightened, as if aware of her own odd behavior, and flashed both Grem and Lenika a sheepish grin.
"Things in the dark. Sorry. I did nuh mean to confuse."
"It's a good idea to be wary, but some things in the dark aren't so bad." Said Grem, softly, and it occurred to Viki that his voice was always soft when he spoke to her.
If he only knew.
She dipped her head into a small nod, though wouldn't offer a further explanation for what she saw, or, didn't see. Her painted lips were forced into a further smile as she took Grem's advice to mind before backing away with quick feet. With a flutter of fabric and hair alike, she spun on her heels, entrance-bound once more. There were too many voices and bodies assembled, though in truth she had been present on much more crowded nights. Soft footfalls fell upon the polished floor and took her toward the threshold, then out onto the porch where she had lingered not too long ago.
"Ket'chka ril."
She felt her insides jump, yet she stood poisoned on the porch, as if posing for a photograph or an artist's paintbrush. "Skado." A singsong voice, accompanied by a light flutter of fingertips.
"You are nearly as strange a daytime creature, as myself... "
This brought an abrupt burst of rather musical laughter. "I sleep much, and forsake the sun for lesser stars." She stretched bare arms above her head and brought them back down in front of her, clasping her hands at her middle. "You left quick, last night, and I was lost without you."
There was a short, quiet laugh, and it did not seem like a laugh at all. "Lost leading the lost?" He looked quite tired as he leaned against the rail of the porch.
"Are you so lost?" Careful steps were taken toward him, and perhaps she was in tune to his own preference for space, or perhaps because she herself was weary, and caution was necessary to retain a certain amount of grace.
"Perhaps I am. I have so many faces, I do not truly know anymore." His tone was thoughtful, not sad, and as he spoke, the smoke from his clove bore tiny sparrows. They flew about briefly, or came to settle along the railing, and by some small miracle managed to cling to life as others were denied.
Like Irrykin.
"I know. He makes birds like the other." Said the seer, aloud, her eyes fleeing to the side, as if she had spoken to some invisible presence, as if the sandman wouldn't hear. Then, her pretty face lifted, and her eyes were all for him again, him and the occasional ghost bird.
"I like this face. Do naut change it again if you can help it." She spoke to the birds, of course.
"Like the other." The sandman repeated, and all thought seemed to linger on that spilled secret. Simultaneously, the smoke birds puffed out of existence.
And then there were two.
Viki's teeth sunk into the lower portion of her painted lips. Speaking secrets aloud was never a good thing. Perhaps she would cover it with a simple change of subject.
"I met a girl last night. She stared at me with young eyes and I thought perhaps you knew her since she called you by a title, though I forget what that title was."
"Teacher, perhaps. You met Tina."
"Yes. That was her name." Her interest in him was perhaps apparent, though, it was more intrigue than anything else. So you say. He was strange. She was stranger, which she demonstrated with a click of her tongue and a new stance upon one foot. "How does one go about getting. .taught?"
"Choose to learn." He set his chin upon his claws and continued. "I would not call myself tutor though. That is favor the mother asked of me, and I merely speak sense or pretend logic on occasion."
"Artsblood. Yes, she spoke of her mother, and I asked her if she made art of blood, or blood of art, but rejected both." Viki took this all in, smiling-smiling, and settled at his side as if she fit there, though careful to leave a certain amount of space between them. Fabric did not dare touch fabric, but occasionally made the threat. "So you tutor with riddles and you are of the sand and that is all I know of you. I remember I made a house for you out of air and you said someday I could see the real thing."
"The house has changed, and perhaps would not be so pleasing as the unhome of air would like to imagine." Was that sadness in his voice?
Then she did the unthinkable and let her head fall softly to his shoulder. It was the sadness in his voice that pulled her, however faint it was. "I always wanted to live in a star, but I suppose it would be much too bright all the time."
He was tense. "And perhaps too warm."
"Yes." She laughed lightly, letting her head roll to align itself symmetric with her shoulders, much to his relief, perhaps. Twin orbs of off-blue found his in the daylight, though it grew much darker with the growing number of storm clouds. "Tell me a story?"
Black eyes paused to meet her own, then flickered to regard the weather. "My stories are rarely... pleasant."
"So?" She pressed him with her eyes and her face and the fire in that small whisper. The world was full of cruelty, but surely none of the world was within this man. There was a brief moment to follow his gaze to the horizon, but she had seen so many storm clouds, and did not mind the chance of rain. An onslaught, however, was another thing entirely..
Someone interrupted their conversation. It was Miles. They each offered an exchange of greetings before the man was well on his way.
Viki felt her heart ache as that one brushed past, though she would not know why until some time later. Perhaps his quick departure was the best thing. Besides, she liked having Skado for herself. His strange words and mannerisms were all a mystery, as were the secrets which swirled around him, though she had yet to decipher all of that. Perhaps, she wouldn't. It was rude and she counted him as a friend.
"You tried to give a story to a summer girl." He spoke then, but not to her.
"Summer girl?" Viki felt herself a shadow, suddenly, but only in his eyes. Would that she could join him there, if indeed she was. She would spend ages asking the inanimate, and the dead, of how to make such a transformation, because surely, it would make all the difference.
What is it that you want?
The sandman broke the silence with a short breath of air, or a laugh, perhaps, though it didn't seem like much. Then, as if by some sleight of hand, he produced another work of paper art: a tiny folded form of a clover.
Her eyes were glued to the strange new fascination he held in his hand.
"A summer girl with bluebird hair." He twirled the paper and offered it up to her.
She took it like something to be treasured, delicately, and inspected it under the fading daylight. Then, she smiled softly, and peered at him, this odd fellow, before holding the paper trinket to her chest. "I should like to hear that story, someday."
"They are many and small stories." He then produced a coin: silver on one side, onyx on the other? Was it the one from before? Tick-tock. It began a march to mark the passage of time.
"Did you love her very much?" It was suddenly important to know these things. She stepped around him in a semicircle, her eyes carefully following the trail of the coin into his wrapped palm. Perhaps, she asked too many questions. But ah, she saw so many things. Her eyes flickered from the coin back to meet his, as if she could somehow read him through his stoicism.
"Love? No. But perhaps I had care for her." His answer.
"Oh. I thought perhaps.." What was it she thought? There was a small sliver of hope, and it floated by invisible, and though she saw, she would not see. It was a careful decision, one she might agonize over later, or simply forget. Her little fingertips traced over the folded parchment, feeling the angles and partitions which made the paper clover.
"What thought, little Seer?" His head canted to one side as he posed the question, and the coin in his hand resumed its count of time in a march across his knuckles.
"I thought perhaps love was possible, for you." She was careful and calculating as she weaved new words to hide strange emotions. "We spoke once of lovers." Her eyes dipped from his and found the coin. The rhythm it set was strangely hypnotic. Then again, time did hypnotize ones such as she.
He looked as if he were weighing her words. Then, he straightened and spoke. "Love is not something that I manage with alacrity." The word "love" was armed to the teeth with violence and sharper things should she question him still, yet the rest of his reply was soft and simple.
She was privy to his changes in speech, and the sharpness of certain words were familiar to her. By now, she had known when to press him, and when not to, although there was a hint of frustration growing in her expressive face. "And I do not manage it at all. It just, is." She was a wild thing, truly, and what come would come. Her eyes lifted. Did the sun pour between lingering clouds? That was a good sign.
"Perhaps the chaos suits you." Is you, he means, surely.
"Does it suit you?" A strange question, a play on a play of words.
"Does it seem to?" The coin ceased its count of time.
"It might." She said quietly, exercising caution. "Perhaps it does." But just as easily, she would throw caution to the wind. "One does not spend such time riddling and making paper things on gently fixed porches if one did not think it suited himself."
Gently fixed, gently stitched, like the both of you.
"But in the grand scheme of time, I spend very little in speaking words upon gently fixed porches."
He would frustrate her to no end.
"All is small in the grand scheme of time.." Her disappointment was hidden with a flutter of fingers, which slowly began to trace the outline of his frame. "Small and precious."
"Small and forgotten."
But then, a curious thing. His frame seemed to flicker in and out of this reality, as shadows wavered and distorted the outline of shoulders and limbs. This she did notice, the strange disappearing-reappearing line of body, and if left her quite lost indeed. She blinked furiously, and took her fingers to her eyes, as if she would somehow rub away what she had seen. Reality or not, she would never succeed in this, no matter how hard she tried. He was there, and not there, pieces of him.. She stopped, and looked at him, for a long time, and perhaps, longing.
"I do not feel small. And how are you possibly? When you are everywhere and nowhere all at once."
"But do you not remember? I am in pieces... almost." He held up his palms in demonstration.
"I would have you in pieces and collect you, like in a jar, only it would be much nicer I assure you."
"Coin-poor eyes." He seemed to speak silently to himself before his black eyes snapped to attention and fixed upon her. Slowly, he left the railing and moved closer, his movements akin to a prowl around where she stood.
"Collect the pieces? But you see that which you romanticize in oddity. There are sharper, unkind things, and all the trappings of the cruel." His voice was harsh and his steps slowed as he circled her. He appeared to be sizing her up, or at least, taking measure.
"Do naut warn the forewarned." She stated simply, and quiet, though her eyes held back so much more as he took to that prowl about her figure. She wavered slightly, just as he seemed to step into her shadow, and caught his hand into hers. Caws and sharp words and pieces and all, she seemed still unafraid.
"You have never been cruel to me." She softened.
"No, you are right. I have not." The touch of hands was nothing more than temporary. He untangled himself and withdrew to the porch steps, but as he went she felt some piece of his linger, perhaps drowning in her shadow. Or, perhaps he had taken a piece of her.
Flip a coin.
She stood there, at the top of the steps, and had the look not much unlike a widow searching the sea for her fallen sailor. The paper clover was still held tight against her chest, and the rise and fall of it with every breath made it all the more noticeable.
